How to Write a Novel

by Melanie Sumner

  “That sucks, man,” said Penn. “I’m sorry. I hope you can fight this.”

  “I invited him to come over here so we can do some final edits on his statement,” said Diane.

  “I appreciate your help,” said Charles. “I’ve rewritten this thing so many times that I can’t even see the words now. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I was going over the speed limit, but jail?”

  “Once again, injustice prevails in Kanuga,” said Penn.

  “I don’t know if you saw my picture in the paper. That really upset my mom. All my relatives were calling her.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” asked Diane. “You haven’t been convicted.”

  “A human interest story,” said Penn, squeezing the last bag onto the kitchen counter. Diane had apparently blown the grocery budget. We were laying up for a long season of deprivation with bags of frozen like-chicken nuggets, like-pork sausages, and like-beef patties.

  Max pawed through the bags, looking for something edible. He opened a bag of raw almonds, took one out, licked it, grimaced, and put it back inside the bag.

  “Max!” exclaimed Diane. “Don’t do that.”

  “It was gross,” explained Max.

  “Now you have to eat every one of those raw, unsalted almonds,” said Penn. “Until you find the one you licked. After that, we’ll go bang some nails into that playhouse.”

  “Ms. Montgomery-Thibodeau,” said Charles after they left, “I hope I didn’t jeopardize your career.”

  “You can call me Diane now. I am no longer your teacher, and no, you didn’t jeopardize my job. I quit, actually.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Charles. “It’s a loss to KCC. You were a great teacher. I never thought about writing essays as anything more than a chore until I took your class. When you told us, on that first day, that if the writer who finishes the essay is the same person who started it, he has failed—I thought, man, this is going to be a tough A to earn. You changed me.”

  “You changed yourself, Charles. You took risks.” She sighed the way she does before she gives a speech, and I cringed. Even when her orations are good, I cringe. “Your next teacher will find you,” she said in a low voice. “Nobody knows when or how it happens. Prepare yourself and wait.” Effective pause. When she resumed the speech, I started putting groceries away. As soon as Charles left, I planned to make my confession. However, before I could balance the last can of pinto beans onto the bean pyramid, Diane had him doing a freewrite at the kitchen table.

  “I’ll set the timer for three minutes,” she was saying to poor Charles, “and you write without stopping. You remember this exercise from class. Write whatever comes into your head—anything. Write as fast as you can. Don’t use punctuation. Keep your hand moving at all times. If nothing comes to your mind, just repeat the last word you wrote.” She walked over to the stove and put her hand on the kitchen timer. “Whatever you do, don’t stop. Ready?”

  “Ready,” said Charles, and his pencil started moving across the paper.

  “Diane,” I said. “I need to talk to you. I have something important to tell you.” She glanced at the timer and then at Charles. “Okay,” she said, motioning me away from the table so we would not disturb him.

  “Is something wrong, Aris?” Her face was so dear to me at that moment—her mother face, with the sweet, worried eyes, the hopeful smile. She can take it, I told myself. She can do this. She can take care of me. Diane, I would say, Merm. I did something stupid. I need your help.

  The kitchen timer went off.

  “Ouch,” said Charles. He leaned back in his chair, then stretched out his long fingers. He cracked his knuckles. “That was hard.”

  Penn opened the door. “Charles, I have a book I want to loan you. Or maybe you’ve read it—Walls and Bars, Prisons and Prison Life in the ‘Land of the Free,’ by Eugene Debs?”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Charles. He smiled. “You carry that around with you?”

  “Actually, I do. In my truck. I’m a goner if I ever get stopped. Of course, the cops would need a search warrant. No, wait—they wouldn’t. Come on out to the truck with me, and I’ll give it to you.”

  When they were gone, and Diane wasn’t looking, I leaned over the kitchen table and began reading the memo pad.

