When Nancy had attacked Gillian, he’d sprung to her defense, but he never even got close to her. Jerry and their friends circled around her, and Adam’s protective move was ignored. It was so unlike Nancy to flip out that way, and Adam had no idea what she might be so furious about. He had been too far away to hear most of what was said. All he’d caught was Nancy saying something about her father, but he couldn’t imagine what that had to do with Gillian.
Adam had bought a copy of Restitution at the reading, but he postponed looking at it for two days. His curiosity was intense, but he had a gut feeling that there was something in the book that he would prefer not knowing. And when he did read the novel, breathlessly, first with shock, then, in spite of it, with admiration and jealousy, he knew what everyone in the Leopardi Circle was calling him about. He had been absorbed by his hurt that Gillian had not confided in him, but now, without her telling him, he understood why she hadn’t. He forgave her for the hurt he’d felt, and all he wanted to do now was protect her. They’d come down hard on her, everyone in the group. They’d side with Nancy.
And the worst thing was that he sided with Nancy, too. Not just because he was also a novelist, and could so easily imagine how she felt, but because what Gillian had done wasn’t quite right. If it was anyone else but Gillian, he would have rallied to Nancy’s side. But it was Gillian. And he couldn’t reject her because of it. Strangely, it only intensified his feelings for her. Her flaw made her more vulnerable, and stoked Adam’s devotion. She’d need him now, especially as the forces of the Leopardi Circle were marshaled against her.
KIM WORKED ON SATURDAYS at a pet store in the strip mall. They didn’t sell puppies there—the owner was against puppy mills that supplied them—just smaller animals, but the sidewalk in front had a row of doghouses, wooden, with shingle roofs, in four, graduated sizes. The store was deep and narrow, and although Adam put his face to the glass window to look in, he couldn’t see Kim. She wasn’t at the register when he entered, just a young man with a face so pimpled Adam wanted to look away. Inside it was hot and smelled of rodents and amphibians. In the high ceiling area above the fluorescent light fixtures, sparrows flew; below them, flocks of colorful parakeets chattered, imprisoned in cages.
Adam made his way down an aisle towards the back of the store. The dog toys looked like children’s toys, stuffed animals and rubber creatures with silly faces. Along the wall were tanks with gerbils and snakes and lizards, on the other wall, tanks overfilled with fish. A fat girl in a red apron looked up from a handful of studded dog collars she was pricing on a rack.
“Something I can help you with?” she asked.
“No thanks,” said Adam. He walked deeper into the store.
Kim was in the far corner helping two customers, a boy and his mother. The boy’s hair stuck up stiff as a hedgehog’s. Kim had on the red store apron, and she looked as if she could be helping out in Santa’s workshop. She did not notice Adam, and he stepped back into the aisle, watching her, unseen. She was leaning down over a tank to scoop crickets up and put them in a plastic bag she had filled with air. Her glowing hair, silver blond under the fluorescent light, fell forward, and because her hands were both full, she had to shake it back over her shoulders.
“Here you are,” she said to the boy.
The boy held up his balloon of crickets. “Are these the small ones?” he asked. “They look pretty big to me.”
“Yes, they’re the small ones,” said Kim. “The big ones are over here. Take a look.” She squatted down by another tank and tapped on the glass. The boy squatted behind her.
“Those are really big,” he said. “My snake’s kind of little. I think he’d be scared by them.”
“We certainly don’t want to scare the snake,” said the boy’s mother. She smiled at Kim. “I’m actually afraid of snakes, and now I have one living in my house. The things we do for our children! You’ll see, someday, when you’re a mother.”
“How much are these?” the boy asked, holding up his bag of crickets.
“They’re a dollar twenty-five for a dozen. I think there are a few more in there than twelve, but tell them up front you’ve got a dozen.”
“Thank you,” said the mother, and she followed her son towards the registers in the front of the store.
“Adam!” cried Kim happily, noticing him now. Her face was so round—a moon face—so suffused with smile, that he took a step back from her. She ran towards him but stopped just short of embracing him when she realized his arms were at his sides.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I just needed to talk to you about something.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
She scowled a little. “Aren’t we going to be doing something tonight? It couldn’t wait till then?”
“Well, that’s it, I mean, tonight’s not really going to work for me.”
Kim tilted her head, a question. Her perfect white teeth were small, like his mother’s cultured pearls.
“You think you could take a break and come outside so we could talk?”
“Sure,” said Kim.
The woman who had been hanging up dog collars was at the front of the store now, at the second register.
“I need to take a few minutes, Shirley,” said Kim. “Could you cover for me?”
“Sure,” said Shirley. She was clearly bursting to ask who Adam was, eager to be introduced. She watched them shamelessly as they left the store.
Outside the mall it was cold, and Kim rubbed her shoulders. She had on only a short-sleeved blouse under her apron. Another time Adam would have taken his denim jacket off and put it around her.
“So what’s the matter?” asked Kim.
“I’m just not up for this anymore,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Kim.
“I mean I’m just not in a position to be going out with you right now.”
