After the Workshop (31 page)

“Look,” I said today, pointing. “The Black Angel.”

In the middle of telling Lucy the story of the statue, she pulled out a notepad and began scribbling furiously. I stopped talking.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’ll write a novel about it,” she said. “Tell me more.”

It was as simple as that for Lucy Rogan—a few interesting details, and a novel bloomed in its entirety. All that was required was for Lucy to sit down and transcribe it. How could I not admire that? She was Charles Atlas to my puny, sand-in-my-eyes self.

I parked by the more recent graves. Last night’s snow had covered the markers, but I had been here so often since the death of my own novel that I could probably have found it with my eyes shut. I led Lucy down a few rows, paused to get my bearings, then down a few more. I crouched and began wiping away snow. I was off by two markers, which wasn’t bad, really, given the expanse of blinding whiteness all around us.

Lucy stood beside me. She read the grave marker aloud: MAX KELLOGG. WRITER. “I’m afraid I haven’t read any of his work,” she said.

“You wouldn’t have,” I said. “He never published anything.”

“Was he a friend of yours?” she asked. “A classmate?”

“I never knew him,” I said. “I took his job after he died.”

“What job?”

“Media escort,” I said. I turned toward Lucy now. Her cheeks were red from the wind, her eyes glassy. “I was your media escort when you did your signing in Cedar Rapids.”

Lucy blinked a few times before reaching up and dabbing the corners of her eyes with a pink-cashmere-gloved fist. She smiled at me, and I returned the smile. We walked silently back to the car. I opened Lucy’s door for her, but we both paused at the clip-clop of a horse going by. It
was an Amish man riding his buggy past the cemetery. Cars had lined up behind him, weaving into the opposite lane to see what was holding them up, impatient for the first chance to zip past. Lucy and I watched until the buggy, with a familiar orange triangle attached to it, rounded a bend, disappearing from our view.

“Shit,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Do you have a little free time this morning?”

“I’ve got nothing planned,” Lucy said, “except our next lesson.”

“Good. Do you want to go for a drive?”

Lucy smiled. “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.

A mile down the road, we passed a sign that read WATCH OUT: BUMP AHEAD, and I touched Lucy’s knee and nodded toward the warning so that she could brace herself as I slowed my speed.

T
HIRTY MILES SOUTHWEST of Iowa City sat the town of Kalona, home to the largest Amish community west of the Mississippi. When we reached it, I pulled over, popped the trunk, and pulled out the publicity materials for Vanessa Roberts’s book. Inside was a glossy five-by-seven photograph. I tucked it into my coat pocket and then drove from business to business, stopping to ask each proprietor if anyone had seen this woman. Like a detective in a dime-store novel, I flashed Vanessa’s photo.

“Why do you think she’s here?” Lucy asked.

“A hunch,” I said. “Her entire book reads like a Wikipedia entry about the Amish.”

“Is she Amish?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t think so. No.”

At a house that sold pies, I met an older Amish woman who wouldn’t look me in the eye when I spoke to her, but when I showed her the publicity photo, she led me onto her front porch and pointed to a decrepit store down the highway that sold antiques.

“Thank you,” I said.

Lucy bought an apple pie from the woman. When she turned to face me, I could see in Lucy’s eyes another idea for a novel percolating.

The name of the store was Jakob’s Antiques. It was housed in an old gas station that still had two ancient pumps outside, the kind topped with glass bulbs.

We walked inside the tiny store, and a bell dangling overhead announced our presence. Sunlight streamed through the otherwise dark room. The entire place was crammed full of stacked glassware and old, rusted tools in ancient wooden soda pop crates. A few broken toys, coated with dust, sat on shelves.

“Look,” Lucy said and pointed to an old cast-iron typewriter. It was the exact same typewriter as my mother’s, the kind I had first begun writing on. I hit a key with my forefinger. The corresponding typebar rose, smacked the roller, and fell back into line. I pushed the carriage release lever all the way to the right, and the bell dinged.

