“You look,” she said.
She watched him read through the poems. The paper snapped as he turned the pages. Suddenly he paused. His head didn’t move; his fingers froze. “Bingo!” he cried.
He tilted the page to show Nancy. His finger pointed to the spot. “Translucence is not transcendence,” he read aloud. “They come at different times.” He shut his eyes and recited: “Translucence, not transcendence. Nor time allows, nor years.” He opened his eyes. “Gillian’s poem goes off in a different way,” he said. Then he added, sadly, “It’s one of her best poems.”
BEFORE THEY LEFT FOR THE DRIVE BACK, Nancy went down the hall to use the bathroom. The floor was covered with black and white octagonal tiles, an optical illusion; as she moved her head, it was a white floor with black, or a black floor with white. The bathroom was all hard surfaces, and sounds were magnified: the Niagara-sized flush, the metal stall door swinging back into place, the pressing of the plunger of the soap dispenser on the wall.
The hot water felt good on Nancy’s hands. She splashed water on her face and blotted it with a paper towel. Her face, in the mirror over the sink, looked like that of a woman who’d been up all night. She started to take out her makeup, but decided she didn’t really care enough. It really didn’t matter what she looked like, it didn’t matter at all. She stepped out into the hallway, the bathroom door closing slowly behind her. Gillian had walked down this hallway when she’d been a student here. She’d sat in these classrooms, wandered into the lounge.
“I’ve got you,” Nancy wanted to crow at her—through time. “I’ve got you at last!”
NANCY WAS SO TIRED she considered asking Adam if he wanted to drive back, but he was so keyed up she was afraid he would suddenly collapse. He chose a radio station that had rock music she would never listen to on her own and hummed along, poorly, out of tune, tapping a beat on the armrest.
When they were getting close to his house, Nancy turned off the radio.
“You know, Adam,” she began, “we do need to be a little realistic here. A few words—that’s all we really have—it might not be enough.”
“It’s not just those few words,” said Adam. “We’ve got something more.”
“But there was only that one poem.”
“Yes, but there are about fifty in Anya Kuznetsov’s thesis.”
“Her thesis?” asked Nancy.
“When you were in the bathroom, I checked out those bound theses in the bookcase. I found hers and glanced through it. I spotted some other stuff. I have it, right here, with those copies of Ailanthus,” said Adam, and he patted his briefcase on the floor between his feet.
“You took it?” asked Nancy. “You just took it from the shelf?”
“Don’t worry,” said Adam. “You have nothing more to do with this now. I’m delivering all this to Chris myself.”
Gillian
CHRIS HAD HIS FRIEND, BUT GILLIAN HAD HER FRIEND, TOO. He wasn’t able to rescue the prize for her, but he did leak to her what had happened. The Pulitzer Committee saw her as a potential liability—those few echoes of lines from the poems of another student many years before were insignificant in themselves, but everyone was nervous there might be something more. A Pulitzer Prize winner was high-profile, a choice target for the jealous and resentful. They’d go after those skeletons, they’d deconstruct the closet itself.
Gillian was upstairs at her desk when the call came. She had been expecting very different news. She was so astonished she was barely able to respond, to protest. She sat for a moment, running the words over again in her head, trying to find some opening in them, some contradiction that would render them untrue, but the fact they conveyed was irrefutable. Her wrists felt cold against the edge of the desk, and the cold spread upwards through her arms, to her shoulders. She reached for the sweater that was usually slung over the back of her desk chair, but it wasn’t there.
She got up and walked to the door. Jerry was downstairs in the kitchen. When she opened the door to call out to him to come up to her, she heard him talking to Paul. She hadn’t realized Paul was home. She closed the door and looked out the window at the darkening meadow. A blue jay coasted across the open expanse, seeking refuge in the woods beyond.
Anya Kuznetsov. She had not thought of the name for so many years, had pushed it away, cleaned her mind of it. She worked to remember what Anya had looked like. Lank, blond hair tucked behind her ears. Big ears, and a narrow face. She’d never read Anya’s poems—she saw no point in reading student magazines, pretentious, shallow stuff—but she had once heard her read them. It was at the department’s poetry competition, which Gillian had entered only because there was a hundred-dollar prize. That was a lot of money for her then, and when she won she’d used it to buy course books and one frivolous luxury, an Indian silk scarf, lapis blue, with a pattern of swirls and leaves in red and violet and green. It was long enough to circle her neck and flutter to her waist. She’d bought it in Harvard Square when she was visiting a boyfriend there. The shop smelled of incense and teak and brass. The scarf had been the most exotic thing she had owned, proof of a world she was determined to visit someday, far beyond the stark New England landscape. She hadn’t worn it for years—if she wore a scarf at all it was a solid black or the green-blue-grey of her eyes—but she was fairly sure she still had it. She found it in a drawer, under the pile of perfectly folded scarves, and pulled it out. The silk in her hand felt thin and light, almost not there at all.
