No. His worst mistake had been to take Evan Parker’s plot in the first place.
Did it even matter anymore that Crib was his—every word of it? That the book’s success was inextricably entwined with his own skill in presenting the story Evan Parker had told him that night in Richard Peng Hall? It had been an exceptional story, of course it had, but could Parker himself really have done justice to it? Yes, he’d had some moderate talent at making sentences, that much Jake had recognized back at Ripley. But creating narrative tension? Understanding what made a story track and grab and hold? Forging characters a reader felt inclined to care about and invest their time in? Jake hadn’t seen enough of Evan’s work to judge whether his former student was capable of doing that, but Parker had been the one telling the story that night, and that came with certain rights of possession; Jake had been the one it was told to, and that came with certain moral responsibilities.
At least while the teller was … alive.
Was Jake really supposed to throw a plot like that into some other writer’s grave? Any novelist would understand what he’d done. Any novelist would have done exactly the same!
And thus reacquainted with his righteousness on the matter, he started his car again and headed south to the city.
There was a spinach soup Anna liked to cook, so intensely green it made you feel healthier just looking at it, and she had that waiting for him when he arrived home, along with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread from Citarella. She was sitting in the living room with the disassembled Sunday Times, and he noticed, as he accepted her stiff hug, that she had the book section unfurled on the coffee table, open to the bestsellers page. He knew from Macmillan’s weekly dispatch that he was currently at number four on the paperback fiction list, something that would have thrilled and astonished him at any moment in his life except for the past month, when it represented an actual descent. But such were not his most pressing concerns this evening.
“You want to wash up? Are you hungry?”
He hadn’t eaten since that donut, many hours earlier in West Rutland.
“I’m definitely ready for that soup. Even more, though, for some wine.”
“Go put your stuff down. I’ll pour you a glass.”
In the bedroom he found the envelope she’d received, left for him on the bed. It was identical to his own with that single name, Talented Tom, as a return address and their own address—with her name, this time—front and center. He picked it up and slipped the page out, numb with horror as he read its single sentence:
Ask your plagiarist husband to tell you about Evan Parker, the real author of Crib.
He had to fight the urge to crumple it up on the spot.
Jake went to put his dirty clothes in the hamper and return his toothbrush to its usual place. He tried, by some fearful instinct, to avoid seeing himself in the mirror, but inevitably he caught his own gaze, and there it plainly was: the impact of these last months, deeply and unmistakably etched into dark circles around his eyes. Pale skin. Lank hair. And above all an expression of intractable dread. But there was no quick fix for it now, and no way out but through. He went back to the living room, and his wife.
Anna had brought from Seattle a set of well-used knives, a “Dutch oven,” an old wooden cutting board she’d had since college, and even a mason jar half full of something that looked like desiccated tapioca pudding, which turned out to be sourdough starter. With these she had been producing a continuum of actual food for months: balanced meals, confections, casseroles and soups and even condiments that now filled the freezer and the refrigerator shelves. She had also dispatched Jake’s existing dishes (and silverware, and glasses) to the Goodwill on Fourteenth Street, replacing them with new sets from Pottery Barn. She was setting down sturdy ceramic bowls of the green soup as he took his seat.
“Thank you,” he said. “This is beautiful.”
“Soup for the raveled sleeve of care.”
“I believe that’s sleep,” he said. “And soup for the soul.”
“Well, this is for both. I figured we were going to be needing a lot of it, so I made a double batch and froze it.”
“I love your pioneer instincts.” He smiled, taking his first sip.
“Island instincts. Not that we didn’t have supermarkets on Whidbey. But people always seemed to want to prepare for being cut off.”
She tore the end off the bread and handed it to him. Then she watched him begin.
“So, how does this work? Do I have to ask you questions or are you just going to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
In that instant, and despite the long day without food, he lost his appetite.
“I’m going to tell you,” he said.
And he tried.
“I had a student named Evan Parker. Back when I taught at Ripley. And he had this great idea for a novel. A plot that was … well, striking. Memorable. Involving a mother and her daughter.”
“Oh no,” Anna said quietly. It landed on him like a blow, but he made himself go on.
“It surprised me, because he had no real feeling for fiction that I could see. Not much of a reader, which is always an indicator. And the few pages of his work I saw, well, he could write, but it wasn’t anyone’s idea of a great book in progress. Maybe his own, but no one else’s. Certainly not mine. But still—he did have this great story.”
Jake stopped. It already wasn’t going well.
“So … did you take it, Jake? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He felt sick, suddenly. He put down his spoon. “Of course not. I didn’t do anything, except maybe feel a little sorry for myself. A little pissed at the universe that this guy had come up with such a great idea straight out of the gate. He was a nightmare as a student. Treated everyone else in the workshop as if they were wasting his time, and not a shred of respect for me as a teacher, of course. Sometimes I wonder, would I have done it if he hadn’t been such a jerk.”
“Well, I wouldn’t lead with any of that if you’re ever asked,” said Anna with heavy sarcasm.
