Empty Houses

Went with Andrew Monday to visit a consignor in Cincinnati. He's a spry elderly man in a big rambling house, and he's working on downsizing after the death of his wife in early December. He's managing well, perhaps approaching things from a very organized and orderly fashion in an attempt to bring some clinical sterility to the process. Things seem to be clicking along smoothly enough, but sometimes there's the faintest whiff of automation, like the house in Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," where mechanical detachment from the outside world just lets a system run on, oblivious to massive destruction.

Consignor work is so often sad, though, and sometimes I wonder how Andrew does it and manages to maintain distance. I want to list items, sign contracts, and then offer to bring over dinner or run to the post office. The houses are invariably fading beauties, lovely exteriors with rot creeping in along the window sills and underneath the bathroom tiles as steadily and fixedly as the weeds creeping up in the flowerbeds. Family support, if there is any, is distant and detached, aside from laying claim to the most valuable of objects. And in the midst of things, sort of a human version of "the last house standing" photographs from the Galveston hurricane, is one person, usually in need of a haircut, a good meal or a hug, shuffling back and forth through echoing rooms, selling off the archaeological record of their world, a world that has ceased to exist.

I suppose that's only to be expected. We aren't normally called in at the happy times in life, when people are newly married and trying to fill an apartment or when a baby has come along and changing tables are being purchased. Those people come into our world, pick things up, place bids, write checks and go home. It's only when the road narrows and darkens that we're invited into their world. Downsizing, death, divorce, disaster - the so-called "four D's of the auction business" - all those roads lead to the same place.

I probably find it sad too because I suffer from terminal empathy, and I can't approach the situation without picturing myself in the same place. Anxiety makes me a planner, hoping that somehow if I worry and strategize enough ahead of time, then I'll be able to avoid the worst. When Andrew's running late and not answering his phone, I don't waste time imagining horrible fates; I just assume the worst and then start thinking, "Will police come to let me know? Should I call my parents first or his parents? Should I call someone to go be with his parents before I call them?" It's as if I think if I have the answers ahead of time, then I'll be able to give them all at once and speed through the awfulness.

But then, I think about our house and all "his" things. No matter how many checks I write or how many objects I admire and bring home, I think of them as his, and I wonder simultaneously how quickly I can get away from all of them and how long I can keep them near me. Part of me would want to send everything away immediately and fill the house with the anesthetizing dullness of new furniture, making our house look like everyone else's, but I also wonder if I couldn't live out my days as the only living object in a shrine of early 19th-century furniture. I dread Andrew's business trips, because I can't help but think of them as dress rehearsals for some day, maybe years in the future, but some day that will come to exist. They offer practice runs, short introductions to how quiet the house is without him, for a time when I will be responsible for all the chores, for remembering garbage day, for filling hours.

Perhaps this morbidity, if that's what it is, will pass. I feel awkward and bizarre even entertaining these thoughts, let alone writing about them. They don't make sense to most people, and we all know that what doesn't make sense normally makes us uncomfortable. After all, we're 35 and most people would say we have our whole lives ahead of us, but I can't unknow what I know - that people can be snatched out of life instantaneously as neatly as if they had been erased. I wonder when/if I cross the magic line of 36 and a half if I'll feel as though the rockiest part of the journey is behind me, but I doubt it. I suspect that even my best efforts to brace myself won't make much of a difference; planning may smooth the road, but the scenery and the journey don't change.