I looked up at Mrs. Williams’ kitchen window and was surprised to see that it was the only window looking out at the courtyard. The other apartments had once had windows, but they had been filled in with a different color brick, like eyes shut tight. With the exception of Mrs. Williams’ kitchen window, Arthur Weeman had complete privacy.
The playground was a square. On one side of its perimeter was Arthur Weeman’s double-wide town house. Facing it on the playground’s other side was the back of Mrs. Williams’ building. To his right, if you were looking out his window, was a brick wall completely blocking the street from view, along with another brick wall abutting his town house, and to the left was the back of the Gardener School.
With the glove in my pocket, I left as fast as I could, carefully stepping in each of Arthur’s footprints.
Out on the street, I examined the glove. It was brown leather, cashmere lined, with a Gucci label. I just hadn’t imagined him as a Gucci type. I wondered if the Prince had scrutinized the slipper. Had it surprised him, the whorishness of it? For the first time I wondered if admiring from afar was better. It was so ordinary. His gloves should have been stitched by magic elves in a far-off land. And I felt so ordinary holding it, like a regular fan. Thalia was so much more than that. She wasn’t the type to run around collecting his used cups and cigarette ashes, although there was his handkerchief, but that had been a gift. In fact I felt even lower than a fan, as if getting his glove had demoted Thalia from muse to stalker.
What other brands did he wear, I wondered, Prada, Church’s, Fruit of the Loom? I finally slid the glove on and walked for several blocks hand in hand with Arthur Weeman.
I knew a crazy woman named Ivette once who thought she was destined to be with Bob Dylan. She sold her co-op and moved to Italy so she could be there for his birthday concert, where she was sure she would meet him and he would fall in love with her. Having this glove made me as crazy as she was.
My cell phone rang and I instantly felt better. It was Isaac telling me he’d just gotten a great shot of some rap star and he wanted to go to the movies to celebrate. I thought what a good team we made—the crazy fan and the paparazzo. Only Isaac would understand this glove in my pocket, but I wouldn’t show it to him. Ivy Vohl was right, he was perfect for me. I told him I’d meet him at the theater on Twelfth Street and Second Avenue.
“I can’t wait to see you,” he said.
I got downtown a few minutes early, so I decided, with much trepidation, to go to the Strand for a while despite how bad it might make me feel.
Going into any bookstore was always a traumatic experience—all those books—but going into the Strand was worse. The Strand was a famous bookstore that sold used books, and even worse, remaindered books. Books in big bins and books shunted out onto the street on shelves marked forty-eight cents.
Inside, old out-of-print books sweated it out on library stacks. I was sure I could hear the sounds of writers crying. Every time I cracked open a book there, I felt its author’s tears wet my boots. I heard screams and moans, typewriter keys and quills scratching parchment. Lifetimes of wasted work, bad reviews, blurbs not gotten, royalties not earned, insults, humiliation, and poverty filled the dusty stifling air. Basically it was a poor author’s mausoleum, a potter’s field, and each book was a tiny, insignificant headstone.
“I’m looking for Proust,” I said, when I got to the information desk. I thought maybe Mrs. Williams would enjoy to hear a small passage every night. Being around so many old people had made me think a little bit about dying, and I’d never read Proust.
“I don’t know what that is.”
This was the kind of help you always got at the Strand.
“Marcel Proust. Remembrance of Things Past,” I said.
“Maybe you’ll find her in fiction.”
The Strand was the great equalizer. The grim reaper. Its bell tolled for us all.
Only at the Strand could you find Proust in fiction on the shelf next to James Patterson, author of Four Blind Mice. I wandered around back there for a while determined not to look for my own book.
There was nothing worse than finding a copy of your own book at the Strand, except for finding an autographed copy of your own book. Especially if it was inscribed with heartfelt words to someone you thought would cherish your book forever, not sell it to the Strand. This had happened to me once with a book I inscribed for my friend Bernadette before she moved to L.A. And what made it worse was that I didn’t even find it—Derek Hassler found it and bought it, and called me up laughing hysterically because it said: To Bernadette, the best friend a girl could ever dream of having in this world. All my love and thanks, Rebekah Kettle.
