Home Safe

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Looking forward to it,” Helen says. It sticks in her throat a bit, yet she finds she really means it. At last, a way to get out of the house that carries with it some familiarity and legitimacy. And income. She recalls a time when she was ten years old and made pot holders on a loom, then went door-to-door selling them—ten cents for the small ones, twenty-five cents for the large. An unshaven man wearing a soiled bathrobe bought out her entire remaining inventory, and for years she clung to the belief that he was very wealthy. Never mind the ramshackle appearance of his one-story home—peeling paint, a dying lawn—Helen just knew that he had sacks of money in the basement with dollar signs stenciled on them, Scrooge McDuck style.

  “I'll be really glad to finally meet you,” Nancy says, and her voice is warm and sincere.

  “Me, too,” Helen says.

  She hangs up the phone, leans against the kitchen counter, and thinks about what besides milk and suet she needs at the grocery store. She feels a pleasurable stirring of something she cannot quite identify, but then does: it's the idea that she will now write something. Even if it's only exercises for a writing class, she can step out of here into there.

  seven

  “WELL. HAPPY DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH!” HELEN SAYS. SHE IS standing at a podium before an audience of two hundred, organized by the friends of this particular library. Most times when Helen does these things, she prepares a few words of general introduction, then reads from her work. This time, the woman in charge asked her to speak only. “After all, we can all read by ourselves,” she said. “We look upon this as an opportunity for our patrons to get to know you.”

  Helen understands the impulse; she has felt it herself. Once, she and Dan took a driving trip in Maine and they found the house where one of Helen's favorite authors, E. B. White, used to live. They sat parked outside it for some time, Helen imagining the life that used to go on there. She wondered what the kitchen looked like, the bedroom, the library, surely there was a massive-size library. “I wish we could walk around the grounds,” she said.

  Dan shrugged. “Let's ask.”

  “We can't do that!” Helen said, and Dan said why not, all the new owners could say was no, nothing would happen.

  Helen sat still, thinking.

  “Want me to go ask?” Dan said.

  “Yes. No!”

  “I'll just see if anyone's home.” He went up the walk and knocked on the front door. When it opened, Dan spoke to someone and pointed at the car. Helen waved—at whom, she had no idea; she couldn't see who stood inside.

  Dan came back to the car, beaming. The woman who lived there was most accommodating when she heard Helen was a writer (though she'd never heard of Helen, he reluctantly admitted) and she told Dan that he and Helen could go ahead and look around all they liked. She even told Dan how to get down to E. B. White's writing shed by the water, trusting them to be there alone. When Helen walked into that little shed with its slab of wooden desk and bare floors and open window that framed the blue waters of the bay, she burst into tears. She cried for the beautiful words White had written, and she cried because he was dead, and she cried for the privilege of being in this space, where he had looked out this very window and smoked and thought and written lines full of such humor, intelligence, and heart. “Sit down,” Dan said quietly, pointing to the bench where White had sat, and Helen wanted to smack him. Sit there! Sit there! “No,” she said. “No, it would be …” She walked to the window and looked out at the water, then turned around. “I just …”

  “I know,” Dan said.

  “What he offered the world, still offers the world, is so important.”

  “I know,” Dan said again.

  She wanted to talk about White's essay “Death of a Pig.” She wanted to see if they could find the dusty path that Fred, White's beloved dachshund, traveled alongside his master when they buried that pig; she wanted to invoke the names of the characters in Charlotte's Web and feel inside herself some of the wonder the author must have felt looking out at these acres of beautiful land, where geese lowered their long necks to hiss out warnings, and grandchildren ran, shouting; where his wife Katharine's well-considered gardens grew, where he must have struggled to come to terms with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. What sad irony, that a man so gifted with language would, at the end of his life, end up without the facility for it.

