by Dan Noble
He ducked; I’ll give old Micko that; he had a sense of humor. “You could nearly imagine you’re living that life, or not so much living it, but that the experience aroused by reading those lives is the real life, while all of this doesn’t matter at all.” By the hand sweep, I’d lost him. I talked too much, too fast, and now I sounded manic. I could tell by the way he’d changed his posture that he thought I was a crazy woman who’d lost her mind when her daughter was “taken from her” (or insert other palatable way of saying the unpalatable). I took a sip, slowed my breath, my cadence. “I used to think how I could never imagine it, a life without novels. It would be impossible. But then something happened.”
“Something happened.” He knew. I obviously wanted him to: Why else would I have told him where I lived? Now he knew, just like everyone else. Ha ha, Erin!
“Yes, and then I never read a novel again.”
“A punishment?”
“Sort of. And do you know what I learned?”
“That you were a creative sufferer?”
“No. That books—to people who love them—and movies and clothes and all that culture is actually important. Every bit as much as the moral or emotional, ethical or economical duties. It’s how you live your life. And when you don’t do any of it, your life has no framework to hang itself on. It just slumps on the floor like a dirty shirt.”
“Like a dirty shirt.”
“So, though I never thought so, writing is important. Some historians say that only the written-about things ever actually become part of history. If you don’t write it, it didn’t happen. Can you imagine?” Why was I speaking like a university lecturer? Why did I keep saying things I’d said I wouldn’t? Maybe this was good; maybe this was the process I needed, but couldn’t have predicted, couldn’t have known until I was in the midst of it—this is why “pantsing” is always the best writing technique. I explained the term to him: when the research and characters in their scenes take you someplace you never could have predicted. You let yourself go and see where you’re taken. Don’t be fooled; it’s the opposite of simple. There are complex brain processes going on here. Trust them, I explained. The more refined concepts of stories are out of reach until we find ourselves immersed in the world of the story—because meanings are not simple, conscious conceits: they are a complex maneuver of projection, linking, and blending. There’s tons written on this, though people only ever want to know ridiculously simple things about books: what they’re about. Why were these the things I spent my time thinking about? What I normally did wasn’t thinking so much as being in that book world, with a mind that refused to know we’d completed the normal part of our lives. I’d gone so long without anyone to share it with, this exchange had become a sort of eruption. Lucky guy. “And so, we come to history. Your favorite.”
“Did anyone ever tell you you think too much?”
“No, no. None of this makes much sense unless you know that I was a novelist and that I gave that up, too.” No, I didn’t give it up so much as it gave me up. All the popular cable television series stole my life and made it better. But back when I was living those lives, no one liked that kind of thing. And I didn’t know how to write about it properly even if they had. I used circular sentences; I didn’t know shit about simple language. I recall some serious abuse of em dashes. In others’ work, I could spot it, and it could make me lie in bed all day weeping when some novelist I loved and loathed at the same time got it right, but it wasn’t going to be me causing someone else such sweet distress. I wasn’t good enough. And if I ever again heard about Mozart or Van Gogh not being appreciated until they died, I was going to spontaneously combust.
Yes, I think too much. That is probably part of the problem. People had always said that, but that was a different Erin; of this one’s thoughts, I didn’t know what people would make. Amazingly, I didn’t care.
“Still, you might want to think about all this thinking. It seems to me you used to be a lot of things.”
“This is something true, finally. And now?”
“And now?”
“Now I am sitting here with a man, telling him things he doesn’t care to know.”
“Would you like to come home with me?”
“No. I don’t think I would.”
“You sure?”
“No. Not exactly sure.”
“Then you might be persuaded?”
“It would take a lot.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s already eight thirty.”
Men here knew how to be men; the antidote to us. I’d give him that. I pictured myself beneath him, in my plainly elegant underwear, but I didn’t like what I saw—breathing and pushing. What were we all grabbing at? I touch this man, he touches me, and then what? Why all the touching? Wasn’t there any other way out? What do you want, Erin? You tried a life, and you failed. Okay, but what comes after that? I didn’t want to die; I wanted to want to, but I just wasn’t built that way. A higher power, or a religious epiphany; these things I could have clung to if they’d shown themselves, but what about when you can’t get your smart-aleck girl back and there’s just more? Every single day, the fucking sun in your eyes?
The waitress took Micko’s empty plate while the guitarist was picking out a folksy, melancholy song I’d always liked. He ordered us another round. I wasn’t much interested in my food, though it looked nice enough—salad that was more than a garnish, a fresh herby sauce in an old-fashioned fluted paper cup. My mobile rang while I was spearing a flake of fish.
“Gav.” I could tell from the ringtone it was my husband. He often called me on his way home, though we never said much. I would listen to the ABC, rattling on to him until I could hear him pull in the drive.
I shouldn’t have answered it; the thing to do was put it in my bag and continue on.
“Hello, Erin.” There was Mark Colvin on the radio in the background, kindly and evenly enunciating his way through a terrifying story about people smugglers. The band finished with a fancy drum roll, and I panicked.
