The man who lived next door was a mystery. When I was young
we called him retarded, the adjective we used for everything we
couldn’t explain. That’s retarded, she’s retarded. He would wear
galoshes when it rained, but the few times he spoke—about the
damaged fence, or the ruffians who plagued the block one fall—
he did not reveal an accent. My mother thought he’d been in the
war. My father defended his right to privacy, as if the man were
a secret part of him. My friends and I would steal in through the
gate to peek eagerly into the window but there was rarely much
to see: a cereal box left on the table, a TV with snow, the flannel
shirt hung over a chair as if mending itself. The one time we did
catch him he was standing in the middle of the kitchen touching
his throat—he looked panic-stricken. Years later on a trip home
my father told me casually that our neighbor had died. His maid
had found him, cried as if he’d been a lover. My father didn’t say
that—about the lover; that was my addition; I had learned a few
things in the world and had begun to dream of him. He filled the
recesses of my brain the way water creeps in, or the way clouds
obstruct the sun, and there is no quick or easy way to be bright.