Take Me Back

by Sally Mandel

  10

  Dear Gran,

  I’m feeling much better. I forgot what it was like to be sick and hear the visiting nurse drive up. You just know you’re going to get a shot. Also I’m sad that I missed the most amazing week ever. There was a foot of snow on the ground, then it rained so the top layer melted a little. Then it got really cold and the whole world froze so you could ice skate on your yard, or the golf course or anywhere. It was one gigantic rink out there and I had to watch it from my bedroom window. Unfair!

  Are you taking care of your cough?

  Love,

  Amy

  The next was in pencil, Gran’s writing on the hasty side this time, though not scribbled. She was always neat.

  Dearest Amy,

  You would have enjoyed the little to-do outside the kitchen window this morning. Two gray squirrels were playing tag on the trunk of the maple tree. They stopped suddenly, on high alert with both tails straight up. They had spotted a chipmunk, who was laboriously rolling a walnut across the lawn. They were on him in a flash, charging at him from all directions. But the little guy was not about to give his treasure away. He stuffed the nut into his cheek and went up on his hind legs, holding his ground imperiously, like royalty facing down the rabble. Intimidated, the grays turned tail and scrambled back up the tree again. His majesty, the chipmunk, spit the walnut out and glared after the bullies with visible disgust. Such captivating drama to witness while doing the dishes!

  Love,

  Gran

  14

  Dear Gran,

  I read a book this week that made me cry. A lot of things make me cry but not always in a bad way. It’s like I feel too many things at the same time or just feel too much in general. I think that I’m an inside out kind of person.

  Love,

  Amy

  What could the book have been? she wondered. And yet, she was eager to get on with it. Gran had drawn a red star on the top right-hand corner of the next, with a date: “8/89.” 1989, the year Amy had finally set her first novel aside and spent a summer agonizing over the prospect of never writing again. And then … what was that magic, when the idea strikes like a fish surfacing, freed from the depths below to shower beads of water that glisten in the sun?

  24

  Dear Gran,

  I have the first sentence of my new book:

  “Ellen O’Malley … yes, that Ellen O’Malley … climbed out of the boat and onto the rickety dock in her Fifth Avenue shoes.”

  Love, Amy

  And the reply:

  Dearest Amy,

  Thank you.

  Love, Gran

  Leave it to Gran, Amy thought, to respond to such a profoundly personal communication with just those six perfect words. Even praise—How intriguing, I can’t wait to read it—would have felt like pressure. How did Gran know these things?

  Here was a postcard from that period, with the Empire State Building on it. Amy flipped it over and read her own printing in bold letters:

  25

  GRAN, I GOT FIRED! IMAGINE THAT! XOXO

  “Tell me!” Gran had written back, on that ancient lurid stationery.

  To which Amy had responded:

  I guess I’m just not cut out to be a waitress. I got the orders mixed up last night and gave a man who was allergic to onions a contaminated soup. You wouldn’t have believed how much he vomited. Gran, if it hadn’t been so tragic, it would have been kind of fascinating in a “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” kind of way. It just went on and on.

  So I got canned. And no, Gran, please don’t start in about money. I’m fine, I really am. I just need to find some other line of work.

  Love, Amy

  Gran was always trying to fund her so that she could continue writing without having to work days. But Amy, for her part, worried that her grandmother would run out of money. What if she needed to go into a nursing home one day, or to hire help? The two had reached an unspoken truce in that Gran would give Amy one extravagant check at Christmas and then another at her birthday, which was conveniently five months later.

  It had been such an odd sojourn in Amy’s life, living in the city. She had felt from her arrival that she was an alien in New York. One day, she had seen a man crossing Madison Avenue with flippers on his feet. The sight was bizarre enough, but even more striking was the fact that nobody else seemed to notice. To Amy, the flipper man seemed like a kindred soul. Of course, it didn’t help that she was making precisely zero progress as a published writer.

