The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  He willingly, eagerly, does all that Paloma asks of him, will continue to do all that she asks, and he is studying hard, reading the books she has given him, and visiting the museums and galleries she puts on his to-do list, taking notes about what he reads and his impressions of the exhibits he visits, wanting to understand art, to understand Paloma Rosen, who she is and what she sculpts, to be able to speak her special language.

  They get along very well, he thinks, as long as he leaves her alone, does not bother her when she disappears down into the studio for her thirteen-hour days, unless she calls to him, and then he comes running.

  Paloma Rosen chose him, Theo Tesh Park, and everything changed. He has wondered, these months, if she knows he chose her, too, as the recipient of his goodness, of the love nearly dried up in his heart.

  Joan exhales. The daily writing of Paloma Rosen is mending her own heart, allowing love to run through it again, at least for the work, for Paloma and Theo, for Eric, too, for Vita, Camille, and Ela, and the others she has come to know here, her talks with Lakshmi at Namgyal Café, and the stern face of her father, Hadi, the café’s chef-owner, who lights up when Joan requests that he surprise her with whatever he would like to cook, wants her to eat. Joan’s heart is mending just as Paloma Rosen will mend Theo’s heart. Theo Tesh Park will love her, and Paloma Rosen will love him back, against her will, until she gives in, tosses away the precepts by which she has lived her life.

  Paloma doesn’t yet know that Theo has chosen her to mother him, and then Joan is thinking about Camille, who did not want children, but provides art therapy to children so difficult it must be hard to find the love, and yet she does; and about Ela, who wanted children but could not bear the fruit, and now her children are those who sit around her on the red silk pillows, guided in meditative practice, learning the lessons she gently imparts; and about Vita, who lost a child before his twenty-first birthday. And how Vita and Camille and Ela, all childless, continue to mother Joan in their distinct ways, even when she bristled with Vita, refused, at first, Camille’s overture. And aside from her own explicit motherhood, Joan is about to become another kind of mother this Saturday afternoon, nurturing ten Dharamshalans who want to crack open their shells, emerge with wings that might flutter, allow them to fly on the words they arrange.

  All the ways in which women become mothers of some sort. Is motherhood inescapably entwined in female life, a story every woman ends up telling, whether or not she sought or desired that bond; her nourishment, her caretaking, her love, needed by someone standing before her, hands held out, heart demanding succor, commanding her not to look away, but to dig deep, give of herself unstintingly, offer up everything she can?

  49

  After her post-work bath, Joan stands naked at the open windows in her pine suite, the solemn chill of impending weather on her hot, damp skin. The chirs are still green in the forest, but the oak leaves are already burnished, a carpet of gold and red on the forest floor. She’d packed light for three weeks in India, but at the last minute she tossed in a pair of boots, a pair of jeans, and a black cashmere sweater, her workhorse attire since the weather has dramatically cooled. In her sixth month, she is no longer prevaricating about the fact that she is living in Dharamshala. And because that is true, and because winter will arrive soon, she will need to buy suitable clothing. She’s been through all the shops in the marketplaces and bazaars, bought several Indian tunics she wore when it was warm, but nothing for a cold and snowy Dharamshalan winter. Her linen pants and shirts are too light now, and her golden sandals with their luminous crystals have been put away, in the pine closet since late October.

  She dresses in her warm clothes—her new uniform—gathers up the ten stories and her own notebook and races out of the hotel and down the hill. She will miss the final outdoor meditation with Ela in the courtyard today. Starting tomorrow, meditation will be held in the banquet room of a teahouse on the edge of sacred Dal Lake. Then Joan is through the marketplace, at the end of Kotwali, at Darpan’s bookstore.

  A sign on the door, in silver italics, reads: Closed for Writers’ Class Until 5 pm. The chime tinkles when she walks in. Darpan has prepared. A long table is in the open space between the counter and the first row of bookshelves. Twelve folding chairs, a pad of paper and pen at each place, in the middle, a pitcher of water, glasses, plates of cookies that have the misshapen look of homemade.

