Missing Mr. Wingfield

by E. Christopher Clark

  By early 2017, I start to realize that I want the kid to win out. The responsible adult part of me, the one that’s invested nearly $50,000 in creative writing degrees and who demands the validation of traditional publication—I want him to lose. So, I begin making plans.

  I finally realize that the “Wingfield” chapter has to be moved. It has to be the first chapter, so that everything you read after that is colored by the fact that Tracy is the first character you meet. Then, round about May, I realize that something needs to go in the hole the “Wingfield” chapter has left. I write the section titled “Those Worn-Out Records” as my new bridge between the Veronica and Michael sections of the book. It comes fast, but it feels as authentic as anything I’ve ever written, so I trust myself. For once.

  I send the book out to beta readers over the summer, including former students Ali Russo and Viktor Herrmann. Ali gives me the single most important note I’ve received on the book in years, plus a bunch of other easier-to-implement minor changes. But the big note that Ali gives me completely reshapes the ending and gets me more excited for the book than I’ve been in ages. As a way of thanking her, I work in a reference in the courtroom scene to a redhead we both admire who I can’t believe I hadn’t already included.

  Then the book goes to Abbie Levesque for copyediting. We’ve worked together on my Geek Force Five magazine before, and she is one of the most brilliant students I’ve ever worked with, and there’s no one I trust more to help me put the final polish on the thing.

  And then it’s done. Finally, after years of saying that it was and failing to deliver on that promise, it’s done.

  IV.

  This is way longer than I meant it to be, and I think it could be longer still if I really took the time to chart out all of the drafts over the years, all of the major and minor suggestions that completely reshaped this thing, but there are some other people I’ve got to thank before you quit reading this (if you haven’t already).

  When I started my Patreon fundraising efforts in November 2014, the response was phenomenal. And it’s really thanks to those patrons, past and present, that I finally found the courage to put this book out into the world on my own. So thank you to Susan Clark, Kathleen E. Shepherd-Segura, Lissa Brennan, Benjamin DalPra, Mary Casiello, Erica Collins, Rob Luhrs, Chuck Galle, Abbie Levesque, Amanda Giles, Jim Arrington, Jonathan Martin, Leslie Poston, Matt Gold, Mary Ann Spilman, Beth Pariseau, Bethany Snyder, Becky Gissel, Roger Goun, Carla Jean Lauter, Shem Tane, Jasmin Hunter, Sean O’Connell, and Sara Benincasa.

  Thanks also to Ad’m DiBiaso for his feedback on my initial cover designs, which were improved immeasurably by his notes.

  Thanks to my students at Lesley University, both past and present. I hope you’ve learned as much from me as I’ve learned from you.

  And thanks to my colleagues at Lesley, both my fellow teachers in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the folks who I support in my role as administrative coordinator over at the Division of Interdisciplinary Inquiry at the Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences. I’ve been with Lesley in some shape or form (student, alum, teacher, and now staff) for most of the development of this book, and there’s no workplace that’s been more nurturing than this one.

  Many of the people I’ve already mentioned are friends, but there are many more that I haven’t had the opportunity to name-drop in the narrative above who deserve to be named. Here are just a few: Rachael Cook, Andy Hicks, Monica Johnson, Stacey Kerrigan, Angela Santos, Donna Bungard, Brendan Mahan, Deb McCullough, Scott Mortimer, Beth Musser, Jason Prokowiew, Zeke Russell, Louann Santos, Gradon Tripp, Todd Hunter, Constance Witman, Shawn Crapo, Maggie McAleese, Jess Rizkallah, the Savages, the Baringers, the Bowkers, Evan Leah Quinn, Sara Clark, Ken Mills, Gary Locke, Jackie Benson, Callie Kimball, Joi Smith, Matthew Schofield, Julie Krzanowski , Diane Griffin, Rob Killeen, Steve Woodbury, and Barbara Newton. (And hey, if I didn’t mention you by name, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you; I just have a memory like sieve, especially when it comes to important moments like this.)

  Thanks to my parents, Earl and Sue, my brother John, and to my extended family, the descendants of Clark and Niemczyk and Tebo and Johanson, who each informed the cousins and parents and aunts and uncles in my book to one extent or another.

  Thanks to my mother-in-law Julee Applegarth and her husband Mike Foster; my sister-in-law Anisa Woodsum and her son Liam Alexander; my brother-in-law Nate Woodsum, his daughter Lindee, and her mom Amy-Lin Thompson; my brother-in-law Alex Cunningham; and my mother-in-law Lesley Woodsum.

  Thanks to my daughters, Kaylee and Melody, who find a way to remind me that family is what’s truly important to me, whilst never letting me forget that their dad is a capital A Author (even when he doesn’t feel like one).

  My wife, Stephanie, has been with me for nearly all of the 20 years I’ve been working on this thing. Every time I was ready to give up on this book, she stopped me.

  In the 20 years I’ve been working on this book, I’ve lost a number of people who also had a profound impact on me and my writing: Stephanie’s great-grandparents, Eunice and Roy, who said to me, after hearing that I’d given our college’s commencement speech in May 1999, that I was “something of a great orator”; my father-in-law, Stephen Woodsum, whose ability to captivate an audience with a story was something I still aspire to; my one-time co-worker Colleen Garvey Kueter, who was a great friend and confidant during my insecure post-college/pre-grad school years; my middle school friend John Langworthy, whose childhood home was my inspiration for Veronica’s house when I needed a place I could remember that was just across town from my own; my theater history professor Phoebe Wray, who did things her own way, and who once cast me as Crystal Lisbon’s drunk husband (the beginning of a long friendship); my aunt Donna Tebo, who laughed at every stupid joke I ever told; my mother’s uncles Art Tebo and Joe Tebo, who stepped aside to let me give the eulogy at their brother’s (my grandfather’s) funeral when I was just 16 and not yet a proven public speaker; and my grandmother, Josephine Clark, who was like a third parent to me growing up, who I lived next door to when I finally got a room of my own as a teenager, and who read my filthy first book and didn’t disown me (and told me, as a matter of fact, that she quite liked it). She was a reluctant storyteller, Grandma, but once she got going—let’s just say that I’m thrilled I had an iPhone with a Voice Memos app handy in those last years. Someday, I’ll write down her stories as best I can and hope I do them justice.

