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?

O.K., 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.

O.K., 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 long 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 white 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 cannister 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.

You what!

I mean, it wasn’t what you thought, was it? So why not?

Right. Why wouldn’t you invite him in, since I told him if he came around again I’d call the cops?

You should have invited him in yourself when he told you he’d lived in this house.

Why is that a credential? Everyone has lived somewhere or other. Would you want to relive your glorious past? I shouldn’t think so. And this is not the first time.

Don’t start in, please.

Husband says white, wife says black. The way it works. So the world will know what she thinks of her husband.

Why is it always about you! We’re not the same person. I have my own mind.

Do you, now!

Hey, you guys, we got an argument brewing?

Close your door, son. This doesn’t concern you.

Every time another man comes into this house you go berserk. A plumber, someone to measure for the window blinds, the man who reads the gas meter.

Ah, but is your man a man? Awfully fruity-looking to me. Wears his white hair in a ponytail. And those tiny little hands. What does the well-known fag-hag have to say?

He’s a Ph.D. and a poet.

Jesus, I should have known.

He gave up his teaching job to travel the country. His book is on the dining-room table. He signed it for us.

A wandering minstrel in his Ford Falcon.

Why are you so horrible!

Arguing is instead of sex.

It has been a while.

This is better.

Yes.

I don’t know why I get so upset.

You’re just a normally defective man.

So we’re all like this? Thank you.

Yes. It’s an imperfect gender.

I’m sorry I said what I said.

I’m thinking now, with all three of them in school all day, I should get a job.

Doing what?

Or maybe go for a graduate degree of some kind. Make myself useful.

What brings this on?

Times change. They need me less and less. They have their friends, their practices. I carpool. They come home and stay in their rooms with their games. You work late. I’m alone in this house a lot.

We should go to the theatre more. A night in town. Or you like opera. I’ll do opera as long as it isn’t Richard fucking Wagner.

That’s not what I’m saying.

You chose the suburbs, you know. I work to pay off the mortgage. The three tuitions. The two car payments.

I’m not blaming you. Could we turn on the light a moment?

What’s the matter?

There’s no moon. In the dark, it feels like a tomb.

This is very embarrassing.

What were you doing there at three in the morning?

Sleeping. That’s all. I wasn’t bothering anyone.

Yeah, well, the cops are touchy these days. People sleeping in their cars.

It used to be a ball field. I played softball there as a boy.

Well, it’s the mall now.

You don’t mind that I gave them your name?

Not at all. I like being known as a criminal associate. Why didn’t you just check into the local Marriott?

I was trying to save money. The weather is clement. I thought, Why not?

Clement. Yes, it’s definitely clement.

Is it the habit of the police to go around impounding cars? Because if they think I’m a drug dealer, or something like that, they will find only books, my computer, luggage, clothes, and camping gear and a few private mementos that mean something only to me. Very unsettling, strangers digging around in my things. If I’d stayed at a hotel, I’d be on my way right now. I’m really sorry to impose on you.

Well, what’s a neighbor for.

That’s funny. I appreciate humor in this situation.

I’m so glad.

But we’d be neighbors only if time had imploded. Actually, if time were to implode we’d be more than neighbors. We’d be living together, the past and the present moving through each other’s space.

Like in a rooming house.

If you wish, yes. As in a sort of rooming house.

So he’s there. What—hitting on your wife?

No, that won’t happen. It’s not what he’s about. I’m pretty sure.

So what’s the problem?

He comes on like some prissy fuss-pot poet, doesn’t have it together, drives a junk heap, claims to have quit his teaching job but was probably fired. And, with all of that, you know he’s a player.

Yeah, I know people like that.

His difficulties work in his favor. He gets what he wants.

So what does he want from you?

I’m not sure. It’s weird. The house? Like I’ve defaulted on the mortgage and he’s the banker come to repossess.

So why’d you bring him home? He could sit in a Starbucks while they went through his car.

