Must Read Well, page 4
The doors restrained a riot of spiral notebooks, three long shelves of them jammed together so tightly that some of the curly bindings had become interlaced with their neighbors. Many had been turned on their sides and shoved on top of others. A wave of dizziness passed through me. I believe my mouth actually watered. Then, reckoning that of the three hundred, number 185 might be on the middle shelf behind the sixth door, I asked Marta to open it.
She slid the keys around the ring, peering at what I now saw were tiny numbered tags attached to each. Settling on one, she used it to unlock and open the door I’d indicated, then stood and watched as I removed a handful of notebooks; it was necessary to take out this many to make enough room to ferret among the others. With a few exceptions, they all looked the same: five by eight inches, with brown cardboard covers and light green, narrow-ruled pages. It was obvious they’d been handled often. Some were soiled, a few slightly swollen. On two of the half dozen I had selected, the metal spirals had sprung up out of place.
Consulting the fat numerals inked on each of these, I found that my guess at the right location was not far off. The books I’d plucked out, numbers 190-194, dated from the early 1970s. I opened one at random, November 21, 1972-January 12, 1973. Weil wasn’t joking about her penmanship. Her writing was execrable, inexcusable, a tangled, barbed-wire mass of misshapen letters, idiosyncratic abbreviations, and words whose vowels had been excised. Still, I really had managed to make my way through the crossed and recrossed letters I’d told her about—all 132 of them—and I was confident that I could read a handwritten sentence as well as anyone in New York. The page I’d flipped to had an entry written on December 4th.
“Yest” (yesterday) “finished rev” (review) “of Breakfast of Champions for the Chicago Trib,” it began. “Not my cup of tea—too much skipping back and forth in time—but funny and inventive and—” Here came a word I first read as “whistle” but then saw must be “worthwhile.” “The protag” (protagonist) “is a scifi writer, nvr” (never) “my cup of tea either, but he and the lunatic who takes his fiction for truth are entertaining chars, so erred on the side of praise.” I flipped the page over and sighed with relief: She hadn’t written on the backs.
I returned these notebooks to their place and asked Marta to open the fifth door so I could grab another handful a couple of feet to the left of those from the ’70s. This time I guessed right. Number 185 itself (May 3-August 1, 1966) was among the bunch I pulled out. I kept this and put the others away, asked Marta to open the fourth door, and soon found September 24-November 30, 1961. Now, finally, I stood and she returned me to the living room, where I took my designated chair. She restored the keys to their owner, who put them back in the drawer and locked them inside.
“I will be in the kitchen,” Marta said, and left us alone.
Weil had resumed her scrutiny of the few papers on her pretty desk. On my way back to the living room, just for a moment, I had a chance to look at her before she noticed I’d come in. The sight of her lax, unanimated face, so different from the social face she had presented to me, alarmed me so much that my heart beat faster. How very old she was! And how precarious her health. I regret to say that it wasn’t compassion for a fellow mortal’s nearness to death that moved me. It was the possibility that she might die before I learned anything worth knowing.
Although if she died while I was still living here, wouldn’t I be able to—
Again, my careful little lunch asserted itself somewhere in my innards, a lurch of queasiness gone the moment it came. It was a good thing, it was a good thing, it was a good thing I was doing. This strong woman’s valuable diaries should not be lost or forgotten. They should be read and the light they shed on her work shared with the world. It crossed my mind that she might, in fact, have made arrangements to sell or donate the journals to the archives of some scholarly institution somewhere. If she had, perhaps the shipping date was coming near.
Weil sensed my presence and looked up, again setting the magnifier on the desk. I seated myself and reported the dates I’d brought back.
“Well done. Those will nicely bracket the period I’m interested in. If you can decipher those, you’ll be able to read what’s in between.”
I started to say that I’d already glanced at a page and could indeed read it, so eager was I to prove my competence, and so forgetful that I’d looked without license. Fortunately, she was still talking.
