Surprise Me

by Deena Goldstone

  Once the old-fashioned lampposts lining the major campus walkways have switched on and the foot traffic of students has diminished to a trickle, Daniel begins to argue with himself about walking home. He knows he has to do it. He can’t sleep here. It’s ridiculous, but he’s broken out in a cold sweat, and no matter what he tells himself, he can’t seem to make his large body move toward the door. If his son, Stefan, were coming today, that would help, but he isn’t. He has a job interview, and if the planets are aligned just right, he might get hired to do something.

  Then his eye falls on Isabelle’s pages and he sees them as a reprieve. He has to read them, doesn’t he? He owes it to her. He’ll read them first and then he’ll walk home.

  The armchair beckons, just waiting to embrace his outsized body, and he sinks into it gratefully, puts “Outlaw” on his lap, and begins reading. After the first page he sighs—he was so hoping he’d find even a modicum of talent. The second page doesn’t change his mind, but on page 13 there’s a scene between the girl and a hitchhiker she picks up that brings him a surprise. Something unexpected. Thank God—there’s something to work with here. He settles in, stretches his long legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and reads on.

  —

  A WEEK LATER ON A TUESDAY morning, eight minutes before their ten o’clock meeting, Isabelle is crossing the hilly Chandler campus, rehearsing the speech she will give Daniel Jablonski, preparing to do something that will be hard for her.

  “It would be better,” she’s going to say, “if I worked with another professor.” She will make no mention of the fact that he never read her pages, that he lived up to his reputation of being unprepared, of not caring about his students, of being just plain weird. No, she won’t say any of those things. She’ll simply say with as much poise as she can muster, “It would be better,” so that there’s no room for discussion.

  She carefully chose boots to wear today so that she’s even taller—her beautiful, handcrafted, caramel-colored boots with a singular, lyrical vine etched along the outer edge. She loves these boots and they give her confidence and she’s at least six feet tall when she’s wearing them, and maybe Daniel Jablonski’s height, his just plain mass, won’t seem as intimidating.

  Isabelle takes the stairs to the second floor of Lathrop Hall, the staccato sound of her boot heels on the wooden floor announces her approach, and her rapid knock punctuates her arrival. She opens the door without waiting for an answer.

  Daniel is sitting behind his desk as she enters. He doesn’t stand up.

  “Professor Jablonski,” she begins, “I think it would be better if—”

  “I like the blackbirds,” he says, watching that simple sentence drain all the starch out of her stance.

  “You do?” she says, and sinks down into the corner of the couch.

  “I wasn’t expecting them,” he says. “It’s always a gift to read something you’re not expecting.”

  He thinks my writing is a gift?

  “Here’s what I learn about Melanie.” He rummages for her pages, somewhere on the mess of his desk, and pulls them up, scans the page in his hand. “It is Melanie, right?”

  She nods.

  “When she won’t let that boy, that wreck of a boy that she picks up hitchhiking, throw those stones at the birds, I see something in her worth paying attention to.”

  He gets up and takes his place on the opposite corner of the couch. “I want you to surprise me some more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Rewrite the pages up to that scene and bring them next week.”

  He stands up. Her comprehension lags a moment. Oh, the meeting is over. That’s all? It must be, because he’s walking back to his desk and she understands she’s supposed to leave. She does.

  —

  ISABELLE STANDS OUTSIDE Daniel’s closed office door, motionless. She’s trying to figure out what just transpired. Was she given the brush-off? Was he truly complimenting her work? Is that all he’s supposed to do—tell her to rewrite and leave her to it? She’s mystified. He didn’t exactly teach her anything, but still, she feels like she was given something. In less than five minutes. How is that possible? What is it? Maybe his expectation that she can do it. Is that it? She almost turns around to go back into that office to ask him, “What just happened here?” but she doesn’t. She walks away down that long hall much more slowly than she arrived.

