As Phil neared his car, walking down a winding path, he continued reminiscing about the simpler, happier time of his college days, where, in a campus not unlike these pastoral grounds, Tom, Chrissie and he had spent the best years of their lives. Seeing Chrissie again had begun in him a faint welling of emotions he thought he had left behind, or at least learned to keep submerged by years of practice taught by necessity. But she was still the same woman he had loved in silence, never voicing his feelings, knowing that her heart was not and could not ever be his.
Yet he had shared countless dreams and memories far more intimate than the sexual relationship they would never have, and that he could not even fantasize about without engendering strong feelings of guilt and betrayal towards his best friend. Despite the still remembered pain of his secret, unrequited love, and despite his best friend’s withdrawing into an inner world that left no place for him or for Chrissie, those years had left him with memories he would not have traded for anything in this or any other world.
Phil reached his car, entered it, mechanically turned it on and began to drive away, his mind still floating in a mist of tenebrous recollections. A half hour later, as he approached Tom’s house, Phil felt as if he were awaking from a troubled dream; he became aware of his driving, of the wind rushing through his hair and the soft guttural sounds of his uncharacteristically under-revved Porsche. He shook his head, trying to dispel the fragments of his haunting recollections. Looking at his speedometer, he noticed he was traveling at only 35 miles per hour in a 55 zone--a bit unusual for someone who’d had his license twice suspended for having accumulated an excessive number of speeding tickets.
“Damn, I must be getting old,” he snickered out loud as he turned into Tom’s driveway. He stopped abruptly and gazed around him in disbelief at the want of care evidenced by what had once been painstakingly well tended grounds. Gone were the white rosebushes that had flanked the driveway’s entrance, and the cherry, apple and peach trees in the orchard to his right were all bereft of foliage, sporting instead dozens of large, ash colored gypsy moth cocoons bulging with the gorged bearers of doom for all nearby vegetation. The lawn had long ago gone to seed, and tall grasses and weeds grew from what had been impeccable flower beds. Everything was overrun by weeds, some nearly five-feet tall with dandelions and a wide range of other invasive species giving the front lawn a spectral appearance despite the bright sunshine. Sap oozed like honeyed, amber blood from trees whose fallen dead limbs littered the small orchard, some of which had fallen on the driveway and impeded his passage. Gypsy moths were not the only unwelcome guests. Carpenter ants had found a haven here, leaving behind a cankerous wounds and gaping holes in a large oak at the end of the driveway, by the front door. Nor had the house been spared. A shutter hung at nearly a 45 degree angle framing a large picture window with an extensive crack running along it diagonally from left to right; this had, at least, been temporarily repaired with several layers of three-inch wide transparent tape. The work of termites could also be observed around the windows and the door frame.
Phil got out of his car, still dazed by the striking change in the surroundings since his last visit some five years ago. He strolled slowly towards the back of the house, noticing a thick coat of dusty grime covering Tom’s ‘63 Corvette, making its red color seem a mottled brown. Behind the house, nearly ten acres of woods were visible, as was a large natural pond. This had been Tom’s private picnic grounds, always open to his friends some of whom could perpetually be found swimming in the pond, fussing around the large hardwood-fired barbeque, or simply laying in the sun most every weekend in the late spring, summer and early fall. Gone was the white sand Tom had carefully carted in for the small beach; only mud and mud-stained sand of a uniform brown color remained. Tall weeds and grass now covered most of the landscape here as well, with the majority of the trees faring only slightly better than the oak and fruit trees in the front of the house. The pond overflowed its banks with murky water from recent rains--a haven for mosquitoes, gnats and sundry other flying pests which hovered near its dark surface, drawn by the pond scum and the stench of decay.
The house was a modest and unassuming three-bedroom ranch, but the grounds had always been maintained by a gardener--the only luxury Tom had allowed himself despite his considerable inherited wealth--and had been his most prized possession for the joy it brought both him and his friends. Phil could not imagine why Tom had allowed it to sink to such a level of neglect, and felt an oppressive pang of loss that seemed to grow more powerful with every breath he took. After surveying the grounds for a few minutes, he shuddered, blinked back the tears burning the corners of his eyes, and quickly paced back towards the house, unable to further endure the spectral surroundings.
After fumbling in his pocket for the key, he found it and slowly opened the front door. Walking in after a moment’s hesitation, he found the inside blanketed in darkness despite the bright sunshine outside. He groped to his right for the light switch, found it and flicked on the lights. Dark, heavy drapes hung over every window, and all the blinds were drawn. He glanced about and found the furniture much as he remembered it. In all, it was rather Spartan: a large, thickly cushioned wood-framed sofa with ample throw pillows and a matching loveseat, a rustic lamp table with a burnished bronze lamp on it, a coffee table and a 25-inch old-style wood console incorporating a turntable and amplifier that could only be seen today in movies set in the 1970’s. A layer of dust covered everything in an ashen thin blanket, making the television’s remote control unit on the coffee table look like a flattened, tailless dead mouse.
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To the right of the living room, at the end of a short hallway, Phil could see some light bleeding out of a nearly closed door in Tom’s study. He walked there with growing trepidation, drawn by the pressing need to help his friend, yet impeded by his strong emotions and the ghosts of memories brought to life anew.
