How to Write a Novel

by Melanie Sumner

  “A dumbwaiter?” Papa smiled. “Penn can do just about anything, can’t he?” Then he frowned again. “He’s got to build some kind of rail up there, or you’ll fall off and break an arm. That’s not safe.”

  “It’s going to have walls on the second floor. That’s my office.”

  “And a roof,” added Max. “Maybe with a chimney.”

  “There’s no chimney,” I said. “We don’t have a fireplace.”

  “Penn said maybe.”

  “You absolutely cannot build a fire in here,” said Papa, agitated now. “Why, with the old gas fumes in this shed, the place would go up in smoke in two minutes. It might explode.”

  “We’re not building a fireplace,” I told Papa, patting him on the back to help him calm down. His face was bright red, and I could feel his heart pounding in his back.

  “Your mother should have asked me permission before she did all this. I had no idea. How is she going to pay for it?”

  “It’s free,” said Max.

  “Nothing is free,” said Papa. “I may not have learned much in eighty years, but I know that for sure. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is free.” He started picking up scraps of wood on the ground. “Here’s a nail,” he said. He held it up, huffing. “Look at that sucker. Somebody would have stepped on that and gone to the hospital. I hope you all have had your tetanus shots. You have to keep up with those. If you get a rusty nail in your foot, and that thing gets infected …” He took a white, ironed handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow before replacing it. He looked at the nail again, checking it for rust, then put it in his front pocket. “Y’all jumped headlong into this project without asking anybody,” he said. “You have to plan something like this carefully. You can’t do it pell-mell, leaving nails all over the ground, putting gasoline in the garage …”

  Max started to cry. “Please don’t take our playhouse away, Papa. Please. I’ll pick up the nails on the ground. We don’t have to paint it purple. We can paint it gray, or any color—your favorite color.”

  “What are you crying for?” Papa took the handkerchief back out of his pocket and unfolded it so he could wipe Max’s eyes. “Here, now, stop that. I want you to have fun. I just want you to be safe. We don’t want anybody going to the hospital, do we?” When he had settled Max down, he looked back at the house, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth the way he does when he’s concentrating. “I can’t figure out what’s going on with those light bulbs,” he said. “That’s a mystery.”

  Back in the kitchen, Danny stood on a ladder with a screwdriver in his fist, squinting into a socket.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Danny said, climbing down the ladder. “This may sound funny, but I’ve seen it before.” He stuck the screwdriver in his back pocket. “Y’all got a spirit in here.”

  Papa laughed, but Danny didn’t join him.

  “I’m serious,” said Danny. “You can call it a ghost or a spirit or whatever you want. People say different things. From a scientific point of view, what you’ve got going on in this house is a pretty powerful electromagnetic field.”

  “Is that right,”32 said Papa. It wasn’t a question.

  “Somebody around here is a conductor,” said Danny. He looked at each of us with suspicion. “I knew a lady that had the same problem. All she had to do was walk into a room and the bulbs would pop. One after another.”

  “Isn’t that something,”33 said Papa.

  “Yes, sir. It got so bad with her that she’d head down the sidewalk and the streetlights would go out. One after another, as soon as she got under them.”

  “Imagine that,”34 said Papa.

  “Well, her family got to thinking she had an evil spirit in her—you know how they are over in Alabama. They had an exorcism. I don’t know how you feel about snake churches, but that’s where they carried her to have the evil spirit removed.” Danny shook his head at the wonder of it all. “The way I see it,” he continued, “if God went to the trouble to put a rattle on a poisonous snake, he’s done his part. If you don’t have the sense to leave it alone—”

  “There’s another one,” said Max, pointing at the ceiling. “Another light bulb went out.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” said Papa, and Danny shook his head.

  “My point being,” said Danny, “this lady ultimately had to make a sacrifice.”

  “Did she kill a sheep?” asked Max.