  As she stood in White's work space that day, it occurred to her that she was grasping at straws when it came to really understanding anything about the man; you could read his work, even biographies about him, and imagine a certain kind of person; but the reality of him would forever be a mystery. She thought this was probably true of anyone who made any kind of art: the work did not necessarily represent the person. She thinks it was Margaret Atwood who said that wanting to meet a writer because you like their work was like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.

  So when the librarian, Doris McCann was her name, told Helen that her patrons wanted to know her, she understood completely. She just didn't know if she could comply.

  She straightens before her the paper where last night she scrawled some prompts to help guide what she would say. But now, to her dismay, she finds that they make no sense whatsoever. She has no idea what “river” means, or “broken lamp.” She sees the word “roses” and seizes gratefully upon it. “When my first novel was accepted for publication,” she tells the audience, “my best friend sent me twelve long-stemmed pink roses with a card that said, ‘This is the stuff of your dreams.’ And it was.” She smiles, and some of the women in the audience smile back. She looks at her notes again, feeling long moments go by, feeling perspiration start under her arms. She scratches her forehead, pushes back her hair. “Yikes, I really need a haircut,” she says.

  Now the women simply stare, one with her eyebrows knit, her arms crossed tightly. Helen sees one woman elbow the woman next to her. She has seen this before, but that was when it was something positive, when it was one friend telling another she was having a good time. It does not mean that now.

  “But that's not what we're here to talk about!” Helen says gaily, and she sees Doris, sitting at the end of the front row, nervously smile and turn ever so slightly in her seat, looking to see how the audience is doing. Well. Helen can tell her.

  “You know, I was asked not to read,” Helen says, finally, and it comes out far too defensively. She leans closer to the microphone to say, “Which is okay, it's okay,” and there is a terrible squeal of feedback. Helen steps back. She clears her throat, looks again at her useless notes. What in the hell is “refrigerator repair man”?

  She looks out at the audience again and presses her palm against her sternum, as though trying to resuscitate herself. “I apologize,” she says, finally, and now her hands move to clasp each other on the lectern before her. Calm down. She breathes in deeply, lets it out. Just talk. Just say something. “Usually I read from my work, my novels, I guess you know I've written some novels.” She holds up the latest one, which she brought along as a kind of talisman. “But anyway, I usually read from them as a way to … Well, as a way to show my art, I guess. Though that sounds pretentious to me, as I say it: show my art. It sounds like … Well, but what I do is, I read and then I take questions. I don't usually just … talk. About myself, I mean. I must confess, in fact, that I feel very nervous talking only about myself. I think most writers are shy people who hide behind others, who want to talk not about themselves but about other people. Of course, they are actually talking about themselves when they talk about other people …”

  And now there is nothing. White space inside of her. White noise around her. There is nothing she can think of to say.

  “I wonder if … I think I am just going to go ahead and read a little, just a couple pages of my latest novel, to show you something about how writers work. Well, how I work, anyway.” Helen opens her book to the prologue, then looks up to say, “There is a tarot card called the King of Wands, and it represents a man who appears to
be terrifying, really fierce; but on the inside, he's a real softie. This novel is about a man like that.” She reads the opening pages of The King of Wands, about ten minutes' worth of material. Then she closes the book, and smiles. “So, I think that might show you how a character's voice can take the lead in crafting a story. Just a sample, there, of how that works.”

  It is so quiet. Helen clears her throat. “How about if we move to questions? Are there any questions?” Last time Helen did an event, they had to cut questions off after half an hour. She prays for that now.

  No one raises a hand. What feels like a year passes while Helen stares at a spot on the back wall. When someone does finally raise her hand, Helen practically yelps, saying, “Yes?”

  “Where do you get your ideas?” the woman asks.