He nodded. Of course, she was right.
“I think we might have spoken once, outside of class. In a conference. That’s when he took me through this plot. But never anything personal. I didn’t even know basic stuff like that he was from Vermont or what he did for a living.”
“He was from … Vermont,” Anna said slowly.
“Yeah.”
“Where you coincidentally just were. Giving a reading and working on your revisions.” She set down her glass.
Jake sighed. “Yes. I mean no, it wasn’t a coincidence. And I wasn’t working on my revisions. Or giving a reading, for that matter. I was meeting one of his friends from the Ripley program, in Rutland. His hometown.”
“You went to Rutland?” She seemed horrified.
“Well, yes. I’ve been kind of hiding away from this. I finally felt I needed to deal with it directly. See if there was anything I could figure out, by being there. Maybe by talking to some people.”
“What people?”
“Well, the Ripley friend, for one. And I went to Parker’s place.”
“His house?” she said with alarm.
“No,” Jake said. “Well, yes, that too. But I meant the bar he owned. Tavern,” he corrected himself.
After a moment she said: “Fine. What happened after you were his teacher and talked to him one time outside of your workshop.”
He nodded. “Well, basically, I forgot all about him, or almost forgot. Every year or so I’d think, Hey, that book still hasn’t come out. And maybe he found out it was a lot harder to write a book than he’d thought it was going to be.”
“So finally you decided, He’s never going to write it, so I’m going to write it. And now Evan Parker’s threatening to expose you for stealing his idea.”
Jake shook his head. “No. That’s not what happened. And whoever’s threatening me, it’s not him. Evan Parker is dead.”
Anna stared at him. “He’s dead.�
��
“Yeah. And actually a long time ago. Like, within a couple of months of that Ripley workshop. He never did write his book. Or at least, he never finished it.”
For a moment she said nothing. Then: “How did he die?”
“Overdose. Awful, but absolutely nothing to do with his story, or me. And when I heard about it … I really wrestled with this, of course. But I couldn’t just let it go. The plot. You see?”
Anna took a sip of her wine. Slowly, she nodded. “Okay. Keep going.”
“I will, but I need you to understand something. In my world, the migration of a story is something we recognize, and we respect. Works of art can overlap, or they can sort of chime with one another. Right now, with some of the anxieties we have around appropriation, it’s become downright combustible, but I’ve always thought there was a kind of beauty to it, the way narratives get told and retold. It’s how stories survive through the ages. You can follow an idea from one author’s work to another, and to me that’s something I find powerful and exciting.”
“Well, that sounds very artistic and magical and all that,” Anna said, with a definite edge to her voice, “but you’ll forgive me if what you writers think of as some kind of spiritual exchange looks like plagiarism to the rest of us.”
“How can it be plagiarism?” Jake said. “I never saw more than a couple of pages of what Parker was writing, and I absolutely avoided every detail I could remember. This isn’t plagiarism, not remotely.”
“All right,” she conceded. “So maybe plagiarism isn’t the right word. Maybe theft of story gets closer.”
That hurt terribly.
“Like how Jane Smiley stole A Thousand Acres from Shakespeare or Charles Frazier stole Cold Mountain from Homer?”
“Shakespeare and Homer were dead.”
“So was this guy. And unlike Shakespeare and Homer, Evan Parker never actually wrote something another person could steal from.”
“As far as you’re aware.”
Jake looked down into his rapidly cooling soup. Only a few spoonfuls had made their way into his mouth, and that seemed like a long time ago. She’d managed to put her finger on his worst fear.
“As far as I’m aware.”
“Okay,” Anna said. “So Evan Parker isn’t the person who wrote to me. Who did it, then? Do you know?”
“I thought I knew. I thought it had to be someone who’d been with us at Ripley. I mean, if he told me about his book, why wouldn’t he have told somebody else in the program? That’s what the students were there for, to share their work.”
“And be taught how to become better writers.”
Jake shrugged. “Sure. If that’s even possible.”
“Says the former teacher of creative writing.”
He looked at her. She was clearly still angry at him. Which he deserved.
“I thought I could make it go away. I thought I could spare you this.”
“Why? Because it was going to be too much for me, this pathetic internet troll? If some loser out there decides to go after you because you’ve actually accomplished something in your life, that’s his issue, not yours. Please do not hide this kind of thing from me. I’m on your side.”
“You’re right,” he said, but his voice really was cracking now. “I’m sorry.”
Anna got to her feet. She took her own nearly full bowl of soup to the kitchen sink. Jake watched her back as she rinsed it and put it into the dishwasher. She brought the wine bottle back to the table and poured more for each of them.
“Honey,” Anna said, “I hope you know, I don’t care in the least about this creep. Like, zero compassion for somebody who does what he’s done, no matter how justified he thinks he is. I care about you. And from what I can see you’ve really been harmed by this. You must be devastated.”
Well, that’s absolutely true, he wanted to say, but all he could manage was: “Yeah.”