Well, he called. And I hang up and there she is looking at me. And I’m suddenly into proving something to her. You see what’s happening? I can no longer be me, which is to say to the guy, I don’t know you. Who the fuck cares if you lived here or didn’t live here? They’ll give you back your damn car and you can leave. But no, he works it so that I have to prove something to my own wife—that I am capable of a charitable act.

I guess you are.

So, like, he’s now some new relative of ours. This touches on the basic fault line in our marriage. She’s naïve in principle—she forgives everybody everything. Always excusing people, finding a rationale for the shitty things they do. A clerk shortchanges her, she imagines he’s distracted and just made a mistake.

Well, that’s a lovely quality.

I know, I know. Her philosophy is if you trust people they will be trustworthy. Drives me crazy.

So they’ll give him back his car and he’ll go.

No. Not if I know her. She’ll drive him to pick it up. The day will have passed, and she’ll ask him to stay for dinner. And then she’ll insist that he shouldn’t be allowed to drive off in the night. And I will look at her and sit there and agree. And she will show him to the guest room. I’ll give you odds.

You’re a bit overwrought. Have another.

Why the hell not?

With age, you see how much of it is invented. Not only what is invisible but what is everywhere visible.

I’m not sure I understand.

Well, you’re still quite young.

Thank you. I wish I felt young.

I’m not talking about one’s self-image. Or the way life can be too much of the same thing day in and day out. I’m not talking about mere unhappiness.

Am I merely unhappy?

I’m in no position to judge. But let’s say melancholy seems to suit the lady.

Oh, dear—that it’s that obvious.

But, in any case, whatever our state of mind life seems for most of our lives an intense occupation—keeping busy, competing intellectually, physically, nationally, seeking justice, demanding love, perfecting our institutions. All the fashions of survival. Everything we do to make history, the archive of our inventiveness. As if there were no context.

But there is?

Yes. Some vast—what to call it?—indifference that slowly creeps up on you with age, that becomes more insistent with age. That’s what I’m trying to explain. I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job.

No, really, this is interesting.

I get very voluble on even one glass of sherry.

More?

Thank you. But I’m trying to explain the estrangement that comes over one after some years. For some earlier, for others later, but always inevitably.

And to you, now?

Yes. It’s a kind of wearing out, I suppose. As if life had become threadbare, with the light peeking through. The estrangement begins in moments, in little sharp judgments that you instantly put out of your mind. You draw back, though you’re fascinated. Because it’s the truest feeling a person can have, and so it comes again and again, drifting through your defenses, and finally settles over you like some cold, very cold, light. Maybe I should stop talking about this. It is almost to deny it, talking about it.

No, I appreciate your candor. Does this have something to do with why you’ve come back here—to see where you used to live?

You’re perceptive.

This estrangement is maybe your word for depression.

I understand why you would say that. You see me as the image of some colossal failure—living on the road in a beaten-up car, an obscure poet, a third-rate academic. And maybe I am all those things, but I’m not depressed. This isn’t a clinical issue I speak of. It’s a clear recognition of reality. Let me explain it this way: It’s much like I suppose what a chronic invalid feels, or someone on the verge of dying, where the estrangement is protective, a way of abating the sense of loss, the regret, and the desire to live is no longer important. But subtract those circumstances and there I am, healthy, self-sufficient, maybe not the most impressive fellow in the world but one who’s managed to take care of himself quite well and live in freedom doing what he wants to do and without any major regrets. Yet the estrangement is there, the truth has settled upon him, and he feels actually liberated because he’s outside now, in the context, where you can’t believe in life anymore.

Why would anyone come to New Jersey to die?

Sir?

And the house is nothing special, you’ll grant me that. The usual Colonial with white vinyl siding, a one-car garage, the gutters packed with the crap of I don’t know how many autumns. Actually, I’ve been meaning to get to that.

Sir, please. We ask and you answer and we leave. Can you tell us anything more about the deceased?

Well, you see, I knew him mostly as a corpse in the hallway. Ah, you are skeptical. And why not, with my wife weeping away like he was a close relation?

So you’re saying—

Hard to believe, isn’t it? Not even an old boyfriend of hers, not even that.

