An Unfinished Story: A Novel

by Boo Walker

  Whitaker was absolutely dumbfounded by his father’s query. Not because of the specific question, but because his father was showing interest. His mother had always asked about his novels, but to hear his father show curiosity was such a soothing feeling. Even if Jack was forcing it, who cared? His question was one of those instances over the course of Whitaker’s life where Jack had shown how great a father he could be.

  Whitaker looked at his dad. “It’s about a guy my age going through the typical impediments we midlifers go through. All the stuff that drives you crazy. But this guy looks outside of himself and helps a young boy who needs a lift up in the world. He’s an orphan living in a group home. No father to speak of. His mom pushed him out of a moving car when he was three. It’s not a sob story, very uplifting. So far, at least. But I’ve been doing a ton of research, trying to understand the foster care system. It’s heartbreaking to learn how many kids come from broken homes. We’re all just skating by ignoring them, thinking we have enough to deal with.”

  Whitaker pushed himself up straighter with the armrests. “Did you know more than a hundred kids a month are taken from their parents in Pasco and Pinellas Counties? Some months more. We don’t have the support system to give them homes. Parents are afraid to adopt or even foster. Children are living in hospitals right now, because it’s the only place with empty beds.” Whitaker took a breath. “I think this novel will help bring awareness and maybe help a few kids. If I could even help convince one family to take in a child in need, then I’d be happy.” Whitaker shook his head and repeated a notion he’d read online. “Who are we as a community if we can’t take care of our children?”

  Jack crossed his arms high on his chest and breathed in deeply. His belly visibly expanded against his button-down shirt and then contracted again.

  Whitaker braced himself as a sharp pain ran through his forearm to his wrist. “What is it?”

  “That’s all fine, son. Sounds like a fun little project. Or hobby, or whatever it is you call it now. And it’s nothing you couldn’t do while working for me. Something to do on Saturday mornings. Like fishing is for me.”

  The pain reached Whitaker’s fingers, and he stretched his hand. Did Jack really want to go to war right now? Could Whitaker bite his tongue? “Look, Pop. I am so appreciative of the job offer. Seriously, I am honored that you’d go out of your way for me. And I know it’s a great job, and a million men would be lucky as hell to be offered such a position. But I’m not them, and I’m not you. I look at you, Dad. The things you’ve accomplished as a soldier, an entrepreneur, a father, a husband, a community leader. It’s all so commendable, and I’m inspired.” Holding eye contact, Whitaker gently set his throbbing fist down on the table. “But I’m not you. I have to give back my own way.”

  Whitaker pointed at himself. “I’m an entertainer. I change people’s lives with words. Or at the very least, show them a different perspective, or, hell, put a brief smile on their face. Writing is the thing I can give most to the world, and that’s why I have to do it. Doing anything other than writing is just pretending, or faking it. I don’t want to die a pretender.”

  The two men continued staring at each other, and Whitaker had no idea what his father was thinking. But Whitaker knew he was doing what was right, and even if he couldn’t get through to his father, he had to stand his ground.

  “How is the story going to end?” Sadie asked, attempting to deflate the tension.

  Whitaker smiled at Jack and finally broke eye contact. He turned to Sadie. “That’s the tough part. What this guy has written is so good, but he left it hanging right before the climax. The kid I told you about is in trouble.”

  The server set the drinks on the table, and they tossed them back while talking more about the story. Jack forced his way back to at least faking interest. The conversation moved into lighter conversation as they ate. Whitaker had always enjoyed the fried shrimp plate, but he opted for a kale Caesar topped with a piece of tilefish instead.

  Once the topics of conversation were as empty as the twenty-seven plates, Whitaker sensed Jack and Sadie had more on their agenda than asking him why he’d left his job.

  When he caught them looking at each other as if urging one another on, Whitaker decided he’d go ahead and rip the Band-Aid off. “So what is it? You’re not telling me something.”

  Sadie looked at Jack and then patted her mouth with her napkin. They both looked at Whitaker but didn’t speak.

