The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

by Cherise Wolas

  * * *

  It is indeed a pine suite. Pine bed frame, pine dresser, pine desk and chair, pine armchair, pine floors, and she laughs. A second laugh since arriving in Dharamshala, and when it sprints up a register, she knows she has kept herself sewn together for quite a long time and now the stitches are starting to tear.

  Kartar called this cozy room a suite. It is a fraction of the size of the suites she and Martin have stayed in during their family vacations on island resorts, smaller than the rooms she was given as a young writer on her book tours, when she expected garrets. Still, it has all she needs. A thick double bed with an Indian-red coverlet. Sheer marigold-yellow curtains. A desk and chair. An armchair. An ample pine closet. A spacious bathroom with a deep tub set within a slatted pine box. Outlets ready for the adapters she remembered to take from Martin’s drawer filled with such travel items.

  She feels the need to settle in fast, to make this pine suite her own in an instant. Suitcase opened and clothes hung in the pine closet, folded into the pine drawers. Toiletries on the bathroom counter. Laptop, ream of paper, pens, pads pulled out of her carryall and set on the desk, then she dumps everything else in the bag onto the bed. A Butterfinger falls out, slipped in by Martin, an offering of a sort, and she rips it open, shoves half of it into her mouth, crunches away.

  There is a small fridge under the counter in the bathroom, and she opens it hoping to find those little bottles of bliss—vodka, wine, whatever the alcoholic specialty might be of Dharamshala—those benefits of home the young man referenced, that she indulged in on the plane, but it is empty. She opens one of the bottles of water she bought at the Delhi train station, stashes the remaining six in the fridge, and the granola bars she is sick of. Chewing the last of the chocolate, Joan looks at the packaging, bright honey-orange wrapping, and thinks she has butterfingered her own life.

  Suitcase and bag in the closet. Novels stacked on the nightstand, but they look wrong, and Joan realizes she has chosen to sleep on the side where Martin sleeps at home, next to the windowed wall. In Dharamshala, she will occupy the side that has never been hers.

  She pulls the curtains all the way back, finds that the window is a sliding-glass door that leads out to a small balcony that overlooks the trees. In the reception area, she thought it was a stand of trees, but it is not, it is an entire forest. Joan doesn’t recognize some of the trees, but she can identify the oaks and those that are some kind of pine, and she wonders if the pine furniture in her room came from the trees right beyond her balcony.

  Then she looks beyond the forest, up and up, at the sky, and before she reaches the heavens, there are the Himalayas on high.

  Her deep sigh needs no interpretation—she wants it to be decades ago, when she was still young, when all the choices were hers, before she birthed children, raised a thief, and a recovering addict here in Dharamshala on a quest, when her love for Martin was not so complicated, when her love for Martin had not existed. She believes the young man now—that this is his best room, a perfectly monastic space, safeguarded for a last-minute guest who requires a special cocoon for her broken heart.

  She has been holding on, keeping herself upright for so many days, and then during the seven thousand five hundred miles of travel to Delhi, and Joan backs away from the balcony, finds herself flat on the bed, legs jackknifed to her chest, Martin’s voice from deep in the past saying, “Write and write, and just give me the moments when you want a break.”

  And she was foolish to believe him, because later he said, “I’ve never been so happy,” breaking his vow to her at the very beginning. So much blame to spread. Including her own. Her failure to demand her own needs, losing all of her years, sacrificing herself on the altar of motherhood to a son who saved himself from eternal extinction, to a son whose desperation she had missed. Had she followed her own course, she would have sent Words to Volkmann immediately, and if she had, there would have been no unguarded manuscript in a box in the garage for Daniel to find.

  Now she is a woman who wants to be alone, a mother finished with that role, a writer unable to acknowledge the famed books are hers, unsure how to remember who she was. When she tries picturing herself writing Words for all of those years, she can’t.

