This Angel on My Chest

by Pietrzyk, Leslie

  Joy’s cheeks flushed bright pink and she sucked in her breath sharply. She set the Styrofoam cup on the floor and wiped the front and back of both hands on her skirt. Vanessa wanted to feel sorry for her, but Joy probably should hear she was too perky. And it suited Vanessa if Louise made enemies quickly.

  “This should be a fun two weeks,” Vanessa said, keeping her voice neutral. “So much to catch up on.”

  “It’s terrible about Michael,” Louise said. “Did I already say that?”

  “You sent that gorgeous peace lily,” Vanessa said. “Thank you.”

  An oversized, leafy eyesore Vanessa hauled to the curb. Too much responsibility, she told herself, watching through the blinds to see if neighbors might take it in. The next morning the garbage collectors swept it away.

  Then Louise said, “I suppose you’ll be writing about this one day. That’s what we do as writers, isn’t it, write about all the bad things that happen to us?”

  That’s what you do, Vanessa thought, that’s what you did, but she smiled casually. Her face was going to collapse. What a thing to say, even for Louise, who would say anything. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. It just all feels pretty awful right now.” She crossed her arms. “We really don’t have to keep talking about it.”

  Louise said, “It’s your one story. Like Updike and Rabbit. Roth and Zuckerman. Richard Ford and Frank Bascombe. Vanessa and Michael.”

  She longed to demand that Louise never speak his name again, but she concentrated on her careless smile as she said, “But it’s not a story. It’s what happened.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Stop it,” Vanessa said sharply, the smile punctured.

  Louise laughed, a silly trill. “Oh, you. You know I’m saying what’s already in your head.”

  Vanessa’s shoulders tightened as she glared at Louise. Goddamnit, Louise was right. But those thoughts shouldn’t be in her head, not now, so soon—not ever. Goddamnit. She said, “Just don’t say that again. It’s rude and hateful.”

  Joy interrupted: “I think that’s us,” and she pointed. A girl with a sunburned nose, holding a clipboard, called and waved, coming to herd the three of them to another corner of the waiting area, where several men clustered around an elderly man in an airport wheelchair. The three women silently collected their luggage, rolling and shuffling, Louise knocking over the Styrofoam cup, which slowly bled coffee onto the carpeted floor. Vanessa couldn’t be sure if this was accidental or Louise’s way of leaving her mark behind, and she shivered.

  NARRATIVE EXPOSITION: not a true point of view, but can provide background, especially in longer works; also useful when writing the first draft to gain insight into characters and their motivations, assuming the material is deleted later. (An inability to convey necessary information naturally through the POV character may suggest the author should reconsider POV choice.)

  Vanessa Connally and Louise Phillips met at the MacBride Writers’ Conference in 1996. Both women were roughly the same age—mid-twenties—and both were considered attractive, Louise in a dark, dramatic, high-maintenance way, and Vanessa in a golden, girl-next-door, let’s-go-on-a-picnic way. There were some who found Vanessa to be cold, perhaps calculating. She was noticeably friendliest to people who might be in position to do her favors. She over-complimented, with an air of forced sincerity, and claimed too many things were “fabulous” to be trusted entirely.

  On the other hand, Louise came across as exceedingly friendly, conversing with an array of people, from the housekeeping staff up to the visiting Nobel laureate. She was often found cozied on a porch swing or tucked into the window seat in the lobby, head bent close to her companion’s, asking questions, prodding for more information, swearing the same terrible thing sort of had once happened to her. She was a wonderful confidante, so it wasn’t until later that her conversational partner realized that Louise hadn’t shared much of her own life as she listened to those precious secrets peeling back. It was a sick feeling much, much later to see those same secrets laced through Louise’s novels or short stories. Still, she was getting her work published, and that was something.

  OMNISCIENT: all-knowing, all-seeing “voice of God”; unfashionable in contemporary literature though Zadie Smith’s White Teeth offers a welcome counterpoint.