  Whatever you do don’t stop stop stop blue lights flashing stop step out of the car hands up I said hands up in the air hes clean I dont care open the trunk shut up hands up hands behind your back back of the line for visitors yes sir hes my daddy my father who art in no sir yes sir you broke the law son dont you respect the law son son you grown on me hard on me life one week aint nothing boy you’re just getting started

  “Aris! Are you reading Charles’s freewrite?” Diane snatched the memo pad out of my hands and turned it facedown on the table. “I have taught you not to read other people’s writing without their permission.”

  Where the hell did that come from? We were grading papers together a few days ago. Was I or was I not the co-parent in this family, an equal partner in the management of the Montgomery-Thibodeau enterprise? Did I even want this job? It had always been my life’s goal to grow up. Every year, I came closer to achieving adult status—but now—I wasn’t sure. I felt as if I had been crossing a long, narrow bridge and realized I might not want what was on the other side. I couldn’t go forward, and I couldn’t turn back. I thought this must be the place where people have nervous breakdowns.

  I looked at Diane’s outfit: gray leggings, white artist smock, gold bobby pins that disappeared into her blond hair, failing to hold anything back. Nails filed down for working hands. Eyes played down, lips played up to emphasize the desire to communicate. We were at a new beginning, and oh, how she loved beginnings. This was a prologue to a new book. It was all about starting over on bright, clean pages. The possibilities stretched into the horizon. We would never get to chapter one.

  Outside, Charles had joined Penn and Max on the renovation site. Bang, bang, bang went the hammers. Suddenly, they stopped. Penn was telling Charles something. Charles was telling him something back. They both shook their heads and laughed. The hammers were making a song now: bangbangbang bangety-bang-bang.

  “Diane,” I said, “we’re not going to make it this time.”

  “I have some ideas,” she said. “I can start a business.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was thinking about becoming a professional organizer.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Her voice was tight with self-control, but I had to push it. “Cleaning out people’s closets? Taking their stuff to the Salvation Army?” I lost it. “Diane, what are you going to do?”

  “Do about what?”

  “Your life,” I said quietly. “Our lives.”

  Diane decided to blip out on this conversation. “Well,” she said, as if everything were normal, “I’m going to start something for dinner. Remember, Papa and Grandma are coming over tonight for their anniversary. I thought I’d try a soufflé, or maybe—”

  “Diane,” I said, “you are unemployed.”

  “Okay,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know that.”

  “We are stuck,” I said. “Don’t you see that?”

  I had never said this to her before. I had never expressed my lack of faith in our ability to survive. I had been the strong one, the voice of hope, but all that was gone now. I knew how dangerous it was for me to abandon her like this. An alcoholic might remain sober for twenty years, and then bam! One drink leads to the bottle, which leads to the case, and Defax is at the door. I had heard this story a hundred times in AA meetings.

  “This may look like an ending,” said Diane, “but it is actually a new beginning. Sometimes, you have to close one door before a new one opens.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “What?”

  “How inconvenient of me,” I said. “I know you don’t have
time for this. Even if you did have time, you aren’t grounded enough to catch a falling star.” Immediately, I wished I hadn’t said “falling star” in that dramatic voice! She was probably thinking, Bad poetry, but the look on her face was pure bafflement.

  “Call Kate’s mom,” I instructed. “Tell her I’m coming over because you’re fed up to here, and you have a dinner party with your difficult parents.”

  “Aris, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. What’s the matter with me?”

  “You seem a bit fragile.”

  “It’s probably just my hormones having a party,” I said in my old reassuring voice, but it sounded false.

  With a worried frown, she picked up her phone.

  At Kate’s front door, Diane said, “Aris seems a little tired and out of sorts. It’s probably hormones.”

  “I know, I know,” said Kate’s mom. “Believe me. I have two tweens over here. Sometimes there’s only so much you can take as a single parent.”

  “Well,” said Diane, “I think I might be the problem. I quit my job.”

