The Writing Circle Read online

  “Aside from Bernard and Virginia, who were actually married to each other,” she said, “are there pairings I should know about?”

  “Nothing currently,” said Chris. “Though I’m sure you know that Gillian and Bernard had their moment. Gillian and I, appearances to the contrary—and I am speaking ironically here—have yet to have our moment.”

  Nancy hadn’t known about Gillian and Bernard, though it did not surprise her. She was probably one of the few women she knew whom Bernard had not slept with.

  “In case you or anyone wondered,” said Nancy, “I’m happy to see people outside of class. But I do live with someone.”

  “Of course I wondered. I knew you weren’t married and thought it would help to set things straight, right at the start.”

  “So that’s why you invited me out for lunch?”

  “Not exactly,” said Chris. “Though, to be honest with you, it’s better to know these things than to make a fool of oneself, which, as you may have heard, I’ve done more than once in my life.”

  “No,” said Nancy, smiling. “I haven’t heard. But I’m still waiting to hear the real reason you invited me.”

  “I just wanted you to know that, in spite of whatever Bernard may have told you, I’m really happy to have you in the Leopardi Circle.”

  Bernard had told her that the decision to accept her hadn’t been unanimous, but he hadn’t told her that Chris was the holdout.

  “Then tell me,” said Nancy, “just between us, as new friends now, how come you voted against me?”

  Chris smiled a big smile. It was obviously a smile that had served him well in the past in his dealings with women. The waitress had come with their order, and Chris waited until she left before speaking again.

  “Truth is,” he began, “it had nothing to do with you personally. I just thought we had enough highfalutin literary types, and I wanted a better balance.”

  “Who’s weighing in on the highfalutin side?” asked Nancy.

  “Gillian, obviously. It would take a warehouse of ordinary folks to balance her. And Bernard—I know he’s your buddy, but you have to admit he is a literary icon. And Virginia, although she’s a sweetie.”

  “I gather you don’t like Gillian.”

  “Nobody likes Gillian,” said Chris. “She isn’t someone to like. She’s someone to revere. And I, along with everyone else, revere her.”

  “But you do like Virginia.”

  “Virginia is the real thing, but thoroughly unpretentious. She’s the one who brought me into the clan—did you know that?”

  “No,” said Nancy. She had wondered about Chris; he seemed so professionally at odds with everyone else. “I didn’t realize you knew her.”

  “I lived in the same house as her daughter, Rachel. First-floor apartment, Rachel was upstairs. It was right when I’d moved to the area after marriage number two tanked. Rachel and her husband took pity on me when they found out I was alone for Thanksgiving and invited me to join them for their family dinner.”

  Chris was quiet for a moment, poked at the quesadilla on his plate. He looked up at Nancy. “I had tried to call my boys to wish them a happy Thanksgiving, and their bitch of a mother wouldn’t let me talk to them. I was pretty shaken up, and Virginia put her plump arm around my shoulder and did one of her ‘there, theres.’ Very comforting.”

  “Yes,” said Nancy, “I can see Virginia doing that.”

  “Virginia and Helene—she’s the one who, how shall we say, dropped out for good?—had talked about starting something. They asked Bernard, and he asked Gillian. There was another guy—named Dick Smollett of all things—who came onboard. He nabbed a MacArthur, stopped writing, but that’s another story. Then Virginia asked me. Felt sorry for me, no doubt. I think it was a shock to all when they found out the kind of thing I write. But by then it was too late, I was one of them.”

  “But do you like being ‘one of them’?”

  “I feel I am among the elect. As you will, too, now that you are also ‘one of them.’ But I want to warn you, Nancy, protect your heart, because they will undermine your confidence in your writing, in yourself.”

  “That sounds ominous,” said Nancy, laughing a little. “Who is this ‘they’? Anyone in particular?”

  “It’s just the way it works. But Gillian’s the one you need to watch out for especially.”

  “So, that’s another reason you invited me to lunch: to warn me?”

  “You seem like a good person, Nancy. You deserve to be warned.”

