Becoming His Muse, Part Three (22 page)

“
Award-winning writing.
”

“
The character of Anna is fascinating and shows a whole new depth of character development from this already accomplished writer
.”

I open the thick envelope. Inside is a bound sheaf of 81/2 by 11 pages that I have to turn sideways to read, as each page shows two book pages. I flip a few pages and alight on the dedication.

To A.N, who inspired every sentence you are about to read. And opened my locked heart.

I feel a lump in my throat. It’s not until I push the bound sheaf away that I notice the title:
Stealing Stars
.

“I don’t know if I can read this.”

“You don’t have to,” says Lowell. “But based on the early press, the public, Logan’s fans, deserve the opportunity to read it. It’s good, Ava. Really good. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Me?”

“We both know Logan wouldn’t have reached this calibre if he hadn’t met you.”

“I can’t take the credit for his work. He did it. They’re all his words.”

“But they are
inspired
words. Will you help me get them into readers’ hands?”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know. Talk to your father, or Dean Ascott?”

I nod. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you.”

Lowell stands up and re-buttons his jacket. “I should go. I’ve got to get the next train back to the city.” He leaves the pages and envelopes on the coffee table but picks up the white envelope.

“Your secret letter,” he says, handing it to me. I clutch the precious rectangle.

“Did he say anything about me when he gave it to you?”

Lowell meets my questioning gaze. “Whenever I’ve mentioned your name this past week he has the same cryptic response: “the muse has to choose.” That’s all he ever says.”

Lowell opens the door, ready to head out, but then he turns back. “Oh, something odd happened the other day. He tossed his Fedora off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

He shrugs in a what-do-you-make-of that kind of way and then walks down the steps.

I climb into my unmade bed and carefully peel open the white envelope. My heart skips a beat when I see Logan’s handwriting. I remember the first time I saw it scrawled inside his signed book.

Before I read the words, I look at the shape of the letters. Row upon row of inky waves undulate across the page. The images of his words to me. Containing the voice of his heart, I hope. I focus my eyes on each letter, the way they are arranged in certain sequences to make words, and I begin to read.

Dear Ava,

I’m sitting at my desk in my apartment in Soho. Outside the window, tree branches arc and unfurl their leaves. These branches were covered in snow when we were last here together. Not here, exactly. We didn’t look out this particular window together, and I’m sorry for that. I want to tell you why.

Up until last week someone else was living here. A woman names Jesse Myers. I ran away from her like I ran away from you. I’m very sorry on both counts, but for very different reasons.

Jesse and I lived together for six years. Nearly a year ago, she told me she was pregnant with my child, a child I didn’t want, which I know sounds terrible but was true. I did not want to be a father. I couldn’t stand the idea that there was any chance at all I might end up like my father. Jesse knew this. She still wanted the baby. So I suggested we get married. We went through the early motions, but neither of us were happy.

I’m sorry I never told you this. I probably should have, but I felt as if I were being given a chance to start over when I went away to teach, and when I met you.

When Jesse miscarried, I was secretly relieved, which I know sounds terrible but was true. She knew it. She knew I was broken. I think she hoped that having a baby might fix me, change me, help me move past the past. We argued for weeks, talked about breaking up, and then I had to go away to give this reading at your college. It was a relief to get out of the city, away from Jesse and our broken relationship, which we both knew was unsalvageable. When Dean Ascott offered me the position as writer-in-residence, I jumped at the chance to avoid going home. It sounds cowardly, I know. And for that I’m sorry.

It was Jesse I was talking to outside the gallery at Sukira Lyn’s opening. I had a chance to tell her I was sorry. I had a chance to tell her about you. She’s the reason we didn’t stay at my apartment. I told her she could stay there while I was away teaching and writing. She’s gone now. She’s with another man now, a man who’s not afraid to have a child.