  She wants only to leave everything behind, to transcend what has happened, the mistakes she has made. Every fiber of her hopes Dharamshala might be her imagined Devata where her characters came to stay, turning their backs on the outside world, rediscovering the truth of their childhood selves, finding the strength that had ebbed away, allowing their healing hearts to create.

  Will this be her actual arcadia, her Devata rendered in three dimensions, where she finds the guidance she desperately needs about what her future might look like?

  She needs clarifying golden words right now and wonders if they will fly down to her from the Himalayas, or perhaps one day float to her straight from the Dalai Lama’s mouth, or if she will have to discover them for herself.

  Just then she tastes salt. Salt from tears new and old and those formed so long ago they date back to childhood. In an instant, undammed, they are flowing, coming faster and faster and faster, sealing her eyes, cracking her skin, sinking her entirely.

  33

  There is ringing where Joan is, deep inside the ferocious jet lag, under the red coverlet that is over her head, her skull soldered to the pillow. The ringing keeps on, even when she sticks her head out, opens her eyes, sees her pine suite, feels her curdled pain. She can’t figure out the sound, but it stops, and she thinks, good, and only when the ringing begins again does she realize someone’s calling her cell phone, once, twice, who knows how many times.

  Through thousands of layers of cotton, Joan hears a voice say, “It’s Iger. Joan, it’s Annabelle. Can you hear me? Are you there?”

  “Yes. I’m here, absolutely exhausted. You got my email.”

  “There aren’t enough words to express how sorry I am, to let you know we are mortified by what’s happened, that we’re taking every step to rectify it all.”

  “Did everything arrive?”

  “Yes, the file with your novel, and the original book and the copyright registration you FedExed. I have in front of me the contract Daniel signed. His signature’s illegible, but no one had any reason to question the author’s signature. But it’s my responsibility. I take full blame. I should have vetted the books, followed my instinct when they reminded me of your work, but for all these years, you’ve told me you weren’t writing, so I never considered the books might actually belong to you.”

  “Book,” Joan says.

  “Book?

  “Of course. Book. Two books now,” Iger says.

  “I should have sensed immediately that something was wrong because J. D. Henry—Daniel—wouldn’t meet with me. He refused to provide photos and bios for the back flaps, said he was old-school, that the writing spoke for itself, that who he was and what he looked like would detract, but that he would send me the acknowledgments he wanted to use. It’s so rare these days a writer doesn’t want to be recognized, and I was thinking, how refreshing, Pynchon, Salinger, old Harper Lee, thinking it was time another writer came along who preferred mystery.

  “Other things should have tipped me off too, like having to fight for the option to his next book because he really did not want to give it to me, talking about how he couldn’t write on a deadline or with someone looking over his shoulder. And the fact that he only agreed to interviews he could do via email or on the phone. I thought maybe he was shy, or his face was somehow scarred. In the interviews he did give, he refused to reveal anything about himself personally, but he was incredibly erudite discussing the books. I thought he was a different breed of writer and I loved it. Never once was my radar turned on.

  “I bought the books for an astronomical sum in a best-bid auction. It was fast, three days to read. It’s no excuse, but I adored them, was elated we got them for the imprint. I hadn’t intended to publish them as soon as I did, but they were ready
to go, needed no editing, and now I understand why.”

  Iger pauses, and Joan knows she is waiting for her to acknowledge the compliment, but she doesn’t.

  “So. When one of my writers blew her schedule, I had a hole to fill. It won’t make anything better, but the publicity and marketing campaigns have been very successful. Foreign rights sold in twenty countries so far, and they’ve been literary marvels since publication in March, colossal best sellers now in their fourth month.”

  From thousands of miles away, Joan hears Iger release her breath, through lips in her signature red no matter the late hour. She can picture Iger standing at her enormous mirrored desk, up on a high floor in her Manhattan office, a warrior marshaling the written dreams of others.

