Laura Rider's Masterpiece

by Jane Hamilton

  Laura could sort of see what her teacher meant if she made the huge effort to be depressed. She did remember the first time she’d felt the kind of black tunnel of hopelessness Valerie was maybe talking about. She’d been twelve, old for a flower girl, but a flower girl nonetheless. She’d stood in the doorway of the bride’s room in the church basement, watching the bridesmaids help her cousin Jersey sit on the toilet. Jersey, it turned out, could not go to the bathroom in the wedding dress by herself. It seemed a strange and terrible world of intimacy that somehow was related to marriage, and it had made Laura feel empty and frightened.

  She raised her hand after Valerie was finished talking and said, “I think I know what you’re saying, about how life has its secret and black places. But that’s not what I want to see in a book or movie. I want a lesson learned. Gratitude and understanding. A healing hand. I like books where people get what they deserve.”

  Laura wouldn’t point out the obvious, the fact that Valerie’s books were out of print, the fact that if Valerie could torque her worldview maybe she’d sell a few more copies.

  “Take, for example,” Laura said, “a situation where a brilliant woman, a genius, is found out for having an affair with a laborer, a simple stonemason. I’d like to see what she learns from that experience. It seems like she could be a better person for it, that there should be a take-home message. In high school we learned about tragedy, how there’s supposed to be evil, and then suffering, but finally values. A meaningful man in action. I don’t want my heroine to offer herself to the world, to reach with both hands, and what she discovers is that life is awful. What’s the point of that?”

  Valerie said, “What has compelled your character to take up with a laborer, someone out of her class? Does she feel liberated, or is she ashamed? Will she be punished? Those are certainly some avenues to explore with your plot.”

  “Punished?” Laura asked. “Punished for being in love? Punished for connecting to her humanity? Punished for being who she is? The stonemason might make her realize that her retarded brother is a complete human being. Maybe the stonemason teaches her to respect her mother, who has Alzheimer’s.”

  Valerie nodded and then lined up her pencils above her clipboard. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” she said, “but I’m ready for a drink.”

  The magical aspect of the group was how quickly they got close. They did as Valerie said and adjourned to the bar, and after they were lubed, many of them got their suits and reconvened in the indoor water park. Valerie had a staff meeting, which for Laura, frankly, was a relief. Without their leader, they went down the slides, they played in the interactive tree-house water fort, they went in the Howlin’ Tornado, and they took turns soaking in the hot tub. Through all of it, they never stopped talking about writing. Laura admitted that when she read a book she always located the end of the chapter, and each time she turned a page she mentally counted how many more to the finish. She was quick to say it was a habit she hoped to break. Doug, sitting on the edge of the hot tub, announced that he had found a metaphor in the water slide. “So,” he said, “you’re going through the long tunnel, and the water is both mental juices and amniotic fluid, and when you burst out at the end, it’s the birth of an artist. The birth of an artist at Bear Claw Resort. The lifeguard is there in the shallow water, the girl in the red suit holding the safety strap, there for your delivery, and ready to save you if you need it.” They all had to laugh at the idea of dowdy, morose Valerie in her tank suit waiting to rescue them.

  It wasn’t all fun, not by a long shot. Laura worked as hard as she ever had in her life. They had assignments through the day and homework in the evening. She wrote an opening page that Valerie sent her back to rewrite, not once, not twice, but three times. She wrote descriptions of her characters not because she knew exactly who they were, but because Valerie had instructed them to come up with something, to get anything at all on paper. She worked on a sketch about the farm, she rewrote her father’s death scene, and she even turned in a short piece about the Knees. She tried a love scene in a hotel room that’s interrupted several times by a cell phone, and another few pages, which Valerie praised, about an ugly woman falling in love. Mrs. Rider was definitely starting to hear the mermaids sing. Even if Valerie didn’t write interesting books, even if she had a jaundiced outlook, Laura admitted by the end that she was a good taskmaster.

  On the last day, she exchanged e-mail addresses with her fellow workshoppers. Doug was going to set up a Bear Claw Resort and Conference Center Literary chat room so they could continue to share their manuscripts, so at least they’d have a virtual community. “None of us will ever be lonely,” Nora said. And they would all keep each other posted when they got published. They checked out, they hugged, they waved. When it was really over, Laura sat in the parking lot and cried.

  Charlie had still not heard from Jenna when his wife got back from the Dells. “I need to know she’s all right,” he whined.

  Laura didn’t say that Jenna was probably just fine without his concern. “She’ll get in touch when she has a minute,” she said.

  “She’s furious,” Charlie insisted. “She’s devastated.”