My mother died, Ava. My mother died and I wanted to run to your arms and cry into your breast and let all of the burdens of the past fall from my shoulders. But by then mayhem had broken out at the gallery, Warren had his arms around you, and Lowell had booked me a plane ticket that I needed to race to make. By the time I’d been to the hospital and the funeral home, I’d been notified of the restraining order. I called Dean Ascott and tried to take the blame for everything. I never wanted you hurt by any of this. I’m used to hurt. I wanted to take it all on. I was more than willing to be the bad guy if it meant you could be free of shame and blame. But that’s never how it goes. Everybody ends up hurting.

I don’t blame your father for hating me. I understand he wants to protect his only daughter, but he should know I’m not a danger to you. I won’t bother you again after this letter. Leave the restraining order in place if you like. Maybe it’s a good thing. It will keep me from breaking a promise to myself. My promise to never bind your wings, to let you fly free and be the amazing woman you are.

I may have been the teacher and you the student but I know I learned more from you than you ever could have learned from me. You changed me, Ava. You made me a better man. You made me want to be a better man. And that’s why I left. Because I can’t be a better man. I’m too broken. That part of me didn’t change. What did change is that I know it now, and I will not seek to break others anymore. I’m sorry if I broke you. Some of the things I said and did were so rough, so arrogant, so much more about protecting myself than trusting you. I’m sorry for all of that. You were my last muse. My last and greatest inspiration.

My mother saw the good in me. Even before she got crazy. Now she’s gone. She was always my protector. She did her best to protect me from my father. She did the best she could do. When he died, after cracking his skull on the counter top, slipping drunk one night after sending my mother to the hospital yet again, I found him bloody and not breathing on the tiled floor in the wee hours of the morning. His hat had fallen off and rolled toward the front door. He always wore that Fedora, to the day he died. His stylish armor. I picked it up. Put it on. Vowed to myself that I would never end up like him.Vowed to my mother that I would take care of her, that she would never live in fear again. I coiled up my fear and hatred in that hat. I kept it close. My stylish armor. Soon I wasn’t myself without it. It became a part of me. The latch that kept the door to the past locked up and safe.

Until you came along. With your bright-eyed innocence, fierce passion, tender beauty, and indomitable strength. The hat, the hat. You were always urging me to get rid of the hat. I think you saw the good in me without it. The part of me stripped of armor was the part of me that you loved. And yet I never let myself feel safe without it. Until it was too late.

It’s gone now. A sacrifice to the East River. My parents are gone, the past is gone, my teaching days are gone, you’re gone, even the novel looks like it’s gone. So I’m free now. I can’t tell if it’s a beginning or an ending. Both perhaps. I’m like that bare branch unfurling a vulnerable green tip that will soak up the sun and rain until it colors and falls and gives up its place to a dusting of snow.

I will never forget you.

Love, Logan

I cried and ached and cried and curled up in my covers and kicked them off and longed to hold Logan and say I was sorry too and I forgive you and sometimes you have to break in order to be made whole again and even if you feel too broken to fix, wholeness is possible through love and I love you enough to weather the healing through winters and springs and over and over again.

When my tears were spent and I felt more peace in my heart than I’d felt in a long time I got up, showered, brushed my teeth, and got dressed.

Tess made a few cheeky comments but couldn’t hide her relief at seeing the me she was used to seeing again. I told her I was planning to head back to school the next day but I had an important phone call to make.

***

I dial from Tess’s landline. My mother answers the phone.

“Tess? Is everything all right?”

“It’s me, Mom.”

I hear her tiny gasp. “Oh, Ava! Are you okay, oh my darling. Will you please come home? You need to come home.”

“I need to talk to Dad.”

“You do? He’s just in the den. I’ll get him.”

This will be the first test. Will he step away from his sports to take a call from his estranged daughter?

In the distance, through the receiver, I hear his deep impatient voice. “Just pause it Rita. It’s the blue button at the bottom. God dammit, the blue button!” I hear the receiver being handled.

“Hello? Ava?” His voice is slightly softer for me. Even so, hearing his confident voice calls up my livid rage. I try to contain it. I have to negotiate after all.

“Hello, Dad.”

“So you’ve finally come to your senses?” He’s trying to be jovial in his bully-ish way, but I don’t want to fight or dance around. I’m ready to move on.

