Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 71–73
Almost exactly two years later, Samantha’s father collapsed in the parking lot of the central maintenance office at Colgate University and was dead before the ambulance arrived. The biggest change in Samantha’s life, following this event, was an abrupt decline in financial security and the fact that her mother started obsessing over some woman her father had been sleeping with, apparently for years. (Why she’d waited until her husband was dead to reveal all this made no sense, at least not to Samantha. It was too late to do anything about it now, wasn’t it?) On the other hand, Samantha got her late father’s car, a Subaru. That was a big help.
Her daughter, Maria, by then, was doing all of the normal things, like walking and talking, and one or two things Samantha considered not normal, like saying the names of letters everywhere she went and pretending not to hear Samantha when Samantha was speaking. She had been, from her first days of life, a malcontent, a blusterer, a pusher-away of other people (mainly Samantha, but also her two grandparents and the pediatrician). In due course she began kindergarten as a surly child in a corner with books, declining to parallel play (let alone cooperative play), interrupting the teacher with commentary when it was story time, refusing to eat anything but jelly and cream cheese on the heel of the supermarket loaf.
By then, all of Samantha’s former tenth-grade classmates had passed out of the crepe-paper-decorated gymnasium holding their rolled-up diplomas, and they’d scattered—a few to college, others to work, the rest to the wind. If she ran into one of them in the supermarket or at the Fourth of July parade along Route 20 she felt such a surge of fury that it rushed upward into her mouth and burned her tongue, and she had to grit her teeth together when she made polite conversation. A year after those classmates moved on, her original classmates—the ones she’d leapfrogged past as a sixth grader—also graduated, and all that anger seemed to go with them. What was left after that was a kind of low-grade disappointment, and as the years continued to pass she lost even the power to remember what it was she was disappointed about. Her own mother was home less and less; Dan Weybridge—in the goodness of his heart or perhaps some festering sense of paternal responsibility—had upped her hours at the Family-owned-for-three-generations! College Inn, and she’d also joined a group at her church that traveled to women’s health clinics to harass the patients and staff. Samantha spent most of her time in the sole company of her daughter, and the care of an infant, then a toddler, then a young child expanded to fill every corner and moment of her days. She tended Maria like an automaton: feeding, bathing, dressing and undressing, losing ground with every passing day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Another Day’s Lies
There were days when he could manage an hour or two of work on the new novel, but many more when he could not. Generally, after Anna left the apartment in the morning, Jake remained on the new kilim-covered couch Anna had chosen to replace its ratty predecessor, bouncing back and forth between his phone (Twitter, Instagram) and his laptop (Google, Facebook), checking and rechecking for new posts and tracking the malevolent ricochets of those posts he’d already seen, trapped and tortured and utterly incapable of finding his way out.
When the Macmillan group reconvened a couple of weeks later, this time via conference call, there was a certain amount of chagrin at TalentedTom’s response to the cease and desist, and a general dearth of other ideas to try. On the other hand, Roland the publicist reported that the book websites and bloggers seemed to have let the story pass, mainly because there wasn’t much for them to write without any details at all, and also, frankly, because the anonymous poster did sound like just the kind of person who comes out of the woodwork when someone writes a massively bestselling book. (Jake’s circumstances were also helped by a gloriously well-timed war between two novel-writing exes in Williamsburg, whose books—her first, his third—had been published within weeks of each other, and together formed a mutually punitive indictment of their failed marriage, albeit with different villains.)
“Of course I wish we’d had a better outcome,” said the attorney, “but there’s always the possibility that this was his last hurrah. He knows he’s being watched now. He didn’t have to be all that careful before. Maybe he’ll decide it’s just not worth it.”
“I’m sure that’s the case,” said Wendy. To Jake’s ears she seemed to be straining for optimism. “And anyway, there’s about to be a brand-new book by Jacob Finch Bonner. What’s this dickwad going to do then? Accuse Jake of stealing every book he writes? The best thing for all of this nonsense is to get the new novel into production as soon as possible.”
Everyone agreed with that, and no one more so than Jake, who hadn’t been able to write a word since what he had privately thought of as the regret-to-inform message had materialized online. But after he got off the phone he pulled himself together. These people were in his corner. Even if they’d known Crib’s comprehensive origin story, they’d probably still be in his corner! After all, people who worked with writers were fully aware of the myriad and frequently bizarre ways in which a work of fiction can take root in an author’s imagination: fragments of overheard conversations, repurposed bits of mythology, Craigslist confessions, rumors at the high school reunion. Maybe the punters out there believed novels followed a visit from the muse—perhaps these same people thought babies followed a visit from the stork—but so what? Writers, editors, people who thought about it for more than a nanosecond understood how books truly begin, and at the end of the day, those were the only people he really cared about. Basta! It was time to turn down the noise and get to the end of his own draft.
And this, somewhat to his own astonishment, he actually managed to do.
Less than a month later he hit Send on a good first draft of his new novel.
A week after that, with requests for only minor revisions, Wendy formally accepted it.
