the Writing Circle (2010) (9 page)

“I know that Dave is your old college buddy, Chris,” said Lydia, “but I’m not sure he’s on top of things. It may be time to get yourself a better lawyer.”

“Don’t worry about me, Lyddie. I trust Dave to get this mess all cleared up in time.”

Lydia sighed and rested her hand on Chris’s foot. She gave it a shake. She hadn’t liked Susan when Chris first started going out with her and had urged him not to marry her. Chris was grateful that she was kind enough not to remind him of that now.

THE NEXT DAY CHRIS FELT TIRED OUT
but elated by the realization he had survived his colonoscopy. He was grateful to his colon, all thousand feet of it. He was proud of himself for having actually gone through with the procedure, and only a little ashamed of what a hard time he had given Lydia. He sent her a lavish bouquet of flowers.

At Susan’s house, Chris waited in the car in the driveway for Sam and Ben to come out. He would have liked to have gotten out of the car to embrace his sons, to open the car doors for them, but Susan’s lawyer had been explicit that he was forbidden to set foot on her property, and his lawyer, who agreed this was preposterous, urged him to comply. Ben and Sam were wearing matching navy blue jackets that looked too big for them. At the car door they turned to look back at the house—where Chris saw a head at the window—but they did not wave.

When the boys first got in the car, they were always subdued. It took a while before Chris could get a smile out of each of them. Chris thought of it as his sons thawing out after he removed them from Susan’s icehouse.

“So, guys, where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Jimmy’s!” they cried, together. It was their opening routine. Chris always asked, and they always went to Jimmy’s. Originally, their preferred places were fast-food restaurants near the mall, but Chris had managed to win them over to Jimmy’s, a triumph he was particularly happy about. McDonald’s and Friendly’s were the places Susan brought the boys to as a rare treat.

Jimmy’s was a diner run by Greeks. They had a favorite booth, which they called “our” booth, and Jimmy, the owner, whom Chris had struck up a friendship with, always remembered them by name. Sometimes, when Chris was missing his sons more than he could bear, he drove the eighty miles to Jimmy’s for dinner. He didn’t sit in “our” booth, he sat at the counter, on one of the red Naugahyde, swiveling chairs, and schmoozed with Jimmy when Jimmy wasn’t working the register.

Chris was always trying to get the boys to try Greek food, but both Sam and Ben were unadventurous eaters. Ben was particularly picky. Once a restaurant had served him a turkey sandwich and had neglected to hold the mayonnaise, and Ben wouldn’t touch the turkey, even after Chris had rubbed all the mayonnaise off with his paper napkin.

“So how did things go with your poster?” Chris asked Sam. Both boys were sitting across from him in the booth. Ben was pushing the buttons on the jukebox mounted there. Chris had given him a quarter for it, but he couldn’t choose.

“Okay,” said Sam.

“Did Ms. Cornwell put it up on the bulletin board?”

“Yup,” said Sam.

“That’s great,” said Chris.

“She puts them all up on the bulletin board,” said Sam. “Even the stupid ones.”

“Mom wouldn’t let Sam get new markers,” said Ben.

“How were the old ones?” asked Chris.

“All dried out,” said Ben.

“Just the blue and the yellow,” said Sam.

Chris kept notes on everything the boys told him at these dinners. As a reporter, he’d trained himself to listen well and then quickly write down everything he’d heard as soon as he had a chance. He kept a notebook in his car, and as soon as he dropped his sons off he’d fill a page or two. The note-taking served two purposes. First, he wanted to keep track of all the details of his sons’ lives so they’d feel he was really connected with them, and he didn’t trust himself to remember things. He also wanted to document anything they said that might be useful to him in legal negotiations. He never grilled them about Susan, but some of what he’d picked up would, he felt, make any reasonable judge award him custody. Would make any judge with a heart break down and weep.

People always commented on how well-behaved Ben and Sam were, and while this gave Chris a moment of pride, it worried him as well.