  “If it’s so bad, then why be part of the Leopardi Circle?” asked Nancy.

  “Ah—that’s the mystery, isn’t it?” said Chris. “Because it’s the crème de la crème of the local literati. Because of its pretentious name. Not my choice, in case you wondered; it was Helene’s.”

  “Yes, Bernard told me.”

  “People indulge the dying,” said Chris. “Even Gillian came onboard with the name, though she initially resisted since the suggestion hadn’t originated with her. I’ve come to appreciate the irony of such an erudite mascot for a bunch of hacks like us. And this fellow, Giacomo Leopardi, was, appropriately—as Helene pointed out—tortured, pessimistic, and, above all, passionate.”

  “Pessimistic hacks?” asked Nancy, smiling.

  “Not you, of course,” said Chris.

  Nancy moved her plate to the side of the table so the waitress would know she was done.

  “You haven’t finished your sandwich,” said Chris.

  “Chipotle sauce on the turkey,” said Nancy in a low voice. “Not a success.”

  “You should have asked for something else,” said Chris. “Or are you the sort who doesn’t like to make fusses in restaurants?”

  “I’m the sort,” said Nancy.

  “I could have guessed,” said Chris. “In that case, why don’t you let me pick up the tab?”

  Nancy’s face betrayed her surprise. She had assumed from the start that Chris was picking up the tab. Chris smiled. “I was just kidding,” he said. “Did you think I’m the kind of guy who asks someone out to lunch and then expects them to pay?”

  “Frankly,” said Nancy, “I didn’t know.”

  Chris just shook his head, his mouth turned down like a little boy’s. Nancy could see why women—other women, that is—would find him appealing. When they left the restaurant, he walked her to her car. He wasn’t a tall man—only a few inches taller than she. Sitting down, he looked as if he might be as tall as Oates, who was just over six feet.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” he asked.

  “No,” said Nancy.

  “You seemed, how shall I describe it, somewhat depressed at lunch.”

  “I did?”

  “The look on your face, in those odd moments when you didn’t think I was looking at you.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I couldn’t help wondering if it was something I’d said, or done. Or maybe just me, my presence . . . ?”

  Had she been depressed? She realized she had been. It surprised her that Chris had noticed. “Not you at all,” she said. “It’s just that I passed by a friend’s farm before lunch. The vet was there, and her horse—a horse I’ve grown somewhat attached to—was lying down in the field. I’m afraid he’s not going to make it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Chris. He did not say, as any number of people might have, “Oh, just a horse.”

  “Are you an equestrian?” he asked after a moment.

  “Nothing like that,” said Nancy. “I rode when I was young, but I don’t much anymore.”

  Chris stopped on the sidewalk and tilted his head to look at her. “I can picture you,” he said, “one of those wealthy little girls in a riding habit and flesh-colored jodhpurs going over jumps, your blond hair flipping up on the sides.” Chris ran his finger along the bottom edge of her hair so it rose and fell.

  “My hair was under my helmet,” said Nancy. “And we weren’t wealthy, my father was a schoolteacher. And the jumps weren’t very
high.”

  “Thank you for lunch,” said Chris. And before she had a chance to worry about whether he was going to lean forward and kiss her good-bye, he held out his hand for her to shake.

  TO HELP COVER THE EXPENSE of her horseback riding when she was a girl, Nancy worked at the stable. She was allowed unlimited riding on a horse named Star, an old gelding with a lopsided trot and a habit of shying at jumps. It was almost like having her own horse, but she knew the difference. There were other girls who owned horses they boarded at the barn—horses worth thousands of dollars—and they didn’t do stable work.

  The school bus dropped Nancy off at the barn, and then one of her parents picked her up before dinner. If she was running late, her mother would wait for her in the car, but her father would always come in and give her a hand finishing up. On weekend mornings when Nancy’s father drove her to the barn, she’d turn out Star in the fenced pasture, and then her father would help with her chores. They’d work in companionable quiet, dividing up what needed to be done—raking up manure, spreading fresh wood chips, filling water buckets—without ever discussing it. It was a secret between them. Not that Nancy’s mother had ever stated that the chores should all be done by Nancy herself, but there was an unspoken understanding between Nancy and her father that her mother might not approve of his doing any of the work.

