The End of the Book (33 page)

“I know your feelings about California, but a lot has happened since this last came up. We don't have to apply if you don't want to,” she said. “I'd be lying, though, if I told you I didn't want another shot.”

“When are applications due?” I asked.

“Middle of June. And they're moving fast on this.”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

Over the next couple weeks I didn't think much about California. I meant to, but each night when I came home from work I found myself digging into the box marked “BOG” and obsessively reading through my father's typewritten pages and disconnected fragments. I assigned the scattered notes to the folders he'd already begun—
Leaving Winesburg; Turn-of-the-Century Chicago; Street, Rail, and Waterway Maps; The Golden Age of Advertising; Chicago Barons of the Gilded Age; The Panic of 1907; Anderson and the Chicago Renaissance; Secondary Characters and Other Grotesques;
and
George Willard
. I started new folders—
The Lazar Agency; Hull House; The Lab School; Characters from Home; Characters from Chicago; Helen White; Margaret Lazar; Tom Willard
, and a new folder for
George Willard
, because the one my father had begun was overflowing.

I filled a whole legal pad with character profiles and ideas, dropped my own notes into folders full of what-ifs:
What if George, in a rut at work, married the boss's daughter? What if Helen White worked at Hull House? What if Margaret wanted to take George away on a European tour? What if George steered his wife toward Hull House?
Along with the what-ifs were open questions I knew I couldn't answer just yet:
Will George get back with Helen? Will he stay in his marriage? Will he choose art over commerce? Will he stay in Chicago?

The weekend before applications to Imego's eBookstore were due, Dhara sat down at the swag-leg table, where I had spread the notes and folders. She'd shown remarkable patience with me, hadn't complained about the mess I'd made of our small apartment, hadn't asked about California.

Until now.

“Well? Are we going to apply?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Yes, you are going to apply. But, no, I'm not.”

She didn't seem surprised or upset by this. “So if I get the job?”

“We go.”

She didn't have to ask what I was going to do. She knew already, had known for a long time, since well before I asked her to marry me and she said yes. “You're going to give your notice and write a book.”

“Just as you need to take another shot, so do I.”

She didn't give me a hard time about leaving one of the world's most coveted jobs for one of the most uncertain. I had a story to finish, a collaboration really, between my father and myself. It occurred to me that all novels are collaborations of a sort—between the writer and his influences, the real and the possible.

Dhara said she was going to polish up her cover letter and went into our bedroom to work. I made myself a cup of tea and put out food for Wing Biddlebaum, who came sauntering up to his bowl.

Back at the table, I opened my laptop and started a new folder titled
The Book of the Grotesque
. Pulling the stack of files closer I found a stray note card that my father had written but not put away. It was a quote from Sherwood Anderson:

When you are puzzled about your own life, as we all are most of the time, you can throw imagined figures of others against a background very like your own, put these imagined figures through situations in which you have been involved. It is a very comforting thing to do, a great relief at times, this occasionally losing sense of self, living in these imagined figures. This thing we call self is very often like a disease. It seems to sap you, destroy your relationship with others, while even occasionally losing sense of self seems to give you an understanding that you didn't have before you became absorbed
.

I placed this note card next to my computer and opened a new document. Sitting there looking at the blank screen, I was startled for a moment by Wing, who jumped onto the table, stepped into my lap, curled up in a ball, and began to purr.

How he found himself on an eastbound train leaving Chicago was a story he would write time and again in the coming years. It was a story he'd already written, already lived—leaving an ever-narrowing place for a seemingly open one, slipping out under the cover of darkness, running away.

It was September. That much he knew, because his trunk was mostly packed, the house as good as ready for the half year he and Margaret had planned to be away. If he had stayed another week he might have stepped onto this same train and continued to New York, then boarded that boat.

Helen had called him McAdams. She had predicted this. Or had her prediction become a self-fulfilling prophecy? He hadn't thought he would flee, still wouldn't use that word. No, he was not escaping—he was going home. Like his father, he just needed some time to think.

After he had read Tom Willard's letter, he tried to go about his days as if nothing had changed. He went to work, put up with whispers in the halls as he was slipping away early.
So, you're writing the Great American Novel?
Kennison said.
More power to you! I can tell folks I knew you when you were just a flunky at a hype shop
.

George had sat at his desk in Palmer House and tried to write. But nothing came. He went down to the lobby, where Lemuel Means shot him a glance that said
I saw that woman put her arm around you. I've seen her many times. You're a married man. My boss's wife runs in the same circles as your mother-in-law. And I'm just the kind of company drone to ring up Bertha Palmer and tell her what I've witnessed
.

No doubt he'd already done so. And the host at Henrici's as well. And the breadmaker Stefan Wirtz, who had surely said something to Margaret. And they weren't the only ones. Lazar, who had once claimed to be the last to know what was happening on the home front, met George with the steeliness of a stand of clouds before a storm. Margaret had been spending more and more time at Harriet's, going over last-minute details but also caught in the coil of mother-daughter separation. She wanted to show the face of the free woman, setting out on the adventure of her life; at the same time she wanted her mother to feel guilty for letting her go, jealous at having to stay behind.

For her part, Harriet had been making eleventh-hour threats to join the party, meet up in Paris or Rome or even accompany them from the start. It must have dawned on her that this might be her last chance to travel with her daughter. And how could she not be on hand for the great secret laid bare, the confrontation played out on the streets of a European capital? For wasn't that how betrayals were so often revealed, on unfamiliar ground, awash with strange voices and sights?

Whether his affair would have come to light in Chicago or abroad, he wasn't going to face it. He was on a train. Nothing to see but the spilled ink of night, the conductor calling out the stations: South Bend, Elkhart, Waterloo.