“I believe in raising little gentlemen,” Susan had once said. But he was afraid they were too docile, too repressed.

They had sundaes for dessert—a specialty of the diner. The sundaes were so big Chris always ended up finishing Ben’s, and sometimes Sam’s, too. Both boys were too skinny, Chris thought.

Ben was bouncing around in his seat.

“Want to hit the bathroom before we go?” Chris asked him.

Ben nodded and scooted out from the booth.

“You all set?” he asked Sam.

“Uh-huh,” said Sam.

Sam had saved some of his fries in a paper napkin for Chris to bring back to Maybe, and although Chris knew that they weren’t good for the dog, he took the offering and promised he’d give it to him. He reached across the table and ruffled Sam’s hair, which was cut short and stuck up in front. He wanted to take Sam’s head in both his hands and kiss him on his brow, the way Chris’s father used to kiss him when he was a kid. But he was afraid he might get all teary-eyed. Driving back home after leaving the boys at Susan’s house, he often cried in the car, but he didn’t ever want to cry in front of Sam or Ben.

Chris had noticed a police cruiser off the side of the road near the entrance to Susan’s driveway, but he didn’t make anything of it. He drove up the driveway and turned off the engine so he could give the boys a good-bye hug. They sat in the back, and he had to reach around the front seat to hug them. He watched the boys run into the house. The door on the breezeway slammed shut after them, but he waited, knowing they’d run through the house and wave good-bye to him from the living room window. He had his eyes on them, their faces framed by the mullions of the bay window, when he realized the police car had come up the driveway behind him and a cop was getting out.

Chris was fairly certain he hadn’t been speeding—he always drove carefully when the boys were in the car—but maybe this crazy town had a speed trap that he’d missed. He produced his driver’s license for the cop, as requested, and was surprised he wasn’t asked for the car registration as well.

“Would you please get out of your car,” said the cop. He was a young cop, a foot taller than Chris at least, with large ears that stuck out. The cop asked Chris his name, then studied his face and the photo on the license.

“What’s going on?” asked Chris.

“I have a warrant here for your arrest,” said the cop.

“You’re kidding me, right?” asked Chris.

“I’m afraid not,” said the cop. “You’re being arrested for failure to pay back child support.” And he showed Chris an official-looking document.

“Oh, that’s no problem, then,” said Chris. “Everything’s been taken care of. It was all a misunderstanding. My lawyer worked things out with my ex-wife’s lawyer, and I’m in the clear.”

“Apparently not,” said the cop.

“But this is crazy,” said Chris. “I gave my lawyer all the necessary papers. I spent days digging out my old tax records to prove I wasn’t hiding secret assets.”

“I’m sorry,” said the cop. “The governor is cracking down on ‘deadbeat dads,’ and so it’s our job to round them up.”

“But I’m not a deadbeat dad,” said Chris. “I pay through the nose, every month. I’ve never missed a month.”

“I’m sorry,” said the cop, again, “but there’s nothing I can do. I have to bring you in to the county jail, and once you’re there, you can get in touch with your lawyer.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Chris.

“You might want to leave all your valuables in your car,” said the cop, “because things have a way of disappearing in the jail. And leave your belt, because they’ll just take it away from you.”

“You got kids?” Chris asked.

The cop nodded.

“Then you’ll understand,” said Chris. “I’ve got two boys, Ben and Sam.” He pointed at Susan’s house. “I hadn’t seen them for a week. I drove eighty miles to get here. I got to take them out to dinner, then I had to bring them right back. I won’t get to see them again for another week.”

“I wish I could help you out,” said the cop, “but I have no choice except to take you in.”

Chris left his watch and most of the contents of his wallet in the glove compartment of his car. He took off his belt and laid it on the seat. On the console was the paper napkin filled with French fries. The oil had seeped through in places, leaving translucent stains on the paper.

Chris held the fries out to the cop. “I promised my son I’d bring these back to the dog,” he said.

