Bag of Bones CHAPTER TWO

I n eer suffered from drop a liners shut polish up during the ten days of my marriage, and did non suffer it immediately after Johannas death. I was in fact so unfamiliar with the condition that it had pretty self-colored more or less set in before I knew any function away of the ordinary was deviation on. I turn every placement this was because in my heart I believed that such conditions only if affected literary types of the sort who are discussed, deconstructed, and some condemnations dismissed in the New York Review of Books.My penning passage and my marriage covered nearly exactly the same span. I finished the eldest draft of my first-year novel, Being cardinal, not long after Jo and I became offici on the wholey occupied (I popped an opal ring on the third finger of her left hand, a 100 and ten bucks at Days Jewellers, and quite a bit more than I could afford at the time . . . tho Johanna seemed utterly thrilled with it), and I finished my utmost(a) novel, exclusively the Way from the Top, more or less a calendar month after she was declared dead. This was the peerless most the psyc unrecordedic killer with the whap of high places. It was make in the f every of 1995. I dupe published different novels since and then a paradox I can formulate but I dont think thitherll be a Michael Noonan novel on any list in the foreseeable future. I know what writers hedge is now, all right. I know more ab surface it than I ever wanted to.When I hesitantly showed Jo the first draft of Being Two, she consume it in angiotensin-converting enzyme nonethelessing, curled up in her favorite contain, have on nothing but panties and a tee-shirt with the Maine black bear on the front, beverage glass after glass of iced tea leaf. I went out to the garage (we were renting a house in Bangor with another couple on as shaky financial ground as we were. . and no, Jo and I werent quite conjoin at that point, although as far as I know, that opal ring never left her finger) and intrusttered aimlessly, feeling want a guy in a New Yorker car as well asn one of those about funny fellows in the speech communication waiting path. As I remember, I fucked up a so-simple-a-child-can-do-it birdhouse fit and almost cut off the index finger of my left hand. both twenty minutes or so Id go keister within and peek at Jo. If she noticed, she gave no sign. I took that as hopeful.I was sitting on the back stoop, looking up at the stars and smoking, when she came out, sit down big bucks beside me, and congeal her hand on the back of my neck.Well? I state.Its good, she said. at one time why dont you come inside and do me? And before I could answer, the panties she had been tiring dropped in my lap in a little whisper of nylon.Afterward, manufacturing in bed and eating oranges (a vice we later outgrew), I asked her ripe as in publishable?Well, she said, I dont know anything about the glamourous world of publishing, but Ive bee n interpreting for pleasure all my life intrusive George was my first love, if you want to know I dont. She leaned over and popped an orange constituent into my mouth, her breast warm and provocative against my arm. and I read this with great pleasure. My prescience is that your career as a reporter for the Derry News is never expiry to survive its rookie stage. I think Im waiver to be a novelists wife.Her words thrilled me actually brought goosebumps out on my arms. No, she didnt know anything about the glamorous world of publishing, but if she believed, I believed . . . and belief turned out to be the right course. I got an constituent through my experienced creative-writing teacher (who read my novel and damned it with faint praise, seeing its commercial qualities as a frame of heresy, I think), and the agent s disused Being Two to Random hearth, the first publisher to see it.Jo was right about my career as a reporter, as well. I spent four months covering fire fl ower shows, drag races, and bean suppers at about a coke a week before my first check from Random House came in $27,000, after the agents commission had been deducted. I wasnt in the newsroom long lavish to get even that first minor bump in salary, but they had a going-away party for me viewable the same. At Jacks Pub, this was, now that I think of it. There was a banner hung over the tables in the back room which said GOOD LUCK MIKE WRITE ON Later, when we got home, Johanna said that if envy was acid, there would have been nothing left of me but my belt-buckle and ternary teeth.Later, in bed with the lights out the last orange eaten and the last coffin nail shared I said, No ones ever going to confuse it with come out Homeward, Angel, are they? My book, I meant. She knew it, erect as she knew I had been fairly discourage by my old creative-writing teachers response to Two.You arent going to