Albatross

by Terry Fallis

  “Hmmm, that is highly unusual, but I suppose so are these circumstances. I’ll have a discussion with the registrar, but I think we can make something happen,” she replied. “As I understand it, the only official documents that require your full name are your admission application, your transcripts, and your degree, should you complete the program. I think I can get him to agree to this if I position it as a measure that is in your academic interest.”

  “That would be amazing. I’m not sure I’ll be readily recognized, as I’ve let my hair grow long, I’m now sporting a beard, and I’m wearing glasses. If you can’t, well, then you can’t. I get it. We’ll deal with it. But it would be nice to have a bit of breathing room.”

  “I wouldn’t count on your true identity remaining a secret for very long, but we can try to support you on that front.”

  “Thank you very much. And yes, I agree. The news will break sometime. But even if I can be Adam James for a few weeks or months, that would help me get out of the gate cleanly.”

  A lot happened that first week of September. After spending a lot of time online and on the telephone, I managed to shut down my life in San Francisco, repatriate everything I had down there, including my car, sort out Bobbie’s affairs, and buy a great condo at the corner of Yonge and Bloor in the heart of downtown Toronto. It was a 2,800-square-foot corner unit in the upper reaches of a two-year-old luxury high-rise building. Lisa Griffiths handled the financial part of the transaction. No need for a mortgage—we paid the full price through a certified electronic bank transfer. After an amazing interior designer worked her magic in record time, I moved in the Friday before classes started. And I confirmed that my name on the class list would be Adam James. We would see how long my secret would keep.

  I hadn’t shaved since the Olympics. I’d had no idea I could actually grow a beard, but apparently I could. I let my hair kind of do what it wanted. As it grew out, it became a little unruly—not quite curly, but at least wavy. To avoid looking too scruffy, I at least kept my newly grown chin spinach neatly trimmed. Standing before the bathroom mirror, I was quite surprised at how different I appeared. But that worked just fine for me. This was part of the plan. Despite a raft of sports reporters charged with discovering where I was and what I was doing, I don’t think many people knew I was even back in Toronto. I’m sure a few of my neighbours knew, but generally, I could walk around the city wearing a ball cap and no one really gave me a second glance. I certainly wasn’t going all out to hide my true identity. I knew my anonymity would be fleeting, but I was enjoying it while it lasted.

  I spent the weekend enjoying my new condo, doing some grocery shopping, cooking dinner for my parents to inaugurate the kitchen, and generally psyching myself up for my first class on Monday. It was a short-story workshop course. In preparation, the professor had already emailed the class and attached a short story written by one of my fellow grad students. Our assignment was to read the story and be prepared to critique it on Monday.

  I didn’t love the story. Nothing really happened in it. It was entirely the disjointed interior thoughts of a young man as he walked along a remote highway after his car ran out of gas. I thought it needed something, but I wasn’t exactly sure what or why. I wondered if it reflected Hemingway’s iceberg theory, in which much of the story is unstated but clearly lurking below the waterline. Maybe I wasn’t seeing what was really happening beneath the surface. My plan was to keep my ears open and my mouth closed during the class, at least until I found my feet.

  When I arrived on Monday, there were only about a dozen students, mainly women, seated around a very large table. The numbers forced me to rethink the mouth-shut part of my classroom strategy. A few of them close to where I sat introduced themselves and I reciprocated. I tried to keep track of their names—Bethany, Shannon, Stephen and Kaz, I think. They all seemed nice. I liked Professor Keller. He was youngish and looked like a struggling writer in his faded jeans, sandals, and flannel shirt. His chaotic hair and beard made it appear as if we shared a stylist. He talked for a while about the course and how much more difficult short stories were than novels.

  “Some of you seem surprised. Some of you probably thought starting with short stories is the logical way rookie writers begin, before eventually finding their feet and graduating to the big leagues and writing novels,” he said. “Not so, in my mind. Think about it. Novelists can stretch out on their massive canvas, indulge in digressions, and generally pad their writing to reach their word count. They can get away with prose that is a little flabby when it’s against the backdrop of a one-hundred-thousand-word manuscript. But a short-story writer has no such luxury. Every single solitary word must count. Every single solitary word must be right. Every single solitary word must be perfect. Many novelists edit chapters, pages, paragraphs, and sometimes sentences. Short-story writers, well, we edit right down to clauses and words. We have no space for superfluous verbiage. We must distill our prose until it is pure and powerful.”

  He let that sink in. No one said a word, though there was some vigorous head-nodding.

  “So I’m one of those who thinks novels, despite their length, may well be easier to write than short stories. And don’t get me started on the difficulties inherent in pulling a collection together, finding the theme that links the stories, and ordering the pieces to maximize impact. In comparison, writing novels is a walk in the park.”

  “Then why do story collections get no respect out there?” asked a woman sitting next to me. “Novels still seem to be literature’s gold standard.”

