Work: Going well. Having great success with two books written by the same author that I published in tandem in March. Paradise of Artists and The Blissed-Out Retreat. They remind me of your work. Let me know if I should send copies.
You: What’s new?
Xoxox Iger!
She writes down the names of Iger’s books, and searches for Paradise of Artists. The screen floods with links to hundreds of articles about it, and the companion book, The Blissed-Out Retreat, best sellers that have sparked a frenzy of critical analyses.
Good for Iger, Joan thinks.
She opens the New York Times review: “These books contain a literary greatness about the pursuit of beautiful art in an ugly world, integrating enormous themes.”
From the Wall Street Journal: “The author introduces readers to something serious, original, and contemplative about creation, and the creation of lives; just as cutting-edge medicine can introduce into a sickened body new cells able to target the offending disease.”
On the NPR Web site: “J. D. Henry has outstripped the feminists who made their reputational bones tearing apart the male-female paradigm of sexual desire and the exertion of control. J. D. Henry has hidden a secret treatise within these elegantly written and compelling books.”
An industry has sprung up around them.
The Rolling Stone article surmises that the two books contain a history of the sexual and artistic worlds in their current incarnations: “AIDS and STDs and computer porn and increased violence against women within the larger context of a crumbling economy, a further widening of the gap between those with and those without, a massive increase in the unfettered desire to attain celebrity without commensurate talent, a frustrated mélange of creative impulses lacking sufficient outlets, appropriate forums, satisfactory levels of funding from the NEA and every state arts foundation. Within the artistic storm that looks malevolent to J. D. Henry’s characters, to whom he/she has given names conjuring up worlds beyond America, tinged French or maybe Persian, foreign but not foreign, and just American enough, this troop, ranging from their mid-twenties to early forties, repair to an arcadia, intent on finding purity in the works they seek to create, curating their existences as carefully as they do their art—be they canvases, words, music, dance, a small forest of cannabis—through their artistic endeavors, their sexual encounters, and relationships.”
Joan’s stomach clutches. She searches for biographical information or pictures, but there is nothing in the computerized universe that indicates the author is a real person with a past, a life, parents, a wife or husband or partner, a gym membership.
She looks up from the computer, at Martin’s treasures that he set out in the study against her wishes.
There are his presentation boxes, the sun glinting off the polished steel of the instruments displayed within, the caliper gauges and intraocular lens loops, the tonometers and trephines and punches, the spatula picks, and the scleral depressor he bought in Cologne and once put in Joan’s hand. She thought she had grown used to them, but today, the antiquated ocular devices of his profession look to Joan like the tools of a serial killer. Ovoid eyes, big as dinosaur eggs, with their removable parts for use in medical school classes, line the bookshelves, sit on the coffee table, glare at her sitting behind the marble desk.
27
Joan scrolls rapidly again through the articles about Paradise of Artists and The Blissed-Out Retreat, searching now for the quotes she had skipped. She finds one and reads:
She had dreamed of this place, all shattered pewter and fluorescent silver, and bold bright greens, the natural world dancing under the sun. She felt at peace, at home as she never had before, her footsteps making no sound as she walked through the meadow to where the others were gathered. Just twenty-five of them, then, on the ground in a circle, talking quietly about the projects they were about to embark upon. One girl, pink-lipped and fair-haired, said, “Dance,” and a man with a long ponytail, eyes older than the rest, said, “A symphony of birds,” and a young couple, love-struck, held hands, and said, “Three parts of a painting.” And Bashi knew only a few of the words she wanted to use, but paragraphs floated like metallic clouds in front of her eyes. “We need a name for our community,” someone said, and Bashi, from India, by way of Tuscany, surprised herself when she spoke up and said, “There is a Hindi phrase that means ‘Land of the Gods.’”
She races to the kitchen for the copy of Words intended for Volkmann, then back to the study and places it down on the black marble desk. Then she is flipping through the pages, searching her work, finding the paragraph she just read in an article on the screen. Right here, in her own book, is the same paragraph. The only difference between Bashi in J. D. Henry’s Paradise of Artists and her Bash in Words of New Beginnings is a gender reassignment; otherwise, every word choice, every bit of punctuation in the quote is identical to the unpublished page in her hand.
She keeps on, a ravenous comparison between every excerpt from those books quoted in the articles and her own passages about Bash, Lila, Minu, Zena, Bernard, and Anton.
J. D. Henry has kept Joan’s work completely intact.
For long minutes, she sits at the edge of the ergonomic chair, her mind whirling, unable to settle. Then—
Who would have done this?
How would anyone have known where to look, when no one has known of the book’s existence?
Over the last seven years, only Eric and the Solve kids had been in the house, out to the garage.
Did Eric fire someone, give whoever it was a reason to steal?
Other than the bottles of alcohol that Eric himself stole, nothing has ever gone missing.
Only this, her book.
Her book. Someone with an ax to grind with her.
Had one of his team hated her enough to damage her in this astonishing way?
Her fingers are fumbling, but then Eric’s mobile number is ringing and ringing, from Rhome to India, and his voicemail never clicks in.
