by Dan Kolbet
No less than a dozen novels are currently sitting in various stages of completion in boxes in my bedroom closet. I wrote in those little blue notebooks and pulled out pages that were complete, thereby creating a mess of loose notebook pages to serve as the complete original draft of each potential novel. I have no intention whatsoever of showing her, or anyone else, anything I wrote. It wasn't good enough and showing it off wouldn't make me happy anyway. I'd seen enough rejection that my writing felt like a big vat of doubt. Every insecurity I had in myself was shown for all to see on the pages of my work. My singular success meant that everything I would ever do would be judged against it. My follow-ups weren't enough. They were embarrassing. I was embarrassed.
Maybe someday the spark would ignite again and I'll find some story burning to get out of me. But that hadn't happened in quite some time and I wasn't sure if it ever would again. The novels that I thought were good, were practically laughed out of my agent's office. There's more to that story—to Monique, my agent—but I'd rather not think about her. Not ever again.
Chapter 8
The next morning the smell of coffee wakes me up. This is a particularly strange feeling because I didn't set the coffee pot timer to go off. Over the years I had forgotten how the strong, surprise aroma would bring me out of my slumber. Kendall must have made it. As I roll over and swing my legs to the floor I notice the steaming cup on the night stand. Maybe I was still dreaming. Kendall actually brought me coffee? What parallel universe have I awakened in?
I sniff it, thinking that I would recognize the smell of poison, but knowing that I was just being overly dramatic. She and I weren't off to a great start—which was exemplified by the fact that I immediately thought she might be trying to kill me with morning coffee. Yes, overdramatic. I'm not used to being around people this much.
I put on a tee-shirt to go with the shorts I usually sleep in and shuffle out into the living room with my coffee. Gracie is still asleep in the loft. Kendall is nowhere to be found. I look out the window to her spot—my spot actually—on the deck overlooking the lake.
Her knees are curled up to her chest and she's covered with a blanket. She's holding her own cup of coffee and glancing down at her lap. I quietly walk out to the deck, careful not to make too much noise and wake Gracie. That's when I see what Kendall is doing—reading. Reading one of my unpublished manuscripts in a blue notebook.
"What the hell?" I blurt out. A bit louder than I intended.
I startle her and she drops the notebook. Loose pages scatter and slide to the deck like floating feathers. I drop to my knees and attempt to scoop them up before the wind can catch them and send them careening off the deck and into the forest below.
"Wow, be a dick, why don't you," Kendall says.
"I told you those were not ready to be read."
"Yeah, and that was enough to get me to want to read them even more. Have you never met a teenager before?"
"Those are private," I tell her, embarrassed.
"Your novel sold millions of copies—what's so private about that?"
"This isn't a finished book. It's just notebook pages."
"Looks pretty finished to me," she retorts. "And it was just getting good."
I stack up the last of the pages that fell to the deck and finally catch a look at the working title in the header of the notebook. It was called Your Loss, about a medical salesman who traveled 20 days out of the month. He never saw his kids and his wife leaves him. I wrote it a few years ago and hadn't thought about it even once since.
"It's not finished," I repeat. "Otherwise it would have been . . . wait, did you take this out of my closet?"
"Oh, come on? You know I did. That's where you left it and you told me where they were. It didn't come out here by itself."
Smartass.
"No, I didn't tell you where they were," I correct her. "Those are private."
"You keep saying that."
I attempt to stack the pages in order, but they are completely disorganized. I give up and simply straighten them before setting them on the bench next to where I sat down, my coffee long forgotten.
"You can ask me," she invites.
"Ask you what?"
"Ask me what I thought of it."
"I wasn't going to ask you that," I lie. "I was going to ask you why you brought me coffee."
"Because I read your book, you jerk, and I liked it."
I can't help but smile, yet I turn away so she can't see it. Validation in the most unlikely form. She smiled too. Had she said she liked Isolated Highway, I would have acknowledged the words and moved on. I'd heard that a thousand times. But not about this never-before-seen work. It felt good. I handed her back the disheveled, unedited manuscript and walked back inside wondering if she'd finish reading it and what she might think about it when she finished.
Chapter 9
I wrote Isolated Highway in the attic crawl space in the house I shared with Jane and Aspen. The tiny two bedroom house didn't have an office. No den. No privacy whatsoever. Jane always said that was why she liked it so much. There was nothing we could do except be together when we were home. Until I found a way to change that.
Sitting down at the kitchen table to write meant that the rest of the house had to be quiet. I tried headphones. I played loud music to drown out the rest of the world, but I got distracted easily and often the rhythm of the music would put me to sleep. I couldn't listen to anything with words in it, because I'd start paying attention to the lyrics, not what I was supposed to be writing. So the beat would drum in my ears and make me drowsy.
Jane was a busybody, which isn't a negative statement about her. She would come home from her work—cleaning teeth and picking out gunk from gums—and never sit down to relax on the couch. She'd clean floors and pick gunk out of the carpet or the back of some seldom-used cabinet. These menial tasks would occupy her for the night. She didn't have many friends except for her co-workers and she'd rarely go out with them after work for drinks or any kind of socialization.