It was two years later when her thesis advisor, Professor Jacobson, accused her of copying Anya’s poems. But she hadn’t copied them. Some phrases from them had gotten caught in her unconscious—the way the eelgrass at the edge of the bay catches the detritus of the rising tide—and ended up in the poems in her senior thesis. She had been reading so much poetry then, scooping it up like someone starved for words. First, Gerard Manley Hopkins. Then Eliot, Pound, and Wallace Stevens. And, finally, Yeats. She had memorized most of his poems, and would recite them to herself for an hour without pause. She had learned from all these poets: their rhythms, their cadences, their density. But she had never copied them.
Towards the end of the semester, after she turned in the final copy of her poetry manuscript, Professor Jacobson had invited her to meet him for lunch. She assumed they were celebrating the completion of her thesis. The honors committee was meeting the next week, and Professor Jacobson had hinted that she could expect to be awarded a summa.
They ate at the Dorset Hotel, in the restaurant behind the bar. During commencement weekend, the hotel would be packed, even though it lacked the amenities of the two newer hotels closer to campus, but it was quiet now. Professor Jacobson’s house was far out in the country, and he sometimes rented a room at the Dorset, he told her, so he wouldn’t have to drive home when he worked late on campus.
They sat in a curved booth in the back of the restaurant. At dinnertime the table would be covered with a tablecloth, but now it was a half circle of black Formica, shiny as patent leather. Even so, it had seemed like elegant dining to her. The silverware came rolled up in a white linen napkin. Gillian unrolled hers carefully; Professor Jacobson yanked at the corner of his napkin, his silverware clattering on the tabletop.
They had finished their lobster bisque and sandwiches, and were waiting for their blueberry cobbler when Professor Jacobson explained that the reason for this meeting was to discuss a problem that had arisen with her thesis. He told Gillian that a line in one of her poems had struck him as familiar, and he had finally hunted down the thesis of a student whom he had worked with two years before and compared the poems side by side. Gillian insisted she had never read Anya’s poetry, only heard it that one time, but he made it clear he didn’t believe her. When he showed Gillian Anya’s poem for proof, she was surprised but unapologetic. She had no reason to apologize, and would not have apologized even if she had done something wrong. She never apologized for anything. Professor Jacobson suggested she resubmit her thesis and remove the
poem in question. But she argued that her poem was a different poem entirely, and even Professor Jacobson had to admit it was better than the original.
THE ELEVATOR WAS small and creaky and gave a little bump when it landed on the fourth floor, jostling them closer together. He took her hand as he led her down the corridor, which turned the corner twice before they reached the door of his room.
It was the first time she had made love with someone who was this much older than she. Naked, under the covers, she had watched while he shed his shirt and took off his pants and his undershorts. He’d kept his eye on her while he massaged his penis back and forth. He pulled the blankets back off the bed and looked at her.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, “so beautiful.” Her skin had pebbled with cold, but he hadn’t noticed. He knelt beside her on the bed, and she rolled towards him as the mattress sloped under his weight. He touched her small, flat breasts. He parted her legs with his fingers, then parted her labia with his tongue. It was the first time anyone had sucked her there. She closed her eyes. She heard the sound of him ripping a condom wrapper with his teeth. She lifted her knees, and he lumbered on top of her. Her arms went around him, and she could feel the hair on his shoulders.
“I want you to come,” he told her, and she tried to keep herself from coming just because that was what he wanted. But she lost the power to do so. Her body shook loose on its own.
“Blanche, my princess,” he said. “My beautiful white princess.”
THE SCARF LAY ON HER DESK, a swath of vivid color across the plain wood surface. The label, held by a single blue thread, stared up at her. handwoven pure silk made in india. She crumpled the scarf and pushed it off the side of the desk, to the floor.
Nancy
NANCY COULD NOT FALL ASLEEP. BESIDE HER IN BED, OATES slept purposefully, inhaling slowly, as if his breath had a difficult journey along the corrugated roof of his mouth. She tried to think of images to occupy her mind, something benign, soporific, but she kept coming back to Gillian. She did not feel sorry for Gillian. Pity had always come so easily to her, and she was unnerved by its absence now.
She cuddled close to Oates and put her arm around him to hug him closer. She would not wake him, but she wished he would wake, and when he finally stirred, she kissed his upper arm. He rolled towards her, onto his back, and woke up.
“You still awake?” he asked her.
“I’ve been trying for hours,” she said, “but I can’t sleep.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t feel like myself,” she said. “I think I’ve lost my moral center.”
He blinked and rubbed his forehead. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Nearly two.” The lace on the neckline of Nancy’s flannel nightgown felt scratchy. She undid the tie and opened the buttons.
“Can’t this wait until morning?”
“I wish it could,” said Nancy.
Oates took in a generous mouthful of air and held it for a moment before letting it out. “I thought you’d be feeling great,” he said. “You finally accomplished what you hoped to do. You aren’t sorry you did it, are you?”
“No,” said Nancy. “And that’s just the point. I don’t like me this way.”
“For God’s sake, Nancy,” said Oates. He freed the pillow from under his head, gave it a shake, and rolled it in half before he let his head sink into it again. “Gillian plagiarized your book. She stole your father’s story and turned it upside down. If she loses the Pulitzer Prize, if her reputation is damaged, it’s exactly what she deserves. Isn’t it?”