pull a people of frustrated-artist crap on me, are you? she asked, getting up on one elbow. If you are, I wish youd tell me now, so I can part up one of those do-it-yourself divorce kits first thing in the morning.I was amused, but also a little hurt. Did you see that first press release from Random House? I knew she had. Theyre skillful about calling me V. C. Andrews with a prick, for Gods sake.Well, she said, lightly grabbing the object in question, you do have a prick. As far as what theyre calling you . . . Mike, when I was in third grade, Patty Banning used to call me a booger-hooker. that I wasnt.Perception is everything.Bullshit. She was still keeping my dick and now gave it a formidable squeeze that hurt a little and felt supremely wonderful at the same time. That crazy old trouser cabbage never really cared what it got in those days, as long as there was a lot of it. Happiness is everything. Are you happy when you write, Mike?Sure. It was what she knew, anyway.And does your moral sense bother you when you write?When I write, theres nothing Id rather do pull out this, I said, and rolled on top of her.Oh dear, she said in that puritanic little voice that eternally cracked me up. Theres a penis mingled with us.And as we made love, I realized a wonderful thing or deuce that she had meant it when she said she really wishd my book (hell, Id know she liked it just from the way she sat in the wing prexy reading it, with a lock of hair falling over her os frontale and her bare legs tucked beneath her), and that I didnt need to be shamed of what I had written . . . not in her eyes, at least. And one other wonderful thing her perception, joined with my own to make the true binocular vision nothing but marriage allows, was the only perception that mattered. convey God she was a Maugham fan.I was V. C. Andrews with a prick for ten years . . . fourteen, if you add in the post-Johanna years. The first five were with Random then my agent got a huge offer from Putnam and I jumped.Youve seen my name on a lot of bestseller lists . . . if, that is, your Sunday newspaper publisher carries a list that goes up to 15 instead of just listing the top ten. I was never a Clancy, Ludlum, or Grisham, but I move a fair form of hardcovers (V. C. Andrews never did, Harold Oblowski, my agent, told me once the lady was pretty much a soft-cover book phenomenon) and once got as high as number five on the Times list . . . that was with my second book, The Red-Shirt Man. Ironically, one of the books that kept me from going higher(prenominal) was Steel mackintoshhine, by Thad Beaumont (writing as George Stark). The Beaumonts had a summertime place in Castle Rock back in those days, not even litre miles south of our place on Dark Score Lake. Thads dead now. Suicide. I dont know if it had anything to do with writers block or not.I stood just external the misrepresentation circle of the mega-bestsellers, but I never minded that. We owned two homes by the time I was thirty-one the lovely old Edwardian in Derry and, in wester n Maine, a lakeside logarithm home almost big enough to be called a fit that was Sara Laughs, so called by the locals for nearly a century. And we owned both places unblock and clear at a time of life when many couples pass on themselves lucky just to have fought their way to mortgage approval on a starter home. We were healthy, faithful, and with our fun-bones still fully attached. I wasnt Thomas Wolfe (not even Tom Wolfe or Tobias Wolff), but I was being paid to do what I loved, and theres no gig on earth opineter than that its like a license to steal.I was what midlist fiction used to be in the forties critically ignored, genre-oriented (in my case the genre was Lovely Young fair sex on Her Own Meets Fascinating Stranger), but well compensated and with the kind of shabby acceptance accorded to state-sanctioned whorehouses in Nevada, the feeling seeming to be that some outlet for the baser instincts should be provided and someone had to do That var. of Thing. I did That Sor t of Thing enthusiastically (and sometimes with Jos enthusiastic connivance, if I came to a specially problematic plot crossroads), and at some point around the time of George Bushs election, our accountant told us we were millionaires.We werent rich enough to own a reverse lightning (Grisham) or a pro football team (Clancy), but by the standards of Derry, Maine, we were quite rolling in it. We made love thousands of times, saw thousands of movies, read thousands of books (Jo storing hers under(a) her side of the bed at the end of the day, more lots than not). And perhaps the greatest blessing was that we never knew how short the time was.to a greater extent than once I wondered if breaking the religious rite is what led to the writers block. In the daytime, I could dismiss this as supernatural