* * *
It is consoling to think, if I am not always looking for God, that God is nevertheless looking for me. It is my suspicion, so deep that I forget its existence, that I am as profound as I am willing to be, that only a small revolution or turn toward the light would make all the difference.
* * *
2002
Yesterday was New Year’s Day. I went to Cross Brothers Market and found a way to jump-start the book, give it life. It doesn’t change anything so much as it makes the story open up, like a window, to let some air in. I owe it to Norma (renamed “grumpy Diane” in my book), who is always slipping terrible news into the conversation while she rings up my groceries. She was the Everywoman I needed to keep the story from being a fuzzy, Walt Disneyish reverie. Suddenly I was off, with my busybody character, Frances Nickerson, in hot pursuit. I continue to wonder if this is a children’s story or whether it is an adult story with children in it. Dickens didn’t make these distinctions.
Fear and facts are not the same thing, and when I think of my life I think I must treat the realities in it as facts, not fears. I am almost penniless. This is a fact. I am afraid of this fact. This is a fear. My book goes slowly. Fact. I am afraid of my book dying. Fear.
Yesterday I wrote a small three-page chapter, but it is complete. Chapter Four today.
I have been thinking of the whole concept of “losing heart.” A squib in the New York Times reports that doctors now know that the heart can repair itself. Conversely, a heart can be destroyed by the possessor, and the emotional or psychological loss of heart is real, too.
My father’s bad heart may have been made worse by the fact that he didn’t believe in his own life, in its value, or in his capacity to survive his mistakes—his bad opinion of himself. This is enormously sad, and I wish I had known or felt able to approach him. But even if he were alive now, I don’t think I would have the courage to approach him. He was too unbroken, like a horse that could kick you unawares.
I made the mistake of reading my book with fresh eyes, only to discover it wasn’t what I thought it was—at least not yet. It took away the small platform of self-worth I had been standing on; immediately, everything ahead looked dark.
This morning I am feeling better. A pink shirt, a little moisturizer, and hair that falls correctly can have a restorative effect.
Reading, I come across the familiar phrase, “the story gripped him.” Does Giovanni’s Light grip me? Yes, it does. I am eager to get to the ending. Whether it is a children’s story or not, I don’t know, but it is a story with children in it.
Everything about yesterday restored me. I did nothing but make clay jugs and pots. In between, I took phone calls from friends and had a long satisfying talk with Christian [my older son]. Midday there was an unexpected gift of a box of L. L. Bean fatwood from the real Fran Nickerson. That night, Mom and I sat before the woodstove, swatting embers off our sweaters and the rug, while we fed the small aromatic sticks into the fire. A present like that, out of the blue and so exactly right from somebody so loved, is a plug for the wounded heart.
The chapter about Miranda Bridgeman is done. Somehow, despite the knowledge that I may be writing for a small family audience, I feel sure about the rightness of continuing. Five chapters done and now I’m at the sixth, where it is all new to me, except that it is the chapter where the town heads into darkness and starts to get sick—which may be too strong a word but accurate enough.
A letter from the real Fran Nickerson fighting for me, protesting against my self-doubt. Whenever I think of her, I see a crackling woodstove throwing off enormous heat. She inspires me to write—about her!
I find it interesting that writing fiction depends for me upon not knowing what I am going to say until I see it, while nonfiction is much more a distillation of ideas I have already written down. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote: Edward Crimmins took his watch out of his vest pocket and laid it on the breakfast table. Then, and only then, did I see what else—a stack of travel brochures—was also there. Then he shook out his napkin. You are only able to see where you are after you have arrived.
Another chapter written. I’m not sure of its quality. All one has to do is read a D. H. Lawrence story like “The Man Who Loved Islands,” to know what seamless beauty is. Yet Lawrence lifts me up to a level I would forget if I wasn’t standing on it—like a stair.
Mom, on some of the people in Ashland:
“It’s so sad. All they’re doing is breathing. They have no vision of what their life is supposed to be for. They really truly feel that they don’t have another life. This is it. When you die, you hope that you’re saved. There’s no sense that you incarnate. It’s a dead end. You never get beyond the altar. The altar blocks them. I think if Jesus came back he would tear the altars down.”
On one of her friends:
“There is something about me that brings out the second chakra [anger] in her. It just comes out of her. It’s sad because there is so much inside her that doesn’t come out. But she has chosen to lead the mundane life and be happy with it, and to tell herself that she’s happy with it. She’s going lickety-split around the wheel of life. It’s depressing.”
I am reading a biography of Mark Twain in which the playwright Arthur Miller commented upon Twain’s disastrous business sense. What Miller calls Twain’s “excess of imagination” wrecked him and his family as he chased after wealth. Had he simply stayed at home and written, he would have been solvent throughout his life. This is a lesson I am learning right now—with almost no one signing up for Nightwriters and me in the hole at least $10,000 because of it.
A conversation with a difficult friend. Talking to her is like going on a dangerous but exhilarating bobsled run. I’m always relieved to get off the sled intact.