“But she’s not being done in because of my novel, she’s being done in because of something else.”
“So it’s indirect justice,” said Oates. “Sometimes that’s the best we can do.”
Nancy heard the tone of exasperation in his voice. She didn’t want to aggravate him, but if she couldn’t explain to Oates, then there would be nobody she could explain to. Everything about them, their future, depended on this.
“Here’s what I realized,” said Nancy. “Gillian has an incredible memory. She absorbed my first chapter just hearing it that once and was able to reproduce it, months later, almost exactly. Maybe she didn’t deliberately copy Anya Kuznetsov’s poems but read them once and then unintentionally absorbed them.”
“So?” asked Oates.
“So, then she isn’t really guilty. And yet I don’t care, because I got what I wanted.”
“I don’t see the problem then,” said Oates.
“The problem is I don’t like the person I’ve become. I’m not good.”
Oates held Nancy by the shoulders now. “You are the craziest woman in the world,” he said. “You get yourself into these moral tangles. Stop worrying about being good all the time.”
She felt off balance, as if she were a boat in the sea and her cargo were words, shifting from side to side. She pressed her head against Oates’s chest to steady herself.
She worried about being good because that was what had mattered to her father. She had inherited a moral compass from him, and she had always worked to keep the jiggling needle pointed right. Without that, she was someone he wouldn’t respect.
“Gillian has turned me into this,” she said. “So she’s the one who has the final revenge.”
“Let her have her revenge then,” said Oates.
“Do you still love me?” asked Nancy. “Do you love me the way I am?”
Oates settled back down in bed and pulled her close to him. She wanted to hear the words, but she knew that he was done with talking, and had to accept, as an answer, the pressure of his arm across her hip. She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep.
Oates listened to her, he loved her, but he didn’t truly understand her. No one had ever really understood her, except her father. And she was the only one who had really understood her father—her mother hadn’t, his parents hadn’t. She’d explained her father in her novel, she’d set things right. But her novel would never be published.
But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the incontrovertible fact that her father was dead, and she’d never be able to talk to him again.
Paul
PAUL WAS DOWNLOADING MUSIC WHEN HIS FATHER KNOCKED on his door. Instinctively he slid the biology textbook he was supposed to be studying to the center of his desk as he called out, “Yeah?”
Jerry closed the door behind him when he came into the room, and this gesture made Paul sit up straight. Even with the door open, you could barely hear anything upstairs from here. A closed door guaranteed that.
“Can you manage here on your own for a few days?” Jerry asked.
“Sure. I guess,” said Paul. He knew that his father was worried about something because Jerry didn’t comment, as he usually did, on the disorder in the room, didn’t even seem to notice.
“Gillian wants to go out to Truro, and I don’t want her to be driving down there alone. I’m on duty at the hospital tonight,” Jerry said. “But I’ve persuaded her to wait until I can go with her tomorrow morning.”
“What’s going on?” asked Paul.
“She didn’t get the Pulitzer,” said Jerry. “She just heard.”
“So,” said Paul. “Lots of people don’t get the Pulitzer. What’s the big deal?”
“Paul!”
“Yeah, okay. I get it,” said Paul. “So it’s a big deal for her.” It was hard for him to sound suitably sorry. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Gillian to get that silly prize—she was always nicer to live with when she got what she wanted—but he liked the idea that expectations didn’t always pan out. Everyone had described her winning the prize as a sure thing. He was glad that things weren’t that predictable.
“I’ll need you to hold down the fort until I’m back late tonight,” said Jerry.
“Sure,” said Paul. “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t let anything disturb Gillian. Keep your earphones off so you can hear the phone. And if you find
out that she’s decided to head out to the Cape on her own, page me.”
“You want me to go up there and check up on her?” Paul asked.
“No,” said Jerry. “I don’t want you to bother her at all. Just get in touch with me if she tells you she’s leaving.”
“Okay,” said Paul. His father looked tired and old. He looked like a man who needed a good night’s sleep, not a doctor who was heading off to be on call for emergency appendectomies.
“Are you afraid she’s going to off herself?” asked Paul.
“God no!” said Jerry. “Whatever gave you an idea like that?”
Paul shrugged. “People kill themselves over major disappointments,” he said. “It happens all the time.”
“You don’t have to worry about Gillian,” said Jerry. Not that Paul was worried, it was Jerry who was obviously worried. But as Paul thought about it, Jerry was right. Gillian didn’t fit the profile of someone suicidal. He knew all about that from some website on depression.
Paul looked at his biology for a while, until he saw Jerry’s car head down the driveway, then he went upstairs to scrounge something for dinner. He heated a frozen pizza in the microwave and brought it downstairs to his room. He put his earphones on, but he kept the music low enough so he figured he could hear anything important. It was dark out now, and the windows, instead of offering a view of the sloping lawn down to the driveway, offered only a mirror image of his own room, and his own face. He went upstairs to get some ice cream for dessert. The freezer had been set too high, and the ice cream was so hard he couldn’t get it out with the scoop. Chubby Hubby was the flavor. He took the container of ice cream over to the glass table by the kitchen and used a spoon to shave off pieces, eating directly from the container.
The Writing Circle Page 27