Domestic Violets (28 page)
“What’s this?”
“It’s for next school year. Mr. Gilmore is stepping down and we need to fill his space. We haven’t officially put out an announcement yet. When we do there will be a lot of applications. But, if you took some teaching courses, your real-world experience would make up for never having taught. Since this is a private school, you don’t need to be certified. It could be a great opportunity.”
There’s that word again.
“Mom, I’m not a teacher.”
“Well, according to this article, you’re not a businessman. If you’re not a teacher, then exactly what are you? I think that’s a question you might want to start trying to answer for yourself.”
“I’ve got an agent,” I say. “And he’s getting my book ready to send out next month. He thinks he can sell it, and I believe him. I’m gonna be a writer. A
real
one.”
She leans forward further still, weaving her long, narrow fingers together. “You will be, dear,
some
day. But not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
She opens yet another drawer and pulls out my manuscript. With all that’s gone on this past month, I’d forgotten she even had it. “It’s not you, Tom,” she says.
“No kidding. I told you that, I’m not using my
real
name.”
“It’s not about your name. It’s the writing—and it’s not yours. This
book
isn’t you. Do you know what a pastiche is?”
I tell her yes, but, of course, I have no idea.
“It’s when you write something, a story or an essay, but you do it in someone else’s voice and style. You mimic their aesthetic. A lot of my students respond to Salinger, and so as a writing exercise, I’ll have them do pastiches of him in their own words. Your novel is wonderful—but it’s a wonderful imitation of Curtis. It’s his book from start to finish.” Her face is compassionate, but stern.
“What are you talking about?”
“The themes. The tone. The little details and metaphors—the baseball glove and the ashtray in that old car. These are the things that made your father famous, Tom. It’s obvious. People are going to recognize that.”
I suddenly don’t like her, this skinny old woman who could never write her own novel. I don’t like her because somehow she’s opened up my brain, sifted through all the muck there, and found the one thing I’ve been worried about most—the one thing that no amount of name changing and denying will ever fix. She’s telling me exactly what Katie and Anna and Brandon told me, but it’s not a compliment. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sit down, Tom. I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just wanted to be honest with you. You’re very talented. This proves that. And you’re going to find your own—”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“You just got here.”
“Hank’s waiting in the car.”
“Thomas Michael, please.”
As I storm out, behind me, the printout about her silly teaching job blows from her desk onto the floor.
A
few more days
of unemployment and daytime television have passed. Much of that time has been spent opening my novel to random sections on my computer and then comparing them to equally random sections of my dad’s books. Much of that time has also been spent eating a startling number of Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies and wearing sweatpants.
It would be easy to write my mother’s criticism off entirely, but I can’t, because, of course, she’s right. And she’s been telling me as much in voice-over form for about seventy-two hours now.
I know what I have to do to make this right. It came to me in a moment of pure clarity this morning when I was standing over Hank, plastic bag in hand, waiting for him to go to the bathroom. But the thing that I need to do is going to be difficult and foolish and far-fetched. And so, as a last-ditch effort, I’ve decided to ask Anna what she thinks.
“I hate to say it,” she says. “But I think she might have a point.” Her face is still flushed and her breath is slowing now to a regular clip. She’s unapologetically naked and beautiful, lying on her belly beside me.
“Really?” I ask.
When you’re having sex again, it makes you wonder why you weren’t before. What could possibly have been bad enough to make you stop doing
that
? The cement barrier down the middle of our bed has gone away, and being with her has become, well . . . effortless.
“Maybe,” she says.
When people are worried about delivering bad news, the word “maybe” almost always means “of course.” She’s read as many of his books as I have, she’s got a master’s in comparative literature, and she’s smarter than me by leaps and bounds. And so that settles it. Today is the day that I officially admit to myself that I’ve been slowly and quietly pretending to be my father for almost five years.
She rolls onto her side to face me. “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she says. “Maybe every writer is
like
some other writer. They say Hemingway influenced everyone—even writers who’ve never read him.”
I smile, wondering how many other couples reference Hemingway immediately after sex. It’s purely academic though. We both know that it does matter. A lot. And so I climb out of bed and find some underwear.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
I kiss her lightly on the forehead. “I’m gonna stay up for a while, OK? You get some sleep. You actually have a job to go to tomorrow.”
She smiles at me, and it gives me flashbacks, like a flurry of highlights from when we were young and she had no reason to think that I was anything other than exactly what she wanted me to be. I tell her that I love her. A simple, unpolished word. I’ve made an agreement with myself to start saying this more—to say it for no good reason and to avoid assumptions.