“Just to be clear, the question isn’t simply whether you can decipher it,” she was saying. “There are several other requirements. The first, I’m happy to say, you already meet: I need someone with a pleasant voice who speaks well. You do.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that,” I said, and meant it. I owed this accomplishment to Miss Hart, my English teacher in junior year of high school, who had recognized my intellectual potential and taken me under her wing. If not for her, I would never have dreamed of applying to Columbia; in fact, I might have skipped college entirely. Miss Hart spoke beautifully, with a loving regard for vowels and a deep respect for consonants. Among many other kindnesses, she taught me to do the same.
“But I also need someone who can read for meaning,” Weil was going on. “Do you follow me? There are readers, even professional readers of recorded books, who seem unable to see the shape of a sentence, who don’t get its sense. They emphasize the wrong word—‘He turned around to look at her.’ ‘She lived happily ever after.’ Or they make a statement of a question, as if they couldn’t be bothered to look at the end of the sentence before beginning to speak it aloud. ‘Daddy, what happened to the rabbit after it went back into the hat.’ That kind of thing. Do you see? I need someone who can read with understanding.”
“Yes. I believe I can do that.”
“And the last bit is—”
Here she paused to give me a stern look, a look of warning.
“The last requirement is that whatever you read here must be kept in absolute confidence. You will not speak a word of it to a friend or your family or the newspapers—not that they’d be interested—or whisper it into a bed of reeds, for that matter.”
I said “Of course” without thinking—what else could I say?—but inside my chest I felt a mighty wrenching, as if the bottom brick of a tall stack had suddenly been pulled out. If she wanted the journals kept secret, might she be planning to destroy them before she died? Might this revisiting of the “episode” be a sort of last waltz? Even if (as I believed) the prose in Vengeance was pedestrian at best, even if Weil was as much propelled by her social moment as responsible for it, Vengeance had indeed jolted hundreds of thousands of women forward toward independence, and her journals surely must form a picture of a life of her time—the life of a creative, highly intelligent woman in a particularly transformative era.
“Yes. Of course,” she repeated. “And I’ll ask you to sign an agreement stipulating that.” Another long pause, another minatory glance at me, while I tried to keep the alarm out of my face. “But the first order of business—” With a wave of her hand at the notebooks in my lap, she settled back into her chair. “The first thing is to hear how you read. Start with the earlier notebook. Any entry will do.”
I opened the 1961 journal to a page near the middle, scanned a paragraph, and began.
Tuesday October 24, 10 p.m.
Worked all morning on And Sometimes Y, if that’s what it ends up being called. Laura needs more backstory. Thinking of giving her scoliosis. Phone rang four times in two hours. I let it. Who are these people who think I have nothing to do but chat?
Lunch at Zouave with Sarah Thacker. She’s working on a profile of Norman Mailer. I wish her joy of him.
Weil made a “hmph” sound and I looked up to find her smiling a faintly nostalgic smile. Thacker had been a prolific staff writer at The New Yorker for many years. I felt a pang as I realized I might have tapped her as a source for my dissertation. She had died only a year or two before.
I hoped Anne would say something more about her, or about Mailer, but she didn’t. As for And Sometimes Y, unless she had indeed changed the title, it was never published.
“Go on.”
I went on.
Drank a whole vodka tonic before our meal even arrived. So ridiculous of me. Naturally, I couldn’t work when I got home. Instead, trotted over to Ottomanelli’s and bought a sirloin steak. I made Béarnaise sauce for it—I thought it rather a failure but S. liked it.”
“‘S.’ was my husband. Steve,” Weil told me. She had closed her eyes but opened them now. She added, her tone a little dreamy, “We were introduced by a mutual friend.” Her choosing to explain how they’d met surprised me, since it was in no way necessary for me to know. “Though I say it myself, he was immediately intrigued by me,” she went on. “I was very exotic to him. A Jew! He was a WASP, of course.”
I had noticed while doing my research that no article about Weil, and no essay she had written, referred directly to her religious heritage. I supposed she was born Jewish, because of her name, but it was nice to have it confirmed. At the same time, I wondered what being a WASP connoted for her. Officially, though perhaps not culturally, I am a WASP myself.