The room was exactly as he remembered it: a small desk in its center with book shelves covering every available inch of wall space. He knew the bedrooms would be the same. Only the living room had escaped the advancing bookcases that branched out from the study like appendages from some monstrous octopus, slithering relentlessly towards the world outside. Unlike the living room, this room was free of dust and was obviously well used. Phil could detect nothing out of the ordinary. At Tom’s desk, he noticed various hand written notes and an open book, an old volume of Plato’s Republic, bound in tooled leather, heavily annotated in Tom’s crisp, clear handwriting and rather worn from use. A notebook computer sat atop Tom’s desk, next to the open book. It was still on but Phil did not have the time to try to guess the password to bring it out of sleep mode and display whatever Tom had been working on. In any case, he was sure it would only show whatever academic paper or book Tom was currently writing.
Turning his attention away from the computer, Phil opened the top drawer of the desk and found it full of numerous writing implements and blank sheets of paper. The second drawer contained a stack of various manuscripts, all bearing Tom’s name. The first one bore the title “Western Philosophy: An Ongoing Reaction to Plato’s and Aristotle’s Epistemologies.” Phil grimaced, and thumbed through several other papers underneath it with equally useless titles. These represented an eclectic mix of scholarly work in a range of disciplines that included philosophy, physics, and mathematics. He wrinkled his nose at these as well and slammed the drawer shut with a mixture of distaste and frustration.
In the last and largest drawer at the bottom of the desk he found a curious mixture of artifacts, books and papers. Most seemed trivial, and some were unexplainable--candy wrappers, old movie ticket stubs, theater programs, concert tickets, a couple of college literature and poetry anthologies, and sundry other items that could hold meaning only for Tom. Underneath these, Phil found and extracted a small metal box; this he placed on top of the desk and opened it after briefly struggling with a rusty latch. It contained some sheets of paper with writing, and assorted snapshots. It was the latter he looked at first. His hands trembled slightly as he looked through pieces of his own past, their shared past now so seemingly distant and irretrievable. All their old friends were there, as well as dozens of pictures of Chrissie, Tom and Phil taken over a period of more than a decade, many around this very house and grounds, some at college, and a few on the many trips they’d taken together. Tom had, after all, kept these. This fact deeply moved him for reasons he could not easily understand. He finally lost control of the emotions he’d been unsuccessfully trying to rein in and wept, sobbing quietly for some time.
After a while, he regained control of his always volatile emotions, put down the photos and turned his attention to the papers in the box. Some were letters. He recognized Chrissie’s handwriting and his own on several. These he did not read. Finally, he found a carefully folded sheet of paper at the very bottom of the box inside a smaller tooled wooden jewelry box. He carefully unfolded it and began to read a poem in Tom’s own hand on a half sheet of paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook:
Oh half remembered, fleeting, happy time,
When nothing mattered more than love and play,
Imagination was then in its prime,
And life began anew with every day.
A flower was then a joy, a mystery,
And not a petal, root and simple stem,
And life was full of wondrous fantasy,
Untainted by the intellect of man.
That time is gone now, It cannot return,
The fruit’s been swallowed, its slow poison kills,
And yet my fallen heart will always yearn,
For that ephemeral time of unknown skills.
Oh false god, knowledge, daily you destroy,
All that was holy in me as a boy!
Eyes glistening, he folded the piece of paper and replaced it in the small, wooden box in which he’d found it, then placed the small box inside the larger metal box and took the box with him out of the room. A close inspection of every room in the house turned up no clue such as might help unravel the mystery of Tom’s present condition. He dutifully checked all other drawers and cabinets, paying close attention to the bathroom medicine cabinet for hopeful signs of any substance Tom might have purposely or inadvertently ingested that might explain his condition, but none was found. His medicine cabinet contained only a fresh bottle of Mylanta, a half-empty bottle of aspirin and nothing else.
In the kitchen, all Phil could find was a brown, half-desiccated half head of iceberg lettuce and several half-liter bottles of spring water. He even searched the spider-infested unfinished basement for clues, but Tom had clearly not been there in quite some time. Aside from some large, complex cobwebs, all he could find there were dozens of filing cabinets stuffed with scholarly papers, both published and unpublished works, not unlike the dozens of similar manuscripts in Tom’s study desk drawer. Although philosophical treatises were clearly the dominant field represented here, there were also published works on a mind boggling range of subjects. There were also hundreds of dusty journals lining bookcases along every wall covering an equally dazzling range of disciplines. Inspecting several at random, he found many that contained articles published by Tom. If Tom had devoted his life to the pursuit of knowledge, he had certainly not squandered it away in idle thought.
Finding nothing in the house that might help to explain Tom’s condition, Phil made his way outside again, taking with him the metal box he’d extracted from Tom’s desk with the intention of giving it to Chrissie in the hope that it might bring her some comfort--and some validation for her loyalty and love for Tom through the years. After locking the door, he allowed the warmth of the sun to wash over him for a few moments before getting into his car and making his way back to the hospital; he immediately began to feel a better as if the sun were cleansing away the sepulchral chill and mustiness he’d experienced inside and burning away the fogginess in his mind.