The cop shook his head in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he said.

But although he was required to put Chris in handcuffs, he waited till he had backed out of the driveway and they were out of sight of the two small faces in the window.

S
UNDAY MORNING, NANCY FOUND OATES IN THE KITCHEN
when she came downstairs. Sunlight from the window divided the room into half brightness, half shadow. Oates stood at the stove, his hand and arm in sunlight. He was humming while he stirred scrambled eggs. He rested the spatula on the edge of the frying pan and turned to kiss her.

“My bride,” he said.

“Did I make any promises last night?” asked Nancy.

“You sure did,” said Oates.

“Maybe it was like one of those drugs they give you—you say things but have no memory of it the next day.”

“I don’t think so,” said Oates.

She untied her bathrobe and pushed up his T-shirt so she could nuzzle against him, her skin against his skin.

“And you’ll love me still, even after we’re married?” she asked.

“I love you now, and I’ll love you then,” he said.

“It’s probably too early to call Aliki, don’t you think?”

Oates looked up at the clock and then at Nancy. “We could have breakfast first,” he said. “But I bet Aliki won’t mind being woken up for this.” Oates gave the eggs a last prod, covered the pan, and turned off the stove.

“Let’s call her right now.”

Aliki’s voice was full of sleep, but when Nancy said, “We’ve got some news for you,” she immediately perked up. “Hooray!” she shouted. “It’s about time. Put Oates on.”

“I’m on,” said Oates. “It’s the speakerphone.”

“How did you finally persuade Mom to come to her senses?” asked Aliki.

“There was no persuasion necessary,” said Nancy. “It’s just that it seemed the right time.”

“At last!” said Aliki.

“So you’re happy for us?” asked Nancy.

“Duh,” said Aliki.

There were other people to call with the news. But that could wait till after breakfast. Oates put the eggs on the plates, and Nancy got the toast. They sat across from each other, and Nancy rested the soles of her feet on top of Oates’s warm feet. When she was a little girl, she’d waltzed with her father at a cousin’s wedding reception, with her feet (black patent-leather shoes) on top of his feet. How they’d flown around the room! She hadn’t had to know the steps, all she had to do was keep her balance, keep from sliding off.

The breakfast table was beside the window, and the sun caught the facets of the glass butter dish, setting them aglow. The butter on the toast melted in puddles, the shape of continents. The minute hand on the clock clicked from one designated minute to the next. It would go on like that all hour, all day. Forever. This is what happiness is, thought Nancy. And while so much of what she thought and felt went into her writing, she knew she’d never make use of this moment. It was hers to be remembered, hers alone.

LATER IN THE DAY
Oates was sprawled on the sofa in the den, eating a cinnamon bun and reading the “Week in Review” section of the Sunday
New York Times.
The rest of the paper was spread out on the floor beside him. A piece of gummy walnut was stuck to the corner of his lip. He nabbed it with his tongue.

“I feel guilty leaving you this afternoon,” Nancy told him. “You’ve been back only a day.”

“I’ll be fine,” said Oates. “I rarely have the house to myself. I’ll putter to my heart’s content.”

“I don’t have to go,” said Nancy. “It’s Sunday. We should be spending it together.” The room was all sunshine now. It smelled of coffee and morning.

“Go,” said Oates. He looked up over the top of his glasses at her. “I know you’ve been worrying about reading anything to them, sweetheart, but believe me, they’ll love your work.”

“They’ll shred my chapter,” said Nancy.

“I doubt it,” said Oates, but Nancy interrupted him.

“And then I’ll lose heart in the entire project,” she said.

“You’re not going to lose heart in your book, Nancy. You believe in it. I believe in it.”

“I don’t have to be doing this,” said Nancy. “I can call Bernard and tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

“Nancy. Just go,” said Oates. “Have fun at your Leo Party, or whatever it is they call themselves.”

“The Leopardi Circle,” said Nancy. “Named for a famous early-nineteenth-century Italian poet and philosopher.”