  For most of the first 15 or so years of this book’s development, I was certain it would be dedicated to my grandfather John Tebo, who died in 1994 when I was 16 going on 17. His death had a profound impact on me and my view of the world. The earliest versions of this book were, in some ways, my attempts to deal with his absence through my art. The book you’ve just read is not the book I started out writing, however, and it made more sense to dedicate it in another way. But I cannot let this opportunity pass to honor my grandfather’s memory. The minor character of Grampy in this book is an amalgamation of my two grandfathers, a mix of both John and my dad’s dad, Earl Davis Clark. He’s a major character in other works that I hope you’ll get to read some day.

  And lastly, thank you, the person reading this right now. A novel is not as obviously a collaborative art form as a play or a film, but it is a journey that isn’t complete until my words roll off your tongue or through your mind. I thank you for taking this journey with me. And I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

  Yours,

  E. Christopher Clark

  September 4, 2017

  A Note on the Chapter and Section Titles

  While a big part of me would like to leave the references in my chapter and section titles up to the reader to figure out, the responsible academic in me realizes that readers might mistake some or all of these great turns of phrase as mine when they are not.

  The section titles—“The Bastard Sons of Bastards,” “The Snows of Yesteryear,” “Better Off Than the Wiv
es of Drunkards,” “Those Worn-Out Records,” and “What To Look for in a Man”—are all drawn from dialogue or stage directions in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

  The chapter titles in “The Snows of Yesteryear” are both an homage to the firm of “Scrooge & Marley” from A Christmas Carol and a play on a line from Father of the Bride Part II where, during a discussion of “alternative last names,” the proposed name of the soon-to-arrive baby (“Cooper Banks MacKenzie”) is ridiculed as sounding like a law firm. Once I came up with the title of the first chapter in this section, the mashup of Bailey (a reference to George Bailey, the protagonist of It’s a Wonderful Life) and Scrooge, I sought out unique combinations of names brought up or alluded to in each of the other chapters. (“Odbody & Marley” is perhaps the most obscure, a reference to the figures who help Bailey and Scrooge toward their moments of truth; the rest I’ll leave to you to decipher.)

  The chapter titles in “Better Off Than the Wives of Drunkards” are all references to famous alcoholics of history: “The Second Man on the Moon” refers to Buzz Aldrin; “The Old M’am and the Seams” is a play on the title of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea; “You’ll Not Be Buried in My Tomb” is a reference to Ulysses S. Grant and the famous riddle about his tomb; “What An Artist Dies in Me” is a reference to a translation of Roman Emperor Nero’s famous last words (Nero, as you may or may not know, was known for his debauchery, so referring to him in this chapter about the Runt seemed only fitting); “In the Mood for a Melody” is a reference to Billy Joel’s song “Piano Man”; and “Glory, the Grape, Love, and Gold” is a reference to a quote from Lord Byron that sounded pretty good as the title of a chapter about Veronica playing a guitar solo from the top of a piano in front of the two great loves of her life (Tracy and Desiree).

  The chapter titles in “What To Look for in a Man” are references to quotations, clichés, or song lyrics about men: “Dudes Lining Up Cause They Hear You Got Swagger” refers to a lyric from the song “Tik Tok” by Kesha; “Not Living Up to What He’s Supposed to Be” refers to a lyric from the song “Terrible Lie” by Nine Inch Nails; “Guilty Feet That Got No Rhythm” refers to a lyric from the song “Careless Whisper” by George Michael; “A Trail of Honey to Show You Where He’s Been” refers to a lyric from the song “Reptile” by Nine Inch Nails; “The Attention the Kiss Deserves” is a reference to a quote attributed to Albert Einstein; “Seven Men at Perfect Height, Seven Noses Pink” refers to a lyric from the song “Behind Every Good Woman” by Tracy Bonham; “The Lonely Boy in the Rain” refers to a lyric from the song “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” by Heart; “Who You Want to Take You Home” refers to a lyric from the song “Closing Time” by Semisonic; “Tears on the Sleeve of a Man” refers to a lyric from the song “Pretty Good Year” by Tori Amos; and “Here and Begging for a Chance” refers to a lyric from the song “Special” by Garbage.

  About the Author

  E. Christopher Clark writes fiction about fractured families, lust gone wrong, and memories as time machines. His writing has been published in Live Free or Ride: Tales of the Concord Coach, River Muse: Tales of Lowell & The Merrimack Valley, and Literary Matters, the newsletter of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. He is also the author of three collections of short fiction published independently: Those Little Bastards (2002), All He Left Behind (2010), and Out of the Woods (2017). Missing Mr. Wingfield is his first novel.

  Get in Touch:

  clarkwoods.com

  chris@clarkwoods.com

  E. in Your Ears

  Horribly Off-Topic is a comedy podcast with new episodes every Monday. It is hosted by author E. Christopher Clark and comedian Steve Woodbury. Subscribe at clarkwoods.com/hot in iTunes, Stitcher, Google, Overcast, or via RSS.

  Also by E. Christopher Clark

  Those Little Bastards

  All He Left Behind

  Out of the Woods