Missing Mr. Wingfield

by E. Christopher Clark

  The cast of the March 1999 production included Robert DaPonte as Michael, Jonathan Martin as Adam, Trish Ruppert as Jenna, Amanda Damstra as Maggie, and Tori Ryan as Mary, with Chris Larsen reprising his role as Andy the Chinese Food Delivery Boy. As with Lick, I directed. Nikki St. Pierre, Heather Thatcher, Lissa Brennan, and Matt Perrone were our crew.

  In the years between the end of college (1999) and the beginning of grad school (2003), I tried my hand at expanding the universe of these characters in a few different ways. I adapted Lick and Christ into screenplays and added a third script, Just Like Family, to round out the trilogy. Not many people ever read these, except perhaps my friend Jon Martin and my wife Stephanie, but the screenplays did have a profound impact on the story you’ve just read. The screenplay version of Lick is where the character of Desiree really emerged, a friend from high school who Veronica had a crush on (later to be merged with the original “Tracy” character). It’s also where the idea of a pregnancy first entered into my imagination, though it was Desiree who was pregnant and not Veronica. The screenplay version of Christ is one of the first times I floated the idea of Veronica and Tim living in the apartment building where Aerosmith once lived (an idea still explored in “Eliot, Tallarico & Hook”). And Just Like Family finally introduced the character of Michael’s sister Ashley, along with proto-versions of the rest of the extended family, only alluded to here in Missing Mr. Wingfield but a vital presence in other stories and a key factor in developing Michael and Veronica into the characters they are today. Family is also the first place I dramatized Michael and Jenna’s wedding and the weeks leading up to it.

  It was also during these years that I wrote a novel titled The Legend of Zeema Zalowicz, as problematic a piece of writing as I’ve ever composed (and something I can’t believe I have never obliterated from my hard drive out of fear of it being read). No one has ever read that either, but it is notable because it’s the first place I remember developing the idea of Michael Silver as something of a celebrity (at least in his own small corner of the world). The main character of Zeema is a student at the college Michael used to attend. And he looks up to Michael, who is already a bit of a legend on campus even just a couple of years after his graduation.

  It’s amazing to me now, looking back on these early years of development (1997-2003) and reflecting on all of the building blocks that were already there in these pieces of writing that I find mostly cringe-worthy today. These disparate, unrefined elements weren’t quite a foundation yet. To extend the metaphor, they weren’t yet even concrete. But I was about to whip them into shape and pour them into something solid I could build upon.

  II.

  I spent my first semester in the Lesley University MFA in Creative Writing program working on stories that had nothing to do with the Silver family (at least at the time). And though I don’t remember that being an intentional choice, it was one of the best things I could have done for myself as a writer. I spent four months working with my first grad school mentor, Michael Lowenthal, on writing new stories and revising them. Revising them and revising them and revising them again, until I couldn’t revise them no more. I turned in revisions of one story, “Ian,” nearly every month that Lowenthal and I worked together. He’d send me a letter back telling me how much better I’d made the story that month, paying me endless compliments, and then he’d tell me how much further he thought I could still go with it. Much like the only great physical trainer I’ve ever worked with, Lowenthal knew that I was the kind of person who needed to be pumped up about himself before he was told what he still had to work on. And to this day, my muse, when it speaks to me at all, sounds an awful lot like him.

  Toward the end of my semester with Lowenthal and into my second semester in the program, the one I spent studying under Christina Shea, I started to feel like maybe I was ready to get back to the Silver family. After a while away, I at first only dipped my toe into their gene pool (with short stories about Michael’s father, Albert, and his high school girlfriend, Robin). But by the end of my semester with Christina, encouraged by an independent study I did with Sharlene Cochrane on placing my family’s history into the broader historical context of American history, I decided to take a stab at turning all of my old Silver yarns into a novel. Inspired by my family’s lengthy history on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, and not yet having learned my lesson about titles from my experience with The People vs. Jesus Christ, one of the first things I decided about the novel was its title: Down the Cape. And that was the title of this book you’re reading for far longer than it should have been. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

