A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

  “Why not?”

  “It’s the most painful episode of my life, that’s why. I don’t want you to write about it.”

  “I wouldn’t be writing about you. I’m interested in the moral and psychological complexities of a twelve-year-old child suddenly changing her mind in the judge’s chambers. I mean, it’s very Jamesian, don’t you think?”

  “Seth, please. I would consider it a violation of my trust in you if you wrote a story about that.”

  I began writing the story anyway. After all, I was just completing an assignment for a class, and Rachel didn’t need to see it. I changed the girl to a boy, set it in New Jersey, and forgot all about Jamesian complexities. I remembered when I was twelve and had wanted to leave my mother too, remembered how a child can feel emotionally responsible for a lunatic parent. The boy in the story was me, or some version of myself, and the mother was a version of my mother. Rachel’s story had provided me a medium through which to tell my own. I had never felt so pure and inspired about anything I had written. I only felt guilty about lying to Rachel. I had never lied to her before, but now I lied to her every time she asked me how the writing was going. “Not great,” I’d tell her. “It’s bad. Really bad.”

  FOR THE SECOND TIME THAT TERM, all my classmates were sitting around the seminar table with purple mimeographed copies of a story I had written while we waited for Professor Kadish. No one made eye contact with me except for the girl who called herself Cat. When she came into the room, she said, “Great story, man,” and then sat down across from me, fidgeting, sniffing, pulling on her earrings and sending smiles my way.

  Kadish came in ten minutes late. He dropped his books, papers, and keys on the table with a thud, then moved his glasses to the top of his forehead and stared around the room for a couple of seconds, as if looking to see if he was in the right place. “Well, I think we can all agree that this is a highly accomplished story. Mr. Shapiro is a real writer.”

  After Kadish pronounced his judgment, most of my classmates praised the story too; some felt bound to offer criticisms, perhaps out of envy, perhaps in an attempt to generate some discussion over the remaining sixty minutes. One student said the word “obdurate” at the end seemed out of place. Someone said that he didn’t think a tallis could actually be rolled up into a tight little ball. Another student said that ending the story with the two characters walking away together seemed like a trite way of exiting the story. Then one student wondered if it would provide more of a twist at the end if the boy changed his mind and decided to stay with his mother. A number of other students became animated by this idea, agreeing that it might provide more of a psychological and dramatic reversal if the boy changed his mind. Of course I had planned on ending the story that way, but when I reached the final scene, I didn’t believe that my character would actually go through with it. The scene that created the most problems for me was the fistfight at the bar mitzvah: It was the one detail in the story that felt like a real betrayal of Rachel.

  Finally, Cat raised her hand. Throughout the term, it had been her habit to sit quietly through most of each class and then disagree with the drift of the discussion. Kadish called on her.

  “I disagree with what everyone has been saying. If the boy changed his mind and stayed with his mother, the story would be less emotionally complex, less surprising, because that’s the ending we want. He does have a stronger bond with his mother, but he doesn’t understand how much he loves her. That’s why the ending is so beautiful and sad.”

  I smiled at her and she winked back at me.

  When Kadish gave me back his copy of the manuscript, I turned to the back for the comments. See me about submitting this story for the Chandler Prize and publication in the Chicago Quarterly. A. The Chandler Prize was awarded for the best work of fiction by an undergraduate student. Kadish was the editor of the Chicago Quarterly, a literary magazine published by the University of Chicago Press. I went to Kadish’s office after class, knocked on the door, and waited for close to a minute before he opened it and stared at me.

  “Yes, Mr. Shapiro?”

  “You told me to see you about the Chandler Prize and the Chicago Quarterly?”

  “Oh, right. Hold on a minute.”

  Kadish went back into his office and closed the door. After another minute, he came back out and stood in the doorway.

  “Here’s the form you need to submit your story for the contest. The deadline is tomorrow. You ought to be notified of the results in about a week.”

  I asked him who the judges were.

  “Just me.”

  “You also said something about publication in the Chicago Quarterly.”

  “Yes. I’d like to publish the story if it’s all right with you.”

  “Yes. Thank you very much.”

  Kadish nodded his head and then went back into his office.

  I waltzed and whizzed my way down the four flights, holding the copy of my story with Kadish’s comments as if it were a prize-winning lottery ticket. Bursting out of Cobb Hall, I heard my name. I turned around and saw the girl from class who called herself Cat.

  “Hi, what’s up?” I said.

  “Which way are you going?”

  I pointed down Sixtieth Street.

  “Me too.”

  “You know, I don’t even know your real name,” I said to her.

  “Not many people do.”

  “So, will you tell me?”

  She stopped. “Well, only because you wrote such a great story.” Then she put her warm, pillowy lips against my ear and whispered, “Bella.”

  “Bella,” I repeated. “Bella Katz.” Her vowels were flattened by a midwestern accent. “Highland Park?” I asked.

  “Close. Shaker Heights.” She paused. “So, look, would you like to go get a drink?”

  “Well, I sort of have a girlfriend.”