  There comes a moment when every party could tip either way, and now is that moment for this party. It’s two A.M., and the food’s been gone for several hours—not that there was much: two bags of honey mustard pretzels, hummus and carrots for vegetarians, and a large bag of truck stop beef jerky, presented ironically, of course, but consumed nevertheless. It’s BYOB, the only kind of party the MacBride Writers’ Conference throws. The skunky beer, the clutter of cheap vodka, and the single bottle of show-offy single-malt scotch are well below the halfway point; the ice is dripping into a puddle that no one thinks to mop up. Supplies are dwindling, and it’s the first night, so people can claim jet lag as a legitimate excuse to retreat to bed, ignoring the truth: they’re old and tired and can’t party the way they imagine they used to. Or—tip the other way, and this becomes the night where The Thing That Everyone Talks About happens, The Thing that, once missed, is forever missed—an irretrievable loss no matter what other Things might arise later in the conference. No one dares miss The Thing.

  And so the party tips: toward the more interesting, riskier possibilities, into the sort of party where people dribble more warm, cheap vodka into plastic cups, and the owner of the fancy scotch sees his bottle stormed by a cluster of bearded young men who don’t care that he has two poetry books published by a top university press and a third coming out in October that will win the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  The music from someone’s iPhone pumps louder, and so does the thrum of conversation about Emily Dickinson, villanelles, the best pho in Brooklyn, what was really behind that New York Times hatchet job on Jonathan Franzen. (No, no—that’s a joke. Even in fiction, the New York Times critics are incapable of giving Jonathan Franzen a hatchet job. But the fact that they won’t, that Franzen seems to live comfortably in their pockets, arises in the bitter exchange between the two novelists huddled by the stone fireplace.)

  A young woman shrieks, “Everybody dance,” and curious gazes slide her direction, as she stumbles awkwardly through the main room, knocking into poets and playwrights, her long hair flashing and flailing until she collapses onto the overstuffed couch that has remained in that exact spot for the last twenty years.

  Vanessa watches the girl while maintaining a tedious discussion about the craft cocktail scene with an eager young man. It was on that couch that she and Michael first met in 1996; there was nowhere to sit and her feet hurt, so she flopped down on his lap because he was cute.

  We were that way, Louise says, sidling up to her. Louise is a sidler, and a slipper-inner of snarky comments, and a sneak. Vanessa never liked her, even back in those days when they were as young as the dancing girl who is now splashing vodka on her neck and pulse points. She had been Michael’s friend, not that he liked her all that much either. He couldn’t even remember why he slept with her, which made Vanessa angrier. “Don’t you remember that huge fight we had in the woods?” Vanessa had asked, and he pressed his palm to his temple, said, “What woods?”

  Once upon a time, Vanessa says. She introduces Louise to the man she’s been talking to, calling him the wrong name—which turns out to be his dreaded brother-in-law’s name—and either that’s all very funny or they’re all very drunk. This could be The Thing between Vanessa and this man, calling him the name of the dreaded brother-in-law for the entire conference, each time with a laugh. He would take that, as he perceives Vanessa as higher in the writer hierarchy; he is merely a waiter-writer, and she is a faculty-writer, a real writer, a writer with books. He loves her work, he assured her earlier, striving to sound sincere, since he hasn’t actually read her work but has been meaning to.

  Louise says to the young man, Don’t mind us, we’re grumps.
She barely hears herself speak; she’s thinking about how thin Vanessa is, how Michael’s death has turned her ethereal and mysterious, lighter somehow. Like an angel. Like a fucking angel. She hates the trite word and mentally flicks it away. Vanessa has always unnerved her. Louise isn’t supposed to be here; the director invited her last-minute and she surprised herself by saying yes: only because the director begged, telling her that he needed her for backup if Vanessa flamed out. He was convinced she’d show up then run off, he told Louise, remember, she met Michael here. I remember, Louise assured him, clucking with false sympathy before agreeing to be a special guest for a big fee. The director sent her the manuscripts for the workshop Vanessa is supposed to lead, but Louise didn’t mark them up, knowing nothing will keep Vanessa from her class because Vanessa relies on students to reflect her own brilliance back on herself.

