I said, “You mean, you people buy my share of the house?”
“Yes,” Fay said. “Otherwise the bank’ll be taking your share and you’ll wind up with not one god damn cent out of this.” To Nat she said, “And then we’ll be living here with the Bank of America.”
“I don’t feel like selling,” I said.
Nat said, “You have no choice.”
To that, I said nothing. But I continued to smile.
“There’s a bank payment due right now,” Fay said. “One of them. One-fifty-five. Do you have half of that? You have to have. It’s your share. Don’t imagine I’m going to pay your share of it, you –” She called me a name vile beyond belief. Even Nat looked embarrassed.
We argued to no avail for at least an hour, and then Fay went off into the kitchen to fix herself a drink. Meanwhile, the girls had come home from playing with some friend of theirs. They both seemed quite glad to see me, and I played the airplane game with them. Fay and Nat watched with dark countenances.
Once, I heard Fay said, “… gets to play with my kids, and what can I do about it? Nothing.” She hurled her cigarette at the fireplace, and it missed and landed on the floor beyond. Nat went over and got it. She paced around and around the living room while he sat gazing somberly at the floor, occasionally crossing and recrossing his legs.
When I got tired of playing with the girls I sent them off to their rooms to watch tv, and then I joined Nat and Fay in the living room. I seated myself in the big overstuffed easy chair that had been Charley’s favorite. Putting my hands behind my head I leaned back and made myself comfortable.
After some silence, Fay said suddenly, “Well, I’ll tell you one thing; I won’t live in this house with this asshole around. And I won’t have him playing with my kids.”
Nat said nothing. I pretended not to hear.
“I’d rather give up my share of the house,” Fay said. “I’ll sell it or give it away.”
“You can sell it,” Nat said. “It shouldn’t be hard.”
“What about now?” she said. “Right now? Tonight. How’m I going to sleep here?” Glancing at Nat she said, “God, we can’t make a move; we can’t even eat a meal or take a bath — nothing.”
“Come on,” Nat said, standing up and motioning to her. Together they went outdoors onto the patio and stood together, far enough away from the house so that I couldn’t hear them.
The upshot of their discussion together was that they decided to leave the house entirely and move over to the smaller house that Nat rented, the one which he and Gwen had lived in together. As far as I was concerned, that was fine. But what about the girls? That house was too small for four people, even two adults and two children. At least, that was my understanding, from what I had heard. It had only one bedroom, and then one small utility room in which he had done his school work late at night. Plus of course a living room and bathroom and kitchen.
They took the girls that night, at about nine, and drove off with them. Whether they stayed at Nat’s house or in a motel I don’t know. In any case, I prepared to go to bed alone, in the empty house.
It gave me an odd feeling that night as I changed from my day clothes into my pajamas and prepared to get into the guest bed in the study. After all, this had been Charley’s study, where he had spent a good deal of time. Now he was dead, and his wife had gone off, taking his and her daughters, leaving no one in the house but me. All of them gone. All of them had left this house which they had gone to so much trouble to build. And who was I? For a time, as flay in bed, I felt confusion. I wasn’t actually one of the persons who owned this house … at least, who owned it in a real sense. Perhaps I owned a legal share of it, but I certainly had never thought of it as mine. I might as well have had someone point to some movie theater or bus station and tell me that I owned a share of it. In some respects it was like when as a child I had been told that, as an American citizen, I’d someday “own” a part of every public bridge and dam and street.
I had lived well in this house, for a short period of time. But not because of the house itself; more, because of the good meals and the warmth. Now, if! wanted warmth, I would have to pay for half of the bill that came as a result. And I would be buying my own food, as clearly as I had had to buy it when living in one single rented room in Seville. Nobody would charcoal broil t-bone steaks on the outdoor grill and hand me a piece free.
And the animals were dead. Except for the banty chickens. Now, at night, the banties had gone into their shed and gone to sleep. No ducks. No horse. No sheep. Not even the dog. Their carcasses had been dragged off for fertilizer.
The house and the land around it was absolutely silent. Except that now and then I heard quail whirring around in the cypress trees. I heard the quail calling like Oklahoma teen-agers to each other; ah-hawhoo-whoo. A sort of Okie yell.
And then, lying by myself alone in the dark, empty house, hearing the refrigerator in the kitchen turn on occasionally, and the wall thermostats open and shut, I felt one thing. Fay and the girls and the animals had left, but someone besides myself remained. Charley was still in the house, living there as he had always lived there since the house had been built. The refrigerator that I heard was his. He had supervised putting in the radiant heating. The different sounds were made by things that belonged to him, and he had never left them. I knew it. It wasn’t merely an idea. It was an awareness of him, just as at any previous time, during his stay in the physical world, I had been aware of him. By sight, smell, sound, touch.
All night long I lay being conscious of him in the house. He never left, even for a moment. It was constant; it never dimmed.
( eighteen )
At seven o’clock the next morning the telephone woke me up. It was Fay calling from wherever they were staying.
“We’ll buy your equity in the house,” she said. “Here’s what we can give you. One thousand dollars cash and the rest in the form of monthly payments of thirty-eight dollars. We sat up half the night discussing it.”
I said, “The only thing is that I want to stay here.”
“You can’t,” she said. “Did it occur to you that everything in that house belongs either to the girls or to me? And if we want to we can keep you from using the refrigerator or the sink — you can’t even use the towels in the bathroom. You can’t even eat off the dishes in the rack on the drainboard. My good god, you can’t even sit down in a chair — that bed you’re sleeping in doesn’t come with the house; that’s part of the personal property, and he only left you his share of the house. The sheets on the bed. The ashtrays!” She went on and on, working herself up. “And how are you going to eat? I’ll bet you think you’re going to walk into the kitchen and open up a few cans and packages of food. Do you think that food is yours? It isn’t. And if you eat one bite of it, I’ll sue you. I’ll take you to court and sue you!”
I hadn’t realized it. What she said was true. “There’s a lot in what you say,” I said. “I’ll have to get my own furniture.”
She said, “I think I’ll have the movers come up from Fairfax and move everything out of that house.”
“Okay,” I said, taken aback and having difficulty thinking.
“You idiot,” Fay said. “All you’ve got in this world is that empty box of a house — half that empty box of a house. And we can keep up our share of the payments with what we’re getting in from the factory.” She hung up, then.
I dressed and combed my hair, and then I went into the kitchen and stood wondering if I should fix myself breakfast or not. Suppose while I was eating it, Fay appeared with the sheriff or someone? Wouldn’t I, in a sense, be stealing the food?