He was likely coming from his friend David’s room, a fellow apprentice writer and his closest male friend and drinking buddy, who had pledged the Beta fraternity. Like her, Emerson had little interests in groups and so had avoided joining a fraternity, though he did enjoy their parties.
She checked her watch, registered the time (four p.m.), the date (Tuesday), recollected her roommate Amanda’s schedule—chem lab from three to six. Emerson lived, like many freshmen, in a dorm room with two other roommates, so they rarely went there. Amanda had an off-campus boyfriend, so evenings she often stayed there. This left them with a happily empty dorm room and wonderful, carefree sex and talk and more sex.
The girl closed her Complete Pelican Shakespeare (presently Lear).
“Hey,” she said.
He smiled and sat beside her on the bench, but he looked out.
“Have you decided on a topic yet?”
“Topic?”
“Familial infidelity in King Lear? Animal metaphors in Othello?”
“Ah, the Shakespeare paper.”
When this second semester of his freshman year had begun, they’d both enrolled in Professor Porter’s Shakespeare 201, a senior-level class Emerson had talked his way into, as freshmen were discouraged from that level.
“No, not yet.”
“You’d better get on it,” she said. Even the word “on” had two syllables when she said it—ooh-wn—and he smiled at her when he heard it—ooh-wn. “You know Professor Porter will be gunnin’ for you in particular.”
“I’ll be all right.”
It was evident that Shakespeare was not on his mind, but that something was, and her first emotion was concern for him.
“Grimsley.” He said it with such weight and finality that her concern immediately turned to herself, her turning stomach.
“Yes,” she said cautiously.
“David is bringing me to the Beta formal next week. He’s convinced his ‘brothers’ that I should be encouraged to join their ranks.”
“I thought David knew you better.”
“Evidently not, but he’s a sweetheart and has insisted.”
She paused, still waiting for whatever was to drop. “And?”
“I’ll be attending with Ashley Bennett, a Tri-Delt. Do you know her?”
She did indeed, a stunner from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a junior like her. “I don’t think I do,” she said. And then she exhaled, feeling relieved at what she knew would be easy and happily said. She even chuckled a little. “You. You know I’m not the jealous type. You can go. If someone asks you to something you want to go to, I’m not going stop you.” She gave his shoulder a nudge.
He turned and looked her in the eye and said, “I asked her.”
She knew she’d responded physically in some way because he winced.
He said, “I’m sorry.”
“I think I understand,” Grimsley said. She waited a few moments more. Perhaps a lifeline would appear. When he offered no more, she knew she did understand, and she stood and left the bench. She climbed the flight of stairs to her dorm room. She placed her big book on her desk. She leaned on her desk, breathing unevenly. She headed back down the hall to the bathroom, thinking she would splash water on her face. Instead she looked at her reflection—hateful to her in its plainness—stared down into the sink, gripped either side, and retched clear, viscous fluid that clung to the dry drain.
Five
Wow, I thought, looking from the bench to my old friend in his middle-aged blazer, holding a cup of coffee. How long buried the actual memory had been, unearthed now intact.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “You’re right.” I took a deep breath. “It hurt pretty bad at the time.”
“But not for long, yes?”
“That I can’t say. I don’t have a good memory for pain.” I’d become a terrible liar today!
The truth of it: I was shattered for many weeks. I, of course, saw him in class each Tuesday and Thursday, and this was fine—good, even, as it gave me a reason to be near him and a chance for us to at least small-talk on neutral ground. And I could watch and admire him without feeling self-conscious, as he was often a lively presence and liked being the center of attention. It was after one of these classes that he’d first given me a short story and asked if I’d read it. How could I say no, or ignore my quickened heart that he wanted my opinion? It got to be almost regular—he set himself the task of writing a story a week on top of his schoolwork.
It was when I saw him outside that class that it was bad, when he was with someone else. During those first couple weeks apart, before he asked me to read that first story, which allowed me to stay intimately connected with him, he knew I hurt and so never sought me out in a let’s-just-be-friends kind of condescension. When I was headed down the ugly concrete walkway to the Bryan Center, the relatively new social, arts, and commerce center of the university, and he was leaving it, heading my way with his arm around a girl, he’d remove his arm when he saw me. That spring he gravitated toward the East Coast neo-hippie types, long skirts and bangles. As we’d pass, he’d say, “Hi, Grimsley,” gravely, not with false cheer or ease.
I’d be able to muster a straight-faced, “Hey,” clutching books to my chest.
We both kept walking and I’m sure he didn’t look back, though I wouldn’t know. It was all I could do to make it through those doors into the carpeted, air-conditioned center and find a banister to lean on until it went away. It felt like stomach flu. I’d close my eyes till the nausea passed and ultimately try to focus on my class work, my savior that spring. I could dive into books and forget about him for hours.
“Well it didn’t last long,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, shaking my head to clear it.