  25

  So, dearest Gran, another rejection for the book. That makes eight. I suppose it’s possible that if I had an agent there might be more interest, but I haven’t had any luck there either. It’s the slush pile for me. God knows if anybody ever really reads those manuscripts or if they just send out the turndown letters willy-nilly.

  Mom and Dad are pressuring me to give the writing a break (i.e., quit). They think it’s too tough on my self-esteem—I should leave New York and come back to Hudson. Dad thinks I could get a job with The Reporter, a.k.a. The Distorter. I suppose that’s writing, too, but I want to make things up, not record the dreary facts.

  Do you think I’ve made a religion out of writing? I’m not sure I believe in God, but I surely do believe in Words.

  Love, Amy

  Dearest Amy,

  Yes, words are important—holy, even, or they can be. A perfect sentence is a contribution to the world. Not everyone can conjure up such a fantastical thing, but you can, with your own special voice and your own special light. Whether it’s recognized or not, your book is worthy. And so, you must write another, and another after that. If there comes a time—never, I hope, and believe—when you are no longer sustained by your work, that’s when you set it aside. And even should that come to pass, you will have enriched the hearts and minds of those who were fortunate enough to read your Words, in whatever form.

  With much love and faith,

  Gran

  25

  Dear Gran,

  Somebody out there must have read your wonderful letter! I got a great rejection today! It says: “We are sorry that UP RIVER does not fit into our publishing schedule. We would be pleased, however, to read any future material you wish to send along to us. If would be helpful if you would attach a copy of this letter to any submissions. Very truly yours, Ramsey Smith.”

  I love Ramsey Smith! I adore Ramsey Smith!

  I was so inspired that I hopped on the subway and spent a whole afternoon walking on the beach. Listen to this. Suddenly, when I had walked, I don’t know, halfway to Montauk, I got this great idea for a final scene, complete with last line of the whole shebang, which is, of course, insanely crucial. But I didn’t have anything to write with and I was scared to death I was going to forget it, which is tragic when it happens because you never get it back and what you wind up with isn’t anywhere near as good as the initial thought. I had a receipt from the cleaners in my pocket. It had the straight pin still attached, you know, so they can pin it to the garment. I stuck my finger with it and squeezed and squeezed until I had enough blood to write down just a couple of words, enough to jog my memory when I got back to civilization. What do you think of your crazy granddaughter?

  P.S. Do you think Ramsey Smith is a boy or a girl?

  Dearest Amy,

  I spent some time rereading and thinking about your last letter. I took it to the orchard and sat under the flowering crabapple with the bees humming fat and lazy around my head.

  It seems to me that you’re talking about passion. You could be writing of your devotion to a man, such is the intensity of your description. This made me wonder where romantic love fits into your life? Or does it? I would be so very interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

  Do you see Wayne in New York? You mentioned in passing that he
works at the Natural History Museum, something to do with insects. The last time I saw the two of you in the same room together was here, last Christmas. Amy, darling, he does love you. It’s quite clear in the way he gazes at you with such longing. It seems equally evident, however, that you don’t return his ardor. Though by my count you do have four more years until your deadline.

  And was there also someone named Kevin?

  I wish you would tell me everything you can about your process of writing. I can’t think of anything more interesting.

  Love, Gran

  Gran rarely mentioned the boyfriend issue. Amy knew it grieved her that she was unattached, and Amy had half jokingly assured her that she would visit the issue when she was thirty, a birthday that now loomed close on the horizon. The truth was, Amy wasn’t so certain about falling in love. The closest she’d ever come was when she was fifteen, with Theo, the drug dealer. She still thought of him, in fact, which was alarming. What did that say about her? Both her mother and grandmother had suffered through marriages with troubled men. Amy had watched it, which was why she had pledged to herself that she would join a convent before she would carry on that particular tradition. Instead, she had vowed to throw her energy into writing; that producing a book would signal the end of something, and maybe the beginning as well. She would be free now, to explore all facets of her life—writing another book, certainly, and then another, but it was this one that proved a beloved tyrant in her head and in her heart.

