did, in droves, and Paterson is now overwhelmingly African-American. The houses look exactly the same, but the people look different.
It is a source of great pride to me that my parents never followed the masses across the river, but a source of some shame that I did. But I love that house, and that neighborhood, and I love my parents even more for not abandoning it.
I drive to the house, with Tara sitting in the front seat and looking out the window at the neighborhood, checking it out as if she is thinking of buying property here. We arrive at the house, now empty of family, and I take a deep breath as we walk toward it. We walk up the steps where I covered myself in glory playing stoopball. We step up onto the porch from which I used to watch summer thunderstorms, mesmerized as the water hit the ground so hard that it bounced six inches back in the air.
And then we enter the house. You could blindfold me and I could describe every square inch of the house, tell you every piece of furniture that has ever been in it, yet I could barely remember what any house I've lived in since looks like.
Once inside, the pain begins inside my stomach and keeps boring inward. By the time I'm in the den it has reached previously unexplored depths, but I resolve not to give in to it. My resolve lasts for about eight seconds, and I start sobbing. Tara nuzzles next to me, letting me know that she loves me and is there for me. I wonder if she can comprehend how much that helps; I believe she can. The power of a dog's love is astonishing.
I compose myself and get started. My father kept everything in four file cabinets in his office, and for the next three hours I go through papers and documents. Everything seems characteristically straightforward and organized; my father would never have had it any other way. My unspoken (even to myself ) dread that I would find something troubling (an old love letter to a mistress?) soon gives way to semiboredom as I plow through the material.
I seem to remember that there are a lot of things in the attic, so I take a stepladder and go up there. It's dusty; this area obviously was not a frequent place of visitation. There are boxes of old papers, books, photographs, and memorabilia, and despite myself I get lost in them. I realize with a flash of guilt that I have not similarly chronicled my own life, then I realize with a flash of sadness that there will not be anyone to notice.
Many of the items I see trigger old memories, though some are literally before my time. There is a yellowed newspaper clipping from the day that my then thirteen-year-old father slipped through an ice crack in a local pond, along with a picture of Philip, dripping wet after heroically pulling him out. It is an incident my father related to me perhaps half a dozen times; he truly credited Philip with saving his life. Surprisingly, I never heard Philip mention it, though it would certainly have added luster to his political résumé.
I pick up a photograph of my parents at the beach. What strikes me about it is how comfortable they look together; I can never remember a time when it was any other way. Looking at their youthfulness, it seems amazing that they are gone, or even that they ever existed in this form.
The photograph is in a frame, and as I go to put it back, I see there is something behind it, as if hidden. I pry open the frame and pull out another picture, which is of four men, arm in arm, smiling and laughing as they pose for the camera. All of the men seem to be in their early twenties, and my father is one of them. There are two 1960s model cars in the driveway behind them, one sideways to the camera and one facing it.
The black and white shot was taken at night, and the young men seem jovial, perhaps intoxicated. In the background are trees and a large, manicured lawn, but I don't recognize the location.
I go to put down the photo, then do a double take and pick it back up. One of the men looks like a young Victor Markham, a very wealthy, very influential local industrialist. I've never met Markham,