You have no heart.

No, it’s an interesting experience, a total stranger falling dead in his underwear on the way to the bathroom. And to see him carried out the door in a body bag! Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Good for the kids, too, a life experience before going off to school. Their first suicide.

Sir, the man died of an acute myocardial infarction.

Says who?

The E.M.T.s examined him.

Well, they’re entitled to their opinion.

It’s more than an opinion, sir. They see things like this every day. They didn’t even try to resuscitate.

No, he took himself out, for sure, wily fellow that he was. That’s why he came here—it was all planned.

Why are you being like this? He came here, it was like—

Like what?

A pilgrimage.

Oh, right. He came here to fuck up our lives is why he came here. Came here like a dog to lift his leg and mark his territory. And where does that leave us? Living in a dead man’s house. I thought my home was my castle.

I didn’t think you had such homebound loyalties.

Well, folks, we’ll be leaving now.

I didn’t! Somewhere to stash the wife and kids is as far as it went with me. But, by God, I paid for it with my labor. I’ve done everything I was supposed to do. Gave you a house, a safe if dull neighborhood, three children, a reasonably comfortable life. To make you happy! And have you ever been? What but your dissatisfactions could have led you to invite this walking death wish into your home!

Well, folks, as I said, we’ll be leaving now. We may have some more questions after we sort things out.

And what are you going to do about his damn Ford Falcon sitting in my driveway?

We’ve gone through the car. We’ve inventoried the contents. Got his I.D. Closest relative.

He said he had a daughter.

Yes, ma’am, we have that.

But the car!

We have no more interest in the car. It becomes part of the deceased’s estate. The daughter will decide its disposition. In the meantime, I will ask you to leave it where it is. Safer here than downtown. Keys are in the ignition.

Jesus!

Sir, there are procedures for situations like this. We are following the procedures. The cause of death will be confirmed by the medical examiner, the death certificate filed with the town clerk’s office, the body placed in the morgue, pending instructions from the closest relative. That will be the daughter.

Officer, I will want to write her.

Soon as we make contact, ma’am. I see no reason why you can’t. We’ll be in touch.

Thank you.

And, hey, Officer?

Sir?

Tell her the good news. Daddy has come home.

So, finally, I agree with you.

Yes?

We can’t live here anymore. I pass through the hallway and sidle along the wall as if he were there on the floor, staring. It’s eerie. I feel dispossessed. I’m a displaced person.

Not the best time to be selling, babe. And what about the kids’ school? Right in the middle of the term.

You’re the one who said we couldn’t ever get this out of our mind.

I know, I know.

The boys won’t come upstairs. The playroom’s their dormitory. And it’s damp down there.

All right. O.K. Maybe we should think about renting something. Maybe a sublet somewhere till we get squared away. We’ll see. You want another?

A half.

I am really sorry. I don’t blame you. I speak in the heat of the moment.

No, I suppose I should have known. The way he talked. But it was interesting. His ideas—how unusual to hear philosophical conversation. That someone would reveal himself to that extent. So though I thought he was a depressed person, I was fascinated by the novelty that someone could be talking that way as if it were the most natural thing.

You know, it’s really funny. . . .

What?

She’s just like him, the daughter. A gamer.

Yes, I did think it odd.

I would not call that a close relationship, would you?

Hardly.

Couldn’t care less. You know, I found—when Goodwill took away all his stuff—I found that the actual naked car inside was clean. Upholstery’s O.K. And I looked under the hood. Needs an oil change, and the fan belt looks a bit ragged. Took it around the block and it bounces a bit on the road. Maybe new shocks.

You like that car, don’t you?

Well, with a good paint job, maybe some detailing . . . You know, people collect these things, Ford Falcons.

It was his home.

No, dear one. This is his home. That’s just a car.

Our car.

Appears to be. We ought to frame her letter. Or bury it in the yard along with the can of ashes.

Oh, but she meant for them to be strewn.

Strewn? Did you say strewn?

Scattered?

Why not sprinkled?

Sown.

O.K., sown. I’ll go with sown. ?