by Robyn Sisman
It hadn’t taken him more than twelve hours back in New York to realize that he had to get out of the city. After Cornwall, Manhattan’s frenetic pace jarred; everyone, it seemed, had a purpose except himself. The double-whammy of losing his allowance and his book contract meant that he couldn’t afford to stay anyway. Most tormenting of all was the knowledge that Freya was on this same island, only a mile or two away, despising him. He could almost sniff her corrosive contempt in the grimy air. Lazy . . . spoiled . . . dilettante.
What he needed, he decided, was a writer’s retreat—nothing fancy, just somewhere peaceful so he could shut himself away with his computer and concentrate on his novel, free of city distractions and mundane household responsibilities. His stepmother Lauren lived in Virginia now, in a very pleasant, comfortable house which she left each day to work as head of an outreach program for disadvantaged and “problem” children; it occurred to Jack that her guest room might be the perfect place, and he called her up to suggest it. To his chagrin, Lauren did not share his enthusiasm for this plan. In fact, her questions about his sudden desperation to leave New York and devote himself to his writing were uncomfortably probing. That was the trouble with intelligent women: they could never accept a simple statement at face value; they always had to read their own meanings into the smallest nuance.
“Don’t tell me someone’s got under your skin at last, Jack,” she’d drawled affectionately, as Jack’s explanations became increasingly tortuous. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he had responded gruffly.
Still, Lauren had come up with the goods. Within twenty-four hours she’d called him back with an offer, which she strongly recommended he accept. A friend of hers owned an old vacation place up in the mountains that had been in the family for generations. Last year the cabin had been broken into by survivalists on the run from the police, and no one had got around to fixing it up. There was no electricity, and her friend wasn’t sure exactly what state it was in, but Jack was welcome to stay there rent-free so long as he repaired the house and made it secure. Jack had accepted eagerly, fantasizing himself into the role of a latter-day Thoreau, Southern-style—at one with nature, free to let his imagination roam unfettered, the epitome of rugged American individualism.
There was a hand-painted sign coming up on the left. Jack pushed his glasses into position and ducked his head to peer through the windshield. FEED STORE, he read. Good. According to his directions, he was to drive a further mile, then turn right by the twin pines and keep going until he reached the cabin. He felt a surge of excitement; the adventure was about to begin. And here at last was the private track, so overgrown that he almost missed it. He heard the whisper of long grass and the crunch of pine needles under the tires. Overhead, the trees grew close, admitting random shafts of deep golden light. He gunned the car up a sudden incline, rounded one bend, then another, then coasted to a stop as his foot slid off the accelerator in shock. Ahead of him was a miniature forest of shoulder-high hogweed, above which he could just discern a sloping tin roof swathed in creepers and the upper half of rough log walls, with the outline of a window crudely barricaded by crisscross planking. Jack stared. This wasn’t a place where one could spend a vacation. It was barely a cabin. It was a shack, a wreck.
Switching off the car engine, he swung the car door open and climbed out. Silence enveloped him like a shroud, and for a moment he experienced something akin to panic. Then he pulled himself together, excavated the jack from the trunk of the car and used it to beat a path to the narrow raised porch and pry off the defensive planks from the front door opening. Behind, the door itself hung ajar off broken hinges. Jack took a step inside, ducking in alarm as a bird swooped out of the gloom and flew past his head. He was now standing in a biggish room, maybe fifteen feet by twenty, with roughly sawn floor and walls. At one end was a square pine table and a rickety gas stove; at the other, pulled close to the stone fireplace, were two chairs and a couch with the stuffing half torn out of them. Either the survivalists had had a fight, or small creatures had found a very cozy spot to make their nests. There were mouse droppings everywhere, as well as drifts of dead leaves and a choking layer of dust. Jack discovered two small windows, covered by makeshift shutters, and a further door that led into a tiny back room, furnished with a bare bedstead, a plain country chair, and a splintered rail that must once have been used for hanging clothes. That was it.
Jack went back outside and sat on the porch steps, fighting down his dismay. He wondered about trying to find an inn or a hotel, just for tonight, but it would be dark in an hour and the likelihood was that he would get lost first. Anyway, that would merely postpone the problem, and he didn’t have money to squander. The key question was whether he was going to stick this out, or give up now. A rustle in the bushes made him look up. A groundhog had emerged from the undergrowth and was sitting on its backside, front paws hanging limp, potbellied and inquisitive as an old man. It stared at Jack and Jack stared back. In his head he heard his own voice explaining, “You see, I was going to finish my book, but unfortunately the cabin was uninhabitable. I always wanted to be a writer, but unfortunately I ran out of time. I was going to do something different from my father, but it didn’t work out. There was this woman I always liked, but . . .” Woodland noises resumed as he sat for a long time, thinking. Finally he gave the groundhog a comradely nod. “You and me, pal,” he said, and rose purposefully to his feet.
