The Longest Ride

busier in the year that Ruth had begun teaching. As my father had done during the war, I again took over the lease on the space next to ours. I expanded the store and hired three additional employees. Even then, I struggled to keep up. Like Ruth, I often worked late into the evenings.

The renovations on the house took longer, and cost more, than expected, and it went without saying that it was far more inconvenient than either of us imagined the process might be. It was the end of July 1947 before the final worker carried his toolbox to the truck, but the changes – some subtle, others dramatic – made the house finally seem really ours, and I have lived there for over sixty-five years now. Unlike me, the house is still holding up reasonably well. Water flows smoothly through the pipes, the cabinets swing open with ease, and the floors are as flat as a billiard table, whereas I can no longer move from room to room without the use of my walker. If I have one complaint, it’s that the house seems drafty, but then I’ve been cold for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel warm. To me, the house is still filled with love, and at this point in my life, I could ask for nothing more.

“It is filled, all right,” Ruth snorts. “The house, I mean.”

I detect a note of disapproval in her tone and glance at her. “I like it the way it is.”

“It is dangerous.”

“It’s not dangerous.”

“No? What if there is a fire? How would you get out?”

“If there was a fire, I’d have trouble getting out even if the house stood empty.”

“You are making excuses.”

“I’m old. I might be senile.”

“You are not senile. You are stubborn.”

“I like to remember. There’s a difference.”

“This is not good for you. The memories sometimes make you sad.”

“Maybe,” I say, looking directly at her. “But memories are all that I have left.”
     

     
    Ruth is right about the memories, of course. But she is also right about the house. It’s filled, not with junk, but with the artwork we collected. For years, we kept the paintings in climate-controlled storage units that I rented by the month. Ruth preferred it that way – she always worried about fires – but after she died, I hired two workers to bring everything back home. Now, every wall is a kaleidoscope of paintings, and paintings fill four of the five bedrooms. Neither the sitting room nor the dining room has been usable for years, because paintings are stacked in every spare inch. While hundreds of pieces were framed, most of them were not. Instead, those are separated by acid-free paper and stored in a number of flat oak boxes labeled by the year that I had them built by a carpenter here in town. I’ll admit that there’s a cluttered extravagance to the house that some might find claustrophobic – the journalist who came to the house wandered from room to room with her mouth agape – but my home is clean. The cleaning service sends a woman to my house twice a week to keep the rooms I still use spotless, and though few, if any, of these women over the years spoke English, I know that Ruth would have been pleased I hired them. Ruth always hated dust or mess of any sort.

The clutter does not bother me. Instead, it reminds me of some of the best days of my marriage, including, and especially, our trips to Black Mountain College. After the renovations were completed, when both of us were in need of a vacation, we spent our first anniversary at the Grove Park Inn, the place we’d honeymooned. Again, we visited the college, but this time we were greeted by friends. Elaine and Willem weren’t there, but Robert and Ken were, and they introduced us to Susan Weil and Pat Passlof, two extraordinary artists whose work also hangs in numerous museums. That year, we came home with fourteen more paintings.

Even then, however, neither of us was thinking of becoming collectors. We were not rich, after all, and the purchase of those paintings had been a stretch, especially after the renovations on the house. Nor did we hang all of them right away. Instead, Ruth would rotate them from room to room, depending on her moods, and more than once I came home to a house that felt both the same and different. In 1948 and 1949, we found ourselves returning yet again to Asheville and Black Mountain College. We purchased even more paintings, and when we returned home, Ruth’s father suggested that we take our hobby more seriously. Like Ruth, he