The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  “Do you know who my mother is?” I asked. I had never told him your name.

  “You’re deflecting,” Vidal responded. “Avoiding identifying fundamental truths about who you really are. Don’t you want to acknowledge the past, unmask yourself, possibly return to writing which you say you are keen to do, even if that means following in your mother’s footsteps?”

  I had nothing to say to any of that—

  * * *

  Joan stops the recording again to catch her breath, refill her glass. She hadn’t known Daniel had taken himself to a psychologist. Apparently therapy failed to uncover how he lost the plot of his life, a state of confusion he never disclosed to her. She was wrong in thinking he told her everything. She thinks of when he was a little boy, how she was a mother cat and he the kitten; with Eric, she was a guard dog caring for a baby hawk; with the theft of her work, she turned into a lioness.

  She watches the Dhauladhars use their power to shuck off the hovering clouds, and the early faint stars are up there, lives and deaths charted in the sky. She inhales, sips, touches the button that brings Daniel back into her life.

  In my childhood, when I marched around my bedroom with a new story in my hand, a pencil stuck between my lips, imagining myself a famous writer, I was too young to understand that if I followed through, if I truly had talent, and luck, my stories might be read by others, beyond mother and father, and baby brother, if I promised him lollipops after. And then, suddenly, millions of people were reading Paradise of Artists and The Blissed-Out Retreat, to which I had appended my name, or rather J. D. Henry’s name. And yet who was I, and what had I actually achieved? A pseudonymous personage, a burglar of the glorious words put together by another—

  * * *

  Joan listens to the story of a reader’s spellbound weekend during which childhood hurts are revisited, the small hurts looming enormous when endured by a child, the way they slithered deep inside and fed off the warmth of tissue and blood and a child’s flawed desperation, the need that time never abates, to become that hero the child imagined he was, to make himself known and worthy of recognition. What’s missing, Joan thinks, is any awareness by Daniel that the seeds for such elevation were within him the whole time.

  She is saddened, horrified, flattered, unwillingly fascinated by how articulate he is in analyzing her work, describing the ways he was moved, the application of her stories to his own life. And the beautiful modulation of his voice holds her when he reads excerpts of her work in the way she intended her stories to be absorbed. There are so many revelations in his artistic confession—what she did wrong, what he did wrong—all underscored by the low tone of arrogance, the artfulness she realizes is not new, she heard it every time they spoke from the moment that must date from his theft of her work.

  My tremulous defense today might be that I confused who was the reader and who was the writer when I submerged myself in Ashby’s published words, tasted her unpublished words on my tongue, inhaled it all until I floated on a sea of infinite creation. In important ways, it’s true, but such a defense would not hold up in a court of law, and I won’t condescend by arguing I was in some mental state that diminished my capacity to know right from wrong, or caused me to be unaware of what I was doing, the actions I was taking. I am not minimizing what I did, but I feel it important to explain that my actions were based in hard truths, at least in my own truths, in my own reality.

  It might be easy to deem me a fraud, a consummate con man, a thief of the work I thought abandoned, and that I believed I was bringing into the light. I think such facile labeling underestimates critical points, points I determined when I stood at my wall of windows and thought how the harms from the past inform the present; how old wishes are nailed to a person’s endoskeleton, no matter that the bones have lengthened, solidified over the years; about the confluence of events in a life; the power of the written word.

  This suffering with which Daniel has so closely aligned himself, he will have to let it go, leap into the depth of the world, stop playing it safe, take risks that belong to him alone. He wanted the Devata she created in Words, the one she has found here in Dharamshala, but he must make his own, in a terrain that suits him. Paradise belongs only to the creator. Joan lifts herself out of the pine armchair, feeling older than she ever has, and pours herself a third glass of wine.

  I have been narrating my story all of this Columbus Day weekend. Three days so different than last year, no biblical storm and rains, just a blue sky and white clouds. It has been difficult hearing myself explain my actions, but at least I have done something. An attempt to rectify the wrong. Whether you have listened to my entire story, and will find a way to forgive, I have no way of knowing.

  I admit to some mild satisfaction as well. A narrative structure has evolved from my wrongdoing. By virtue of my reprehensible actions, the attempted assumption of an unearned life, the theft of words written by another, I have created a substantive piece of work all my own.

