Summerlong: A Novel Part 16

"Why wouldn't you want to help your father finish his book?"

"I don't care about art anymore," Charlie says. "I told you-that's the way of madness and sadness. Playing Hamlet almost made me insane. Who wants to dwell in that kind of sadness? If my father actually wrote a novel, I guarantee you it is f.u.c.king sad."

"So you're avoiding sadness? That can't be done!"

"Look, the only reason I'd finish my old man's book is so that he would turn to me and thank me and tell me what a great job I had done, how much he needed my help. And he's too senile to do that. He could get a contract with some huge publisher, his book could be a best seller, and he'd never know."

"But you'd know!"

"If I write a book, it'll be my own book."

"You want to write a book?"

"Nope," Charlie says.

"I think we're making the wrong kind of list," ABC says. "I think you need a list of things you want to do with your LIFE." She wrote L-I-F-E on the legal pad in huge letters.

"You're the one who wants to die," Charlie says.

"Not exactly. I'm waiting for Philly to find me."

"You really believe this will happen?"

"Let's talk about you: Don Lowry said this house can get maybe four hundred grand, it's just, you know," ABC says, "you have to wait for a person with four hundred grand to spend to move to Grinnell, Iowa. But think about it. You could live off that forever! And, in the meantime, we could use the pool! Skinny-dippin' parties!"

"Could you believe Claire did that?" Charlie says.

"She's on an edge, you know?" ABC says. "I feel bad for her. She's trapped in her life."

"Everybody is," Charlie says. "Even me, Mr. Freedom. There are many aspects of my life that are unchangeable. Does it mean I dwell on them or in them?"

As they speak, Charlie is halfheartedly combing through papers. Throwing old newspapers into a recycling bin, tossing away more of the meticulously archived work done by former students, and starting a box of books that could go to Goodwill. When he first began the work of going through his father's stuff, he still had hoped to find, buried in all of this, a book ma.n.u.script. This would, he felt, negate the terribly sad sheaf of letters he'd uncovered. A book! A finished masterwork! With notes and an introduction by Charles Gulliver! Maybe he'd win an award, maybe he'd go back for a graduate degree after all, follow in the old man's footsteps. He would go to his father's room, and he would visit him and say: I found it. And it will see the light of day. And I plan to be a professor. And aren't you proud of your son?

But now, even that wouldn't matter.

ABC has gone through his father's CD collection and has put on some music, some Henryck Grecki.

"My father liked to listen to this as he worked."

"It's almost unbearably sad," ABC says. "How could he handle all of that sad music and remain sane? It seems as if it'd be nearly impossible."

Charlie takes down a large hardcover edition of Jude the Obscure, which had been one of his father's favorite novels. This is an old edition. Maybe he will take it to his father in the Mayflower. He is not delusional. His father is not dead, but this part of his father's life-the life of professional responsibility and pleasure-is over. Patients who suffer Lewy body dementia tend to have moments of clarity, but a sustained engagement with reality, with a return to the day-to-day life of a scholar Gill Gulliver had loved for so long? Impossible. Still, maybe in some small moments, he might return to Hardy and find something of the familiar in its pages.

"What's that?" ABC asks.

"Jude the Obscure," Charlie says. "Have you read it?"

"I have! In your dad's Literary a.n.a.lysis cla.s.s. Freshman year. It. Was. So. Depressing."

"My father gave it to me when I started high school. As a gift. I never read it. He was so disappointed by that."

He opens the book.

"Read it now," ABC says.

Inside the book is a small white envelope. In the corner of the envelope, in purple felt-tip pen, is a hand-drawn line of three question marks, thick and ornate, as if penned by a calligrapher. On the other side of the envelope, three hearts drawn in green. Inside, some letters: the first letter was typed on an old typewriter, on green typing paper.

Before Charlie has even unfolded the letter, ABC is standing up and coming toward him. "What is that?" she demands. "Let me see that."

This is what it is: Grinnell, Iowa September 16, 2011 G- I found your note in Ruth's mailbox. At least I'm going to a.s.sume that it is from you, that you are the "G" who signed the note. Yes, it is true that I no longer have a cell phone or an e-mail address that works. Sorry. Yes, it is true that I am back in Grinnell and living in the home of Professor Manetti's widow. Yes, that was me you saw walking last night, and yes, I did hear you call to me from your car, and yes, I did sprint away from you, from your voice, at the painful moment of recognition. I'm sorry. I didn't want to explain to you why I came back to Grinnell just four months after graduating, why Los Angeles felt claustrophobic to me, teeming with noise and germs, and why everywhere I looked I felt death. I missed the prairie. I missed the quiet. I missed the big and changing sky, and the feeling that I could see things coming from any direction. I missed Philly, and all my memories of her are here. They live here. It's not something I can explain. I really don't want to explain this, which is why I am not talking to anybody.

