by Jaime Clarke
“We used to come down here on Sundays,” Vernon said excitedly. “The last time I visited, I was shocked that people from my high school were keeping the tradition alive.”
An exodus for cover was taking place as they pulled into a parking spot. Lightning streaked the sky, a sonorous crackle following. The ocean frothed, expelling the last swimmers. Vernon stood atop a pylon and shielded his eyes. “They’re here somewhere,” he said.
Charlie hoisted his duffel from the car as Vernon jogged down the dark beach. The car alarm engaged as he shut the door, and he was filled with wistfulness for the safe interior of the BMW, like driving by the home you were born in, knowing you would never live there again. He shouldered the bag and watched as Vernon receded into blackness, a web of lightning illuminating his outline, the lone figure marching toward the ocean while others ran for cover.
As Charlie moved inland, a light rain began to fall, the menace of a downpour in the air. He made for the taillights of a city bus as it pulled away from its stop, waving for the driver to stop, but the bus roared away. He’d hardly stepped into the shelter of the bus stop when the sky unburdened itself, unleashing a torrent that bathed the streets, rain bouncing off the hardened ground. He wondered if Vernon was looking for him, or if he’d turned to introduce him to his friends and shrugged when he found Charlie had disappeared. Neither really mattered. Either Vernon did or he didn’t, and the consequences were the same to Charlie. Vernon wouldn’t be surprised either way. He was right: Charlie had invested too much in Vernon’s myth—they both had. Charlie often thought of his lack of a belief system—in anything—as a handicap, but wasn’t life just a series of beliefs that mostly turned out not to be true? Or as true as you needed them to be? Wasn’t the need to believe more interesting than the belief itself? In a sense, each new beginning in his life had been a rebirth, another chance. So many rebirths annihilated any thought of death, allowing recklessness to become his guiding principle.
“No more buses,” someone shouted over the din of the hard rain, a vagrant taking refuge.
“No more buses?” Charlie repeated.
“Tomorrow is Labor Day,” the vagrant said.
Charlie remembered the time he’d tried to take Olivia out to dinner for her birthday only to find all the restaurants closed on account of Thanksgiving, a fact they discovered after driving from restaurant to restaurant, playfully bargaining about the types of food they were willing to eat as they encountered each closed establishment, until they darted around Phoenix trying to locate a fast-food drive-through that was open.
“How could you not know it was Thanksgiving?” Olivia had asked. “Isn’t it one of your biggest holidays?” He failed to explain that Thanksgiving was mostly a gathering of family and served no purpose for those who had grown up in a procession of tribal communities.
He smiled at the memory as the rivulets of rain collected in small tributaries. He wasn’t devastated by Olivia or any of it, his ability to tie things off a skill he assumed most people would admire as they became bogged down by the minutiae of their lives. Back in New York, Christianna’s sister was likely returning from Paris, ending Christianna’s summer sublet. And Olivia and Shelleyan were probably strolling around Manhattan, Shelleyan relating what she knew about Charlie and his time in New York, which wouldn’t amount to anything. The week before Vernon reappeared had been fraught with anxiety, and a small part of him was disappointed that he wasn’t going to be called to account. Olivia meant more to him than he did to her, he had known that from the beginning. But he would never doubt that in time he would’ve won her completely over, like he would’ve Suzy Young and Michelle Benson, and like he did Jenny, before he lost her.
A chill gripped him as the wind gusted, but he was cheered when he recalled the copy of his short story—the Camden version, before Vernon’s edits—buried deep in Vernon’s archives. He hoped someone far into the future would stumble upon it and marvel at reading the thoughts and true feelings of someone who had lived a long time ago.
A black Cadillac splashed through the flooded street and Charlie was suddenly troubled by the thought that maybe his wasn’t a skill anyone would admire at all. The mechanism he had so heavily relied on throughout his life—his innate ability to box his experiences—occurred to him as an impediment against making connections that might allow for personal growth. Even acknowledging the fact, he understood it academically but not emotionally, which was a worry and a lament. However his recent experience had turned out, any vulnerability had passed and he would always remember it as a time when there was a writer named Vernon Downs, and a girl named Olivia, a summer spent in Vermont and then New York, a road trip across the country. When the astounded future listener asked, he would say that the plan all along was for him and Olivia to move to New York, once Olivia had flown back to London to settle her affairs, tell her family and friends. His misguided adventure would be reduced to a few anecdotes about how he spent his time in New York while he was awaiting Olivia’s return.
Over time, the entire episode would even occasion nostalgia.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Josephine Bergin, Charles Bock, Christopher Boucher, Rebecca Boyd, Hillary Chute, Brock Clarke, Chris Cooper, Michael Dahlie, Stephanie Duncan, Heather E. Fisher, Mary Granfield, Pete Hausler, Alden Jones, John Laprade, Holly LeCraw, Marianne Leone, Allison Lynn, Stephanie Mabee, Amy MacKinnon, Michael Rosovsky, David Ryan, Ryan Scharer, Whitney Scharer, James Scott, Elizabeth Searle, Elizabeth Solar, Lavinia Spalding, Benjamin Strong, Mary Sullivan, and Eugenio Volpe as well as
The Hotel Bar Book Club
My Arizona family
My New York family
My Boston family
My Bennington family
My Post Road family
Dan Pope
Clarkes, Gilkeys, Kaliens, and Cottons
Mary Cotton and Max
Bret
A Note on the Author
Jaime Clarke is a graduate of the University of Arizona and holds an MFA from Bennington College. He is the author of the previous novel We’re So Famous; editor of the anthologies Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and Talk Show: On the Couch with Contemporary Writers; and co-editor of the anthologies No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from “Post Road” Magazine (with Mary Cotton) and Boston Noir 2: The Classics (with Dennis Lehane and Mary Cotton). He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road, now published at Boston College, and co-owner, with his wife, of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.
www.jaimeclarke.com
www.postroadmag.com
www.baumsbazaar.com
www.newtonvillebooks.com
Praise for Vernon Downs
“Vernon Downs belongs to a tradition that includes Nicholson Baker’s U and I, Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, and—for that matter—Pale Fire. What makes Clarke’s excellent novel stand out isn’t just its rueful intelligence, or its playful semi-veiling of certain notorious literary figures, but its startling sadness. Vernon Downs is first rate.”
– MATTHEW SPECKTOR, author of American Dream Machine
“Moving and edgy in just the right way. Love (or lack of) and Family (or lack of) is at the heart of this wonderfully obsessive novel.”
– GARY SHTEYNGART, author of Super Sad True Love Story
“Vernon Downs is a brilliant meditation on obsession, art, and celebrity. Charlie Marten’s mounting fixation with the titular Vernon is not only driven by the burn of heartbreak, but also a lost young man’s struggle to locate his place in the world. Vernon Downs is an intoxicating novel, and Clarke is a dazzling literary talent.”
– LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Isle of Youth
“An engrossing novel about longing and impersonation, which is to say, a story about the distance between persons, distances within ourselves. Clarke’s prose is infused with music and intelligence and deep fe
eling.”
– CHARLES YU, author of Sorry Please Thank You
“Vernon Downs is a fascinating and sly tribute to a certain fascinating and sly writer, but this novel also perfectly captures the lonely distortions of a true obsession.”
– DANA SPIOTTA, author of Stone Arabia
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
Copyright © 2014 Jamie Clarke
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eISBN: 9781448214204
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