The door opened and Edith leaned out of it—a small, wiry woman with thick glasses that made her eyes look enormous. Though much frailer and leaning on a metal cane, she was still recognizable as the teacher in the yearbook picture—those same high cheekbones and wide, upturned mouth, the now-silver hair clipped into the same no-nonsense, chin-length style. She wore an oversize oxford cloth shirt that might have belonged to her husband, an A-line denim skirt,and Nikes, her pale, skinny legs roped with veins, like ivy crawling up fence posts. “Fuck off, Gladys,” Edith told the neighbor. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Gladys turned on her heel and stomped back into her house, the little dog protesting the entire way.
Edith shook her head. “I’m in one of the few one-story houses in this place,” she said. “They all can’t wait for me to either move out or kick the bucket, but that bitch is the most obvious about it, pardon my French.”
“No offense taken.”
She smiled. “So... April Cooper,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about her, at least once.”
Quentin looked at her. “Really? After all these years?”
She pursed her lips, her eyes going misty behind the thick glasses. “She was a special one.”
“What do you mean by special?”
“Come on in,” she said. “Excuse the mess.”
IN QUENTIN’S EXPERIENCE,when interview subjects said, “excuse the mess,” it usually wasn’t over anything noticeable. Maybe they hadn’t dusted yet, or they were busy sorting laundry on the dining room table and didn’t want it mentioned on the air. It was more a sign of performance anxiety than anything else—a last-minute bout of maybe-I-shouldn’t-be-letting-a-journalist-into-my-home. He always put them at ease with a friendly laugh. “What mess?” he’d say. Or “Come on. You should see my place!” But the moment he stepped into the small foyer of Edith Brixton’s coveted ranch house, he knew that wouldn’t fly here. Edith, as it turned out, was a serioushoarder—though her hoarding choices seemed limited to reading material. Newspapers, magazines, paperback books, filing boxes overflowing with ripped-out pages of old spiral notebooks and legal pads, covered with scribbles and yellowing. The whole place stunk of newsprint.
“Wow,” said Quentin. He couldn’t help it.
“My husband, Carl, was a neat freak. I think maybe I’ve been trying to get back at him for dying on me.”
He cleared his throat, pulled his thoughts together. “No, no. I get it,” he said. “You like to read.”
“Well, yes. I do.”
“You don’t want to forget what you’ve read, so you keep it around. For reference.”
“I suppose that’s part of it.”
Quentin kept his expression neutral. “Listen, when I’m preparing my podcasts, I take notes on old steno pads. I’ve done that for pretty much every story I’ve ever written since I was in college. I’ve kept all of them. My husband makes me store them in boxes in the attic. He hates the clutter, just like yours did.”
Edith smiled.
“But the thing is, I can’t get rid of them. It feels like I’m throwing out entire parts of my life.”
She leaned on her cane, a sigh escaping her lips. “Do you know something, Quentin Garrison? You are wise beyond your years.”
“Nah. I’m just saying I know how you feel,” he said, “because I’m the same way.” Of course, Quentin was lying. He took notes on steno pads, yes. But only when he didn’t have his voice recorder handy. And after he’d completed his stories, he couldn’t throw them out soon enough. It disgusted him, really, his sloppy, spidery handwriting on the lined page. Something about him that could be analyzed,dissected... “Listen, do you mind if I record you?” he said. “I may have forgotten my steno pad, and anyway, I’d rather focus on what you have to say than on my lousy shorthand.”
She answered fast. “As long as your tape recorder works properly.”
It always surprised Quentin, how easy it was to get certain people to talk on record. He’d interviewed a guy on death row once, a psycho who’d killed his girlfriend and their baby, yet when Quentin turned on his digital recorder, he started acting as though he were a politician, or a Nobel Laureate, or anyone else who might be famous for doing something that wasn’t horrible.You’re getting every word of this, kid? That equipment you got works, right?Thinking about it now, with this for-all-accounts decent person having the same reaction, he realized it wasn’t delusions of grandeur that made them so eager to have their words preserved forever. More likely, it was the knowledge of being on limited time.
“I think the living room has the best acoustics,” Edith said. She led Quentin through a long hallway, weaving slowly around the stacks of cardboard boxes, nudging some aside with her cane. They wound up in a room with large windows and the shades drawn—a dark room, the couch stacked high with volumes ofWho’s Who in AmericaandEncyclopaedia Britannicaon one end, a cardboard Bankers Box on the other. There was a glass-topped coffee table in front of the couch, littered with magazines. It made him think of Reg Sharkey and his oldTV Guides, and he imagined introducing Edith Brixton to his grandfather—Reg with his tidy time capsule of a living room, Edith with her barely controlled chaos. Together, they might raise an army of dust bunnies and take over the world. Quentin sneezed.
“Bless you.” Edith gestured at the one clear space on the couch, and Quentin settled into it, resting an arm on the encyclopedias.
Across from the couch was a rocking chair with no room to rock. Edith dropped her cane and hoisted herself into it, her thin legsnot quite reaching the floor. Quentin turned on his phone’s voice recorder and set it on the coffee table, atop aNew Yorker. “Ready?”
Edith nodded.
“I’m speaking to Edith Brixton on June 28.”