She was content to putter around and clean the house when Aspen was asleep. But watching this buzzing about the house made me feel guilty for not helping, so I'd rush through my minimum word count for writing each night and I'd join her. That usually meant she then would stop whatever she was doing and we'd end up watching some cooking or house remodeling show on TV until we both fell asleep. Sometimes next to each other, sometimes not. I'm not sure if she did it on purpose—clean and make me feel guilty so I'd stop writing—but it was effective nonetheless.
So, when I discovered that the rectangular hole in the hallway ceiling actually lead to a private space within the house, I jumped on it, or rather climbed up into it. No more distractions. Just writing. The attic crawl space was no larger than a walk-in closet, not even tall enough for me to stand up in—which didn't matter much, since I, like any sane person, write sitting down. In the summer it was a sweatbox. In the winter it was a freezer. But for a few months in late spring, it was just right. Or just write, depending on how much you like puns.
I did my original handwritten draft in the blue notebooks. I worked on the manuscript for 14 months, half of which was editing and rewriting. I did that in my cramped little attic too. When my back started to stiffen up from sitting at the desk, I'd lie down on the plank-wood floor, halfway under the desk and work from there. The glamorous world of literature.
Throughout those 14 months, I continued to work during the day selling insurance. The job sucked the life out of me. But I felt free when I could write, even if I was cooped up in the attic, locked away from my wife and daughter. I won't say that I missed an entire year of Aspen's life, but I did miss a lot of it and I regret it every single day.
Jane brought in the majority of the household income then. It's not something that I was proud of, but that's the reality in which we lived.
When I finally felt like the book was in the best shape it could possibly get . . . I revised one more time and then started the
process of getting it published. This was well before eBook publishing tools allowed any amateur with a flair for writing to publish a book. This was back in the dark ages when powerful literary agents and shadowy editors held the monopoly on publishing. They were the gatekeepers and you had to sell your soul to get inside the gate. A dirty business indeed.
I sent a query email to a literary agent in New York—Monique. In fact, I sent out nearly 100 query emails to various agents in every corner of the country, but I remember the note I got back from Monique above any of the other ones. Not just because it wasn't a rejection letter—since that's all I ever received. She'd rejected my other novels before too.
"This isn't as bad as your other writing," she wrote back in an email. "Send me a full manuscript to review."
She didn't even sign the email. Just left it blank, for me to wonder if it was a real request from her, or some typing mishap that happened to formulate two complete sentences that were never intended for me in the first place.
It took one simple, stupid fucking note from her to change my life's trajectory. It was the start of a relationship that would rocket my professional writing career into orbit, while simultaneously sinking my personal life into a hell from which I would never escape.
If I could go back, I'd never have written that goddamned book.
Chapter 10
The blasting horn of my phone ringing wakes me up and it takes me a minute to realize I'm back in Spokane.
After a few days at the cabin, getting my shabby little Montana life packed into a series of boxes, I've managed to roughly settle in at the Cedar House. And somehow during that time Gracie must have gotten a hold of my phone and changed the default ringer. The little device lets out a blaring siren of an alert—one that tells you that the nuke plant up the street is about to blow and that you should just kiss your ass goodbye.
I'm not a fan.
Or maybe it isn't that loud, but inside my head, it's nuclear-holocaust time. The sound pounds on my brain. The remnants of a night of solitary drinking are still well inside me. I swim toward the plutonium-laced phone and swat it off the table. I don't actually intend to send it flying to the floor, but my reach was off and my back is starting to seize up from sleeping on the couch.
You see, I don't have a bed at my brother's house. Sure, there's one sitting in his room—all made up pretty, with extra pillows. But that's not my bed or my room. I can't sleep there. I know it sounds stupid, but it just doesn't feel right. The guest room is still filled with April's belongings and I really don't want to go through them because I'm afraid of what I might find—drugs or anything else. Eventually I'll tackle it, but it's not a priority.
I swing my legs over the side of the couch and bang my right knee into the corner of the coffee table. After letting out a few choice words I manage to get to my feet and stumble toward the phone on the floor. The light streaming in the living room windows invades my eyes. I squint in a vain attempt to block it out, thus blocking out the view of the city which my brother prized so much that he bought this oversized house on the hill to see it. The place is massive, but empty, like a church on a Friday night. I'm not sure how he, Jennifer and the girls managed to fill it up.
The phone continues to blare.
I pick up my cell and instantly recognize the number. Emanuel Sanchez from the GreyHawk. Sanchez had been calling every day since I visited his office to see Mom and Dad.
"Mr. Redmond, we need to come to some sort of an agreement about financing your parents' long-term care," he would say during these calls. To which I would reply that I'd love to help, but didn't have the means to do it. Of course, I'm lying when I say I'd love to help. I didn't actually want to be involved at all and hoped that by just ignoring his call I would not end-up owning the problem myself. I'm sorry that Trevor picked-up the tab and now he couldn't, but how was that my problem? He was the big shot, rich doctor. I couldn't do stuff like that.
I set the phone back on the table. Maybe Sanchez would just give up.