  “Miss Ashby, welcome, welcome.”

  “Everything looks perfect, Darpan. So nice of you to think of water and cookies.”

  “I am very excited and when I’m excited I eat, eat, eat,” Darpan says. Joan thinks that can’t be true. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with DHARMA OR BUST in gold across his concave chest, and she could count his ribs beneath the thin material if she tried.

  “So, this is your place, at the head of the table,” and Joan feels like Ela, at the top of the clock. She has sidestepped the conversation with Darpan, about whether the class will meet just this once, or once a week for a month, or more. She does not intend to leave Dharamshala, but there is such freedom in being again a writer at work, a woman at liberty, and she had said to him, “Let’s gauge everyone’s actual interest, see if they’re willing to do the hard work, before making specific plans,” and he had agreed.

  And then the chime over the door is ringing madly, neophyte writers swarming in, calling out “Namaste, Ashby. Namaste, Darpan,” handing wrinkled rupees to Darpan, thanking him for the pads and the pens, scuffling over which seat they want, the cookies on the plate disappearing rapidly, and Joan is surprised to find that the teenager with the anemone braids who serves her the roaring lion lattes at the Namgyal Café, who asks her all about America, is among them. One of the stories she selected was written by a Lakshmi, but it’s not an uncommon name.

  “Hello to you all,” Darpan says. “Welcome to the best writing class in the world. And now our illustrious teacher will take over.”

  Joan smiles at each of them, the way Ela does, then says, “Let’s start with everyone giving their name and briefly explaining your reason for wanting to take this class. Lakshmi, you can lead us off.”

  “I’m Lakshmi, and I want to take this class to become as smart as Ashby.” Not what Joan had in mind, but it’s a start, and when she realizes Lakshmi wrote about Rati, the girl whose father has selected a husband for her, she wonders if it’s true, if Hadi is already arranging a marriage for his daughter, with a short boy who has the body of a baboon, the eyes of an owl, if this accounts for all of Lakshmi’s questions about life in America. That she is preparing for her own escape.

  “I am Hoshi,” the old man next to Lakshmi says. He is taller than most Dharamshalans, with a full head of white hair, deeply etched wrinkles over his entire face, like a glass well cracked, but the pieces still, somehow, intact. “I have always been a writer in private, and before I die I want others to read my stories.” He had written about Navin picking up his younger brother to take him out into the fresh air.

  Next to Hoshi is a heavyset, middle-aged woman, in a bright-yellow sari, with a thick and pilling sweater over her shoulders, the vermilion stripe down the part in her hair.

  “Edhitha,” she says. “I am a wife and a mother and I am tired of being told I make up too many stories and so I thought I might as well do it for real. Prove to them I am not a liar, but a storyteller.” Her story was about Feni, whose name means sweet, but she isn’t.

  Next to Edhitha is the youngest member of the class. “I am Qadir. I am twelve. I am happiest when I am writing, considering the nature of the universe.” He wrote about Qasam wanting to storm out of the valley and get to somewhere good, the only writer who had used a swear word in his work. He reminds Joan of Daniel, the intelligent young eyes that stare without blinking, the early need to ponder the big questions in life. Joan wonders if his parents are aware of his intelligence, his command of expletives.

  “My name is Onir,” says the next young man. He is handsome, with long sideburns, a
nd a neat, well-trimmed beard. “I am only twenty-three, but I like to tell stories as if I am an old man and have already lived my entire life.” His story was about old Prasad with a story to tell his family that would alter the way they saw the world.

  “I’m Taj. I was raised a strict Buddhist, but have broken away.” Joan thought he was the same age as Onir, homely where Onir was handsome, balding where Onir had an abundance of hair. Taj had written about Iti and Ibha, who were sick of praying to Buddha.

