by R.J. Ellory
“You just need a first line,” he said. “Every great book begins with a great first line, you know?”
“Such as?”
He laughed. “Hell, Joseph, you’re the writer. I’m just a lowly reader. I know a great first line when I read one, but when it comes to writing I have a hard enough time filling out a job application.”
“I have a first line.”
“Which is?”
We were in my room. I was at my desk and Paul was in an armchair in the bay. Against the mid-afternoon sunshine he appeared as little more than a silhouette.
I reached for the sheaf of papers upon which I had scrawled the beginnings of my novel so long before, and I thumbed through them.
“Here,” I said. “You ready?”
“Hit me with it, Jackson.”
I smiled. “There was never a time when I believed that life would be anything other than beautiful—”
He was shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he said. “It’s clumsy. No poetry. It sounds trite as well.”
“Anything else wrong with it?”
Paul rose from his chair and walked to the bookcase. “Let’s see what we have here,” he said. He reached for a volume. “Cannery Row. John Steinbeck.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Shut up and listen.” Hennessy cleared his throat. “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” He snapped the book shut and smiled. “See? Poetry. A little magic. It conjures a whole atmosphere in one sentence.” He reached for another. “William Faulkner. The Wild Palms.”
“Nobel Prize for Literature last year,” I said. “You’re setting me up against some stiff competition.”
“Which is probably exactly what you need. Here we go. ‘The knocking sounded again, at once discreet and peremptory, while the doctor was descending the stairs, the flashlight’s beam lancing on before him down the brown-stained stairwell and into the brown-stained tongue-and-groove box of the lower hall.’ How’s that for a little mystery, eh? Who’s the doctor! Is he in his own house? What’s the knocking sound? Someone at the door? Who would come knocking at his door at night? Is someone sick? Has someone died?”
“Enough already. I get your point.”
“So write me a great first line.”
“Now?”
“Sure now, why the hell not? What’re you waiting for? You know what they say . . . ten percent inspiration—”
“Ninety percent perspiration, I know.”
“So I’ll go sit over by the window and mind my own business until you’re done.”
I leaned over the desk, pen in hand, and I closed my eyes. I thought of the opening scene. The arrival of friends at a house. Friends long since forgotten. Friends passing through a town who decide to call on the central character. He is surprised, taken aback, but their enthusiasm and charm seem to captivate him. He feels as though there is something here he has lost. He yearns for the past, a time when friends such as these were all that was important, and he decides that the life he has chosen has been a waste. He begins a journey back to his roots. He travels on foot, by train, on buses and wagons, and hitches rides. He crosses from the east to the west of America and lives life as it was meant to be lived. He never does reach the town of his birth, but he does find his home. An allegory, a fable, a myth.
I put pen to paper.
“I hear no scratching of nib on parchment,” Hennessy said from his bay window.
“Shhh,” I hissed. “Can’t you see I’m working?”
A few minutes later I looked up, leaned back, turned in my chair with the paper in my hand and smiled. “I have it,” I said proudly.
“Good. So let’s hear it.”
“There was a time when it seemed each day could burst with passion; a time when life was swollen with magic and desire; a time when I believed the future could be nothing but perfect. There was such a time. And in my wide-eyed innocent youth, I felt that a path had been carved for me that could only lead higher—”
“Whoa, enough,” Hennessy interjected. “That’s more than one line.”
I looked up. “I have more.”
“I didn’t ask for more.”
“So what d’you think?”
“Better,” he said conservatively. “Better than the other one. You get the idea there’s some impending darkness. A disappointment. Something has happened to dampen this fellow’s enthusiasm, right?”
“Yes, there is. Some friends of his—”
Hennessy raised his hand. “Don’t tell it, write it. Write it first, and then you can tell me.”
I smiled. “You intend to be my muse,” I said.
“God no, Vaughan. A muse should be female, a woman of grace. We shall find you a muse, someone intelligent and elegant, but not so pretty that she’s a constant distraction, eh?”
I had spoken of Alex with Paul so many times before. In that moment I could not bear to speak her name again, and so I said nothing.
“You are going to carry on writing?”
“Yes,” I replied. “You have started me off now.”
“Then, Vaughan, my work is done. I shall leave you to the machinations of your own mind. I am going to find a bar and drink until I can’t see very well.”
“Enjoy,” I said.
“I shall, Vaughan, indeed I shall.”
I worked consistently. I found a groove, a rhythm, and somewhere between dawn and dusk I managed to discipline myself sufficiently to hammer out my words. I bought a new Underwood typewriter, set it atop a folded blanket on my desk to minimize the clatter it made, and shunted page after page between roller and platen. I took up smoking, a nauseating affectation which I promptly became addicted to, and oftentimes I would go out in the evening with Hennessy and we would try as many different drinks as we could manage until we were sick as dogs.
