“I have something for you,” she said on the phone.
He feared it was a Christmas present. She’d given him two, and two birthday presents as well. He’d never given her anything. He dawdled on his way to the restaurant despite the cold, or maybe in hope of numbing himself further. He had by then achieved a blankness that, in moments of lucidity, he worried would be his permanent state.
Dumplings, spicy fish, rice for two; the moment had come to look at her. She looked the same. “Is that a new ring?”
“Asa, I’ve had this for fifteen years.”
He did suddenly remember trying it on one summer afternoon and laughing because it didn’t fit even his little finger. “Oh, yeah.” He wanted a beer. Which was worse, forgetting or finding that wisp of memory?
“You’re so unobservant,” she said.
“Don’t hold it against me.” He raised his teacup. “Here’s looking at you.” He was, by then, able to more easily. It was true, she looked the same. “You never change.”
“It’s only been six months.”
“I love the skin on this fish. Crackly.” He realized she would think he was “avoiding” something.
But: “Very good,” she agreed, and they discussed what seedlings were in his basement and Roger’s latest unwritten article and how she was finding the free-lance life. He thought they might get through it without—what? Acknowledgment. And the longer they did, in fact, maintain their banal interchange, the safer he felt looking at her, enjoying her cheek and how it met her lip, the ivory of her sweater against her darker ivory neck, her hand clumsy with the chopsticks.
“You don’t know how to use those,” he told her. He realized she had always used them wrong. He moved to position them correctly for her. The sensation of her skin against his was so familiar that it was as if a landscape from boyhood were spread before his eyes. Her hand lay quiet in his. I’ve had a good life, he thought. He showed her how to cradle the sticks in the hollow between her thumb and forefinger; her hand was soft and pliant, and the whole time their skins brushed against each other he felt the warmth of his life surrounding him.
Then fortune cookies. “Why are they always like this? ‘You have a good head for business.’ ” His was, “A friend asks only for your time and not your money.”
“At least yours is true,” she said.
“So what do you have for me?”
“What I wrote.” She took a folder from her bag. “I wanted you to have a copy. After all, it’s yours in a way. So here.” She pushed it across the table.
They parted on the street, quickly, because it was cold and they didn’t know how to say good-bye. They settled on an awkward hug made more ungainly by their coats and gloves. “Merry Christmas,” they told each other, and “Let’s not wait so long next time.” Then they walked off in opposite directions.
It was a slow afternoon at work. The magazine had been put to bed the week before, and the pile of articles on Asa’s desk was only thicker than it had been before he got caught up in the mechanics of the last issue. A profile of a physicist whose work he didn’t understand; an article on weather; a photographic essay on East Africa. And on top, something by Dinah. Two-thirty. He cleaned his waxing machine. Three-ten. He discussed inside-cover advertising possibilities with the sales manager over the intercom. Three-twenty. He shut the door to his office. He put his feet on his desk and began to read.
It made him queasy, no doubt about it. He kept fighting the urge to stop. At the same time he was fascinated, because he saw himself there—but then again, not himself, a ghost or duplicate. The queasiness came from the way he felt shuttled between recognition and confusion. Several times he said out loud, “But it wasn’t like that.” And it hadn’t been; surely he hadn’t been such a wimp. Or was he then, and even now, and had she detected it? But he hadn’t had anything to do with Reuben’s girlfriend, who wasn’t unlike Jo, surprisingly. He’d had a few ideas, maybe, but not … he had to keep reminding himself that this was a book. Or something, he didn’t know exactly what. At any rate it was not his life history written down by someone else. Except that frequently it was.
How had she deduced that about the Breughel print? She must have seen it at the office Christmas party he gave two years before. But to make the leap to this piece of his adolescence—the one true tragedy he’d ever been involved in—was remarkable. Had he said something that gave her a clue? He poked his memory, but it seemed unreliable to him after the incident of her ring. Without her to prompt him, he might as well erase everything that had gone on between them. He saw himself, on the page and in the past, brooding at that picture as at a votive portrait. Perhaps, he thought, we are actually transparent to those who love us.
Six o’clock on a December evening; he was the last person in the building. At home Fay was lighting a fire for his welcome. She loved him too. There he was, in his warm, handsome office, holding a story written about him by a woman who loved him. All he had lost through death and neglect, and caution, and his damnable moderation—he did not think of it. Unassailable in his happiness, his luck in having received so much, he walked home through the night.
All these years, Asa has been too caught up in whether his book is “true” to know if it is “good.” He has never even considered it from this angle. By now it is history: part of his life, an artifact he possesses. And though only a typescript, it, like Ovid and Hardy, is final and eternal.