“Oops,” said Oates. “I never heard of him. Do you want to reconsider what you promised last night?”

Nancy bent to kiss him. “It’s all right, darling,” she said. “I had to look him up, myself. I’m sure I shocked Bernard when I displayed my ignorance, but he was uncharacteristically nonjudgmental.”

Nancy straightened the waistband of her long, grey skirt. “How do I look?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Oates.

“You don’t think I’m too dressed up?”

“You look fine.”

Nancy bent down again to kiss him good-bye. “Why do you put up with me?” she asked.

“I can’t imagine,” said Oates.

“Still want to marry me?”

“What do you think?” asked Oates, and he pulled her down again for another kiss.

NANCY’S FATHER
graded his students’ papers at the table in the middle of the kitchen. He had a desk—a mahogany desk with its green leather top protected by a piece of glass—but Nancy couldn’t recall him ever sitting there. The desk had come from the office of his father, a cardiologist, and Nancy wondered later if that was the reason it went unused. Nancy liked having her father work in the kitchen, his glasses perched cockeyed on his face, an extra red pencil tucked behind his ear. He was part of the hum of the family: her mother stirring lentil soup on the stove, her little brother, Nick, racing his Matchbox cars along the floorboards, and she reading on the old sofa under the window. When her father needed his pencil sharpened, she’d jump up to do it. He had a pencil sharpener in a clear plastic case, so she could watch the red-tipped curls of wood peel off the pencil as she turned it against the blade.

When Nancy was little she’d been told that her grandfather, Papou, was a heart doctor, and even when she was old enough to know better, she still connected him with the paper hearts of valentines. She understood he was eminent because he treated the most important organ of the body, the one that determined life. But even so, what he did seemed removed from people. He attended to a particular part of the human body, not to the person herself. He was not someone you went to when you were throwing up or had a fever or broke out in hives. When she got a splinter at the boardwalk on the beach, it was her grandmother who removed it. And when she had to have surgery on the arm she broke falling off a horse, her Papou came to her hospital room carrying a stuffed bear. He wasn’t wearing a white doctor’s coat; he looked like any visitor.

Nancy’s father loved his students. Not as much as he loved his own children, but sometimes, Nancy felt, almost as much. Not in a gushy way, like her own fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. O’Reilly, a cooer, but in a serious, almost reverent way. Every child, even the most obdurate of the boys, was worthy of his infinite patience, of his kindness. He worked tirelessly for them, but he wasn’t one of the popular teachers, the cool ones who went by their first names and gave kids high fives in the hallway. In time, Nancy believed now, his students would all appreciate him in retrospect. She’d never been assigned to her father’s class, and she avoided running into him at school as much as possible. At school she aimed to be invisible. Once she had been in the toilet stall when she overheard two girls in his class complaining about a paper they’d just gotten back.

“He took off five points just because I didn’t do the outline right,” said one girl. “He’s so unfair!”

“Yeah,” said the other girl.

Nancy wanted to rush out at them. Her father was never unfair. He was the fairest person in the world. She waited in the stall until they had left the bathroom, afraid to flush, afraid to let them know she had been in there, her hands pressed against the grey marble.

Nancy dreaded anyone thinking she got special treatment because her father taught at her school, and she was an obsessively conscientious student to dispel any accusation of favoritism. Even in high school and in college, where her father could have had no possible influence, even years after he retired, she was still burdened by a little fear that she had to do everything right, that the A she got (and she usually did get A’s) had to be a grade she had truly earned. It was not just that she was worried she’d be accused of having an unfair advantage. It was that secretly she was worried that perhaps she did have one.

Nick, two years younger, never shared these worries. He hated to read and was a screwup in school, though he excelled at standardized tests. As an adult he’d made a success of himself in Silicon Valley. He’d redeemed himself, but their father hadn’t lived to see that redemption. Yet their father hadn’t worried over Nick. He had trusted that Nick, once mature, would thrive.