Martin is biking up some hill and out of reach.
She tries all of Iger’s numbers, but it’s a holiday weekend and likely she’s somewhere exotic.
When she tries Daniel again and again, his phone is turned off.
She sits with her breath caught in her chest as the printer whirs into action, those damning articles dropping into the tray.
On the chair in the bedroom are the shorts she wore yesterday afternoon when she and Martin took one of their meandering neighborhood walks, and the shirt Martin wore last night when they had cocktails with Miranda and Larry Sumner, and she pulls on both.
She feels like a sleepwalker, or as if she is underwater, making her way through the house, back to the kitchen, retrieving her car keys from the ceramic pot on the counter. In the garage, she hits the button and sunlight fills the space.
In late February, when she retrieved Words of New Beginnings, the box was sealed up, the manuscript hidden at the bottom, nothing seemed tampered with, but she hadn’t been looking.
She starts the car and catches her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her tan, the faint sunburn from falling asleep in the glen, all faded into the pallor of death. Her hair is wilder than usual. Piled high for the evening last night, she did not brush it out when she and Martin returned home, simply pulled out the pins, and slept on it. Under each eye, traces of mascara not washed away last night, not dissolved this morning in the pool.
She turns the key again and the engine cries in distress. She remembers then her dream out on the chaise—a son killing his mother.
She looks at her shaking hands gripping the steering wheel, then down at her feet and sees she has forgotten shoes. Last night, she and Miranda sat with their feet in the Sumner pool, Miranda’s dozens of golden bracelets tinkling madly as she gestured around the pretty backyard. “I think I’m going to leave Larry soon. Take up the life I’m supposed to be living. I can’t keep pretending this is what I want. See how everything lines up perfectly, every right angle exact?” The lawn was t
rim, the flower beds neat, the rocks of the waterfall, square and precise. Only the small figure eight pool lacked right angles. “I despise such perfection. I want mess and craziness. I don’t want to have a bedtime. Can you imagine? Larry is in bed, ready to sleep at ten every single night. He wants me next to him. I hate it. I loathe it. I want to stay up all night if I choose to, not lay next to a man already dead to the world.”
Last night is ages ago.
Joan runs into the house for her sandals, then back to the car, guns onto the road, hits the crest, flies down the long drop of the hill.
The Inveterate Reader has posted CLOSED FOR HOLIDAY WEEKEND in its window. The Tell-Tale’s small parking lot is empty when she drives in, but the sign says they open at one o’clock on all holiday weekends, except Christmas and New Year’s.
Finally, someone is at the bookstore doors, unlocking from within. Then Joan is inside, past the shelves with their literary offerings. Handwritten notes by the store staff explaining why they liked this or that book. Kimberly has drawn daisies in a row over her name, Jed’s writing is blocky, Rocco’s nearly illegible, Sue’s letters perfectly formed.
At the table with its sign, RECENT BEST SELLER RELEASES, there is no logical organization, the books are not set out alphabetically, by title or author’s last name. Then she spots them. J. D. Henry’s books, side by side. A large gold label on each proclaiming its phenomenal status.
Joan is alone in the store, but the checkout girl is readying her register. Ears double pierced, a small crystal stud in the curve of her left nostril, she, too, moves as if she is sleepwalking or underwater like Joan.
A ping and the register opens. Metal-on-metal scraping while the girl wrestles with the cash box until it hooks in. Another ping when she closes the register drawer firmly. Finally, she scans Joan’s books through.
“They’re really great,” the girl says.
Her pale cheeks flush, an upward sweep of pink that colors her pallid, doughy face. If the submerged cheekbones appeared, if the nose developed cartilage, if the eyes opened wider—it is a mutable face, Joan thinks, that could become almost pretty depending on the choices the girl makes in her future. Then she thinks that face will never develop character. Not too long from now, when her belly balloons, the girl will leave behind her double earrings and her nose stud, but will remain behind this cash register, pinging and pinking when she speaks shyly, nervously, to paying customers.
“I don’t need a bag,” Joan says, when she is allowed to pay, and grabs the books, leaves behind the girl, the store, the glass doors, until she is out on the hot macadam of the empty parking lot, and then back in her car. She turns on the engine just long enough to lower the windows, puts down the visor to block the sun.
She flips through the pages of Paradise of Artists, looking for the author photo, the biographical data about J. D. Henry.
There is nothing, just a statement that J. D. Henry is also the author of The Blissed-Out Retreat.
She looks for the acknowledgments page.
Three quotes attributed to Lewis Carroll and his two companion books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Snippets from a master of literary nonsense, another writer’s work appropriated in place of the personalized acknowledgments Joan has never believed in. She reads them. Then reads them again.
J. D. Henry’s choice of Carroll quotes are ridiculous explanations for such a horrendous action.
An explanatory message for aberrant behavior:
“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
A circuitous statement which confounds the notion of oneself, Carroll’s double negatives winding the self into origami:
“Be what you would seem to be—or, if you’d like it put more simply—never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
Lastly, an apology that negates itself by containing a grandiose rationale:
“Do you think I’ve gone round the bend?” “I’m afraid so. You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
* * *
At the back of The Blissed-Out Retreat, the same three Lewis Carroll quotes.
