‘I understand you’re on the radio,’ Jack Flanders said to Sarah later that evening, when the adults were alone in the living room.
‘Oh, not any more,’ she said, looking pleased. ‘That’s all over now.’ In the early fifties she had served as ‘hostess’ for a Saturday morning housewives’ program on the local Suffolk County radio station – Emily had heard it once, and thought she did very well – but the program had expired after eighteen months. ‘It was only a little local station,’ Sarah explained, ‘but I did enjoy it – especially writing the scripts. I love to write.’
And that led her into a subject she had clearly wanted to bring up for hours: she was writing a book. One of Geoffrey Wilson’s ancestors on his mother’s side, a New York man named George Fall, had been a Western pioneer. Together with a small group of other Easterners he had helped to clear and settle part of what was now Montana. Little was known about George Fall, but he had written many letters home during his adventures, and one of his nephews had transcribed them into the form of a pamphlet, privately printed, a copy of which had come into Geoffrey Wilson’s possession.
‘It’s fascinating stuff,’ Sarah said. ‘Of course, it’s pretty hard to read – it’s all in this very quaint, old-fashioned style, and you have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps – but the material’s all there. I figured somebody’s got to do a book on this; it might as well be me.’
‘Well, that’s – quite an undertaking, Sarah,’ Emily said, and Jack said it certainly did sound interesting.
Oh, the project was still in the very early stages, she assured them, as if to minimize their envy; she had made a rough outline, finished the Introduction and done a first draft of the opening chapter, but the chapter still needed work. She didn’t even have a title yet, though she was thinking of calling it George Fall’s America, and she would have to do a lot of library research on the period as she went along. The book would take time, but she loved doing it – and it was a wonderful feeling just to be doing something again.
‘Mm,’ Emily said. ‘I can imagine.’
‘Might even be a little money in it,’ Tony said, chuckling. ‘That’d cert’ly be a wonderful feeling.’
Sarah looked shy, and then suddenly bold. ‘Would you like to hear my Introduction?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t often I have an audience of two real writers. Darling?’ she said to her husband. ‘Why don’t you fix us all another drink, and then I’ll read my Introduction.’
With her shoes off and her ankles snug beneath her buttocks, holding her trembling manuscript high in one hand and allowing her voice to fill out to the timbre appropriate for a small lecture hall, Sarah began to read aloud.
The Introduction told of how George Fall’s letters had been preserved, and of how they had provided the basis for this book. There followed a brief summary of his travels that included many dates and place-names, and even that was easy to listen to: Emily was surprised at how well the sentences flowed; but then, Sarah’s radio script had surprised her too.
Tony looked sleepy during the reading – he had probably heard it before – and his tolerant downcast smile, as he stared at his drink, seemed to say that if this sort of thing gave the little woman pleasure, well and good.
Sarah had reached her conclusion:
‘George Fall was in many ways a noble man, but he was not unique. In his time there were countless others like him – men who dared, who gave up comfort and security to confront a wilderness, to face adversity against seemingly hopeless odds, to conquer a continent. In a very real sense, then, the story of George Fall is the story of America.’
She put the manuscript down, looking shy again, and took a deep drink of whiskey and water.
‘That’s excellent, Sarah,’ Emily said. ‘Really excellent.’ And Jack said something polite to show he was in total agreement.
‘Well, it probably needs work,’ Sarah said, ‘but that’s the general idea.’
‘… Your sister’s very sweet,’ Jack Flanders said when he and Emily were on the train going home. ‘And she does write well; I wasn’t just saying that.’
‘I wasn’t just saying it either. I know she does. I can’t get over how soft and dumpy she’s getting, though. She used to have the most beautiful figure I’ve ever seen.’
‘Yeah, well, that happens to a lot of full-blown women,’ he said. ‘That’s why I like ’em skinny. No, but I see what you mean about your brother-in-law; he is kind of a boor.’
‘I always get the most terrible headaches when I go out there,’ Emily said. ‘I don’t know why, but it never fails. Could you sort of rub the back of my neck?’
Chapter 2
Iowa City was a pleasant town, built in the shadow of the university along a slow river. Some of the straight, tree-lined, sun-splashed residential streets reminded Emily of illustrations in The Saturday Evening Post – was this what America really did look like? – and she wanted to live in one of their ample old white houses; but then they discovered a small, odd-looking stone bungalow on a dirt road in the country, four miles out of town. It had been built as an artist’s studio, the real estate lady explained; that accounted for the outsized living room and the tall picture window. ‘It wouldn’t be at all practical for people with children,’ she said, ‘but for just the two of you it might be fun.’
They bought a cheap used car and spent several evenings exploring the countryside, which turned out to be far less monotonous than they’d expected. ‘I thought it’d be all cornfields and prairies,’ Emily said, ‘didn’t you? And here are all these rolling hills and woods – oh, and doesn’t the air smell wonderful?’
‘Mm. Yeah.’
And it was always a pleasure to come home to the little house.
