Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (17 page)

Alas, these generally pleasant memories should not conceal the fact that I must have played the Nelson Algren role to more than one of my writing students. I'm certain that I've hurt the feelings of young writers who were more serious and gifted than I judged them to be. But just as Mr. Algren didn't harm me by his blunt and (I think) unfair assessment, I doubt that I have harmed any
real
writers; real writers, after all, had better get used to being misunderstood.

When it happens to me, I just remind myself of what Ted Seabrooke told me: “That you're not very talented needn't be the end of it.”

The Imaginary Girlfriend (1995)

AUTHOR'S NOTES

A few pages of this memoir were written as a letter to John Baker, Editorial Director at
Publishers Weekly;
John published parts of my letter to him in an article he wrote for
PW
(June 5, 1995). Portions of my remembrance of Don Hendrie were published in the form of an obituary for Hendrie that I wrote for
The Exeter Bulletin
(Fall 1995). And an excerpt from “The Imaginary Girlfriend” appeared in a fall ‘95 issue of
The New Yorker

I am grateful to Deborah Garrison at
The New Yorker
and to my wife, Janet, for their editorial response to an earlier draft of this autobiography, which was called “Mentors” and (believe it or not) contained fewer than 10 pages about wrestling. Deb and Janet ganged up on me; they said, in effect, “Are you kidding? Where's the wrestling?”

The reason this memoir was written at all is because I had shoulder surgery a week before Christmas, 1994. I was completely unprepared for how many hours a day, and for how many months, I would be rehabilitating my shoulder; I had anticipated an easier recovery. I knew there would be a little bone sawing in the area of the acromion-clavical joint, and I knew I had a torn rotator-cuff tendon; I
didn
^}
t
know that the tendon was detached from the humerus — nor did the surgeon, until he got in there.

With four hours of physical therapy a day, for four months, I didn't feel the time was right for me to begin a new novel, which I'd planned to begin after Christmas; I had about 200 pages of notes for the novel, and a halfway-decent first sentence, but the shoulder rehabilitation was too distracting.

One day in January of ‘95 I was making a nuisance of myself in my wife's office; I was aimlessly bothering Janet and her assistant — poking my nose into the pile of manuscripts that are always waiting to be read in the office of a literary agent. The stitches had only recently been removed from my shoulder and I had just begun the requisite physical therapy; I was still wearing a sling, and I was bored.

Janet doesn't like it when I hang around her office. “Why don't you get out of here?” she said. “Go write a novel.”

Summoning my most self-pitying voice, I said, “I can't write a novel with one arm and four hours a day of rehabilitation.”

“Then go write a memoir, or something,” Janet said. “Just get out of here.”

My goal was to write an autobiography of 100 pages in four months. It took five months, and the finished manuscript was 101 pages — not counting the photographs.

And so the winter of ‘95 was one of recovery (April counts as a winter month in Vermont). I would see the physical therapist first thing in the morning; she would “manipulate” my shoulder and prescribe the stretching exercises and the weight lifting that she wanted me to do in the afternoon. I would write my memoir in the middle of the day; in the late afternoon or early evening I would go to my wrestling room and follow the orders of the physical therapist.

To explain “my” wrestling room — it is about 25 feet from my office in the Vermont house. (Between the office and the wrestling room is a small locker room: a toilet, three sinks, two showers, a sauna.) My wrestling mat is equivalent to the in-bounds area of a regulation mat. About a dozen jump ropes, of varying lengths, hang from pegs at one end of the room; at the other end is an area for weight lifting — a couple of weight benches and two racks of free weights. There's also a stationary bike and a treadmill, and lots of shelves for knee pads, elbow pads, head gear, spools of tape — and about a dozen pairs of wrestling shoes, in a somewhat limited range of sizes. (Brendan's feet are only a little bigger than mine; Colin's are only a little bigger than Brendan's.)

There are over 300 photographs on the walls; there aren't many of me, and even fewer of Everett — and not a lot of room remaining for the photos of Everett, which I presume will come. Most of the pictures are of Colin and Brendan, together with the bracket sheets from the tournaments they won. There are twelve medals, five trophies, and one plaque; only the plaque is mine. I never won any medals or trophies, because I never won a wrestling tournament.