  “No, young man, she did not. She moved to Michigan. She paid a rent up there that you would not believe, and it was cold as the dickens. But she sold that house—that’s my point. What you’ve got in here, whether you want to call it a ghost or whatnot, is extra energy. It’s coming up around the current. It’s kind of like a vibration, but not one that most people can feel. I don’t see it going away anytime soon.”

  Papa wrote Danny a check, and he left. “Everybody has a story,” he said as he opened a fresh box of light bulbs. Papa himself had never looked deeply into the subject of ghosts. His expertise was managing human beings in the world of business, and he was familiar with the wiles of electricians. All the same, he looked pale and tired.

  “Why don’t you stretch out on the couch?” suggested Diane, bringing him a glass of water. Papa said no, he was dirty from working in the garage; he didn’t want to mess up the couch. Then he did the strangest thing—he lay down on his back in the middle of the living room and took a ten-minute nap.

  Shortly after Papa left, Penn came to the door. I swear, it was beginning to seem like we had a social life. Somebody in, somebody out—I have a deadline here, people! Novels don’t write themselves. However, Penn was holding a sack in his hand, and that was interesting. Diane waved him into the house as she traipsed by the window. She wore sweat pants and a T-shirt with ALASKA printed in faded letters across the front. Definitely not a breakup outfit. Just as you end a chapter with the reader wanting more, you should end a relationship looking provocative. But maybe she didn’t know this?

  “I found something at the Salvy you might like,” Penn said, handing me the sack.

  “My mad bomber hat!” I shrieked. “You found it!”

  “Look at that!” exclaimed Diane, popping back into the living room. “Is it the same one?”

  “This is my hat,” I confirmed as I pulled it onto my head. Rules be damned, I wrapped my arms around Penn.

  “Now I’ll have to take a bath,” he said, but he was smiling.

  Diane touched the hat on my head tenderly, as if it were alive. “I’m so sorry I tried to get rid of it. That was wrong. Penn, can I pay you for it?”

  “Catch me another time,” he said, looking at his feet.

  I sent Diane a telepathic message: This is the man you are discarding?

  He and Diane weren’t totally ignoring each other that afternoon—just enough to seem like a real married couple. Mostly, he talked to Charles, who had some experience with drywall. As they worked on the playhouse, they debated the existence of God. Max trailed behind them, picking up nails. Diane and I remained available for consultation on the back porch, where we were finishing up the pan of brownies.

  “So what exactly are the symptoms of writer’s block?” I asked her. I had three days left to finish my novel, and there were unresolved issues.

  Before she could answer, her cellphone rang. “Damn,” she said, glancing at the caller ID. Into the phone, she said, “Hi, Mom. I’ll have to call you back.”

  Suddenly, she stood up. Turning her back to me, she said, “What? When? He was just over here. Oh my God, no!”

  Please not Papa, I prayed. Don’t take my Papa too.

  But I knew it was him, even before Diane turned off the phone and faced us.

  “My father has had a stroke,” she said.

  31 Lord Byron, I’m not getting a big head here. But who knows?

  32 In southern gentleman code, that means, “You’re full of shit.”

  33 “You’re still full of shit.”

  34 See previous footno
te.

  I do not do hospital scenes. I appreciate the medical services so readily available to us in this country, especially to those who have medical insurance, but I hate hospitals. As soon as I find myself in the bowels of one, I look for the exit, which is usually hidden. When I encounter a hospital scene in a book, I skip right over it.

  The only thing I will share here about Papa’s stay in Room 311 is the picture he drew for the neurologist. The doctor asked him to draw a clock.

  “What kind of clock?” asked Papa.

  “Just a regular clockface,” said the doctor, handing him a pad and pen. “Round, with numbers and hands. Whatever you like.”

  While Papa was drawing his clock, the doctor smiled at us. “State-of-the-art diagnostic technology,” he said.

  Here is Papa’s clock.

  I took a picture of it with my phone and sent it to Kate, explaining about the stroke, which the doctor called a “ministroke.” Then I googled Salvador Dalí’s painting The Persistence of Memory. That was it—that was the Alzheimer’s clock! I sketched Dalí’s clock and sent it to Kate.