  “I’m Jalaf. It is a great honor to meet you Ashby, to be sharing a table with you. I am quite overcome,” and there are tears in her wide brown eyes, and Joan says, “I’m so pleased you’re here. Would you like to say anything else?” but Jalaf can’t talk, just waves her hand at Joan, then at the woman next to her. Jalaf’s story was about the girl who sees herself in the mirror and realizes she is all grown up. Joan thinks Jalaf is in her early thirties, but she has no bindi between her eyebrows, no vermilion stripe down her part, no rings on her fingers, or in her lobes. Is she unmarried, alone, lonely? The story had struck Joan that way, that the narrator was lonely and sad, and in real life, it seems Jalaf might be indistinguishable from her narrator.

  Next to Jalaf is a woman nearer in age to old Hoshi than to anyone else. Early seventies perhaps, and immaculately put together. Rouge and lipstick and brown eye shadow, the heavy coats of mascara turning her eyelashes into thick spider legs, her hair pulled up high, dressed as if she lives in New York or in Paris, structured jacket, skirt, high heels. Unusual attire for the valley. She plays with the gold earrings she wears, a nervous tic maybe, Joan thinks.

  “I am Medh. Bombay-born. Brought here as a young bride. I have maintained journals my entire life, my stories a blend of fact and fiction.” Her story, about a woman who thinks her mother’s constant chants contain the father she never knew, had been evocative and touching.

  “Zafar. Forty. I was a monk in my early years. Fell in love and left the temple. Now I love my wife, drink beer, watch action movies, read rip-roaring stories. Guns and mayhem, that kind of thing.” He is strapping and bald. His brown leather jacket zipped all the way up to his chin. From peaceable monk to mayhem seems like a long climb, or fall, Joan isn’t sure which. He had written about the girl hiding in the fort and knowing she was going to die. If Zafar aims to write action stories, he will need to learn the parts of a gun, like actions, stocks, and barrels, how bullets slide into chambers.

  It is a teenage boy’s turn, the same age, Joan thinks, as Lakshmi. There is a stillness in his face, his eyes look sleepy, but take everything in. “I am Tanvi. I am in my final year of high school. Last year my mother died and now it’s just me and my sister and my father. I think this class will help me feel better.” Tanvi had written about boyhood friends who played games together and relied on each other’s mothers for maternal love.

  Joan always took the opposite approach with her work, even in her earliest stories, never writing about her own life. But nearly all these stories, with the exception, she hopes, of Zafar, intrigued by guns and death, the work seems to mirror the writers’ realities and Joan wonders how best to help them dive in, delve more deeply, how much of her instruction will require therapeutic intervention versus the indefinable aspects of writing.

  Darpan speaks last. “I will work hard on my stories,” is all he says.

  As she leads them in a discussion about how the class will work, what it means to workshop a story, the revisions they will be required to do, their potential goals for themselves, she realizes this will not be a onetime class.

  For the next two hours and forty-five minutes, Joan watches Lakshmi, Hoshi, Edhitha, Qadir, Oni, Taj, Jalaf, Medh, Zafar, Tanvi, and Darpan start to break out of their shells, find common ground with one another, always looking to her, for guidance, for illustration, for explication, as their serious faces grow lighter, smiles opening wide, white teeth flashing the private desires they carry within, that she will see them through to the other side, where their hopes might match their dreams. She isn’t sure most of their dreams revolve around writing, but it doesn’t really matter. She is heeding the call of these people standing—well, sitting—before her, with their hands held out, their hearts demanding succor, commanding her not to look away, but to dig deep, give of herself unstintingly, offer up everything she can.

  When the clock shows it’s already five, Darpan says, “Thank you for a most wonderful first class, Ashby. Everyone knows what they must do this week. You must work hard on your stories and be brave, like Ashby says. On Monday, I will have behind the counter copies of everyone’s stories, so make sure you come and get your packets. Anyone who doesn’t will be tossed out of the best writing class ever.” And just like that, Joan is running a writing class, with a taskmaster she need not beckon or call.

  There are hugs and bows and handshakes, and then the writers scatter away. Darpan bows to Joan and says, “Maybe we should consider more than one class a week? Start a second class?”

  “I can only handle one, Darpan. I’m busy with other work.”

