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  for my parents,

  Mark Davis and Yueh-hsiu Chien

  I have now long been aware that the persons I see about me are not “cursory contraptions” but real people, and that I must therefore behave toward them as a reasonable man is used to behave toward his fellows.

  —Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness

  1

  When Kirstie interrupted me I was in the break room. I had just sat down at the round, perpetually stained plastic table in the corner and was listening with satisfaction to the coffee maker as it began its quiet gurgle. Reluctantly I made a small gesture of greeting.

  She asked if it was a “fresh pot,” and I nodded, and to discourage any further conversation I bent my head over the weekly paper that happened to be open on the table in front of me. She was dressed, I noticed, entirely in athletic clothing—black and elastic, with a muted sheen. Her cheeks were flushed, and the triangle of flesh below her collarbone was flecked with beads of perspiration.

  She passed behind me and asked, startling me, “Is that the horoscopes?”

  She moved closer to me and I could smell the scent of her freshly exercised body in the small, windowless room.

  “That’s funny,” she said. She had not pegged me for the kind of man—the kind of “guy”—who read the horoscopes.

  “Oh,” I said quickly. “I’m not—I’m not reading this.” And as I said it I saw that I looked like a very poor liar. I had failed to notice, somehow, that the paper in front of me had been turned to the horoscopes section, and not only that, but the facing page had been folded back with care.

  “Could you read me mine?” she asked, reaching for a mug. “I’m a Pisces,” she said, and my heart sank.

  As a rule, I maintained a careful neutrality toward my colleagues. I preferred not to involve myself in university gossip, or department politics, aware, without regret, that I had chosen for myself a somewhat lonely stance. But when Kirstie arrived, early last year, I found that she provoked in me a strong aversion that I couldn’t shake, an abiding hostility I could not explain even to myself. And yet, I thought, there was no real way to refuse her request, and so I found the right place on the page, next to a picture of two turning fish.

  “‘Wishful thinking won’t make it so: don’t waste any more time, energy, or resources on a dead end. You get your point across better by keeping your dignity. Some people just aren’t buying what you’re selling.’”

  I thought of something else just then, and when I became aware of Kirstie again I saw that she was sitting back on her heels in front of the cabinet below the sink, as if momentarily frozen in place, her gaze apparently fixed on an unremarkable strip of wood below the sink’s lip.

  “Was that really,” she asked, her voice suddenly very quiet, “what it said?”

  I could not quite see how to answer her, and I was grateful when the coffeepot switched itself off with its distinct click and Kirstie seemed to forget her question and revive.

  What I meant to do next was turn the page quickly, to forget all about horoscopes and Kirstie. This was not a day, after all, when I could afford to be distracted. But somehow, contrary to my intention, I saw my own index finger slide quickly down the page to rest on a crude drawing of a goat.

  Dear Capricorn, the text read, don’t be afraid to connect the dots. The path between events that may seem unrelated will soon become clear. With your moon in the fifth house, you will find yourself uniquely positioned to set things in motion.

  When I had finished reading, I looked up at the wall. Somewhere, as if far away, Kirstie was stirring something into her cup and making some quiet remark, but I could barely hear it. I looked back down at the paper. I read my horoscope again. The path between events that may seem unrelated will soon become clear …

  It was all very odd. The horoscopes had turned out to be something very different than I’d expected them to be. Uniquely positioned, I thought, to set things in motion. As much as I lacked confidence in the source, the message could not reasonably be dismissed. It was not irrelevant at all. Could it be a coincidence, I wondered, that I had received this strange message on this day, the day of my father’s open house? A strange message, undoubtedly, and yet somehow encouraging.

  * * *

  My father—my late father, I should say—and I were not close at the time of his death, and our relationship had not been without its complications—and yet. And yet, I thought, as I rose from my seat and went out into the hallway, between a father and his only son, no matter the circumstances, runs a thread that should not be underestimated.

  I put my hand out absently to my mailbox as I passed it in the hall; it was empty. My mind slipped, then, to the dream I’d had the night before the start of winter quarter, a peculiar dream in which I saw my father shoot himself on a bridge above a churning gray river. I also saw a hearse and cars creeping along Palm Drive, spooling out along the Oval, heading toward Memorial Church.

  In the thin half-light of the next morning, I’d had a lingering sense of unease. It was just a dream, I told myself, although I’d seen that river before, I thought with a wry smile, I would recognize that bridge if it were coming down a dark alley with its collar turned up against the cold; it had featured in more of my previous dreams than I could count, though never, it was true, in conjunction with my father. What could it mean? I had not dreamt of my father since I was a child.