“I meant that it wasn’t long before we were enjoying the best parts of ourselves,” he clarified. “On occasion at least.”
“Which parts,” I asked, “the sex or the stories?”
Just thinking about that time a quarter century ago brought back the stomach churning, but his comment pulled me out of it—moving on to what was a happier period after the pain of the break—and it became clear that I hadn’t necessarily lost him completely, that there was hope, a hope I guess you could say I hung on to for four more years.
“Both,” he said. “I hope you don’t remember either with regret.”
“No, I can say truthfully. That one day, that one sentence, that was the worst of it. Unhappy dagger.”
“That’s not the line.”
“But that’s how it went.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
I retrieved my buzzing cell phone. I sighed, looked at Em. “It’s my sister.”
“Take it.”
“Hey, Mare-bear,” I said, turning from Em. My sister has a knack for calling at the exact worst moment.
I hung up and turned to Em. “I’ve got to go pick up my sister’s dog from the kennel. Long story.”
Em nodded.
I turned away and said, “Fuck.”
“Is it that bad?
“I just hate that both my brother and sister think of me as lonely old Grimsley who, unmarried and childless, has nothing but time time time on her hands and is happy to do any and all errands for them.”
“So say no.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because. They’re right!” I smiled. I stalled a little, then said what I was thinking: “I’m not ready to say goodbye. I haven’t heard a thing about you, what you’re doing. Mr. Big-Time LA writer.”
He smiled self-consciously. After a moment he said, “How long an errand is it?”
“Half hour each way.”
“If I come with you, can you get me to the restaurant—I think it’s called the Grocery—by five-thirty?”
“That’s a great place, and yes, five-thirty we can do.”
“I’m not ready either, and I’d kind of like to take you
up on your offer.”
“Offer?”
“To hear a confession of mine.”
“Well, come on then!”
And then he grinned at me, and I knew why, the way I pronounced “on”—ooh-wn. It just came out like that. He was bringing out my mom’s geechie accent from way back.
*
And so it was on this hour-long errand down to Raleigh and back that I heard how my old friend was. He hadn’t won that Emmy. In fact, that show had been the only one that had ever made it to the screen. He’d moved out of magazine journalism when he’d sold a script for a bundle of money, though it was never made. The money was too good to pass up, even though it was usually just that—money—with nothing to show for it but the things it bought. He became a highly regarded script doctor, noted for his ability to elevate and condense dialogue. So he was often paid during a movie’s production to come fix a script.
“A couple years ago,” he told me, “Jeff Bridges walked off a set and refused to do another minute’s work until they brought me in to get the dialogue right.”
“You are kidding me!” I said. “Jeff Bridges?”
“Yep,” he said, slapping his knee in a way I knew to be proud and ironic. “Great guy, by the way.”
“What movie?”
“Men Who Stare at Goats.”
“Never saw it.”
“Consider yourself lucky.”
We were cruising west on I-40 toward the doggy-daycare center where my sister boarded her boxer-shepherd mix, McGee, which she couldn’t get to because of a doctor appointment/soccer game conflict, and Eric, her husband, was traveling. Em kept his window rolled down and his hair was whipping around his face.
He raised his voice to be heard. “You see The Blind Side?”
“Loooved it.”
“That Sandra Bullock speech about family and watching each other’s back to get Michael to play hard and use his strength?”
“Sure.”
“That was mine.”
“Get out !” A quick glance and I saw he was staring out the window at the pine trees whizzing by. “That is so cool. So if I Google it, will you come up?”
“Nope, that kind of work goes uncredited. Screen Writers Guild has all kinds of rules about who gets credit for what.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Nah, pay is too good to complain.”
“But you don’t like to do it, sounds like.”
“I’d rather be writing my own stuff.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Money.”
“I thought you married into a wealthy family.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I thought I read it somewhere.”
“Well, a lot can be mishandled in a generation. I mean, there is some money in trusts, we live really well, the kids’ schools are taken care of. Collista is accustomed to a certain style, and I still have to work. And I want and like to work.”
“I can hear a ‘but’ in there.”
He turned to me. “For the past five years, I’ve been pitching television ideas and writing pilots, getting paid a shitload for stuff I know—even while I’m working on it—stuff I know will never make it off the written page. I find myself sometimes dreading that I’ll get a call from my agent saying a network has ordered a pilot.”
I said nothing.
He said, “It’s a living.”
I still knew him. I knew what he’d been. And knew—I could hear it in his voice and see it in his face—what he felt inside.
“Have you tried returning to fiction?”
He grunted.
“But you’re still telling stories, what you always wanted to do, what I always thought you did best. Just in a different form.”
Silence.
“What was it Professor Blackmore told your class? This would have been your senior year—I remember because I was working at the library by then. You opened the book right there and read it to me. Something about how stories were fundamental to our … our species. I remember that. You were checking out one of Blackmore’s books and you read it to me right there, like you were on fire.”