“Just say Steve when you see an S,” she was going on. “Or any other abbreviation, just say the word I meant, assuming you can figure it out. How’s the deciphering going?”
“It’s a little difficult.” Why make it sound easy? Then she would think anyone could do it. Besides, it was difficult. Her handwriting was a combination of print and cursive. The letters leaned against each other and overlapped as if they were drunk, tangling into almost abstract knots. They poked up and down over the narrow-ruled lines. Both th and gh were rendered as a single curve. All the letters were flattened, the t barely taller than the s, and the tail of the g docked like the tail of a cocker spaniel.
“Nothing I can’t manage, though,” I added. I took a deep breath before daring to go on, “You know, it occurs to me that if I do end up reading to you, it would help if I knew what sections we’d be looking at next. That way I could spend some time on them in advance and be able to read more fluently.”
“You’re doing fine,” she said. “Go on.”
I read.
Steve had much to say at the table (and for half an hour after, as he watched me clean up), about the new partner they’ve taken on at Lister, Pace. Porter Somebody. He voted against letting him in and he’s still not a fan. The man is arrogant, brags about his political connections, already alienated a potential client, doesn’t know the law nearly as well as he should, etc.
After he’d unburdened himself of this and gone off to do more work, I spent a couple of hours reading a novel called “The Bell,” by Iris Murdoch. It’s extraordinary. Such a wonderful writer. I owe Sarah T. a debt for having pointed me to her.
Off to bed now to read until Steve comes in or I pass out.
“That’s the end of the entry. Should I go to the next one?”
“No, switch to the other book.”
I switched and spent a few moments flipping the pages from June 1966. I would have appreciated a little feedback. Was I reading “for meaning,” as she called it, getting “the shape” of the sentences?
Wednesday June 8, 8 p.m.
Wrote this a.m., then took a break to walk to the Morgan Library to see if they had anything special on view that might be of interest to me. No. Came home and was standing in the lobby, dripping wet from suddenly pouring rain, when I had the always miserable experience of catching sight of—”
I stopped here. “It just says ‘G.’”
Weil repeated the letter with a querying emphasis. “G?”
“Yes. An uppercase letter G with a period after it.”
“And what was the year?”
I reminded her.
“I see… G. stands for ‘Greg.’ You can say Greg. Keep going.”
Came home and was standing in the lobby, dripping wet from suddenly pouring rain, when I had the always miserable experience of catching sight of Greg on his way out. I suppose this is something that’s going to happen till one of us moves away. Or dies.
He looked purposeful, as if he were on some important errand. As usual, I played my assigned part—pretended not to see him, didn’t even warn him it was raining. Also as usual, sank into agitated wretchedness as soon as I was home.
Who could “Greg” have been? An editor who’d dropped her? A critic who’d panned one of her novels? An agent with whom she’d quarreled? Or maybe he had nothing to do with her professional life.
“Skip a few pages,” she instructed, her voice somehow hardened, curt. “Go to another date.”
I skipped.
June 25, 9:30 p.m.
Worked on The Balance (still very rough but going okay), then a review for Harper’s in the a.m. Read (reread) “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” for pleasure over lunch (buttered bread and olives). Later wrote a long letter to Ginny and met Nina for coffee. Then hared off to Macy’s to replace the sheets that turned pink in the wash.
Dinner and out to see “Zorba the Greek” with Corinne. Quite entertaining, though a little too much joie de vivre for my taste. Somehow I’ve never cared for joie de vivre. Maybe I’ll read the book.
In those lines about joie de vivre, I noticed a similar tone to the archness I’d heard in her voice. She used it to amuse herself, it seemed. A line had been left blank here. I reported this to Weil, then finished the entry.
Is this really to be my life?
Having come to the end of the day, I fell silent. Weil also remained silent for a few long seconds. When she spoke, her words had a listless, faraway sound.
“How did you manage with the handwriting?”
“It’s a little difficult in one or two places,” I said, “but mostly no problem.” As she didn’t reply, I went on, “How did it sound? I can make my voice more animated or louder or—whatever you want.”