The past tried to leave me alone, but I would collide with it every once in a while. I thought of the girls who’d been killed, and their names would come back to me: Alice Ruth Van Horne, Rebecca Leonard, Catherine McRae, Virginia Grace Perlman, others whose faces I had never known, would never know. I thought of the day I’d found Gunther Kruger in my mother’s room, and then I would think of her creeping from the house that late August night to commit arson. I tried to convince myself that she could not have done such a thing, but I knew she had. She had tried to exorcise the demon from Augusta Falls, a demon she had permitted to enter her bed, her life, her heart perhaps. Guilt, anger, pain, her conscience, such things as these had finally overwhelmed her, and she had inflicted her own madness on the world. That madness had grown, had eaten her alive from within, and finally it had killed her. My thoughts of her were not heavy with grief, but a bitter sense of pity. I did think of my father. I often wondered what would have become of us had he lived. I took my emotions and I wrote them into “The Homecoming”, and in some way, it seemed to make things better.
Early September of the same year, with much of the first draft complete, I registered at the nearest library I could find. From here I borrowed Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, armfuls of the Writer’s Digest, works by Ezra Pound, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Fenimore Cooper’s Satanstoe. And it was here that I saw her for the first time. And though there was no particular line or curve to her features, though her eyes were neither emarald-green nor sapphire-blue, but warm, a color like mahogany, painstakingly sanded until the grain came proud; though her face cafried the familiarity of someone close but long-lost . . . Despite nothing to name or cite as the one thing, it seemed that everythig about her carried with it a sense of magic. Perhaps it was the feeling that here was a woman who needed no one, and that was the quality that made her so unbearably attractive to me.
I saw her in the library, she too bearing up a handful of books, and I believed that some preternatural selection had designated this moment as one of great importance.
My words, ordinarily my strength, fail
ed me. The first day I could say nothing of consequence or meaning. I merely smiled in the hope that she would smile back. She did not. I felt my heart snap like a green-stick twig.
I returned to the library each day for the better part of a week, and on a late Friday afternoon she appeared from behind a shelf with a copy of Cannery Row in her hand.
I remembered the line, the very first line, a line I had memorized following my conversation with Paul. I smiled; I cleared my throat; I spoke.
“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem—”
The girl frowned, looked embarrassed.
“—a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”
She shook her head. “Excuse me?”
“The first line,” I said, somewhat proudly, though I felt like a fool. “The first line of Cannery Row, the book you have there.”
The girl raised her eyebrows, peered down at the slim volume in her hand. “Is that so?” she asked. “I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read it.”
“I have.”
“So it would seem.” She lowered her hand to hide the thing, and then she moved as if to get past me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I took a step back in an effort to be less intimidating; I tried to smile, something heartfelt and warm, but my muscles tensed. I imagined she thought me quite crazy. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” I went on. “It’s just that when you see someone with a book you love, you think there might be some—” My throat tightened. I did-n’t know what I’d planned to say.
“Some what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. My self-consciousness rapidly increased to near emotional distress. “Really, I’m sorry. I wanted to speak to you last time you were here. I’ll go now. I’m just making a fool of myself.”
The girl smiled. “Okay,” she said gently. Once again she stepped to the left as if to pass by.
I knew that if I let her go then I would more than likely never see her again. Such were the Fates.
“I come here quite often,” I said. “I’ve only just moved here, and I don’t really know anyone. I wondered . . .”
She looked at me askance.
I raised my hands and backed up. “This is not going the way I wanted,” I said.
“And what did you want?” she asked.
“I don’t know, miss . . . I just wanted to introduce myself. I wanted to say hello. I wanted to find a reason to speak to you, that was all.”
“And what did you want to speak to me about?”
I shrugged. “Anything really. Books. Who you are. Where you come from. Whether or not we could . . . I don’t know . . . whether or not we could get to know one another. I thought we might have something in common . . . literature, you know? We might discover that we have something in common, and then you could be the only person I know in Brooklyn.”
She smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Vaughan,” I said. “Joseph Vaughan.”
“Well, Joseph Vaughan, it was very nice to meet you but I really am in a hurry. I have to get back home now, so if you don’t mind?” Once again she took a step to the left to come by me.
“Could I see you again perhaps?” I asked. I had reached a point of no return. I had nothing to lose. My dignity, my self-respect, everything had gone by the boards.
“You could,” she said. “But then I could see you again. Wouldn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to see you again. Like today, the fact that both of us happen to be in the same library at the same time means nothing more than we both come here to borrow books. Coincidence, yes?”
I did not mention that I had come every day in the hope that she would be there.
“I’m not a great believer in coincidence,” I said.
“Are you not?” she replied, a rhetorical question. “Seems also that you are not a great believer in recognizing when someone doesn’t have time to stand and talk to strangers.”
That was it. She had managed to crush me completely.