“Beautiful!” I said. “I want it.” But then I remembered that I didn’t have any money. “I’ll come back and get it later.”

“Why?” Lucy asked. “You should get it now. You can start writing your new book on it.”

“I’m a little strapped right now,” I said.

“I’ll get it for you.”

“No, no, I couldn’t.”

“Think of it as a gift from S. S.” She leaned toward me and said, “If you had any idea how much he’s paying me . . .”

“Okay, all right,” I said, frowning and nodding. “Since you put it that way . . .”

A woman said, “If you need any help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

I turned quickly, startled by the sound of a voice other than ours.

Behind the counter stood Vanessa Roberts. She held her baby and gently rocked him. She was wearing a plainly cut blue dress and a black bonnet, and her face was free of makeup. By her eyes and the way she
began bouncing her baby faster I could tell that she recognized me. Lucy took hold of my arm. She, too, recognized Vanessa from the photo I had been flashing.

My first impulse was to demand the money she owed me for the breast pump. My next impulse was to use Lucy’s cell to call Lauren Castle with the hope of catching her before she boarded her plane in Cedar Rapids. I could gloat over the phone:
See? I’m not as worthless as you think!
But then another option came to me, a possibility that hadn’t, until this very moment, crossed my mind: What if I let it all go? The money. Vanessa Roberts. What if I pursued none of it? Ironically, it was this prospect that brought me the most relief. Letting go was something I had never been able to do until S. S. had physically excised my novel from my life, treating it like the malignant tumor it was.

I carried the typewriter up to the counter and set it down.

“How much?” I asked.

Vanessa didn’t look at it. She maintained eye contact with me. “It’s free,” she said. “Please. Take it.”

“Oh, no,” Lucy said, “we want to pay for it.” She reached into her purse, but I placed my hand on top of hers. A deal had been struck: the typewriter for my silence.

“It’s all right, Lucy,” I said. To Vanessa, I said, “Thank you. I mean that.” I picked up the typewriter and said, “Good luck, okay?”

Vanessa nodded. She peered down at her baby and rubbed his cheek with her finger. She cooed at the child, then tilted her head back, peering down her nose at the child and saying, “Oh, what is it? Hm? What is it, sweetums?”

A man came out from the back room, joining Vanessa and the baby. He was dressed in traditional Amish garb, except for the Rolex that glinted on his left wrist when sunlight momentarily filled the room.

“My husband,” Vanessa said.

“Glad to meet you,” I said.

Outside, I popped the trunk and placed the heavy typewriter inside, and then Lucy and I drove noisily back to Iowa City.

I
NSIDE MY APARTMENT, with the cast-iron typewriter sitting next to my laptop, Lucy said, “Ready?”

I slid a sheet of paper into the feed roller and cranked the knob until the top of the paper revealed itself. I typed my name. The ribbon was dry, and the letters weren’t as dark as they should have been, but I could read my name well enough to get by until I found new ribbons for it.

“Ready,” I said.

Lucy, standing beside me, said, “Today, I want you to write a generalization—something you think is true of most people that’s also true of you.”

I faced my typewriter and placed my fingers on the keys, but Lucy said, “Wait until I’m gone, okay?”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m going for a walk,” she said. “I’ll be back for dinner, though. My treat.” She put on her coat and slipped on her pink cashmere gloves. She rested a hand on the top of my head for a moment and said, “Good luck.”

I waited until she had left the apartment, and then I waited until I heard the front door downstairs creak open and shut. I took a deep breath, held it, and hammered out my assignment:

I breathed out. I stared ahead for a good fifteen minutes. Then I tapped the space bar twice. I still felt Lucy’s hand on my head, encouraging me to keep going. I typed

I was about to strike the space key again when someone pounded on my door.
M. Cat
, I thought, sighing. I considered not answering the door, but the knocking came again, harder this time.