  As I walked down the hallway toward the break room that morning I could not shake the feeling that even if the events in my dream did not conform precisely to real life, surely they did not mean nothing at all? Perhaps there had been some important change. It could, I thought— But there I stopped myself; dreams were dreams, and that was—

  Consumed by my own train of thought, I had burst somewhat unceremoniously into the break room, where a group of graduate students, occupying all four chairs at the round plastic table, turned to me, startled, like children interrupted at a forbidden game. Now that I thought of it, I had the impression that they had been talking quite noisily just the moment before, and on my arrival had been struck dumb. One of them—Weber, I thought, was his name, a fey and bespectacled little Italian—turned to his neighbor and muttered, under his breath.

  “Eccolo,” he said. “Il fratellastro.”

  2

  Needless to say, since my father’s death he had been very much in my thoughts. There is always some regret, I would imagine, when there is a sense that where there might have been connection between family members there was strain, with death’s finality precluding any rapprochement.

  And it was not just thoughts of my father himself that were foremost in my mind; it was the circumstances surrounding his death that nagged at me. The more I considered them, the stranger they seemed. Not only that, but someone was trying to tell me something about these circumstances, or so I thought, because a copy of the local paper had appeared in my mailbox some weeks ago, its pages turned to the real estate section, the listing for my father’s house circled in red pen. Who had done that, and why?

  These were the thoughts that preoccupied me as I sat in my car across the street from my father’s house—his former house, I should say, recently vacated. A woman was emerging from the front door holding a single balloon. She moved briskly down the path to tie it to the FOR SA
LE sign that sat like a grounded white bird on the lawn. The real estate agent, I thought, as she straightened up and, turning her back to me, looked up at the house.

  And why hadn’t he—my father—wanted to live on campus? The house before me was a blue two-story affair of no particular style, with white trim and a shingled roof. It was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, deserted at this midday hour. I watched as the real estate agent adjusted her skirt, squared her shoulders, and went back up the pathway and closed the front door behind her. My father had been enjoying his third marriage when he died, and he had lived in this house with his young family.

  * * *

  I crossed the street, walked up the path, and rang the doorbell. Through the pane of frosted glass in the front door I could see the figure of the real estate agent advancing, and I felt a tingle of anticipation. This was all about to begin, I thought, as the door swung open and we were suddenly face-to-face. What had that horoscope said again? You will find yourself uniquely positioned to set things in motion? We shook hands, and she introduced herself as Sharon.

  “If you wouldn’t mind stepping onto this,” she said, pointing to a white paper doormat that lay inside the threshold. It was printed in blue with the outlines of two footprints. “They just refinished the floors.”

  It was true, I thought, as I stepped carefully on, then off the paper mat, that the floors looked waxy and bright. There was cream-colored carpet on the stairs and a second-story landing, and that, too, looked freshly cleaned. In general, I thought, looking around me, the house had the appearance of having been polished within an inch of its life.

  “Well,” said Sharon. “Shall we start upstairs?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she began to climb the steps that curved up from the foyer to the second floor. She was older than I had expected; her youthful figure, as I’d seen it from the window of my car, had been deceptive. Up close, she was near my own age.

  Another detail of note, I thought, as I followed her up the stairs, was that a strong scent of cinnamon had just been sprayed everywhere; with every other breath I caught another dose of it. This was disappointing; there was no connection between my father and a smell like that.

  “Four bedrooms,” Sharon was saying. “Three up, one down.”

  She cast a backward glance in my direction. “The previous owners used the downstairs bedroom as a study.”

  The previous owners, I thought. Now that I had started down this path there was no changing it—I would see it through to the bitter end.

  Now she turned into what was obviously a child’s room, a little girl’s, with a single bed, a pink lamp on a white nightstand, and purple rocking horses on the wallpaper.

  “Have you been looking long?” asked Sharon. She was standing by the door, watching me. I crossed the room to the closet and slid the door open. It was empty save for one additional lamp, the twin of the one on the nightstand, its cord wrapped around itself.

  “Looking long?” I repeated.

  “For a home.”

  Oh yes, I thought, of course. Looking for a home. In my excitement I had forgotten that this was, in fact, the customary reason to attend an open house.

  “No,” I said truthfully. “Not long.”

  “Well,” said Sharon, when it became clear I did not intend to elaborate. “It’s an excellent place to start.”

  I murmured my agreement and crossed the room again. Surely we had spent enough time at this point, in this irrelevant room, but she gave no signs of moving and instead I went to the window, which overlooked an unremarkable backyard: a lawn, a patio, a table with a green umbrella. Here my father had barbecued, presumably. Sharon, taking her cue, had moved across the room to position herself by my side, so that we stood shoulder to shoulder, and I noticed something strange about her arm. Her wrist, both wrists, in fact, were covered in thin silver bracelets, some inlaid with turquoise, but that was not the strange thing. From her left wrist to her left elbow stretched a long, thin scar, as if someone had drawn a needle along it. When she saw me looking at it she turned quickly away.

  “That’s half an acre down there,” she said, and when she reached the door she turned. She had recovered herself. “Shall we move on?”

