Must Read Well, page 6
I went in.
“It takes me quite a while to wake up,” she continued, still with her back to me, “so please ignore me and I’ll do the same. I’m no morning person. Have some coffee if you like.”
I thought a morning cup of coffee might become a little bond between us and accepted with thanks. Then, delighted to know Anne shared my own need for time to myself at the start of the day, I stood at the window quietly sipping while, behind me, she dropped the butter knife into the sink and took her toast to the dining room. The muffled thump of her cane marked her progress. I had already noticed a mug of coffee on the dining table on my way in and realized that, needing a hand to hold her cane, she could carry only one thing at a time.
Uncertain whether I was allowed to eat in my room, I delayed my own breakfast and, hoping she wouldn’t look up, tiptoed past her with only the coffee. I was sure she’d prefer I not join her at the table. A few minutes later, I dared to return to ask for the password to her internet network. (“Windrush,” as it turned out.) Back in my room, I checked my email: Petra, demanding a full report; several students with questions about an upcoming paper; Carrie, confirming our plan to meet for lunch. Nothing from Tim. I wondered how long it would be before I could open my email without looking for his name.
At nine, there was a knock on my open door. Anne poked her head in.
“I’m good for a reading today,” she said. “See you in the living room at ten?”
“Yes, absolutely.” It was happening! As she thumped away, my pulses began to throb and my breath quickened. I dashed out to the kitchen again to grab a banana and a container of yogurt, ate them without ceremony at the dining table, then went back to my room to count the minutes until it was time to present myself in the living room.
Anne was already at her desk, dressed in the same sort of clothes as the day before, this time an olive-green sweater and gray pleated pants. Through her magnifying glass, she was looking at a credit card bill. She set this down as I came in and exchanged the black reading glasses for the tortoise-shell ones.
“Today we’ll take out all the notebooks we’ll need,” she said. “The first must include February 1963. If you take the next five or six as well, they should encompass the time period I want, and we won’t have to go through getting them out of my study again.”
Marta was out shopping, so Anne began the difficult work of rising from her chair—the cane, the business of making sure it was steady, the free hand pressed on the desk for safety as she pushed herself up—while I meditated upon the fact that, with all the pertinent notebooks out, she would never need me to open the magic bookcase on my own. It felt like a move in a chess game, a move against me. In her study, she took the ring of old-fashioned keys from her pocket and handed it over. I knelt down in front of the glass façade of the bookcase, which seemed to gleam at me defiantly, impregnable and smug.
“Look wherever you think they might be. Somewhere between the journals you read from the first time, of course.”
I found key number five and opened the door, then began to search for 1963. I realized now what I’d failed to notice before: the shelves had only two vertical dividers. This meant that just three keys would be required to gain access to all of the notebooks. Even a single one would suffice to get to a third of them. The eight doors were merely a convenience. The thought gave me a little flicker of hope. It occurred to me to wonder if Anne might have stashed away duplicate keys somewhere in the apartment.
February ’63 was soon in my hand, a short month that also contained the last few days of January and the first five of March. I pulled it out, then the five after it. The last contained May 17 through June 12.
I told Anne the dates and she said I might as well put the last one back; we wouldn’t need it. I did so, then locked the door and returned the key ring to her. She thanked me and we left the study. As I followed her halting steps to the corridor, the four notebooks in my arms, my thoughts turned to the nature of this so-called “episode.” I was curious about it, of course, had been since she first mentioned it. I reminded myself it might be nothing more intriguing than an account of her father’s illness and death, for example—he had died sometime in the ’60s, as I recalled—or a burst of creativity at Yaddo. Still, it might be something far more useful to me. My curiosity helped divert me from my frustration.
Back in the living room, we seated ourselves. I kept the February notebook and put the others on her desk.
“Try starting on February 9th,” Anne said. “I’m pretty sure that’s the day it began.”