Em stared straight ahead. I waited for the light at the end of the exit ramp to change, staring at his Romanesque profile.
“The need to tell and hear stories,” Em said, quoting words all but literally etched into his mind, “is essential to the species Homo sapiens—second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter.”
“So does this have anything to do with the shame you spoke about earlier?”
He didn’t answer. Neither of us spoke after that until he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Canine Castle,” I told him.
Untitled
She hadn’t been roused in the middle of the night since Emerson had scratched on her screen and begun the affair that had ended so abruptly eight months later for reasons she still didn’t know. It was now early May, a month since he’d told her he wanted to see someone else. They had remained friends, possible only because, well, she adored him, and he was so guileless and natural. And of course the short stories, which flattered her (though they were only okay, and she was gentle in her written critiques). They mainly saw one another on Tuesdays and Thursdays during their Shakespeare seminar. She loved to listen to him spar with the professor, who finally acknowledged that Em was not out of his league amongst the few juniors and mainly seniors in this upper-level class. Grimsley herself struggled to keep up, but she was glad she’d taken the class. The sight of him still charged her—happily, not sadly, and she didn’t think this happiness strange. She did not feel heartsick.
They had just finished reading Hamlet (finals were this coming week). Oh, how Emerson loathed Hamlet. Hamlet the character. He’d had the respect of the class since his bawdy reading aloud of Othello (he could have been an actor if he’d wanted), but Hamlet left him cold, so when Professor Porter caught him drifting, he called Em out. There were about twenty students, a standard classroom, rows of individual desks, facing Porter’s large wooden desk, Porter pacing back and forth in front of a green blackboard. He was a hulking man, six-four and built like a defensive lineman. He had bushy hair and rosy cheeks above a full salt-and-pepper beard, a hearty fellow in all ways, which made the sickly looking lips all the more out of place. Porter mainly talked and questioned, didn’t use the board at all, but throughout class he flipped a piece of chalk as he paced and occasionally took a drag from it. Nicorette had yet to make it to the United States and Porter was doing his best to quit smoking.
The class erupted in nervous laughter when Emerson explained that he was sick of reading about “a pussy.”
“Would you rephrase, please?”
“Okay, wimp.”
“You’re speaking about one of the most famous characters in literature.”
Without referring to the text, Emerson said sarcastically, “Ohhh, ‘how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable are all the uses of the world!’ So get on with it. Character is about action. Character is action. Here is an entire play devoted to a main character who fails to do anything on purpose. It drives me bananas.”
“Until he kills Polonius.”
“He even fucked that up! He thought it was the king! His first action was an accident.”
Grimsley was the first to laugh—he always made her laugh—and the class followed. But not Em, who was overly serious at this point.
“Your language, please.” Porter paused. “Isn’t inaction a kind of action, Mr. Randall?”
Older teachers still used student surnames.
“No. Action is action. Romeo and Juliet risking all to marry and enjoy a night in the sack, that’s defining action and drives the plot forward.”
“But Hamlet is debating murder. Have you ever tried to imagine how difficult it would actually be for a good human being to kill someone, a family member no less?”
Emerson responded, “It was apparently pretty easy for the king.”
/>
“But that, we surmise, is because of the type of man the king is. And he’s no Hamlet.”
“Exactly!” Emerson said, slapping his hand on his desk. “We know who the king is through his actions. Here is a whole play devoted to a character’s inaction and the horrible, and stupid, consequences.”
“Shit or get off the pot, is what you’d like to say to Hamlet,” Porter said.
“Thank you.”
Porter turned his back to Emerson, took a drag from the damp chalk, and said, “Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.” He turned to the class and said, “Page nine-sixty-six, act five, scene one, Ophelia has drowned. Suicide, yes?”
The sound of twenty hands riffling pages, Emerson’s included. Professor Porter could always reengage him.
“That’s an action, no?”
“Ah!” Emerson said. Now it was just him and the prof, and we were the audience, which is how I think he liked it. “From inaction to death. That’s how it goes for most, is it?” He turned a few more pages. “I’m with Yorick. At least he made people laugh while he was alive.”
“Soon, you, too, will be with poor Yorick,” said Professor Porter.
“Not sooner than you, I hope!” Em shot back with a sly but friendly grin. He knew Porter was the scholar and not him.
Porter smiled, removing the chalk from his lips. “I hope so, too, Mr. Randall.”
*
Grimsley let him in because he still made her tingle on sight. Because he was a writer, and she liked writers. And because she knew that even though he’d left her, he was still sweet, was and always would be the kind of guy who would leave a bundle of daisies on his girlfriend’s bed on a gloomy February day, Valentine’s Day (melted her heart). He thought about that kind of thing. He was special. She had felt herself lucky then, when she’d found those flowers, and she felt herself lucky now.
In Short Measures Page 6