The new book concerned a prosecutor who had once, at a vulnerable moment early in his career, accepted a bribe to sabotage one of his own cases, a seemingly insignificant matter involving a traffic stop and an open glass of rosé being enjoyed in the back seat. That small decision, however, returns to assail the character in his later success and complacency, and brings unanticipated harm to himself and his family. The novel lacked the thunderbolt of Crib’s plot twist, but it did have a number of course corrections that had kept Wendy and her team at Macmillan guessing, and while Jake knew this work could not bring a repeat of the phenomenon Crib had been (it was telling that no one from Wendy on down suggested it would), the book still looked like a viable follow-up. Wendy was happy with it. Matilda was happy with Wendy’s happiness. Both of them were happy with Jake.
Jake was not happy with himself, obviously, but this had been true of his life, always, not just during the long years of professional failure but during the past two years of dizzying success, in which he had merely traded one form of dread and self-castigation for another. Each morning he woke to Anna’s warm and tactile presence, and then, almost instantly, to that other presence: spectral and unwelcome, reminding him that today there might be a new message, entirely capable of destroying everything in his world. Then, all through the hours that followed, he waited for the terrible thing to happen, the one that would force him to explain himself to Anna, to Matilda, to Wendy, to sit in the James Frey–designated spot on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, to “hold for Steven Spielberg, please,” to rescind his Writers’ Advisory Board position at PEN, to hang his head while he walked down the street, desperate not to be recognized. Each night he sank into the exhaustion of subterfuge: another day’s lies coiling around him, pulling him into sleeplessness.
“I wonder,” Anna said to him, one night in May, “if you’re, you know, all right.”
“What? Of course I am.”
It was a worrying note to be striking on that particular evening, the designated observation of the six-month anniversary of Anna’s arrival in New York. They were back
at the Brazilian restaurant he’d taken her to that first night, and had just been brought their caipirinhas.
“Well, you’re preoccupied, obviously. I have this feeling, when I get home at night, that you’re making an effort.”
“Making an effort isn’t a bad thing, necessarily,” Jake said. He was going for a light tone.
“I mean, to be happy to see me.”
He felt a small surge of alarm.
“Oh. But that’s wrong. I’m always happy to see you. Just, you know, in the weeds a bit. Wendy asked for some revisions, I think I told you.” This was not untrue, of course, but the revisions were minor, and wouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks.
“Maybe I can help.”
He looked at her. She seemed serious.
“I walk a lonely road,” he said, still trying to make a joke of this. “I mean, not just me. All of us writers.”
“If all of you writers are walking the same lonely road it can’t be all that lonely.”
Now it was impossible not to hear the rebuke. Anna had never been that person, banging on the door, demanding access to his thoughts and worries. From the moment they’d met, in fact, she had quietly offered so many of the things he’d already known were missing—companionship, affection, a better class of furniture and a much improved diet—without ever once asking him that fatal and soul-crushing question: “What are you thinking?” Now, however, even Anna seemed to be reaching the limits of her goodwill.
Or perhaps, at long last, she had entered his name into a search engine during some idle moment at work or gone out for a post-yoga coffee with some acquaintance who’d said: Hey, don’t you live with Jacob Finch Bonner? What a drag, what they’re doing to him.
So far, it still hadn’t happened, but—when it finally happened—because it had to happen at some point—would she accept some version of Matilda’s reassurances (Yep, that’s me: accused plagiarist! Guess I’ve really made it now.) or some pained excuse about sparing her the trauma of it?
He was thinking: no, she would not. And then she would truly see who he was, not just a person who’d been accused of an awful thing, but a person who had hidden the accusation from her. For the entire length of their relationship. And that would be that: off she would go, this loving and beautiful woman, back to the farthest end of the continent from where he was, and she would stay there.
So he’d continued to not tell her, and to justify not telling her:
How could she possibly understand? It wasn’t as if she was a writer.
“You’re right,” Jake told her now. “I should try not to be so much of an artiste. Just, right now, I’m feeling a little bit—”
“Yes. You said. In the weeds.”
“It means—”
“I know what it means.”
The waiter arrived, bringing Jake’s fraldinha and Anna’s mussels. When he departed, she said, “My point is, whatever’s making you feel so in the weeds, would you consider sharing it with me?”
Jake frowned. The answer, of course, was: No fucking way. But there were several excellent reasons not to say this.
He lifted his glass. He was hoping to get back onto a more anniversarial track. “I’d like to thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, a little suspiciously.
“You know. For dropping everything and moving to New York. For being so brave.”
“Well,” she said, “I had a pretty good feeling, from the start.”
“Checking me out at Seattle Arts and Lectures,” he teased. “Deviously arranging for me to come to your radio station.”
“Do you wish I hadn’t?”
“No! I just can’t get over the idea that I warranted so much effort.”
“Well,” Anna smiled, “you did. What’s more, you do. Even if you’re walking a lonely road.”
“I know I can be a bit of a downer sometimes.”
“This is not about you being a downer. It’s about you being down. I can take care of my own moods. But I’ve been a little worried about yours.”