“You did very well. Very well,” she repeated, her own voice more vigorous as she came back from wherever she’d been. She smiled at me. “You’re hired. The room is yours.”
Mine! A rush of excitement flooded me and I had to work hard to keep from grinning as I thanked her.
“You’re quite welcome,” she replied, then added, “I don’t know how long all this will take. I hope you can move in fairly soon. And that you’ll stay at least a month.”
I assured her that I would take up residence within the week and stay a month, much longer if she would have me. Certainly, I wouldn’t leave while she still needed me to read.
“Well, that’s very kind, but you never know how life will change. You’re young. I’m sure you must have some irons in the fire, some ambitions you haven’t mentioned. You’re much too smart to be content with a rented room and a job writing catalogue copy.”
I hadn’t anticipated her raising such a point and cursed myself. In a moment, though, a plausible answer came to my lips.
“I have been looking for some kind of nonprofit where I could work. I’m pretty good at copywriting, and nonprofits always need that. My hope is to work on women’s issues,” I added in a flash of inspiration, “maybe for Planned Parenthood or NOW.” Surely Anne Weil would endorse such a goal.
She nodded, smiling with what I hoped was approval.
“Well, that is an aspiration,” she admitted. “Let me know when you’re ready to move in. I’ll be here.”
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I left the Windrush feeling as if my blood were carbonated. I wanted to leap into the air, yell, declare myself Liz the Victorious, the Brilliant, the Magnificent. Adrenaline (and maybe some testosterone?) coursed through me, so much so that I strode through the knife-blade winter wind all the way to Penn Station before reluctantly descending to the warmth of the subway. I thought of calling Petra to tell her the news but decided instead to go to Gourmet Garage and buy some fresh shrimp and asparagus and arborio rice—it was Tim who had taught me to make risotto, but I shoved that memory away—as well as a celebratory bottle of Pellegrino, and cook us up a truly excellent dinner.
I slowed as I passed a liquor store on the way back to her place. Petra drinks; I could get a split of Champagne for her. But I don’t drink. And since she never orders alcohol for herself when we eat out together, I decided she’d just as soon share my acqua frizzante. I sent a text to tell her to be sure to come home for dinner and left it at that.
About the alcohol thing: I know I’ve been dancing around about that already, hinting darkly at my background, so let’s get it over with. When I was eleven years old and she was twenty-nine, my mother either did or did not kill my father, either intentionally or accidentally, because she was too fucked up herself to realize what she was doing when she shared some heroin with him. My dad, normally an active addict and alcoholic, had been clean for several months before that day, and the dose that was fine for her killed him. This is something that happens pretty often when addicts relapse; they don’t have the tolerance they had before they got sober, but they forget that. They slip, they pick up, they use much more of whatever substance they crave than their body can tolerate, and they die.
Two more things before I leave this subject. If my mother was a little careless about my father’s wellbeing, you could say she had some reason. He slammed her around quite a bit when he was using, and that tendency to rage didn’t magically go away when he wasn’t using, either. Also, my mother died young as well, but not because she OD’d. She just got really, really drunk and walked into the intersection of Main and Susquehanna in downtown Fliessport. She was forty. I was twenty-one.
So this is why I do not drink. Don’t drink, don’t use drugs, don’t even like to take Tylenol. (In fact, Tylenol can be really dangerous; everyone should be careful about using it.) Among her other life-saving acts on my behalf, as soon as Miss Hart learned how my dad had died, she took me to a meeting of Alateen, a twelve-step off-shoot of Al-Anon, itself a twelve-step offshoot of A.A. There I met other children of alcoholics and addicts and learned I was not the cause of my father’s death, nor his anger, nor my mother’s various failings (sloth, irresponsibility, occasional wrath, bottomless self-pity), nor, for that matter, any of my parents’ problems. I also learned that neither of my parents had asked to be addicts. No one does. They were responsible for their actions, but they were also victims of their own disease. At least that is how I came to think of them and, if not entirely forgive them, then at least understand them.
