When I’ve finished, we both lie still in the silence. I can hear my pulse in my ears. My sister turns to me.
“You had no right to do that,” she says.
“I know. I guess I figured it wouldn’t do any harm.”
“You figured it wouldn’t do any harm? That’s why you did it?”
My eyes have adjusted, and I can see now that the room is filled with pale moonlight. “I loved him, too, you know,” I say.
“You loved him from a distance,” my sister says. “Your favorite way to love.”
“Excuse me?”
“In my world, we don’t show people we love them by pouring oil on them when they die. We show people we love them by spending time with them when they’re alive.”
I don’t have an answer to that, so I stand up.
“Why don’t you leave,” my sister says.
“I’m leaving.”
“No, I mean—why don’t you go home.”
The next morning, when I wake up, I find a napkin on top of the folder of pictures.
I’m sorry, my sister has written. Please stay. I pick it up and carry it with me into the kitchen, where she’s sitting at the computer.
“You’re sorry,” I say. “What are you sorry for? I’m sorry!”
“Thank you for being here,” she says. “I appreciate it.” I put my hand on her shoulder, and this time, she lets it remain.
She stands up. “Where’d you get those pictures?”
“I stole them from Mom.”
“Would you mind if I scanned them into the computer?”
“Not at all,” I say. She gets the folder and begins to scan them, one by one, while I sit with her. There’s a framed wedding photograph on her desk of her with her arms around her husband under a canopy of leaves; they are nose to nose. She unscrews the back and removes the photo. Then she places it facedown and leaves her palm against it while the light rolls by. Everything around us reeks of life: the blooming tulip trees, the fresh coffee brewing, the sun-dappled pool. I hear voices, and a moment later, the kids are spilling into the room. Coco opens the refrigerator. Pepper clambers into my lap. Saltine Teacup’s eyes are even bluer when she first wakes up. She takes one of the photos from her mother’s stack.
“What’s this?” she says.
“That’s the house we lived in when you were first born,” my sister says.
“It is?” she says. She doesn’t remember anything from that time; she was too young. My sister’s husband, aware of how sick he was, had said at the end: “But if I die now, the girls won’t remember me.”
“That’s the house where they wanted to make your daddy cut his hedge, but then he went around and took pictures of the hedges of all the city council members, and they stopped,” I say.
My sister smiles. I haven’t seen her smile in so long.
“We will always tell you stories about your father,” I say to the girls. “You won’t ever forget him.” When they’re old enough, I will tell them how when he died, their mother had said: “You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” and had climbed into the hospital bed and lain down beside him. One day I will tell them how I watched her weep at the memorial while gigantic pictures flashed on a screen above our heads, and the whole auditorium swelled with the music of their wedding song: “I Just Want to Dance with You.” Someday I will tell them about the hiking trip where he spontaneously stripped off all his clothes and jumped into the Merced River. One day I’ll tell them how I once saw him change a diaper with one hand, after he’d broken his wrist, and I thought: Now I’ve seen everything. Someday I will let them read this story.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
I love it when authors share the backstories to stories and snippets about their creative process. So I thought I would part the veil and share my own.
THAT OF WHICH WE CANNOT SPEAK
In my twenties, for about a year and a half, I smoked. I was never very good at it, but the real catalyst for quitting was an extremely educational two-week bout of laryngitis. Somewhere in my files there’s a photograph of me from a party I attended during this humbling, voiceless fortnight. It’s taken from behind, and at first looks like a throwaway shot. Only on closer inspection can you see the piece of package string tied at the back of my neck.
Although I’m more physically allied with Samantha, it was Bradley’s emotional struggle that resonated with me. Giving voice to the inner life and speaking the truth even when I know it won’t be well-received are ongoing battles. There’s an art to being both honest and gentle, and a sadness to always erring on the side of caution, as Bradley does. I’m personally so fascinated by people who are not restrained by a fear of disapproval that I once stared in awe at a man who was clipping his fingernails in the lobby of the midtown office building where I worked. Although it’s true that when I related this story to a friend, she said: “Well, let’s not confuse lack of self-consciousness with schizophrenia.”
While working on this story, I was haunted by a quote by Thomas de Quincey: “If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable.” I kept wondering if the pressure was pure misery, or if there might not be some pleasure in it.
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH
Lee K. Abbott once told me that a good story should cost the writer more than just time and ink. There were a couple of moments while I was working on “Through” that I had to stop typing, put my head down, and let myself cry. I straightened up after one such break, remembered Lee’s advice, and thought: Well, maybe this one will be good.
In typical fashion, I accumulated piles of research about camping—including purchasing and reading the book referred to (they really were out of Camping for Dummies)—only to write a story in which the characters never actually camp. Which I can’t hold against them.
I don’t mind being outdoors occasionally; I just don’t feel the need to sleep there. I had numerous alternate silly names for Fetterman’s band—naming being one of the best reasons to form a band—including 60 PhDs, Command Z, and Undisclosed Location.