He used the remaining span of daylight to gather a stack of brushwood, reconnoiter a source of water, and sweep out the cabin with a surprisingly serviceable broom located in a lean-to shed. When the mosquitoes began to bite and the bats to swoop, he exchanged his shorts for jeans, pulled on an old sweater, and carried a selection of items from the car to the cabin. By the time he had finally wedged the broken door shut, the sky was black as pitch. Clouds had drifted in on the evening breeze, obscuring the stars and a fingernail of moon. Jack built himself a fire, more for light and comfort than warmth, and sat on his sleeping bag in front of it, munching his way through a megasandwich, two apples, and a package of Krispy Kreme doughnuts while he made a list of all the things he would need to buy tomorrow. Outside, the temperature dropped and the wind rose. Unknown creatures crashed in the woods outside (deer? possums? skunks? black bear??). Around ten o’clock it began to rain. Raindrops pinged on the tin roof and dripped through multiple leaks. The chimney smoked ferociously. Jack took off his shoes and slid fully clothed into the sleeping bag, resting his head on his folded jacket and staring into the flickering flames. Arthur Miller, he remembered, had built his own cabin with his own hands before moving into it to write Death of a Salesman. Jack conceded that he was not Arthur Miller; he would never get to marry Marilyn Monroe, for one. But his Madison pride was seeping back. He would not be beaten.
It took him five days to make the cabin livable. He fixed the small generator that pumped water up from a hillside spring, scythed the hogweed flat and piled it in the woods, patched up the roof and rehung the door. He replaced the mosquito screens and cleared the chimney of birds’ nests. In the small, sleepy local town he bought a secondhand stove and fridge plus the gas canisters to fuel them, and invested in three brand-new kerosene lamps. He got himself a fishing license and a stack of local maps with the hiking trails marked. He solved the problem of a bed by slinging a hammock across one corner of the cabin, and was almost getting used to sleeping in it. The small back room he turned into his study, with a desk made from an old door propped on sawn rounds of pine logs, securely nailed. Parked outside under the trees stood his new vehicle, a wheezy pickup bought cheap on account of the way it had been painted by its previous hippie-girl owners—screaming pink decorated with flowers. Farm boys on tractors honked their scorn as he passed. Jack just grinned back and turned up the yingle-dangle-doo music on his radio.
Finally he was ready to start writing. His portable typewriter sat square and neat on the makeshift desk,
alongside a high stack of virgin paper and several folders containing his notes and unfinished manuscript. Jack made a ceremony of his first day of real work. He got up early, shaved in front of the mirror he had hung on a tree outside, fixed himself coffee and a ham-and-eggs breakfast, dressed in shorts and a clean T-shirt, and seated himself in his bare wooden cell. Pumped full of hope and determination, he reached for a folder and took out the familiar manuscript. Ah, yes. “The ship lumbered into harbor . . .”
Five hours later, Jack slammed his hand on the desk in frustration and strode outside to the front porch, glowering at the magnificent view. He was still stuck. The story was there, but it was dead on the page; he could not breathe life into it. For the rest of that day and the next two days Jack wrestled with the problem, scribbling phrases, typing paragraphs, rolling paper into his typewriter and tearing it out again, to screw up and toss away. He wondered if he should change the ending—or the beginning—or rewrite the whole book in the first person. Sweat poured off him as the July sun beat on the tin roof and turned his study into an oven. He cursed himself for all the hours he’d wasted back in New York when he could have been writing in comfort, with all the conveniences of air-conditioning and a computer. Yet he craved distraction, and had to practically tie himself to the chair to stop himself jumping in the truck and driving into town for a beer and companionship. Time was ticking by. On a budget of fifty dollars a week, his money might just last for three months. This time, his deadline was immovable.
On the fourth day he rose at first light, pulled on his hiking boots and slung a rucksack over his shoulders, and set off into the woods. Morning cloud hung thick and damp over the trees. The pine-spiced air was alive with the whistle of birds and gurgle of cold, clear streams. Once he surprised a herd of deer, who bounded off in a flurry of white rumps. His eyes absorbed the scenery, as a strengthening sun turned it from misty sepia to vibrant color, but his mind was focused on the story he was trying to write. It hung there like a hologram: he could see it, but he couldn’t feel it. As the miles passed and the path wound upward, Jack’s thoughts began to drift—childhood memories, scenes from movies, whether he had enough bread to last the week, and then—without warning—Freya. He had been trying to shut her out of his thoughts, but suddenly she was achingly close. He could feel the bouquet in his hands, the prick of thorns; he could see the twist of her body as she clutched the sink. “You have no respect for the human heart.” The memory brought shame and tenderness, regret and self-doubt in a powerful, swirling mix.
He climbed on automatically toward the bald pate of granite mountaintop that was his goal. Finally he reached the summit, panting a little, and stood to admire the the landscape that unrolled beneath him to a hazy horizon. He was struck by its ordered perfection. Seen from this vantage-point, the terrain that seemed so confusing at ground-level now assumed an irresistible logic. He could see how streams connected with rivers, why farmers had shaped their fields to certain precise patterns, how the interlocking hills created a mirror-image of interlocking valleys, and that the maze of dirt-tracks where he had so often got lost were merely man-made copies of the natural contours of the landscape. He wished he could discern the structure of his novel this clearly. An author should have authority.