I didn't really “win” the plaque. In 1992,1 was selected as one of the first 10 members in the Hall of Outstanding Americans by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. These “Outstanding Americans” were not necessarily outstanding wrestlers, although a few of them were; we were all chosen for being outstanding at something else, and for having also (in our fashion) wrestled.

I am honored to be a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, although I'm embarrassed to have gained entry through the back door — meaning for my other accomplishments,
not
my wrestling or my coaching. I feel privileged to have been in the same wrestling room with some of the wrestling and coaching members of the Hall of Fame — George Martin, Dave McCuskey, Rex Peery, Dan Gable.

You may be surprised to learn of a couple of other “Outstanding Americans” whom the National Wrestling Hall of Fame has honored: Kirk Douglas and General H. Norman Schwarzkopf. I'm surprised that, as of this writing, my fellow novelist Ken Kesey
hasn't
been selected as a member; Mr. Kesey's wrestling credentials are a whole lot better than mine. He is still ranked as one of the top 10 wrestlers (most career wins) at the University of Oregon, where he graduated in ‘57. And in ‘82, at the age of 47, Kesey won the AAU Masters Championships at 198 pounds.

I suspect that after the Senate confirms General Charles C. (“Brute”) Krulak's promotion to four-star rank, and General Krulak is officially serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the new Commandant of the Marines will also become a member in the Hall of Outstanding Americans at Stillwater. Described by
The New York Times
as “a diminutive dynamo of a man” — he was a 121-pounder at Exeter and a 123-pounder at Navy — Chuck was a platoon leader and company commander during two tours of duty in the Vietnam War, and later served as commander of the counterguerrilla-warfare school in Okinawa. Thereafter, General Krulak was commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia, and — just prior to President Clinton's nominating him as the next Commandant of the Marines — Krulak commanded 82,000 marines and

600 combat aircraft in the Pacific. (In the event of war in Korea or the Persian Gulf, General Krulak would have commanded all the marines there.) But as a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which I assume he will be, Chuck Krulak will probably feel as I do: namely, that the honor is undeserved.

Thus my plaque from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame occupies the far corner of a shelf in my wrestling room, where it stands a little sheepishly, looking unearned beside the hardware and the ribbons that Colin and Brendan won outright. I go to such lengths to describe the territory of my wrestling room and its proximity to my office because I want you to understand that the distance between my writing and my wrestling is never great; indeed, in the winter I was writing “The Imaginary Girlfriend,” the distance was only 25 feet.

For four months, I didn't venture farther than that 25-foot path — with two exceptions. The first was a trip to Aspen in the middle of March. I spent less than a week with Colin and Brendan in Colorado. I couldn't ski; I went to the gym and repeated the rehabilitation exercises that my physical therapist in Vermont had given me, and I paddled around in the heated pool and the hot tub with Everett. I had some very pleasant dinners with the Salters, Kay and Jim, and then it was back to Vermont to finish the “Girlfriend” — only I couldn't finish it; not before leaving for France in April, for the French translation of
A Son of the Circus.

After most of my interviews in Paris, in the lobby of the Hotel Lutétia, a photographer would drag me to a small plot of greenery (less than a park) off the boulevard Raspail and attempt to position me beside a statue of the French novelist Francois Mauriac. I refused to be photographed beside the statue of Mauriac, largely because the statue is 15 feet tall — you may recall that I'm only five feet eight — but also because I thought that Mauriac looked extremely undernourished and depressed. Possibly he was mortified to be photographed alongside every visiting author who was staying at the Lutetia.

That was Paris: I was brooding about not having finished “The Imaginary Girlfriend” before I had to leave for France, and I was constantly and unsubtly being compared to Mauriac. One of his critics once said that God surely disapproved of what Mauriac had written, to which Mauriac admirably responded: “God doesn't care at all — what we write — but when we do it right, He can use it.” (I kept telling one photographer after another that God couldn't possibly find a use for a photograph of John Irving with Francois Mauriac, but the photographers were uncomprehending; one of them misinterpreted my refusal to be photographed with Mauriac as a sure sign of religious zealotry.)