And so, here I am, a distinguished alumna of Grinnell College, winner of the Nellie Sifkin Prize, living two blocks away from my first college dorm.

Living the dream, right?

I'm not missing much in L.A., trust me on that. The only jobs available to me are do-gooder jobs in which I labor for slave wages in order to transform somebody else's life while my own life hangs in limbo.

I'm not interested in that, which is not a very Grinnellian thing to admit, is it?

You are right to guess that Philly's death is what drove me back here. Of course, I am not taking it well. One day I will tell you about it. Not what happened, though that is surreal in itself, and it's a story I can tell you if you want to hear it. But I also should tell you why I couldn't stay in L.A. without her, even though I had lived there most of my life: that's a story I need to tell, soon. (I had heard you were on leave, medical leave, and I do hope everything is okay.) My mother is of no help to me, though of course she has offered me a place to stay, her spare bedroom, since without Philly, it is hard to afford even the small studio apartment that she and I shared. (We had bunk beds and no couch, just one tiny love seat we'd sit on to watch movies on her laptop. We didn't care. We had our own place in West Hollywood and we had no concerns over its tininess. We cared about its our-ness!) Of course I loved Philly. But also, my G.o.d, I think I was in love with her too.

Write back. Or don't.

But if you do, use my new Grinnell post office box, please, number 573.

Mrs. Manetti is nosy. She understands more than she admits.

Yours, ABC.

The next letter was printed on a laser printer and had the words MY COPY penciled in blue at the top right-hand corner.

July 6, 2009 Dear ABC, I trust, or at least hope, this note finds you well. Prague is such a beautiful city and it is vibrant and alive with so much-music, art, s.e.x, rich and heavy food-but it is also, for me at least, a place of profound melancholy, of minor keys. I was there last in 1997, and when I came home, I could barely function. Everything depressed me about Grinnell, the town, the campus, the way my wife never fixed her hair, and my son's constant chatter. It was a dreadful time for me, I felt I was suffocating, and I have always attributed that to a spiritual condition caused by spending a portion of the summer in Prague.

Do be careful.

But you are young! And regret probably doesn't weigh as heavily on your heart as it does on mine. And a city as beautiful as Prague-with its significant architecture and sidewalks teeming with attractive young people-probably does not cause you as much regret as it causes me. To you, Prague must be a city of promise, a city freed from the shackles of oppression and more or less embracing the chaos of Westernization. At least I hope so. I hope too that you are reading some of the Czech authors I recommended to you. Milan Kundera, especially, is most fun to read while sitting in some bar drinking pilsner and eating one of those strange but delicious pizzas they serve everywhere in that city. G.o.d, I'd kill for a decent pizza tonight!

Anyway, I did look at your essay regarding Tender Is the Night and I must say it is accomplished in its scope but still incredibly scattered in terms of its argument. As a sample for graduate school, it is probably not your best work, though I am sending you back a copy of the essay with some comments and notes in the margins. It may, with some revision, turn into your showcase piece. If nothing else, it is deeply gratifying to me to see how much you've connected with Fitzgerald on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Well, you don't want to waste your days in Prague reading boring missives from a washed-up Fitzgerald scholar, do you? Take care and know that I miss you. I miss seeing you unexpectedly on campus and miss your visits to my office. I miss your laugh, the depth of it, and the sight of you, and even your scent, the shampoo I sometimes could smell when you came to cla.s.s right from the gym and you sat in the front row and I thought . . . well, never mind what I thought!

Yours, Gill Gulliver And then there are two more notes, handwritten, blue pen on yellow lined paper, ripped, untidily, from a legal pad. One reads: Professor Gulliver, I am so sorry but there is no way, no way at all I am ever going to get this paper done, even with the generous extension you have given me. I really don't know what to say except that I am sorry to disappoint you. With much respect, yours truly, ABC.

The second note is handwritten as well, but had been copied on a photocopier and is in the strange manic scrawl that Charlie recognizes instantly as his father's handwriting.

Again, in blue ink on the top, the words MY COPY.

The note read: My dear ABC, please do not apologize to me in that way again. I am not disappointed in you. I am proud of you and think the world of you and your intellect. I am only sorry I have to wait a few days longer to read your always brilliant thoughts on this a.s.signment. The connection between Hemingway and Emerson/Th.o.r.eau is a notable one, but not an obvious one, so do take your time and get it right. The papers I've read so far, by your esteemed but incredibly inferior cla.s.smates, are RUBBISH. I want to speak with you soon. Preferably alone. When I don't see you at some point during the week, I spend the weekend feeling destroyed.