  —

  DANIEL JABLONSKI IS PLEASED with himself. He feels the meeting with Isabelle went well. He could honestly compliment her work. He gave her direction. Now let’s see what she comes up with. He has no idea how mystified Isabelle is by their interaction. Being a self-taught writer with nothing but junior college classes, which he rarely attended, in his background, he has no idea what a writing mentor does. He thinks the whole idea of teaching someone to write is a fool’s errand. Writing is mysterious and mercurial and maddening, and he certainly has no idea how to help someone do it better.

  He can’t even help himself. He settles his large body into his desk chair, turns on his computer, brings up his working file, and stares with dismay at what he wrote yesterday. And he groans. It’s bad. It’s awful. It’s irredeemable. He deletes two and a half pages with ruthless abandon, feeding his secret terror that he will never finish another book. Each day as he turns on his computer and faces the words he wrote the day before, he wants to weep. Sometimes he does.

  His last novel was published over eight years ago. When it sank like a stone in water, the depression and anxiety that he had been trying to hold at bay for almost a decade washed over him, sweeping away his marriage to Cheryl (a good thing) and rendering him agoraphobic (a bad thing) and hopeless about his work (a devastating thing).

  This novel in embryo, his fifth book, refuses to gain viability. He prods it each day nonetheless. He doesn’t know what else to do.

  —

  IN THE RAMSHACKLE WOODEN HOUSE she rents on the edge of campus with Nate and her other roommates—Jilly, who barely makes it out of bed each day, and Deepti, who rarely lifts her head from her books—Isabelle also stares at her computer screen. Rewrite the first twelve pages so that they surprise Daniel Jablonski. What the hell does that mean? No answer comes to her. Nothing. And then, gratefully, a distraction. She hears the front door slam shut and she knows Nate is home. Neither of the girls announces her presence with a preemptive slamming of the front door.

  “Nate?”

  And he’s there, leaning against the doorframe of the dining room, which they’ve designated the communal study area, his long, somber face almost as familiar to her as her own. They’ve been together since high school, nearly six years, primarily because, even though Isabelle didn’t want him to, Nate followed her out to California for college. She never found a way to tell him not to come.

  “What surprises you?”

  He hates these open-ended questions, she knows, and she can see it on his face—the furrowed brow, the exasperation, the indecision.

  What he’d like to do is sidestep the question. The conversation Isabelle wants to have is guaranteed to waste precious minutes.

  He tries for diplomacy. “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

  “No, I need a jump-start here. I have to write something that surprises Daniel Jablonski.”

  “Then ask him.”

  Isabelle is exasperated. “I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “How does it work, then?”

  “He tells me to surprise him and I have to come up with something by next week that does.”

  “That’s fucked,” Nate says as he pushes himself into motion and out of the room. “You want lunch? I’m heating up the leftover soup.”

  “No,” Isabelle says, staring at the empty computer screen hopelessly. “I’ve got to manufacture something startling, and don’t roll your eyes,” she says, even though Nate is in the kitchen now, banging pots around, and she can’t see him. It doesn’t matter. She knows that rolling his eyes i
s exactly what he’s doing.

  And then she hears him walk into the living room and turn on the TV, ignoring the fact that she’s trying to work in the next room. He likes to catch up on the noon news while he eats and calls out random bits of information he thinks are noteworthy every few minutes.

  “Izzy, Tonya Harding’s husband, Jeff something or other, took a plea for whacking Nancy Kerrigan’s leg.”

  “Really?” is all she needs to say to satisfy him.

  “Whoa, that Tonya’s in trouble now.”

  “Nate, I’m trying to work here.”

  Thankfully, he’s quiet, and after forty-five minutes of staring at her computer screen, she hears Nate leave the house. He has an afternoon seminar, she knows, on drug policy and criminal intent. “Later,” she hears him yell as the back door slams shut. Always so noisy, as if every action has to be punctuated by an aggravated sound. And then the house is quiet. Perhaps she is the only one home, but she doesn’t think so.