  “Neil Silver, Daniel’s agent, or rather former agent, is humiliated by all of this. He’s doing all he can to be helpful. Forwarded second interview requests from Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, O, and NPR. Daniel refused their requests for interviews because they wanted to meet with him personally. It doesn’t make sense now to put the books back together, but at some distant time, we can reveal you as the writer. If that’s what we want to do. Or if sales flag. We don’t have to make a decision now.”

  “Iger,” Joan says. To stop her old friend—now her publisher—from doing what Iger does best, spinning words until she achieves her desired result.

  “Iger, there can’t be any interviews. I can’t pretend to be J. D. Henry. I don’t want to pretend to be J. D. Henry. I don’t want to lie. Daniel’s lie is what caused all of this. And I’m not ready to consider public ridicule and shame for him. Or for me.”

  “I get it. That’s fine. We don’t have to do anything now. Because the books are selling. I promise you, I’ll make this right. I’ve got calls with your lawyers in the morning about everything that needs to be done. Rescinding the old contract between J. D. Henry and Annabelle Iger Books, drafting a new contract between you and AIB. I understand that your lawyer here in New York will claw back from Daniel the AIB advances he pocketed, and the West Coast lawyer is assuming the reins from Neil Silver for negotiating the film options.”

  There is too much information for Joan to process.

  “Iger,” Joan says. “I haven’t hired any lawyers.”

  “You have. Or rather Martin has for you. He took care of all that while you were flying. Listen, try to let this all go if you can. We’re making it right on this end. I’ll call you again after I talk to them. How is India, by the way?”

  * * *

  It’s her first full day in Dharamshala, and if Iger had said it was midnight in New York when she called, it’s now one in the morning there, and in Rhome. She punches in their home number.

  “I’m here and I’m safe, but I don’t want lawyers. I wrote to Iger from the airport, and I just got off the phone with her,” she says, when Martin picks up.

  “You have to have lawyers, Joan. People to look out for your rights. Right now, both the agent and Iger are in precarious positions. You could sue the agent. You could sue Iger, the publishing house, her imprint, and you could sue Daniel. She has to do everything she can, and so does the agent, but you have to do the same thing. I’ve gotten everything going. I called our lawyer, who gave me the name of a New York lawyer, someone top in publishing, and she’ll handle those aspects. I gave her your account details, told her to execute whatever legal steps she needed to take against Daniel. I know she’s already contacted him, but I don’t know anything more than that. And she gave me the name of a movie lawyer in Los Angeles, and that lawyer is up to speed. I know it’s not everything you want, your name on the books, but at least you’ll benefit as you should. Both of them are going to call you, not today, I guess, or not my today. It’s nearly one thirty here. What time is it there?”

  “Eleven. In the morning. I’m nine and a half hours ahead of you.”

  “Listen, try to enjoy being there if you can. I hope the weather’s nice. I miss you already.”

  “It is nice weather,” Joan says, crawling out of bed, pulling open the sheer curtains, confirming the truth of what she has just said.

  “Martin—”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  So Daniel knows that she knows. She wonders when she will hear from him, if he will send careful words arranged in a feeble defense, provide verbal reparation, a chest-beating apology, drown himself in a shower of mea culpas.

  She remembers Kartar said breakfast would be outside of her door early each morning, and there is the tray with a covered bowl, a covered cup, a pale pink flower in a purple vase. She sets the tray down on the pine desk. The cooked lentils and barley tea are both cold, but the tray has been sitting out there for hours. She steps onto the balcony, feels the sun on her face, glad the two lawyers Martin hired for her are women. Men have messed up her life and now it’s time for the women, herself included, to fix it.

  Her reflection in the bathroom mirror is a shock. There is a leonine, savage cast to her eyes, something anarchic even, and inside, a ferocious desire to maul something, or someone, that fired up at Dulles the moment she sent the email to Iger, and only intensified during all the airborne miles, while riding the trains that brought her to this place.

  She will let the lawyers Martin hired fight for her. She will let them go as far as they can. She will not be bested, even by a once-favored son. Whether she will expose Daniel as a filial thief and plagiarist is a much larger decision she is not yet prepared to make.