For a very uncomfortable moment, he wondered if he was about to cry. As usual, she saved him.
“Honey, it’s not my intention to pry. It’s clear to me that something’s wrong. All I’m saying is, can I help? Or if I can’t help, can I at least share?”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” said Jake, and he picked up his fork and knife, as if this proved his point. “It’s so sweet of you to be concerned. But really, my life is great.”
Anna shook her head. She wasn’t even pretending to want to eat. “Your life should be great. You’re healthy. You have a nice family. You’re secure, financially. And look, you’re successful at the only thing you ever wanted to do! Think of the writers who haven’t accomplished what you’ve accomplished.”
He did. He thought about them all the time, and not in a good way.
“What’s the point of all of this, if you’re not happy?” she asked.
“But I am,” he insisted.
She shook her head. He had a sudden, terrible thought that she was saying something important here. Something along the lines of: I came all this way for someone I thought was a vital, creative, appreciative person, only to find this morose creature undercutting his own happiness at every turn. So I’m going back where I came from. His heart was pounding. What if she really was going back? Here they were together, and he was a fool, failing to appreciate what he so obviously had: success, health, Anna.
“I mean, I’m sorry if it seems I don’t appreciate … all of the wonderful things.”
“And people.”
“Yes.” He nodded fervently. “Because I’d hate to …”
“What?” she said, eyeing him.
“I’d hate to … not articulate how grateful I am …”
She shook her silvery head. “Grateful,” she said with disdain.
“My life,” Jake said, stumbling into the apparently foreign thicket of the English language. “It’s … so much better with you in it.”
“Oh? Well, I don’t doubt that, from a practical standpoint. But I have to admit, I’d been hoping for something more. I mean,” said Anna, who wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I feel like I knew my own feelings right away. I’ll admit, leaving Seattle was probably a crazy thing to do, but we’ve lived together for six months now. Maybe not everyone knows how they feel as quickly as I did, but I think it’s really been enough time now. And I mean, if you still don’t know what you want to happen here, maybe that’s its own answer. This is what I’m in the weeds about, if you want to know the truth.”
He stared at her, and a sick feeling surged through him. Eight months since their meeting, six of them spent living together as a couple, exploring the city, adopting a cat, meeting his family and his friends and broadening their shared circle … what was the matter with him? Was he so distracted by some malevolent piece of shit on the internet that he was about to miss the truly life-altering and entirely real person on the other side of the table? This dinner was not, as he’d simply assumed, a rote acknowledgment of their six-month anniversary, it was the end of some private trial period for Anna. And Jake was blowing it. Or already had blown it. Or surely would blow it if he didn’t … what?
He asked her to marry him.
It took mere seconds for her to begin grinning, mere seconds more for him to grin back, a minute at most before the idea of it, of getting married to Anna Williams of Idaho, Seattle, Whidbey Island, Seattle again, and now New York, had lost all of its unfamiliarity and become an exciting, cheerful, and above all settled thing. And then they were holding hands beside their still steaming plates.
“Wow,” said Anna.
“Wow,” Jake agreed. “I don’t have a ring.”
“Well, that’s okay. I mean, can we get a ring?”
“Absolutely.”
An hour later, having dispatched several additional caipirinhas and never once returning to their previous topic of conversation, they left the restaurant an inebriated and very
much engaged couple.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Only Place Left to Go
Anna wasn’t interested in anything elaborate, and neither of them saw any point in waiting. They went to the diamond district and she chose something called an “estate” ring (which meant “secondhand” with a nicer name, though it did look very pretty on her finger), and less than a week after that they were at city hall, waiting on the hard benches with all of the other couples. After a bespectacled official named Rayna pronounced them married, they walked a few blocks to Chinatown for what would serve as their wedding party. (On Jake’s side: his parents and a couple of cousins, and two or three of his Wesleyan and MFA friends. On Anna’s: a colleague from the podcast studio and a couple of the women she’d met at yoga.) They occupied two round tables in the back of a Mott Street restaurant, each with a lazy Susan of dishes in the middle. Jake and Anna brought champagne.
The following week, Matilda took them out to the new Union Square Cafe to celebrate, and Jake arrived a few minutes late to find his agent and his new wife with their heads together, gossiping over pink-salt-rimmed margaritas as if they’d known each other for years. “Oh my god,” he heard one of them say as he sat beside Anna in the booth. He wasn’t even sure which one had spoken.
“What?”
“Jake!” said his agent with unprecedented reprove, “you didn’t tell me your wife worked for Randy Johnson.”
“Uh … no,” he confirmed. “Why?”
“Randy Johnson! Soundtrack of my adolescence. You know I grew up in Bellevue!”
Did he know that? He didn’t, actually.
“I met him once,” Matilda went on. “I went on his show with a friend of mine, because we were organizing a fun run for some worthy cause. Actually the worthy cause was probably getting-the-two-of-us-into-Ivy-League-schools, but never mind about that. My dad drove us to the station. I don’t think it was the one he’s at now.”
The Plot Page 15