The Writing Circle Page 9

  THE MORNING OF HIS COLONOSCOPY, Chris waited in the living room for his sister, Lydia, to turn up. She lived in Boston, two hours away, but had volunteered to pick him up after the procedure. They would only release him into the care of someone who undertook responsibility for him, and one of the excuses he had used to postpone the procedure was he had no one he could ask to do that. And because she didn’t trust that he wouldn’t come up with a last-minute excuse to cancel the appointment, Lydia had planned to drive him to it as well. The sacrifice of time and all the planning required to make this possible should have endeared Lydia to Chris. Certainly she loved him and had his best interests at heart. But Chris—in spite of being something of a hypochondriac—was phobic about medical procedures, and now that he was facing what he believed was one of the world’s most dreaded, he blamed Lydia entirely. He didn’t like the idea of some wire probe snaking itself up inside his body, a miniature light lighting the way and a miniature camera recording everything it saw, invading the privacy of his intestines. Certainly there were dark recesses of his body that were meant to remain mysterious. On their own, they functioned in perfect synchrony. Why provoke them?

  Chris’s golden retriever, Maybe, raced to the door, tail wagging, when Lydia arrived. Chris had bought Maybe as a gift for Sam and Ben, but Susan’s response to the puppy had been to call Chris irresponsible within earshot of the boys and to make him take it home with him.

  “How are you holding up?” Lydia asked Chris after she had paid attention to Maybe and wiped the dog drool off on her jeans.

  “How do you think?” asked Chris.

  “Oh, poor baby,” said Lydia. She gave Chris a hug. “You’ll see, it will be over in no time and you’ll feel silly for having been so worried about it.”

  “If I am still alive,” said Chris.

  “Really, Chris, people don’t usually die because of a colonoscopy.”

  “No, Lyddie, they die because of the humiliation.”

  Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “Get your coat,” she said.

  AT THE MEDICAL FACILITY (at least it wasn’t a hospital), Lydia waved good-bye to Chris as he went through the door to the ominous back quarters when his name was called. In an overbrightly lit dressing room, he took off his clothes, as required, and put on a thoroughly inadequate smock and a pair of socks with rubber treads on their soles. Ben and Sam had worn socks like that when they were little. A nurse instructed him to put his clothing in a small locker and helped him lock it up and put the elastic key chain on his wrist. He hadn’t realized his hands were shaking.

  “You might want to give me that watch of yours,” she said, pointing at his other wrist. “I’ll bring it out to your wife for safekeeping.”

  “My sister,” said Chris, as he removed the watch and surrendered it to her. Since their last names were the same, it was a reasonable mistake, though they looked enough alike that most observant people guessed they were related. And now, once again, Chris felt a pang of wifelessness. While he was fortunate to have a sister who cared for him enough to accompany him to his colonoscopy, it was pitiable that he had no one else in his life whom he could ask. No wife, no lover. Not even a good friend.

  The room Chris was led to had reclining lounge chairs lined up all around it, each in an area partitioned off with curtains. The linoleum floor was so highly polished the surface looked wet. In a wild second he fantasized dashing across to the exit and was grateful for the no-skid socks. But it was already too late. He was seated in the reclining chair and a nurse with a soothing voice was going over his medical history, asking him questions he was certain he had already answered on the form. She’d introduced herself as Julie, and while she went over in more detail than he cared to know what exactly he had in store for him, he kept his terror at bay by thinking about the Other Julie, the one he’d been in love with, briefly, a decade ago. The Other Julie wore khaki shorts rolled up high on her thighs, and heavy boots. She had long, frizzy blond hair, which she held back with a bandanna. She shaved her armpits for him, but not her legs.

  “This will just be a little pinch,” said This Julie, and she stuck a needle into the top of his hand and threaded a slender plastic tube into his vein.

