“Yes, this is a nice large bedroom,” Mrs. Williams said.
“Feel free to open the closets,” Melissa offered.
“Hmm,” Mrs. Williams said, pleased, at each open door.
In my study, Mr. Williams said, “Are you retired? I’ve the feeling you might be.”
“I am. But I still keep my hand in.”
“That’s always a good idea, I would think. What,” he soon asked his wife, “will we do with this room?” and there was such a tone of worry in his voice that I suddenly visualized it all ending here. Here!
I said quickly. “You can turn it back into a bedroom. That’s what it was.”
“Of course, George,” his wife said. “It’ll be an extra bedroom.”
“I mean all those bookcases,” he said. Then to me: “You must have two hundred books in this room alone. Do you have any idea how many you have altogether?”
“Quite a few,” I said.
“It’s really a shame, though,” Mrs. Williams said, “to tear down these beautiful bookcases.” Then she said, “Will you have room for them where you’re moving?”
“No,” Melissa replied. “We’ll have to store them or sell them or give them away.”
Smiling, Mrs. Williams looked at me. “May I ask where you’re moving to?”
“I think,” I said, “we’re going to start off in Spain.”
“What do you mean,” Mr. Williams asked, “by ‘you think’?”
“Oh,” Melissa spoke up, “we’re going to put everything in storage, or just about everything, and just take off. Go with the wind pretty much. Bill has always wanted this,” she said, smiling at me, “and we decided it’s time. Just take off. We have a bunch of brochures. Six months in Spain — travel all around there first, we’ve never been there, we’ve never been to most places — and see where we’d like to put down roots for, say, six months before moving on. I was thinking maybe Valencia first, I’ve heard such nice things — you know, on the Mediterranean?”
“You mean,” Mr. Williams said, “you’re not sure where you’ll be living? You’ll just be... going?”
“Oh, that’s the idea,” Melissa said. “Then we’ll go to Portugal, although we still might go to Portugal first. We’re like two kids.”
“So you have no idea where you’ll be settling down.”
“Oh, that’s the last thing we want to do,” she said. “We’ve had enough of settling down. We’re going to rent here, there, everywhere the wind and our whims take us. That sounds, oh... I guess poetic, but that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Sounds like a dream,” Mr. Williams said with a slight, awed shake of his head.
“The idea,” Melissa said, “is to get away from everything you always assume you have to do, have to have. Live at last for ourselves. No more gardener just because next door has one. No more must have a new car every two years because you don’t want to have the oldest one on the block. No living in fear, like — ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that because I might break a hip and what’ll I do, who will I call, who’ll care?’ I’m sick of fear. Children, grandchildren — God bless them, but we’ll see them once a year, twice a year. They’ll do fine. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life worrying about will they cross the street safely, will they do this, that, as though living near them is some kind of safety. And this may make me sound hard, but let them worry about us for a change.”
“That’s something,” Mr. Williams said; and meanwhile I was staring over at Melissa in fury, for she was really taking years of my words and throwing them back at me, even embellishing them. And it was everything she’d ridiculed before!
You know, Mr. Williams’s voice cut in, what his dream was?
“I’d really like to live somewhere where it’s always sunny. The beach and shorts and barefoot thing. Really. Well, maybe someday.”
“Honey, someday we will,” his wife said. “You know we’ve talked.”
“What she’s talking about,” Mr. Williams explained to us, “is what I really want some day. Well, some year. A charter fishing boat.” His face was suddenly red, as though he was embarrassed. “You know, move with the seasons to the warm spots.”
It was so idealistic a dream, so corny even, so much a cliché, that I couldn’t believe he had let himself say the words. But almost instantly something strange happened in me. I didn’t know this guy, what he did for a living — though I pictured him in some corporate, somewhat above entry-level job, but he seemed so simpleminded that I felt a rush of warmth toward him, a kind of... love. Like suddenly he was a son I wanted to protect. And what happened next, though it might not seem much, only brought it to a boil.
“We’ll get it one day,” Mrs. Williams said. Then, almost immediately putting an arm through his, “Honey, look at those windows. Do you know what curtains I can see going there?”
We were walking back downstairs soon. I know we went down to the finished basement, then out to the garage; I remember hearing Mrs. Williams admiring how neatly I kept my tools, but that’s about all — my head and heart were pounding. And it was, I think, just when we came back into the living room that Mrs. Williams said, “When could we have possession?”
“Would two months be all right?” Melissa asked.
“Oh fine, that’s just right.”
“Well, the one vital thing we haven’t asked about,” Mr. Williams said, “is price. What are you asking?”
He had turned that simple-minded face to me and was looking at me with a mixture of eagerness and concern. But I’m just guessing at that — the thing was, I could barely see him. There were waves in front of my eyes, sent up by the tumult of my heart.
One-ninety at the most, I’d insisted to Melissa. If not, then the best offer...
“Three hundred thousand.”
It just came out, just like that. And through those waves in my vision I saw Mrs. Williams’s face fall, but his — am I guessing this? am I making this up? — seemed to lift. Then they both turned to Melissa as she exclaimed, “Bill!”
“What’s the matter? It’s what we said.”
She looked at me squarely. Then, quietly, “Yes, I know.”
“Well,” Mr. Williams said after a slow look at his wife, “it’s way too much for us. I should have asked right away. But it is quite a house.”
They were mumbling thanks now, Mrs. Williams almost in tears, and I think I shook hands with them, but the next thing I really remember is standing facing the closed door as though in the silence of a bell jar. I remember a feeling of tremendous elation — more than that, the greatest possible pure joy. I’d saved him! And given it to that little bitch! Not forever, maybe, no one could save anyone forever, but it wouldn’t be me who helped trap him!
I was waiting, my back turned to her, for Melissa to speak up, to taunt, to yell. But nothing. And gradually, aware of it as if for the first time, I felt myself sinking back into it, the trap, the large-toothed trap. Back into the hovering madness.
But this was just that couple! There’d be others!
“You’re crazy,” Melissa’s voice said, very quietly. “You know you’re crazy?”
I didn’t turn around.
“What’ve I told you?” she went on. “You blame me, you blame everyone, you make” — her voice kept getting higher — “every kind of excuse — every kind — it’s this, it’s that, it’s everything but yourself. Yourself”
I leaned my forehead against the door.
“You are crazy.” Her voice came closer. “You know that? You’re crazy!”