Yours, Gill "Why didn't you tell me this?" Charlie says. "Why wouldn't this be like the first thing you told a person? Nice to meet you! I was f.u.c.king your dad before he went insane!"

"Charlie!" ABC says. "I wasn't f.u.c.king him! He had a crush on me, or something, something delusional and strange, and I was kind to him. I liked his attention. But nothing ever happened."

Had Charlie not already read through over a hundred communications like these, he might not believe ABC. But he has seen so many of these notes already. His father couldn't possibly have had legitimate affairs with all of these women.

"Your father was addicted to the feeling of being in love. He told me once-probably inappropriately-that the great love of his life, before he met your mother, was someone he couldn't have."

"He told you that?"

"I think he became addicted to pursuing women he could never have. It was a thing for him, but he never left your mother. He never would."

"He should've."

ABC leans in and gives Charlie a hug. "You are lucky, Chuck. Because I am in the mood to get stoned and then go over to the city pool and ride the waterslide. Maybe my bikini top will come off again! Won't that be fun!"

Charlie flops down on the couch.

"Why the f.u.c.k did I agree to do this?"

ABC straddles Charlie. "Hey, hey, slugger. You are way hotter than your old man. That feels good, don't it?"

"I, um . . ."

"He never got a chance to be f.u.c.ked by me, and you, you will have multiple chances."

"I thought you said this was nothing," Charlie says. "A onetime thing."

"It is nothing. But who counts nothing? Two times zero is still zero."

"Right! Of course! I'm not good with math."

She is grinding herself on him, kissing his mouth, and then the phone in the study begins to ring.

"I don't hear that," she says. She pulls off her s.h.i.+rt, and as she does, he reaches over to the table and picks up the old-fas.h.i.+oned desk phone.

"h.e.l.lo?" he says. "Gullivers'."

ABC puts her s.h.i.+rt back on when she sees Charlie's face fall. Stands up, smooths out her clothes.

Then Charlie says, "Yes, I'll come. Don't worry, I'll help you."

"What is it?" ABC asks, but Charlie ignores the question, distracted.

He hangs up the phone, finds his keys and wallet, and says, "I'm sorry. I have to go."

"Where?" ABC asks.

"It's really complicated. It's Claire."

"Why is she so f.u.c.king complicated? I know two men in this town and they're both very wrapped up in her complexity."

"It's just-right now, she needs me."

"Is that why you like her?"

"I don't know," Charlie says. "I've never been needed before."

Perhaps the most profound crack in a shattering marriage is how often one spouse ignores the calls of another spouse. That Sat.u.r.day, as he works on the stack of neglected paperwork-tax doc.u.ments, state regulation forms, MLS listings-Don Lowry ignores three calls from his wife as well as two text messages that say h.e.l.lo???!!!????

Why does he do this?

One explanation, which is the one he gives himself, is that he is simply busy-no, not simply busy, but awfully busy, and whatever dramatic thought has popped up in Claire's head, whatever possible misdeed or trespa.s.s she is so eager to talk about, would simply distract him from what he's really trying to do: get s.h.i.+t done. Since his friends.h.i.+p with ABC began, along with its attendant recreational weed smoking, he's been about as productive as a pill-popping starlet at the Chateau Marmont, at a time when he needs nothing more than to work and work hard.

It's time to get s.h.i.+t done.

Another possible and perhaps more plausible explanation for his refusal to answer his phone, or even listen to the message she left on her third call, is harder to admit. He is hoping ABC will call. She had mentioned to him something about a day off, and how she usually spent Sat.u.r.days getting stoned and wandering around Rock Creek State Park or some other outpost, and she wondered if he wanted to come along.

He is working on an Excel file that is itemizing his expenses for the year, so that he might somehow estimate the quarterly taxes he will certainly not be able to pay, when his phone rings again.

This time, he answers, because it is not Claire. It is exactly whom he wanted it to be.

"Yo," ABC says.

"Yo," Don says back, though he probably hasn't said yo in decades.

"I was hanging out with Charlie," ABC says. "But he ditched me. Come by the pool and hang out."

Don Lowry's heart floats up to the drop ceiling and explodes in the fluorescent light. Pieces of his heart fall down on his head when he says, "Sure. Cool."

If she's ever been happier in her life to see someone, she can't remember it. Charlie, smiling but bewildered, coming toward her as she leans on the Suburban next to a female police officer.

"Is this your friend?" the cop asks her and she nods, and starts crying, which embarra.s.ses her to no end, as does the hug, more awkward than she expected it to be, and she cries, more and more, as Charlie talks to the officer, explains that he'll drive Claire's car home and leave his own car there.