  “Oh no! I’m sorry. Or was that a good thing?”

  I left them commiserating on the porch and found Kate in her room. Kate and her sister share a room because they all had to move in with her grandmother after the divorce, but there’s an invisible line down the middle that we all respect.

  “I think I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I told Kate, “but I’m not sure.” We were stretched out on our backs on her twin bed, head to toe, so we would both fit. “I don’t actually feel nervous.”

  “You can be completely calm while having a nervous breakdown,” said Kate. “It’s a rather mysterious process.”

  Kate’s sister was on the other bed, lining up Barbies for a session of speed dating with the only Ken in town. “Out of my way, bitch,” said the second Barbie in line. “It’s my turn.”

  Kate shot her a reproachful glance, but you’re allowed to say whatever you want in the privacy of your own room—that was their rule. Kate’s half of the ceiling was strung with Christmas tree lights. The lights reminded me of the Ghost Daddy sparks I hadn’t seen in several days. What if I never saw him again, not even a spark of him? He hadn’t been around much. Was he swept away (mostly) with the mad bomber hat? Or was I changing? I had been a cute little girl without a shadow side when he died. Maybe Mr. Lafontaine was once a cute little boy without a shadow side. Eventually, everyone eats fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You eat that apple and then you find yourself alone.

  “What happens now?” I asked Kate.

  “Well,” she said, staring up at the ceiling, “that depends. Every culture has its own method of responding to a nervous breakdown. The Oglala Sioux Indians regard the event as an opening of the window into the spirit world, possibly the beginning of a career as a shaman. In the Middle East, where only women lose their minds—yeah, I know, who’s writing history here, guys?—a drum ceremony called Zar placates the evil spirit. Koro is a Malaysian malady, brought on by stress, in which a man thinks his penis is shrinking back inside his body. The cure is to have friends and family members hold on to it. Believe it or not, this disease is contagious. Indigenous Canadian tribes dealt with an anxiety disorder called Windigo, in which a person was seized with the uncontrollable desire to eat everyone else, by burning him into a pile of ash. In our culture, Kanugian white middle class, we respond to crack-ups by ignoring them.”

  “You’ve been reading again,” I said.

  “It’s never too soon to find your direction in life. I don’t know if I want to be a linguistic anthropologist or a cultural anthropologist.”

  After a few minutes, she said, “I told you my mom has a new ‘friend,’ right?”

  “Do you like him?”

  “He totally creeps me out.”

  “He undresses her with his eyes,” said Kate’s sister.

  “You too,” said Kate.

  On the other side of the room, two of the Barbies sidled over to the edge of Kate’s sister’s bed and started to whisper to each other and giggle. When Kate took her shoe off and threw it, the Barbies turned away and went creeping after Ken.

  Silently, I began to cry. Kate handed me some toilet paper, and I blew my nose.

  “You can talk whenever you’re ready,” she said, stretching her hands behind her head. Good old Kate. Dr. Dhang charges a hundred dollars an hour to do this.

  I licked my salty lips and blubbered, “I am a huge, epic fail.”

  “I’m listening,” said Kate.

  “I read all of Diane’s journals.”

  “Ah,” said Kate.

  “Then I mailed them out to people who had ordered books from her on the Internet.”

  “That is rather shocking,” said Kate. “I’m not judging, just saying.”

  She glanced at the closed bedroom door. We could hear the tap-tap-tap of her mother’s footsteps going up and down the hall as she talked to Mr. Friend on her cellphone. On the other side of the room, the Barbies had swarmed upon Ken in a fit of passion, and now he was missing a leg. Abruptly, they abandoned him, piling into their Jeep and driving off the side of the bed without a second glance at the man they were leaving crippled but smiling.

  “Be right back,” said Kate. “Nature calls.” She went to the bathroom, where the walls were thinner and she could hear her mother’s conversation better. While she was gone, my phone started beeping and buzzing like it was having an orgasm or something. When I looked at the screen, I figured the world was coming to an end—Billy had responded to a text I’d sent three weeks ago.