  Kate texted back.

  :0 He’s in the 4th dimension!

  At first, Papa was not fond of the fourth dimension. He kept asking for his checkbook, and he suspected Grandma of having an affair with one of the male nurses. He did well in physical therapy, however, referring to his young female therapist as “my trainer.” He refused to draw any more clocks for doctors.

  “I’m not an artist,” he told them, and they sent him home.

  The day before Charles went to jail, he came to see us. From the window, Max admired the BMW parked neatly in our driveway—he had decided to get one for himself when he was sixteen.

  Suddenly, he yelled, “Miss Octavia is here!” We watched as Charles walked around to the passenger side of the car to open the door for his mother and then carried her packages to our front door.

  “Well, my goodness!” said Diane, in her southern-hospitality voice. “This is a treat. You all come inside.”

  “Charles told me about your father’s stroke,” Miss Octavia said. “I’m so sorry. I fixed y’all a dinner—you probably can’t even think about cooking right now. We won’t stay long.”

  Did Miss Octavia know that Diane never thought about cooking? She must have, because when the bags were unloaded, we had a party on the table: fried chicken (huge platter—a henhouse massacre), a cold pink ham, creamy potato salad, coleslaw, corn on the cob, my favorite green bean casserole (with the French onion rings on top), and a three-story chocolate cake.

  “We will certainly need some help eating this,” said Diane. She called Grandma and Penn and told everyone to come over.

  “How is your father?” asked Miss Octavia.

  “He’s recovering quickly. He had a TIA stroke, which is mild, but it has left some neurological damage that the doctors don’t quite understand. The shock to his body may have triggered the onset of dementia.”

  “It’s a deus ex machina,” I said as I licked a finger that had accidently trailed along some chocolate frosting.

  “Say what?” said Charles.

  “Aris is writing a novel,” explained Diane.

  “I thought you were supposed to be finished with your novel today,” said Max.

  “I’m blocked, okay?”

  “Fine by me,” said Max. “I just thought this was the last day.”

  “It is day twenty-eight, actually. I have thirty days.”

  “It’s not a leap year,” he said.

  “Leap year has nothing to do with my deadline!” I hissed, and then I had to leave the room. Writer’s block is a serious matter. I put on my mad bomber hat. When I had it securely fastened, I felt calmer, but the block wouldn’t budge. After her last review, Ms. Chu said that enough terrible things had happened in my novel—I did a good job with that—but now the characters needed to reflect. She wanted to see a scene with Aris and Max reflecting. I told her that aside from the anomaly at the talent show, Max doesn’t stay still long enough to reflect. The rest of us are too busy with our new social life.

  When Penn arrived, wearing a tool belt, Charles grinned with relief. “I was hoping we could finish up that drywall today,” he said. “I hate to leave it for a week.”

  “I hope you men are going to sit down first and eat,” said Miss Octavia.

  “Penn doesn’t eat,” explained Max.

  Miss Octavia paused with her knife over the ham and cocked her head at Penn. “Is something wrong with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Penn. He bowed his head humbly and then sashayed out the door.

  Did I note an expression of longing on Diane’s face as she watched his exit? What would happen when the playhouse was finished? Would he stop coming over? Miss Octavia looked at the retreating figure of Penn, at Max, who had followed him out with a chicken leg under his shirt, and then at Diane. She knew a love story when she saw one. I was hoping we might discuss this—now that it was just the women in the kitchen—but Diane had geared herself up for an apology.

  “Octavia,” she said as she poured herself a glass of tea, “I know that I offended you at Charles’s trial.”

  Miss Octavia looked deeply into the coleslaw she was stirring.

  “In my excitement over Charles’s essays—they are so promising—I was insensitive to what their exposure might mean to his family, to you.”