Earlier that day he had paid a visit to Hull House. Unannounced. He went through that open door—the greeter must have stepped away—and there was Jane Addams herself at the threshold of her octagonal office.

We met once. George Willard
, he'd reintroduced himself.
It's awfully quiet today
.

The great woman, in her gentle voice, told him it was Sunday.

I'd clear forgotten
, he said, then asked after Helen. And Jane herself—one of the most famous people in the world—climbed the stairs to the apartments on the third floor and led Helen down.

They talked in an empty classroom with Italian and English phrases still scrawled across the chalkboard. Helen opened the windows. It was close and hot. The sun beat down on the courtyard bricks.

Why are you here?
she asked.
You might have given me some warning
.

I need to talk to you
.

You look a fright
, she said.
Have you been getting any sleep at all? You've skinned your knee. How did that happen?

He looked down at his trousers, where he had ripped a hole in one pant leg and frayed the other. He didn't remember falling, but once he'd had in mind that he needed to see Helen he had all but hurled himself across the city, by grip and then on foot.

The knee was bleeding, so Helen fetched bandages and disinfectant from the nurse and set about cleaning the gravel-studded abrasion.

Thank you, but I can do it myself
, he said.

You're in no state
. She flicked away the gravel, dipped a cloth in iodine, and made quick, careful swabs.

He winced.
I came here to let you know that I've left my wife
. It was the last lie he would tell her. Or was it a lie? Perhaps he had as much as left already.
I love you, Helen. I'd marry you in a twinkling if you'd have me
.

She placed gauze on the wound and bandaged it.
You don't know what you're saying
.

I do. We grew up together. We can grow old together, too
.

But you haven't grown up. That's the trouble
, she said.
If you had, you wouldn't have lied to me, wouldn't have thrown your wife over after two years of marriage—right before a trip abroad, no less! If you were a man, you wouldn't be in this state
.

He'd been sitting in a chair, but now dropped to his sore knees.
You're right! I'm a thoughtless fool. I do need to grow up. I'm going to write a book. That's what I have to do. Write until I can see myself clearly. Maybe then I can make amends. I can come back to you, and you'll reconsider
.

Stand up, George. You're ruining your bandages
.

I don't care. I just want to know if you'll let me hold on to a little hope
.

Fine, if that helps you
. She took his arm and guided him back into the chair.
But you treated me badly. And others, too. I won't forget what you did
.

I was wrong. People do change, you know
.

We'll see
, she said. Then she left again and came back with a tall glass of water, which she handed to George.
You need to drink this
.

He was thirsty. He gulped the water down.
If you won't have me now, perhaps you'll help me
, he said.
Remember on the Midway how you asked what you should do with your life—stay at the Lab School or move to Hull House? And I told you to follow your instincts, and here you are? I need you to return the favor
.

He told her about his father's letter, the tin box in the rubble, how by some miracle this man who had come to a blank wall in his life was of a sudden in the money.

Where do you think the box came from?
Helen asked.

I have no idea. It's not my father's, or he would have said so. He claimed it had been on his property, so it ought to be returned to him. Maybe a thief stayed the night and had to leave in a rush. But the box wasn't in a closet. It was plastered behind a wall
. Intentionally
hidden
.

Perhaps it was your mother's
, Helen said.
Women have been known to stow what money they can, under the mattress, in a vase. Behind a wall? Anything's possible. She might have been saving it for life without your father, if that ever came to pass. Jane Addams is only one example of what a woman can do given some measure of financial independence
.

But my mother had no income. I don't know what savings she would have been hiving up. It's a mystery
, George said.
So I need to know: Should I stay or should I leave? I can't write here anymore. I have a desire like never before to strike out for some new place. But I'd be starting from nothing
.

Maybe your father will open his treasure chest
.

You know my father. He thinks only of Tom Willard
.

I don't know what to tell you. I think you already know what you're going to do. You knew before you stumbled in here. You've known for a good long time
.

You could come with me, Helen! Or I could get where I'm going, and you could join me there
.

George
—She gestured around her to remind him they were standing in the place where she'd found her sense of purpose.

I know
, he said.
It's just that—

But she embraced him before he could say whatever next might have come to mind. He dried his eyes on the shoulder of her blouse and promised himself that Helen White had not seen or heard the last of him. Here in Chicago they had reunited under the wrong circumstances, but one day he would make up for it; he would rewrite this ending.

Back on the weather-beaten streets, he leaned his way toward the grip, then the Palmer House, then his room, where he packed his valise. He told himself he could send for the trunk later, though how likely was it that Margaret would release his belongings, after what he was putting her through?

Checking out
. He handed Lemuel Means his key.

Disappointed with the amenities?
the hotel clerk said, no doubt with a sneer, but George wouldn't give him a response. He paid the bill, shouldered his bag, and set out for Dearborn Station.

On the train he tried to write a letter to Margaret, but he crossed out the sentences one by one. Everything he set to paper came off as false:
I never deserved you. You were always too good for me. I was unworthy to undo your shoestrings. It was my fate to fly too high, yours to be married to me in my time of crisis
.

He put his paper and pencil away, closed his eyes and listened to the rumble of the train, the clang of the brazen bell, the conductor calling out
Toledo, Woodville, Winesburg
.

Strange to be stepping onto the platform in his hometown to find a chain-wire fence where the New Willard House once stood. The lighting was poor, the moon hidden behind clouds. He would have to wait until morning to take in the spectacle. He checked his pocket watch: 11:30 p.m. He headed down Main Street to the shoe-repair shop and pulled on the door under the sign that read: