The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  50

  The envelope contains a single piece of paper, thin as tissue, folded into thirds, and something heavier and square, a photograph. Of Joan. Joan captured secretly by Willem Ackerman’s eye and lens, under a dome of blue sky, on the roof of the lodge at the Pong Wetland, looking into the distance, her notebook open to a clean page on the table, her pen in midair. She remembers that moment, when she knew she needed to resolve her own life, find a new iteration of herself. Up on that roof that late afternoon, she hadn’t yet shed her old self, the amorphous body that had carried her along, she had not yet fully hurled herself into the feast of the future, was not yet ready to saunter or gallop, was still just crawling. But she looks beautiful sitting there, balanced on the knifepoint of resolution, and she is pleased Willem took this picture of her. Other pictures have been taken, of the places she’s seen, of Eric’s cottage, of Eric and Amari, of Eric and her, of Ela and Camille, and the three of them sitting on the red silk pillows, their heads tipped together, at Darpan’s bookstore surrounded by people, but not a picture of her alone, in India. Willem Ackerman has caught the steel of her core, the tenderness with which she was binding herself together in those days. She unfolds his letter.

  I am back from my professional travels and the months away allowed me to find my bravery and acknowledge that I fell in love with you the moment I read your words a long time ago, and saw your pictures on the back of those book covers. Perhaps my wife was right to be jealous, the way I returned to your stories again and again. I took this picture of you at the sanctuary, one of dozens I took without you being aware. When I printed this picture, these were my thoughts: Joan Ashby is ready to find herself again, and she is ready to experience a true and rare love. Even here in this land outside of time, the complications of life follow us, and I promise that I will not be such a complication, but know that I have missed you and my offer of that true and rare love will stand for all time.

  She feels again like that giddy girl she never was, the way she felt with Willem in his orange jeep, the way she felt with him during every second of those three days, imagining something more between them, then saying no to his offer. And what she thinks next surprises her: she never tested Martin’s love, never learned how he would have reacted if she had said all those years ago, “We agreed on no children,” and held him to his vow. They were equally complicit, in turning conditional the pure love they once had.

  A quiet rapping on the door of her pine suite—Kartar with three bottles of good French Chardonnay, two wineglasses, and a bucket of ice, all set out on one of the breakfast trays. An unexpected fresh flower for the end of day, a stalk with tremulous scarlet petals in a marigold vase—the colors of India—and French wine in Dharamshala. Two wineglasses because Kartar harbors hopes that Willem Ackerman will sweep Joan off her feet, that true love will be found at Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, and if Kartar knew what was written in Willem’s letter, his romantic nature would zoom into overdrive.

  Joan has learned that Kartar’s time in the United States altered him in only one way—he became an Americanized romantic. At twenty, he holds all those notions near. When he told Joan about the movies he watched when he lived there, he said, “Oh, Ashby, how much I loved those rom-coms. I learned so much about the broken hearts of people when they make mistakes in matters of love, how one must travel that long road to reach the heart that fits your own.” He was surprised when she gently explained that rom-com stood for romantic comedy, and he was not meant to take such movies seriously.

  When he has placed the bottles, glasses, and ice bucket on the dresser, Joan asks how much she owes, and he shakes his head.

  “Kartar, if you do not take what is owed to you, I won’t be able to ask you for anything else.”

  “All right Ashby, I will do it your way. My father would say one must accept what one is rightfully owed.”

  “Your father is right,” Joan says, and presses on him rupees for the wine and a large tip, as she always does, which he slips into his pocket. She kisses his cheek, sees him blush, and then he is out in the hall, and she barely hears the lock click closed. Two bottles into the bathroom fridge, the cork of the third pulled out. Joan fills a glass with the warm wine, scoops ice from the bucket, plunks in a few cubes.

  She reads Willem’s letter a second, third, and fourth time, then puts it aside, her heart beating a wondrous and strange little tune.