  “Might as well get it all out,” Whitaker said, moving his hand in a circular motion.

  Jack looked at his wife. “Let me tell him.”

  Whitaker could feel the acid from his salad dressing creeping up his esophagus. Anchovies and bad news. Was their surprising interest in his story an attempt to butter him up for what was to come? For the life of him, though, he couldn’t imagine what it was. Had someone died? Did one of them have cancer? There was no cancer ever diagnosed that could kill Jack Grant.

  After a sip of bourbon, Jack dropped the hammer. “We ran into Lisa’s parents yesterday.”

  Hearing Lisa’s name rise from his father’s mouth was not a good feeling.

  “They told us Lisa is engaged.”

  There it was again. A few words and Jack Grant had brought down Thor’s hammer.

  Whitaker stared into his father’s eyes and then lost himself in his own head. Lisa was engaged. Lisa was getting remarried. Lisa was in love with another man.

  He felt a hand on his arm. It was his mother’s. He looked at her and then looked back down at the remainders of kale and corn bread croutons and dressing on his plate.

  Sadie squeezed him. “You knew it had to happen.”

  Whitaker patted his mom’s hand and then pulled away from her.

  Jack cleared his throat. “From what they told us, it happened very quickly. A few dates and then he proposed to her. They’re marrying in Martha’s Vineyard on May of next year. He’s a surgeon.”

  Whitaker processed the information his father had shared. He felt his rib cage imploding. Why, dammit? Why did Lisa still have so much control over him? After all this time, she still owned him. Whitaker felt like lifting the table and pushing it over, letting the fleet of china and glass smash onto the floor.

  Another man—a better man—was taking his ex-wife. She was in love with him.

  “What should we do for dessert?” Sadie asked in a jolly, high-spirited tone. Were those pom-poms in her hand?

  Whitaker stood from the table and tossed his napkin onto the chair. “I’ll pass on dessert. Thank you very much for dinner.”

  “Whitaker,” Sadie said. “Don’t do that. Don’t let her break your heart again.”

  “She’s not breaking my heart. It’s just not something I need to hear right now. Mom, Dad, thanks for dinner.”

  Racing out the back door before he encountered any more familiar faces, he grappled with this awful news. Everything that he had built these last two months—all the happiness he’d found—rushed out of him. Why? He didn’t miss Lisa like Claire missed David. He didn’t see her shadow crossing the hall. He didn’t still feel her warmth next to him on the bed. It was the loneliness, that fucking abyss of not being wanted by anyone. Whitaker replaced by a goddamn surgeon, Lisa never looking back. And then Claire, still hung up on a man she would never see again. Even the dead were more lovable than Whitaker.

  Using Staff Sergeant Jack Grant’s analogy, Whitaker felt like he’d spent all this time building a giant mansion, only to find out the foundation was made of cards.

  And Lisa, the Queen of Hearts, had knocked it down.

  Chapter 25

  THE NATIONAL TREASURE

  Whitaker collapsed onto the houndstooth sofa face-first. How was it that he had fought so hard recently to overcome the struggles of a decade of washed-up-writer syndrome, only to be toppled with a crappy reminder of how bad of a husband he’d been? How bad of a person, really. Claire had probably saved herself a lot of heartache by stopping his advances. Wh
o was to say he was any more put together now?

  With his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall, his mind danced clumsily through the years of marriage. He flashed back through all the smiles they’d shared, and each memory stabbed him like the barb of a stingray, each stab leaving venom to poison the bloodstream. He’d been nothing short of an asshole.

  He recalled the day she’d sat him down and given him the first of several gentle warnings—warnings he didn’t take seriously. “This is your wake-up call, Whit.”

  He saw himself on that day, shaking his head, assuring her that he was focused on coming back, that he was inching back, grasping with everything he had. “I swear to you, Lisa, give me a little bit more time. I can see the end of this nightmare. Let me get this next story out, and I’ll be back. It will be about us. I just can’t let this career I built slide.”