  The chair, he discovered, was like a giant baby carriage. He was wheeled through swinging doors, down a corridor to an operating room, where he was hoisted up on a table under a light that glared. There was a television screen hooked up to a lot of equipment. A doctor who looked like an overweight Woody Allen repeated information about the procedure. There were other nurses around, talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, and he was in a reclining chair again, in a curtained cubicle, though not the one he had been in before. A nurse he wasn’t sure if he had seen before was offering him juice and crackers.

  “Everything was fine,” said the doctor, leaning over him. But then it was Lydia who was leaning over him, saying, “See, I was right, wasn’t I? It wasn’t much of anything at all.”

  “I was right,” said Chris. “They didn’t find anything wrong, so this whole thing was unnecessary.”

  Later, home on his sofa with Maybe lying on the floor beside him, Chris argued with Lydia about what he had said in the recovery area.

  “You told the doctor you had found it fascinating to watch the procedure on the screen and were planning to use the experience in your next novel.”

  “I never said anything like that,” insisted Chris. “And I didn’t watch anything on the screen. I was out, asleep, before they even began.”

  “That drug plays with your memory,” said Lydia. “I wasn’t there during the procedure, so I can’t tell you what you saw. But I was there in the recovery area, and I heard your long conversation with the doctor.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Chris. “I can’t believe I was conscious and don’t remember a thing.”

  “That’s why they recommend you not sign any legal documents for a day after, so the drug can wear off.”

  Lydia leaned down and smoothed Chris’s hair back off his forehead. “I’m going to make you something to eat,” she said.

  While she was in the kitchen, Chris started to doze, but shook himself awake. He had always known there were drugs that produced such potent forgetfulness, but experiencing it himself, a drug that could make part of his own life inaccessible to him, the one person who should have access to it, was a different matter. He would use this in his new book.

  Lydia brought him lunch, walked Maybe, and then got ready to go back to her own life, to her husband and her daughter.

  “Will you be all right on your own?” Lydia asked him.

  “Sure,” said Chris.

  “You promise you’ll take it easy and won’t do anything stupid?”

  “I promise, Lyddie,” said Chris. “I’m beat. I’ll probably just watch a movie, then go to bed. And if I have any energy, the most I’ll do is work on the chapter I’m bringing to my coven on Sunday.”

  “How’s that been going?” asked Lydia.

  “We got a new member. A fiction writer named Nancy Markopolis.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of her.”

  “Not many people have,” said Chris. “I took her to lunch yesterday. Nice woman. She has a slightly prissy look and a patrician manner, but I like her.”

  “Oh no, Chris. Don’t get involved with one of your writer friends,” said Lydia. “You yourself said it would be messy.”

  “Who’s getting involved?” asked Chris.

  “That’s what you always say,” said Lydia.

  “You can relax this time. Apparently Nancy is spoken for.”

  “I wish I could trust you,” said Lydia. “Look, I better get on the road. Give me a call tomorrow and let me know how you’re feeling.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Chris. “And tomorrow I get to take the boys to dinner.”

  “What was this business you were telling me about Susan’s lawyer going after you about the child support?”

  “Susan heard somewhere t
hat I’d been offered six figures for my next book deal and convinced her lawyer that I’ve been in cahoots with my agent to hide assets from her. I had to come up with tax returns, letters from the publisher, affidavits, you name it, so Dave can get it all squared away by the judge’s deadline.”

  “I know that Dave is your old college buddy, Chris,” said Lydia, “but I’m not sure he’s on top of things. It may be time to get yourself a better lawyer.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Lyddie. I trust Dave to get this mess all cleared up in time.”

  Lydia sighed and rested her hand on Chris’s foot. She gave it a shake. She hadn’t liked Susan when Chris first started going out with her and had urged him not to marry her. Chris was grateful that she was kind enough not to remind him of that now.