In that instant, Jack’s thoughts about writing and his feelings about Freya connected, striking a spark of insight that flamed into life and illuminated his whole book. He saw that in worrying over structure and theme he had forgotten the human heart of his story—forgotten it because he had refused to look into his own heart for so long. No writer could produce even a hundred words without revealing something of himself—without commiting to a viewpoint. Jack understood that it was his obstinacy in this matter that had blocked him for so long. He sat down on the bare rock, overwhelmed by a sense of release and excitement. Ideas, scenes, whole passages of dialogue began to race out of his brain, like fishing lines that had finally hooked onto something live.
It was late afternoon by the time Jack returned to the cabin. He washed hastily, throwing off his clothes and upending a bucket of spring water over his head. Then he dressed and hurried to his desk, grabbing bread and cheese on the way. His muscles ached but his brain was jumping. He placed two lamps on either side of his typewriter, prepared to be as profligate as need be with the kerosene. Even as he was sitting down, connections snapped together in his head. Fleetingly he wondered where Freya was and what she was doing. Then the conscious thought of her was swept away under an intoxicating rush of ideas. Placing his work-scratched hands on the keys, he began to type.
Freya was in Chelsea, having spent the afternoon poking around disused garages and run-down warehouses. Two weeks ago Lola Preiss had announced her intention to move the downtown gallery out of SoHo, which was rapidly turning into designer-label heaven, with rents to match. Several of the cannier dealers were moving up to Chelsea, and Lola didn’t want to be left behind. She had instructed Freya to draw up a shortlist of likely sites.
Now it was after five. The sun was shining, and today the temperature had dropped again into the pleasant mid-seventies. Freya wasn’t ready to go home. Instead, she decided to have a little wander, nowhere in particular—just, you know, wandering.
She walked out to the end of one of the old shipping piers and stared at the river for a while, then retraced her steps and began to thread her way through small leafy streets, aiming vaguely for the subway station. Everything looked familiar—the decorative wrought-iron hoops around the trees, the potholed sidewalk she always used to trip on, that man practicing baseball catches with his son, the sound of children screaming with delight as they ran in and out of a playground sprinkler. She did, in fact, seem to be on Jack’s actual street. She hoped he wasn’t looking out his window. She did not wish to see him. But it would silly to turn back now. So long as she stayed on the opposite side of the street from his apartment, she’d be safe.
Glancing across, she saw that there were builders at work on something, cluttering the curbside with their usual paraphernalia of planks and cement mixers and bags of sand. Freya felt a pang of regret that yet another house was being renovated. Soon the neighborhood would be full of bankers, and its character would change. But as she drew closer, her idle nostalgia sharpened to surprise. It was Jack’s house that was under reconstruction; specifically, it was Jack’s own apartment that was being gutted. What was going on?
Without pausing to think, Freya dashed across the street and asked the builders if they were working for Mr. Madison. But nobody knew except the foreman, and he had gone home early—as usual. They were pretty sure some new people were moving in, one of those hotshot career couples to judge by the fancy fittings they’d ordered.
Freya gripped the front railings and stared into the empty shell of the apartment she had known so well. Now that the first shock had passed, she realized that there was nothing particularly strange in the fact that Jack had moved. He’d said himself he couldn’t afford to stay. What surprised her was how swiftly he had acted. She wondered where he had gone.
She walked on, lost in thought, until a sound somewhere between a grunt and a greeting made her look up. It was the old Italian man in the undershirt, sitting on the stoop and tilting his beer bottle at her in greeting.
Freya waved back, then walked over to the bottom of the steps and looked up at him, shading her eyes from the sun. “Do you remember my friend Jack,” she asked. “A big blond guy, early thirties, who used to live in the apartment they’re working on down there?” She pointed.
“Sure.”
“Well, do you know what’s happened to him?”
“Gone,” said the man, swilling his beer. “Moved out.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe three, four weeks.”
“Do you happen to know where he went? Did you talk to him?”
“I say to him, ‘You moving out?’ And he say to me, ‘I’m leaving the city.’ ”
“Leaving the city?” Freya was st
unned. “But why? Where?”
The old man gave her a baleful look. “What am I, psychic? People come. People go. That’s New York.”
Freya thanked him politely, and walked on. She told herself that it was silly to feel unsettled. It was of no interest to her where Jack had gone. Jack was a bastard. She could never forgive him. She never wanted to see him again, and had told him so.
Never. The word seemed to reverberate in her chest. She saw the long months stretching ahead—July, August, September . . . Surely he’d come back in September, to start his teaching courses.
But what if he didn’t? What if she had driven him away for good? Freya realized that she couldn’t even remember the name of his home town. Oakville? Oakland?
Oh, what did it matter? She stepped straight off the curb at Tenth Avenue and almost collided with a bicyclist, who swerved wildly and gave her the finger. Freya wondered what Jack had done with Rosinante. Where are you? she shouted angrily in her head. But there was no answer.