  “What you don’t see, Whitaker,” she’d said, “is that you’re trying too hard, and you’re thinking too much. Let’s focus on us and having fun. I have a feeling you’ll get your stories back.”

  She was right, but he wasn’t listening.

  The worst of life strikes you when you’re at the top, Whitaker decided. Because at the top, everyone and everything was out to get you.

  He found himself imagining the surgeon, who must have family up on Martha’s Vineyard. As much as Whitaker wanted to put a hit out on him, he hoped the man would treat her with the love and respect she deserved, doing what Whitaker had failed to do.

  It wasn’t heartache, was it? Had he a choice of Claire or Lisa, he’d choose Claire. No doubt. So why was this news so difficult to process? Because of the failure and the rejection, the lonely bed he’d made for himself. Whitaker Grant might be a great writer, but he was a terrible lover. And what mattered more than love?

  If for nothing more than to have some company, he flipped on a cable news channel. Then he opened his Facebook on his phone. He typed Lisa’s name in the search bar and found her. He clicked on her profile page and realized that she had unfriended him. This unfriending was something new, because he had recently stalked her. And it felt like she’d cut the head off their relationship. Like all the years they had shared together didn’t matter anymore. The total elimination of everything they had ever had.

  Crossing into new territory, Whitaker went to several of her friends’ pages and poked around. He scrutinized a few shots of Lisa, but he saw no indications of a new man in her life. Thankfully, he didn’t see a surgeon from Martha’s Vineyard running across the beach in slow motion in his scrubs, his stethoscope poised in his right hand, ready to test the beat of Lisa’s happy heart. Whitaker stopped to look at his lost redheaded lover with friends at the Grand Prix in downtown St. Pete in March.

  For a flash of a moment, he recalled the day he and Lisa had attended the Grand Prix together. The morning before the first race, Lisa had found a review online calling him a “national treasure.” Though Lisa had spent the day laughing at the comment, he’d ridden his high horse for weeks. Today, he would have been happy with anything close to such a lovely designation. He would even have found delight in something more mediocre. He’d even take “neighborhood treasure” at this point. Whitaker Grant, the “crown jewel of Gulfport.”

  The next morning, Whitaker finished brushing his teeth and looked at himself in the mirror. In his father’s voice, he spat, “Private Grant, are you a typist or a writer? Get. Your. Ass. In. That. Chair. Now.” He saluted himself and then followed his own orders.

  Returning the laptop to the desk, Whitaker sat down and worked his way to the document. He had to get something out, even if only a few words. He looked at the picture of David and tried to tap into Claire’s dead husband. “Please share your story with me,” Whitaker said. “I’m here, ready to type, but I don’t know where I’m going.”

  Whitaker lifted his fingers above the keys. “Let’s go, David. Give me something to work with.”

  No words came. Not even letters.

  His fingers waited above the keys like a dog ready to chase after a ball the owner had no intention of throwing.

  Something was missing.

  Whitaker tried desperately to remind himself that every single writer on earth faced these demons. Even Hemingway hated himself sometimes and hated writing and doubted every single word in every sentence.

  The best writers, though, they trudged through it. Whitaker sat up again, trying to muster the energy and faith needed. With his fingers at the ready, he tried to make a choice. That was all writing was in the end. Choices.

  He couldn’t type one word. He couldn’t make one choice. He couldn’t hit the ball.

  Claire walked barefoot in the wet sand, searching the heavier patches of shells for sharks’ teeth. Her camera hung from her neck, the memory card nearly full with the shots of her rediscovered passion. This was her special place, to be on the beach, walking in the rays of the rising sun, an abundance of life dancing all around her.

  With her eyes closed, she could hear a seagull calling its mate, the wind blowing against her ears, the waves crashing onto the sand, the shuffling of the shells. The bliss of her youth on this beach had returned.

  She looked up to see a black skimmer flying across the water, its beak skimming the surface, searching for food. Her grandmother Betty had first introduced her to this bird. With oversize orange-and-black beaks, they looked almost top-heavy, and, to Claire, resembled a toucan. During one of their many beach walks, Betty had told her that they had vertical pupils that helped cut the sun’s glare.