  One late afternoon in winter, after they’d given Star his grain and hay, they lingered for a while, leaning on the half door of Star’s stall. They stood together, Nancy’s father’s arm around her, listening to Star eat, to the swish of his tail, and the occasional soft whinnies from other horses in the barn.

  “We should be pushing on,” her father said, “it’s about time for dinner.” But they hadn’t left just then; they just stood there, smelling the comforting smells of hay and wood chips and warm manure, and listening to the sweet peacefulness of the barn.

  Most often when Nancy thought about her father, she thought of things he said. But strangely, he was most present in memories like this one, when nothing was said and when nothing much was happening—just a horse eating his hay, and darkness settling in around a lighted barn.

  WHEN NANCY GOT BACK TO HER HOUSE, she started turning in to her driveway, then backed out again and kept going along the road. She slowed as she neared the Kleinholz farm. The vet’s black pickup was gone from the driveway. There was a raw, brown rectangle in the far corner of the field where Jackie had been lying, as if someone had just prepared the ground for a new garden.

  “No!” Nancy cried out. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  She drove up to the Kleinholzes’ house and ran up to the back door. Teresa was in the kitchen baking pumpkin muffins. The first batch, on a cooling rack on the counter, had been overdone, and the kitchen smelled of burned pumpkin.

  “What happened to Jackie?” Nancy asked.

  “A virus of some kind,” said Teresa. “He got so weak he couldn’t stand. So the vet put him down.”

  “And he was buried, right there?”

  “That’s the way it’s done,” said Teresa. She laid her fingers on Nancy’s forearm. “Herb Miller came over with his backhoe. We were lucky to get him to come right over.”

  It was Nancy who was crying.

  “He was an old horse,” said Teresa.

  OATES’S FLIGHT WAS DELAYED, so Nancy ate dinner by herself, leftover ravioli that she didn’t bother to heat up. When his car finally pulled up in the driveway, it was almost eleven. They didn’t even make it upstairs; they made love in the kitchen, standing up, Nancy with her back against the counter.

  In bed, later, on the clean sheets that still carried a hint of lavender, Nancy told Oates about Jackie dying and being buried, about lunch with Chris, who warned her about the jeopardy of joining the Leopardi Circle, about licorice (which Oates liked as much as she did), now a pariah of candies.

  “That’s a lot to think about,” said Oates. “Do you think you can add one more thing?”

  “It depends what it is,” said Nancy.

  “It’s that I want you to marry me,” said Oates.

  “We’ve talked about this before,” said Nancy.

  “We’ve talked about it,” said Oates, “but I’ve never formally asked you before. So I’m asking you tonight.”

  “Why tonight?”

  “Flying in tonight, I was looking out at the lights in the distance—little yellow lights, houses, towns—wondering if I could see yours. They were the only lights that mattered to me. I thought, if you are all that matters to me, shouldn’t we be everything, shouldn’t we be married?”

  “It still frightens me a little,” said Nancy. “I like us the way we are.”

  “You’re afraid if I become your husband, you’ll lose me?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Nancy softly.

  “That was someone else, a long time ago,” said Oates. “Not me. I’m not going to leave you. I promise.”

  “Do you want an answer tonight?” asked Nancy.

  “If it’s ‘yes,’ then I would like to know as soon as possible. I’d like to go to sleep knowing that.”

  Nancy curled up in the crook of Oates’s arm. “It’s yes,” she said.

  It was so quiet she could hear the river straining against its banks behind the house. She could hear the sweet thump, thump, thump, thump of Oates’s heart. So quiet, she could almost hear the Kleinholzes’ mare pawing at the wood chips in her stall.

