Summerlong: A Novel Part 21

Ruth smiles.

"What?" ABC says, still brushing.

"I blew him," Ruth says.

ABC shrieks with a kind of shock and begins to laugh. Ruth's slender shoulders shake with laughter too, silent laughter. It takes ABC almost five minutes to recover.

"In some ways, it's terrible, but now, it's just, well, it's just a fact."

"Where did you blow him? Right there on the path? Oh my G.o.d!"

"That's what they said then. It was 1982. They said 'b.l.o.w. .j.o.b.' They said, 'She blew him.' Isn't that still what they say?"

"I guess so. Sometimes we say oral s.e.x."

"Oral s.e.x? Sounds clinical."

ABC smiles.

"Did you have oral with Philly?" Ruth says.

ABC says, "That's private."

"I did always wonder about that. I always thought a woman would know just what to do."

ABC smiles. "Yeah, pretty much. So, oh my G.o.d, you just blew this guy?"

ABC wants details before Ruth loses her energy and clarity.

"I didn't just blow him. The kids were gone by then. Away. Grown. And John was at a conference in London, was spending most of the summer there. John annoyed me. It was hard to get used to being a couple without kids around. Everything he did annoyed me. And I think it was mutual. I wanted time away from him, just away from his snoring and the slurping of cereal and the general noise of him. It was the first time I'd ever lived alone in my life, that summer.

"And so, one day, on the path, this man, this shirtless beautiful man, was tying his shoe when I pa.s.sed him. And so we got to talking. He was new to town, to the college, he said, and I invited him for coffee, I said I could tell him about life in Grinnell, and he looked at me, looked at my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, my face, my hips, and I felt him looking at me, and he said he'd finish his run and take a shower and come over."

"And you did? Then?"

"All summer, we kept it up, and then John returned and school resumed, and it was different. He found a young woman to marry. He stayed on in the English department, and so I would see him, from time to time, and yet it was actually never that awkward. It was kind of, I don't know, compartmentalized? It didn't feel like my real life. It felt like some self-contained interlude . . . Jesus, I'm tired, ABC. All of a sudden I need to sleep."

ABC helps her to bed.

As Ruth starts to fade, ABC asks, "When did all of this happen?"

Ruth, now smiling, closes her eyes, lets out a sigh. "Oh, years ago. Three decades ago. 1982, it was."

"1982?"

"Yes. He wrote me some letters that fall. He disguised them by using envelopes he had stolen from the Presbyterian church. My husband always thought I was just getting the Presbyterian Women newsletter."

"Clever," ABC says.

Ruth, dozing now, murmurs, "He always wrote wonderful letters. I have some of them still. We should get rid of them, you know. Before I die. Remind me tomorrow."

"Is this why your kids don't talk to you anymore?" ABC says, though she's already figured this out from the tears that flood Ruth's eyes. "Your kids are lucky to have a mom like you," ABC says. "You think they'd be more forgiving, you know?"

"Mothers have secrets," Ruth says. "I mean, all women do. But mothers? Oh, they die full of secrets. There are certain things n.o.body wants mothers to say, to think, or to feel. There are restrictions, rules. And if those secrets get out? Unforgivable."

JULY 7,.

97 DEGREES.

It is sweltering and Don and ABC are on the porch when a letter arrives by certified mail. They've taken to sitting in the heat, drinking cold beer, and then going into the house, blasting the AC, and getting stoned. It is a way to pa.s.s the day.

Don knows the mailman, Ron, who usually will stop and chat a bit with Don and then continue on his way. ABC has seen it happen a few times, and has always found it pleasant-the small talk of a small community going about simple business. But today Ron delivers a certified letter and as soon as Don signs the letter, Ron brisk-walks back to his truck. He has not even so much as smiled or nodded at ABC.

"What is it?" ABC says and Don already knows as he opens it. The return address is from a family law firm in Iowa City, the envelope marked confidential and urgent.

Don takes the letter from the envelope, a thick sheaf of pages.

"She filed for divorce," Don says. "I've just been served."

ABC breathes deep, puts a hand on Don's shoulder. She feels as if there is the vibration of shattering plates coming from inside his body.

"Don Lowry," she says. "I'm so sorry."

He doesn't want to talk about it until they are inside, in the hazy smoke, and then all he says is this: "I want to kill myself too."

"No, you don't. You have a lot to live for," she says.

"And you don't?"

"It's different for me, Don," she says. "You have kids."

"I'm like my father, ABC. People are better off without me now that I've hit this point."

"That's so not true," ABC says. She knows he's feeling bad about himself, and that he is scared, and she wants to let him vent.

"You don't believe me," Don says. "But I do. I can't do this anymore."

"Do what?"

"Watch Claire leave me for someone else? Watch my kids live with someone else? Watch my kids realize what a loser their father really is?"

"A loser father is better than a dead father, Don Lowry," ABC says. "And you're not a loser."

"I want to be dead. Just like you."

"Don Lowry."

"Let's make a pact. We'll pick a date. We'll find a place. We'll go down together, make it look like an accident. That way the kids will get my life insurance."

ABC doesn't want to tell him yes, but she does. They shake on it. She wants him to wait for her to be ready, and before then, she's sure, she can talk him out of it. Maybe she can save him. Maybe she can save his marriage. Maybe that is how she will find Philly again. Maybe if she saves Don Lowry's life, Philly will come back to hers.

