Authors: Ann Patchett

What Now? (7 page)

BOOK: What Now?

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you are curious as to its content I would urge you to use your imagination. You will not come up with anything as lifeless as what I had written. Allan said it should be about me, my time in college, my life as a writer. He said it should be funny. In short, it should be everything it wasn’t. This was not a situation that called for a rewrite. It was time to let the whole thing go gentle into that good night.

I sat on my couch for a long time and stared out the window. I had no interest in starting over again, but there are some people whom we grant the role of oracle in our lives and when they speak—rarely, gravely—we are well-advised to listen. When I had written my new speech (a shorter version of this book), I did not send it back to Allan. I didn’t need to.

After all, I am still a good student. I had done everything he told me.

9 0

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

The day of graduation started out overcast and then gave way to white shots of lightning slicing through torrents of rain.

I waited in the line with my friend Alice Ilchman. She had retired from the post of president and bought a house with her husband a few blocks from campus. Alice stayed remarkably the same over time, with only a little more gray in her straight blond hair.

There was always the feeling when I was near her that I was in the presence of a tremen-dous energy source, the kind of fire that comes from the perfect balance of intelligence and compassion. For as long as I had known her I had wished that I could bottle up just a quarter cup of her effervescence and 9 1

take it with me to have in the moments when my own intelligence and compassion failed.

Alice had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a month before, and the anima-tion that so distinguished my friend had not diminished as her health had waned. Now we sat together on a low stone wall to conserve our energy before the procession. She brushed aside all inquiries about how she was doing, and so while we waited I told her about Allan and the pages I’d thrown away.

She considered this for a while. It was as if she could hear my speech coming in from somewhere in the distance and knew just how bad it had been. “Very sound advice,” she told me, and held my hand. “Always listen to Allan.”

I had listened to Allan, but I didn’t fully understand how perceptive he had been 9 2

until I was up on the platform with all the speakers who came before me. Every one of them was important, instructive, and serious unto dire. I pictured myself delivering my recently abandoned address, being both dull and pedantic, and that picture was a knife through my heart. Holding my new speech in my hands, I had never been so grateful to anyone as I was at that moment to my teacher, who twenty years later and a thou-sand miles away was still able to save me from making a fool of myself.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

The sun returned as soon as the procession was over. At the reception afterward a young woman came up and told me that Alice had gotten tired at the ceremony and 9 3

had to go home, but that she wanted me to stop by before I left town. Her daughter, Sarah, now grown up and married, was visit-ing, and Alice wanted me to say hello. By the time I arrived, Alice had put away her heavy academic gown and hood, and came down the stairs in jeans and a sweater. She was fragile, thin, luminous. When she saw me she held out her arms. “Dear girl,” she said, “I knew you’d come.”

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

I had never imagined the true gift that would come of being asked to give the commencement address at my college: the chance to say good-bye to my friend.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

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This book lets me pay honor where honor is due. It is a rare and wonderful thing to be able to dedicate a book, to say in print: these are the people I love, the ones to whom I am most grateful.

I do, and I am.

9 7

P H O T O C R E D I T S

pages i–ii: © Dennis MacDonald / Alamy page vi: AGFC50—© Jupiterimages/ Brand X / Alamy pages vii–viii: AHWCTB—© Visions of America, LLC / Alamy pages ix–x: A4CF9C—© Chad Ehlers / Alamy page xi: A7XT09—© Kim Karpeles / Alamy page 5: © JLImages / Alamy

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page 79: OJP0001021—© OJO Images / Veer pages 79: © PBNJ Productions / Corbis page 81: AC6M8C—© K-PHOTOS / Alamy page 85: © moodboard / Alamy

pages 88–89: © Alloy Photography / Veer pages 94–95: © UpperCut Images Photography / Veer pages 98–99: AFNG99—© Adrian Sherratt / Alamy page 101: AAAXK1—© Photo Bank Yokohama Co., Ltd. / Alamy

About the Author

ANN PATCHETT
is the author of five novels—

The Patron Saint of Liars
,
Taft
,
The Magician’s
Assistant
, and the
New York Times
bestsellers
Bel
Canto
and
Run
—as well as the nonfiction book
Truth & Beauty
. She has won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Patchett has written for many publications, including the
Washington Post
, the
Atlantic
, the
Paris Review
,
Gourmet
,
Vogue
,
Harper’s Magazine
, and the
New York Times Magazine
. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

www.AnnPatchett.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Ann Patchett

Fi c t i o n

R u n

B e l C a n t o

T h e M a g i c i a n’s A s s i s t a n t Ta f t

T h e P a t r o n S a i n t o f L i a r s
No n f i c t i o n

Tr u t h & B e a u t y

Credits

Book design by Chip Kidd

Jacket photo montage © Getty Images Jacket design by Chip Kidd

Copyright

WHAT NOW?. Copyright © 2008 by Ann Patchett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader March 2008

ISBN 978-0-06-165248-6

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