In boxer shorts and an old T-shirt, I slink out into the dark hallway. It’s 10:45, but unemployment has made time merely a concept. The extra bedroom/office is just an office again since my dad left, and it’s a little chilly in here. The computer screen lights up when I nudge the mouse, and I open up the document on my desk that I’ve named “Untitled.” This afternoon I started working on something. It’s not one of my blogs—there will be plenty of time for those. But it’s something else, something that might become something. I can practically hear the men upstairs, working and squabbling and plodding. I read the first few lines, and they’re pretty good—smooth, like the first few strides of a cross-country race when I was a kid.
I dial Brandon’s number, a little exhilarated by what I’m about to do.
“What’s up, gorgeous? Are you done watching
Murder, She Wrote
?” I like when he finds creative ways to call me an old person, considering we’re basically the same age, at least geologically speaking. Wherever he is, it’s quiet.
“I’m having trouble sleeping.” I say.
“Do you want me to talk dirty to you? I can. I’m what you call a full-service literary agent.”
“Not tonight. What are you doing home anyway?”
“It’s the middle of the week, Tommy. Even the beautiful people need a night off sometimes. Blaine and I are catching up on
Lost
on TiVo. Why is it that Sawyer has so much trouble keeping track of his shirt? The rest of them don’t seem to have that problem.”
We chat about random things, like how he’s begun to grow less and less enchanted with thirty-nine hundred dollars a month for an apartment the size of an inner-city school kid’s gym locker. And, of course, we talk about Curtis and Sonya.
“I’ve always wanted a big brother,” he says. “Someone to beat me up and show me
Playboy
s.”
“I’ve been thinking about the book,” I say. “I’ve got an idea, and I want to run it by you. It’s . . . a little dramatic.”
“Oh, thank God. You’ve pulled your head out of your ass and you’re letting me use your real name, aren’t you? This is great news. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to Fifth Avenue and I’m going to buy the biggest fur coat I can find. Suck it, PETA!”
I let him go on for a while, simply because I enjoy listening to Brandon talk. When he’s finished, he’s actually a little out of breath. “It’s not about my name,” I say. “Well . . . not exactly.”
A
few days later
, I open my dad’s front door carefully. “Hello, hello!” I say, announcing myself thoroughly. For fear of what or who might be lurking there, I will never again walk quietly into my dad’s house. I’ve brought Hank along for the ride, and he skitters through the front door and immediately disappears into the kitchen.
“Oh no!” cries Sonya. “It’s a rat! Get out of here, rat!”
There are some suitcases scattered in the main room, and the photos of Ashley are gone from the walls. The house is in the midst of its umpteenth stylistic reimagining, and it’s hard to say what it’ll eventually look like, because right now it looks like a big peaceful mess. Sonya Ross’s journey out of New York City has begun.
She appears from the kitchen, carrying the rodent in question, who welcomes her to our nation’s capital by trying to French kiss her. She’s wearing jeans and a bright blue T-shirt, and her hair is pulled back off her face. I’ve only seen her in New York colors, and the effect is startling. As are her sneakers. I’d have never guessed Sonya even owned sneakers.
She sets Hank on the ground and we kiss the air near one another’s cheeks. “So, you’re here,” I say.
“In the flesh. I was just working in the kitchen. You know they didn’t have but four dishes here between them?”
“Well, Ashley gets most of her nutrients from the sun . . . and vodka.”
“I keep thinking that if this had all happened sooner, then maybe I could have been here to . . . to look after him.”
“Well, you’re here now,” I say. “That’s what matters.”
In the kitchen, I step over some discarded Crate & Barrel boxes and lean against the counter. A new spinning spice rack sits next to a shining toaster, and a bright yellow dishrag hangs from the faucet, still creased and unused. This is the first time I’ve seen Sonya since New York. She’s known me for most of my life, but I can see she’s nervous. “I’m sorry that everything had to be so hush-hush. He didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation. He just felt it’d be best if you—”
I stop her, touching her wrist, determined to help her from feeling like she doesn’t belong here. In the face of vulnerable women, I’ve found there’s always the one right thing to say. I’ve decided to dedicate myself going forward to actually saying that thing whenever possible. “Sonya, I promise, there isn’t anyone I’d rather see here. I mean that.”
The overhead light reflects from her eyes. I’ve caught her off guard. “Tommy,” she says.
“All right, enough of that. If you start crying, then Hank will start crying, and there’s nothing more pathetic than a crying dog.”
“Deal,” she says, and points me upstairs. Apparently, my father is up there playing with a new toy. I have no idea what this could mean. “He’s just taken some medicine that makes him a little stoned. He rather likes it actually.”
The Pulitzer is on the wall, hanging beside his other awards, and it’s a staggering sight, this completed wall. So much so that Hank runs into the backs of my legs on my way up the stairs as I stop to look. I can hear hushed voices and quiet applause, literally, and I imagine a small crowd of well-read people clapping for his achievements. And then I realize that what I’m hearing is actually just televised golf.