  THE NEXT DAY CHRIS FELT TIRED OUT but elated by the realization he had survived his colonoscopy. He was grateful to his colon, all thousand feet of it. He was proud of himself for having actually gone through with the procedure, and only a little ashamed of what a hard time he had given Lydia. He sent her a lavish bouquet of flowers.

  At Susan’s house, Chris waited in the car in the driveway for Sam and Ben to come out. He would have liked to have gotten out of the car to embrace his sons, to open the car doors for them, but Susan’s lawyer had been explicit that he was forbidden to set foot on her property, and his lawyer, who agreed this was preposterous, urged him to comply. Ben and Sam were wearing matching navy blue jackets that looked too big for them. At the car door they turned to look back at the house—where Chris saw a head at the window—but they did not wave.

  When the boys first got in the car, they were always subdued. It took a while before Chris could get a smile out of each of them. Chris thought of it as his sons thawing out after he removed them from Susan’s icehouse.

  “So, guys, where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Jimmy’s!” they cried, together. It was their opening routine. Chris always asked, and they always went to Jimmy’s. Originally, their preferred places were fast-food restaurants near the mall, but Chris had managed to win them over to Jimmy’s, a triumph he was particularly happy about. McDonald’s and Friendly’s were the places Susan brought the boys to as a rare treat.

  Jimmy’s was a diner run by Greeks. They had a favorite booth, which they called “our” booth, and Jimmy, the owner, whom Chris had struck up a friendship with, always remembered them by name. Sometimes, when Chris was missing his sons more than he could bear, he drove the eighty miles to Jimmy’s for dinner. He didn’t sit in “our” booth, he sat at the counter, on one of the red Naugahyde, swiveling chairs, and schmoozed with Jimmy when Jimmy wasn’t working the register.

  Chris was always trying to get the boys to try Greek food, but both Sam and Ben were unadventurous eaters. Ben was particularly picky. Once a restaurant had served him a turkey sandwich and had neglected to hold the mayonnaise, and Ben wouldn’t touch the turkey, even after Chris had rubbed all the mayonnaise off with his paper napkin.

  “So how did things go with your poster?” Chris asked Sam. Both boys were sitting across from him in the booth. Ben was pushing the buttons on the jukebox mounted there. Chris had given him a quarter for it, but he couldn’t choose.

  “Okay,” said Sam.

  “Did Ms. Cornwell put it up on the bulletin board?”

  “Yup,” said Sam.

  “That’s great,” said Chris.

  “She puts them all up on the bulletin board,” said Sam. “Even the stupid ones.”

  “Mom wouldn’t let Sam get new markers,” said Ben.

  “How were the old ones?” asked Chris.

  “All dried out,” said Ben.

  “Just the blue and the yellow,” said Sam.

  Chris kept notes on everything the boys told him at these dinners. As a reporter, he’d trained himself to listen well and then quickly write down everything he’d heard as soon as he had a chance. He kept a notebook in his car, and as soon as he dropped his sons off he’d fill a page or two. The note-taking served two purposes. First, he wanted to keep track of all the details of his sons’ lives so they’d feel he was really connected with them, and he didn’t trust himself to remember things. He also wanted to document anything they said that might be useful to him in legal negotiations. He never grilled them about Susan, but some of what he’d picked up would, he felt, make any reasonable judge award him custody. Would make any judge with a heart break down and weep.

  People always commented on how well-behaved Ben and Sam were, and while this gave Chris a moment of pride, it worried him as well.

  “I believe in raising little gentlemen,” Susan had once said. But he was afraid they were too docile, too repressed.

  They had sundaes for dessert—a specialty of the diner. The sundaes were so big Chris always ended up finishing Ben’s, and sometimes Sam’s, too. Both boys were too skinny, Chris thought.

  Ben was bouncing around in his seat.

  “Want to hit the bathroom before we go?” Chris asked him.

  Ben nodded and scooted out from the booth.

  “You all set?” he asked Sam.

  “Uh-huh,” said Sam.