  * * *

  Kartar’s corkscrew slices through the thick tape wound around the box from Martin. She pulls back the flaps, lifts out each item, places it down on the quilt.

  Here is a thick letter from her husband sealed up in an envelope.

  Here are three supersized bags of red licorice vines, which make her smile.

  Here is a newly purchased tube of her lipstick, still in its box, the make and color exactly what she has used for years, a shimmery sort of blush shade. She is nearly out of the one she brought, and she feels a warm rush inside, that Martin would know what she puts on her lips, would think she may be running out.

  Next a layer of clothing. She never thought to ask Martin to send her a few things, but he has: her white hat, gloves, scarf, and down jacket, three sweaters, including her favorite one the color of a blued icicle, a pair of her heavy-duty boots, wool trousers and jeans, a plastic bag with bras and underwear, two pairs of her warm pajamas, and her comfortable old sweatpants she wore on cold nights when they nestled together in bed watching a movie. This box seems to say he understands she doesn’t yet have any answers to his questions, that he is giving her all the time she needs.

  At the bottom are several novels with Iger’s publishing imprint stamped on the spines, along with a handwritten note from Iger to Martin.

  Martin,

  I never realized how good a man you are. With Joan stomping through Nirvana, my thinking about you has altered completely. Sorry for doubting you all of these years. I wanted her to write, not bake bread and babies and backseat her own work. Apologies for the unkind thoughts I had about you in the past. I hope you won’t mind sending on these books. She might be in need of reading material, beyond what the Buddhists suggest.

  Xoxo,

  Iger

  Martin would not have liked learning Iger blamed him, for Joan’s lack of output, for taking her to Rhome, for making her the mother of two sons, and Joan knows that he deliberately included Iger’s note to remind her of his good qualities, that he thinks she may have forgotten. She thinks about calling him to apologize for Iger’s words, but Iger’s not entirely wrong, and Martin would interpret such a call as an invitation to come here, or a tacit acknowledgment that she is ready to return home, and neither is accurate. Paloma Rosen would not call Jean-Pierre Beson, would never doubt her decision, imagine it in any way a mistake. Joan hasn’t yet made a mistake, and she doesn’t want Martin to bank on something she is not sure she can or wants to deliver.

  The last thing in the box, tucked into a corner, is another box, small and compact, filled with bubble wrap that machine-gun pops when she tries to uncover what’s hidden inside. It is like something belonging to a spy, a secret decoder, or a minuscule bomb that will blow her up if she makes jarring moves or moves too fast. She knows it’s for the computer, she thinks it’s called a memory stick.

  She opens Martin’s letter:

  Dear Joan,

  I miss you. I hope these months have allowed you to solve what you needed to solve, but please, it’s time for you to come home, to return to our life. I never agreed—

  It goes on for eight pages, but she only needs Martin’s opening salvo—the confused mix of caring followed by demand—to know that the rest of his words will be at odds with the box he has sent her, the warm clothes contained within. This is how it’s been, she realizes, conditional love all the way through, despite giving him what he wanted right from the start. It’s Martin’s love that has been conditional, it’s why he did not notice, or care, when she stopped writing, or when she began writing again, wrote Words of
New Beginnings over nine long years, the reason why she wrote Words, with its story about an arcadia, her Devata, or why he left her to do the dirty work, policing Eric all on her own. His life has taken no detours, has not been delayed at all, moved forward as he wanted, every step exactly as he arranged. There is no need to read every word of his letter this moment; she will, later, from start to finish, and figure out exactly the stand she will take, but right now she wants only to know why she has been sent this memory stick that came wrapped in its own box. She moves her index finger down through all the pages looking for an explanation, but Martin does not mention it at all.

  She strips out of her jeans and pulls on the old sweatpants. She lifts the blue sweater to her face, inhales her perfume long twined into the weave, scented with their past. And suddenly she is pining, as she did in this room at the start of her life here. But pining for what she and Martin had, at the very beginning, and the good and sweet times they have shared these marital years, and it catches her hard.