  Maybe, Laura thought, Charlie privately subscribed to the Valerie Shippell school of thought, always assuming that people deep down are ravaged. Though Laura had tried to imagine Jenna on the beaches of North Carolina, she had not, because of her own exhilaration, focused on the possible varieties of her idol’s suffering, if, indeed, Jenna was unhappy. She had not pictured Jenna taking long walks at dawn by herself, the early hour of that exercise not born from a wish to comb the beach for treasure, but the result of never having fallen asleep.

  On the first morning, before Frank and Sally were up, Jenna had talked to Dickie by the water’s edge. Her friend had never disappointed her before, and she found it hard to believe, even as it was happening, that he was so uninterested in her humiliation. She did not know if his recent spate of migraines had made spiritual and emotional pain seem insignificant. “No one cares about adultery anymore,” he pronounced. “It’s unfortunate, the perception in the culture that passionate love no longer has the power to transform. And the end of shame means the novelist no longer has a subject. The novel will die as a result.”

  Jenna didn’t care about the death of the novel. “Dickie!” she cried. “I’m ruined.”

  “My darling, you are not ruined. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no one is ruined by this kind of scandal. On the contrary, your stock is probably soaring.” And if she was ruined, time would pass, he assured her, the wounds would heal, all would be forgotten, all was vanity, all was dust. The world was coming to an end, and if she had enjoyed herself before the coasts fell into the ocean and Wisconsin became a desert, then she’d done the universe a favor. If she’d enjoyed herself before the jihadists or the Christian Right destroyed Western civilization, she had done well.

  She wondered if he was on new medication. She could not explain to him that something fundamental was lost to her, an old-fashioned respect and authority that had seemed part of her nature—Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. And it wasn’t only the discovery but the fact that the poison pen had been her own. Sally seemed not to have shared the message with him, and Jenna was too mortified to recite it, but if she had, surely he would have better understood her plight. Because he paid no attention to the technological world, because he’d never used a computer, he did not realize the pandemic speed with which a person’s shame could travel. The stain on her honor was bright and indelible. She couldn’t bear to think about the amount of energy she’d have to muster to walk out of the door every single day, head held high, from here on out.

  I imagine you are down the hall, and the nurse will wheel me, poor old Jenna Faroli, to Charlie Rider’s room in the evening… .

  If Dickie had given her any comfort, it was that the end of the world was ni
gh.

  Laura also didn’t imagine Jenna’s second morning, the moment when Frank was finally settled on the deck with his book, the moment Jenna went out to speak to him. She put a cold glass of tea by his side, and she said, “I’d like to tell you about something.”

  He shut his novel and closed his eyes, and she knew then that Sally had mentioned the message to him. It did not surprise her. He and Sally had always loved each other, a fact that was clarified for her in that instant. Earlier, the two of them had strolled down the beach, full of their intimacies, amiably knocking into each other, Sally telling Frank what was Jenna’s to reveal.

  She sat down next to him, brushing away her tears, but he, instead of waiting for her to begin, stood up. He put his hands on her shoulders and, leaning down, chin on her head, spoke over her, into the brushy growth past the deck. “I don’t want to hear about it. I’d rather you never said a word to me about the matter.”

  It was of little consequence that she stifled her sob. He was gone before she could reach for his hand, back through the glass door, back to his dear friend. There was no one to hear her. She moaned into her lap, “Don’t leave me to myself, Frank.” When she lifted her head she could see him calmly pouring coffee as if nothing had occurred. “Frank!” There was no one in the world for her now, nothing to do but go down the stairs toward the ocean, toward the morning light, already sharp and glinting on the waves.

  Laura didn’t imagine Jenna stumbling along the beach, pausing to fish her phone from her pocket, to answer Vanessa’s call. Jenna had to kneel in the sand, holding the phone away from her face as Vanessa chattered. She knew that when she saw Charlie at home, in Hartley, she would not recognize him. Not only would she blot out the joy of their Kewaskum Inn afternoons, but she would not understand why he had thrilled her. “Mom,” her daughter said, “are you there?” She would no longer believe in delight. “Mom?” Vanessa shouted. “It sounds like someone’s being strangled.”

  Jenna hung up. She weaved along the dry sand and the wet sand as the phone, in her clutches, vibrated.

  It wasn’t that Laura had stopped thinking about Jenna, not at all. She wondered, for instance, if most women truly wanted children, if mothering was how they would wish to spend their lives if they were given enough guidance. Jenna was uppermost on her mind on this subject because it did seem that Vanessa was a continuous pain in the neck to her mother. Laura could imagine the stimulation, and maybe even comfort, Jenna took from having a brainy husband, how, back when Jenna was feeding the baby, the judge would talk to her soothingly of case law and listen to her worries. Laura was certain that Judge Voden, the old baldy, hung on his wife’s every word. It did occur to her that if Jenna were to disgrace herself in any way, the judge, having seen the gamut of human conduct, would hardly bat an eye. So, if Laura wasn’t envisioning the particulars of Jenna’s vacation, she was nonetheless mulling over ideas and questions that for her started with Jenna Faroli.