The snow chapter is almost done and Will has met Giovanni. Angels have been introduced, Miranda Bridgeman has been defined as a budding writer, which opens up some opportunities. It is a joy to have a few friends, like Pat and Mom, waiting in the living room each evening to hear the new installment. That and a block of clay to make little jugs and faces out of at the end of the day, and I’m provided for.
Lying in bed this morning, I became aware that I was in the midst of a battle for my spirit, or soul. And the battle is really with two selves, one that wants to imprison me and one that wants me to be free. All night long I let myself in and out of the same jail cell.
Then I think of my friend Sue, who is fighting it out on a literal level. After being in prison for fifteen years, she was recently paroled. She vacillates between fear and exhilaration. So much freedom, to make so many choices—and mistakes. When you are free you are unprotected from yourself.
Being a writer gives you the skeleton key to a lot of doors that wouldn’t open otherwise. In 1994, I read a story in our local paper about Sue Kennon, a young woman inmate in a nearby Virginia penitentiary who was serving a forty-eight year sentence for multiple drug-related felonies. The mother of three small children, she was the first inmate to have gotten a college diploma while behind bars. I thought she sounded remarkable and wanted to become part of her support system. I wrote her a letter and she wrote back saying that the only way for us to meet was for me to give a writing seminar for the inmates, which I did—the first Nightwriters seminar behind bars.
For several months, I met once a week with a dozen women, most of them in prison for nonviolent crimes, like forging checks and drug prescriptions. Then the prison had a lock-down that kept all the women in their quarters, and the seminar came to an abrupt end. But through letters and visits, Sue and I maintained our friendship. During this time, she began work on her Masters in Psychology. Then, in 2001, she was unexpectedly paroled and now works for the state at that same prison, teaching women how to be parents behind bars.
I am on the chapter about Neddie and his father stuck in the house together in the blizzard. I’m not sure how to bring them together in an interesting way—something about time, and Neddie
’s father realizing that the snow has made time irrelevant—nobody can go anywhere so there’s no need to know what time it is. This is the chapter where the town grinds to a halt and Edward Crimmins grinds to a halt, too. It is painful, but by the end of the day Neddie and his father are joined.
I am discovering the truth of the statement “Fiction is the highest form of history.”
Dorothy, sitting upright on the sofa, listened to me read, and when I got to the part where Edward Crimmins starts to cry, she murmured, “He’s been wantin’ to cry all his life.”
I am taking a ceramics class in Richmond. It is difficult work, and the part of my personality that is seven years old and wants to cry with anger and frustration came leaping to the surface. That damn clay blob defeats me, turns into a mocking, rubber-lipped mouth. I resist wanting to know, in detail, how clay operates, how I must wedge the clay to get the molecular particles going in the same direction.
One of the more advanced students showed me her rubber “comb” and how you should push the clay gently to the side instead of tamping it down, as was my instinct. I was surprised at how respectful of the clay she was. She said she was like me when she started. I see how terribly impatient I am. Clay requires great patience or it won’t respond.
Last night when I came home from the dentist, Dorothy and Esther were waiting in the living room with Mother to hear the next installment in my story. What I like best about their reaction is that they can’t tell what’s going to happen next. I’ve discovered one possibly big flaw. Can Giovanni burn wet Christmas trees? The story depends upon his being able to do it.
It has been nagging at me that if this book is not accepted by a publisher I will be very, very depressed/angry/ helpless. But I must take that risk. I believe in this story and I will see it through.
It is difficult at this point in the story to do anything but write. I don’t want to clean house, or take a walk, or pay attention to any other aspect of life. Like giving birth to a baby, it’s stronger than any other impulse.
Now I am on Chapter Eleven, when it all comes together. My gentle listeners’ response is still that no one knows what’s going to happen until it happens, so that is a good sign. I don’t know all the details myself until I get into the writing. The more I write, the more I see. It is an amazing process, and I see the connection between doing this in my life as well, taking steps forward, not knowing what to expect but going ahead anyway and then being able to perceive more.
Last night at a dinner party, I was aware of how the men there seemed to be locked into jails of different kinds. B was the biggest surprise. I thought he would be very charismatic and commanding; instead, he seemed worried and withdrawn. R was quiet for much of the time, like a judge listening to oral arguments, and K always seemed to be trying, via questions, to keep center stage. (The women, of course, were perfect.)
I finished Chapter Twelve—the final one—yesterday. My constant audience, Dorothy and Esther, were over promptly at five to hear it. They approved. “You leave the reader in another—better—place,” is what Dorothy said. In talking to Justin on the phone and telling him I was really afraid of being disappointed (Would my agent like it? Would it sell?), he said, “You have to humble yourself and say that you love it. And that’s all that matters. It’s the work that is important.” This morning I begin the rewrite. I must be careful not to ruin what is there.
Financially, I look a little better. Offers to edit, to help someone write a book; students for Nightwriters coming in, drip by drip. I am totally grateful to Mother, who has really been carrying the load.
Up late last night clearing away papers and filing others, I discovered to my horror that I had overdrawn my never-empty Nightwriters account by paying the same bill twice. “Well,” I said to myself, “you are responsible for this. What did you expect if you do not keep track?” Even my mother, half blind as she is, takes scrupulous care of her checkbook.