Soon there was a staff meeting from which Jack returned in an exultant mood. ‘I don’t mean to depart from my customary boyish modesty, baby,’ he said, pacing the floor with a drink in his hand, ‘but I happen to be the best poet they’ve got out here. Maybe the only one. Jesus, you ought to meet these other clowns – you ought to read them.’
She didn’t read them, but she met them, at several raucous and confusing parties.
‘I liked the older man,’ she told Jack as they drove home one night. ‘What’s his name? Hugh Jarvis?’
‘Yeah, well, Jarvis is okay, I guess. He wrote some good stuff twenty years ago, but he’s washed up now. What’d you think of that little bastard Krueger?’
‘He seemed very shy. I liked his wife, though; she’s – interesting. She’s somebody I’d like to get to know.’
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘Well, if that means having the Kruegers out for dinner, or anything like that, you’d better forget about it right now. I don’t want that phony little son of a bitch in my house.’
And so there was no one in the house but themselves. They were isolated. Jack had set up his work table in a corner of the main room and he sat there for most of the day, hunched over his pencil.
‘You ought to use the little room for working,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t that be better?’
‘No. I like being able to look up and see you. Moving in and out of the kitchen, hauling the vacuum cleaner, whatever the hell you’re doing. Lets me know you’re really here.’
One morning, when the housework was done, she brought out her portable typewriter and set it up as far as possible across the room from him.
A NEW YORKER DISCOVERS THE MIDDLE WEST Except for parts of New Jersey, and maybe Pennsylvania, I had always pictured everything between the Hudson River and the Rockies as a wasteland.
‘Writing a letter?’ Jack inquired.
‘No; something else. Just a sort of idea I have. Does the typewriter bother you?’
‘Course not.’
The idea had been simmering in her mind for days, complete with that title and that lead; now she settled down to work.
There was Chicago, of course, a gritty and inadequate oasis to the north, and there were isolated spots like Madison, Wisconsin, renowned for t
heir quaintly charming imitations of Eastern culture, but for the most part there was nothing to be found ‘out there’ but vast reaches of corn and wheat and stifling ignorance. The cities bustled with people like George F. Babbitt; the numberless small towns were haunted by what F. Scott Fitzgerald called ‘their interminable inquisitions that spared only the children and the very old.’
Was it any wonder that all the famous writers born in the Middle West had fled it as soon as they could? Oh, they might indulge themselves in sad rhapsodies about it afterwards, but that was only nostalgia; you never heard of them going back there to live.
As an Easterner, born in New York itself, I greatly enjoyed showing stray, bewildered Middle Western visitors through my part of the world. Here, I would explain; this is the way we
‘Is this idea of yours a big secret?’ Jack called from across the room. ‘Or can you tell me about it?’
‘Oh, it’s just – I don’t know exactly what it is. It might turn into a magazine piece or something.’
‘Oh?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just fooling around.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m doing, too.’
On Mondays and Thursdays he disappeared into the campus, and when he came back he was always on edge – either chagrined or exhilarated, depending on how his class had gone.
‘Ah, these kids,’ he grumbled once, pouring himself a drink, ‘these fucking kids. Give ’em half a chance and they’ll eat you alive.’
He drank too much on the good days, too, but he was better company: ‘Hell, this job’s a breeze, baby, if you don’t try too hard. Walk in there and talk about what you know, and they lap it up as if they’d never heard it before.’
‘Maybe they never have heard it before,’ she said. ‘I imagine you must be a very good teacher. You’ve certainly taught me a lot.’
‘Yeah?’ He looked shy and greatly pleased. ‘About poetry, you mean?’
‘About everything. About the world. About life.’
And that night they could scarcely wait to be finished with their cooling dinner before they fell into bed.
‘Oh, Emily,’ he said, stroking and fondling her. ‘Oh, baby, you know what you are? I keep saying “You’re great” and “You’re perfect” and “You’re tremendous,” but none of those words are right. You know what you are? You’re magic. You’re magic.’
He told her she was magic so many times, on so many nights, that she finally said ‘Jack, I wish you’d stop saying that.’
‘Why?’
‘Just because. It’s getting a little old.’
‘“Old,” huh? Okay.’ And he seemed hurt.
But she had never seen him happier than when he came home three hours late on one of his class days, a week or so later. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I got to drinking with some of the kids after school. Did you eat?’
‘Not yet; it’s all in the oven.’
‘Damn. I would’ve called you, but I wasn’t watching the time.’
‘That’s all right.’
As they ate dried-out pork chops, which he washed down with bourbon and water, he couldn’t stop talking. ‘The damnedest thing: there’s this kid Jim Maxwell – have I told you about him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Big, burly guy; comes from some godforsaken place in south Texas, wears cowboy boots and all that. He always scares me in class because he’s so tough – and so smart. Damn good poet, too, at least he will be soon. Anyway, tonight he waited until all the other kids’d left the bar, so it was just the two of us having one last round, and he gave me this very squinty look and said he had something to tell me. Then he said – damn, baby, this is too much – he said that when he read my first book it changed his life. Isn’t that the God damnedest thing?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s a great compliment.’
‘No, but I mean I can’t get over it. Can you imagine me writing anything that could change the life of some total stranger in south Texas?’ And he forked a slice of pork chop into his mouth and chewed it mightily, savoring his pleasure.