  The kitchen is empty; the dented tin pot he used to heat up the soup is still on the stove. They rented this old shingled house knowing there was no microwave or dishwasher, but somehow that hasn’t translated for Nate into the idea that he has to wash his own dishes.

  She turns to the living room, where Nate’s soup bowl rests on the floor next to the couch, and paces from the fireplace they’ve never used to the large windows that look out on the front porch, which they do once the weather turns warm. She’s totally lost. She knows it. How can she come up with something that surprises Daniel Jablonski when she has no frame of reference? What would he consider startling? She has no idea.

  Down the hall she goes, to the back of the house, and stops outside Jilly’s room, ear to the door. She’s trying to figure out whether her roommate is home and sleeping. Jilly has opinions about everything. Maybe Isabelle can borrow some surprising data from her. Quietly she turns the doorknob and peeks in. There Jilly is. Well, there is the top of her very messy, curly hair above the mass of sheets and comforter. How can one person sleep so much? She closes the door softly.

  Deepti, Isabelle thinks, maybe Deepti is home. It’s hard to know, because when Deepti studies, it’s always in her room and she’s quiet as a mouse. There must be many surprising things she could say, coming from another culture to go to college. She knocks gently on the last door at the end of the hall.

  “Deepti?”

  “Yes, Isabelle? Come in.”

  And Isabelle does. It’s like taking a step into another country. Immediately the vibrant, hot colors of Indian prints assault her eye. There are the patterned silk curtains at the windows, a batik bedspread, and Deepti sitting cross-legged on her bed in a green and pink sari, her chemistry books spread out around her in one circle and her class notes spread out in another.

  “I have a question.”

  “Okay.” Deepti puts her highlighter aside.

  “What surprises you?”

  “I am surprised that I ended up in Los Angeles.”

  “Yes…but what surprises you about life in general?”

  “Ahhh, a deeper question.” Deepti looks out the window to the side yard, where a star jasmine vine is in the midst of winding its way around a chain-link fence, obliterating ugliness and replacing it with beauty. Soon the jasmine flowers will perfume her room, and Deepti can hardly wait. Now she takes a quiet moment to contemplate Isabelle’s question.

  “That people sometimes act kindly,” Deepti says finally.

  “I used that already. Unfortunately.”

  “What is this for?”

  “Daniel Jablonski.”

  “You have to give him the gift of surprise?”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  “Then it has to be from you.”

  Isabelle groans. “I’m the least surprising person alive.”

  And Deepti laughs, a soft, rounded series of chuckles that always makes Isabelle smile, too. “Maybe not.”

  By four o’clock Isabelle has managed to write not one word. She thinks it’s safe to call home now. It will be seven o’clock in Merrick, Long Island, and her father should be there, back from the train that takes him to the city each day and brings him home. If she had called his law office in Manhattan, he wouldn’t have had the time to hash out her question. And if she called home before he got there, her mother would be no help at all.

  It is Ruth Rothman’s opinion, communicated to Isabelle in ways both subtle and overt, that her daughter is far too dependable to be original—she lacks the temperament. In their family, Ruth long ago claimed the mantle of “creative spirit.” During her long quest to find her particular métier, Ruth has tried painting, photography, ceramics, fiber art, and jewelry making. With each obsession, Isabelle dutifully stepped in to care for her three younger brothers, and when Ruth retreated to her bedroom—her latest passion sputtering out—drew the curtains, and took to bed, Isabelle picked up the slack then, too. Ruth’s migraines are legendary.

  “Dad,” Isabelle says when her father, thankfully, answers the phone.

  “There’s been another earthquake?”

  “No, Dad, but I have a question.”

  “Shoot.” She can hear the relief in his voice. He can deal with a question but not another natural disaster.

  “What surprises you?”

  “Give me the context.” Her father, always the lawyer.

  “I’m taking this writing tutorial—”

  “You are? What for? You write fine.”

  “It’s creative writing.”