  She trades her workhouse black cashmere sweater for the blue and her stare shifts from Willem’s photograph of her, to his letter, to the mysterious black device. She carefully inserts it into the slot on the side of the computer and an icon pops up on the screen. She clicks it twice, and when it opens, there is an audio file simply labeled: For Joan Ashby.

  Months ago, she tossed into her suitcase the miniature speaker Martin gave her, along with the laptop. She’s never had any reason to use it and it’s sitting in the top drawer of her pine bureau. She retrieves it and finds the small hole on the laptop, plugs it in.

  In the instant before she presses the button, she thinks how her world is this moment fantastic, that she will lament no longer, that life is too short for anything else, that she has all she needs, all that she requires—the orchestration of her days and her nights, her writing, her meditation, her explorations, her new friendships, her new class of writers, her blessings, whatever sins she may choose. So many of her people in her stories sinned, though never before has Joan considered their actions this way. But weren’t they all sinning—big and little sins, some thunderous, some small as a white squeaking mouse. And she, Joan Ashby, in her own life, she has not sinned nearly enough. Except in her thoughts, the anger and impatience she felt toward husband and children, in her selfish desire to get back to her own life, subject only to her own needs. But outright sin, no, there’s been none of that; she rejected Willem’s offer on the roof of the lodge when no one would ever have known had she spent that night, and all the following nights, and days, with him in bed. But that’s not the kind of sin she means, and she wonders when and how she decided it was sinful to heed her own destiny.

  Then she presses Play.

  51

  It is Columbus Day weekend, a weekend of symmetry for me. I am looking out my wall of windows, sitting in my favorite armchair that you found for me when I bought this apartment. The chair is covered in some kind of soft fabric that makes me think of a blue lake, and I wish I were on the banks of that lake right now. Instead, I have a digital recorder in my hand, as weightless as my steps in the wrong direction, heeding my every word, the various inflections in my voice.

  I have debated what to call this recounting. I considered “Testament,” but my brain reconfigures that into Last Will and Testament, which makes me think of death, and although I deserve severe punishment, I hope even you might think death extreme. I considered “Explanation,” but that implies there is one, and no configuration of reasons or rationales exists to justify my actions. I have decided to call it “Recordings,” since I am doing just that—recording to confess, to elucidate, and, I guess, to soothe in some way. No matter what, I will have told my story. Such a roundabout way to arrive at a story worth telling: I never expected deceit and deception would figure in its creation.

  When you left for India, a departure without warning, or at least without any warning to me, I thought only that you had taken Eric up on his offer to visit him there. I know now that you left because of me and what I had done. I remain thankful that your maternal instincts kept you from revealing my treachery to the wider world, that knowledge of my actions has been limited to Annabelle Iger and the lawyers. I did everything asked of me to put the debacle legally right, to allow you to recapture your stolen work: I signed declarations and quit-claim documents and wire-transferred the ill-gotten funds out of my account and into yours.

  If it helps, know that I have suffered mightily for my transgression: my original life has vanished and my very brief pseudonymous existence has gone up in smoke. I brought these consequences on myself and I expect no sympathy. I also do not expect your forgiveness to come easily, or perhaps at all. I can put myself in your place now, and it is impossible for me to imagine forgiving someone who absconded with my life’s work, my own heart, but I hope you will try.

  I thought reading Other Small Spaces and Fictional Family Life would sink me, instead they set me free. Of course, I used that freedom in the wrong way, but I honestly thought J. D. Henry was my way out, my way forward, my future, and that he could do what I never could do, never could be. It has been surreal to be him, even if for such a short time, to have tasted what you experienced early in your life.

  I’ve considered how best to start, and I think it is like this:

  I, Daniel Manning, am the commoner in a family renowned for its brilliance: mother, father, much younger brother, all masters of their particular universes.