By November he had come to admit, or rather to insist, that his own work wasn’t going well at all. He would get up from his desk many times a day to stalk the floor, flipping cigarette butts into the fireplace (the bed of ashes in the fireplace became so choked with cigarette butts that only a roaring log fire would burn them out), and saying things like ‘Who the hell ever said I was supposed to be a poet anyway?’
‘Can I read some of what you’ve been working on?’ she asked once.
‘No. You’d only lose what little respect for me you have left. You know what it’s like? It’s like bad light verse. Not even good light verse. Dum de dum de dum, and dum de diddly poo. I should’ve been a songwriter in the nineteen thirties, only I probably would’ve failed even at that. It’d take about twenty-seven of me to make an Irving Berlin.’ He stood slumped and staring out the big window at the yellowed grass and naked trees. ‘I read an interview with Irving Berlin once,’ he said. ‘The guy asked him what his greatest fear was, and he said “Some day I’m going to reach for it, and it isn’t going to be there.” Well, that’s me, baby. I know I had it – I could feel it, the way you feel blood in your veins – and now I reach for it and reach for it, and it isn’t there.’
Then the long white Middle Western winter settled in. Jack went back to New York to visit his children over Christmas, and she had the little house to herself. It was lonely at first, until she found she rather enjoyed being alone. She tried working on her magazine article, but its dense, clotted paragraphs seemed to be getting nowhere; then on the third day she received an ebullient Christmas letter from her sister. She had been exclusively concerned with Jack Flanders for so long that it was oddly refreshing to sit down with this letter and remember who she was.
… All is well at Great Hedges, and all send their love. Tony has been putting in much overtime, so we rarely get to see him. The boys are thriving …
Sarah’s handwriting was still the neat, girlish script she had taught herself in junior high school. (‘Well, it’s sweet handwriting, dear,’ Pookie had told her, ‘but it’s a little affected. Never mind, though; it’ll develop more sophistication as you get older.’) Emily skimmed through the inconsequential parts of the letter until she came to the meat of it:
As you may know, Pookie has lost her job – the real estate agency went bankrupt – and naturally we’ve been very concerned about her. But Geoffrey has come up with a very generous solution. He is fixing up the apartment over the garage into a nice little home for her, where she can live rent-free. She is eligible for Social Security. Tony feels it may be a little awkward having her here, and I agree – not that I don’t love her, but you know what I mean – but I’m sure we’ll all manage.
Now for the other big news: we are about to inherit the Main House! Geoffrey and Edna will be moving back to New York in the spring – she hasn’t been at all well, & he is tired of the long commute & wants to be closer to his office. When they move out, we’ll move in, and rent out the cottage for some badly needed income. Can you picture me taking care of that enormous place?
I have shelved George Fall because it turned out that I couldn’t proceed very far without doing research in Montana. Can you imagine me ever getting to Montana? I am still writing, though, planning a series of humorous sketches about family life – the kind of thing Cornelia Otis Skinner does so well. I admire her work tremendously.
There was more – Sarah always ended her letters on a cheerful note, even if she had to force it – but the essential sadness of the message from St. Charles was clear.
When Jack got home he was filled with high purpose. No more fooling around, he announced. No more drinking too much every night. Above all, no more letting the students’ work take up so much of his time. Did she realize he’d let things slide to the point where he was working on student manuscripts almost every day? What kind of nonsense was that?
&nb
sp; ‘… Because here’s the thing, Emily: I did a lot of thinking on this trip. Did me good to get away and kind of put things in perspective. The point is I think I do have a book. And the only thing that stands in the way of getting it done by summer – the only thing – is my own half-assedness. If I’m careful, and lucky – you have to be lucky as well as careful – I can bring it off.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘That’s wonderful, Jack.’
The winter seemed to go on forever. The furnace broke down twice – they had to huddle at the fireplace all day wearing sweaters and coats, with blankets around their shoulders – and the car broke down three times. Even when both were in working order there was a pattern of bleak discomfort to the days. Going into town meant putting on heavy socks and boots, wrapping a muffler up to your chin and shivering until the car heater blew warm, gasoline-scented air in your face, then driving the four treacherous miles on ice and snow, under a sky as close and white as the snow itself.
One day when Emily was finished at the supermarket – she had learned how not to be stultified by the supermarket, how to deal with it in quick, competent movements that brought results – she sat for a long time in the steaming brilliance of the laundromat. She watched the whirl of suds and soaked cloth in the porthole of her machine; then she watched the other customers, trying to guess which were students and which were faculty and which were people from the town. She bought a chocolate bar and it tasted surprisingly good – as if, without her knowing it, sitting here and eating this chocolate was the one thing she had wanted to do all day. Waiting for the drying cycle to end she began to feel a vague dread, but it wasn’t until she was at the warm, lint-speckled folding table that she figured it out: she didn’t want to go home. And it wasn’t the drive through snow and ice she dreaded, it was going home to Jack.
‘Ah, that fucking Krueger,’ he said on slamming into the house one evening in February. ‘I’d like to kick his balls in, if he has any.’