  The sun is slipping away on this third and final day of the holiday weekend. I’ve been watching its path, noting its weakening light, and it strikes me for the first time that recording my story is not at all the same thing as writing fiction from scratch. Again, I have reined myself in, failed to take that great leap into the life I once wanted, and who knows, despite all that has happened, maybe I still do.

  No doubt I have time until you send me some sign regarding my fate as your son. Perhaps I ought to use the coming days, weeks, or months judiciously, start at the beginning again, and write this—my story—for real.

  Then there is silence. The recording is finished.

  He’s right, Joan thinks—there is a manifest talent in the framing of his tale, the cohesions that bind it together. It might even be a story she would write, as fiction, call it Words of New Beginnings; that good title still belongs to her, waiting only to be unpacked.

  Did Daniel say he was sorry?

  Her head is filled up with hours of his words, but Joan is certain that particular one was missing.

  She looks up into the Indian sky, at the faraway stars dressed up in their prehistoric white, the past informing the present.

  She will write a fourth letter to the Dalai Lama, have Kartar deliver it to His Holiness’s secretary in the morning. There on her nightstand is the basket filled with Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise stationery, and she places a stack on her desk. She will use the full force of her own words, include the new depths of her story, the additional facts she has gleaned from her son’s tale. She must set everything out as accurately as she can, as honestly as she is able, by hand. He hasn’t responded to her three previous letters, but perhaps he will, to this one.

  Joan pauses. She realizes it is not to the Dalai Lama she needs to write, but to Daniel. She never tested Martin’s love, but she will test his. She opens her laptop and begins:

  Daniel—

  If my lessons to you during all your formative years failed to take, I can’t teach you anything at this late date, and I should not expect to hear you say the word “sorry,” but your recorded voice, the excuses you have made for yourself, will not do. You tried to eat me up, but you must find another way to assuage this hunger of yours, a different form of satiation. The books are mine, a wedge between us that must be removed, so that you can begin to find the life meant for you.

  The nature of your crime is more important than the punishment, but the punishment cannot be avoided. You must purify yourself, come clean, own up to what you have done, tell the truth—not to me, for I know the truth.

  It is primal, what you need to do, but it is the only way you can scale your limited horizon, see beyond it. This isn’t a story you need to write, it’s a story you need to finish. You still have the potential for a long, good, and fulfilling life, but you must have the strength to do what’s right, acknowledge your theft publicly, atone for the sins of J. D. Henry; only then will you be through to the other side. And I promise, if you make it there, I will be waiting.
Still your mother. Still a mother who loves her son.

  * * *

  She reads it over several times, satisfied with what she has written. She attaches the letter to an email, types in Daniel’s email address, writes in the subject line: “It Is Up To You,” and looks at the computer’s clock.

  It’s three in the morning in Dharamshala, only five thirty in the evening in DC. She will wait to send off her letter when it is the dead of night there, when Daniel will likely be sleeping. In three hours, there will be soft footfalls in the hallway outside her pine suite, Kartar placing her morning tray at the door. She’s drunk nearly the entire bottle of good French Chardonnay, and she could use some strong barley tea, a bowl of steaming lentils.

  Joan sits up straight in her chair at her pine desk.

  In Daniel’s recording, isn’t there a delivery boy named Kartar with an apparent ability to forecast the future, who intrigued, and then frightened, him? A boy who worked at a place called Lucky Star? Joan has a Kartar, and although he has never forecast her future, he knew she needed a special place in which to pine, and was the first to call her Ashby, and offered her a guidebook she still uses daily, and drew the map that took her to Eric’s cottage, and lent her an umbrella stamped Lucky Star, and extolled Willem Ackerman’s character, which sent her on the journey to the bird sanctuary, and has hand-delivered the three letters she has written to the Dalai Lama, and is it possible that she and Daniel have shared the same Kartar, that this young Indian man has figured in both of their lives in subtle but immeasurable ways?