“Are you talking about tonight?” asked Kim. “Or are you talking about . . . about always?”
“I guess I’m talking about— Well, not just tonight,” said Adam.
“What are you saying, Adam? I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Kim.
“I’ve gotta take a break from things,” said Adam. “I’ve got to stop seeing you.”
“But why?” asked Kim.
“I don’t know,” said Adam.
“There’s got to be a reason,” said Kim. “You can’t just do this and not have there be a reason. There’s got to be a reason.” As if by insisting, she could make it not true.
Adam looked around him. The store next to the pet food store was called Mattress King, and in the window was a deeply quilted box spring and mattress in ivory-colored satin, designed for a sultan. It looked bare, stripped of its sheets, like someone in underwear.
“I’m in love with someone else.”
Kim’s smooth face was broken up by lines now, like a globe that had been smashed.
“Who?” she asked after a while, her voice a child’s.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Adam.
“Who?” Kim asked, louder this time.
“I can’t say,” said Adam. “I’m really sorry, Kim,” he continued. The word sorry seemed so inane, but he didn’t know what else to say. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
Kim didn’t say anything, she just kept looking at him.
“Are you going to be all right?” asked Adam.
But Kim didn’t answer. She just stood there, hugging herself more tightly, her shoulders hunched around her pale neck.
“You better be going back in,” said Adam. “It’s too cold for you to be standing out here.” He didn’t want to leave Kim standing there on the concrete in front of the lineup of doghouses, but he felt desperate to get away. “Please,” he said, “go on inside, you’re going to freeze out here.”
There were two doors to the pet store—one marked “in,” one “out.” He pushed the “in” doo
r open and held it for Kim. She stepped into the store, and he followed behind her, but he was careful not to touch her.
She turned to him. “Adam?” she asked, but he shook his head and backed out of the other door.
ON THE WAY TO GILLIAN’S HOUSE, the gas tank warning light flashed orange on Adam’s dashboard. There was no way he would stop for gas, though, now. He couldn’t even imagine “afterwards, on the way home, I’ll stop to get gas,” because he could not imagine “afterwards,” could not imagine “on the way home.” His mind was filled with the image of Gillian’s house. He saw it exactly as he had seen it that one time, months before, when he had taken Kim to the Christmas party. He wasn’t picturing Gillian, just her house, his destination. He knew the way there exactly, because he had driven to her house many times before—driven past the entrance to her long driveway, the number, not the name, on the mailbox, the house not visible from the road.
It had been winter when he had last driven up Gillian’s driveway. Now, three seasons later, the maples had begun dropping leaves, the oak leaves were brown but firm. The gravel on the driveway was thin in places—almost just a dirt road—but deep closer to the house. Adam was aware of the noise his tires made in the deeper gravel. There were no other cars in the driveway, and the garage doors were closed so he could not tell who might be at home. For a moment, he felt hesitant, but once he turned off the engine and stepped out of the car, he was swathed once again in his purpose, in the immovable clarity of it.
He was not surprised when Gillian finally answered the door. But she was clearly surprised to see him.
“Adam?” she asked.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said.
She looked puzzled. “Because of what?”
“I had to talk to Kim first. I had to end things with her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Gillian.
“Don’t you think we should be inside?” asked Adam.
“I don’t like to be disturbed at home when I’m working,” said Gillian, “but since you’ve obviously driven all the way out here to tell me something, I suppose you should come in and sit down for a moment.” She led the way through the kitchen to the dining area that looked out across the lawn, and sat on a Breuer chair at the glass table, nodding at another chair for Adam. “It’s something important, I hope.”
The kitchen looked austere, as if no one had ever cooked a meal there. The glass table was perfectly clear, as if it had never borne even a crumb of food.
Adam sloughed his jacket off so it fell over the chair back. The glass table was so cold to his touch that he pulled his hand back to his knee.
“I ended things with Kim,” he said. “I told her I couldn’t see her anymore.”
Gillian waited as if she expected him to say something additional. “What does that have to do with me?” she asked.
Adam leaned towards her, his arm on the glass table. “Everything,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” said Gillian, “but I’m not following you.”
“When I read Restitution, when I saw what you’d done, I realized why everyone in the group was going crazy. I wanted to be here for you, entirely. And I couldn’t do that if I was, in any way, still involved with Kim.”
“What do you mean by what I’d done?” asked Gillian. Her voice was sharp.
“What you’d done to Nancy,” said Adam. “They’re all up in arms about it. But I’m with you. I’m with you all the way.”
“What have I done to Nancy?” asked Gillian.
Adam pulled back a little. For the first time he actually took a breath. “The book,” he said. “Her book.”
“What about her book?” asked Gillian.
“That first chapter that you took from her.”
“Took from her? Is that what you think?”
“I mean, I know what you were doing, artistically, that is. But naturally Nancy didn’t, I mean—”
“Nancy’s novel was self-indulgent and myopic and unpublishable. I gave Nancy the entire plot of my novel, but she refused it, and she refused all my advice about how to shape hers into something publishable. I didn’t take her first chapter. I used what I remembered of it, and brought it to a new place. Are you telling me you think there’s anything wrong with that?”
