How I Became a Famous Novelist (11 page)

I left that one hanging there.

When he got home a few nights later, I was wearing a button-up shirt and my finest dining-out pleateds. As he opened the door I was tonging ice into my two surviving Larry Bird commemorative glasses, our apartment’s finest drinkware.

“Oh, hey Hobart.”

“Hello.”

“I thought, you know, Friday night and all, we should have a cocktail hour. Like gentlemen, you know?” I poured two glasses and offered him one. “It’s MacAllister eighteen,” I said, before a slow and gentlemanly sip. “Mmm, very
peaty
.”

I handed him a Scotch.

* * *

Two hours later: Hobart was holding forth in a voice that quivered with anguish. Scotch slopped all over the carpet as he paced back and forth.

“She says she’s ‘coming into her own as a woman.’ Into her
own
! That the distance is good for us! She said ‘we’re better as two separate entities that care about each other than as one unit.’ Bullshit!”

“Man.”

“It’s bullshit! And she’s always, she’s mentioning all the time
Nevin
.”

“Yikes.”

“Some guy named Nevin who works at Washington Mutual. ‘You’d like him.’ She said that! I wouldn’t like him! I friggin’ . . . I hate him!”

“That’s tough, man. But, you know, give it some time. It’ll work out.”

“It sucks!”

“Yeah man, I hear ya. I’ve been having a rough time, too. I lost my job.”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve been working on my résumé, but I just have so much trouble concentrating.”

“Concentrating. That’s all I ever do is concentrating.”

“It’s just, you know, I don’t know if I’m gonna make rent.”

This seemed to hit, triggering Hobart’s terror of disorder. He looked up at me. “Dude are you serious?” He seemed to grasp instantly how unnatural he sounded saying
dude
.

“Yeah.” This was not true. Signing up for unemployment had been easy, made me feel like a real writer, and had me stable for a while.

“That’s . . . God!”

“Yeah. If I could just figure out a way to
concentrate
.”

Hobart’s eyes showed determination as he struggled to stay seated upright. I saw my time to strike.

“Hey, you guys at Lascar are working on a drug for that kind of stuff, for like hyperactivity and stuff?” A pause. Then he spoke, slurred, as though reading off a chart on the wall.

“Reutical is a medication designed to reduce the symptoms of hyperactivity and ADD, improving focus and concentration in adolescent males.”

“So it helps kids pay attention in school and stuff?” Heavy, thudding nods from Hobart.

“I mean, it probably has something to do with never knowing my dad. I’ve tried all different stuff that doctors gave me.” This was not true. “But one of them said the only thing that might help was this Reutical thing. Do you think you could get me some?”

There was a long pause, as his whiskey-soaked neurons made ethical calculations.

“We’re only in phase two trials.” He said this as though it concluded the matter.

“So that’s experiments, right?”

“Yeah, experiments.”

“Sweet. I mean, I’ll be an experiment.”

Hobart laughed. “We’re all friggin’ experiments.” Some rolling of the head about his neck like a statue teetering on a podium.

“You know it’s great what you do. It’s medicine, after all. To help people.”

I fixed him with my eyes.

“Hobart, you’re a good roommate. And a good friend. I knew you’d help me out on this. Because you’re a gentleman.” He looked at me. I knew I had maybe twelve seconds before he could say anything. So I dashed into the bathroom. I waited there. I heard him pour another glass. Then silence. I saw him passed out on the couch.

Early, very early the next morning, I left a note on his desk saying “Hobs, thanks so much for promising to get me that Reutical.” Then I hid in my room.

For two days I didn’t see Hobart. But I knew how his brain was working. He was thinking, “Pete can’t make rent. He has trouble concentrating. It probably has something to do with never knowing his dad. It’s medicine, to help people.” But above all he was thinking, “I promised him. He called me a gentleman. I am a gentleman. I’m better than Nevin. I made Pete a gentleman’s promise.”

I walked into the living room one morning and found a clear plastic jar holding thirty gray oval pills.

Beneath were eight pages written in his meticulous hand. It was warnings and instructions, with tidy arrows of emphasis, a diagram explaining in basic terms Reutical’s chemical structure, and charts. I skimmed it and got the main point, which was “don’t take Reutical with alcohol.” I gleaned the subtext, which was “please, Pete, don’t screw me on this.”

