When that whole front yard is wall to wall with Clair Beaudry’s things, we come inside and get ourselves a cup of coffee. It’s like we got to do something a little normal after the weirdness of this night. Then we wrap ourselves in blankets and go out on the porch like it’s summertime and we’re going to watch the fireflies.
We sit out there waiting for that old pickup and Clair Beaudry’s face when he sees all his belongings where they belong. The rain beyond the porchlight is coming down on his boots, his belts he’s used on the kids I don’t want to think what for, his tools, his big bottle of English Leather, and all his sorry clothes tangled together like someone tried to make a ladder to escape out of a fairybook tower. Makes me kind of sad to see the waste of what could have been better. Then I’m just plain scared like I just landed someplace I’ve never been inside myself.
I look over at Yo, who’s sitting there with her head down, listening to that rain like it’s reminding her what was written on them ruined pages. I put everything I got into listening, too, but all I hear is the taps, splats, and pings of the rain coming down hard on Clair’s things.
The student
variation
Lou Castellucci had made good. Tall, handsome with the winning smile of a pro whose team is headed for the championships, Lou had won almost every game he had played in his life. In high school he had been a star football player, taking his small town team to the State championship first time ever.
His high school prowess had won him a full scholarship at a small liberal arts college, where he played less impressively with each succeeding year. But then, football was no longer his game. His attention had been caught by other things. His senior year he became interested in writing and in a tall girl with a mess of pretty blond hair, Penny Ross.
He had not been able to attract Penny’s attention although he had tried to put himself in her way. He had taken The Contemporary Novel on the off-chance that Penny, an English major, might be in the large, popular lecture course. She hadn’t been, but the class had turned out to be Lou’s favorite. He was sorry now that he had so doggedly pursued his computer science major. He envied the kids who were English majors and sat around in black turtlenecks, smoking, and intensely discussed the meaning of a book. They really got into it, and it made Lou feel, listening in on their conversations in the dining hall or lounges, as if he were, well, not that smart, not that sensitive, not that vital a human being.
Spring of his senior year, Lou signed up for a writing workshop. If he could write novels like the ones he had read, he could wow her and anyone else. But it wasn’t just to wow her that he took the course. Writing was the new game he wanted to learn to play. When that guy Updike or that Mailer guy wrote a book, it was a touchdown at the end of each chapter. Sometimes as he read, Lou would catch himself, making a fist, pumping his arm forward as if to say, Go, Mailer, go!
The teacher was supposed to be a known writer but not one Lou had ever heard of. She was a Dominican-American-USA-Latina—or whatever she had explained she was during the first class. Her pretty olive color made Lou think of honey in a jar. Lou had never before known a Hispanic person without ten pounds of shoulder and chest pads on him and a teeth guard in his mouth and a helmet on his head. The couple of Hispanic guys here on the team had an attitude that Lou didn’t like. Christ, it hadn’t been him who made their daddies pick grapes or whatever.
Anyhow that first day, this lady was real friendly. Said she wanted you to call her Yolanda or Yo or whatever you liked and talked about writing as a game you played for the fun of it, not just for the deep meaning. It made Lou feel better sitting in that circle, his big hands sweating all over this poem Yolanda passed out. They were going around the circle, having to say what they thought of it. Skinny, brainy girls found things in that poem that made Lou feel like a whole different poem had been handed to him. His neck started to get hot, and he wished he’d taken a lecture class instead of putting himself out there this way.
When his turn came, Lou said that maybe he just didn’t have the background, but this poem seemed, to him, a lot more simple than everyone else had said. Yolanda’s eyes lit up, and she kept nodding her head like one of those little dogs with a spring in its neck. She asked him how did he read this line and that line, and Lou did the best he could with it. “Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah,” she kept saying, and flashing her eyes at him. The writer types looked at him as if he were some kind of authority. Everyone, even the deep-thought girls, began nodding. Lou wished he’d taken his baseball cap off.