  I don't, lately, Helen wants to say. I don't have any ideas. Do you? What she does say is, “Well, they're all around. You know. Life. Ideas are all around; the real question is, Where aren't ideas? I mean, there's a story you can imagine about two random people in an elevator, isn't there? One person in an elevator. An elevator! And then the rest is … Well, it's alchemy. That's what you hope for. And rarely achieve. It's hard to achieve what you mean to, to get to where you think you're going to go, when you first start a book. And in some ways, the more success you have, the harder it gets. You begin writing in fresh air and sunshine; with each book, you suffer more pollution. Sales figures, reviews … your own … your own …” She clears her throat, looks around the room at the audience. She sees a kind of polite bewilderment.

  Another woman, seated in the back, raises her hand, and Helen nods gratefully at her.

  “This isn't a question,” the woman says, “it's just a comment. I just wanted to tell you that I loved Telling Songs and I gave it to all my friends for Christmas last year. It's a beautiful book. And also I wanted to let you know I have to leave early; I didn't want you to think I was leaving in the middle of your talk. So thank you.”

  “Thank you!” Helen says, and watches as the woman gathers up her purse, her coat, the program with Helen's bio. She wants to beg her to stay, to come and stand on the stage with her.

  Another woman raises her hand. “Could you tell us something personal about yourself? Something that nobody else knows?”

  Helen has no idea how to respond. “You first,” she says, finally, and laughs, though no one else does. They all wait. Finally, she says, “Well … why would I do that?” Now she has completely alienated them, she can feel it. She speaks quickly, saying, “Okay, here: I have a very clean house, but my refrigerator shelves are awful. Plus I have a little crush on Donald Trump, I don't know why.”

  Oh, God, not a sound. They are taking her too seriously, she has come off so strangely she can't even kid around. They think she's odd, they don't like her, and they are disappointed. They have set aside time to come here, and for what? This is the talk that would let them get to know the author?

  Helen stands there, increasingly dry-mouthed, then says, “I'm sorry. I don't know what you want of me.” She feels very close to tears. She shifts her weight, looks down again at her useless notes. She looks out at the crowd and a great weariness comes over her. She thinks for a moment about simply walking offstage, but then says, “I don't see how you can get to know a person from a lecture. I guess I think if you want to know an author, you should read her books. Because that's the part … That's the personal part, even if it isn't real. You know? That thing you try to get at, so you can …

  “I'm afraid that's all I can say. Unless there are any more questions. Or comments. Anyone have anything they'd like to say? About anything?”

  No one does.

  “Well, then … Thank you.” Helen moves off the stage to a light smattering of applause, the sound of which is easily overwhelmed by the low murmur of conversation.

  Doris McCann is standing backstage, a tight smile frozen on her face. She offers Helen a white envelope. Her payment.

  “That's all right,” Helen says. “I'm so sorry. I haven't been feeling well.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Doris says, but her tone says, Then why didn't you call and cancel?

  Helen starts to explain, then does not. Why say this has never happened before when that might only make her hostess feel worse? There is nothing to say; the damage is done. It's like a disastrous first date: Midge once went out with the captain of the football team in high school and farted as she was getting into his car, him behind her gallantly holding the door open—and that was the end of that. Doris will tell Helen's lecture agent about this performance, or lack thereof, how could she not? Why should she not? Helen's track record, which thus far has been so good, will be spoiled.

  Doris offers the check again. “Go ahead and take it. We did sign a contract. You did appear. Maybe you could just sign some books?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then …” Doris puts the envelope into the outside pocket of Helen's purse. “Let's go and do that.”

  They go back into the auditorium, where there are four people in line, and the last one asks Helen quietly, “Are you all right?”

  “Thank you for asking,” Helen says. “I'll be fine.”

  After the room empties, Doris says. “Well, I'll buy one. Could you sign it to my mother? Her name is Phyllis. She liked you.”

  She seems not to notice the slip: liked.

  Helen pulls out her pen, signs the book, and hands it to Doris. “Thank you. I hope she enjoys it.”

  “Oh, sure,” Doris says. She scratches her ear. Smiles.

  “Again, I apologize for—”

  “It's all right. These things happen.”