  “Because so few people, critics included, really understand how short stories are crafted and what they truly demand from the writer and the reader,” he replied. “But that’s why we’re all here. So, on that happy note, let’s dive in. I circulated Stephen’s story last week. I’m going to make the dangerous assumption that you have all read it and given it serious thought. That’s what this course is all about. You owe it to each other to commit as much to reading and critiquing your colleagues’ work as you do to writing your own. That’s what a workshop class is all about. Let’s start with Stephen’s ambling-down-the-highway piece. Who’ll start us off?”

  Stephen put his hand up.

  “I just want to give some context for the story,” he said.

  Professor Keller held up his hand like a stop sign.

  “Sorry, Stephen. We only hear from the writer at the end. Your readers will seldom have the benefit of a set-up from the author. So you must set context in the story itself.” He looked around the classroom. “Okay, who’s up?”

  “Well, I read it twice and I still don’t know what it’s supposed to be,” said a young man at the end of the table. “A guy runs out of gas, has no cell signal, and so is forced to walk along the shoulder, sharing his random thoughts. And man, does he think a lot, and all over the map, too.”

  “Okay, you’ve just made an observation about the story,” Professor Keller said. “But we need more than that. What was Stephen trying to get across? What was his point?”

  “I wondered if it was a meditation on the impact of technology and how little time we all have in today’s hectic society to think, to really think,” said a woman seated across from me.

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” the professor said. “That’s digging in a bit. That’s what we need to do. Who else?”

  “I kind of thought he might be a little ADHD. His thoughts were flying in from all directions on countless topics. I wondered if his search for gasoline was a metaphor for his own search for peace, stability, and order.”

  “Good. That may not be what Stephen intended, but you’re getting underneath the prose and that’s good,” Professor Keller said. “Who else?”

  “Well, I just thought the writing was pedestrian, while the empty-gas-tank metaphor was too obvious. It’s clear that the guy in the story is tapped out in his life and looking for something to save him. But the running out of gas thing is cliché and overdone.”

/>   This comment came from a clean-cut student sitting at the end of the table. He shook his head and even rolled his eyes while sharing his little hatchet job with the rest of us.

  Stephen blanched. I blanched. A few of the other students blanched. Safe to say there was blanching.

  “Whoa!” the professor said. “Let’s remember that your story is going to come up for critique in the coming weeks. The point is to be constructive in our criticism. Give the writer something they can consider, something they can act on, something they can salvage. Perhaps I should have spent a bit more time on what we’re looking for when critiquing our colleagues’ work.”

  “Sorry, but it’s just bad writing. I don’t even know where to start with it,” the student protested.

  “Look, it’s simple. In your critique, be thoughtful, be considerate, be empathetic, be understanding, be gentle,” the professor said.

  “In other words, don’t be a dick,” Stephen said.

  “Right. Inelegantly put, Stephen, but true,” agreed the professor. “Don’t be a dick. But also, as writers, we need to have thick skins and learn how to take criticism. Even in sharply worded rebukes, there is often a kernel of truth. Our job is to not take it all so personally that we fail to see the value lurking in the sometimes unnecessarily harsh criticism. Readers don’t mince their words on Amazon or Goodreads, and frankly, neither will some of your editors and beta-readers. So don’t take criticism personally. Listen, consider, and decide for yourself whether to act and what to act on. That’s our job as writers.”

  The clean-cut guy at the end of the table, who was forever after known as Dick, scowled but said nothing more.

  Much to my relief, none of my fellow grad students seemed to recognize me, although Professor Keller had nodded his head knowingly, almost conspiratorially, when we shook hands at the beginning of class.

  While I had seen Allison around campus a few times, particularly in the library, I hadn’t yet spoken to her, and I didn’t think she’d yet seen me. I hadn’t really figured out how to approach her, and decided I should just let it happen. So on Thursday afternoon that week, I walked over to the library bearing my precious cargo in the hopes of seeing her.

  I slipped up to the mezzanine level, which yielded a good view of the tables one floor below. And there she was, hunkered down at a table, writing in a well-used notebook. Even from where I stood, I could see she was still using the vintage orange Parker Duofold I’d given her years earlier, on the day we broke up. She looked good. She looked great, in fact. Her hair was a little shorter, and her jeans and hoodie screamed out student. Seeing her did something to me. I was just happy to be in the same room with her again.

  Why wait? I headed back down the stairs, carrying our antiphonal novel with my new chapter newly inked.

  My last act at the campsite on Lake Temagami—which seemed like months ago, not days—had been to write the next chapter in our long-neglected antiphonal novel. As you might expect, it featured a reconciliation, after several years, of the young woman—by then in Toronto—and the itinerant hockey player. I didn’t know if Alli was seeing anyone right then. For all I knew, she was in love with someone else. She could even be engaged to the good-looking dude from Christmas a few years ago. But I had to try. I had to know.

  I wasn’t moving in slow motion, but it sure felt like it. She looked up when I was still some distance off. I could feel my knees wobbling from sheer anxiety and expectation. Our eyes met for an instant before she turned away again. Ouch, that hurt. Then she paused and snapped her head around to find me again. She was out of her chair like a shot and came to meet me. Her hug was long but there was really no way to tell exactly what kind of embrace it was. It could very well have been a “Great to see you after so long, Auntie Irene” hug.