They sat together in silence for a few moments. He wondered if it made her feel better or worse to know how right she’d been, all these weeks, about how badly he was feeling. But Anna wasn’t a vindictive person. Just now, she might be frustrated at the extent of his secrecy and his withholding, but already empathy was getting the upper hand. What he needed to do, though, was tell her everything.
He took a sip of his wine and tried again.
“So, like I said, I thought it was someone from Ripley, but I was wrong.”
“Okay,” Anna said warily. “So who?”
“Let me ask you something. Why do you think Crib got the response it did? I’m not looking for praise, I’m saying … lots of novels are published every year. Plenty of them are tightly plotted, full of surprises, well written. Why did this one blow up?”
“Well,” she said with a shrug, “the story …”
“Yes. The story. And why was this story so shocking?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “Because how could that ever happen in real life, to a real mother and daughter? It’s crazy! Fiction invites us into outrageous scenarios. That’s one of the things we ask it to do. Right? So we don’t have to think of them as real?”
Anna shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Okay. So what if this was real? What if there’s a real mother and daughter out there, and what happens in Crib actually happened to them?”
He watched the color drain from her face. “But that’s horrible,” she said.
“Agreed. But think about it. If it’s real—real mother, real daughter—the last thing that woman wants is to read about what happened, let alone in a novel that’s being published all over the world. They’d obviously want to know who this author is, right?”
She nodded.
“And it’s right there on the back flap that I was associated with an MFA program at Ripley College. Where I would have crossed paths with the late Evan Parker. Where I could have heard his story.”
“Well, but even if that’s true, why be angry at you and not at Parker, for telling you in the first place? Why not be angry at whoever told Evan Parker the story to begin with?”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t think anyone told Parker. I think Parker was close to it. So close he saw it happen, firsthand. And when he realized what he’d seen, maybe he decided it was too good a story to waste. Because he was a writer, and writers understand how ridiculously rare a story like that is.” Jake shook his head. He was feeling, for the very first time, some actual respect for Evan Parker, his fellow writer. And his fellow victim.
“I don’t think this was ever about plagiarism,” Jake said. “Or theft of story, or whatever else you decide to call it. It’s never been a literary issue at all.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, okay, even if I did take something that wasn’t technically mine, Evan Parker took it first, and the person he took it from was furious about it. But then he died. So: end of story.”
“Obviously not,” Anna observed.
“Right. Because then, a couple of years later, along comes Crib, and unlike Parker’s attempt it’s actually a finished book, and somebody’s actually published it. Now the story’s out there in black and white, in all its glory, and two million total strangers have read it—in hardcover, paperback, mass market, audio, large-print editions! Now it’s translated into thirty languages and Oprah’s putting a sticker on the cover and it’s coming soon to a theater near you, and every time this person gets on the subway somebody’s got a copy open, right in their face.” He paused. “You know, I actually understand how they must feel.”
“This is really scaring me.”
I’ve been scared for months, he didn’t say.
Then she sat up. “Wait,” Anna said. “You know who he is, don’t you? I can see that you do. Who is he?”
Jake was shaking his head. “She,” he said.
“Wait,” she said. “What?” She had a lock of her gray hair coiled between her fingers, and she was twisting it.
“She. It’s a woman.”
“How ca
n you know that?” she said.
He hesitated before answering her. It seemed insane, now that he was about to actually say it out loud.
“At Evan’s tavern last night, the woman sitting next to me knew Parker. She loathed him. Said he was a complete asshole.”
“Okay. But it sounds like you already knew that.”
“Yes. And then she reminded me about something else. Parker had a younger sister. Dianna. I knew about her, but I never gave her any thought, because she’s also dead. She died even before her brother.”
Anna seemed relieved. She even attempted a smile. “But then it isn’t her. Obviously.”
“Nothing about this is obvious. Dianna had a daughter. Crib is about what happened to her. Do you understand?”
She stared at him for the longest time, and at last, she nodded. And then, for what it was worth, there were two of them who knew.
CRIB
BY JACOB FINCH BONNER
Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 212–13
For weeks, they didn’t speak, and even after a lifetime of not speaking something about this felt different: harder, colder, relentlessly toxic. When they passed in the corridor or on the stairs or in the kitchen their eyes slid past each other, and Samantha felt, at certain moments, the actual physical vibration of what was accumulating inside her. She had no intention, still, just a growing idea of something approaching that would not be averted, even with effort, so what point could there be in trying to avert it? It was so much easier to just give up, and after that she felt nothing at all.
On the night Maria left home forever, she knocked on the door of her mother’s office and asked if she could borrow the Subaru.
“What for?”
“I’m moving out,” said Maria. “I’m leaving for college.”
Samantha tried not to react.
“What about senior year?”
Her daughter, maddeningly, shrugged. “Senior year is bullshit. I applied early. I’m going to Ohio State. I got a scholarship for out-of-state students.”
The Plot Page 21