  “You know, I wonder if—Maybe I could try again another time.” She'll share with them the story about telling her father as a little girl that she was going to be a writer someday and how at first he had laughed but then had said, “I believe you.” She'll explain how important it is to have someone believe in you, how important it is to nourish dreams, especially your own. She'll tell them that she used to pull books behind her in a wagon when she played outside, they were her favorite toy, and that all one summer, after her parents made her turn out the light, she read under her covers by fireflies in a jar. She'll talk about the time she was twelve years old and got so sunburned she couldn't wear clothes and had to lie in bed with only a sheet over her for four days and it was then that she read Gone with the Wind for the first time. And then she went on to read it eight more times. Oh, she can think of a lot of things to say, now! That the impetus for one of her best-loved novels was a sentence in a conversation she overheard in a gynecologist's office. “There'd be no charge for my coming back, of course,” she tells Doris.

  “Well, that's very nice of you. But you know, we schedule so far in advance …”

  “I see,” Helen says.

  They leave the empty auditorium, their footsteps echoing. At the doorway that leads to the parking lot, Helen shakes hands with Doris, and heads out into the parking lot. A raw wind blows, and Helen shivers in it.

  When she gets to the car, she calls Midge. Who is not home. “Well,” she says to the message machine, “you were kind of wrong about how I'd do.”

  She wishes Doris had taken back the check. She doesn't want it. But she needs it.

  The next morning is December 18, the anniversary of Dan's death. Helen comes into the kitchen early and turns on the light. She makes coffee, waits for it to brew, drinks some, then puts her cup in the sink to rinse it out. She turns on the water, speaks above the noise to say, “Damnit, Dan! I just bought that cup!” She stands there for a long moment, the water running, her hands clenching the edge of the sink. Then she turns around and looks at the spot where he fell. Behind her, the water runs and runs. She turns it off, then goes to sit at the kitchen table, still staring at that spot on the floor. She moves to Dan's chair. She opens her hand as though a cup is falling out of it, then slides onto the floor, adjusts her body to look the way his did. She is looking in
the direction of the sink, right where she was just standing. He would have seen her ankles, the hem of her robe. He would have seen how the cabinets looked immense from there, the ceiling so far away. He would have heard her speaking. He would have seen her turn around and start toward him. He would have known she was coming to save him.

  She gets up off the floor and stands there. Outside, the sunrise completes itself, trades its rose colors for gold, and bars of light stripe the kitchen table. She hears the sound of birds, and she goes to the window to watch them eat.

  eight

  AT ELEVEN-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, HELEN IS AT HER DESK, TRYING to think of exercises for the first writing class. Her phone rings and she answers immediately, grateful for the distraction. But there is no one there. “Hello?” she says again. There is silence, then a gentle hang-up. A caller who keeps hanging up? A call that changed your life? A misunderstanding that occurs when you think you're talking on the phone to one person but in fact it's someone else? She taps her fingers against the desk, arranges again the red roses she brought home from the grocery store this morning. The first time you got flowers, or gave them? Your first dance? Your first date? No, no, and no. She looks carefully around her study, as though an idea will come floating down from the ceiling like Groucho's duck.

  Exasperated, Helen calls her friend Jessica Miller for ideas; Jessica is a writer who has taught a thousand workshops. “Well, I have an exercise I always use for the first class,” Jessica says. “It gets the juices flowing right away, and it helps people in the group get to know one another. I just say, ‘Write one page telling me who you are.’ And then I give them twenty minutes. I use a timer, by the way; there's something about that ding! that's pretty unequivocal.”

  “That's a big assignment!”

  “Yes, but restricting it to one page and giving them so little time keeps them focused on just getting something down on the page. There's no time to listen to that critical voice in their heads, no time to judge, no time to even plan anything. Tell them there doesn't have to be any rhyme or reason, that you're not looking for a completely finished piece, just an interesting fragment that feels true to them, maybe even scary. To feel a little scared, to take a risk when you write, is a good thing, and they need to learn that, right away. What you want is for them to trust the process, you know?”