In short, Hobart was as careful as possible and doesn’t deserve any blame.

8

On this morning, Prudence didn’t stop. She walked right into the shop.

Her father and her brother Josiah and Gideon the apprentice didn’t notice, so busy were they at their planing and awling.

“Good morning!” said Prudence.

“Prudence!” said Father. “What brings you to us this morning? Has Mother sent you with blackberry currants for our midday meal?”

“No,” said Prudence. “I’ve come because I’d like to learn to be a cooper.”

“WHAT?!” cried Gideon. “Why, a girl cooper?”

“Surely you’re joking, Prudence!” declared Josiah. “Why, I could sooner imagine our American colonies separating from Mother England!”

The two boys laughed, quite meanly.

Father put his hard hand on Prudence’s shoulder.

“Prudence,” he said, “such foolishness doesn’t become you. You know as well as I that young girls are made for milking, mending clothes, and baking pies. Let’s be home with you, and hear no more nonsense.”

But Prudence was very brave. She didn’t move a foot.

“Father,” she said, “I would like to be a cooper. And if you teach me, why, I’ll make a barrel as well as might a boy!”

The cruel boys laughed again.

“Look, Gideon,” cried Josiah, “at the barrel made by Prudence!” He was holding up a broken stave.

A tear welled in Prudence’s eye.

“I
will
be a cooper!” she cried. “You’ll see!”

She turned from the shop, and off she ran.

—excerpt from the unpublished manuscript
Prudence Whiddiecomb: The Girl Cooper
by Evelyn Ewart and Margaret Wrenshall

The next day I threw my laptop and a handful of underwear into my Camry and drove north, up 93 to Vermont.

An easy way to get credibility as an author is to live someplace rugged. Publishers live in Manhattan, so they consider southern Connecticut to be a hinterland. They’re easily impressed, and it seemed foolish not to exploit that weakness.

Preston Brooks has West Virginia. Upstate New York is a popular choice. That’s cordwood-chopping, run-down mill-town country. West Texas is fertile—cf. Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry. Wyoming and Montana give a writer a lot of seriousness points. Nobody’s gonna call you out when you start throwing around place-names like Bitterroot and Teton and Laramie. The point is to prove that your prose is as natural as a bushel of organic tomatoes or a cut of steak from a free-range longhorn.

Territories are going fast. Before long novelists will have to set up camp in Burkina Faso or Sakhalin Island if they want any credit for being genuine voices.

With a bottle of Reutical in my pocket, it wouldn’t be long until I was putting
The Tornado Ashes Club
on the market. I’d need the publishing assistants to say to their bosses “you’ve got to sign this guy—he’s a completely pure voice, he holed up in a cabin in like
New Hampshire
or someplace and wrote this fucking amazing book that’s so lyrical you’re gonna shit.”

Plus I knew Hobart would almost immediately regret his decision, and I didn’t want to be around to deal with it.

So I’d called up my Aunt Evelyn.

THE STORY OF AUNT EVELYN

Once Evelyn was a famously fierce lawyer. She wore pantsuits. She was in the papers and on TV a few years back when her firm had defended the city of Boston against some kids who claimed they’d been injured riding the subway. She was the one who tricked the main guy into admitting in court that their injuries were actually from filming a homemade break-dancing video. That was the same year she announced she was a lesbian. This didn’t bother anyone in our family, a fact which I think disappointed her because she was fired up to smoke any opposition. After that she mellowed out. She got a girlfriend, Margaret, who was only a few years older than me. Margaret had captained the Smith College rugby team to the national championship. She’s great. I did a bunch of shots with her at the commitment ceremony. A year or two later, Evelyn announced that she was quitting the law. She and Margaret were going to move up to Vermont to open a maple sugar distillery. That was the kind of thing you could do if you didn’t have kids, my mom had commented ruefully.

At about six I turned down the gravel road in Tracton toward their house, a solid rectangle of local stone set back among desapped trees.

Margaret came out, the Joan of Arc dome of her hair bouncing as she ran up to me for the first round of hugs. Then into the kitchen for round two with Aunt Evelyn, who was ferociously eviscerating a cantaloupe.