Just for that moment, she had lost the mid-Atlantic accent and reverted to Brookline. I was already paging through the journal, but I glanced up. Her face was strained, as if preparing for a blow. Looking down again, I found the 9th and began.
Saturday February 9, 11:15 p.m.
Home from an interminable dinner chez Amy and Len Reeves. Twelve of us, six women, six men, three of the latter Steve and Len’s colleagues at L.P.
“Bingo,” Anne interrupted. “That was the start of everything.” She reverted to her cultivated accent. “L.P. is Lister, Pace, the law firm where Steve was a partner. ‘Pace’ was Steve—Stephen Pace. I think the firm was mentioned in one of the sections you read on your first visit here.” She paused for a moment before telling me to keep reading.
The odd man out, whose name I never quite got, hardly spoke. His wife quiet also. She went in and out of the kitchen “helping” Amy, who looked ready to hit her. At the table, the usual segregation of the sexes, men choosing one end, women relegated to the other. Among the lucky—
I hesitated. She had written “atts” and it took me a moment to translate it.
—among the lucky attorneys, there was a discussion of the aftermath of the missile crisis in Cuba. At our end, Beatrice Holloway and Amy talked about the price of meat these days and the rumor that Balducci’s was going to open another store. Amy served a quiche Lorraine, forgetting that Steve is allergic to eggs. She made him a sandwich jambon and I wished she had made one for me. The quiche strangely concave and thick, and the chocolate mousse for dessert the same. Eggs again, of course, and Steve relegated to graham crackers, poor man.
A surprise as we were leaving. It turned out that the unfamiliar couple lives in the Windrush. They moved in a month ago. We all took a cab home together, but I didn’t learn much about them except that Mrs. Whatsit met Amy through a book club they belong to. She didn’t seem to know I was a writer and I said nothing. They live on the C/D side of the building, hence no wonder we haven’t crossed paths before.
Steve planning a three-day trip to Cleveland. He’ll leave ungodly early from Idlewild on Monday. I’ll miss him but am hoping the time will allow me to make some better progress on—
I paused. “It says ASY here. Is that the book you mentioned in the 1961 journal? And Sometimes Y ?”
“Yes. It took forever and then came to nothing,” she said. “But never mind. Scan ahead. I don’t need to hear anything until the new neighbors I mentioned come in again. The dinner guests. I’m not sure how I’d have identified them the next time.”
Obediently, I ran my eyes over the bumpy lines. Days went by. “Moderated a panel discussion called ‘Whither Publishing’ for PEN at Mercantile Lib,” read one entry. “Companionable sex w/S” was recorded a few days later. “Dad called, said he was feeling well, though I always wonder if he would tell me if wasn’t. Mostly talked about the mistake he made in taking his car to a new repair shop, where it has now been for almost a week.” “Nightmare last night. Someone (S?) was choking me.” The next day: “Long phone call with Ginny. She’s still going on endlessly about Mike: How could he leave her? Why didn’t she see it coming?… I urged her, gently I hope, not to let him take away her joy in life, suggested she focus on her friends, her work, the pleasure she takes in art and books and music and so on and so on, but what I really wanted to do was tell her to snap out of it, for Chrissake. Mike’s gone! Celebrate! But she seems to remember nothing of the hell he put her through.”
Finally, the Reeveses reappeared, and with them word of the new neighbors. The entry began with other details of the day and Anne told me to read them as well.
February 18, 2 a.m.
Just woke from another nightmare, this time a classic: Dad crying in his sleep and I couldn’t wake him. I remember finding him sobbing once in real life, a few months after Mother died. He was sitting on the back steps after breakfast one morning.
Stayed up late tonight to finish reading “The Makioka Sisters.” I don’t know why I never read it before. A beautifully detailed and historically fascinating novel, though it surely has the strangest last sentence I’ve ever encountered. Earlier made a little progress on And Sometimes Y but also deleted several paragraphs, so I guess I came out even. I know this book isn’t commercial (big surprise) but I can’t seem to set it aside. The characters have a hold on me, especially Bridget.