I started to get dangerously close to the K’s, and one masochistic moment later, I found myself face-to-face with my own book. A first edition hardcover for $2.99. I opened it cautiously and right there on the title page, optimistically round and robust, was my John Hancock.
To My Dad, with all my love. Your daughter, Rebekah Kettle.
To My Dad.
To Dad. It was the book I had given my father. I even remembered ripping open the envelope from my publisher that held the first copy and rushing to his office to give it to him. The very first copy of my book. It was my father’s book. My own father’s book. My own father had sold my book to the Strand for a quarter.
The sound of authors moaning and weeping sounded louder and louder in my ears. Laura Ingalls Wilder was wailing. She couldn’t imagine Pa bringing her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, to the mercantile and selling it to Mrs. Oleson for the price of a peppermint stick.
This was the end of me and my father. I was through. With a new sort of determination I walked to the front of the store like I was in a funeral procession and paid for my sad purchases.
I handed the guy behind the cash register my credit card.
Why had my father discarded my book? I wondered. Had he hated it that much? Why was he so angry at me, that he couldn’t even stand to keep my book on his bookshelf next to his precious Stephen Kings? I had no idea just how much my use of the first person had infuriated him.
The guy grabbed a yellow-and-red Strand plastic bag and lowered the Proust into it. Then he picked up my book and did a cartoonish double take at my credit card. “You wrote this?” he asked with a voice filled with disdain.
I nodded modestly.
“You have to buy your own used book?” he practically screamed.
I autographed my credit card slip and left as fast as I could. When I hit the street I started to cry. I shook with anger. I didn’t know what I had done to make him reject me like this. My ex-shrink was right, it was no wonder I was obsessed with Arthur Weeman. There was no one in this world who needed a father figure more than I did. But to throw away my novel like that. It was the same as throwing me away.
I wrote a letter, standing outside the movie theater.
December 16
Dear Awful Writer,
I am in the Gardener School Playground at this moment, sitting on the freazing cold concrete bench, writing to you. In eight days, two hours and forty-five minutes it will be Christmas vacation. I will miss you. I see you looking down at us sometimes. Do you know which one I am? Do you see me looking back at you? Why do you watch us, Arthur? It makes me happy to see you in your window, but I like to think you have discovered me especially. Anyway, I want you to keep watching me, Awful Writer, and whatever Thalia wants Thalia gets!!! I would never tell anyone about my letters to you because they are private.
Today I found a man’s brown leather Gucci glove in the playground. I know there is no way that it is yours but I put it in my uniform jacket pocket and I imagined it was yours. I will keep it always.
Your beloved,
Thalia
I put the letter in my bag just as Isaac walked up to me. Soon, I thought, we’d be buying popcorn and choosing seats. Soon, I thought, we’d be sitting next to each other, sunk down in our seats, heads touching. Soon, I tho
ught, we’d be at the movies. Thank God for the movies.
On Monday I marched into my father’s office, interrupting him on the phone. “I’ve got Mrs. Katz out there,” I said. She’d been trying to hit me up for Seconals. “She thinks she has pneumonia.”
"I’m going to have to X-ray her then,” my father mumbled. He looked up. “Does she have a cough?”
"Yes.”
“Is it productive?”
“In what way?”
“Is it productive? Does it produce phlegm?” My father wanted everything, even your cough, to be productive.
“I got you a present,” I said, shoving the Strand bag at him.
“Oh, thank you, I love that place,” my father said, looking at the Strand bag I was holding.
“I know,” I said.
“I have a set of first-edition Agatha Christies that I got there,” he said.
“I know, I bought them for you,” I said.