  26

  Dear Gran,

  Kevin is very good-looking. I’m so shallow anyway that, for the time being, just staring at him seems to keep me gratified enough.

  Did I upset you with my gory tale? I never want ever to distress you in any way. How I wish we could be sitting side by side in the garden chairs to hash over such weighty issues as love and work and how to layer lasagna.

  I remember one time when Mom and Dad went away and I stayed at your house. It was maybe my first sleepover because I was sad and a little scared. I must have been crying because you opened the door to the bedroom. You were backlit against the hall light with your hair cascading down your shoulders. You looked like an angel, and I remember feeling that nothing bad could ever happen to me. Now it’s my turn to take care of you! I want to bring you tea and biscuits and make sure you’re warm enough. I know how chilly you get on these cool spring nights with no fire in the fireplace.

  You asked about writing. I’ve been keeping a journal. It’s not secret, really, though it’s very personal so there’s no one but you whom I would share it with. When I’m writing, I often feel that I’m under a spell—I really question how much control over the process I have. Maybe after a few more years it won’t feel quite so elusive. The journal is a way to pin it down, I suppose, to make writing more of a routine, like going to work in a factory each day. Of course, that’s ridiculous, but I am so afraid that the slender golden thread attaching me to the world of imagination will suddenly tear asunder and I’ll never write again.

  Just in case they are at all interesting, here are some excerpts from my journal. Sorry for the sloppy handwriting.

  Today I went to a new doctor, so I was asked to fill out a form. I stared at the “Occupation” box for a long time. What am I if I’m not a writer? Am I a writer if I never publish a single word? I left it blank.

  Writing is like being possessed. I can barely look or listen without thinking: how do I describe that? (The water lapping at the shore during a cold snap—is it viscous, sluggish, what?) I am constantly weighing my words, a walking Roget’s.

  My new heroine, Ellen O’Malley, is famous for being famous, empty at the core (we think, but she’s really hiding). She drives through a traffic light and causes an accident in which someone dies because she does not believe that even traffic lights apply to her.

  Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll have some fatal accident before I finish the final draft of my book and someone will read it and think I thought this crap version was the finished product. The horror!

  Along with the characters from my current book, there are people in my head from various projects, from other places, other centuries even. They exist apart from me, and I can tap into their lives at any time. This one is standing by the stove in the gaslight, stirring a pot, this one is walking on a mossy path in the woods accompanied by his three-legged dog. I can remember the people in stories I wrote as a child. Maybe this is why I rarely feel lonely. Miserable, fearful, yes, but not alone.

  I had expected when I began the first novel that I would write exactly what I felt. Now I see that I can sometimes come achingly close, touch my finger briefly to the spot, especially at those inexplicable periods when the keyboard is clattering away faster than my thoughts and I’m just hanging on for dear life.

  I like working in a small room, so that I can pluck the words out of the air before they can escape.

  When I look back over these scribbles, Gran, I realize that I skirted around the piece of it that plagues me every day: my terror. I am almost always convinced that I will fail, that the cruel blank screen will win. That I have nothing important to say and that I’m living in delusion. I’m so intimidated by Mom’s real-world accomplishments. She is making a difference in people’s lives. I’m just a word whore. Maybe I should quit these ridiculous mutterings and get on with a productive occupation like teaching or going to medical school. These are the thoughts that torment me every day until finally I force myself to sit down and type a sentence. One sentence, which can be total nonsense—often is—and yet, for whatever reason, somehow that mechanical gesture starts the engine going and if I’m lucky, I’ll have a decent day at the computer.

  I’m so lucky to have you, Gran. You are my safe place.

