My father was all but undone by my mother’s death. In the evening after supper he walked the floor and I walked with him, with my arm around his waist. I was ten years old. He would walk from the living room into the front hall, then, turning, past the grandfather’s clock and on into the library, and from the library into the living room. Or he would walk from the library into the dining room and then into the living room by another doorway, and back to the front hall. Because he didn’t say anything, I didn’t either… His eyes were focused on things not in those rooms, and his face was the color of ashes. [p.8]
My father and my stepmother… fiddled with the interior plans until they were satisfactory. I was shown on the blueprints where my room was going to be. In a short time the cement foundation was poured and the framing was up and you could see the actual size and shape of the rooms. I used to go there after school and watch the carpenters hammering: pung, pung, pung, kapung, kapung, kapung, kapung… They may have guessed that I was waiting for them to pick up their tools and go home so I could climb around on the scaffolding but they didn’t tell me I couldn’t do this, or in fact pay any attention to me at all. And I had the agreeable feeling, as I went from one room to the next by walking through the wall instead of a doorway, or looked up and saw blue sky through the rafters, that I had found a way to get around the way things were. [p.25]
III. The Palace at 4 A.M.
When I dream about Lincoln [Illinois] it is always the way it was in my childhood. When I dream about it, the proportions are so satisfying to the eye and the rooms so bright, so charming and full of character that I feel I must somehow give up my present life and go live in that house: that nothing else will make me happy. [p.130]
After six months of lying on an analyst’s couch -- this, too, was a long time ago -- I relived that nightly pacing, with my arm around my father’s waist. From the living room into the front hall, then, turning, past the grandfather’s clock and on into the library, and from the library into the living room. From the library into the dining room, where my mother lay in her coffin. Together we stood looking down at her. [p.131]
In the Palace at 4 A.M. you walk from one room to the next by going through the walls. You don’t need to use the doorways. There is a door, but it is standing open, permanently. If you were to walk through it and didn’t like what was on the other side you could turn and come back to the place you started from. What is done can be undone. [p.131-132]
— William Maxwell (from So Long, See You Tomorrow, selected by the composer)