  In my third and fourth semesters at Lesley, I studied under Tony Eprile and Tony was the one who pushed me to finish a draft of the novel for my thesis (Rachel Kadish would be my second reader). Though I’d spent nearly half of my time in the program working on short stories, it quickly became obvious to Tony (and to the classmates in my workshops) that I had the drive to push through to the end of this thing in the time I had left. Those classmates included Shera Palmer, Scott McCabe, Jill Vora, Sara Oliver, Mary Verdier, and Erica Thinesen, among many, many others. I also met the talented writer-artist Bryan Ballinger during my time in the program. And though Bryan was in the Writing for Young People concentration, the program was small then and we saw each other a lot. I know I must’ve bounced ideas off of him at some point. Bouncing ideas off of each other was just something we all did for one another—the line about “the products of conception” in the chapter about Veronica’s abortion anxiety (“Eliot, Tallarico & Hook”) was a gift from one of the women in the program, a sentence that had once been uttered to her. That we shared such personal stuff with each other—I will never forget their generosity.

  During that second year I churned out chapter after chapter, writing more in the second half of 2004 and the first half of 2005 than I ever had before and probably more than I have in any similar period since. It helped that I lost my soul-crushing technology job and picked up a gig at a literary non-profit instead, and that I was only part-time during my first year there. My boss at that non-profit, Michael Gouin-Hart, was incredibly flexible and incredibly supportive as I finished up grad school. And the fact that he trusted me to help him run the association’s annual conference in New Orleans just a month into my tenure there—that was a huge boost to my confidence during a time that, at least professionally, I was feeling pretty low about myself.

  The intensity of those annual conferences, mingled with the intensity of the twice-a-year residencies I attended during my MFA program—these experiences formed the backdrop for the chapter on Michael’s infidelity (“Who You Want to Take You Home”). Though I never succumbed to temptation the way that Michael did, it was easy to imagine how, in such an overwhelming environment, the right person at the wrong time in their lives could make those choices.

  Though I came into contact with literary luminaries during my time at the non-profit—having a drink with Edmund White and Joyce Carol Oates after a reading, helping to rescue Jhumpa Lahiri from a Philadelphia rain storm and an inept cab driver—it was the staff members and student volunteers I worked with who had the most profound impact on me and my work. I can’t go any further without thanking them, in particular Richie Hofmann, Leslie Harkema, Beth Stone, Lisa Grove, Tonya Serra, and Chelsea Bell. Someday I’ll write about all of the folks I worked with during those years and the impact they had on me—it was the best job I’ve ever had, aside from the one I have now—and maybe then I won’t forget anyone, as I surely have done now.

  In the years between 2005 and 2009, I revised the novel about once a year, cutting huge bits of it along the way as I searched for the right shape (many of which made their way into my 2010 collection All He Left Behind). I pitched it to agents twice during those years and got great feedback but no bites.

  As a side gig, I started teaching (first English Composition, and then eventually the Advanced Fiction Seminar). My students were, in general, amazing. I wa
s helping them to create great works of their own while struggling to do anything substantive with the great work of my life. It was a confusing time.

  Frustrated by the novel’s lack of traction, my attention shifted to a pop culture website I’d started under the name of Geek Force Five. In my years of networking to promote that site, I spent a great deal of time at the New Hampshire Media Makers meet-up and at PodCamp events throughout the northeast. I met John Herman, Leslie Poston, James Patrick Kelly, and many more during these years, each of them offering invaluable insights about my creative work. I worked on all sorts of projects with them, all of which fed back into the novel in some way. Phil Kliger, a musician I met during those years, once helped me write a soundtrack for the novel, including a song called “Sing, Angel. Sing.” that would be pivotal in its future development. It was a great time, even if I did more talking about the book than I did writing it. I got back into theater after a long absence and started to write short plays for evenings of theater that John Herman put on. When an actor dropped out of a play I was directing at the last minute, I ended up getting back on stage again too. This led to good reviews, which led to more roles, which led to a reputation in the theater community of the New Hampshire seacoast. And all of this time away from the novel actually set up the third and final act of its development.