“Oh, right.” He stared into space for a minute, trying to remember, and then seemed to give up. “Agatha,” he said. “We had that dog we named Agatha Christie. Ceased of distemper. I diagnosed her.”
I looked at him as if he were crazy. I was getting angry. “We never had a dog,” I said, with my voice raised. “I wasn’t allowed to have a dog!”
“What?”
“There was no dog named Agatha Christie.”
He sat up in his chair and shook his head. “Oh, right. Sorry, I meant when I was a boy,” he said. “In Philly. I think I confused you with my sister.”
“You diagnosed your dog’s disease when you were a kid?” I said.
“Never mind. I don’t know what I’m saying,” he said. “I was confusing two things.”
“What two things?” I asked.
“What is this, the third degree? Leave me alone, will ya?”
"I just wanted to know why I found this in the Strand,” I said, handing him his copy of my book.
“This is your book,” he said.
“It’s the book I inscribed to you.”
He frowned, causing his forehead to look like freshly raked sand. He opened the book to the title page and read the inscription.
“I don’t understand,” he said. He went to his bookshelf that lined a whole wall of his office and put his fingers in a space on the shelf between The Botany of Desire and Seabiscuit. It was eye level and centered. I had never remembered the book being in his office, but there was a space there. “It was right here. Someone must have taken it.”
“No one’s ever in your office when you’re not here,” I said.
“Not necessarily true. I may have lent it to someone. Yes, I did.”
“You lent it to someone? Who?” I wondered why he had the ability to make me feel like I was the crazy one. Had a patient stolen it or had he lent it to someone?
“It’s not important. You got it back. There, all set,” my father said.
He slid it into the empty space on the bookshelf.
“It is important,” I said. And then I did a very unprofessional thing for a medical office assistant. I started to cry like a little girl, complete with chin shake. I just sat in the patient chair crying. I cried for myself and for him and for my book.
He made a sad “oh” sound.
“You never saved anything of mine,” I whimpered.
“That’s not true.” He sounded angry. “I saved all your letters.” He was practically yelling.
“What letters?”
He went to a filing cabinet in the corner and handed me a file marked REBEKAH—LETTERS in Irmabelle’s neat handwriting.
I wiped my eyes with my sleeves and opened the file. There were two letters. The first one was on beautiful harlequin ballerina stationery.
Dear Dad,
Just a note to tell you I just came from my audition and it went quite well. I mite get the lead part of Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. I absolutely adore French Woods. It is the best theatre camp on Earth. I have so many friends and one is a boy named Nedim Seban from Istambul, Turkey. He pronounces “Friends” like “Free-onds.” There is also a boy named Kenny who does magic and I told him about your aces trick and he wants to meet you on visiting day. I think I have an idea for a novel and I am going to try to write it between the time I get home from camp and school starts. It’s about a girl who is hairy. I can’t even believe I wrote the word school. I don’t even want to think about that again. I had to go to the infirmiry because I am highly allergic to mosquitoe bights. By the way things in the canteen are more expensive then you said they would be and even though I am only having one icecream sandwich and one slushpuppy a day I am already almost out of money so please send more. I don’t think that is spending to much. I hope you have a lot of sick and dying patients this month because I need a lot more icecream sandwiches!!! I am not enjoying reading The Brother’s Karamazov AT ALL. It’s not very good AT ALL. I was heartbroken to discover that we don’t have a library here. Please send me something else to read. I feal like either reading the whole Little House series again or The Hobbit. One of the councelors is reading The Valley of the Dolls and that looks quite interesting. The girls in my bunk had a meeting to kick me out because I am so sloppy. I think their jealous because I’m probably going to get to be Adelaide. But a girl named Jayne (pronounced like “Jay-knee”) said she would show me how to organize my things on the shelves. She is very tall and bossy, but nice.
Well, I have to go shave my legs now . . .
Love, your daughter, Rebekah
The second letter in my father’s file had been typed on onionskin paper and it wasn’t a letter I had written. It was a letter written to me.