He wrote a lot of stories for this class. First one, he got back all marked up in pencil to make him feel as if everything were just a suggestion, but he got the gist of it. Big note at the bottom said, You expect me to believe this? He read his story over about a spy caught in a war zone, and he had to agree with her. A bunch of crap. Some episode he’d seen on TV. He thought he could put a new twist on it by having the spy wake up at the end and the whole story be a dream. In the note she said he should write about what he knew, and so in the next story, he wrote about a big football hero who gets paralyzed from the waist down in an accident and, in order to free his girl from marrying him, he commits suicide. This time the note at the bottom read, Please come see me.
In conference she explained she meant writing stories out of his own life. He pushed his cap back and looked down at his palms as if to reassure himself of a lifeline. “That’s kind of personal,” he told her.
“Yeah-yeah,” she nodded enthusiastically, “stories are personal.” The way she said it was like he was Helen Keller and she’d finally gotten through to him that water meant water.
It was wild talking to her in that little office. Everything he said, she tied into something she’d read. She kept climbing up on her chair to pull down this book and that from her shelves. She read him long passages of something someone famous had said that was supposed to contradict what he’d said, and kept looking up at him so hopeful. He finally said, yes, he’d try writing like she said.
Later, a buddy told Lou the woman was on a seven-year tenure track. Lou didn’t really understand how this tenure ring worked. All he could think of was the racetrack his stepfather Harvey had taken him to when he was still a kid. Hyper horses sprang out of their stalls when the gates lifted, giving it all they had, to the finish line. But seven years, Jesus! No wonder some of these profs were a little odd after going around in circles for so long.
Lou had a hard time writing his next story about his dad leaving. He gave the kid in the story a different name and colored his hair yellow and his eyes blue. He told how his mom fell apart and had to be hospitalized, and how Uncle Harvey started coming around. Course, he changed Harvey’s name to Henry. One day, the kid betrays Henry by telling some friends that Henry isn’t his real father. Story ends with the little kid seeing the pain go through Henry’s face like a crack in china.
That day in class when they got to his story, Lou felt woozier than a pregnant girl on a roller coaster. Everyone waited for Yolanda to say what she thought and then they all fell in with her that the story was really great. Of course, soon after the praise, the “suggestions” followed. “One little thing that did bother me,” they always began, and then everyone tore Lou’s story apart like it was now meat for the dogs. But at least when he got the story back from Yolanda the final note read, You’re onto rich material here!
Lou had finally gotten the hang of this story game, and he was on a winning streak now. Story after story he wrote, this Yo lady was treating it like Hemingway in the rough or something. Kids in class returned his stories with smiley faces, going on and on about how this or that part was really awesome. Then, the last story he wrote for class, he just about put himself up on that computer screen like an X-ray of his chest with a dark shadow for his aching heart.
The story was about the only game Lou could ever remember losing. It happened when he was twelve. That Saturday afternoon, Harvey was right behind the team’s bench, as always, rooting for him
. Then suddenly, Lou’s father had showed, first time Lou’d seen the old man in ages. He was loud and obnoxious up in the bleachers. “That’s my kid!” he kept shouting at the crowd.
As Lou got more and more into the writing, he forgot his fears. It was the last quarter, score tied, and his team’s turn to make a final touchdown. But as he ran towards the arc of the descending ball, he couldn’t think straight, worrying about what would happen after the game, if he’d go up to his dad or Harvey to be congratulated. Losing his concentration, Lou tipped the ball into his opposing teammate’s hands. The visitors scored the last touchdown. Afterwards, he sat with Harvey in the car and bawled like a baby. As he wrote the story, Lou realized he hadn’t cried because he had lost the game for his team. His father had left without so much as saying hello to him.
Even now, Lou could feel his goddamn eyes tingling!
But the amazing thing was you could write a story about losing and feel like you’d won. And one other thing he had learned writing these stories. He had to put himself out there more. After all, he’d taken a chance with this course, and it had been pretty terrific. He would ask this Penny girl out to dinner, and if she was dating someone else, let her up and say so. He would take the job he’d been offered even if it wasn’t a big-time company his friends had heard of. He had liked the people who interviewed him, low-key and real, and they made sports equipment he believed in.