  The list of what women wanted was growing longer and more complicated the more she thought about it. The first rule of thumb, though—and this wasn’t a bad thing:

  1. What women wanted was always in flux. There was always something more, something new, something different to want. In her twenties, for example, Every Woman wanted to couple, to share, and if she was successful in that department, she wanted, by the time she was forty, to be left alone to watch Comedy Central.

  2. She did want to be the right woman for her man, easier said than done, but still, a goal. It was sad if the situation arose that she irritated him, belittled him, or henpecked him. Because she absolutely wanted to honor who he was.

  3. She wanted dominion in specific areas but with the knowledge that if she was way off course he would steer her straight without ever bragging about or even acknowledging his superior navigation abilities.

  4. She wanted a respectful and attentive and sympathetic audience, a man with advanced listening skills but not so advanced he seemed like a phony or a girlfriend. His skills were male, his own, and empowering.

  5. She wanted genuine appreciation for her creativity, her flexibility, and her generosity. In addition, she wanted genuine appreciation for her own genuine appreciation for his talents.

  6. When it turned out that he had very few of the qualities on the wish list, and if the Serenity Prayer didn’t work, that old saw about accepting the things you cannot change, then women wanted the perils of freedom.

  Laura wasn’t saying that all of the above for both parties didn’t take a mind-boggling amount of dedication, generosity, forgiveness, and consciousness. Of course, some women could think of nothing but Mr. Right, some women made bad choice after bad choice, and others wanted to spend their lives wallowing in their yearning. Laura was above all of that wasted energy, in part, she admitted, because maybe she did have a man in her life who was now pretty much calibrated exquisitely. Maybe the whole point of love was to break each other so that from those shattered selves you could build a better, a sturdier self, so that you could go forward—not hand in hand but a comfortable arm’s length apart. Ideally, if both parties were conscious in the romance, Every Man and Every Woman would enter the relationship with arms spread wide open, ready for the adventure of being broken to pieces and reassembled. As Laura wrote her book, she was going to be looking both within and down upon the plain of millions of seekers, millions of women, and she was, she hoped, going to teach them what to wish for. Jenna was right, that there was a lot to absorb, the whole long history of womanhood, from Queen Nefertiti to Britney Spears. It did occur to her that maybe she, Laura Rider, was possibly the heroine of the story.

  As for Charlie, if Mrs. Voden was truly moving on to greener pastures, he would mope for a while. The shine had gone out of his eyes, but he was keeping busy up in his nook, probably online with his alien support group. Charlie’s great blessing was the fact that he was constitutionally incapable of being unhappy for too long. If Jenna had stopped calling, because, maybe, after all, the newsletter thing had gotten to her, if she was worried about her reputation, worried about the People of Hartley, she should let that trouble go. Everyone thought Charlie was a homo. They were probably convinced that if he was going to run off with anyone it was the illegal immigrants who kept Prairie Wind Farm afloat. Charlie was the Ideal Cover for Every Woman who wanted a roll in the hay, the hero who could fake out the community.

  After Laura had unpacked from the workshop, she went into her study and sat down at her desk. Before dinner was as good a time as any to get started. She turned on her computer. She’d begin her book using what she’d generated at the Bear Claw Resort, and see what happened. Right off, in her new ergonomic task chair, she felt balanced. She felt ready for what lay ahead. She could see past the screen into the distance. Far off was a hotel ballroom filled with women in gowns, and as she focused she could see herself in a satin bodice with a tulle skirt, up on the dais with authors such as Wanda Carol Newman. Just as she’d known she’d marry lovely, funny, dear Charlie and acquire a beautiful farm, this vision, too, had the sheen of hard work and inevitability. It was real, it was solid, it was true. There she was at the convention of romance readers and writers, a celebration of new talent, an evening with dancing and toasts and champagne and an enormous sheet cake decorated to look like Laura Rider’s book jacket. She might not say it out loud, but as she moved to the podium—careful to gather up her voluminous skirt—as she flowed to the mike to describe her writing journey, she would inwardly thank those who had helped her, the Bear Claw group, her husband, and, maybe most of all, Jenna Faroli.

  She wasn’t averse to having her characters be part of a TV series or a computer game, as Jenna had suggested. The world was changing—humanity itself, perhaps, was changing. There were so many new doorways, doorways upon doorways that opened into story after story. Maybe the creative process wasn’t so different from being lifted up in the dark and guided into one bright realm after another. Although she had only begun to ask the questions abo
ut Every Woman, it was through her art that she’d find the answers. She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and said, “Take me.”