Edgar Doctorow - All the Time in the World

And that is how that evening, after parking the BMW in front of the next house, and taking the trouble to reclaim my litigation bag from the attic, I stood at my front door in my black cashmere coat and pin-striped suit with a Turnbull & Asser spread-collar shirt and a sober Armani silk tie, American-flag suspenders, and Cole Haan black English calfskin shoes, and I turned the key in the lock.

Every light in the house was on. I could hear them in the dining room; they were decorating the Christmas tree.

Hello? I shouted. I’m home!

WHAT KIND OF CAR WAS IT?

I don’t know. An old car. What difference does it make?

A man sits in his car three days running in front of the house, you should be able to describe it.

An American car.

There you go.

A squarish car with a long hood. Long and floaty-looking.

A Ford?

Maybe.

Well, definitely not a Cadillac.

No. It looked tinny. An old car. Faded red. There were big round rust spots on the fender and the door. And it was filled with his things. It looked like everything he owned was in there with him.

Well, what do you want me to do? You want me to stay home from work?

No. It’s nothing.

If it’s nothing, why did you bring it up?

I shouldn’t have.

Did he look at you? Please.

Did he?

When I turned around, he started the engine and drove off.

What do you mean? So before you turned around—

I felt his eyes. I was weeding.

You were bending over?

Here we go again.

You know this creep pulls up in front of our house every morning and you go out to the garden and bend over?

Okay, end of conversation. I have things to do.

Maybe I can park at the curb and watch you weeding. The two of us. That’s something, anyway. Seeing you in your shorts bending over.

I can’t ever talk to you about anything.

It was a Ford Falcon. You said it was squared off, hard edges, a flattened look. A Falcon. They built them in the sixties. Three-speed manual shift on the column. Only ninety horses.

Okay, that’s wonderful. You know all about cars.

Listen, Miss Garden Lady, to know a man’s car is to know him. It is not useless knowledge.

Fine.

Guy is some immigrant up from Tijuana.

What are you talking about?

Who else would drive a forty-year-old heap? Looking for work. Looking for something he can steal. Looking for something from the lady with the white legs who bends over in her garden.

You’re out of your mind. You’ve got this know-it-all attitude—

I’ll take the morning off tomorrow.

Immigrants don’t have long gray hair and roll the window down so I can see his pink face and pale eyes.

Oh, ho! Now we’re getting somewhere.

YOU DON’T MOVE OUT of here I’m writing down your license plate. The cops will I.D. you and see if it’s someone they know …

You’re calling the police?

Yes.

Why?

Why not, if you don’t move? Go park somewhere else. I’m giving you a break.

What is my offense?

Don’t play dumb. In the first place, I don’t like some junk heap in front of my house.

I’m sorry. It’s the only car I have.

Right, I can see that no one would drive this thing if he didn’t have to. And all this bag and baggage. You sell things out of the trunk?

No. These are my things. I wouldn’t want to let anything go.

Because nobody in this neighborhood needs anything from the back of a car.

Well, I’m sorry we’ve gotten off to the wrong start.

Yes, we have. I’m not too friendly when some pervert decides to stalk my wife.

Oh, I’m afraid you’re under a misconception.

Am I?

Yes. I didn’t want to disturb anyone, but I should have realized that parking in front of your house would attract notice.

You got that right.

If I’m stalking anything, it’s the house.

What?

I used to live here. For three days, I’ve been trying to work up the courage to knock on your door and introduce myself.

AH, I SEE THE KITCHEN is quite different. Everything built-in and tucked away. Our sink was freestanding, white porcelain with piano legs. Over here was a cabinet where my mother kept the staples. A shelf swung out with a canister for sifting flour. That impressed me.

I’d probably have kept it. This is their renovation — the people who lived here before us. I have my own ideas for changing things around.

You must have bought the house from the people I sold it to. You’ve been here how long?

Let’s see. I count by the children’s ages. We moved in just after my eldest was born. That would be twelve years.

And how many children have you?

Three. All boys. I’ve sometimes wished for a daughter.

They’re all in school?

Yes.

I have a daughter. An adult daughter.

Would you like some tea?

Yes, thank you. Very kind of you. Women are more gently disposed, as a rule. I hope your husband won’t be too put out.

Not at all.

To speak truly, it’s unsettling to be here. It’s something like double vision. The neighborhood is much as it was. But the trees are older and taller. The homes — well, they’re still here, mostly, though they don’t have the proud, well-to-do look they once had.

It’s a settled neighborhood.

Yes. But you know? Time is heartbreaking.

Yes.

My parents divorced when I was a boy. I lived with my mother. She would die in the master bedroom.

Oh.

I’m sorry, I sometimes speak tactlessly. After Mother died, I married and brought my wife here to live. I’ve never stayed anywhere else for any length of time. And certainly never owned property again. So this is the house — please don’t misunderstand me — this is the house I’ve continued to live in. I mean mentally. I ranged all through these rooms from childhood on. Until they reflected who I was, as a mirror would. I don’t mean merely that its furnishings displayed our family’s personality, our tastes. I don’t mean that. It was as if the walls, the stairs, the rooms, the dimensions, the layout were as much me as I was. Is this coherent? Wherever I looked, I saw me. I saw me in some way measured out. Do you experience that?

I’m not sure. Your wife—

Oh, that didn’t last long. She resented the suburbs. She felt cut off from everything. I’d go off to work and she’d be left here. We hadn’t many friends in the neighborhood.

Yes, people here stick to themselves. The boys have school friends, but we hardly know anyone.

This tea helps. Because this is a dizzying experience for me. It’s as if I were squared off, dimensionalized in these rooms, as if I were the space contained by these walls, the passageways, the fixed routes of going to and fro, from one room to another, and everything lit predictably by the times of day and the different seasons. It is all and indistinguishably … me.

I think if you live in one place long enough—

When people speak of a haunted house, they mean ghosts flitting about in it, but that’s not it at all. When a house is haunted — what I’m trying to explain — it is the feeling you get that it looks like you, that your soul has become architecture, and the house in all its materials has taken you over with a power akin to haunting. As if you, in fact, are the ghost. And as I look at you, a kind, lovely young woman, part of me says not that I don’t belong here, which is the truth, but that you don’t belong here. I’m sorry, that’s quite a terrible thing to say. It merely means—

It means life is heartbreaking.

HE CAME BACK? He was here again?

Yes. It seemed so sad, his just sitting out there, so I invited him in.