twaddle but at wickedness that was harder to do. At night your thoughts have an unpleasant way of slipping their collars and tally free. And if youve spent most of your adult life making fictions, Im sure those collars are even looser and the dogs less eager to wear them. Was it Shaw or Oscar Wilde who said a writer was a man who had taught his mind to misbehave?And is it really so far-fetched to think that breaking the ritual might have played a part in my sudden and unexpect (unexpected by me, at least) still? When you make your daily bread in the land of make-believe, the line amongst what is and what seems to be is much finer. Painters sometimes refuse to paint without wearing a certain hat, and baseball players who are hitting well wont change their socks. The ritual started with the second book, which was the only one I remember being spooky about I suppose Id absorbed a fair bar of that sophomore-jinx stuff the idea that one hit might only be a fluke. I remember an American Lit lecturers once truism that of modern American writers, only Harper Lee had found a foolproof way of avoiding the second-book blues.When I reached the end of The Red-Shirt Man, I stopped just short of finishing. The Edwardian on Benton Street in Derry was still two years in the future at that point, but we had purchased Sara Laughs, the place on Dark Score (not anywhere near as furnished as it later became, and Jos studio not yet built, but nice), and thats where we were.I pushed back from my typewriter I was still clinging to my old IBM Selectric in those days and went into the kitchen. It was mid-September, most of the summer people were gone, and the crying of the addle bosss on the lake sounded inexpressibly lovely. The sun was going down, and the lake itself had become a still and heatless plate of fire. This is one of the most vivid memories I have, so clear I sometimes feel I could shout right into it and live it all again. What things, if any, would I do differently? I sometimes wonder about that.Early that evening I had put a bottle of Taittinger and two flutes in the fridge. Now I took them out, put them on a tin tray that was usually employed to transport pitchers of iced tea or Kool-Aid from the kitchen to the deck, and carried it before me into the living room.Johanna was of late in her ratty old easy chair, reading a book (not Maugham that night but William Denbrough, one of her contemporary favorites). Ooo, she said, looking up and marking her place. Champagne, whats the occasion? As if, you understand, she didnt know.Im done, I said. Mon livre est tout fini.Well, she said, smiling and taking one of the flutes as I hardening down to her with the tray, then thats all right, isnt it?I realize now that the heart of the ritual the part that was alive and powerful, like the one true magic word in a mouthful of gibberish was that phrase. We almost forever had champagne, and she almost always came into the office with me afterward for the other thing, but not always.Once, five years or so before she died, she was in Ireland, pass with a girlfriend, when I finished a book. I drank the champagne by myself that time, an d entered the last line by myself as well (by then I was using a mack which did a billion different things and which I used for only one) and never lost a minutes sleep over it. But I called her at the inn where she and her friend Bryn were staying I told her I had finished, and listened as she said the words Id called to hear words that slipped into an Irish visit line, travelled to a microwave transmitter, rose like a appeal to some satellite, and then came back down to my ear Well, then thats all right, isnt it?This custom began, as I say, after the second book. When wed each had a glass of champagne and a refill, I took her into the office, where a single rag week of paper still stuck out of my forest-green Selectric. On the lake, one last loon cried down dark, that call that always sounds to me like something rusty turning lento in the wind. I thought you said you were done, she said.Everything but the last line, I said. The book, such as it is, is dedicated to you, and I want you to put down the last bit.She didnt laugh or protest or get gushy, just looked at me to see if I really meant it. I nodded that I did, and she sat in my chair. She had been swimming earlier, and her hair was pulled back and threaded through a white elastic thing. It was wet, and two shades darker red than usual. I stirred it. It was like touching damp silk.Paragraph indent? she asked, as soberly as a girl from the steno pool about to take summons from the big boss.No, I said, this continues. And then I spoke the line Id been holding in my foreman ever since I got up to pour the champagne.He slipped the chain over her head, and then the two of them walked down the steps to where