  It had been a few days since she’d seen Whitaker, and she missed him. Even when she did her best to think of something else, distracting herself, his name would flash before her one letter at a time. W.H.I.T.A.K.E.R.

  When she returned to her bungalow, Claire checked in with him. Only a few seconds into their call, she detected that something was bothering him. “What’s going on with you?”

  After a long beat of silence, he said, “I don’t want to rain on your parade, Claire. It thrills me to hear you so happy and bubbly. But I’m having a tough time today. I . . .”

  Claire sat down on the rocking chair on the porch, knowing bad news was coming.

  “I can’t put my finger on the ending. I don’t know where David was going. I feel like I’m lost.”

  Claire swallowed her disappointment and said encouragingly, “Maybe you need to walk away for a few days. You’ve been staring at the story nonstop for months. Seriously, have you even taken a day off?”

  “No, but it’s not that. The muse doesn’t reward you for taking vacation.”

  “Enough about the muse.” Claire stopped before saying more. Be gentle, Claire. “What can I do to help?”

  “That’s just it,” Whitaker said. “I don’t know if there is anything anyone can do to help. I’ve stared at David’s last line for days. This is exactly why I didn’t want you to tell anyone.”

  Knowing she needed to give him encouragement, she made a firm decision on an idea she’d been pondering. “I’ve been thinking. I want to give you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a surprise. Why don’t you take the day off from writing and relax. Put your feet up and stop thinking about it. I’ll be over this afternoon after I close the restaurant. Okay?”

  “All right.”

  Claire took a quick shower and rode down the beach to the café. After an hour of computer work, she helped the chef with inventory. Just before closing, she asked Jevaun if she could borrow his truck. He followed her back to her bungalow and helped her lift David’s desk and chair into the truck bed. After watching him drive away in her convertible, his dreads blowing in the wind, she stepped up into his Chevy. The woven steering wheel cover was the colors of the Rastafari: red, yellow, and green. Don Carlos was singing through the speakers. She turned it up and drove across town, moving her head to the Jamaican grooves.

  When she pulled up, she found Whitaker slumped in a chair in the front yard under the kapok
tree, which had shed its white fibers all over the yard, spreading its seeds. He was shirtless in surf trunks, and she couldn’t help but notice how much leaner he’d become.

  He pulled on his shirt and greeted her when she climbed out. “New truck?”

  “I borrowed it so I could deliver your gift.”

  Whitaker looked into the back. “A desk?”

  “They’re David’s. A Victorian pedestal desk. And the chair is Herman Miller. I figured it would be an upgrade.”

  “From my card table? I’d say. But you don’t have to do this.”

  Claire walked to the back and dropped the tailgate. “I thought they might help you tap in. Really, I don’t see how you get anything done in that awful office of yours. I can’t think of a less creative space in the world.”

  Whitaker pointed to his forehead. “This is where the creative space is supposed to be. But I’ll take any help I can get.”

  “I think we ought to clean up your office and make it more writer friendly. I’m sensing some blocked chi in there—whatever the opposite of feng shui is.”

  “I don’t disagree, but I’m dealing with it. Just hit a slump; that’s all.”

  Claire saw the pain in his eyes. “What you need is a hug.” She stood onto her toes, opened her arms, and pulled him in, wrapping her hands around his neck. “You’re such an awesome man, Whitaker. And an amazing writer. Don’t get discouraged.”

  He whispered a thanks, giving her a light squeeze.

  Claire kissed his cheek, surprising even herself. Whitaker lost his breath. She felt his heart kick. Not wanting to push away, she ran a hand through the hair on the back of his head and pulled him tighter. “I believe in you,” she whispered into his ear.

  When she finally took a step back, with a flutter in her stomach, she looked at his face. He was as surprised by the kiss as she was.

  She quickly spun toward the truck. “Now help me get this out. I’m not leaving until your office is worthy of your words.”