  Michael’s death has shocked her. He was only forty-one. But in her mind he felt younger, the lanky boy she’d known, with that earnest way of grabbing your arm when he spoke about something he thought was important. It was sort of sexy. He had such dark, velvety eyes. Without those eyes, she might have stayed hands off. Or not. She was a mess back then, needing buckets of attention. Thank God for a decade of therapy. That’s one of her phrases, said with a snort, indicating that it’s not as though she considers herself cured.

  The young man is yammering and Louise interrupts: You know what this party needs?

  She is lucky—or is it skill?—to have the knack of speaking at those mysterious moments when a crowd falls into a deep and significant silence, so the entire room hears her.

  She smiles deeply, thrilling in the attention and in the nervous twitches flitting across Vanessa’s face. This party needs a GAME, Louise announces.

  And so the party tips; so the games begin; and so our story lands upon the precipice of The Thing That Everyone Will Be Talking About. Who isn’t glad to have stayed; who’s worried now about cheap vodka hangovers?

  SECOND PERSON: you; may be perceived as cheap gimmickry, often used in emotionally distancing experimentation with form, narrative, etc. Employ cautiously. Do not use in MFA workshop pieces.

  You are not the kind of person who likes to play games. When forced, you strategize ways to lose quickly: Don’t buy Monopoly property. Three-letter words in Scrabble. Slap down the cards and fold. But Louise doesn’t play games where a person immediately knows how to win or lose, or even games where it’s clear who has won or lost. Louise is tricky. You long to run and hide in your bed, to smile in a bemused way at the gossipy stories of tonight while immersed in the safety of tomorrow, to murmur understanding words as things sort out in the light of day, in the aftermath.

  Louise likes aftermaths.

  But when you turn to escape, Louise clutches your upper arm. Tightly. She’s strong. “Don’t go,” Louise says, in that way she has. “For me? Please.” Oh that masterful please. Is it so obvious to everyone that even now you long to please people, or obvious just to her? Or is she the one you long to please?

  You nod, cursing your weakness. Already, you suspect what the game will be. No. You know.

  Louise efficiently herds people into a circle, a whiff of exclusivity ruling out the fringes of the party. “It’s the perfect game for writers like us,” Louise says. She glances around, locking eyes, creating a bond, drawing the group more tightly together.

  Like us. You wish you were one-tenth as masterful. There’s her hand on your arm again, a lighter touch. You’re reminded instantly of Michael but push the thought away. The group of a dozen or so rustles and whispers and titters nervously, weight shifting from leg to leg. You stand perfectly still. You will not let her sense your anxiety.

  “Two lies and a truth,” Louise announces. “We go around the circle, and everyone tells two lies and a truth, and we guess the one true thing.”

  There’s a palpable sigh of disappointment tinged with relief: so, clothing will remain on. This game is a standby at corporate retreats, slumber parties, and awkward Thanksgiving gatherings. It’s unworthy of this historic writers’ conference. Nor is it worthy of Louise. But there’s more here than meets the eye. For example, you’ve played it as two truths and a lie; trust Louise, the liar, to twist the game to her benefit.

  Louise smiles, almost as if she knows what you’re thinking. “People have probably played this before, so just to make it interesting, fifty bucks to anyone who beats me. Not that anyone can beat me . . . I’ve never lost this in my whole life.”

  Laughs, grumblings, smack talk; Joy rolls her eyes and shakes her head, rallying her newfound acolytes of nonfiction writers. You have no acolytes. You’re still in a bubble. This game should be a piece of cake, but it won’t be. You could find a strategy for losing, but you won’t. You want Louise’s fifty bucks. You want to beat Louise. I’ve never lost this in my whole life. A strange thing to brag about, an annoying thing to brag about.

  There’s the conference director, slouching across the circle from you. You expect him to smile or stage whisper or lift an eyebrow, but, like you, he remains impossibly still and impassive, as if the two of you are locked in a staring contest. You want to look away but don’t because you want to win this, and do, when he drops his eyes and shifts. First you think, Michael will laugh when I tell him, and then you think, Michael is dead, Michael is dead, and those three words loop—Michael is dead—even as Louise speaks in an organizational voice, even as a doe-eyed young poet launches into a story about her father’s foot getting chopped off in a combine on the Fourth of July, which you recognize as a lie. The Fourth of July sounds desperate, an obvious detail, though many think that story is the one truth, afraid to challenge a maimed father. That’s a trick to winning, knowing that no one will challenge a story that’s tragic. You think these things and chortle with the group even as words spin their web: Michael is dead, Michael is dead . . .