  “My knees are talking to me,” said Miss Octavia. “I think I’m gonna sit down here a minute.” When she sat down at the table, the chair disappeared beneath her. She was wearing a white sweatshirt with Praise Joy Church on the front, and big red hoop earrings. “He showed me the essays last night,” she said. “I read them all. I read them more than once. I read your comments, Diane—and yours as well, young lady.”

  When she looked at me with those purple eyes, I shrank two sizes. How did she know! Before Diane could come up with an intelligent explanation for letting a child grade her college students’ essays, Miss Octavia resumed her speech.

  “I see more than you think I do. Those essays—well, now I know why Charles stopped eating corn.” With the back of her hand, she wiped a tear from her eye, and then another. “He’s a good man. He shouldn’t be going to jail—to jail!”

  Diane handed her a napkin. She was trying to think of the right thing to say, but there was no right thing. Outside, all three hammers were going on the playhouse: bangetybang, from Penn, bangbangbang from Charles, and bangthudyelp from Max.

  “I’m sorry,” said Diane. “It’s not fair.”

  Miss Octavia wiped her eyes carefully with the corners of the napkin and straightened her shoulders. When she spoke again, her voice rose above the sound of the hammers. “Who said life is fair?”

  This was a rhetorical question; Diane and I kept our mouths shut.

  “The Lord may be testing Charles now,” said Miss Octavia, “but he won’t give him more than he can handle. The Bible says, right there in the first Corinthians, God ‘will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.’ ”

  “Penn’s an atheist,” I said.

  “Is that right,” said Miss Octavia. She took a sip of tea, studying Penn through the glass doors as if he were a zoo animal. “You have to believe in something,” she said. “Even if it’s nothing.”

  “I hope his beliefs won’t be detrimental to Charles in any way,” said Diane. “Penn likes Charles. He admires him. He wants to be his friend. Penn is—” she said, and stopped. “Well, he would hate to hear this, but he is more like Christ than most Christians.”

  Miss Octavia laughed then, showing the gold tooth at the back of her mouth. “Oh, Charles, he loves him an atheist. I believe this may be the Lord’s work after all.”

  When I stepped out on the porch, Penn and Charles were having another go at converting each other.

  “Okay,” said Penn, leaning one arm against the railing. “You’re saying
God exists but can’t be seen, like a radio wave. Actually, physicists have been able to detect radio waves by bouncing light off a vibrating nano-membrane, but I’ll leave that point for a moment. Let’s say that we cannot detect God because God doesn’t want us to detect him. Why is he hiding?”

  “So he can be revealed.”

  “Standard lock-tight,” said Penn. “But the same could be said for leprechauns. So how is he revealed?”

  “For example,” said Charles, “through me. Through this discussion. You see, the soul is the vibrating nano-membrane in this case.”

  Penn smiled, took a cigarette from behind his ear, and lit it.

  When I went inside, Grandma was coming through the front door. “Yoo-hoo!” she called. “Anybody home?”

  “Where’s Dad?” asked Diane.

  “Oh, he’s probably still getting out of the car. He’s such a slowpoke.”

  “Mom!” cried Diane. “He has had a stroke! Don’t leave him in the car!”

  “Pshaw,” said Grandma. “He’s fine. They gave him a cane. He’s just dawdling. Go out there and see about him.”

  When Diane darted out the door, Grandma turned to Miss Octavia. “You must be the friend that brought all this food.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Miss Octavia. “I heard about your husband’s stroke, and I thought y’all might need some refreshment.”

  I was nervous that Grandma would say something like, Is that black boy out there in the yard your son? Is that the one that got arrested? That one in the paper? Miss Octavia would have to slap her. In the ensuing chaos, it would come out that Diane was unemployed. Then what would happen?

  As if she could guess what I was thinking, Grandma narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you wearing that hat in the house? Take that thing off. I can’t see your face.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s stuck on my head.”

  “Stubborn,” said Grandma. “You’re as stubborn as your mother and your grandfather.”

  “Let me get you something to eat,” said Miss Octavia.