The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  Daniel has annihilated her life. Not just her future life as Joan Ashby again, but her past life, all her past choices. She is a statue at the limestone island, waiting for Martin to return.

  The night sky has swallowed the sunset when at last he comes in, sweaty and dirty and happy, saying, “We ended up doing ninety miles, and I was close to the front of the pack the whole time.”

  He looks at Joan, at the empty bottle next to her drained glass, then back to her face. “What,” he says. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  She hands him the articles about J. D. Henry’s books, the quoted excerpts ringed in fluorescent yellow. Then her own loose pages with mad yellow circles around the matching paragraphs. Then the books themselves, the first pages bleeding yellow until she had given up.

  “Okay—” he says. “You’re scaring me. What is all this?”

  She gestures at the stack piled up in his hands and Martin nods and sits on a stool and begins to read.

  Joan retrieves another wineglass, opens another bottle of wine, pours Martin a glass, fills hers back up. She tries to slow her drinking as Martin makes his way through it all. Then he drains his glass and pours himself another.

  “More?” he asks her.

  “Yes,” she says. No matter how much she drinks, the adrenaline of rage is keeping her sober.

  Three hours later, Martin knows everything Joan knows: the swim, the dream, the brief conversation with Daniel, Iger’s email, Joan’s research, her race to the bookstore, sitting here at the island since then, trying to understand what has happened.

  Martin wants to storm DC, burst into their son’s apartment, force him to explain himself, then smash him, and throttle him, and threaten him with prosecution.

  When he quiets, Joan says, “No. No rampage to Washington. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but I have to handle this my own way.”

  It takes another hour before Martin concedes, and another thirty minutes before he drags Joan away from the island, from all that evidence of betrayal, forces her arms above her head, takes off her clothes.

  When he has tucked her into bed, and is beside her, Martin says, “I’ll reschedule my surgeries in the morning.”

  Joan says nothing until he reaches for her, tries to swaddle her in an embrace.

  She steels him away. “No. Go. Don’t reschedule anything.”

  In the morning, when he is gone, Joan finds a wrapped box on the marble desk in the study. Inside is the laptop Martin said he wanted to buy for her, to celebrate her resuming her writing life. She looks at it and wonders what use she has for it now. An invisible being is choking her to death, her lungs straining and straining, and when she pulls in mouthfuls of air, it is the air of a different world, where never again will she draw a nearly contented, nearly happy breath. It is an alarming, discordant world in which Daniel’s true self has been revealed, impossible for her to digest.

  * * *

  She has the stamped copyright registration that proves Words of New Beginnings is hers, the attached title page shows Final Draft: August 10, 2007, proving her son’s sedition, his duplicity. But she was wrong—the laptop will be useful, she needs at her fingertips, with a click of a key, an electronic version of her novel.

  Her own words, written so long ago, disappear from her mind as soon as they appear on the screen. It’s been seven years since she wrote anything beyond a few scribbled notes she didn’t hang on to, and as she funnels words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters into the computer, the dexterity in her fingers returns, she is a typing zealot, maniac, fiend, making her way through the original typed pages, following the rhythm of the book’s hard-fought sentences, recalling the stubbornness of her characters who once itched and moaned and sometimes rolled away from her, until she listened to them, let them drag her into the intentional lives they envisioned for themselves.

  She retypes Words from beginning to end, acutely aware that Daniel did just this with her manuscript, before he sliced her book down the middle, substituted his encrypted name for hers.

  At seven every morning and again at midnight, Martin asks what she thinks her next step will be, and Joan always says the same thing: “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far yet.”

  When she finishes, when she has turned all of Words into a digital manuscript, Martin is in an icy operating room at Rhome General giving sight back to a partially blinded young man. For the first time, she uses the laptop for a different reason, books herself on a flight that leaves the next day.

  She picks up the phone and calls their doctor. “It’s an emergency,” she tells the receptionist. “I need whatever vaccinations are required for travel to India.”

  She is at the FedEx in Rhome thirty minutes later, sending off a package. She is in Dr. Abrams’s office thirty minutes after that. A cut-and-dry doctor, he never inquires about the personal, except as medically relevant. He does not ask why Joan needed an emergency appointment for vaccinations for a trip to India that surely would have been planned in advance.

  “No need to fear measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, diphtheria, pertussis, or polio,” he says. “Your last boosters will protect you against those diseases. Hepatitis A and typhoid, that’s what you need to worry about.”

  She tightens up when the needle slides into the skin at the back of her arm. There is an ache at the injection site before she feels the medicine fan out through her body.

  When she says, “I already feel it,” Dr. Abrams says, “Joan, that’s impossible. Pull up your other sleeve, better if the injections aren’t in the same arm.”

  She refuses the typhoid pills intended to further protect her against that disease.

  “You can’t eat lukewarm food, or eat where only locals eat, and you absolutely can’t drink anything that does not come in a sealed bottle. Pay attention, Joan. Getting sick there is a serious thing,” Dr. Abrams warns.