Adam closed his eyes for a second and ran his tongue over his bottom lip.
“I’m not judging you,” he said softly. “They’ve judged you, and they’re all up in arms. But I love you, Gillian. It doesn’t matter what you do. That’s how I knew that it wasn’t just some casual infatuation thing I felt but something with”—Adam held his hands out, as if holding an invisible loaf of bread—“with substance,” he said, “with longevity. And I realized as long as I was involved with Kim—involved with anyone else—you’d never take me seriously.”
“You expect me to take you seriously?” asked Gillian.
Adam couldn’t tell from her tone exactly what she meant. He felt he was blundering but didn’t know how to rescue the situation.
“I thought you might need me now,” said Adam. “To stand up for you.”
“Stand up for me?” cried Gillian. “Am I on trial now?”
“Not exactly,” said Adam. Everything was going so wrong, he didn’t know how to save it, any of it.
“You judgmental little prick,” said Gillian.
Adam blinked. “I love you,” he said. It was the only thing he was clear about. Nothing else quite made sense.
“Get out of here,” said Gillian, and she stood up.
Adam looked up at her. “I love you,” he said again, his voice close to a whimper.
“You are such a bore,” said Gillian. “I was a fool to ever be nice to you.”
Adam stood up slowly. He thought he might puke. He leaned on the glass table. Through the clear surface he saw the shiny chrome base of the table and Gillian’s bony toes, two ridges of blue veins across the top of her foot.
There was no way any of this could be undone. Even if she hadn’t meant what she said, had said it only in a moment of anger. But she had meant it. He was pretty sure of that.
Nancy
THE CLUES THAT NANCY GOT FROM VIRGINIA WERE SIMPLY these: a college literary magazine, Ailanthus, and a Russian exchange student. Virginia didn’t say where she got her information from, and Nancy, sensing that Virginia preferred to keep her source secret, did not ask. But Nancy guessed that it was Bernard. She had no idea that he would never have provided the information if Virginia hadn’t wrested it from him. She wondered if the clues were slender because it was all Bernard had been able to come up with or if, in his perverse way, he didn’t want to make it too easy for her.
When Adam called to offer his assistance, Nancy was surprised and a little suspicious. He’d gone to Virginia first, he said, and she had explained what Nancy was trying to do.
“I don’t really need your help,” Nancy said. “It’s just a matter of me tracking down that publication—I’m assuming it’s a literary magazine at Gillian’s college—then hunting for a Russian-sounding name.”
“But once you find it, you’ll need someone like me,” said Adam. “I know all of Gillian’s poetry. I’ll be able to spot anything familiar.”
This was true. Nancy had been daunted by the size of Gillian’s new collection, which included not just a section of new poems but selections from her six previous ones.
“I thought he was in love with Gillian,” Oates said when Nancy told him Adam wanted to join her on her trip to Bolton College.
“He was—at least he said he was—but I guess he isn’t anymore.”
“It’s hard to love a plagiarist,” said Oates.
“No,” said Nancy. “That’s not true. People love plagiarists in spite of the fact that they are plagiarists.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know,” said Nancy. “But something’s changed. Adam’s all fired up about this. He said he wanted to ‘bring her down.’ ”
“
Whoa!” said Oates. “In that case, I’d say it was a lovers’ quarrel.”
“I don’t think they were lovers,” said Nancy. “I can’t imagine that Gillian would sleep with anyone as insignificant as Adam.”
“He’s young, he’s handsome.”
Nancy shook her head. “No. Gillian is too calculating to go simply for youth and looks. I’m sure it was all unrequited love on Adam’s part.”
“So why would he turn against her now?”
“Because of what she did.”
“But you yourself said people love plagiarists in spite of what they do. So it must be a case of him finally wanting his revenge.”
“Revenge?” asked Nancy. She thought for a moment. “Is that what I’m doing, Oates, seeking my revenge?”
“No, not revenge,” said Oates. “What you’re seeking, to use your champion Chris’s word, is justice.”
“Thank you,” said Nancy.
“Wait a second, sweetheart,” said Oates, and he caught her by the arm. “What’s so wrong with revenge?”
“It’s just not who I am,” said Nancy.
AS THEY STARTED OUT ON THE CAR TRIP, Nancy felt a rush of excitement. It was the thrill of the hunt, the exhilaration she always felt when she was tracking down something for her newsletter, when she went after any scrap of information. But maybe there was something more now. Maybe I am seeking revenge, she thought, and it upset her to realize this about herself. Is this what I’m becoming? she wondered. Is this what Gillian’s turning me into?
Adam had wanted to drive, but Nancy was too wound up to be a passenger. She gave Adam the AAA map and asked him to navigate. Adam threw his briefcase on the backseat of the car. He’d brought several of Gillian’s poetry collections along for reference. As they drove, he seemed no more relaxed than she. He chewed on his cuticle the way a girl would.
The Writing Circle Page 25