I pull the curtains closed in the living room and make a strong pot of coffee in the kitchen. While I wait for it to brew I quietly creep to the side of the house where Kendall and Gracie's rooms are located. If I move slow enough I won't wake them up. Like the children have motion-sensors on their eyelids or something. It's worth a shot. My knee aches as I trudge along.
Trevor had divided the place up so that the girls had their own little wing of the house which included a shared balcony with the view of the city. The hallway walls were decorated with flowers and pastel colors. It looked like an Easter display from Target had barfed all over the place. Little end tables dotted a small nook with overstuffed chairs from Pottery Barn or some other obscenely over-priced outlet.
I'm sure Gracie loved it, being a girl and all. I, on the other hand, found it mildly disturbing that Trevor and Jennifer would spend what was undoubtedly a small fortune to furnish the hallway. I was more of a minimalist, obviously.
I peek through the crack of Gracie's open door and spot even more Easter Bunny vomit plastered all over the rainbow-themed room. Snoozing quietly in the center of it all is Gracie. I'm half-tempted to turn on my phone's ringer and blast her awake to get back at her for messing with my phone, but I refrain because I'm not a complete jerk all the time.
* * *
Gracie had a tough previous evening and deserved the sleep. She'd been invited to swim at her friend Tabitha's house. Gracie and Tabitha attend the same school together—Five Mile Elementary. The little girl's mom—Georgia—set up a play date. I dropped her off at noon with a bag packed with a swimsuit and towel. After a brief lecture by Georgia for neglecting to bring sunscreen for Gracie, I was allowed to leave as long as I promised to be back by 5:00 that evening. I promised and left. Sunscreen? You're lucky I remembered a swimsuit, lady, I thought to myself as I walked to the truck.
What exactly transpired next was only relayed to me by Georgia, as Gracie refused to discuss it at all when I showed up to get her 45 minutes after I left her there. She just sat in the back of the car and stared out the window. Although by looking at her—and her hair—it was pretty obvious what she'd done.
"I asked your niece to go into the bathroom by the kitchen and change into her swimsuit—and she came out like that!" she spat at me, pointing to Gracie's now incredibly lopsided and jagged self-styled haircut.
The uneven slashes to her hair looked like the edges of a flag that had been waving and slapping on some metal pole for decades and been torn to pieces.
Her beautiful blonde hair which had previously grown well below her shoulders was now just above her ear on the right side, but hung awkwardly at her neck on the left side.
"She must have grabbed the scissors in the kitchen before going in there," she said, obviously embarrassed. "I just . . . didn't know what else to do but have you come get her. What if my Tabby copies this outrageous behavior? This sort of thing just doesn't happen in this house."
"Well, apparently it does," I said, annoyed that the woman had decided the worst thing to come out of this incident was the chance that her own daughter might get an idea in her head.
"And thanks for the play date," I said. "We'll have to do this again sometime."
Georgia just stared at me, her mouth agape.
Gracie didn't cry or get upset, even when I took her to the Super Cuts and had them even out wild haircut. The stylist managed to erase the cavewoman look. It's now very short—just slightly longer than a boy—but nowadays, who knows what passes for a boy haircut.
"You know what?" I told her, "I think you look cute."
She just nodded and said noting until we got back to the house.
"I just wanted it different," was all she said. She skipped dinner and went straight to bed at 5:30.
In truth, she did look cute—a kid with parents who looked like Trevor and Jennifer had a lot going for her in any case. Short hair. Long hair. Bed hair. Didn't really matter.
I can only imagine that
cutting your own hair wasn't an option before I came into the picture. Gracie probably had a Jennifer-approved hairstylist who did it for her. Gracie was so calm about the whole thing, which I find odd, but can't pinpoint why. Maybe she did just wanted it shorter and that was the only reason. Maybe.
I quietly close Gracie's door to let her get the sleep that she obviously needs.
* * *
Kendall's door is closed, but not locked. She had asked to make breakfast in the morning and I wanted to make sure she got started because honestly, I'm starving. I twist the handle and slowly pushed it open to wake her up.
I hear a thud, then a male voice.
"Fuck, man. What the hell?" the voice says.
It was Ethan—Kendall's boyfriend.
Great.
Chapter 11
All I see is a pale moon. Sitting atop two hairy trunks is a pale, cracked-in-half, vertical moon. Ethan's moon. Kendall's boyfriend's bare ass. He's bending over, putting himself on full display for me. It wiggles, but for some reason I can't look away. Why is this ass in my face? Why in the middle of Kendall's room—one that thankfully doesn't look like Easter eggs or rainbows—is this thing looking at me?
Reality confronts me. The little pecker slept over—in her bedroom. Her bed! While I rode the lumpy couch in the living room he was in here with Kendall, doing God-knows-what. OK, both God and I know what they were probably doing, but it's an image I'd like to banish from my mind forever.
Man, I hate this kid.
I glance at the clock on the wall. The one sitting in front of the vintage Guns 'n' Roses poster on the wall. 7:45 a.m.
The moon finally sets, covered by a pair of blue jeans hastily pulled upward and shook into place.
Then I hear a howl from Ethan that can only be described as a man facing his greatest fear. A terrifying wail.