In conference, over his final folder, Yolanda told him how much she liked his last story. She sure was glad he’d taken the course. She hinted at how she’d had a tough time herself. She’d been divorced (it sounded like more than once) and kicked around for a while. What saved her was she could write books, and she just kept writing them and writing them, until something inside settled down.
“Wow,” he noted. He had really wanted to ask her if she was okay now. Some little thing she said hinted she was lonely. “I mean, it sounds like you’ve written a lot of books.”
“Not enough,” she said, twirling a strand of her hair like it wasn’t curly enough already. “My first-year review board feels my publications aren’t substantial enough. They want a major publisher.” She said the word major, rolling her eyes, like Lou would understand.
“Well, I think you’re terrific,” he said, shifting in his chair. Now he was the one getting nervous. What if she thought, you know, like he was coming on? Quickly, he added, “A really terrific teacher.”
She laughed. “Thanks,” she said. “Anyhow, I’ve got six more years to prove myself in the major leagues. Tenure,” she pronounced, in the solemn voice of a diagnosis of a terminal illness.
“Wow,” Lou said to be encouraging.
“I’m doing short stories for now,” she explained. “It’s been hard to concentrate on something longer this year. There’s a lot going on.” Yolanda sighed, on the verge of saying more.
But Lou cut the talk short. His old habit of not getting in over his head was automatic by now. He put out his hand and shook Yolanda’s and thanked her for everything. “Gotta go,” he said as if he had something to do besides hang out this sunny spring afternoon drinking beers with his buddies in the cemetery behind the dorms.
That afternoon, he kept thinking about her, and during a lull in the yak, he asked if any of his buddies knew this Yo person in the English department. One know-it-all guy Lou didn’t like much had the scoop. García had been living in a run-down old house that burned down. She was single but had some out-of-town, pothead boyfriend.
“So is she going to marry him or what?” Lou wanted to know.
“What am I? Her counselor or something?” The guy got a laugh from everyone. He was a guy who worked for laughs, so you could never trust what he said. He went on. “Someone told me she’s been having some troubles, you know.” He spun small circles by his forehead with his index finger. Some of the guys laughed.
Lou defended her. “She’s not crazy, she’s real fine.”
“Man, I’m not saying she’s not fine,” the buddy returned, pumping his hips as if that was what Lou had meant. “I’m just telling you what I heard, okay?”
Lou’s roommate intervened. “Speaking of what we’ve heard. Anybody know if the rumor on Ross is true?”
Lou didn’t let his face show his interest. The guys knew about his crush on Penny Ross. They knew Lou hadn’t asked her out, that he worried she’d be over his head, never sure of her dating status since she was always hanging out with Philip Ballinger of the Black Turtleneck, who co-edited the literary magazine with her.
Same guy who knew the dope on Yolanda had news to report here too. Goddamn guy should start a Dear Andy column or something. He held his thumb down. “Ballinger and Ross broke off,” he announced. “Ballinger’s balling the Contessa.” He twirled his arm elaborately like someone greeting royalty. The Contessa was an Italian beauty whose Papa owned a line of spaghetti sauce and pasta products. She had a beautiful face with pouty lips and elaborate headbands that looked like tiaras in her dramatic auburn hair. The editor went in for hair, all right. And looks. But unlike Penny Ross, the Contessa seemed totally unapproachable. She dated only the richest, brainiest guys on campus, and them she treated with a dispassionate, affected air as if she were saving herself for something better, and these little American boys were her equivalent of sleeping with the gardener.
Later, his roommate prodded Lou about Penny. “This is your chance, Castellucci. We’re almost out of here. It’s now or the fifth reunion, and by then, she might be married with babies.”
