I didn’t complete the thought. Because I didn’t know how to complete the thought.
‘Change,’ Richard said. ‘That ferociously loaded word.’
We started walking up Commonwealth Avenue. I’d been along this boulevard several times before, and had always admired it in a half-fleeting touristic way. Today, however, I began to closely regard the townhouses and apartment buildings and mansions that lined the avenue, and seemed part of a Boston more rooted in Henry James than any contemporary realities. Maybe it was the way the venerable stone and brickwork interplayed with the late-afternoon sun. Maybe it was the matchless autumnal palette of the trees interspersed with the nineteenth-century streetlights. Maybe it was Richard’s animated commentary about the history of this avenue and the way he seemed to have a story about every residence we passed. and from the immense knowledge he displayed it was clear to me that he hadn’t gleaned all this off the Internet late last night; that, in fact, he had made quite the study of this historic thoroughfare, as he knew it with an intimacy and verve that bespoke of serious erudition.
This led me to imagine him in his home in Bath — a modest house, he told me, on one of those streets near the Iron Works. I’m certain it had an attic room he had converted into a home office: a simple desk, an old armchair, a computer that was (like my own at home) a few years out of date — because Richard didn’t strike me as someone who spent a lot of money on himself. This office was his escape hatch: the place he could quietly shut the door on a marriage that had evidently flat-lined and was so devoid of comfort, and away from the ongoing sadness that was his son Billy. Here Richard could lose himself in his considerable curiosity. Whether it be the OED (and I was pretty certain he had the full multi-volumed Oxford dictionary, that was one indulgence he would have treated himself to), or one of those Norton editions of American poetry, or the vast research possibilities of the Internet — once in that room Richard could vanish into the realm of language and historical detail. And envisage perhaps (as we all do) a life beyond the one that we have constructed for ourselves.
Change. The great ongoing desire that underscores all feelings of entrapment. Change. Richard was right: it was such a ferociously loaded word.
‘Now I don’t know who the architect was here,’ Richard said as we passed a mansion that he identified as being ‘so close to the American Regency style that Edith Wharton wrote about in novels like The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. even though most Bostonians would say that New York copied them when it came to mid-nineteenth-century grand houses.’
‘You know this avenue so well.’
‘I told you, I plan to live here in the next life.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘Next street up from here. Southwest corner of Dartmouth and Comm Ave.’
‘Nice to know what’s planned for oneself in the afterlife.’
‘“The next life” doesn’t mean the hereafter,’ he said.
‘So when does the next life commence?’
‘That’s the eternal question.’
‘Or not eternal, as life is so profoundly temporal,’ I said.
‘Do you believe in the notion of “time to come”?’
‘I know that faith is the antithesis of proof. Which means that all belief — especially religious belief — is bound up in the acceptance of a storyline which, though comforting, is rather hard to get your head around. Then again, if I was told tomorrow that I had Stage Four cancer, would I be tempted to ask Jesus to be my Lord and Savior? As much as I’d truly like to think there is something beyond all this, the leap of faith that is required is simply beyond me. It saddens me thinking that. But I have wrestled with it a bit — and my conclusion quite simply is, this is it. And you?’
‘I’d like to say I’m a hedger of bets. I know several very committed Christians who are absolutely convinced that they will be handed a locker room key and a towel from St Peter when they leave this life. I am certainly not against anyone believing all that — the primary function of religion being the lessening of fear about death. But. well, I read that when Steve Jobs was dying of cancer, he told one close friend that, though he was very much fascinated by all sorts of mystical and spiritual notions of the life to come, a great part of him couldn’t help but think that death was like the switch on all his computers that shuts everything down. Death — the ultimate off switch.’
‘Bizarrely, there is some comfort in that, isn’t there? The end of consciousness. The computer goes blank. Forever.’
‘The problem is, we are the only species with a proper consciousness, who can feel guilt, regret. And say you reach the end of your life. ’
‘. with the knowledge that you hadn’t really lived your life?’
We were on the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth, in front of a brownstone that had four floors, and whose brickwork was sooty brown, but which still looked (from the state of the door and the shutters on its windows) well-maintained. Compared to the other more lavish mansions and apartment buildings on the street this one was a little more modest but still utterly charming. There was a For Sale sign attached to the iron railings that fronted the street — the smaller print stating that the apartment seeking a buyer was a one-bedroom ‘with great Old World charm’.
‘So this is the place?’ I asked.
‘Third floor, those three windows facing the street.’
The windows were large ones, indicating high ceilings.
‘Nice,’ I said.
‘I actually sneaked down to Boston around two weeks ago to see the place myself. Really airy space. Great parquet floors. A living room that stretches the whole length of the building. A good-sized bedroom. An alcove off the living room that would be a perfect little office. The bathroom and the kitchen are a bit out of date. But the realtor told me that the asking price of three hundred and five thousand was negotiable; that the sellers had a deal which fell through last year, and they really want a fast closing, and if I could pay two sixty-five cash it was mine.’
‘Can you pay that?’
‘Actually I can. I’ve been one of those assiduous savers who’ve set aside twenty percent of his net income every year. I’ve got about four hundred thousand in the bank. A lawyer I consulted down in Portland — Bath is too small to be talking divorce with anyone — told me that if I was to give Muriel the house in Bath, she’d have no claim on any of that money. And I have another client down here, a builder in Dorchester, who told me he could get a spiffy new bathroom and kitchen installed, repaint the walls, strip and re-stain all the floorboards, all for around thirty-five grand. After taxes and the like, I’d come out with a paid-off Commonwealth Avenue apartment and about seventy-five thousand still left in the bank.’
‘Most of all, you’d be living here — where you’ve always wanted to live.’
‘That’s right. I know I could even run much of my business down here, and probably hire someone to take over Muriel’s administrative job at the agency — though knowing Muriel she’d probably insist on staying on, taking a salary, keeping busy, which would be fine by me. She is very competent.’
‘So when are you moving?’
I could see Richard’s shoulders tense, his lips tighten.
‘Life is never that straightforward, is it?’ he said.
‘I suppose not. Still, if you have it all worked out. ’
‘Does anyone ever have it “all worked out”?’
I smiled.
‘You’re far too right about all that. But this time I really do want to make the move. as messy and unpleasant as it might all be.’