  “I’ll be careful,” she says. A million vaccinations will not cure the illness festering within her that Daniel has caused. At reception, she writes out a check for her copay.

  It is hard to pack her suitcase with both arms bruised and sore from the shots. But then it is done, and she packs up her carryall—the laptop, notebooks, pens, a ream of paper, her travel itinerary, boarding pass, passport, books she can’t imagine reading, snacks she can’t imagine eating on the plane, her makeup bag, and a pair of pajamas in case her suitcase is lost. It is late afternoon when Martin finds her in the bedroom.

  “I canceled my last surgery,” he says as he walks through the open doors of their bedroom, then sees her suitcase on the floor, the carryall on the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “India,” and she watches Martin clamp his long surgeon’s fingers together.

  “India?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Aren’t we going to discuss this?”

  “I know what I’m doing,” she says. “Or at least this feels like what I need to do this minute.”

  “Let me help you. Let’s work through this catastrophe as a team, the way we always do.”

  “We weren’t a team with Eric, and with this, I just can’t,” she says.

  “I’ll get a ticket. Right now. We’ll go together.”

  “No, I don’t want that. I’m sorry.”

  He has always wanted her to explain things about herself, when she thinks he ought to know. How does he not understand her need to be in a place utterly foreign, where the old happy memories of she and Daniel will not tag along, where she can more easily imagine her own son dead.

  “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Are you leaving me?”

  “Martin,” she says, thinking of all she has sacrificed for this marriage, years that affected her as they did not affect Martin, his life continuing apace.

  What can she say, when all she can picture is herself at her old desk in the room that had been her
study, her mind racing through lists of words, as her new husband instantly abandoned the vow he had made, that there would be no children, that he understood her work would always come first. The underpinnings on which she had agreed to marry him kicked out from beneath her at the very start, forcing her to find ways to live an unwanted life.

  She turns away and zips the carryall, ripping up the silence. She hears him in the hallway, the study door click into place.

  She strips and pulls on her swimsuit.

  Out through the glass door of their glass bedroom wall, down the bluestone tiles, all the way to the glen. She will miss this, she thinks.

  Then she is in the water, demonically swimming laps, until her heart feels ready to explode.

  * * *

  The dawn sun is starting to climb when Martin stops at the curb, releases the trunk, and pulls out Joan’s rolling black bag, a red ribbon knotted around the handle. It is the ribbon she used to tie up Words in its box when she gave the book to Martin at the restaurant. Eight days ago. She has no idea if he has started reading, but it’s irrelevant now, the book no longer belongs to her.

  She checks for her passport and boarding pass, shows Martin she has it all. Even in their early days when they barely knew each other, even through everything with Eric, and even though they said little to each other last night, and have been silent on the drive from Rhome to the airport, they still kiss each other well. Wordless statements being made on each side. What she means by her kiss, how Martin interprets her kiss, what his kiss means, she doesn’t know, and he probably doesn’t know either.

  Then she is through the pneumatic doors, in the early morning bustle of Washington Dulles International Airport.

  When she looks back, Martin is pulling out into traffic.

  She checks her bag through, finds her gate with its long line of linked plastic bucket seats. She has work to do before this first leg of her trip, her flight to Delhi. She powers up her laptop, connects to the airport’s free Internet service, and addresses an email to Iger.

  Dear Iger,

  There is a problem regarding Paradise of Artists and The Blissed-Out Retreat, the two books you published by J. D. Henry. In 1999, I began writing the first novel everyone assumed I would never write. I apologize for keeping you in the dark, but I did not want to discuss what I was working on, not even with you. I finished Words of New Beginnings in 2007, just weeks before life drastically altered when Eric dropped out of school. J. D. Henry’s books were not written by him; they are my book chopped in half. J. D. Henry is Daniel. I cannot explain why my son has done what he has done, and I cannot bring myself to seek out his motivations. I have spent the last several days typing the book into my computer and I am attaching it here. By FedEx, I have sent you the original, along with the filed copyright information. You will see that aside from one gender alteration, he stole my novel in its entirety. Once you have confirmed that for yourself, we can discuss what to do. Of course, I will need copies of the contract between Annabelle Iger Books and J. D. Henry. The matter of what you paid to him, and hence what he owes me, I will resolve with him directly. With respect to royalties and all other remuneration, contractual changes will be necessary to reflect that I am the author. I want all of this kept confidential, even within your own imprint. No one is to know. I am going to be out of the country for some period of time, but I will arrange to get original signatures to you in whatever way you desire.

  The box pops up telling Joan the email has been sent, and she wonders how long it will take Daniel to learn his treason has been discovered.

  To Martin she writes, Martin, then she lifts her hands from the keyboard. She realizes Martin might not know whether she is leaving him or not. He could interpret in any number of ways her silence yesterday, her arduous swim, the quiet dinner they ate at the limestone island, the old movie they did not really watch in the den, her perfunctory kiss when they climbed into bed, her lack of response to his quiet Sleep well when he turned out the light, when she made it obvious during the ride to the airport that she wasn’t interested in what he wanted to say. Whatever she writes will not satisfy, but she has no comfort to give. Whatever configuration of the Manning family might remain will have to function without her, and she is not taking bets when she herself does not know what might be ahead.