Dear Rebekah,
Thank you for your detailed letter of November 1. I think you will be quite pleased with what I brought for you this year. In addition to what you requested, Mrs. Claus and I packed something very special for you. I feel confident you will find that it opens up a world of mystery. Speaking of mystery, I also brought the Nancy Drews you wanted and a book I think you will find quite compelling called Abe Lincoln Grows Up. It was one of my favorites when I was a boy.
Thank you also for the milk and Ibruprofin. One certainly enjoys a change from all those cookies and you were right, I did have a headache. You were a very good girl and I hope you enjoy all your presents. Keep up the good work!
XXX
Santa
“See?” my father said. “I saved the letters you sent me from camp.”
“I wrote you a lot of letters at camp. You only saved one. The second letter is from Santa Claus.”
He took it from me and read it.
“I wonder what gift it was that would open a whole world of mystery,” my father said, smiling, delighted with the Santa letter he had written. “Oh, I remember, it was a microscope.”
“It was the microscope you stole from the hospital,” I said, as crushed as if I was right then receiving it again. “And my stocking was stuffed with boxes of slides.”
“Ah yes, that was a very powerful microscope. And I didn’t steal it. Mandlebaum gave me permission to take it. This is a nice letter. You loved that microscope. I remember that evening we looked at skin and blood cells together.”
I wished I hadn’t started all of this. I felt so sad for that girl. That girl who wrote the letter to her father, covered in calamine lotion and struggling to read The Brothers Karamazov when everyone else was enjoying Wifey.
At least I had gotten the part of Adelaide. At least I had that. I had heard that Nedim Seban had gone on to be a big television star in Turkey, but at least I had played Adelaide and only messed up twice.
If only I had written that novel about the hairy girl. I was sure it would have been a triumph. If I could read that novel now, The Hairy Girl by Rebekah Kettle, I was sure it would give me back what I had lost. My father would have loved that book. It would have saved us.
But I never wrote it. I read by the lake but never once went in, and wore white satin shoes with florettes on them all
summer for some reason. She never wrote it but maybe I still could.
And I thought of myself, the girl I was then, waking up Christmas morning and getting that business letter from Santa Claus. A father and daughter extracting skin and blood from each other’s fingers made for strange blood-brothers. An odd Christmas ritual in the Jewish home of the Kettles. A letter written to me that he kept in a slim file of letters from me. The evidence had been misplaced.
“You wrote wonderful letters,” my father said. “I always knew you would be a writer. When you were a child, you never stopped reading. You and I used to spend whole days reading together! I was so connected to you. To your mind. Your letters were the most important thing in the world to me. I made Humberto buzz me as soon as the mail was in just in case there was a letter from you. I never felt happier or more connected to anyone in my life than you when you were a child. Maybe I’ve made some mistakes with you but I don’t know how you turned out so uptight. I never realized quite how uptight you were until you started working here.”
My whole body clenched up with rage. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was like he was confusing me with someone else and didn’t know it was me he was talking to.
Once I had watched him make a chicken. His body moved in tense, jolty motions around the kitchen. He made three movements when one would have been sufficient. I realized he made everything more difficult than it had to be. A production. After fifteen minutes of watching him get the chicken ready for roasting, I’d had to take a Vicodin. The man in the kitchen doing the crazy chicken-roasting dance was the uptight one. Not me.
I didn’t know how to unravel the mystery of my father. Maybe that was why he read so many mystery novels, to try to solve the mystery of me. I was looking right at him but I didn’t know what I was seeing. I was Narcissus looking at myself in a cup of urine.
I suddenly wished I could X-ray him. Take a good look at his spine. I had the urge to grab the stethoscope from around his neck and listen for a heartbeat. To dig up my old microscope and see those skin cells again. I wanted an MRI of his brain to clip up on the lightboard next to the one of mine. See if there were any cloudy white areas or suspicious-looking spots.
Little Stalker Page 18