  III.

  It’s September 2011 and I’m sitting with my friend Crystal Lisbon and her friend Mary Casiello in Simon’s Coffee Shop on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. We’re working out details for a collaboration and discussing the duality of artistic life and “real” life as a possible subject. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to write a brief script that will be paired with a musical performance by Mary. Crystal will produce and direct.

  It’s a month into the fall semester, I’ve just started a new part-time job in retail, and I’m rehearsing for a small part in an upcoming Christmas play. Things are busy, and I probably shouldn’t be taking on the writing of a script at this particular moment, but I’m a sucker for cool ideas, and I have a slew of material I can pull from if nothing new suggests itself. Plus: when an old friend from college asks you to help her fundraise for her new arts organization, when she trusts you to help pull off something that important, you find a way.

  It’s either at that meeting or shortly thereafter that something new does suggest itself, something structurally new that’s made up of something that’s, creatively speaking, very old.

  By the time Crystal, Mary, and I are done producing the one-act Crossroads (or The Piano of Death) in early 2012, I have reshaped half of the novel I’ve been working on for years into a succinct but beautiful yarn about the struggle between art and obligation.

  The cast of the Winter 2012 productions includes Bridgette Hayes as Veronica, Rachel Kurnos as Vern, Bob Mussett as the Salesman for the Portsmouth production, and James Bocock as the Salesman for the Cambridge production.

  I go on to produce a subsequent production of the piece at the Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that summer. During development, because I’m in love with all of the actors who audition, I write a new scene that sees Veronica and the Salesman attending a dramatized version of Veronica’s life. By doing so, I’m able to reintroduce some of my favorite characters and scenes from the original A Lick and a Promise script, albeit with a few twists.

  The cast of the June 2012 production includes Mary Casiello as the Busker, Paul Strand as the Salesman, Elizabeth Locke as Veronica, Cassandra Heinrich as Vern, Teddi Kenick-Bailey as Nica, and Elise Williams as Andy.

  Playwrights and actors I admire from the Seacoast scene, G. Matthew Gaskell among them, come to see the show more than once. They suggest that I should write a full-length as a follow-up.

  This, of course, gets me thinking about the half of the novel that I haven’t yet reshaped.

  Later that summer, my short play “The Boot” is produced as part of John Herman’s An Evening of Grand Guignol. It’s a story about a heretofore minor character in my Silver family mythos, the great-grandfather of Michael and Veronica Silver. The actors of that production of “The Boot,” Chuck Galle and Erika Wilson, provide crucial rewrites of the then-very-rough script and remind me of how useful it can be to get outside eyeballs on my writing (inspiring me to get outside feedback on every subsequent draft of the novel, after years of not doing that). A plot point in the play, that one of the great-grandfather’s wives was a witch of some sort, sparks an idea about that full-length that everyone is telling me I should write.

  Over the next couple of months, I reshape the second half of the novel into a full-length play that will come to be called Temptress. Inspired (and not for the first time) by some lucky math provided by dates I’d written into previous stories, I realize that the baby Veronica had in my earlier work is now just about old enough to have her own adventures. Tracy Silver’s point of view will prove to be the crucial ingredient I’ve been looking for to make her Uncle Michael’s story interesting to the audience.

  When a call for quirky performances goes out from my NH Media Makers pals in late 2012/early 2013, I write to Mary Casiello and ask if she’d like to follow up on Crossroads collaboration with something new. I’m already sensing that by combining the Crossroads script with the Temptress script and returning them to prose form, I’ll have the best version of the novel I’ve ever had. But I have a sense that some connective tissue is missing. So, for my second big collaboration with Mary, I write the short story “After All the Kisses Had Failed,” which survives mostly intact in the novel today as the chapter titled “In the Mood for a Melody.”