“I’ll be home in a few minutes,” I said. “Let me go because you know how I am, driving at night.” He did. He knew this about me.
“Right-o. See you in twenty or so.”
I knew Mick was looking at me. Obviously, he’d be wondering what in the world I was up to.
“What’s all that noise I hear?”
“Noise? Sorry, I can’t hear you; it’s too loud. If you can hear me, I’ll see you in twenty minutes.” I disconnected the call.
Mick tried his best to look nonplussed, which only made him look plussed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I really have to go.” I pulled out my wallet.
He clasped the wallet with a firm grip. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Alone in the car outside the restaurant, I hauled out my notebook and furiously expunged every word in my head. Here it was: my conversation with Micko projecting into something before my eyes; the plan was working! I could feel myself smile. I didn’t know what I was about to write before the marks shone on the page, and yet here they were! Something lovely, finally, happening to me. I did my best to allow myself to enjoy it. I was giddy when I heard the knock at the window. It was Micko.
At the red light just meters away, I saw Gav’s car idling. I could hear the talkback from the cracked window. I felt guilt—waves of it.
“What are you doing?”
“Research,” I said. The light across turned green. I watched Gav’s car drive out of sight, feeling incredibly nauseous.
“Are you writing about what just happened between us?”
“Well, no. Yes. Okay, yes. I am.”
“You looked like you enjoyed the writing more than the dinner.”
“Ha ha.”
“Seriously.”
“I probably did.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Ouch.”
“Ca
n I ask you a question?”
“Are you going to write down my answer?”
“Probably.”
“Right. So go ahead, I guess.”
“Why are you still talking to me?”
“Honestly?”
“No. You should lie to me. In this polite, normal situation we find ourselves in, I don’t think it would really be appropriate to be yourself.”
“I see your point.”
I blinked twice, wiggled my pen. I was having fun; weird, not-good-for-anybody fun. There. I said it.
“I haven’t enjoyed myself this much in a long time.”
“You have serious problems.”
“I have serious problems?”
“I see your point.”
It was a nice smile, that one. Genuine. A car’s headlights illuminated the back of his head, like he could have been an angel, or a Christmas ornament—the classic kind that wasn’t necessarily beautiful, but really pegged the spirit.
“Can I see you again?”
This was getting out of control. I had to shut it down.
“Why?”
“You make me think differently.”
“Okay, yes. Yes you can.”
2
ERIN
I have a confession. The motive I gave in the beginning is not exactly true. Yes, I want to smile and laugh, but that is not the only reason I did this. I could watch 10 Things I Hate About You for this to happen (yes, it is still funny post Heath Ledger, though his character now reads as incredibly insightful). It still works. I’ve tried it. In fact, it worked so well that when I caught my teary, laughing face in the mirror, I went purple and turned it off. I could not bring myself to throw it in the trash.
I had heard of a woman in New York, who had managed to blur the lines between fiction and reality, who’d warped the natural order somehow. My research on this woman never brought up anything definitive. But she’d disappeared and there were claims by a mysteriously named Dr. P, that she’d managed to focus her mind’s participation in a story to such a strong degree that she’d actually been physically absorbed into it. Given my guilt (however ridiculous) over having apparently written Olivia’s death into reality, I’d become obsessed with the idea. This is not the kind of thing I would share with anyone. Especially Gav. And mostly I didn’t believe it, but lately, I could see how—in the right circumstances, with the right person—such a thing could, maybe happen.
And so what was I writing in my car after Micko drove off, and well beyond the twenty minutes in which I’d told Gav I’d see him at home? I am sure I should be ashamed to say I felt flushed from the thrill of the words rushing out from that peculiar place where they are generated. But rush they did. On the page, where I mused about what would happen to some fictional character in a similar situation to the one I’d just extricated myself from, sometime in the near future, “Ricko” asked me to meet him at his place, and then he told me he’d been thinking about me.
I could tell he wanted to have sex. There was the look that would lead to touching. He was close. There was a sense of something about to happen.
On the page, I was different than I would be if this had happened tonight—I wanted it too. I shifted my legs, arched my back. I was satisfied with the idea of my sexuality, the way I could please a man.
At this point, off the page, it was all very innocent. I lived; I felt inspired; I wrote. I liked the way the events had taken on their own momentum. Again, this pantsing—the story propelling me along. It was a thrill. I caught myself singing in the shower. Olivia used to do a bit with me about that, and I smiled to think of it. “Is that good singing?” I used to say. “No. It isn’t.” She meant it, too. Cheeky little thing.
And this week, at my computer, I took this bare-bones scene, and I made something where there was nothing—a story, a sympathy, an experience. I created events from thin air to happen to the character “Erika.” I don’t know what I expected—certainly not symmetry from page to life, nor a canceling out of what had happened with Olivia. I don’t think I was deluded enough to believe I could make something happen because I strung together thoughts into letters, into words, into a narrative structure that made people feel they were experiencing something profound. It began as a story premise, sprung from who knows where, during the pantsing. Of course I did not believe anything would happen off the page. One could not write a thing and then make it happen. And yet, I spent the week writing with the strange feeling of something happening. And there were moments—lightning moments—when I had got it exactly right; I knew that I had. “Ha ha!” I bellowed, smacking the desktop. Fuck, it felt good.