  “I didn’t recognize you at first,” she said after pulling back from the hug but holding on to my hands. “What are you doing here, Adam?”

  “I figured I was long overdue to deliver my next chapter. Sorry it took me seven years.”

  I handed her the notebook. She took it and beamed at me. I wish I could have bottled that moment.

  She led me back to her table and pulled around the chair from the other side so it was next to hers and we both sat. She then reclaimed my hands.

  “Seriously, where have you been, and how are you doing?” she asked.

  “Well, I’ve just spent some time camping on Lake Temagami, sorting out a few things—you know, figuring out my life and what comes next,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you were in Temagami. I wish I’d known. You could have gone to visit my parents.”

  “Well, I think I really needed the alone time. The lake has always been a special place for me, for several reasons. Just being there always helps me think. It was where I made decisions on the next chapter in our novel, and I guess in my life,” I continued. “And as for how I’m doing, well, I think I’m okay. What happened to Bobbie and then the decision to leave golf was a lot to process. I’m sure I’m not finished dealing with it all, but I was certainly feeling a lot better paddling out of Lake Temagami than I was paddling in.”

  “Well, your ‘Goodbye, golf’ news conference was a shocker.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Hmmm. Well, not to me. But to the rest of the world, I mean,” she replied. “And what are you doing here? Are you living at home again?”

  “Well, funny story. And I hope you’re okay with this, but at the last minute, I was accepted into the master’s program, you know, here, in creative writing. I started on Monday.”

  Her eyes widened and she stood up, still holding my hands. It felt so good to be in physical contact with her. Her hands were soft and warm.

  “Yay, Adam, that’s fantastic! You’ll love it. The profs are stellar. This is going to be amazing. We’re getting the band back together!” she said. “I can’t believe I haven’t seen you yet. Then again, maybe I have but just didn’t recognize you. But I’m digging your new back-to-the-land look.”

  She reached up and held her hand against my cheek when she said it.

  “Well, I’m trying to fly a little under the radar to give myself some space and time. In fact, as far as my fellow grad students know, my name is Adam James.”

  “You mean they don’t know? They haven’t recognized the famous golfer who brought down a chopper and then won a gold medal?” she asked.

  “Well, the administration and the profs know, and I expect the students will know soon enough,” I said. “Oh, and I bought a condo at Yonge and Bloor so I won’t be freeloading off my parents.”

  “In that newish, really tall building on the corner with the cool wavy-shaped sides?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Nice,” she said. “Okay, I can’t wait any longer. Can you sit for a bit while I read?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “I’ll sit here as long as you like.”

  She finally released my hands to grab the notebook and turn to my chapter.

  I watched her closely as she read. If she were to roll her eyes or shake her head, I’d be done for. But she didn’t. She smiled as she read. She looked over at me often. I thought I even saw her lip tremble once, but that might have been wishful thinking. When she finished the chapter, she flipped back to the start of it and read it again.

  When she closed the spiral notebook, she leaned forward again in her chair so she could reclaim my hands, which I’d conveniently left within reach.

  “I loved it,” she opened. “Your writing is stronger, more mature, more fluid. It’s good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wanting more than a writing critique.

  “And I like where the story is going, too,” she said, and squeezed my hand.

  We talked all afternoon and a good part of the evening, too. It was like we’d never been apart. We talked writing, fountain pens, what we’d been doing with our lives. We covered a lot of ground that afternoon. Maybe we really were getting the band back together. It felt the
same as it had when we were teenagers, but different, somehow. Deeper, somehow. She was quite busy and really trying to focus on the novel she was writing for her master’s and, she hoped, for publication.

  We touched on our love lives, or in my case, the lack thereof. She wasn’t involved with anyone either, and hadn’t been for a while. I don’t think she noticed the cardiac cartwheels I turned while sitting across from her. It seemed she was giving me green lights at every intersection. We both agreed we wouldn’t rush into anything, though right then, I would have happily rushed into it. I was ready to rush. I’d been ready to rush for six years or more. Rush, rush, rush. But I played it cool. I was in for the long haul.

  THE NEXT MONDAY, one of my stories was up for critique in the workshop class. I was excited and terrified but couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. My story was about a man born with a very special birthmark that scarred not just his body but his life. The key points hadn’t changed from my original, televised rendition, but I’d added brushstrokes to fill out the details and make it feel real. At least, that was the plan. I’d actually honed it a bit on Lake Temagami. Was it ready? Was it finished? Was it exactly where I wanted it? I had no idea. But I felt a connection to the story and genuinely wanted the group’s feedback.

  “Okay, Adam’s story, ‘The Birthmark,’ is up today. Who will kick us off?”

  I sat there with my TWSBI Vac Mini poised above a Rhodia Heritage notebook. Here we go. Stephen jumped in first.

  “I liked the overall arc of the story and the message it conveyed, but I think it could be improved in a few ways.”

  “Okay, how?” Professor K. prompted.

  “Well, the protagonist doesn’t feel fully fleshed out. We know more about his birthmark than we do about him, how he thinks and feels, who he really is. He just feels a little flat. I thought we’d learn more about him as the story unfolded, but we didn’t really.”