  Crystal Lisbon, Mary Casiello, Jonathan Martin, R.T. Tompkins, and Jena Marie DiPinto read drafts of Temptress and offer invaluable feedback. I pitch it to the Players’ Ring for their 2013-2014 season and it lands a January 2014 slot. While I wait for that production to come together, I get to work on taking my two scripts and turning them back into prose. By the time the show closes in early February 2014, I gift to each cast member a mostly complete draft of the novel you now hold in your hands. I still think it’s going to be called Down the Cape. Chuck Galle, Mary Casiello, and Lissa Brennan provide invaluable feedback on this draft, including pointing out to me where I used the exact same description of breastfeeding in two different places. I am further reminded that one must always have beta readers.

  The January 2014 production of Temptress is directed by my longtime friend Jonathan Martin and stage-managed by the incomparable Michelle Blouin-Wright. My NH Media Makers pal Sean O’Connell designs props for Tracy’s guards that he calls the Atlas Vulcan Railgun and the Doomslayer Maximus. Another Media Makers pal, Jeremy Couturier, designs the poster. And another Media Makers pal, Kathleen Cavalaro, shoots the promotional photos. Kathleen, it should be noted, had cast me in my first lead role in a full-length play a couple of years before this. The bit with the SpongeBob boxers in the chapter titled “Tears on the Sleeve of a Man” is an homage to that play, At My Window, which Kathleen wrote.

  The cast of Temptress includes me as Michael; Crystal Lisbon as Jenna; Liz Locke as Veronica; Meghan D. Morash as Tracy; Jennifer Henry as Desiree and Carrie; Lizbeth Myers as Robin and Amber; Samantha Bagdon as Tana, Guard, and Student; Gwyn Codd as Tori, Guard, and Student; and Michael Lavoie as Tucker, The Runt, and George.

  Published reviews of this production of Temptress are not good, and I am crushed by this. But audience members begin to come out of the woodwork to tell me how much it meant to them. My old high school friend Beth Pariseau sends me an extraordinarily kind and thoughtful email about the show, how much she loved it, and what it meant to her. Her email is something I think about constantly in the years that follow, as I pitch and pitch and pitch the novel to agents and small publishers without any takers.

  In November 2014, I launch a project initially called “Draft a Day,” the goal of which is to make my writing my side gig. At this point, my only job is teaching and I decide to see if I can get by with only teachin
g and writing money. I monetize “Draft a Day” with a patronage system through a site called Patreon. And among the first batch of stories I write is one called “Missing Mister Wingfield.” It’s about Tracy Silver getting called to the principal’s office for pantsing a kid at school.

  I have no idea that this is the story that will eventually bring the novel to its completion. Earlier in the year, over a couple of beers in Portsmouth, my friend Lissa Brennan suggested to me that I might tie the novel together better if I wrote the whole thing from Tracy’s perspective. It’ll take me a couple of more years to realize it, but by adding the “Wingfield” story to the novel in the right place, I’ll have finally figured this thing out after 20 years.

  Sometime late in 2014 or early in 2015, I add the “Wingfield” chapter to the novel. But I add it in the wrong place. It ends up going where it should go chronologically, acting as a sort of bridge between the Veronica and Michael sections of the text. But it’s needed elsewhere, and I won’t realize that until 2017.

  In the meantime, I keep pitching to agents. In mid-2016, after having been connected to her from two angles (our mutual friend Jena, who we both knew from our Chelmsford High days, and a former student of mine by the name of Rachel Simon), I ask Jen Petro-Roy to review a new query letter I’ve written. She gives me glowing feedback on it and I feel super-pumped because Jen is someone from my hometown who is about to be published traditionally herself and she likes my silly pitch.

  Unfortunately, the new query letter doesn’t get me much more traction than the previous one did. In June 2016, around the same time that Jen is looking at my query letter, I write a piece for my blog called “Whatever Happened to the Book?” where I first float the idea of putting out this novel on my own. I’m still hopeful that traditional publication is an option, but there’s a part of me—the part of me that self-published a comic book when I was a kid—who is itching to put this thing out on its own and finally close this chapter of his writing career.