  Chris

  WHILE HE WAS MANAGING EDITOR OF THE YORKTOWN TRIBUNE, Chris had contributed a preface for a collection of articles written by one of their columnists. The book had a small print run, but it was handsomely published in a blue cloth binding with gold letters, and the jacket featured a Vermeer print. Chris had never paid attention to book quality before this, but the heft and well-craftedness of this book pleased him. And he was excited by its longevity. For over a year the book presided on the table beside the sofa, the cover solid, the pages still white. In contrast, the pages of the Trib yellowed, dried up on the edges and curled, like leaves. Even the issues saved in their morgue aged poorly.

  Chris had always been attracted to journalism because of its presence, its energy, its speed. When he first came to the Trib as a reporter, he had covered town meetings, zoning board meetings, planning board meetings, and it was a thrill that he could attend a meeting, distill everything that happened, and the next afternoon it was there in print: solid, news. It was as if his brain was pulling the world together for his readers. His take on things was there on people’s doorsteps the next morning. And every news item was followed by another. Everything was always new.

  It was only after the publication of the book of articles that the evanescence of newspapers began to depress him. A brilliant series he’d done on rural poverty (a series that should have won a Pulitzer) ended up in the recycling bin along with everything else. On newsprint it was no different from the weekly horoscope, from the engagement announcements, from the ads for Prime Foods’ sale of capons. The pages of the Trib, his words, his thoughts, lined parakeet cages, were shat on by gerbils, peed on by incontinent puppies, were crumpled up and used to start fires in woodstoves. Sometimes—more often than not—they were not even read. Sometimes, when subscribers went on vacation and neglected to inform the circulation department, the paper sat in sodden piles on doorsteps.

  Books, Chris imagined, lasted forever. Or at least as good as forever. He was smart, he was a crackerjack writer, so why squander his talent on newsprint? With fiction, you were supposed to write about something familiar. He knew about a suburban New York newspaper. He knew about small-town politics. He knew about small-town crime. It was all there for him—all he needed to do was put it together.

  It was around this time that his marriage to his first wife, his college girlfriend, faltered, then came to an end. Valerie was a social worker in a teenage residential facility and often worked the weekend shift, the only time that he was off. They rarely spent time together and came to realize they didn’t m
ind. Not that he exited gracefully. A brief and stupid affair with a friend of hers at the very time he and Valerie were making a halfhearted attempt at reconciliation guaranteed that Valerie would feel resentful towards him the rest of their post-married life. Valerie’s friend patched things up with Valerie but turned nasty towards him, even though it was she who had pushed their indiscretion and he who had merely consented, consented because—well, because he wanted to please her. He liked pleasing women. And this is what befuddled him. How was it that, although he loved women so much, his relationships with them inevitably ended with them turning against him? He marveled at Bernard and Virginia.

  Alone, Chris wrote his first novel. He sold it after only six months of trying. The advance was small, but, heady with his success, he ditched his job at the Trib. He was a writer now, a real writer. He sublet a friend’s vacation house in rural Massachusetts for a month, then decided to stay put in the area. From the profit on the sale of the house in Westchester, even split two ways, he had enough to live on for more than a year. After Valerie, he had three intense relationships in quick succession, each one begun with the conviction that this was the woman he would spend the rest of his life with.

  The first, Julie, was in the landscaping business. She gave him wonderful massages, but she took astrology seriously. The relationship lasted only a few months. The next, Simone, was a reference librarian. She was overqualified for her job at the local library, underpaid, and insufficiently ambitious. That lasted somewhat longer. The third, Susan Pratt, was a rising vice president in the mortgage department of a commercial bank. She had lots of drive, which in hindsight he realized he mistook for passion. Although initially she seemed attracted by the fact that he was a writer, after they were married she grew increasing irritated with his unstructured work schedule and the unpredictability of his income. Within three years they had produced two sons, he had produced two more novels, and he had acquired yet another ex-wife who (unfathomably, he felt) despised him. Susan was more venomous than Valerie, and unlike Valerie she had two weapons to use against him. Samuel and Benjamin (Susan refused to allow them to go by the nicknames Sam and Ben) had inherited their mother’s thin face, but they had his dark, big eyes. It surprised Chris how much he loved them. How unequivocally.