My writing seminars are failing, along with the economy after 9/11. This morning I will cancel Scotland and California but keep Italy or, more prudently, will not cancel Italy yet.
Mother’s life continues to amaze me. For the past several months during her meditations, she has seen an endless succession of intricate three-dimensional geometric shapes, moving slowly in front of her closed eyes, often with shapes behind shapes, transparent and without color. These “building blocks of the universe,” as she calls them, are as clear to her as if she were looking at them in a book. So, too, are the spirit people she sees—most recently in Ukrop’s Market—who are also transparent and move down the aisles in such numbers toward her that she has to stop and ground herself by looking at her feet. Then, when she looks up again, they have thinned out or are gone.
I have asked Mom whether she can see their faces clearly. She said yes. Are they agitated? No, just serious. Headed for her specifically? Some are, some aren’t. Is she frightened? Not at all. What does it mean? She doesn’t know but if she is meant to help them she doesn’t feel inclined to do it. She is more interested in tracking down the geometric designs, finding out how and what she is supposed to do with them; clearly, she said, these are gifts given to her after her eyesight began to go. The color purple came first, then the spirit people, which she would just as soon do without, and now these beautiful designs and shapes.
One evening we talked at length about how it is to go blind. “There are compensations if you allow them,” she said. “If you resist, there aren’t any.” She sleeps better because her mind is emptier. She sees things whole, even though she cannot see them completely. “Like the Wehman’s tulips. I become one with them, swim in the color; I’m suffused with it.” So, too, was she. (The irony was that she was getting more beautiful as she was less able to see herself in the mirror.) “Life is simpler,” she continued. “I’m living a larger existence in a smaller, more circumscribed space.” She was not looking at me as she spoke. The habit of looking me in the eye was leaving her.
I am sitting with a second draft of Giovanni’s Light on my lap. Yesterday it went off to Molly [my agent]. I am pleased with it. Little bits of writing gleam on the page in a way that makes me happy, and I think the characters are real. I feel like all of them in some way.
This morning, on my birthday, I gave a friend with the same birthday a present of some inspirational quotations in a box. Before I left, I urged him to pick one and read it. He chose one by Eleanor Roosevelt: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” Well, I thought, I have to call Molly and find out what she thinks of my book.
To know by the end of the day whether my book is considered good enough by Molly for presentation requires a detachment that is not natural to me. Yet I am steadier than the circumstances would warrant. My mind, or spirit, feels vigorous and hopeful, as if, on some deeper level, all is resolved.
Last night, I replayed for the hundredth time what Molly told me when I called. It is “utterly, utterly wonderful,” she said. “It reads itself; what’s not to love?” In other words, Molly was blown away by it and agrees with me that it’s a book with children in it and a children’s book. “A classic crossover book,” she said. I can hardly believe the words. It put me in an entirely new reality, one that frankly I had not imagined—to hear Molly be so transported. She had been stressed out and tired when she got on the train Thursday night in New York. She had 1,400 pages of manuscripts to read and decided to read the least number of pages first—which meant mine. And by the time she was done, she had calmed down, felt in an entirely new place, and went to bed early. The book had acted as a tranquilizer, she said. If Molly likes it, the book will get sold but I must not think that it will be a great financial boon. What I do hope for it is that it will be read.
It is amazing to think that a month ago I was broke and yesterday I bought material to slipcover two living room chairs.
The town has suffered another tragedy. A man in a small house on North James Street was beaten to death. Scratch the surface and this town seeps w
ith tales. I find it interesting that Ashland seems to be more transparent than usual, the stories coming fast and furious through the door. Murders, betrayals, bankruptcies, PTA mothers getting arrested, blood pressures rising or sinking with news. Mother comes home from her walks with new stories every day—and I make note of them.
A call from Molly, who has shopped my book around. Virginia Duncan (from Greenwillow) does not like it. Nan Graham (at Scribner’s) does, with more work. We shall see. Molly speaks of adding about thirty pages, which expands it by a third. I cannot imagine at this moment where or how to do it but am willing to try. I think the key is to look more closely at everything. My present instinct is to stick with my vision of it being a book for children that adults would read. It will take time for Molly to pull this off. I must simply wait.
Today, the Immaculate Degenerates had Tommy Willis, the owner of Cross Brothers Market, talk to them about the history of his store. I took notes:
Once, Tommy delivered groceries to a woman who lowered a bucket from the second floor of her house.
Then there was the woman who came by at closing time wanting a cooked chicken. They had one left in the meat locker. He brought it out. The woman asked if he had a larger one. Tommy took it back and returned with the same chicken. “I believe I’ll take both of them,” she said. Not to be outwitted, Tommy said he couldn’t do that; he had promised to take one home to his wife for supper.
He told the tale of the man who dropped off a whole truckload of cardboard boxes behind the store. Tommy got so mad he loaded them into his truck and drove to the man’s house late at night and dumped them back on his front lawn. Then he stayed up all night feeling guilty. I’m just as big an SOB as he is, he thought, and before dawn he drove back to the man’s house, loaded all the boxes back onto his truck, and took them back to the store. Later, his wife told him that she had given the man permission to use their trash container.
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