Snellville is the location of the house Raymond Peepgass once shared with Betty and their children, Brian and Aubrey. In his recollection, it is not merely a suburb but the measure of a household he no longer inhabits: a two-story, four-bedroom Williamsburg Colonial, complete with a mock Jack'n'Jill slate-roofed well in the front yard, coach lights beside the entrance, and an NBA Products glass basketball basket on a stanchion near the garage. The catalogue of domestic features gives the house a solidity and scale that his later apartment lacks.

The Family Home and Its Surroundings

The house stands out against Raymond’s account of his current life in a small apartment. Though he once complained about the hour-long drive into Atlanta through heavy traffic, he now sees that commute differently: the Snellville home, for all its inconveniences, had been a refuge filled with other people. Betty, Brian, and Aubrey made the nights less empty. His comparison turns a suburban house into a measure of companionship as much as comfort; even the household’s strains were preferable to sitting alone.

From Shared Home to Ongoing Expense

Betty’s discovery of Raymond’s relationship with Sirja led her to throw him out. He found a $625-a-month apartment in Collier Hills, while the Snellville house and household remained among the costs he still had to meet. The separation therefore did not simply remove him from the home: it left him responsible for expenses associated with a family life from which he had been excluded. Raymond lists the house alongside his apartment rent, the children’s orthodontic work and extracurricular activities, Betty’s medical treatments, and legal fees, describing an annual financial burden greater than his gross salary.

Place in Raymond’s Recollection

Snellville recurs as the opposite of Raymond’s lonely present. The apartment’s smallness and isolation make the former house seem almost grand, but his remembered comfort is rooted less in its architecture than in the people who occupied it. That contrast sharpens the cost of his choices: the home survives as a physical and financial obligation, while its ordinary human presence has become inaccessible to him.