Author Description

Middle of His Life A man in the middle of his life was suddenly taken with a desire to see the house he grew up in. He eased out of bed, left his wife sleeping, and dressed in the hallway. It was 1:34 in the morning. He drove all night: bought coffee and a package of chocolate covered donuts at a gas station, listened to the radio indifferently, saw the sun rise while he was still on the interstate. As the rush hour traffic joined him, he looked at the people wearing suits driving in their cars. He thought of his wife, waking confused in the empty house, of the people at work looking into his empty cubicle. He had his phone in his car but the energy of thinking what to say was too great, and he vaguely felt that a sensible story would occur to him sooner or later. He arrived at the neighborhood at 9:00 a.m. He was trembling. Perhaps this was caused by too much coffee and not enough sleep, the strain of the long, high speed drive. He parked at a new strip mall many blocks from where his old house was. He walked down the main street, saw first a drugstore he remembered, then the library, hardly changed. He stood for a moment, soaking the sight of the library into his brain as if this might form a bridge to his past, even breathed in slow and deep to steady himself, then he walked on and turned onto his old street. He walked past houses where he never had known the people, past houses where he used to know a little about the people, then past Gary’s house, Mark’s house, the Matheson’s. He stopped to look carefully several times, and he rehearsed what he would say if he was challenged about why he was here. ‘I grew up on this block,’ he would say. ‘I just wanted to take a look at the place again.' No one spoke to him though, no one even looked out. The empty lots where he had built tree forts and race tracks had been built on, small modern homes filling in the spaces between the old wooden houses. His childhood home didn’t spark strong feelings when he