  Darpan’s eyes light up. “One never asks a writer about her work, and so I will not, except to say, if it is true what I am thinking, then I am most delighted in every way.”

  Joan smiles. “Don’t let your thoughts run away. Or let them run away, but to your own story, which I’m interested in reading, since you didn’t turn one in.”

  “I will make you proud, Ashby. Don’t you worry about that.”

  * * *

  Then Joan is out the bookstore door, sighted for home, and that’s what she hears in her head: home. It has such a different connotation now. Home no longer means the soaring house, the gardens and vegetable plots, the red maples, the elms, the Cleveland pear trees, the weeping willow, the shed she and Fancy built themselves that she imagined turning into her writing office. It no longer means the long lap pool in the glen, or the knoll, or the four acres of land. Home is no longer Rhome, and Joan might as well directly acknowledge such truths to Martin, who may not be part of home anymore either.

  Home is now her pine suite, with its red coverlet bed, and her laptop on her pine desk, and the forest outside of her windows, the marigold curtains creating a frame.

  Home is Ela’s meditation class each afternoon, it is Darpan and the bookstore, Kartar at the front desk, her friendship with Willem, if he ever returns. It is Eric, and will be Amari. It is her calls to Vita in Udaipur every two weeks, talking to Joan from the house Vita has bought on Lake Pichola, and her weekly Sunday calls with Camille, after Camille meditates and wants to catch up.

  Home is Paloma Rosen, the book that is tangibly and seductively flowering. It is Theo Tesh Park finding a true home with Paloma.

  Joan is nearly up the hill, nearly at the hotel, when she imagines Paloma Rosen published. She stops in her tracks and realizes readers of her famous collections will believe Paloma Rosen is her first novel, that the critics and reviewers will waste time conjecturing what has taken Ashby so long to publish again. Iger sent her an email last week telling her that Paradise of Artists and The Blissed-Out Retreat are still on various bestseller lists, asking again if it might be time to correct the wrong, to clarify that she is the writer, not the ignoble J. D. Henry. It still feels like an impossible decision to make, and she has been so happy lately, she does not want the fury that accompanies such thoughts, having to chant “Om Dum Durgayei Namaha” over and over again: Om and Salutations to that feminine energy which protects from all manner of negative influences.

  Perhaps she’ll agree to acknowledge her authorship of the books if they’re nominated for some kind of prize, then Joan is up the hotel’s wooden stairs, and Kartar is at his post, at the low teak counter, calling out “Ashby, happy late afternoon. A letter for you from the illustrious Willem Ackerman, hand-delivered just an hour ago by himself, and also a large package,” which he lifts onto the counter. “From USA. Rhome, Virginia, it says.”

  He hands her Willem’s letter, and says, “I will
carry the box to your suite,” and they walk down the long hall, and she opens her door, and Kartar places the box on her bed.

  “May I do something else for you this fine afternoon?”

  Kartar has never once failed to make good on his promises, and looking at the box on her bed, at the letter in her hand, Joan knows what she needs.

  “Any chance of another nice bottle of white wine?”

  “I will endeavor to do my best. If I can find more than one, Ashby?”

  “More than one, yes. More than two, yes. Up to five, if that makes the job easier.” She wonders if she should simply ask if he can find her a case. She reaches for her bag, for her wallet, says, “How much shall I give you?”

  “Later Ashby, later. Let me see first if I can perform what I am promising.”

  It’s not easy getting wine here, but Kartar has proven himself a steady supplier. Along with his earlier deployments on her behalf, he gifted her a heavy-duty corkscrew wrapped up in Indian red cloth. Now that Willem Ackerman is back, Joan could ask for a bottle or two of the rich red wine from his cache, but she ought to read first what he has to say.

  “I’ll endeavor to return promptly,” Kartar says, and shuts the pine door behind him.

  Martin has sent this package from home, which used to be her home—is still hers, she emends—though it doesn’t feel true anymore. Dharamshala has become her home, and whatever exists beyond Dharamshala is a story someone else wrote long ago. She looks at the package on the bed, and then at the letter in her hand, and knows which one interests her most.