  “You ‘sort of’ do or you really do?”

  “I really do,” I replied.

  Her eyes became slits. “You know, I really wish you had let me know that before I told you my real name.”

  I looked at the ground and apologized. She burst out laughing. “Oh, man, I’m just yanking your chain. Thanks for not being a dog.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She lit a cigarette and said she was going back to the quad.

  “You’re not really going this way?”

  She laughed again. “Too bad you have a girlfriend. I could have a lot of fun with you.”

  I met Rachel just outside the entrance to the dining hall. She kissed me on the lips and asked me how the class had gone.

  “Pretty well,” I said. “I’ll tell you when we sit down.” Before the class, I had planned to simply lie to Rachel: I would tell her that everyone in the class had hated my story and that I didn’t want to show it to her. But I was so excited about Kadish’s praise, so sure the story itself would redeem me, that I knew I couldn’t pull off the lie I had invented for just this moment. Nothing I had ever done in my life had felt so right, so true, as writing that story, and Kadish’s judgment had left me swelling with virtue.

  We went through the line with our trays and found our usual small table.

  “So Kadish loved my story,” I said. “He wants me to submit it for the Chandler Prize.” I decided to wait for her reaction before I told her about the Chicago Quarterly.

  “Seth, that’s wonderful! Especially because you didn’t think the story was very good. I’m so proud of you. So . . . can I read it now?”

  I reached in my knapsack and pulled out a copy for her.

  “‘A Stranger on the Planet,’” she read. “I like that title.” But when she began reading the opening lines, her face became contorted with pain. Then she started turning the pages rapidly, scanning each one for just a couple of seconds. She slowed down when she was nearly at the end. I knew she was reading the scene in which the mother and stepmother get into a fistfight. I wanted her to speed through those pages too, but she studied them with a
stunned look, the way someone reads and rereads a letter containing shocking news.

  Finally, she looked up at me. “I cannot believe you did this. You promised me, Seth!”

  “I just used some details you told me. The story is about me, not you.”

  “Do you know how violated I feel?”

  “Rachel, no one who reads this story is going to connect it with you. I think you’ll understand if you just read the whole thing.”

  “I’ve read enough,” she said, and banged the story down on the table. Plates clattered, and people turned to look at us. Then she leaned across the table and said in a low but furious voice, “You fucking liar.”

  “Liar? What did I lie about? I’m not hiding the story from you.”

  “When you kept telling me it was bad. You were so happy and giddy during the eight weeks you were writing this story, you had to know it was good. You lying, scheming asshole!”

  She stood up to leave, slipping on her coat and hoisting onto her shoulder her knapsack in one deft motion.

  “But I changed the ending,” I said, as if that might exonerate me.

  “Fuck you,” she said, and left me sitting alone.

  THAT NIGHT I SLEPT BY MYSELF for the first time since Rachel and I had gone to the blues bar back in February. During the week, Rachel wasn’t in any of our usual places: our table in the dining hall or the section on the third floor of Regenstein where we studied together. She didn’t return any of the telephone messages I left for her. The image of the battered look on her face as she read the story kept me awake at night—I don’t think I had ever caused another person so much pain—but I would end up arguing with her in my head. She was a brilliant student of literature; how could she not understand the process of how an author transforms life into art? Kadish had been right about “Two by Two”: The germ of the plot might have come from an incident out of my childhood, but I had directly appropriated Bellow’s way of telling a Jewish story. But “A Stranger on the Planet” was my story. If Kadish had reported me to the admissions office after reading “Two by Two” and the university had decided to expel me, I would have more easily understood that punishment than Rachel’s reaction. She was treating me as if I were as egotistical and as boorish as Tolstoy. Compared to the way Tolstoy treated Sonya, I was a saint. A goddamned saint! Still, I sent her a letter of apology, saying no story was worth the sacrifice of our relationship. She didn’t reply; perhaps she knew I was lying: I didn’t regret writing the story.

  A week later, I received a letter notifying me that “A Stranger on the Planet” had won the Chandler Prize for undergraduate fiction. Along with the letter was a check for one hundred dollars and an announcement of all the winners of the English Department’s undergraduate writing prizes. Rachel had won for best literary criticism. She would have received the same announcement. I left another message for Rachel congratulating her, but she didn’t call me back.

  I was graduating in a month. I had harbored hopes that Rachel and I might maintain a long-distance relationship, but now I wondered if she would even be speaking to me at commencement. Recalling Kadish’s pronouncement about me in class—Mr. Shapiro is a real writer—pumped me up with more self-righteousness and defiance, and I decided to call Bella Katz. She answered on the first ring.

  “Bella?”

  “Come again?”

  “Cat?”

  “Seth, what’s up?”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I told you. Not many people know my real name.”

  “I was wondering if you’d like to get a drink.”

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend anymore?”

  I spent about five minutes explaining, in an aggrieved and self-righteous fashion, everything that had happened between Rachel and me. I expected her to be appalled at Rachel’s crude reaction to my art and to sympathize with my principled positions, but she said she would only go out with me on one condition.

