Illustration: Alex Williamson
It’s a balmy July night. My Oak Knoll neighbors are having a party in the house you used to own, your ghostly voice dancing on the breeze. They’re playing “Saving All My Love,” paying homage beside the swimming pool that, I suspect, still shimmers with massive, curliqued initials WH, for Whitney Houston. I’m wrapped in bittersweet nostalgia. Damn, you were good.
“I Want to Dance With Somebody” begins, and I yank my teenage daughter from her TikTok haze to dance down the street in our pj’s. “Mom, you’re so embarrassing,” Sophie says, as I twirl through the darkness.
I always thought it was a random spot, here in the backwoods of Mendham, for a superstar to live. Yet you did, for more than 15 years. You married Bobby Brown here in 1992. In 1994, you brought home seven American Music Awards. I have an old copy of the neighborhood directory that lists, on North Gate Road, “Houston, Whitney/Brown, Bobby.” My address also lists a husband who is no longer mine.
Tonight, cars are parked up and down North Gate Road. I stand facing your circular house. I can’t see it from the street—it’s hidden behind a privacy screen. But it was on the news when it was for sale a number of years ago, a time-capsule ’80s house with shoulder-pad curves.
The song ends, and I consider the parallel lives we lived in this neighborhood. While our circumstances were different, we were both newlyweds, bore children, and suffered marital strife here.
My need to dance sated, Sophie and I head home. Suddenly, I hear the opening strains of “I Will Always Love You,” your iconic song from The Bodyguard. I’m transported back to an April day 20 years ago. It’s the song I once sang to you.
On that day, I turned into the neighborhood as the same song came on the radio. Turning it up, I sang along. I cruised up Oak Knoll, grateful for the blue sky and pops of yellow daffodils sprinkling the muddy earth and winter-faded grass.
Time slowed as your limo passed. You were in the back seat, being chauffeured like the superstar you were. Your windows were also down, because it was a windows-down kind of day. I was caught red-handed, singing your song to you. Big, black sunglasses partially obscured your beautiful face, and a yellow scarf, the same hue as the daffodils, covered your hair. You must have caught your song coming from my car, because you flashed that blinding smile of yours and nodded at me. I inhaled quickly, swallowing your lyrics.
The news said you’d been going through a rough spell, but on that day, you wore a veneer of exquisite grace.
Nine years later, you were gone. I cried when the news flashed across my TV screen.
It’s dark tonight on North Gate Road. Sophie and I walk home, moon lighting our way, as the song wanes. It will always transport me to the day our lives intersected, the moment your smile was just for me.
This month marked the 13th anniversary of your death. We didn’t walk the same road, you and I, even when our paths crossed in our shared neighborhood. Your legacy remains, though, in your circular home with the monogrammed pool. We remember you here.
Lisa VanderVeen’s recent work has been published in the Saturday Evening Post, River Teeth Journal and Panorama UK.
[RELATED: New Jersey Monthly’s 1986 Profile of Whitney Houston]
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