  * * *

  “Are you familiar with the area?” she asked, as we moved down the hallway. “I noticed your accent.”

  What a busybody Sharon was, I thought. What a little investigator.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I’ve lived here for quite some time.”

  I mentioned the name of the university, and my employment there.

  “Oh,” she said, clearly impressed. “Then I should probably call you Doctor. Do you by any chance know my brother-in-law?”

  She named him, an orthopedist; I did not.

  My capacity for this kind of chat was waning, and I opened a closet in the hallway. Inside it was ski equipment, a disco ball, and what appeared to be an Easter basket filled with miniature bottles of shampoo.

  “Whose things are these?” I said, perhaps a little more sharply than I had intended.

  “Yes, well,” said Sharon. “The previous owners had to move unexpectedly, and some things were left behind. It will all go, though, eventually—”

  “Is that so?” I said. “Why was that?”

  “Why was what?”

  “Why did they have to move,” I asked, “so unexpectedly?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Sharon, but I noticed she was looking fixedly at a point above my shoulder and could not quite meet my gaze.

  She knows, I thought.

  “Just between you and me—” Sharon began, and then we were interrupted by a high-pitched shriek that I recognized after a moment as the more pedestrian sound of the doorbell. She frowned.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Would you like to come down…?” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the stairs.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I’ll stay up here.”

  She gave me a strange look, but said, “Of course,” and hurried out of the room to the sound of the doorbell ringing again, and I heard her footsteps on the stairs in quick descent. I moved slowly down the hallway, opening doors. Below me I could hear Sharon saying, “Hello,” and then, “Well, hel-lo!” and I realized by her tone that she was addressing a child.

  * * *

  I stepped into a bathroom and shut the door. I stood still for a moment and tried to quiet my thoughts. The cabinets were empty, a disappointment; everything was white and silver and gleaming, and on the sink next to the faucet was a circle of soap in a little paper jacket. I could hear the trill of Sharon’s voice and her footsteps coming up the stairs. Think, I told my reflection: you won’t be able to stay at this open house forever—how to proceed?

  As I came back out onto the landing, I caught a glimpse of the obedient little group of men and women who were following Sharon to the top of the stairs. There was no child, I thought distractedly, I must have misheard.

  One of the newcomers was a man, older than myself, quite handsome and distinguished-looking in a dark V-neck sweater and with a full head of silver-gray hair. As he passed me on the landing, our eyes met—what eyes! I thought—and I felt a cold current of electricity pass between us.

  What was that?

  But the moment had passed, and I heard him say something to someone in front of him, not in English—French, I thought, or German.

  I could not account for the look that had passed between us—it was not the kind of casual glance you gave to a stranger, but something else entirely. Whatever it had been, I thought, I did not have time to consider it now; I waited until the entire party had filed into the little girl’s room, to look out, no doubt, at the unremarkable garden. Not a face I would forget, I thought, thinking of the silver-haired man. But I did, in fact, forget it, or any rate I did not remember it well the next time I saw it. But then I was at the end of the hallway, pushing open the door to what appeared to be the master bedroom. And for the first time since I’d arrived at
the open house, I began to feel some hope that here a trace of my father still remained.

  I closed the door quietly behind me. This room had a more lived-in quality, as if its occupants might still return, although it was difficult to imagine my father sleeping beneath the pastel print of a sailboat that hung above the bed. But there was a door off the far side of the room that turned out to be a closet still full of clothing. Coats, mostly, I was surprised to see.

  Why, I wondered, so many coats in this climate? I ran a light hand across their sleeves. It occurred to me that in fact I had seen my father in a coat, once, but that had been many years ago, in practically another lifetime. The memory of the morning he’d come to visit me in Ottawa, where I had been living at the time, hovered just beyond my consciousness, threatening to intrude. But that was a complicated memory in many ways—and at this time, during this short window of opportunity in my father’s house, it could only be a distraction. I made a somewhat dramatic gesture of frustration, as a consequence of which I found myself at the back of the closet, my face buried in the wool sleeves of my father’s coats, my nose in contact with a stiff lapel, with only the vaguest sense of there being a noise behind me, a nagging, persistent noise, which eventually resolved itself into the voice of the real estate agent saying, “Sir? Sir?”

  * * *

  Here’s a tip you won’t need: It’s always better to eat a little something, even when you think you aren’t hungry. Especially when one lives alone, because it’s easy to think to oneself: Why go through all that trouble, and dirty up dishes? But I have learned from experience that it’s better to make an effort, even when the only beneficiary is yourself.

  Which is why, when I returned home from my father’s open house, I poured myself a glass of seltzer from the fridge and made myself something simple to eat. I put two slices of bread in the toaster and mixed a tin of salmon with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper. When the toast was done I spread a thick layer of salmon on each piece, arranged them on a plate, and took it to the dining room table, where I sat down in my customary seat facing the bay window, where I liked to watch the fog roll in from the sea.