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t want to hear any stories about how your girlfriend doesn’t understand you.”

  “Sure, fine,” I replied.

  Bella’s standard attire was patched blue jeans and oversized peasant blouses, so I was surprised at how beautiful she looked without her clothes on. Everything about her was full and round: her eyes and lips, hips and breasts, the swell of her thighs. Nude, she had a glow and grace about her that I had never noticed when she was so indifferently clothed. I tried not to compare her with Rachel, tried not to think about how boring our love life had always been, but when Bella lay on top of me, kissing my lips, softly, lusciously, I remembered what sex was supposed to feel like, remembered how my legs had quivered when Zelda had put her hand on my penis ten years before.

  Later, lying next to me, she said, “So is your girlfriend a lesbian?”

  “What? No, of course not! Why would you say that?”

  “You really know how to use your tongue. Someone had to teach you those moves.”

  I might have told her that I had developed those moves because I had read The Bell Jar in high school and become phobic about having sex with a virgin, but I recognized an opening and pounced. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes welled up for a moment. “Look, man, I think we both know why you called me.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because you wanted some babe who appreciated your story to fuck you.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protested.

  “So? It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Then why did you go out with me?”

  “Because I like you and I wanted to fuck you too. But it’s all right if you don’t call again. I know you still want to get back together with your girlfriend.”

  My face probably fell by a couple of inches.

  “Look, it’s a human thing, Seth. You knew I liked your story, and you knew that I was hot for you, so you called me up. You don’t have to feel bad about being human.”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re nice, Seth, but you’re not as nice as you want everyone to think you are. I mean, you are being a little bit of a dog.”

  “So do you want me to leave?”

  “Remember that story Kadish read on the first day of class? ‘My First Fee.’”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember when the narrator said he wasn’t planning on writing down any of his stories until he was as great as Tolstoy?”

  “Yes, so? Your point is . . .?”

  “My point is that we just had some really amazing sex, but it never would have happened if you believed you had to be a saint every minute of the day.”

  I gave her a puzzled look. She laughed and said, “Oh, Seth, if I had expected this was going to be more than a one-night stand, I wouldn’t have let you see how smart I am.”

  I wanted to protest that Rachel was one of the smartest people in the world, but before I could say anything, Bella laid her head on my chest and said, “Stay the night?”

  “All right.”

  “I love sex in the morning. Don’t you?”

  I HAD NOT HEARD FROM MY FATHER since my fireshman year, but I still made sure the registrar sent him a copy of my grades every term so he could see how well I was doing. My sadness over Rachel reminded me of how much I missed him, reminded me that I was always disappointing the people I most wanted to love me. I decided to invite him to my graduation. In the letter I wrote to him, I expressed my hope that we could use this happy day as an occasion to mend our relationship. I told him that I was graduating magna cum laude and had won the Chandler Prize. I recalled how my father had written “EXTRA ORDINARY” in response to “Two By Two,” and, after a moment of internal debate, I decided to include a copy of “A Stranger on the Planet.”

  A week later, I received my father’s reply:

  Dear Seth,

  Congratulations on your fine academic achievements. I would like very much to attend your graduation, but your letter did not include an invitation for my wife.
Moreover, you still have not apologized for your vulgar outburst to her three years ago. I hope you will honestly examine the untenable situation you have created for me. Hortense and I are not interested in a relationship without a baseline of common courtesy.

  Sincerely,

  Dad

  P.S. In the future, please address all your correspondence to both Hortense and me.

  Sarah was graduating from Rutgers in a week. I phoned her and asked if our father was attending.

  “Dad, Horty, Francois. The whole happy family.” “Francois too? How old is he now? Thirteen or something?” “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you. He’s always looked up to you.”

  A year earlier, I had shown Sarah a copy of a letter Francois had written to me. Dear Seth, How goes it in collage land, where

  men are men, women are women, and collage professors tend to be gay. He had included a poem that he had written and asked for my opinion of it. I showed it to Dad, but he told me it sucked out-loud. Love (not the gay kind), Francois.

  “Well, Dad’s not coming to my graduation,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

  “Thanks for the sympathy.”

  “Seth,” she said, the tone in her voice softer, more empathetic, “he’s never going to change. I know it’s difficult for you, but you have to stop hoping that he’s going to love you someday.”

  “I know. I know. . . . So how did Mom react when you told her that Hortense is going to be there?”

  “I haven’t told her yet.”

  “You haven’t? She’s going to have a fit.”

  “I know. So I don’t see any point in telling her until the very last moment.”

  “Did you consider not inviting Hortense for Mom’s sake?”

  “Dad owes me five thousand dollars upon graduation. I’m not going to jeopardize that money by antagonizing him.”

  “What if he wanted you to invite Joseph Goebbels? Would you do that for five thousand dollars?”

  “I love you too, Seth,” she replied, and hung up.

  I had a box in which I kept all my father’s letters. When I went to store away his most recent one, I found one he had written to me ten years earlier in response to a letter I had sent him after Eddie had broken my nose.