ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 38: Begins the Chase

Joshua calls two or three times a week, but today’s call is a business call. “I talked to Cindi but not for long. She was at lunch. I told her I’m interested in a house for sale on Mulberry Street. If you can look at it with her, and she can send me photos, that would be great.”

This all feels familiar: the excitement of the chase. This is what Ernie, Joshua, and I did so often — pursued a bargain in the stock market, at the track, in the housing market, at auctions and yard sales and flea markets — even though Ernie often quoted this to us: Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

Who said this? I look it up in Ernie’s faded blue copy of Bartlett’s. William Wordsworth, in 1806. The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: little we see in nature that is ours.

I hope the house on Mulberry Street isn’t a wild goose chase. I hope it’s not a world that will be too much for us. I hope Joshua and I are not laying waste our powers.