It was clear to Nancy, though it was never spoken of directly, that her father’s career choice was a disappointment to his parents. It was as if they had expected him to do something more with himself, as if he was meant for better things than to minister to the learning of eleven-year-olds. Nancy’s grandmother spoke, always hopefully, as if Nancy’s father were in some temporary job and would then move on to something better.

“There’s an opening for principal in our district,” Nancy remembered her grandmother saying, but her father just shook his head gently and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Thanks, Ma,” he said, nothing more. Nancy’s grandmother let out an exaggerated sigh that conveyed in its exhale an entire litany of disappointment and resignation.

Nancy’s mother was a teacher, too, an art teacher, but that wasn’t seen to be a disappointment to
her
parents. Nancy wasn’t sure if that’s because expectations were different if you were a woman or if it was because her mother’s family wasn’t Greek. But while her father was content with what he did, in fact treated it like a calling, teaching seemed a job Nancy’s mother had settled for. There was a restlessness about her. She wanted something more than teaching—she wanted a career as an artist. She blamed the failure of her career on fashion, on the politics of the art community, but certainly not on her talent, which she believed in always, even now, when she lived in a Florida condominium and never put it into practice. She constantly bemoaned the limited resources the public school put into art and the fact that her program was considered dispensable. In her last years teaching, her art room was turned into a classroom to deal with overcrowding. She was reduced to a peripatetic status, all of her supplies housed in a cart.

“Like a hotel maid,” she complained.

Nancy could picture her aggrieved mother, cart in front of her, steaming through the Middlebrook Elementary School hallways, colored markers and jars of poster paint flying off in her wake.

Nancy’s father believed in her mother’s art career as much as she did. He made over the breezeway into a studio. He took Nancy and Nick off to excursions on weekends so Nancy’s mother could have undisturbed time. She worked in silverpoint pencil, meticulous grey drawings of things that were themselves ordinary but that were transformed, that took on a luminescence. A drawing of simple oak leaf gall would take her months to complete. She occasionally showed her work, occasionally sold a few drawings, but she would never be reimbursed for all the hours she put into those infinite, hair-fine lines. She chose not to draw lovely things—which might have been more popular—but instead those with asymmetry and flaws. She scorned commissions. In her drawings of people, even those she loved, everything was slightly distorted—in the way a bad snapshot changes things. She drew Nick with a scowl, Nancy’s hair unwashed. It was a portrait of how you feared you might look, rather than a portrait of what you wanted to look like. And although Nancy was actually quite pretty, she never thought of herself as such, and her mother’s drawings of her only confirmed this.

With her father, Nancy never felt it mattered what she looked like. He just wanted to know what she thought. Her father never cared about what anything looked like. Nancy’s mother cared about shape. She cared about line. She cared about shadow and light. Nancy’s father cared about how things worked. He cared about the why.

. . .

FICTION, NANCY THOUGHT,
was like a block of ice, created out of nothing more than water, and inside was a pebble, which was the real story, the truth that everything was built up around. If the ice melted, you’d have that left. In the novel she was writing, the true little story, the nugget within the fiction, came from a moment in a conversation with her father, their last long car trip together before he died.

He’d picked her up at the airport when she came home for Christmas her second year in graduate school. It was raining, and the side windows of the car were steamed up, insulating them from the outside world. The car felt snug and private. Only in a car, when something else was being accomplished—the moving from one place to another—was it possible to talk about difficult things. If you sat down face-to-face in a room, it didn’t happen. Perhaps it was the soothing motion. Or the fact that they weren’t looking at each other, that her father was looking forward, that all she saw of him was his profile, the right half his face.

They’d been on the road for half an hour before she steered the conversation to what she had planned to tell him. It was easier to bring something up to her father alone than tell both her parents at once, and he’d always been the one she could confide in, and the one whose judgment she trusted. She took in a breath, then started talking, quickly, before she could think about it. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I decided I’m not going to continue in the program after this year.”