Chapter 8 “Your Life Sounds Like a Novel.” #3
“That feels kind of like a violation.”
“Nah. I’ve never been shown a name. That’s what Wite-Out is for.”
“That lawyer in your book,” I said. “He was pretty damn scary.”
“Thank you.”
“He’s not like my father at all. My father, as a lawyer, only sees the problems. Never, it seems, the opportunities.”
“Then he’s a good lawyer,” Dennis murmured, but it was without conviction. Then, with what I would come to understand was his remarkable sense of intuition—a strength of many solid predators in the wild—he continued, “I hope you’re not nervous about that deposition you told me about.”
“Of course I am.”
“I’m sure your father can reassure you better than I can, but I can’t for the life of me see how it could have any negative consequences. You hit a golf ball. That’s all you did.”
“I’ve been hearing that for over four months now.”
“Well, listen to what all of us grown-ups are saying.”
“Am I not a grown-up?”
“You know what I meant.”
“I’m not afraid of the legal consequences,” I said. “Not anymore. I just don’t want to have to relive it as part of the legal record. It’s a nightmare. You’ve never killed a person.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“And I can’t bear being in Tallmadge.”
“I thought the deposition was in Manhattan.”
“It is. I meant going back there in my mind for the lawyers. But yeah, I really hated being back home over Thanksgiving—except for being with our dog, Harvey. That was wonderful and had me crying with happiness the first night. Not exaggerating. I was so happy to see him, I was crying. I thought I’d stopped missing him after the first few days at my aunt and uncle’s.
Nope. Seeing Harvey? Smelling him? Hugging him?
He was like Linus van Pelt’s security blanket, and I couldn’t stop cuddling him when I was back home. But…”
“But?”
“But whenever I left the house, I wore sunglasses, even though it was cloudy the whole Thanksgiving weekend, and a Yankees cap pulled down to my eyebrows. I kept expecting to run into Mrs. Foster or Mrs. Catton. They both hate me, and they both should. Their children must hate me. And my classmates? Either I disgust them because I was having sex with Theo Catton—Gross, gross, gross, he’s ancient!
—or I’m the horrible girl who killed Kenny Foster. ”
He cleared his throat. Then he cleared it again, and it was because he wanted to make a point.
“Go on,” I said.
“Be careful, please, with the ‘Gross, gross, gross, he’s ancient!’ observations.”
“I didn’t say I thought you were gross or ancient. I didn’t say I thought Theo was. I was only telling you one more reason why I hated being home.”
He stroked my hair. The truth is, I was in his bed because he was older. I liked it when he—and Theo before him—would wrap one arm beneath my shoulders and the other beneath my knees, folding me into him.
“Are your family still members of the country club?”
“Yes. But they don’t go anymore. It’s pretty uncomfortable for them.
And it’s mostly quiet in the winter, anyway.
Only the dining room and card rooms are open now.
They’re building squash courts and paddle tennis courts, but they won’t be ready until next year.
And I’d be surprised if my parents remain in the club when it’s time to renew their membership in June. ”
We lay like that until Dennis gently pushed me off his chest and reached for his cigarettes on the nightstand.
I didn’t smoke, but he did. So had Theo.
The idea they smoked and I could lie on my back and watch the gray-blue exhalations of these older men curlicue up from the beds we were sharing toward the ceiling always made me feel at once very mature because I was with them and naked, and very childlike because I didn’t share their habit.
I understood it was a precipice, and I savored the vista.
“You should write all these feelings down,” he said. “Think Hemingway. Sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.”
“God. Sounds like suicide.”
“It’s the opposite. He meant—”
“I know what he meant,” I assured him. “What are you suggesting, a short story?”
“Sure.”
“How do you know I can write?”
“I don’t. But you got into Yale, so there’s that.
And here’s the reality about writing. While few people are born with the innate talent of Emily Dickinson or Saul Bellow, scribble long enough and eventually you’ll be a passable writer.
Good God, I’m no Capote or Marquez, but I make a living. A lot of writing is just practice.”
“Like golf.”
“Yup.”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that I was never going to win an LPGA tournament. But I might have made the tour. Maybe. And I definitely could have been a pro at a lot of clubs.”
“My point exactly.”
I didn’t know it at the time, because just thinking about Kenny often upset me.
But a seed had been planted. When he snuffed out his cigarette and went to shower, I looked at the fine-point Bic pens he kept in a mug on his desk and the stack of yellow legal pads beside it, and wondered how he began. How did he find that first sentence?