“Is it true you filed a restraining order against Logan O’Shane?”

“Only for your protection. Ava, I—”

“—Is it also true that you’re representing the college in a suit against Logan’s publisher to prevent them from publishing his novel?”

“That so called writer is an opportunistic slime-ball who took advantage of my daughter and —”

“—Are you going to force me to hang up?”

“I will not let him get away with using my daughter, of all the low-down, dirty scoundrels. If he’s written anything about you … That damned book will never see the light of day!”

“You can’t do that.”

“I damn well can! The law says—”

“—It’s censorship. And while you might succeed in tangling up the manuscript in legal red tape for a while, you can’t bury it forever.”

“But what if he’s written about
you
? It could be libel. I need to protect—”

“—It’s a
novel
. Fiction. It’s not about me.”

“He shouldn’t procure any success after what he’s—”

“—Dad, stop it! I love him.”

Silence.

“Did you hear me? I love Logan O’Shane.”

“You can’t possibly…”

“I can’t possibly what? Have a mind of my own? Have my own taste, my own desires, my own dreams? I can’t possibly what? Be grown up! And ready to live my own life, on my own terms? I can’t possibly have ideas and experiences that are
different from my parents
?!”

“Ava, I only—”

“—You didn’t
only
anything! You have bullied and bear-shoved your way into places you don’t belong. Using your strength and your influence, you’ve used people who respect you, like Dean Ascott, to serve your own agenda.”

“Just to protect you, Ava! When your mother told me about that video I exploded with rage.”

“So why not sue Derrick and Casey? They crossed so many lines and hurt so many people. Or there’s Sheriann with her exposé, but you know what? They’ll all say it’s in the name of art, and freedom of expression and all that. So good luck there. And I hate what they did, don’t get me wrong. But what happened between me and Logan didn’t hurt anyone.” No one except ourselves. And we can fix that if we try.

“I fell for him, Dad. As painful as that might be for you to hear. I’ve fallen in love with Logan, and as much as I’d like to say there’s nothing you can do about it, I know that’s not true, because you’ve already done some pretty horrible things. I’m asking you to stop now.”

“What exactly are you asking for?”

“Get rid of the restraining order and tell Dean Ascott to drop the lawsuit.”

He’s silent for a few moments. “If I agree to that, will you return to school and get your degree?”

“That’s up to the Dean and the College Board.”

“I’ll talk to them.”

I sigh, of course, he will. He can’t just let things unfold in their own way. He has to control what he can. And I’m going to have to let him if I want to help Lowell and have any hope of seeing Logan again.

“I want to see my daughter graduate. I want to see you walk across that stage, Ava. That’s the deal.”

“Fine. Tell Dean Ascott I have one condition.”

“What is it?”

“It’s between him and me.”

When I hang up the phone my body is shaking and I’m all sweaty. My heart takes a long time to slow to a normal pace.

“Well done,” says Tess, stepping out from the kitchen. “You know, you probably would make a good lawyer.” She winks and smiles and ducks out of the way as my fake-slap comes winging through the air.

Tess drops me off at the train station the next morning.

“Good luck,” she says.

I’m not sure if it’s luck I need but rather stamina and fortitude.

I give her a hug and tell her I’ll be back to see her soon.

“Don’t count on Sponge Bob,” she says. “I’m burning those pajamas.”

We part with laughter and smiles only a few days after I arrived broken-hearted and teary. So much can change in a few days or a month or a year, and so much does. I think I’m going to have to get used to that.

***

When I arrive on campus, I go straight to the Dean’s office and continue my negotiating.

“Who came in second for the Most Promising Artist Award?”

I’m pretty sure I know the answer to this question, but after looking in his files, Dean Ascott confirms it.

“Good. I want the award to go to him.”

“The judges already made their decision, Ava. They would have revoked it if you’d been expelled, but as we’ve ironed out those unsightly creases, the judges stand by their initial assessment. Plus, your father’s aware of the accolade. We can’t take it away now.”