Curtis is reclining in his leather reading chair facing the most enormous television I’ve ever seen. It’s sitting on the floor next to the box it came in and what appears to be some sort of wall-mounting contraption. If there’s a less physically capable man on earth than me, it’s Curtis Violet, and I get the feeling it’ll be staying there on the floor for a while, wearing grooves into the carpeting.
“That’s a pretty freaking big TV,” I say.
“Do you think it’s too much?”
“No, I’ve always wanted to see the inside of Tiger Woods’s nose.”
“The high-def really makes everything pop, doesn’t it? I called Gary. He said he’d come by tomorrow and help me get it up on the wall, unless you wanna give it a go right now.”
Hank jumps on Curtis’s lap and sets up shop there, and I agree to come by tomorrow and give them a hand. Curtis and I will offer Gary no value whatsoever, but it’s one of those events I don’t want to miss. Across the room, his computer is dark, turned off, and the symbolism, set against this flat screen monster, is as vivid as the TV’s perfect picture. He’s never allowed a TV up here, even on the second floor, for fear that it would be just one more distraction, and a writer isn’t someone who should invite distraction into his life.
“It was an impulse buy,” he says. “I was there buying extension cords, and it caught my eye. This is what people do, right? They watch televisions like this with surround sound and everything. There’s this package you can buy where you can see every baseball game that’s being played on any day. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, Dad,” I say. “It does.”
He’s lost a little more weight, just in the last few days, and there’s a pharmacy of orange prescription bottles on his desk. When none of us knew he was sick, I think it was easy for him to pretend that he simply wasn’t. But now, he’s accepted it, committed to it somehow. “The guy at the store told me these TVs have come down in price considerably. Apparently I got a very good deal. I could get one for you guys, maybe have it sent over. It would be great for Allie’s
Lion King
.”
“I think we’re good,” I say. “But thanks.” I drop the big manila envelope on the chair next to him.
“What’ve you got there?” he asks. His voice is slow, spoken through a small tunnel of narcotics. “Is it a present for me? If you’re bringing me presents, at
least
let me buy you a television. It’s the least I can do.”
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” I say.
Tiger Woods’s ball drifts along an invisible slope in the grass and falls neatly into the hole, and everyone claps. Curtis shoves Hank to the ottoman and removes my manuscript from the envelope. He frowns at the title page for a long time.
“What is this, Tommy?”
“I wrote a book, Dad.”
“You what? When did you do that?”
“Over the last five years. Slowly. You’ve always made it look really easy. But it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
He touches the crisp corner of the manuscript. His hands are shaking, a steady, unending tremor. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I look down at the floor, studying our shoes. “It felt silly that I was even trying to write a book. So I kept it a secret.”
“But I could have helped you.”
“I know,” I say. “But I guess I just wanted to try doing something on my own.”
He seems about to ask me any number of questions, but then he sets the book on his knees and looks at me. His pupils are big and dark, blackening out most all of the blue. “But, why’s
my
name on it?”
We both look at the title page.
The Son of Hollywood
By Curtis Violet
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s complicated.”
“OK.”
“I think that somehow I knew what was happening to you. That’s the only way I can describe it. When you read this, you’ll see what I mean, because it’s completely obvious that I was never writing it for myself. I was writing it for you the entire time.”
He turns the TV off and asks me what that means, and I don’t know how to answer. I imagined this moment differently. I’d hand him the novel, he’d read his name on the title page, and he’d just understand what was going on. For a moment, I say nothing, here in this very room where he’s written so many of his own novels, and I wait for a long, slow fade to black to mark the end of this scene.
“My whole life I’ve told everyone who would listen that I didn’t want to be like you. But that’s not true at all. I wanted to be like you so much that I pretended to be you. I wrote this book the way I imagine you would, if you could have.”
He opens to a random page in the middle and reads a sentence to himself. “Is it good?” he asks.
I’ve shrouded the last five years in a blanket of anxiety and insecurity about the answer to that very question. But I’m beyond that now. I’ll channel all of that pain and neurosis into the next one, and into the one after that. But this book, my dad’s book, is no longer mine, and so I can think about it objectively. It might as well be sitting on the shelf behind me. “Yeah, it’s good. And if you’re really done writing, Dad, if this is all really over for you, then I want it to be your last book.”
His lower lip is trembling below his aging, handsome face. “What’s it about?”
“You and me,” I say. “I finally figured that out. Mom told me that all first novels are autobiographical. I guess she’s right.”
He touches his own name beneath the title. “Did you make me a bad father?” he asks.
A vulnerable woman is easy. A vulnerable father, though, is not. But I’ll do the best I can.
“No, Dad. I made you a great father.”
