beard, and his chin had such a dimple in it that she screamed before she could stop herself. And she knew this other guy who had broken his jaw in a motorcycle accident and then grown a beard while it was healing, and five years later when he shaved it, he didn’t recognize himself in the mirror, but he had to grow his beard back anyway because the doctors had rerouted his facial nerves and he couldn’t tell by feel or by looking in the mirror what part of his face he was shaving. “Things are so funny,” she said. I thought how like Betty she was, knowing and yet good-natured. And so it went as we drove from property to property, an idle conversation of such richness and pleasure that I felt happy about it for four days afterward. And from time to time she said, “Oh, Joey, how is it that you are so irresistible?”
After that I had occasion to drive past her house twice. I knew the place, had passed it from time to time over the years without realizing that Felicity and Hank lived there. It was a rambling frame house, white siding, black shutters and trim, screened-in porch with chairs visible through the screening, a low table with a flowering plant on it visible too. Turfy yard; the garage was the old barn. It looked like the fields formerly belonging to the house had been annexed by the neighbor, who had them planted in something that was just coming up. Sherry and I would have considered that it looked a little run-down and needed work, but as a setting for Felicity, it partook of some of her charm. It made me think there was something to be said for not painting the living room over and over, for letting a few things accumulate. The life Felicity and Hank and Clark and Jason lived on Nut Hollow Road involved sports equipment lying in the yard, a light on in an upstairs window when all the cars were gone, a half-full wheelbarrow next to a flower bed, a sweater draped over the porch railing—many things going on, some of them not finished, tasks put off in favor, I am sure, of something more interesting. What would have seemed careless to me a year ago now seemed simply evidence of movement. How much of my life had I spent in erasing all trace of activity, all trace of my own presence? Was that what I wanted to do always? Suddenly my condo seemed odd to me. I could live in it my whole life, and my existence there would not register.
On Mother’s Day, Bobby fell down the church steps and sprained his ankle. I knew because he called me to ask me to hold open the house he had advertised for that afternoon. It was a ranch style in Farmington, so I drove past my parents’ house, the same brick house I had grown up in. Three bedrooms and one bath upstairs, with a sleeping porch off the back, living room, dining room, kitchen, and entry hall downstairs, a modest house whose only claim to distinction was the arch over the front door and the two windows facing the street. There was a honeysuckle arbor in the side yard where my father liked to sit in summer and a swing set in the backyard that I had played on as a child. It was two blocks from the elementary school and a block and a half from our church. It had a one-car garage, and all we ever had until I bought my first car in high school was one car, a Buick. I went to school in the winter and church camp in the summer and my parents lived entirely within the circle of the church, where my mother volunteered and cleaned and my father passed the collection plate, always putting his own tithe in first. The minister came to dinner regularly, as did missionaries home from missions abroad and relatives on both sides, but all my cousins were much older than I was. My parents never raised their voices, never disagreed, read aloud to each other from the Bible, and discussed salvation every day along with the price of tomatoes and chicken or the problems of the neighbors or what had to be done to keep up the brick house and the small yard. They never spoke of buying things or
After that I had occasion to drive past her house twice. I knew the place, had passed it from time to time over the years without realizing that Felicity and Hank lived there. It was a rambling frame house, white siding, black shutters and trim, screened-in porch with chairs visible through the screening, a low table with a flowering plant on it visible too. Turfy yard; the garage was the old barn. It looked like the fields formerly belonging to the house had been annexed by the neighbor, who had them planted in something that was just coming up. Sherry and I would have considered that it looked a little run-down and needed work, but as a setting for Felicity, it partook of some of her charm. It made me think there was something to be said for not painting the living room over and over, for letting a few things accumulate. The life Felicity and Hank and Clark and Jason lived on Nut Hollow Road involved sports equipment lying in the yard, a light on in an upstairs window when all the cars were gone, a half-full wheelbarrow next to a flower bed, a sweater draped over the porch railing—many things going on, some of them not finished, tasks put off in favor, I am sure, of something more interesting. What would have seemed careless to me a year ago now seemed simply evidence of movement. How much of my life had I spent in erasing all trace of activity, all trace of my own presence? Was that what I wanted to do always? Suddenly my condo seemed odd to me. I could live in it my whole life, and my existence there would not register.
On Mother’s Day, Bobby fell down the church steps and sprained his ankle. I knew because he called me to ask me to hold open the house he had advertised for that afternoon. It was a ranch style in Farmington, so I drove past my parents’ house, the same brick house I had grown up in. Three bedrooms and one bath upstairs, with a sleeping porch off the back, living room, dining room, kitchen, and entry hall downstairs, a modest house whose only claim to distinction was the arch over the front door and the two windows facing the street. There was a honeysuckle arbor in the side yard where my father liked to sit in summer and a swing set in the backyard that I had played on as a child. It was two blocks from the elementary school and a block and a half from our church. It had a one-car garage, and all we ever had until I bought my first car in high school was one car, a Buick. I went to school in the winter and church camp in the summer and my parents lived entirely within the circle of the church, where my mother volunteered and cleaned and my father passed the collection plate, always putting his own tithe in first. The minister came to dinner regularly, as did missionaries home from missions abroad and relatives on both sides, but all my cousins were much older than I was. My parents never raised their voices, never disagreed, read aloud to each other from the Bible, and discussed salvation every day along with the price of tomatoes and chicken or the problems of the neighbors or what had to be done to keep up the brick house and the small yard. They never spoke of buying things or
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