I was treated to a magnificent welcome dinner: organic spinach salad, mixed fruit puree, locally raised Connecticut River salmon with apple-maple chutney, homemade seven-grain bread, followed by traditional Native American corn pudding. This wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d imagined my stay in Vermont would be a hard literary asceticism, like a boxer in training camp. But I’d now been unemployed for almost two months so I ate like a grateful urchin.

“Try the wine,” Aunt Evelyn said, “our friends Crispin and Lawrence sent it to us from Sorrento. It’s made by Trappist monks.”

“Those monks know how to stomp a grape,” Margaret said.

“So Pete, I think it’s wonderful that you’re working on a book. We’re so honored to have a young novelist for a guest. What inspired you to turn to matters literary?”

“Mostly to humiliate Polly, and impress people at her wedding.”

Margaret laughed. “Right on.” Margaret totally gets it.

“Plus I wanted to get enough money so I don’t have to work anymore.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound especially noble,” my aunt said, though she appeared at least slightly amused. “I’m considering embarking on a writing project of my own. A children’s book. I really think it’s a story that could be empowering to young girls. It’s about a girl who isn’t content to just become a wife and a mother. She wants to learn the trade of coopering. Barrel making.”

“Huh.”

“The best part is that it’s a true story. Her name was Prudence Whiddiecomb, and she lived over in Spayboro in the late eighteenth century. And while her father was off fighting in the Revolution, she took over his business. She became quite a successful cooper and also did some light smithing.” Evelyn told me about her explorations in the historical societies of local towns, in speech peppered with phrases like “the interesting thing about staves is . . .” and “now, in those days, Spayboro wasn’t the county seat, which complicates things.”

After the corn pudding, Margaret showed me an illustration she’d done for the proposed book. Her ideas of what makes a good illustration for a children’s book are different from those of children. Her main influence seemed to be Eastern European movie posters and Victorian crime sketches. The etching was in charcoal, a terrifying, ghoulish close-up of Prudence holding a tool, with a quarter of her teeth exposed, about to stab a barrel.

“That’s an awl,” Margaret said, in answer to an unasked but reasonable question.

Aunt Evelyn never really figured out maple syruping. She told me about how there’d been an explosion in their neighbor’s sugar shack, caused by poor ventilation. A basset hound had been maimed but was getting by now on three legs, an example of perseverance for us all. That was the kind of rural detail from which I could benefit. I made a note to add a part in
Tornado Ashes Club
where Grandmother draws inspiration from such a dog.

The next morning Aunt Evelyn and Margaret went into Spayboro to buy tapenades and such. Under a pot of Mountaineer
Organic Slow-Roast Dark Blend coffee, Evelyn left me a note encouraging me to “make the sugar shack your writer’s studio!”

So there I sat, among the empty vats. Evelyn had set up a metal desk and a wooden chair for me. On my laptop were my most recent pages. Luke was traveling from Tunisia to Peru in the belly of a steamer, his clothes soaked with bilgewater as he dreamed of home. It was great, messy stuff that had occurred to me while I was scouring my bathtub. Meanwhile, Silas, Genevieve, and Grandma were camped out in the Black Hills, and Genevieve was telling a Lakota legend (I’d made it up) about the stars representing the hearts of lost lovers.

All the inspiration and energy I needed to finish was, I hoped, contained in the little gray pill I dumped out of the Reutical bottle. I washed it down with a swig of coffee and waited.

EFFECTS OF REUTICAL, AS NOTED BY THE AUTHOR, MARCH 11

BEGIN 11:34
A.M
.

0–8 minutes after ingestion:
No effect. Boredom.

8–11 minutes:
Slight anger at Hobart. Have I been hoaxed? Itchiness of scalp (probably unrelated).

11 minutes:
Self-administration of second Reutical.

12.5 minutes:
Need to urinate.

13 minutes:
Even-paced walking into house, followed by normal urination.

14 minutes:
Self-administration of small glass of MacAllister whiskey, to accelerate process.

21–34 minutes:
Fascination with the hairs on my right hand. Sudden need to count them above the wrist.
Concern over where to demarcate as “above the wrist.” Drawing of impressively straight line across wrist. Counting of hairs, followed by two recounts to ensure accuracy (78, 77½, 77
, avg. 77.61111)