That night in the dining room, they were sitting at their usual tables, and Penny Ross walked in with a bunch of girlfriends. “Go for it,” his roommate said. Before he knew it, Lou had left his own untouched tray behind, broken into the line, reached for Penny’s tray in her hands, and offered, “Can I buy you a real dinner?” She gave him an assessing look as if she wasn’t sure what to make of his invitation.
Briefly it flashed through Lou’s head something he’d heard his buddies say after they’d seen Penny marching at some rally. She was a feminist. He thought of the word in the same tone as Yolanda had pronounced tenure. “Do I know you?” she finally said.
“This is a way to get to know me,” he blurted. His goddamn hands were shaking like a goddam car with a bad fan belt.
But then, fate or something was on his side because the Contessa walked in with the editor, and Lou could see by the tightening of the muscles on her face that Penny had seen them too. He didn’t necessarily like being the spare, but, hey, when you had a flat, the spare became the regular, right? Sure enough, Penny slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow and gave her head a pretty toss. “Let’s get to know each other,” she said. As they passed by his table of buddies, Lou lifted up the tray in his hand and waved it like a trophy for a game he’d just won.
For their fifth reunion, Penny and Lou brought baby Louie, and a load like you wouldn’t believe. Lou just about had a heart attack every time they packed to go somewhere. Seemed to him that the amount of luggage you brought should bear some direct proportion to your body size. This little tyke’s Portacrib and playpen and box of Pampers and extra bag of clean clothes and handbag of rattles and stuffed animals with lullabies inside them just about took up the whole back of the car and some of the trunk. He had stopped saying anything, though, because every time he did, Penny would burst into tears and accuse him of not loving his own son.
As if anyone could love a kid more! Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so attached to this kid if things had been going better with Penny. First two years had been like a corny movie. He’d find love notes in his briefcase, and when he’d go on business trips, there’d be chocolate kisses and once a package of ladyfingers in with his underwear. He’d risen quickly in the company he joined after graduation, SportsAMER! With his good looks—he still worked out at the gym and ran his daily five miles—and his personable, persistent, but non-pushy manners (the same three p’s Lou plugged to his team of salesmen), Lou was everyone’s winner. Recen
tly, he had been promoted from regional sales manager in the northeast to Vice President of Marketing, with a relocation to Dayton, Ohio.
That’s when the trouble started with Penny. He was doing a lot of traveling to coordinate nationwide markets. Penny was understanding at first, but with each lonely, unemployed month in Dayton, she became withdrawn and nagging. She changed her name back to Penny Ross Castellucci, even though he’d bought her a real nice luggage set with just PC on it. Nothing seemed to please her, least of all getting pregnant.
She had awful morning sickness, and then a hard, uncomfortable pregnancy. Lou had asked to stay put in the home office till the baby was born, but he couldn’t be spared from minding the national accounts. In fact, Lou was busier than ever. The bad economy had hit the company hard. SportsAMER! just couldn’t compete. With a kid coming, expensive house and car payments, Lou could not afford to lose his job. At the back of his mind, of course, was what he most dreaded losing—his marriage with Penny.
After she’d gotten pregnant, she stopped being interested in much of anything. She sat around, reading all the time, like that kid was going to be an Einstein and his brain cells had to be pumped full of info. Many nights arriving home to a darkened house, Lou would climb the stairs to their bedroom. There, in a warm circle of light from the bedside lamp Penny would be reading. “I’ll be with you in a sec, honey, I only have a couple of pages left.”
But then she’d read on and on, way past the end of the chapter.
Penny had nagged and nagged about going to their reunion. It’d give them their first vacation in almost two years, she’d see her native New England again, and they’d get a chance to connect with old friends. Lou cringed. He wouldn’t have minded going when he was on top of the world, but now, he didn’t want to feel like a loser among his old-time, successful buddies. On the other hand, this might be an opportunity to network with some of those guys, put out his feelers, who knows, maybe even land another job. And even if a job lead didn’t come of it, the reunion would give Lou the chance to show off little Louie to the fellows. None of those guys had had the balls to get married yet, much less have a son. If nothing else, he had sure beat them all to fatherhood.