“I apologize,” I said sheepishly. “I really am very sorry to have disturbed you. I didn’t mean to come across as—”
“You came across just fine, Joseph Vaughan, and I’m sure it was very nice to meet you, but I really have to go now. I have things I need to do.”
This time she stepped toward me with greater determination, almost authority, and I stepped aside.
“See you again some time then,” I said.
“Perhaps,” she replied, and then she turned the corner at the end of the row and disappeared.
I stood there for a few moments, my heart thudding, my nerves like taut whipcord, and I willed myself to do something. Anything.
I put the books I had selected on the edge of the nearest shelf and then hurried out of the library and down the steps to the street. A half block down I found a flower seller, threw a dollar at him and grabbed the nearest bouquet. He hollered after me for change, but I was already at a run, back toward the library.
I was there as she came out of the door and started down the steps.
I stood my ground, breathless, red-faced, the bunch of flowers like a shield against her possible rejection.
She saw me, and for a moment she looked surprised, taken aback, and then she smiled, smiled wider, started laughing.
“You are a fool,” she said, echoing my own thoughts. “What are you doing now?”
“I brought you some flowers,” I said, stating the idiotic obvious.
“What on earth for?”
“To apologize for upsetting you.”
“You didn’t upset me.” She reached the bottom of the risers and stood on the sidewalk.
“Look,” I said, feeling something close to irritation overcoming my self-consciousness. “I really don’t know what it is about me that repels you. I’m sorry for looking the way I do. I’m sorry for stopping you when you obviously have better things to do, but my way of thinking tells me that if you don’t talk to people, if you don’t somehow start a conversation with someone, then you’ll spend the rest of your life alone and regretful. I saw you once before. You looked like someone who would be good to speak to. I came here every day since then in the hope that I might see you again—”
“You did what?”
I realized I had taken my foot out of my mouth only to place it firmly back inside. “I came here yesterday, the day before, the day before that. I came here until I saw you again, and then I couldn’t let myself not say something. The fact that I’ve said entirely the wrong thing is beside the point now. The truth is, whatever might happen now, at least I won’t kick myself for not saying something.”
“And what do you think should happen now?” Her expression was feisty and petulant.
“I . . . well, I figured we might go and have a soda or a cup of coffee or something. I figured you might tell me your name, at least.”
She smiled. She seemed to relax a little, let down her defenses. “My name? Sure I can tell you my name.”
I paused, waiting.
“Bridget,” she said. “My name is Bridget McCormack.”
“Pleased to meet you, Bridget McCormack.”
She nodded. “Reciprocated, Joseph Vaughan.”
“So would you like to go have a soda—”
“Or a cup of coffee?”
“Right, yes . . . a cup of coffee.”
“For annoying me, you got no points at all. For apologizing, you get five out of ten. For the flowers?” She shook her head. “The flowers weren’t necessary.”
I put the flowers behind my back.
“But I’ll take them anyway, just so you don’t feel you’ve wasted your money.”
I withdrew the flowers and handed them to her.
“For persistence you get ten out of ten, and yes, I will go for a cup of coffee with you . . . but not today. Today I am actually on my way somewhere, and as a result of this little detour I am already considerably late, so if you don’t mind?”
“So when
?” I asked.
“When what?”
“When can I take you for a cup of coffee?”
“Monday,” Bridget McCormack said definitively. “You can meet me here at noon on Monday and take me for a cup of coffee, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and smiled wide.
“Though this does not necessarily mean that we’ll have anything in common, or even like each other for that matter.”
I nodded. “Understood, but at least we can give it a try.”
“That we can,” she said. “That we can.”
“All right, Monday it is. I’ll see you then, Miss McCormack.”
She laughed and walked past me. “You really are a foolish man, Joseph Vaughan.”
My heart soared. I said nothing. I stood there on the sidewalk and watched her walk down the street and disappear around the corner. She did not look back, and for this I was grateful; standing there with my hands in my pockets, a smile on my face as wide as the Mississippi was long.
Bridget McCormack was not Alexandra Webber. Bridget was similarly intelligent and well-read, but there was something unique about her that made it easy not to be reminded. She did not look like Alex. Her voice was different, and when she laughed she seemed to possess such self-assurance. No one could ever have replaced Alex, no one could ever take her place in my heart, but Bridget somehow managed to make me feel good about being alive. I experienced emotions that had been absent for years, and as I experienced them I realized how much I had missed them. Bridget was twenty-one years old, born of Irish-American parents, a lapsed Catholic, a student of the Humanities at Brooklyn College, and she intended to write poetry and essays, to write letters and articles for eclectic magazines, to study art, to live life, to be herself.
We met that following Monday. We walked three blocks and stopped at a deli. There we sat for the better part of two hours, and she let me speak of myself, of why I was in Brooklyn, of my work in progress.
“So tell me about this book,” she said, and I did, pouring out something of myself that would have seemed strange considering it was our first meeting.