As is Asa. Granite Asa, his substance does not change. Why did I think it could? If I could take an aerial photograph of Asa’s rocky landscape, perhaps I’d find a new curve in a stream or a pile of stones freshly tumbled from a cliff—some slight evidence of my passage through the scene. But, reader, I can’t get far enough away. I have never been able to. Asa is always in my middle distance at the least. I have held him closer and known less, but as yet I can move him no further from me.
Late at night when I look out my windows I see an apartment building. It is six stories high; behind it is Asa’s house. I can’t see Asa’s house. For years this has frustrated me. Likewise has my inability to penetrate the lace of the branches that overshadow the Common, beneath which he walks to and from work each day. But I have come to realize that with nothing between us I was unable to see him. And so these physical impediments bother me less. They state the truth, which I am learning how to know.
I know who changed. I know whose soul awakened. I know whose blood these pages fanned to fire. I am sure of these things. For the rest, it is only hope, the whole world balanced on a straw. But on that straw we stake our lives and, heedless, we go on.
VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
VOX
by Nicholson Baker
A single telephone call between two strangers remaps the territory of sex—sex solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous, in this modern tour de force.
“A brilliantly funny, perversely tender and technically breathtaking erotic novel.”
—The New York Times
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PICTURING WILL
by Ann Beattie
An absorbing novel of a curious five-year-old and the adults who surround him.
“Beattie’s best novel since Chilly Scenes of Winter … its depth and movement are a revelation.”
—The New York Times Book Review
0-679-73194-6
FRAUD
by Anita Brookner
Why has Anna Durrant disappeared and why has it taken four months for anyone to notice? As Brookner reconstructs Anna’s life and character, she gives us a witty yet ultimately devastating study of self-annihilating virtue, while exposing the social, fiscal, and moral frauds that are the underpinnings of terrifying rectitude.
“Brilliant and complex … Fraud is an immensely satisfying novel with unsettling insights.”
—The New York Times Book Review
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WHERE I’M CALLING FROM
by Raymond Carver
T
he summation of a triumphant career from “one of the great short-story writers of our time—of any time” (Philadelphia Inquirer).
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THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET
by Sandra Cisneros
Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence—the story of a young girl growing up in the Latino quarter of Chicago.
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—Gwendolyn Brooks
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WILDLIFE
by Richard Ford
Set in Great Falls, Montana, a powerful novel of a family tested to the breaking point.
“Ford brings the early Hemingway to mind. Not many writers can survive the comparison. Ford can. Wildlife has a look of permanence about it.”
—Newsweek
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A LESSON BEFORE DYING
by Ernest J. Gaines
This richly compassionate novel tells the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, and a teacher who tries to impart to him his learning and pride before the execution. In the end the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected.
“This majestic, moving novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives.”
—Chicago Tribune
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ELLEN FOSTER
by Kaye Gibbons
The story of a young girl who overcomes adversity with a combination of charm, humor, and ferocity.
“Ellen Foster is a southern Holden Caulfield, tougher perhaps, as funny … a breathtaking first novel.”
—Walker Percy
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IN A COUNTRY OF MOTHERS
by A. M. Homes
Jody Goodman was an adopted child. Claire Roth, her therapist, once gave up a baby for adoption. Out of their mutual losses comes a mutual fantasy that evolves into fixation, until it is no longer clear which woman needs the other more—or with more terrifying consequences.
“A commanding narrative … by turns witty and unnerving, and at times almost unbearable in its emotional intensity.”
—Wall Street Journal
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THE CHOSEN PLACE, THE TIMELESS PEOPLE
by Paule Marshall
A novel set on a devastated part of a Caribbean island, whose tense relationships—between natives and foreigners, blacks and whites, haves and have-nots—keenly dramatize the vicissitudes of power.
“Unforgettable … monumental.”
—Washington Post Book World
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NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES
by Thomas McGuane
Thomas McGuane’s latest novel, chronicling the fall and rise of Frank Copenhaver, is set in a Montana where cowboys slug it out with speculators, a cattleman’s best friend may be his insurance broker, and love and fishing are the only consolations that last.
“So sizable in vision and execution, so funny, so tragically and truly about America … that one is moved to stand and applaud.”
—Boston Globe
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BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
by Jay McInerney
Living in Manhattan as if he owned it, a young man tries to outstrip the approach of dawn with nothing but his wit, good will, and controlled substances.
“A dazzling debut, smart, heartfelt, and very, very funny.”
—Tobias Wolff
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FRIEND OF MY YOUTH
by Alice Munro
Ten miraculously accomplished stories that not only astonish and delight but also convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of human experience.
“She is our Chekhov, and is going to outlast most of her contemporaries.”