“Yes?” I said, opening the door, but it wasn’t M. Cat. It was a man dressed in drab-colored clothes, a stranger. He sported a beard without a mustache, the way the Amish do, and yet the shiny new wristwatch and the incongruously hip black-framed eyeglasses, the exact same kind Tate Rinehart wore, told me that this man was not Amish. He stood in the hall, clutching an age-worn leather satchel.

“Are you the writer?” he asked.

I knew, in that instant, that this was the fellow who had saved M. Cat’s life. In exchange for having been rescued, M. Cat had offered him my editorial services. The satchel looked over a hundred years old, a beloved heirloom that held only the most precious of one’s possessions. The sight of this poor man, who clearly had no idea what he was getting himself into, holding onto his satchel—it nearly broke my heart.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I’m the writer.”

“My name is Amos Claussen,” he said.

“Please,” I said, stepping aside and smiling. “Please come in.”

I lived in the same apartment that I had lived in when I first moved to Iowa City, and as I opened the door wider, it was as though I were fourteen years younger, when each day stretched endlessly before me and the jewels of the world were still mine for the taking.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said, blinking away the wetness in my eyes, and Amos Claussen, taking hold of my hand and pumping it vigorously, said, “And I for you.”

William Lashner and Fritz McDonald’s quotes are from
The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
, edited by Tom Grimes.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote is so famous, it needs no attribution.

 

John Gardner’s quote about writer’s block is from
On Becoming a Novelist
.

 

Flannery O’Connor’s quote can be found in her collection of essays,
Mysteries and Manners
.

 

T. C. Boyle’s quote is from an interview conducted by Claire Zulkey and can be found at
www.zulkey.com
.

 

James Frey’s quote is from the Times Online (London) essay, “The U.S. Antihero: James Frey” by Alan Franks. It appeared August 2, 2008.

 

I found the Winston Churchill quote online. I have no idea where it came from or if he really said it. One thing I’ve learned, however: Don’t trust everything you read.

 

The poem on page 223 is from Hart Crane’s “To Brooklyn Bridge.”

 

Thanks to my friends who, in ways subtle and not-so-subtle, helped with the writing of this book: Joe Caccamisi, Ted Genoways, Owen King, Scott Smith, Sam Weller, and Eric Wilson.

Thanks to my old Iowa cohort Gregg Palmer for playing so much pool with me all those years ago in Iowa City.

 

Thanks to my workshop teachers at Iowa: the late Frank Conroy, Madison Smartt Bell, Allan Gurganus, DeWitt Henry, and Tom Jenks, all of whom taught me a great deal. Also, thanks to James Salter for a wonderful class on famous novelists’ first novels.

 

Thanks also to T. C. Boyle, for whom I researched the elusive pygmy sunfish.

 

Thanks to all those writers I escorted back in the day.

 

Thanks to Prairie Lights Bookstore and the Foxhead for providing safe havens for me to while away so many afternoons and nights.

 

Thanks to the Iowa City Police Department for arresting me on a November night in 1987 for public intoxication, thereby allowing me to see the inside of a jail.

 

Thanks to Jenny Bent for suggesting that I write this book after I told her about my media escort days.

 

Thanks to Jack Shoemaker, Roxanna Aliaga, and everyone else at Counterpoint.

 

A huge thanks to Connie Green and Peggy Barrett, unsung heroes where I work, for putting up with me these past seven years. They deserve more than this piddling notice.

 

Thanks to my father, Bob McNally, for his continued support.

 

Mostly, thanks to my wife, Amy, and our dogs (Emma, Hailey, and Scout) for listening to me read this novel aloud as I wrote it, providing an instant audience and a reason to keep forging ahead with it.

J
OHN MCNALLY IS the author of two previous novels,
The Book of Ralph
and
America’s Report Card
, and two story collections,
Troublemakers
(winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and the Nebraska Book Award) and
Ghosts of Chicago
(a Chicagoland Indie Bestseller and voted one of the top twenty fiction books of 2008 by readers of
The Believer
).