Martin Lee Anderson is the name of a real teen bootcamp casualty. Once I’d been moved by his experience, I didn’t want to change his name, so I gave him a cameo. It was only after I’d written this story that I saw the parallel between the way it ends and the Bible’s Abraham and Isaac.
GOOD IN A CRISIS
Some years ago I ran a personal ad that began: “Blond, blue-eyed Harvard grad, 29, seeks kind and brilliant man who is intellectually uninhibited, socially independent, and spiritually intrigued.” It was an unmitigated disaster. Most of the respondents who didn’t sound as if they kept their mother’s body in a bag in the basement said such things as: “I’m not at all what you’re looking for, but I liked your ad.” Although it didn’t lead to romance, I guess you could say the hours spent reading the ads of others helped spawn this story. And the experience of writing an ad was invaluable, if for no other reason than the challenge of trying to reconcile, in words, a love of solitude with the desire for companionship. I came across a single poet in LA who did it fairly well: “Particularly interested in those who do not squirm in quietude.”
My public high school in Winchester, Massachusetts, was (and still is) such an arcadia of gifted teachers that I often wish I’d had the sense to capitalize on my good fortune at the time. Just one more example of too soon old, too late smart. The year I wrote this story was the same year I finally got around to writing a thank-you note to one of my favorite teachers—Fran Russell, head of the English department—only to hear back, in a lovely handwritten letter from her sister, that she’d died a few months earlier.
There was another teacher, a charismatic and attractive English teacher I had sophomore year, who later disappeared. I suppose “Crisis” was partly the result of my wondering what had happened to him.
For a long time while I was working on this story, an odious invention known as grammar check kept suggesting I rewrite the second sentence
as: “The language people mesmerized her.” This was highly annoying until I realized that, indeed, the language people do.
THE THING ITSELF
I’ve always enjoyed the fiction in The Atlantic Monthly, and at one point someone told me that they really like stories where something happens. Which I do, too; I love humor, and insight, and language, but I think most of all, I love stories where something of genuine importance to the characters is at stake, and I don’t think it’s a crime for literary fiction to be suspenseful or entertaining. So after I heard this, I went home and wrote the opening lines: “Something was about to happen. He could feel it.” And immediately I thought: Aha! Now I’ve got it!
In the truly gloomy days that followed, it slowly dawned on me that now that I’d set the stakes, I was going to have to find a way to live up to them. Which of course wound up being a tremendous gift, and in the process of trying to do so, I was able to allow the story to surprise even me.
Nota Bene: This story has an ending that not all readers grasp the first time through. So I will offer this hint: Janet has news of her own.
Special thanks to ZZ Packer, for choosing “The Thing Itself” to win the 2008 Arts & Letters Prize.
THE LAZIEST FORM OF REVELATION
A writer friend and I had just decided that the best way to write dialogue that didn’t feel overly crafted was to put in everything you want, then go back and take out half of it. No sooner did we come up with this rule than I began to exploit its opposite, and found myself working on a story about a woman who couldn’t stop talking. The more her painter-boyfriend ignored her (even as he studied her), the more she felt compelled to reveal.
I have some strawberry in my hair, and part of me has always wished I were a true redhead. In the middle of working on this story, I had lunch with my great-aunt, Corinne Black, whose college nickname was “Torchy.” It was she who told me her mother would never allow her to sit as close to the fire as other family members because she was afraid Corinne’s head would ignite. As soon as I heard the anecdote, I knew I wanted to use it (that’s what the pocket tape recorder I always keep with me is for). I sure hope I was the one who bought the chicken-salad sandwiches that day.
THE SUMMER BEFORE
“The Summer Before” was the first short story I ever wrote—not counting grade school compositions, including one about the adventures a baseball has after it’s hit out of the park. It languished in a drawer for fifteen years—my coming-of-age story, waiting to come of age. I think because the characters are so young, this story in particular brings to mind Irving Howe’s wonderful observation: “The best art almost becomes sentimental, but doesn’t.” During one of my editing sessions, I cut a line in which a yacht passes by with the words Writer’s Block emblazoned across its stern. It didn’t fit with the rest of the scene, and once I realized how bizarrely attached to it I was, I knew it had to go. Lifted from real life was the yellow outboard christened Lightning Bug, which belonged to Bruce and Mark Ashmun, who were part of a gang of friends who helped make summers at Lake Winnipesaukee the kind of thing you want to grow up and write about.
I’m the oldest of four girls, and if I were ever forced to watch a movie of my life—for the purpose of instruction, if not judgment—I’m certain there would be numerous scenes during which I would have to look away, for shame. I suppose this story was one way of trying to do penance. It is dedicated to my sisters.
Lastly: Before he met my mother, my father was engaged to a woman named Fran (Frances Marshall Watkins), who died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. I’m glad she gets to play a small role in this story, unlike the rather large role she plays in my life: Had she not died, I would never have lived.
MOLLUSK MAKES A COMEBACK
Some stories are born whole; they arrive almost seamlessly, and all you can do is humbly acknowledge them as the gifts they are. This was not one of those stories. “Mollusk” lived on my computer for twelve years before it was published, and had different titles and varying details. But its heart remained the same. To me, it’s a story about a young woman’s search for something to believe in, and her attempts to muster the conviction to live.