  52

  Joan sleeps deep inside a dream. Martin and Daniel are at the edge of a vast snowfield, cross-country skis racked against their shoulders, and Daniel has shaved his brown curls clear off his skull, turning him monkish. Father and son are debating which path to take across the untouched infinite white, and she watches them set off. There is a cottage in the distance, mountains rising behind it, and Joan knows it belongs to her. Instantly, she is inside, and finds the white walls entirely covered in words. Someone she doesn’t recognize passes by and says, “Wonderful story,” and Joan reaches out a fingertip and finds she can smudge everything away, leave nothing behind.

  The prophetic dream stays with her even when she wakes. She’s been asleep only a few hours, but the world outside her window has altered completely, the forest blanketed in unexpected snow, the tree limbs and boughs already heavy under the sudden white weight that glistens and gleams. In the distance, the snowy mountains are lit up by the November sun rising over Dharamshala, thin and brittle and bright.

  She brings in her tray. A snowy white flower in a white vase, as if Kartar knew what weather would happen today. It is only two in the morning in London, and Camille will be sleeping, but Joan sends her an email Camille will understand. “I’m ready to tell you about what brought me to Dharamshala.” She looks at the stick Daniel sent her, filled with his memories, thinks of tossing it out into the snowy forest, imagines it sinking beneath the layers, lost forever, then leaves it next to her laptop, next to Paloma Rosen deep inside.

  While the pine-slatted tub fills with hot water, Joan drinks her barley tea and eats every last lentil, finds what she’s looking for in Kartar’s guidebook, and makes notes.

  It is odd to be in the bath hours earlier than usual, hours before her writing for the day is finished, but she soaks for a long while, and then dresses in the warm clothes and sturdy boots Martin sent her in the care package.

  From her pine closet, she pulls out the backpack she has not used since her trip with Willem to the Pong Wetland. The notes she made from Kartar’s guidebook, bottles of water, bags of dried apricots and sunflower seeds, two apples, a set of warm pajamas, extra socks, fresh T-shirt and underwear, toothbrush and toothpaste, face soap, moisturizer, lipstick, a roll of toilet paper, identification, a stack of rupees, Willem’s letter to her, and the photograph he took, her notebook and pen, all go in.

  It is eight now. There is no time difference between Dharamshala and Udaipur, and she hopes Vita Brodkey will be awake. A single ring, and Vita is saying, “Hello.”

  “Vita, it’s Joan. How are you?”

  “Darling, I am simply marvelous. Alive for another day. And like I promised, I am painting away like an old, happy nut. I decided that my idea of painting small watercolors was nonsense, I need huge canvases, ten feet tall, to capture all that I am. Who knows, perhaps I’ll paint only a few before my demise, but I have ten of them leaning against the walls in my second guest room. Enough of me, a call this early feels important. So darling, tell me everything.”

  It would take too long to tell Vita Brodkey everything, but Joan tells Vita her immediate plans, and Vita says, “How wonderful, darling. I knew you would get there, and really, I’m as proud as if you were my own. We need to talk about you coming to Udaipur for a while. Winter is the best time here, the desert heat is gone, just a lovely tropical climate. So different than real winter in Dharamshala. So think about it and call as soon as you’re back. Have a marvelous time, and remember, I will not tell you to be safe, safety is for fools, but remember everything, because that’s what I’ll want to hear.”

  Joan says, “I will and I will,” and then Vita is gone.

  She looks at the email to Daniel on her computer screen, her letter attached, hits Send, and there it goes, Daniel’s own future flying to him in Washington, DC, from India. He might still be up, it’s only going on eleven there, but it won’t matter if he reads it, she will be gone.

  Joan grabs her backpack, leaves her pine suite behind, finds Kartar already at the low teak reception desk, musky incense lit on the table in the sitting area. “Good morning, Ashby. You are up and out early.”

  When she sees his bright and open face, she thinks how Kartar is not an uncommon Indian name, just as Lucky Star is not an uncommon name for a diner—she Googled it this morning and found twenty diners and bistros named exactly that—so it is most likely a bizarre coincidence. Still, she considers asking if he lived in DC during his two years in America, and if so, whether Lucky Star is his family’s diner, and if it is, whether he worked there on weekends, and if he did, whether he delivered meals to a young man named Daniel Manning, and if he delivered such meals, whether he prophesied about the creativity he felt taking place in Daniel’s apartment. She nearly says something, but decides to retain the mystery, to keep close the mystical connections she wholeheartedly believes in these days.