  “Same question.”

  “There’s a man here on campus”—Isabelle is wary, trying to explain something to her very practical father, who she fears won’t be able to understand it—“a published novelist, a wonderful writer actually, and every semester he takes on a student or two to mentor.”

  “And?”

  “And this semester it’s me.”

  “You’ve finished all your other courses? You don’t have any requirements to take so you can fool around with creative writing?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Hmmmm.” And there’s silence while her father digests this.

  Isabelle figures she’ll try once more. She’s desperate. “So, Dad, I have to come up with something that surprises him when I hand in my work next week, and I’m drawing a blank.”

  “Well, of course, that’s a stupid assignment.”

  Now it’s Isabelle’s turn to be silent. Her father sounds too much like Nate for her to continue this conversation.

  “Here,” her father says, “say hello to your mother.” And Ruth gets on the line.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “What’s wrong?” are her mother’s first words.

  Isabelle sighs. “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “I thought Dad might be able to help me with an assignment.”

  “And did he?”

  “No.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “Okay, Mom, how are you? How’re your headaches?”

  “They’re there. It’s what I live with.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Wait a minute, your father wants to say something.”

  And Isabelle waits while her mother hands over the receiver. She hears Ruth questioning her father—“Didn’t you just speak with her?”—when they all know he just did. Then her father has to explain why he needs to talk to Isabelle again. Through it all, Isabelle waits. She’s used to the constant dissension between them. Finally she hears her father’s voice.

  “Use your imagination,” he presents to her.

  “Okay, Dad, thanks, I’ll try that.”

  And her father is pleased, she can tell. He thinks he’s come up with an idea to help his daughter.

  But of course Isabelle has been trying to use her imagination all day, with no success.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Stefan Jablonski is sitting high up on the steel bleachers inside Townsend Gym watching the Chand
ler Coyotes at their basketball practice—passing, dribbling, shooting, a slam dunk every once in a while from their very tall center, Marcus Mohammed. He could play with them, Stefan thinks, although his only basketball skills are those honed on playground courts. He checks his watch from time to time. He knows he has to be at his father’s office at 5:30.

  That was part of the deal they made when Stefan showed up with no warning at his father’s house two months ago. He could stay, but he had to have responsibilities. The first: he had to get a job, which so far he hasn’t managed to do. And second, he had to walk his father to and from campus.

  Stefan readily agreed. He had no choice. His mother, Stephanie, and his stepfather, Simon, had kicked him out. They’d had enough of his drifting, they said. He wouldn’t go to college, even community college. He wouldn’t work at any of the menial jobs open to him. And they would no longer put up with a twenty-three-year-old who was quite content to stay in his room playing music and increasingly violent video games.

  Stefan has never lived with his father. Oh, the first two years of his life don’t count, because he can’t remember them. And once his father left, two days after his second birthday, when his sister, Alina, was five, they saw each other sporadically, only when Daniel was in town. Of course. Even Stefan understands that nobody stays in Erie, Pennsylvania, who doesn’t have to.

  What he doesn’t understand is what’s wrong with his father. How can a grown man, a man who’s lived more than fifty years and been successful—hell, he’s written four books—be afraid to walk outside his door? His dad told him what it’s called, this thing he has, but Stefan lacks the empathy to truly understand it. And Daniel doesn’t like discussing it, so it’s there, in the middle of their lives together—immutable, it seems, and confusing.

  At a quarter to six Stefan still hasn’t arrived. Goddammit, the kid’s always late. Daniel turns from the window where he’s been keeping a vigil and tries to calm down. He eventually gets here, Daniel reminds himself. But then: What if he doesn’t? It infuriates him that he has to rely on his less-than-dependable son to get home. But there it is—his life as it’s now configured. Daniel paces, and suddenly Stefan is opening the office door with his customary “Hey, Dad,” and Daniel grabs his jacket. It’s late January, and contrary to his expectations before he arrived in Southern California, it can get cold in winter.