  “Next!” Louise says, fanning herself with a fifty-dollar bill she’s slid out of her bra. It’s the man who loathes his brother-in-law, and like the doe-eyed poet, he plays too broadly, going for the laugh. His grandfather ran a still in Virginia is the truth, and the lies are that he has an identical twin brother named Elvis Rothstein and that he trained his black Lab to give blowjobs, which makes everyone groan in disgust. You’re glad he’s not in your workshop.

  More stories—as a child, seeing Picasso sip coffee in a café in France (true); choking a pet snake by feeding it a possum (lie); playing Santa Claus in a mall (true); French-kissing George Clooney (true)—and they blur into a cry for attention; whose true stories are the wildest, the craziest—playing with an uncle’s pet tiger cub; butchering a hog; traveling with Doctors Without Borders; a mother and father who were babies in the same delivery room born on the same day who met twenty years later; eating dog meat kebabs in China. You’ve nailed each for what it is, even with your floaty mind. No one cares about the art of the lie at this point. They insist on impressing with the truth. See me! Look at me! Look at who I am! Look at who I want you to think I am! Louise has folded that fifty-dollar bill into a narrow strip wound tightly around her ring finger. She’s nailing them too.

  Not surprisingly, the conference director is good at this game: almost everyone believes his first lie because it is odd and simple, that he eats uncooked spaghetti noodles when he sleepwalks. He speaks persuasively about their crunch. His second lie starts out, “I grew up on a butterfly ranch,” and you understand immediately that he simply relishes the idea of a butterfly ranch, but he’s convincing, explaining that the butterflies were raised for wedding ceremonies, featured in bridal magazines, and so several people are fooled into thinking that’s the truth. Only you and Louise and the doe-eyed poet recognize his single-sentence truth: “I’m deathly afraid of spiders.” The group laughs, and he’s pissed. That’s the problem with revealing true truths. They make people uncomfortable. The truth should be grand and exotic, but mostly it isn’t. Mostly it’s uncomfortable.

  Your turn. Because you’re s
tanding next to Louise, you go second to last. “Watch out,” Louise says, amping up the room, “she’s good.” A flashy smile. The game is getting tiresome, so Louise talks faster. “But not as good as me,” and she unscrolls the folded-up fifty. “All yours if you top the master.”

  “Number one,” you say, as if Louise has not spoken. You notch your voice lower, forcing everyone to lean in close. You pull in a long breath, holding it before letting it slip away quietly. You speak: “When my husband died, exactly at the time of the car accident his voice exploded through my head, telling me how much he loved me, even though I was asleep and he was alone on a highway ten miles away.”

  Stiff-edged silence, as you expected. Invoking the dead husband means no one dares call that a lie, though it is. But people want to believe; it’s a familiar myth they wish to be true: if it’s not true, it should be. Connections to the dead are popular. The doe-eyed poet looks weepy or drunk or both. The conference director stares again in that fixed way. You suspect he’s thinking, Here’s the breakdown. Or maybe he’s thinking, Who tells something that personal to a party of drunk strangers? Or maybe he spotted a super-scary spider. You continue:

  “Number two,” you say. “After he died, I had a recurring dream every night, just before dawn. Michael stands in front of me, staring into my eyes as if he’s desperate to tell me something. But he can’t speak, and I can’t move to touch him, and he can’t touch me, and I say nothing. We just stare at each other as if across an abyss, and then I wake up.” Another familiar story of the bereaved. Another lie.

  The doe-eyed poet sniffles, swipes her cheek. People watch their feet, rebalance their weight. The whole room seems perfectly silent, though it’s not. But you would swear you hear your own heart beat, your blood pulsing through your veins, the cells inside your body multiplying and dying at a rapid pace, skin cells shedding and drifting away. You listen for a moment to Louise breathing beside you.