  “Kartar, I think I know where I’m going, but I want to be sure. Can you draw me a map to Triund? And then the location of the Rest House, and then from the Rest House to Illaqa?”

  “Of course, Ashby,” and Kartar pulls out a large unlined pad and begins sketching.

  “It’s nine kilometers from the center of McLeod Ganj, but only eight from here. You’ll take one of the oldest routes used by the Gaddi shepherds of the Chambra and Kangra valleys.

  “Now here,” he says, writing KARTAR AND ASHBY at the bottom of the paper, “is Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise.”

  Then he draws a long line upward and says, “You’ll walk up this road, and it turns into a path, but keep going and going until you reach Triund,” and he makes an X to mark the spot, “from which you will see all of Kangra.

  “Now here,” and he draws a box past Triund, “this is the Shri Kunal Pathri Devi temple. Make sure you go there.

  “Then here,” and he draws a house with a chimney, “this is the Rest House.

  “And here,” he says, drawing another windy path that seems to go uphill gently, “this is Illaqa, where the monks spend the summers in meditation and prayer.”

  Then he draws a mountain with a mouth, and says, “This is Lahesh Cave, where you’ll go deep inside and see the snow-fed waterfall.”

  She takes his detailed map and folds it up, slides it into the pocket of her down coat. “Thank you for this, Kartar.”

  “How long will you be gone, Ashby?”

  “Two days, maybe three.”

  Kartar smiles and n
ods and does not look worried at all by her plans. Perhaps this journey is not as foolhardy as she already thinks it might be, and for that she is glad. She is eager to be above it all, up on Triund, to see the Kangra valley in the snow, the temple, Illaqa, the cave, the waterfall. She did the calculation back in her room: eight kilometers is just under five miles, just five miles uphill to Triund.

  “Shall I give Mr. Willem Ackerman any message should he come by again, or phone?” Kartar asks.

  “I’ll find him as soon as I’m back.”

  “Very good. Have a wonderful time, Ashby. Namaste.”

  “Namaste, Kartar,” and then Joan is out the hotel’s front doors, and down the steps, into an exalting cold, snow coating the ground, a floating snowfall falling from above, but no wind at all. The sun’s thready light plays hide-and-seek between the clouds.

  The climb will be steep, but she has taken so many hikes since her earliest days here that neither the angle nor the distance is of any concern. She is warmly dressed, sweater and jacket and hat and gloves and scarf, her pack a comfortable, easy weight against her spine, still strong and upright.

  She thinks of Vita Brodkey making a full circle of her life. She thinks of Camille always returning to this place for a revival of her life force and spirit. She thinks of Ela finding her purpose here, after the life she had expected to live was torn from her. She thinks of how Paloma Rosen would never back away from her destiny, would only march inexorably forward.

  Joan starts up the hill in a silence made pure by the delicate white flakes, large and light and lacy, and her own certainty. It takes an hour before the hotel is out of sight, lost somewhere far below, where pastures of flowers will hide beneath the snow until springtime. She inhales the second, minute, hour, day, month, the cold, the hill, the snowflakes on her face, her fate.

  * * *

  Two hours later, there is a looped bend in the road, a brief upward turn that will set her climbing toward the tree line. She can see that the easier grade of the hill will soon give way, turn precipitous. She is all alone, but she has no fear, only hope that she will see the snowbirds Willem Ackerman has mentioned, perhaps even the musk deer, but not the black bears; she hopes they have gone into hibernation. She imagines the rainbows in Illaqa’s snow-fed waterfall, wonders how fast its waters run. She’s walking and thinking of the way Paloma Rosen might walk, then she’s thinking of Paloma Rosen walking slowly from her Wooster Street loft to Chinatown on a hot summer morning, and when Joan sees a huge boulder up ahead, just off the main path, she heads for it, drops her pack, fishes out her notebook and pen. She won’t maintain her daily writing schedule on Paloma Rosen over the next few days, and she needs to get down exactly what she’s seeing in her mind, what she’s hearing. She settles down on the boulder, rips out pages from the back of the notebook black with words, turns to a fresh page, and begins to work.