Now we came to the part she was after. I heard her shift in her chair as I read the first words.
A curious moment today in the mailroom. I ran into the man who came home with us from Amy and Len’s. He was fetching his mail on the C/D side of the room and I was fetching ours across from him, so that our backs were to each other. Then I turned around and stood in the middle of the room, eyes on the letters as I flipped through them. At the same time, I guess, he did the very same thing, because it turned out we were facing each other, so close together that our hands brushed. Instant apologies on both sides, instant springing apart, then laughter. After this, I thought he lingered an extra moment, looking as if he had something to say. But he only smiled and hurried off.
Writing this, I realize I must have lingered just a bit myself. I wonder what kind of work he does that allows him to be home at three o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday.
From here, the entry went back to unrelated matters.
In the mail, a letter from Christine Geer. She’s going to MacDowell this summer, and much good may it do her. Her paramour Martin Keller will also be there, so at least she’ll get something done.
I read this with interest. I’d never heard of a romance between Geer and Keller, both of whose work I’d read and liked. Unlike me, however, Anne was not interested. She soon told me to skim ahead again, keeping an eye out for the Reeveses or the dinner party or the neighbors or possibly the names Susan or Greg.
Greg it was:
Wednesday February 20, 11 p.m.
Oddly—or maybe just that thing where you come across a word you’ve never heard of before and then see it again the next day—I blundered once more into Greg (the name, as I now know, of the unknown dinner guest chez Reeves that endless evening). This time we met on the downtown 1 train. I was on my way home from the research library, where I found some excellent recipes of the 1920s for And Sometimes Y. He was wearing a pea-coat and had a leather briefcase with him, battered, not suitable for business. I think I boarded the train after he did, but I didn’t notice him until we were at 34th Street, even though he was sitting right across from me. The train being crowded, we just waved when we first spotted each other, but at 28th Street, the woman who’d been squashed up against me got off and he dashed over to take her place. Perforce (or not so much? She was a very big woman, and he is not a very big man) also squashing against me. We shouted over the roaring train that it looked likely to snow again tonight, then established that we were both going home.
We disembarked and went up to the sidewalk and walked together along West 12th Street. He said he was coming from a class (teaching or learning? I wondered) and I told him where I’d been, though not why. He’s a small man, fine-boned, sharp-featured, with a crooked nose and eyes of two different colors, one blue, one brown. If men can be called jolie-laide (beau-laid, would it be?), that’s what he is. Quite attractive, even though the parts don’t add up. His face is off-kilter somehow.
As we walked the last block, he very distinctly slowed down, moving the briefcase between us to his other hand. A few yards from the door, he turned, stopped in the freezing wind, and leaned closer, until we were within murmuring distance. Very deliberately he almost whispered, “I hope we meet again.” Spoken in such a murmur, the commonplace phrase sounded far more significant than it should have.
“Bound to happen!” I answered heartily. Later, I felt like a coward for having replied as any virtuous hausfrau should, my tone as bright and vague as possible. At the time, though, I was intent on seeming not to notice the emphasis with which he spoke. I smiled a public smile and hurried into the building, making a quick left toward the elevator.
Made some changes to And Sometimes Y after I got home. I love those old recipes. Feather Cake! Who could resist a piece of that? Left my desk feeling less worried about Bridget’s argument with her mother, less worried about the book in general. Steve home early and startled me. He just materialized in my study, jolting me out of my work. It’s his house, of course he’s not going to ring, but I wish I could put the chain on the front door so he’d have to. Still, in the end, we had an enjoyable evening together—went out for a drink and dinner and made each other laugh about the pretentious, ridiculous maître d’. At home, Steve read to me from the Rex Stout we started last week.