JULY 8,.

89 DEGREES.

Charlie finds, in a cabinet beneath the bookshelves of his father's study, nine ma.n.u.script boxes hidden behind hundreds of back issues of The New Yorker.

He'd been browsing through the magazines, thinking he might try to sell them on eBay or maybe just keep them. He had the idea that he might read each one of them, cover to cover, and keep a journal about the experience. It would be one of those self-imposed regimens he'd been longing for and when he finished he imagined he would emerge smarter and less ignorant and better disciplined. But it is after he removes the first stack of magazines that he discovers the boxes, each one labeled with the word BOOK, in all capital letters and black marker. In smaller letters beneath the word BOOK, there are numbers, each box labeled with a digit one through nine. Nine boxes.

He opens the first one.

The top page reads: "Novel, Draft One."

He takes out the ma.n.u.script, which has been typed, not printed, and is beginning to yellow somewhat with age. The ma.n.u.script is bound with a spiral, obviously a professional job, something his father had deliberately organized and collated and preserved and he opens the book at random and reads this line: Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe- It's a good line. A h.e.l.l of a good line, and his heart rises a moment, thinking that he has found, perhaps, the ma.n.u.script that his father had worked on for decades.

He flips to another page and reads: He had pa.s.sed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarra.s.sment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.

He's found the ma.n.u.script! His father had, in fact, written a book and Charlie already wonders how he might go about finding a publisher to look at it. It appears to be a novel. Excited, he randomly grabs the fifth box, sees the "Unt.i.tled by Gill Gulliver" on the cover page and opens the ma.n.u.script randomly again.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

And then, as swiftly as his enthusiasm rose, his doubts come rushing into his mind: what does it matter? What if his father had written a decent book, had not wasted those long hours in the study, weekend upon weekend. What does it change? Charlie doesn't know. It will change something, he believes that. Maybe it will even change his financial position in the world. Maybe his father's story will be one of those stories you heard about on public radio, the story of an eccentric man, now dead, or gravely ill, who had been crafting a masterpiece, the Great American Novel he was too afraid to show anyone.

Charlie grabs the ninth box; it must be the final, or at least the latest draft, he thinks, the one he will have to work to get published. He begins to think of the afterword he might pen. He'd recently read the journals of John Cheever and found his son's introduction to be one of the most fascinating things about the book. What if Charlie's father had been a tortured genius like Cheever? What if there are journals? What if he can publish even the letters eventually? He thinks for a moment that he may even make a career of it, of bringing meaning to his father's life, which is not parasitic but clarifying, an endeavor to provide context for a complicated life.

For the first time in a long time, he's excited about something that has nothing to do with s.e.x.

He opens the ninth box. This ma.n.u.script is printed on a laser printer, clearly newer than the papers in the first box. This is a more recent draft. It reads on the t.i.tle page: "Unfinished Project, Ninth Draft, February 2010."

This will be it. This will be the ma.n.u.script. He will go and see his father again. He will take a copy to his father and ask him about it. His father might remember something and he might weep with grat.i.tude. His mind will flicker with magnificent recognition and he will thank Charlie for caring, for finding the life's work that Gill Gulliver's mind, at the end, was too cloudy to finish. Gill Gulliver's career had been one of endlessly obsessive revision, but Charlie will put the final punctuation on it. He will bring it clarity. Gill Gulliver will look at Charlie and understand that he has squandered his time with his son, that he has not been present enough, and he will feel unworthy of the gesture that Charlie is about to make: Charlie will finish his father's work, will secure his legacy so that even after Gill Gulliver has forgotten everything, the world will not forget him. What a perfect son. Charlie is fundamentally wonderful; this will be Gill's bittersweet, final moment of clarity, his last grounded thought.

Charlie opens the ninth draft to the first page and reads: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Charlie begins flipping through the pages frantically, reading more and more, not wanting to believe that the names of the characters in this book, upon further perusal, are undeniably familiar: Nick. Tom. Daisy. Jordan.

Gatsby.

JULY 9,.

87 DEGREES.

This is the day during which Don Lowry sends Tom Merrick a lengthy pleading e-mail from his office and begs him, really, truly begs him: Could we-Claire and the kids and I-stay there for the whole winter? We need somewhere to be, away from everything, and I have nowhere else to turn.

After Don hits Send, he finds himself almost choking on a sob.

When Don hears from Merrick a simple, Okay with me. You'll pay utilities? Don goes over to see Claire. She is poolside typing on her laptop, wearing her tiniest black bikini, a stringed affair she had bought almost seven years ago, when they had gone away to Jamaica for a week, without the kids. Don finds it absurdly s.e.xy. He tells her so, and says, "Is that the bikini?"

Claire says, "It's hot, Don. Do you want me to wear a sweater?"

"It's not so bad today. Not even ninety. Where are the kids?" he says.

"At the city pool. Charlie took them over so I could write."

"What a hero."

"If it's unclear to you that Charlie's generosity has saved us a great deal of heartache, it's not unclear to me."

"Can I go swimming?" Don says.

"Go for it," she says.

"G.o.d, I remember that," Don says. "By the way, I have good news. Merrick says we can stay all winter. At his lodge. It has heat and I can plow us out with the s...o...b..ower; there's one in the garage. All four of us, together round the fireplace."