  Daniel’s voice rocketing around her pine suite in Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, the Play button she stabs again to silence him. There is a bitter taste in her mouth and the mauled bubble wrap on the bed looks ominous, the kind of thing, in great quantities, one might use to wrap up a lifeless body.

  Joan drags the pine armchair to the window, curls up inside of it, and looks out at a small corner of her unbelievable world. Weighty clouds hide the distant mountain peaks. Overhead, the sky is unblemished, the deep green forest sparkling beneath a spirited moon. She drinks down the wine.

  Hearing his voice is a shock and she does not want to hear it again, to listen to more of his words. Her finger hesitates over the button, but then she presses it firmly, his voice emerging so sure, so steady.

  Looking back, you should have been my natural first reader—we talked about the big books I was reading—but in the beginning I did not seek you out. Maybe it was deliberate, an unconscious choice not to hand my work over to another writer, though I did not know—or thought I did not know—that you were a writer until I was in seventh grade. It was to Dad I went, at least in the beginning.

  When I came back home from Silicon Valley, my tail between my legs, never once did you say, “I told you so,” and I thank you for that. I never told you that after I moved to DC and was trying to figure out what to do next, I looked for someone who could decipher the map of my life, give me the directions that would deliver me out of the wilderness. I found Dr. Vidal.

  “What brings you here?” he asked me. I had recently finished reading Myra Breckinridge, and so I asked, “Are you related to Gore Vidal?” Dr. Vidal opened his notebook and uncapped his pen. “If there was a family relation, how do you think that would affect our work together?” “I don’t know,” I said. “No way, I guess. But it would be an interesting fact.” He made note of that.

  A few minutes into our second session everything heated inside of me tumbled from my mouth into the cold air of his office. Vidal pressed on. “We ought to further explore your boyhood memories, your resistance to analyzing such key events in your life.” I said, “I’m not being resistant. Haven’t we been talking about those memories for the last fifty minutes?” “I think it would be more accurate to say that we have been talking about not talking about those memories for the last fifty minutes,” and then Vidal rose from his chair to signal the end of our time. I walked home that day, an hour on foot, and when I reached my street, I knew Vidal was right.

  He hit me hard in our third session. “Let’s discus
s how you think your mother contributed to the wrong turn you took in your life.” I chewed up time. Crossed to his window, stared at the old linden trees planted straight as a picket fence down the wide avenue. Filled cups of water and drank them down. Finally reoccupied the beige corduroy chair designated for the messed-up and the lost. Across the floor, Vidal sat in his own chair, a kingly black leather, and waited. I stared at him, felt my resistance locking me down. He raised a trim black eyebrow. I sighed. “So when I was a kid and started to write stories, I didn’t know my mother was a writer. And once I learned she was, I lost what was my mine, lost all of my drive.”

  Vidal lifted that eyebrow again. I could see he recognized the wrong turn I had taken as a boy, and that he was not going to hand over the coordinates so I could alter my direction, attain my proper course. I would have to find those coordinates on my own.

  “Would you say you felt envy? Jealousy? Competition?” I shook my head at those freighted words. “She’s my mother,” I said. “Of course not. Look at how she turned my stories into books. Encouraged me to keep writing.” Vidal cocked his head. “All true. But you’re a smart guy, Daniel, so let’s see if we can’t skip to the meat. You read serious books early on, so you knew writers existed, and you didn’t feel threatened by them. Is that accurate?”

  “Accurate,” I said.

  “Since you believed you were the writer in the family, do you think it’s possible you have unresolved emotions toward your mother?”

  “No,” I said, but I knew that No was not clean.

  Vidal twisted his mouth. “Do you think you found it difficult that your mother already held that honor? Holds that honor still, and the admiration that comes along with that kind of talent, it would be hard for anyone to process. Certainly a child with similar aspirations would have a tough time. Do you think that’s possible?”