Katie has become a bit of a cult figure for my sisters and me. We still speak of “pulling a Katie” or “having a total Katie Day.” Although we like to imply it’s all other people’s fault, usually it means coming face-to-face with the impossibility of staying on top of everything. A Katie Day is a day where everything goes wrong at once, typically in a sad, slightly funny way—the only upside to chaos being that it frequently spits out a joke.
I tend to be drawn to people like Katie, who lived through some period of aimlessness or recklessness before they found their feet. It seems I’m able to spot them across a crowded room. Or if I don’t spot them, they spot me. Even though Katie is a mess in a lot of ways, she also has a lot to teach.
I KNEW YOU’D BE LOVELY
I wrote this story while I was at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for a summer. I’d taken up smoking while I was there—it seemed the thing to do—and my old Mac desktop conked out mid-story, possibly from nicotine exposure. (The only Mac to ever fail me, and I don’t blame the embattled machine one bit.) I had no car at the time, and I remember waiting with excruciating impatience for a bus to come and take me to the campus writing lab before I forgot everything. Once back at one of their computers, I feverishly tried to reconstruct what I’d written, which was utterly strange: I’m not used to working on stories with other people around, during normal business hours.
“Lovely” became my first published story when Joan Silber chose it to win the Inkwell Writing Competition in 2007. I will always be indebted to her and to the other lovelies at Inkwell.
PROOF OF LOVE
I wrestled with this story while writing it, keenly aware of the fine line between a character who has strong opinions and a story that has strong opinions, and the cosmic No-No of finding yourself on the wrong side of that line. (Samuel Goldwyn: “If you have a message, send a telegram.”) I knew Kelly’s persona intimately, so she was easy to write; and I hadn’t seen her elsewhere, so I wanted to write her. But insecurity about the story endured. For that reason, I’ve been especially surprised at the warm reception it has received—one admirer made a PROOF OF LOVE T-shirt; another defended my own character to me: “She’s not a Jesus freak! She’s freaky for Jesus!” I love these people, and don’t think my gratitude can be fully expressed.
WE’VE GOT A GREAT FUTURE BEHIND US
When I left New York City, I chose Pawling, New York, partly because of a wonderful live-music venue they have here called the Towne Crier Café. A few winters ago, I heard Jon Poussette-Dart perform there. He introduced one of his songs by saying it was the result of a collaboration between him and two friends; they’d promised when they were married that they’d write a song with him, and had honored the promise even after they acrimoniously divorced. I loved the idea so much, I don’t think I slept that night. His song was not called “We’ve Got a Great Future Behind Us”—in fact, I don’t recall it being self-referential at all—but nonetheless, a story was born.
I originally thought “Future” was going to be about an estranged couple airing their grievances with each other while writing love songs—through the lyrics of the songs—which just shows you what too much caffeine can do.
Around the time I wrote this, I dated a man who left me speechless when he said he thought women shouldn’t be allowed to vote because we let our feelings distort our perceptions. It was a shocking statement from an otherwise decent man, and I can remember wondering whether I should tell him: “When you date the woman who comes after me, you might want to leave that little nugget in your purse.”
DOUBLE-BLIND
The inspiration for this story came from a passage in a book Perry Mehrling wrote about my father, Fischer Black. In the fall of 1961, my dad shared a small apartment at 1560 Cambridge Street with three physicists and an historian. For some reason, the idea of sharing a
kitchen and a bathroom with three physicists fascinated me. Perry’s book also taught me that in high school, my dad and some of his friends had formed a group called the American Society of Creators, Apostles and Prophets—possibly named for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers—whose stated purpose was “to try to work out effective methods of true discussion.” These two things combined to create the initial spark for “Double-Blind.” As is often the case, many of the original details never made it to the final draft, e.g., that the group read Scientific American and would then discuss Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic theory of the human nervous system, or how Aldous Huxley’s ideas on altered states of consciousness led them to try their hands at hypnosis.
Of course, the well-known line about bumblebees not being able to fly according to the laws of physics is a famous mischaracterization; what bumblebees can’t theoretically do is coast.
THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON
This story was first conceived as an entry for an Esquire fiction contest, in which I was trying to write a story to go with the title “Twenty-Ten.” I didn’t win, but I’m nonetheless grateful to them; if it weren’t for their contest, I never would have written the story.
People sometimes ask if it’s difficult to write in the male voice, and for whatever reason, I don’t find it to be. “Moon” was one of my easiest stories to write; I think it took me only about three weeks (the contest deadline helped). I laughed appreciatively when a male reader told me it was a quintessential male-voice story, saying: “It could be subtitled ‘Sex, drugs, rock and roll, and cars. And beer.’ ”
My uncle Carl tamed the squirrels when he was a freshman at Harvard and would then impress women with his authority over small woodland creatures. He also had a roommate on whom the character of Ace is loosely based. Ace was a writer’s dream—what’s more fun than a character who says yes to everything?—and in many ways, his spirit lives on in a new book I’m working on, The Lucky Brother.
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