  Sam had saved some of his fries in a paper napkin for Chris to bring back to Maybe, and although Chris knew that they weren’t good for the dog, he took the offering and promised he’d give it to him. He reached across the table and ruffled Sam’s hair, which was cut short and stuck up in front. He wanted to take Sam’s head in both his hands and kiss him on his brow, the way Chris’s father used to kiss him when he was a kid. But he was afraid he might get all teary-eyed. Driving back home after leaving the boys at Susan’s house, he often cried in the car, but he didn’t ever want to cry in front of Sam or Ben.

  Chris had noticed a police cruiser off the side of the road near the entrance to Susan’s driveway, but he didn’t make anything of it. He drove up the driveway and turned off the engine so he could give the boys a good-bye hug. They sat in the back, and he had to reach around the front seat to hug them. He watched the boys run into the house. The door on the breezeway slammed shut after them, but he waited, knowing they’d run through the house and wave good-bye to him from the living room window. He had his eyes on them, their faces framed by the mullions of the bay window, when he realized the police car had come up the driveway behind him and a cop was getting out.

  Chris was fairly certain he hadn’t been speeding—he always drove carefully when the boys were in the car—but maybe this crazy town had a speed trap that he’d missed. He produced his driver’s license for the cop, as requested, and was surprised he wasn’t asked for the car registration as well.

  “Would you please get out of your car,” said the cop. He was a young cop, a foot taller than Chris at least, with large ears that stuck out. The cop asked Chris his name, then studied his face and the photo on the license.

  “What’s going on?” asked Chris.

  “I have a warrant here for your arrest,” said the cop.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” asked Chris.

  “I’m afraid not,” said the cop. “You’re being arrested for failure to pay back child support.” And he showed Chris an official-looking document.

  “Oh, that’s no problem, then,” said Chris. “Everything’s been taken care of. It was all a misunderstanding. My lawyer worked things out with my ex-wife’s lawyer, and I’m in the clear.”

  “Apparently not,” said the cop.

  “But this is crazy,” said Chris. “I gave my lawyer all the necessary papers. I spent days digging out my old tax records to prove I wasn’t hiding secret assets.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the cop. “The governor is cracking down on ‘deadbeat dads,’ and so it’s our job to round them up.”

  “But I’m not a deadbeat dad,” said Chris. “I pay through the nose, every month. I’ve never missed a month.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the cop, again, “but there’s nothing I can do. I have to bring you in to the county jail, and o
nce you’re there, you can get in touch with your lawyer.”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Chris.

  “You might want to leave all your valuables in your car,” said the cop, “because things have a way of disappearing in the jail. And leave your belt, because they’ll just take it away from you.”

  “You got kids?” Chris asked.

  The cop nodded.

  “Then you’ll understand,” said Chris. “I’ve got two boys, Ben and Sam.” He pointed at Susan’s house. “I hadn’t seen them for a week. I drove eighty miles to get here. I got to take them out to dinner, then I had to bring them right back. I won’t get to see them again for another week.”

  “I wish I could help you out,” said the cop, “but I have no choice except to take you in.”

  Chris left his watch and most of the contents of his wallet in the glove compartment of his car. He took off his belt and laid it on the seat. On the console was the paper napkin filled with French fries. The oil had seeped through in places, leaving translucent stains on the paper.

  Chris held the fries out to the cop. “I promised my son I’d bring these back to the dog,” he said.

  The cop shook his head in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  But although he was required to put Chris in handcuffs, he waited till he had backed out of the driveway and they were out of sight of the two small faces in the window.

  Nancy

  SUNDAY MORNING, NANCY FOUND OATES IN THE KITCHEN when she came downstairs. Sunlight from the window divided the room into half brightness, half shadow. Oates stood at the stove, his hand and arm in sunlight. He was humming while he stirred scrambled eggs. He rested the spatula on the edge of the frying pan and turned to kiss her.