  Love, Amy

  Dearest Amy,

  I should have known you would remember that Saturday was the anniversary of Grandad’s death and that I would be a little bit down in the dumps. Thank you for coming all the way up here in the pouring rain. Mercy, I half expected to see an ark floating past my window! And how dear that you would slog through the torrents with me to visit the cemetery. I am a lucky grandma indeed!

  Today the sun shines in the rain-washed sky and I am cheerful.

  Gratefully,

  Gran

  Amy dear,

  Next time you come up, I’ll tell you about the night I got drunk with your father.

  Love, Gran

  After this one, her handwriting rapidly deteriorated, becoming wobbly and faint. But Amy continued to write regularly, unaware that this was Gran’s final year.

  27

  Dear Gran,

  For two weeks, it’s been empty inside that place where my characters live. This has never happened to me before. Where is everybody?

  Love from your freaked-out granddaughter,

  Amy

  Dearest Freaked-out,

  Think of it this way: your imagination is a reservoir that never empties. When it’s active, the spigot is open and ideas flood out. When it’s closed, there’s merely a drip, or perhaps nothing at all. But the deep water is merely still, waiting for the tap to open again. And it will. You’ll see.

  Love, Gran

  (And the last, just a note jotted on a blank greeting card with a lily pictured on the front:)

  27

  Dear Gran,

  You were right. It’s deafening in here. I can’t get them to shut up.

  Love, Amy

  Amy felt her throat thicken as she put the letters back inside and closed the box, and after sitting for so long, stood a little shakily. She folded up the tarp and set it down, laying her book on top. Then she walked to the car and opened the trunk. She removed a shovel and walked with it back to the gravesite. She lingered for a moment, breathing in the scent of new grass. She loved the way the trees looked in spring when the budding le
aves veiled the trees in delicate pale green lace.

  A lone golfer played up the center of the fairway nearby, striding with the loose long-legged gait of her grandfather. It seemed appropriate that he would visit her thoughts just now.

  She dug a deep hole beside her grandmother’s stone. Then she set the shovel down and retrieved her book. Amy imagined it lying beside her grandmother, the leaves on its cover murmuring, soothing. She opened the book carefully so as not to crack the binding. The print looked beautiful crossing the page, line after line. She held it open and cleared her throat.

  “I got a good review in Publisher’s Weekly, Gran. The reviewer said, and I quote, ‘Vanderwall’s novel is insightful, funny, poignant, not a new theme by any means, but deftly realized and altogether an auspicious debut.’ What do you think of that?” She imagined Gran’s face gazing back at her with pride and delight.

  Amy listened to the silence for a moment. It was time. She knelt down on one knee, setting her book on the other. She took a pen from her pocket, held it poised for a moment above the title page, then began:

  “For my dearest Gran. This book belongs to you. I would not be a writer if not for you. I would not be a person if not for you. You lit my way. You light it still.”

  And, because it felt like a prayer, she wrote:

  “Amen.”

  Acknowledgements

  Writing Take Me Back was a personal triumph, but it never would have happened without the support of so many people. I was buoyed by the steadfast love of friends who put up with some pretty peculiar behavior until I really began to heal. Susan McClanahan and Martin Tandler phoned me on an almost daily basis to check up on me. Marva Ellis and Rose Austria guided me through the maze of domestic demands that seemed so overwhelming. Rob McQuilkin, my brilliant agent, treated the manuscript with attentive respect. Dr. Baruch Fishman armed me with specific exercises to chase away the demons. Ruona Bertaccini, my remedial cognitive therapist, worked with me for over a year to nudge my brain back into operation. Once the book was written, Carole Baron, Jamie Raab and Lydia Weaver legitimized its quality and made me feel like a writer again. And how can I ever thank Dr. Richard Friedman? He literally saved my life on several occasions when I simply could not face one more minute of hell. He insisted through it all that we would find a combination of medications that would work for me, and we did. My children, Ben and Sarah, and my husband, Barry, surrounded me with patient love always and never alerted me to their fears that I might never recover.