Home Before Dark

by Susan Cheever

Until the 1960s he never made enough money to afford much elegance of his own. But at some level my father was always the homeless boy, the outsider, the one who stood at the edge of “respectable” life looking critically but wistfully in at his friends and neighbors. It didn’t make much difference that in i960, when he was almost fifty years old, he was finally able to buy his own house, with ponds and velvety lawns and big trees, in Ossining, New York. His anxiety equaled his euphoria. For years he roamed the house at night, convinced that it was about to burn down, or break down somehow, or just vanish into thin air. At the same time, he never stopped enjoying other people’s property. Although a swim was the center of his summer days, he didn’t build a swimming pool of his own, even when he could have afforded to.