In my favorite bit, I say to Micko, “Let’s see if you know what I wrote that I wanted to have happen next.” I don’t know why I liked that bit, as it was simple. But it tested the way things could work. In what I wrote next, Erika liked the sex. But I knew in real life I would not. This part of me had been turned off.
I drank wine and coffee and left rings on the tempered glass and didn’t wipe them off. The next morning, I walked over to check that they were really there, because my real life was beginning to feel unreal, so out of step with what it had been. Next time I saw him, I would tell Micko about my hypothesis, and he would find it tragic, and yet he would allow himself to be swept up in it because I’d made everything feel authentic, while bringing him along the wildest ride.
I had twenty-five pages by the time I saw Mick on the following Thursday. Each day, I’d put my laptop on the table outside and written from the second Gav left to the second he rang from his car in the evening. Mark Colvin. ISIS. International Trade Agreement. Violence at Christmas Island. I didn’t get inspiration from the view beyond my window; I liked the temperature—a bit cooler now, with a lively wind that required a ponytail to keep hair from flicking into my mouth and eyes. I didn’t appreciate the sea outside my windows. I didn’t see it; if I still made self-deprecating cocktail banter, I would have said it had become like a piece of plywood. I felt nothing—not even the rushing of waves had the slightest affect. I have come so far the other way, I don’t understand why views do anything for anyone. It is not as if you walk away from a garden as a rose.
There was vivre, but no joie. I didn’t feel “better” while I concocted an alternate reality of Mick and myself—one that sprung into being with the kind of boundless, buried inspiration that I know comes from the layers of experience wrapped around Olivia’s death. I reserved feeling any specific kind of way about the wellspring. Perhaps reserved is the wrong word as it implies an effort, which was not the case.
But I made something. Which isn’t to say there is a healing or satisfactory element to writing for me. It was not cathartic. I did not walk away as a garden rose. I did not walk away as anything other than a woman whose daughter—the one fond of wearing gumboots with ballet skirts—was smashed by a drone when she was posed hip-handed on the veranda, in the gumboots and a particularly threadbare tutu, painting a picture of her dadda eating blueberries (which he never did). Yes, this drone was doing something ridiculous—mapping shortcuts for pizza delivery routes—which, let’s face it, in fiction, would add levity to a grim tale, but which in reality doesn’t feel much different than any other kind of unreal loss. There was a little girl with a perpetual milk moustache in gumboots and a tutu, and now there is not.
The writing was a test. Looking back at this point, I believe I sensed where it would all end up, but I played along, let myself get swept away in the finale.
Off the page, Mick chose a more stylized place this time. It was the kind of place where young girls wear mature clothes and shoes they can’t walk in. I knew some of our friends came here and I could have been spotted, but I went without suggesting an alternative. You have to allow characters to do what they will. The tension of possibly running into someone would make it all the more interesting. Besides, I secretly wondered what someone would do with information like that. It made for excellent conflict.
“So what are y
ou really doing here?” he said, handing me a beer. The sip was more pleasurable than I expected; already, the brain creating new pathways—see? See all the things we’re meant to do, most of which we never even consider?
Though I understood Mick already knew, I told him—via the canned two-sentence version—what happened to Olivia. I did not mention 10 Things I Hate About You. I surprised myself by continuing on, in another, more truthful way. “The worst part is that I wrote a novel about this; a little girl gets killed accidentally in some way we don’t find out in the story. It didn’t even do well. And then it happened to my own daughter.” The word daughter rang strangely in my mind and echoed there. “I am not superstitious. I know I did not make this happen. It is more that I am convinced of a link somewhere—a link between writing and living. It exists. It is difficult to explain to someone who does not write, but when you do—when you really get good at it and master the format, removing all the obstacles—the writing happens in the most passive way. You do not know where it is coming from. You do not make it come. You go about your life, absorb what you absorb, and you sit down, and this comes out. And then after, when it happened in real life, I knew—however grimly—I was onto something. So now I am testing it.” I did not say that I am to blame. This is open for interpretation.
“And I am the test?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know if you pass?”
I shrugged.
He grimaced, shaking his head until he was laughing.
I don’t know why I continued to say these things to Mick. This was not part of the plan. Funny how sharing seems to come so naturally, breaking rank with other motives. I am not sure whether he believed me. As a bereaved parent, is it better to be crazy than to want to laugh? As soon as it came out, I liked the idea of him knowing. It was a kind of pantsing and just as exhilarating. It didn’t seem to matter if the writing bit or the real-life bit came first anymore, as if they’d melded together and I didn’t know where one began and the other ended. A profound connection. Profound was the key. Mostly, though, I liked the idea of Olivia’s death being more than a ridiculous anecdote that people began with, “Oh, you won’t believe this!” She deserved to be immortalized, and not as the poster child for drone reform.