28
The knowledge is right there inside of Joan, but refuses to coalesce.
She is studying the author’s name on the covers. Staring at J. D. Henry. And slowly, so slowly, like an anagram clarifying itself, the quixotic pseudonym is revealed.
The surname of Henry is an homage to the squirrel Daniel wrote about as a child.
J stands for Joan.
D, of course, for Daniel.
Her son has stolen her book and masked his identity with a name only she would decipher.
How did Daniel know about Words?
How and when did he find it in its hiding place in her sixth Ashby box?
How did he go about selling the books to Iger, who has known Daniel since birth, has known the course of his life?
She is trying to puzzle it through.
If Daniel had called Iger, Iger would have called Joan to say she didn’t know Daniel was writing fiction. She would have called Joan after reading manuscripts that made her think of Joan’s work, would have asked if the manuscripts were Joan’s.
Joan can hear Iger’s voice, asking and answering her own rhetorical questions:
How long have we been friends? For decades.
And how many times have I asked why you stopped writing? Ever since you published Fictional Family Life, and not once have you ever given me a straight answer.
And what do I always say to you every single time we talk, every single time you visit me in New York? Get rid of the wonderful husband, abandon those talented sons, you’ve done the domestic, now do whatever you have to do, but please, before you’re dead, start writing again.
Okay, so let me see if I understand. You used Daniel as your stand-in because you wanted to change agents, wanted to publish with someone other than Storr & Storr.
But, Joan, why the pseudonym, why didn’t you just call me directly?
* * *
Iger doesn’t know. She believes what Joan wanted her to believe—that Joan stopped writing decades ago. She doesn’t know about The Sympathetic Executioners or the Rare Baby stories. Iger knows nothing about the work Joan created in her private castle before the jailing she experienced in that seven-year cycle. Iger would think that J. D. Henry was influenced by Joan Ashby, but nothing more than that.
This is all Daniel, Iger as his unwitting accomplice.
How could Joan have misread Daniel’s secretiveness, think he had a mystery he was not ready to share. He did, though, didn’t he? His oblique glances in November, after telling her how much he liked her collections, he was gauging how she might react to his seizure of her unpublished work, his arrogation of her ambition.
The truncated phone calls ever since, his secret altering the tone of his voice. She had thought he was tired, perhaps pessimistic about the events at Think Inc., discovering that the world was not as he hoped, but what she heard had nothing to do with that, it foretold something else entirely.
Still, it is impossible to believe Daniel would have done this to her. Not this son, who has always been so close, so good, loving, and true. Not this son, with his natural sensitivities, his deep well of empathy, his kindness to others, thoughtful, as Eric has never been. Not this son, with whom she shared 2,555 conversations over those seven years, the voice she needed each day, for however long he could give her, a buoyancy in the midst of insanity.
And his reasons?
She has no idea what Daniel’s reasons could be.
What reasons could there be?
Her brain begins skidding.
J. D. Henry is her son, her golden son.
Joan looks at her hands, riveted together. Has she not been through enough?
Jailed by one son she has blamed for her lost time, but this is so much worse. This son is a thief. The thief of her words, robber of her dreams, stealer of her love, and the time lost to the mothering maw, once that tiny thing lodged in her womb that she had not wanted at all. She is thinking these thoughts, acknowledging what she knows must be true, still, it does not seem real.
Where does this monumental transgression of Daniel’s leave her, when Words of New Beginnings, the book so long labored over, is meant to be the door through which she walks to regain entry to the one world where she most naturally belongs?
The choices are all untenable, differing only by degree, the exposure Daniel will suffer, that she will suffer. Eric too, maybe. Her history as a writer out there for all to see, in the midst of a bizarre familial controversy. Her maternal qualifications on trial, judged for her inability to control this son’s egregious, grievous, thieving impulse, judged for not being able to keep Eric on the straight and narrow.
But it is this son, Daniel, who elected to steal the part she so carefully preserved all these years. His actions a symbolic feasting on mother’s milk. Eric cost her seven sacrificial years, but Daniel, he has obliterated her entirely.
Opposing plans crowd her mind. Stay and confront. Confront and flee. Flee then confront. There are even more possibilities lurking. Which one she executes will depend, she realizes, on how she decides to define herself. Joan thinks then that writers have infinite choices and mothers nearly no choice at all.
29
Screaming is not something Joan can do, has never been able to do, not even with Eric. She had yelled, but not screamed, an emotional coloratura once saved for her work, but she wants to scream, to rend her clothing, to hire her own sympathetic executioners, Silas and Abe, to gun down her son.
Eight long hours since she arrived home from the bookstore, spent on a stool at the limestone island, going through J. D. Henry’s books, her novel cleaved in half, her heart ripped from her chest, pulsing madly in her hand. She has not tasted a single drop of the bottle of wine she has emptied, pulled free from the tightly sealed case with fingers that seemed to have grown talons.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby Page 24