  Then he responded to an email I had sent him around that time, outlining my plans for the novel.

  He answered another text.

  Then another email.

  He was even answering texts like, “Watup?” He was opening links in my emails and thanking me for them, one after another.

  When Kate returned, I said, “Billy is texting me. A lot.”

  “The Mayan end of the world isn’t until December,” she said, and looked over my shoulder.

  Sry for all the pain I caused you.

  “What should I reply?”

  “Count to five,” said Kate. “Or maybe fifteen.” She had opened a dresser drawer and taken out an oversized garment she calls her security sweater. It was navy blue and came to her knees. “Then maybe ask him if you can talk. Texting distorts reality, IMO.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I said.

  I sent him a Botox smiley ( |:( ) Then he started blobbing on about how the long-distance thing just wasn’t working for him. He hoped we could be friends, blob blob blob. I replied with a whatever, wry smile (:-1 :-7).

  Two minutes later, Anders texted:

  Did Billy brk up w/u?

  When I got home from Kate’s house, I found Max alone at the kitchen table with Vietnam—The True Story propped up in front of him. He was reading as he attacked a whole rotisserie chicken that had been set before him. “Mom got it for me when she went back to the store to get some gold candles for the diamond jubilee,” he said, clamping down on a chicken leg. “She said I could spoil my dinner.”

  Something was very wrong. I spotted the gold tablecloth folded neatly on the counter.

  “Did she go in the attic?”

  “Yumph,” he said through the carcass in his mouth. Before I could get anything else out of him, Diane stormed into the kitchen, her face white, hair standing on end.30 “Aristotle,” she said between her teeth, “I’d like to speak to you alone for a moment. In my room.”

  The walls of Diane’s bedroom are painted a color called Relaxing Green, which she chose for the name because it’s not a great color. Her furnishings are minimalist: bed, desk, chair, with clothes organized in labeled boxes in the closet. Her incense smells like Penn after he’s been chopping wood.

  “Aristotle Thibodeau,” she said, closing the door behind us. “Where are my journals?”

  I made direct eye contact and was careful no
t to touch my nose, because studies show that liars tend to avert their eyes and touch their noses. “I dunno,” I said.

  Diane wasn’t fooled. “You took them out of the attic,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Where are they?”

  The dogs began to bark. From the living room, Max hollered, “Grandma’s here!”

  “Hello in there!” called Grandma, tapping on the window. She was wearing a metallic gold jacket, black pants, and lots of fake diamond jewelry. She carried her enormous pocketbook on one shoulder and held a newspaper article in her hand. After she rang the doorbell twice, she knocked on the door, which wasn’t locked, making the dogs go berserk. Papa was still getting out of the car, which takes a while because he has to double-check to make sure everything is turned off. Then he has to get all the things Grandma left in the car and pick up any litter that might have accumulated on the fifteen-minute drive.

  “Shit,” said Diane, giving me one last frown before she checked herself in the mirror. Her hair wasn’t combed, which would upset Grandma. I didn’t comb mine either, to show support.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Grandma called, opening the door herself. “Anybody home?”

  Grandma is always fun at first. There are those sparkly moments when we are all bunched up in the hall while she tries to step over the dogs to get through the doorway with the enormous pocketbook. She talks nonstop, careering through a conversation like a car without brakes, bouncing over anything that gets in her way.

  “I finished your quilt, Aris,” she said. “Henry is bringing it inside. It took me six months to make that thing. I got so sick of it, I almost quit. I told my Sunday school class I was making a quilt about the story of your life, and they said, ‘Well, that must be a little one.’ I said, ‘Ha! You don’t know! That child has so many stories to tell I could have made a king size.’ ” She patted me on the shoulder. “I hope you like it, because I’m not making another one.”