  The severity of her expression does not alter while she brushes her teeth, washes her face, plaits her long black curls into a thick braid, thinking that if Daniel voluntarily returns the money, the bank account she opened when she was twenty-one will soon receive a mammoth deposit. Iger told her the amount of the book advance, seven figures for both. She tries to smile at herself in the mirror, to pretend she is part of the living world. Then she gives up and puts on lipstick, blushes her pale cheeks.

  At the closet, she finds a fresh pair of linen pants, another loose top, the golden sandals gleaming with crystals she swore she would never wear until she made it to India. Slipping her feet into them, she thinks: Now I am here.

  She is starving, the first vigorous hunger she has felt since she was at the limestone island, staring down at Daniel’s Lewis Carroll quotes, those preposterous, infantile challenges. She retrieves a wad of rupees from her wallet, tucks them into her pocket along with her room key.

  The pine suite door closes solidly behind her. Only now does Joan notice the expansive width of the hallway, the bright natural light streaming through large windows at either end, making the gold, copper, platinum, and clear crystals of her sandals pop and gleam. The stone floor is smooth under her soles. She has not been outside of the hotel since Natwar delivered her here yesterday afternoon. She is eager to feel Dharamshala air on her skin, the sustaining warmth of its sun, to see the wildflowers she saw along the dirt road when Natwar was biking so hard. She wants the sharp tang of coffee on her tongue, she wants something delicious to eat.

  “Hello, missus. I hope you had a good night of sleeping,” Kartar says, when she finds him at his post at the low teak reception desk.

  “I did,” Joan says. “Thank you. But please, you don’t need to call me missus. If you could, just call me Ashby.”

  The simple act of claiming her original last name loosens one of the tight knots that has been lodged in her heart since she sat in the parking lot of the Tell-Tale Bookstore, her stolen work in her lap.

  “Of course,” he says, nodding. “I will endeavor to remember.”

  “Where shall I go for something to eat? I’m starving. I’m so sorry, by the time I brought in the lovely tray, everything had gone cold.”

  “No problem at all. Sleep is better than all the lentils and barley tea in the world.” Then he is rummaging beneath the reception desk, and when he rises up, he hands her a thick guidebook.

  “Take this with you so that you will a
lways know where you are. Keep it as long as you are here. For now, you should head down the hill. After a while, you will come to the marketplace.”

  * * *

  Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise is a mile from the center of McLeod Ganj. The steep dirt road is rocky under her sparkly sandals. In the distance, Joan sees the multicolored prayer flags that Kartar said mark the beginning of the marketplace. There is no breeze, and the flags, raised on high sticks, hang down, as if taking noon naps. It seems she may never reach the marketplace, but then she is within it, walking past shops displaying Kashmiri scarves, harem pants, hand-knit woolens, prayer bells, tuning forks, singing bowls and mallets, glass jars of pickles and chutneys, jewelry presented to passersby on rough cloth or black velvet.

  Along the main street, in front of the shops, are the food stalls she saw yesterday, their pungent offerings wafting into the air. There is the popcorn seller popping his corn, and the baker baking his Tibetan bread, and aproned chefs sporting white toques sautéing buckets of green vegetables, and other chefs doing other things to other kinds of ingredients. The delectable aromas harshened by the scent of frying red pepper. Joan considers dipping in, but it feels too soon, this is only her first outing, and Dr. Abram’s admonitions are loud in her head. She has gone through too much to arrive here, on this street, in Dharamshala, in India. She does not want to be felled because she braved the fare at the stalls.

  On Temple Road, she spots the Namgyal Café. The outdoor dining patio with its picnic-style tables is empty, though the air is warm, the sun centered in the sky. Inside, she is the only customer. A girl with a smooth brown face, a small nose, and stubby pigtails sprouting all over her head that makes Joan think of a sea anemone, waves her hand.