  Thank you for understanding is what she decides to write, then Love, Joan, and sends that email off.

  Squawky announcements judder the air. People scurry through the terminal, wheeling their bags, harried already.

  She remembers the story Eric told her when he said he was going to Dharamshala, about a woman who had a private audience with the Dalai Lama, and how the Dalai Lama guided her out of her morass, helped her to rid herself of her anger so she could close the chapter on her dead father’s abuse. She was now mediating restorative justice between criminals and their victims’ families. Listening to Eric, Joan had thought the concept so noble, had said, “How wonderful,” and had meant it. She thinks now that the concept is ridiculous and useless; there is nothing Daniel could do to restore justice to her. How did she, with her pride in her observational skills, not notice a fatal rip in his character? How did she not understand how he thinks, when the number of words spoken between them over all of these years is incalculable?

  He has made meaningless the life Joan has led, the sacrifices she has made, and now there is nothing left—not the book that would jump-start her silenced career, not the son she discovered she could love so completely, who had saved her from the other one.

  If she gives him up permanently, will the loss feel similar to what she felt when she decided to have him, when she determined that, to save herself, she had to lock the writer away in a castle that no Manning mortal could enter, when she sacrificed herself these years for Eric and tried not to think of her work ready to go and hidden away.

  In the slippery plastic seat, Joan watches the travelers and thinks that right at this moment Daniel is unaware he has already been exposed. Whatever Daniel obtained by stealing her work, it is destroyed as thoroughly as her own dream for her future. He is her bomber, and whether his actions were expedient or malevolent, she may never know.

  She thinks about the guidance Eric hungers for, the numerous letters he has written to the Dalai Lama.

  Joan has never imagined writing such a letter, never expected to have a reason to seek such illumination, but she is in need of rescue, in need of clarification and wisdom and guidance, about how she might continue on. She knows what people would expect her to say—how does she carry on as a mother and a wife, but she has played those roles to the best of her ability, and where is she? She wants the Dalai Lama to tell her how she can carry on, as a writer. She wants the guidance she gave to Bash, Lila, Minu, Zena, Bernard, and Anton, as they pursued the dreams closest to their hearts, despite the doubts they felt from inside, sometimes from without, the stern voices of people from their pasts.

  She is in a rush now, opening her laptop, pulling up a blank document.

  Dear Dalai Lama, she types.

  Dear Dalai Lama does not look right on the page.

  Do people address this exalted man, encourager of love and healing, good thoughts and kindness, as just Dalai Lama? She searches for an answer and the Protocol School of Washington informs her that the correct form of address is Your Holiness.

  It is strange to see Your Holiness appear on the screen, as if she is addressing a god she has never been sure, has never needed to be sure, exists.

  Your Holiness:

  My name is Joan Ashby. I am a writer—

  She writes until a loudspeaker voice says, “Dearest passengers, our wondrous flight to Delhi will soon board and we would be eternally pleased if all of you would be kind enough to prepare by gathering your belongings and making a neat and lovely line.”

  Inside the carpeted bay leading from airport to plane, the civilized line dissolves with a boarding delay. Information filters backwards about the cause: an obstinate passe
nger, an old man, is gripping his wheeled walker, refusing to release it, insisting on rolling to his seat on his own. The voices at the front grow louder, and the trapped mass goes quiet when a male flight attendant says, “Sir. Please. Listen to me. The walker won’t fit in the aisle. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to wheel your own way. Do you understand? We will get you into your seat another way.”

  People shift from one foot to another, move bags from one shoulder to the other, stare at the advertisements on the rounded walls, avoid one another’s eyes, and then the flight attendant’s voice rings out again, louder this time. “I do understand, sir. But do you?”

  The old man must understand, must relinquish control of his mobility device, must place himself into the unknown hands of others, because there is a swell of movement, and the throng separates, people shifting into place, smiling carefully at those around them, re-forming into a neat line that moves sluggishly onward, heading into the plane.

  Joan is two people away from stepping on board. The attendants are checking boarding passes, directing passengers to the various aisles.

  A calm flyer under normal conditions, Joan flinches at the sight of the plane’s wide hatch, like the open jaws of a behemoth creature prepared to swallow her whole. One person ahead of her before Joan must step into the jaws of the beast. She has a collapsing fear, a premonition that she ought to run back the way she came, until she is out again in the hubbub of the airport.

  There is movement behind her, a jostling against her spine, and she takes a step, and then another one, and she holds up her boarding pass, and then she is inside, and the aisles appear in front of her, long stretches of rows, each three seats across, all the way to the tail of the plane, which is too far away to see. She is in a flux of people, tightly squeezed, but the proximity of all these strangers calms her fear.

  Joan looks behind her.

  The jaws have turned back into a hatch door, the behemoth is just a plane, and this is a trip she must take.