—Cynthia Ozick
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BAILEY’S CAFE
by Gloria Naylor
Set in a diner where the food isn’t much and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, Bailey’s Cafe is a feast for the senses and for the spirit. It is home to Sadie, a ladylike alcoholic; Sweet Esther, who caters to unspeakable appetites; Jesse Bell, who once disgraced her high-minded in-laws by turning to drugs and other women; and to Mariam, the Ethiopian child who just might be the bearer of a miracle.
“Absorbing, poignant and wise … Naylor has crafted a heart-rending testament to the human spirit.”
—Cristina Garcia, Philadelphia Inquirer
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ANYWHERE BUT HERE
by Mona Simpson
An extraordinary novel that is at once a portrait of a mother and daughter and a brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving.
“Mona Simpson takes on—and reinvents—many of America’s essential myths … stunning.”
—The New York Times
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THE JOY LUCK CLUB
by Amy Tan
“Vivid … wondrous … what it is to be American, and a woman, mother, daughter, lover, wife, sister and friend—these are the troubling, loving alliances and affiliations that Tan molds into this remarkable novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A jewel of a book.”
—The New York Times Book Review
0-679-72768-X
PHILADELPHIA FIRE
by John Edgar Wideman
“Reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” (Time), this powerful novel is based on the 1985 bombing by police of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the Afrocentric cult Move.
“A book brimming over with brutal, emotional honesty and moments of beautiful prose lyricism.”
—Charles Johnson, Washington Post Book World
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VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE, OR CALL TOLL-FREE TO ORDER: 1-800-733-3000 (CREDIT CARDS ONLY)
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE BOOKS
BLACK ICE
by Lorene Cary
The story of a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, who, when transplanted to an elite school in New Hampshire, becomes a scholarship student determined to succeed without selling out. In recounting her journey into selfhood, Lorene Cary creates a universally recognizable document of a woman’s adolescence.
“Probably the most beautifully written and the most moving African-American autobiographical narrative since Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
—Arnold Rampersad
Autobiography/African-American Studies/0-679-73745-6
THE ROAD FROM COORAIN
by Jill Ker Conway
A remarkable woman’s clear-sighted memoir of growing up Australian: from the vastness of a sheep station in the outback to the stifling propriety of postwar Sidney; from an untutored childhood to a life in academia; and from the shelter of a protective family to the lessons of independence.
“A small masterpiece of scene, memory and very stylish English. I’ve been several times to Australia; this book was the most rewarding journey of all.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Autobiography/0-679-72436-2
TRUE NORTH
by Jill Ker Conway
In this second volume of her memoirs, Jill Ker Conway leaves Australia for America, where she becomes a renowned historian and, later, the first woman president of Smith College. She enters a lively community of women scholars and examines the challenges that confront all women who seek to establish public selves and reconcile them with their private passions.
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—Philadelphia Inquirer
Memoir/Women’s Studies/0-679-74461-4
THE SHADOW MAN
A Daughter’s Search fo
r Her Father
by Mary Gordon
This is the memoir of a woman who, after thirty years of unflinching love for a memory, sets out to discover who her father really was. Gordon finds an immigrant who lied about his origins; a Jew who became a virulent anti-Semite; and a devout Catholic who was also a pornographer.
“Stunning … a painful and luminous book … that somehow, amazingly, reconciles Ms. Gordon’s feelings of love and horror, guilt and forgiveness, and transforms them into art.”
—The New York Times
Memoir/0-679-74931-4
AN UNQUIET MIND
A Memoir of Moods and Madness
by Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield Jamison is one of the world’s most renowned authorities on manic-depressive illness; she is also one of its survivors. It is this dual perspective—as healer and healed—that makes her bestselling memoir so lucid, learned and profoundly affecting.
“Written with poetic and moving sensitivity … a rare and insightful view of mental illness from inside the mind of a trained specialist.”
—Time
Psychology/Memoir/0-679-76330-9
RIDING THE WHITE HORSE HOME
A Western Family Album
by Teresa Jordan
A haunting memoir about the generations of women who learned to cope with physical hardship and loneliness in the beautiful yet grim landscape of the West. Riding the White Horse Home is at once Teresa Jordan’s family chronicle and a eulogy for the West her people helped shape.
“Spellbinding.… the emotional scope of Jordan’s prose is as vast as the ranch she grew up on—succoring one moment, shattering the next.”
—Seattle Times
Memoir/Travel/0-679-75135-1
GIRL, INTERRUPTED
by Susanna Kaysen
Set in the exclusive grounds of McLean Hospital, Kaysen’s memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. In this brilliant evocation of a “parallel universe,” Kaysen gives a clear-sighted depiction of various definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
Asa, as I Knew Him Page 14
