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Authors: George V. Higgins
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right,â Dennison had said. âWe liked it very much. But we donât live in it any more. Because we changed. Or we got changed. Against our will. Amounts to the same thing, I guess, although Iâd bet if it was your idea, youâd like it a lot better. Lemme give you directions to the Dennison ancestral home we now occupy in Westport.
âYouâve got to bear with me now,â he had said. âThisâs no exaggeration. Donât get the idea that anything Iâm telling you maybe ought to be discounted by at least a dime, most likely a quarter, even fifty-percent, maybe, off the sticker-price. I know how itâs going to sound to you by the time I get through: as though somewhere along the line I mustâve gradually begun to take leave of my wits. You mayâve been pretty sure we were on the same planet when we started out, but youâll be absolutely certain when Iâm finished that somehow I went into a time-warp you didnât happen to notice, and weâve come out in different spheres. The only reason you can still see me and hear me is because I did manage to insert myself into a geosynchronous orbit. But I will sound like Iâm no longer on earth. Because thatâs the way it sounds to everybodyâitâs the way it sounded to me when itâd first happened, or I first began to realize itâd happened, and I tried telling it to myselfâjust to see how it would sound.
â âWell, no, itâs not actually our house. Well, it is our house,
now
anyway, but that wasnât what it was supposed to be. Itâs really just the way it sort of worked out. See, this house, where it is and all, this, well, it wasnât our idea. It was never our idea to buy it is what I mean. Which, as a matter of fact, we didnât, although weâre certainly buying it now and weâre going to be, and not only for the foreseeable future either; also for the unforeseeable one beyond that. Buying it, that is. For nine more years. At least. Heck, we didnât even want to move into it, but we more or less had to, and now the reason we moved in, the lady we moved in to be with, well, she isnât around anymore.
âHere or anyplace else, really; we had her cremated and scattered her ashes on the wind, room-service, you could call it, for the Buzzards of the Bay, if thereâre any still alive. Because that was what she wanted, and one way or the other, whatever Virginia wanted was what you always ended up doing. It shifted, of course, the wind did, while we were right in the midst of doing it, sprinkling Virginia, I mean, so some of her got blown back into our facesâashes-sprinkling and -scattering. Theyâre like peeing, I guess: never sprinkle to windward; always sprinkle to leeward. Otherwise youâll get a good faceful of the dearly departed. âDeparting,â I guess I should say, âdearly departing,â and none too gracefully, either. Damned gritty customer, Virginia was, not only when she was alive and but then also after,
especially
after, weâd had her crispy-crittered. She did have that streak of cussedness, she did. She probably
wanted
sprinkling her to be a big pain in the ass, too. Just like sheâd always been herself, at least when she had a choice. But it doesnât matter. Not now, anyway. What matters now, when what weâd naturally like to do is move out of the goddamned ark we didnât want to move into in the first place, is: we canât. We might as well be in chains.â
âNow you have to agree with me,â Dennison had said, âthe whole storyâs plainly preposterous. Completely true, in every respect, of course, but still: sounds completely preposterous. Prisoners. Of our very own house. Which of course it actually isnât, never was and never will be, because itâs not a house we ever wanted. For a house to be
your house
, in the actual meaning of the term, it has
âYouâve got to bear with me now,â he had said. âThisâs no exaggeration. Donât get the idea that anything Iâm telling you maybe ought to be discounted by at least a dime, most likely a quarter, even fifty-percent, maybe, off the sticker-price. I know how itâs going to sound to you by the time I get through: as though somewhere along the line I mustâve gradually begun to take leave of my wits. You mayâve been pretty sure we were on the same planet when we started out, but youâll be absolutely certain when Iâm finished that somehow I went into a time-warp you didnât happen to notice, and weâve come out in different spheres. The only reason you can still see me and hear me is because I did manage to insert myself into a geosynchronous orbit. But I will sound like Iâm no longer on earth. Because thatâs the way it sounds to everybodyâitâs the way it sounded to me when itâd first happened, or I first began to realize itâd happened, and I tried telling it to myselfâjust to see how it would sound.
â âWell, no, itâs not actually our house. Well, it is our house,
now
anyway, but that wasnât what it was supposed to be. Itâs really just the way it sort of worked out. See, this house, where it is and all, this, well, it wasnât our idea. It was never our idea to buy it is what I mean. Which, as a matter of fact, we didnât, although weâre certainly buying it now and weâre going to be, and not only for the foreseeable future either; also for the unforeseeable one beyond that. Buying it, that is. For nine more years. At least. Heck, we didnât even want to move into it, but we more or less had to, and now the reason we moved in, the lady we moved in to be with, well, she isnât around anymore.
âHere or anyplace else, really; we had her cremated and scattered her ashes on the wind, room-service, you could call it, for the Buzzards of the Bay, if thereâre any still alive. Because that was what she wanted, and one way or the other, whatever Virginia wanted was what you always ended up doing. It shifted, of course, the wind did, while we were right in the midst of doing it, sprinkling Virginia, I mean, so some of her got blown back into our facesâashes-sprinkling and -scattering. Theyâre like peeing, I guess: never sprinkle to windward; always sprinkle to leeward. Otherwise youâll get a good faceful of the dearly departed. âDeparting,â I guess I should say, âdearly departing,â and none too gracefully, either. Damned gritty customer, Virginia was, not only when she was alive and but then also after,
especially
after, weâd had her crispy-crittered. She did have that streak of cussedness, she did. She probably
wanted
sprinkling her to be a big pain in the ass, too. Just like sheâd always been herself, at least when she had a choice. But it doesnât matter. Not now, anyway. What matters now, when what weâd naturally like to do is move out of the goddamned ark we didnât want to move into in the first place, is: we canât. We might as well be in chains.â
âNow you have to agree with me,â Dennison had said, âthe whole storyâs plainly preposterous. Completely true, in every respect, of course, but still: sounds completely preposterous. Prisoners. Of our very own house. Which of course it actually isnât, never was and never will be, because itâs not a house we ever wanted. For a house to be
your house
, in the actual meaning of the term, it has
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