Back in Vermont, April dragged on — so did the “Girlfriend.” In May I spent less than a week with Colin and Brendan in California. By then, my rehabilitation exercises were only two hours a day, and I discovered that I could once again carry Everett on my shoulders; we took him to Disneyland, where, admittedly, Colin and Brendan carried him around more often and more easily than I did. On the plane back East from L.A., I was still revising “The Imaginary Girlfriend,” which I wouldn't finish before June.

An intractable phenomenon of writing an autobiography is that you begin to miss the people you are writing about; I don't ever miss the characters in my novels, although some of my readers have told me that
they
miss them. I found myself wanting to call up people I hadn't seen or spoken to in more than 30 years. In most cases, the motivation was more than nostalgia; I couldn't remember all the details — what was so-and-so's weight class, and did he win a Big 10 title, or did he even
place?

I called Kay Gallagher, Cliff's widow, a couple of times. Cliff had done so many things I couldn't keep them all straight. It was nice to talk to Kay, but it made me miss Cliff.

As for coincidence, the novelist's companion, Don Hendrie's death (in March) coincided precisely with that point in my autobiography where Hendrie was to make his first appearance. My friend Phillip Borsos also died last winter; he was the movie director who made
The Grey Fox
, and with whom I'd been trying to make the film of
The Cider House Rules
— for almost 10 years. Phillip was only 41; his death (cancer), in addition to its own sadness, called back to mind the death of Tony Richardson. (Tony directed
The Hotel New Hampshire
— he died of AIDS in 1991. My friend George Roy Hill, now debilitated with Parkinson's, directed
The World According to Garp?)
Tony used to call me rather late at night and ask me if I'd read anything good lately; he was a voracious reader. Thinking of Tony often puts me in a mood to call people, too. As I was coming to the end of “The Imaginary Girlfriend,” I was calling people left and right.

On Memorial Day weekend, I called my old friend Eric Ross in Crested Butte. While I'd been in France, avoiding the Mauriac photo opportunities, Eric had been golfing in Ireland with a bad case of gout.
I
have never golfed, nor had gout, but the combination struck me as a cruel and comedic affliction.

Thus inspired, I decided to call Vincent Buonomano. I speculated, stupidly, that after Buonomano had graduated from Mount Pleasant High School, he'd never left the Providence area. I called information in Rhode Island and was informed that there was only one Vincent Buonomano in the environs of Providence; actually, he lived in Warwick. I made the call.

A girl answered; she sounded like a teenager. I asked for Vincent Buonomano. The girl said, “Who's calling?”

“He probably doesn't remember me,” I said. “I haven't seen him since he was in high school.”

She went off screaming for him. “Dad!” Or maybe she said, “Daddy!” I had the impression of a large house and a large family.

Mr. Buonomano was very friendly to me on the phone, but he wasn't the same Vincent Buonomano who'd pinned me in the pit — with less than a minute remaining in the third period. The nice man on the phone said that he occasionally got calls for the other Buonomano, the wrestler, and once some bills for “the wrestler” had been sent to the wrong Buonomano's address. The Mr. Buonomano who talked to me told me that he thought the Buonomano I was looking for had gone to college and was now a physician — because one of the bills was seeking repayment of a student loan, and because one of the bills was addressed to a Dr. Vincent Buonomano. (I speculated that he specialized in necks.) But I couldn't find him. He had slipped away, surely never remembering me.

It made me so sad I simply had to call Anthony Pieranunzi. There was a greater likelihood that Pieranunzi would remember me, I thought: our matches had been close. But the operator told me that there was no Anthony Pieranunzi in East Providence, and only one in Providence; it had to be him, I was certain— I called immediately. An extremely likable woman answered the phone. I instantly remembered Pieranunzi's girlfriend. (It's possible she was his sister— she was a knockout, anyway.) I imagined I was talking to the high-school sweetheart of my archrival — now a devoted wife of some 30-plus years.