This was the end of the entry. I looked up to tell her so. Half a dozen emotions seemed to be flickering across her face—recollection, nostalgia, pleasure, rue, and a hint of the worry you feel when you see a friend about to make a terrible mistake. Clearly, the “episode” was no routine thing, no summer at a writer’s retreat or the sad but inevitable loss of a parent. She looked exhausted. Although our session had been very short, I wasn’t surprised when she said we were done for the day.
“Or I am, at least,” she added, glancing at her cane without moving. She sat silent a while, hands in her lap, face to the window, profile to me, her gaze unfocused. I could no longer see the mix of feelings of a moment before. Now she looked grave, as grave as the woman in her dustjacket photos.
“I’ll keep the notebooks here,” she said, holding out her hand. She took the journal I’d been reading from, set it on top of the others, opened the drawer from which she’d taken the keys to the glass-fronted bookcase the day we met, put them and the books inside it, locked it, and tucked the drawer key into her pocket. Sadly, I realized that she would always keep the notebooks locked up.
I saw that I should leave her be.
FIVE
A few hours after that first reading, I took the train down to lower Broadway, near Reade Street, where Carrie Benson had her office. Contract law isn’t her area of expertise—she does family law—but she can interpret a legal agreement.
I called her from the tiny, overheated lobby of her building and waited while she came down to meet me. Then we made our way through the bundled, harried crowds released for their too-brief lunch breaks.
It was a day of ominous warmth, with CLIMATE CHANGE! almost written across the sky. The snow that had fallen in the night had already pooled in slushy gray masses at the corners. We leapt over these and a few blocks away wedged ourselves into an insanely noisy sandwich shop. I grabbed a vacant table while she shouted our orders at the counter, returning with a numbered buzzer that would alert us when our food was ready for pickup.
Though we’d been roommates, Carrie and I had never been especially close, and so I normally would have liked to dive immediately into the matter of the NDA. However, I made myself ask first how she was—work, kids (she started early), husband (also an early start). Work was busy, she yelled over the babble of the crowd. She liked her new boss. Emma was only four but had won a spelling bee. “Pretzel” was the word that broke the runner-up. Caleb had started climbing up the bookshelves—they were going to have them bolted to the walls—and her husband, Scott, was singing in the Gay Men’s Chorus “even though he isn’t gay.”
After the buzzer went off and was exchanged for our meals, we sat down again and she asked how I was. I answered as succinctly as possible, brushing quickly over my breakup with Tim and implying that it was a mutual decision—I don’t like to be thought of as a victim—then moved on to an update on my dissertation and an account of who Anne Weil was and how I’d come to be reading to her.
“So...” I trailed off, finally taking the agreement from my purse and handing it to her. She read it while finishing her salad, then looked up at me.
“Well, it’s binding,” she began, speaking in a subdued, lawyerly voice and leaning over the table so I could hear her through the din. “Although I’m not sure what judge would give it much court time, if it ever came to a dispute. You’d almost certainly be sent to a mediator.”
“Oh,” I said, the remainder of my BLT cooling in my hands. I was glad she thought a formal charge against me unlikely. But mediation sounded expensive, especially if I was found to be at fault.
“Other than the woman’s wish to keep her privacy, not much seems to be at stake,” Carrie went on, “unless I’m missing something. But I think you said her famous book came out more than forty years ago?”
I nodded.
“So she’s not a celebrity now?”
“Definitely not. Not for decades.”
“Okay, and not a criminal—hopefully—or, I don’t know, someone in witness protection. And you’re not a muckraking journalist or a TMZ reporter, so …” Her sentence trailed off into a shrug. “I wouldn’t worry about it much. I mean, of course you should follow it. Don’t breach it. But...I can refer you to a friend who works on non-disclosure agreements all the time if you want a more educated opinion.”
“That’s okay.” For the moment, at least, I’d done nothing wrong. (Nothing except show it to a lawyer, anyway. And surely that was all right; in fact, Quigley had counseled me to see a lawyer.) Anyway, I was nearly broke; I wasn’t looking for new ways to spend money I didn’t have.