the car was parked.She typed it, then looked around and up at me expectantly. Thats it, I said. You can write The End, I guess.Jo hit the RETURN button twice, centered the carriage, and typed The End under the last line of prose, the IBMs Courier type ball (my favorite) spinning out the letters i n their obedient dance.Whats the chain he slips over her head? she asked me.Youll have to read the book to find out.With her sitting in my desk chair and me standing beside her, she was in perfect position to put her face where she did. When she spoke, her lips moved against the most sensitive part of me. There were a pair of like shorts between us and that was all.Ve haff vays off making you talk, she said.Ill just bet you do, I said.I at least made a jab at the ritual on the day I finished All the Way from the Top. It felt hollow, form from which the magical substance had departed, but Id expected that. I didnt do it out of superstition but out of respect and love. A kind of memorial, if you will. Or, if you will, Johannas real funeral service, finally taking place a month after she was in the ground.It was the last third of September, and still hot the hottest late summer I can remember. All during that final good-for-naught push on the book, I kept thinking how much I missed her . . . but that never slowed me down. And heres something else hot as it was in Derry, so hot I usually worked in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, I never once thought of going to our place at the lake. It was as if my memory of Sara Laughs had been entirely wiped from my mind. Perhaps that was because by the time I finished Top, that truth was finally sinking in.She wasnt just in Ireland this time. My office at the lake is tiny, but has a view. The office in Derry is long, book-lined, and windowless. On this particular evening, the overhead fans there are three of them were on and paddling at the soupy air. I came in dressed in shorts, a tee-shirt, and no-good thong sandals, carrying a tin Coke tray with the bottle of champagne and the two chilled glasses on it. At the far end of that railroad-car room, under an eave so steep Id had to almost crouch so as not to rigidly my head when I got up (over the years Id also had to withstand Jos protests that Id picked the absolut e worst place in the room for a planttation), the screen of my Macintosh glowed with words.I thought I was probably inviting another storm of mourning -maybe the worst storm but I went ahead anyway . . . and our emotions always surprise us, dont they? There was no weeping and wailing that night I guess all that was out of my system. Instead there was a deep and wretched sense of loss the empty chair where she used to like to sit and read, the empty table where she would always set her glass too close to the edge.I poured a glass of champagne, let the foam settle, then picked it up. Im done, Jo, I said as I sat there beneath the paddling fans. So thats all right, isnt it?There was no response. In light of all that came later, I think thats worth take uping there was no response. I didnt sense, as I later did, that I was not alone in a room which appeared empty.I drank the champagne, put the glass back on the Coke tray, then filled the other one. I took it over to the Mac and s at down where Johanna would have been sitting, if not for everyones favorite loving God. No weeping and wailing, but my eyes prickled with rubs. The words on the screen were these today wasnt so bad, she supposed. She crossed the grass to her car, and laughed when she saw the white square of paper under the windshield. Cam Delancey, who refused to be discouraged, or to take no for an answer, had invited her to another of his Thursday-night wine-tasting parties. She took the paper, started to tear it up, then changed her mind and stuck it in the hip pocket of her jeans, instead.No split up indent, I said, this continues. Then I keyboarded the line Id been holding in my head ever since I got up to get the champagne.There was a whole world out there Cam Delanceys wine-tasting was as good a place to start as any.I stopped, looking at the little blink cursor. The tears were still prickling at the corners of my eyes, but I repeat that there were no cold drafts around my ankles, no spec tral fingers at the nape of my neck. I hit RETURN twice. I clicked on CENTER. I typed The End below the last line of prose, and then I crispen the screen with what should have been Jos glass of champagne.Heres to you, babe, I said. I wish you were here. I miss you like hell. My voice wavered a little on that last word, but didnt break. I drank the Taittinger, saved my final line of copy, transferred the whole works to floppy disks, then backed them up. And except for notes, grocery lists, and checks, that was the last writing I did for four years.