16

Immediately, his own house is made strange to him. At the insertion of his key a new music tumbles from the front-door lock. Hinges keen, floorboards sigh under the weight of his feet. As he walks in, hours after midnight, Will is reminded of house hunting with Carole, afternoons long past, the two of them following real estate agents through one house after another, rooms that seemed as if they’d been evacuated by the arrival of catastrophe rather than for a prospective buyer. And, who knew, perhaps they had—not an earthquake, war, or epidemic, but the smaller, private cataclysm of financial ruin, divorce, a death in the family.

Lingering behind his wife and the agent, Will was so distracted by the evidence of other lives—titles of books on shelves, photographs hanging on walls, a series of framed paintings made by a child, Joshua, age eight, eleven, twelve—that he had trouble concentrating on the relevant features of whatever house they were considering. Kitchens, bathrooms, bay windows, walk-in closets, laundry rooms, skylights, coffin turns, pocket doors: he missed all of these as he hung behind to look at what had been pinned to the bulletin board by the door: memos, receipts, invitations, a snapshot of a child— Joshua?—wearing a fireman’s hat, a list of names under the heading Thank You Notes, the first few crossed off.

Now, coming home—God, how did it get to be 3:47?—it’s the same with his own house. Who are the people who live here? Will finds himself wondering as he walks through the living room. Whose chair? Whose collection of inkwells gathering dust? Whose subscription to The Atlantic?

A single plate rests in the drainer by the sink, and he picks it up, thinking of the long-ago couple who bought the set of blue and white china from Macy’s Cellar, spending whole hours on a choice that made so little difference: What color? What pattern? The owners of the dish in his hands are people he no longer knows. In fact, it’s hard to picture them.

I should eat something, he thinks, not at all hungry, but his head aches and he’s dizzy; it’s been fourteen hours since he had lunch. He gets out a loaf of bread and tries to find the jar of peanut butter, stands staring into the open pantry door, his hand on the knob, asking himself questions the real owner wouldn’t ask.

Where would they keep the peanut butter? he wonders. Not we. They.