The Ways of Men
MY PARENTS DIED in a hotel fire when I was very young.
With no surviving relatives, I grew up with ghosts hovering by with their faces looking down at me. I didn’t understand that the impeccably maintained mansion and its gardens where I played would be mine one day. All I knew was that everyone—starting with Butler James all the way down to the motorcar mechanic and the groundskeeper and his sons—was very cordial toward me. Sometimes they made a few lighthearted jokes. I didn’t understand that they expected me to become their future employer, and that I’d remember them well when I came of age. I was simply the center of their universe. Detroit glimmered on the periphery of my childhood. It was a city overrun with Model T’s.
But my governess, whom I was supposed to call
