CHAPTER 8
Ben was right. Joel’s office was dark as I passed by on my way to my cubicle. Grateful that I didn’t have to talk to him today, I pushed my duffle bag and backpack under my table, sat, and looked at my schedule. I was booked for the next two hours with four half-hour appointments. But thank goodness the angry woman who called Joel to complain wasn’t one of them. I sighed and looked out the window. Maybe someone wouldn’t show and then I’d have time to read or think about what I should write for next week’s paper in my D. H. Lawrence class. At the moment, I had no idea.
I reached up and took my fingers along my collarbone. Did Christopher still smoke? Would the chemistry still be there between us?
The tutor in the next cubicle sneezed.
“Bless you,” I said.
“Thanks,” he mumbled. I thought about asking him how long he’d been here and if he’d had any no-shows. But I didn’t know him well. I didn’t know most of the tutors. We had biweekly meetings where we gathered to talk about clients, problems, and strategies but for the most part we were on our own, stuck in these cubicles with our heads down while students brought in a myriad of problems that we tried to help them fix. We hadn’t had any formal training. Simply being an English major and interviewing had been enough.
“Excuse me, are you Clare Michaels?”
A woman stood in the doorway of my cubicle, a notebook clutched to her chest and a giant, scuffed-up black pocketbook hanging from her shoulder. She was older than me, maybe in her thirties, with short, curly blond hair (she reminded me of a sunflower) and dark eyes so wide, maybe frightened, that I wondered if she’d seen something horrific, a car accident or assault, on the sidewalk outside.
“Yes, I am, come in.” I motioned to the other chair. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t move from the doorway but stared at me with a look that suddenly morphed into something else. Anger or disappointment. I tried to remember if I’d seen her before, if I’d messed up a paper and she was coming back to complain, but she didn’t look familiar. I glanced at her name on my signup sheet, Lucy Weslawski, but didn’t recognize that, either.
She slowly walked into the cubicle and sank into the chair, the notebook still pressed to her chest. She wore a blue and white striped sundress, faded from so many washes and with a slight tear along the right shoulder. She had long fingers with perfectly painted red nails that didn’t match the shabbiness of her dress. Was she a full-time student? Part time?
She lowered her notebook to her lap and placed her hands on top and now I saw that they were shaking slightly. And her eyes, which had seemed so big, were smaller under hooded eyelids. Maybe she did see something awful. Or maybe she was just a nervous person. I felt uncomfortable in a way that was becoming all too familiar in here. What if I couldn’t help her with her paper, either?
“So, what can I help you with today?” I glanced at her notebook.
“Your mother is Eleanor Michaels.” This wasn’t a question. I nodded. I wasn’t sure how many people here knew this. I’d only talked about my mother with Joel. “When I saw your name on the tutor list, I thought of an article I’d read in which your mother said she had a daughter named Clare who liked to read. I took a guess that you were her daughter and asked someone and she confirmed it was you.”
Who confirmed this? I shifted in my chair. She kept batting her eyes every few seconds in a way that was making me nervous, too.
“My name is Lucy Weslawski. I know your mother. Or at least I used to know her. Years ago when I was an undergrad, I took her Milton class. She was quite a teacher. Everyone was terrified of her. But not me. Because I realized early on that she wasn’t interested in nonsense and mediocrity. She respected hard work. I liked that. And I respected her. She was so strong and capable.”
Well, yes, some of the time. But what about when I was expected to be the strong and capable one? I cleared my throat. “What did you bring to work on today?”
Lucy pulled her shoulders back and laughed. “I’m quite able to write an argument or analytical paper. I could do what you do with my eyes closed.”
Something was wrong. I gripped the sides of my chair and sat up.
“Look.” She licked her lips and sighed. “I’m not here to argue with you. You seem like a nice enough person. I’m here because I want you to give this to Eleanor.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a white envelope, and pushed it across the desk toward me. Eleanor Michaels was written in black cursive letters across the front.
I frowned. This had happened to me many times before. Most things I passed along were simple fan letters. But a few were something else: a high school teacher who wanted my mother to read her five-hundred-page novel. People who asked for signed books or her time or presence at fundraising events. One who threatened to “track you down” if she didn’t write back. I always felt responsible for these letters I gave to my mother, especially when she chose not to answer. Which was most of the time.
“My mother is busy and it’s hard for her to respond to letters she receives,” I said. “I’m happy to give it to her, but know that you probably won’t hear from her.”
“I’m used to her not responding. I just want her to know that I’m still here. And I’m still wondering. And I’m not going away.”
This didn’t sound so good. Was she a crazed fan, like some of the others?
Yet her face, with her droopy eyelids and pout across her thin lips, made me feel more curious, and a little worried for her, than afraid. Somehow, she’d been terribly wronged or mistreated. The world had not been kind to her. I glanced at her hands, still trembling in her lap, and said in my softest voice, “I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t. And you don’t need to know. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if she’d answered my letters. And if her publisher hadn’t referred me to its legal department. All I want is for her to answer questions about what she did.”
And all I had to do was thank her, take the letter, and say that I’d deliver it. Then she’d be gone because clearly she wasn’t here for help with a paper. But I wanted to know what she was talking about. I needed to take care of this before it went any further, to Joel, to a newspaper, to God knows where else. “Maybe I can help you with this. What do you think she did?”
Lucy shook her head. “No, no, you’re making a distinction that just isn’t there. This isn’t about what I thought she did. This is about what she did. Plain and simple.”
I was starting to feel impatient and thought about a woman who kept calling our apartment on Dean Street, just after Listen was published, demanding to talk to my mother. She has to change the ending, the woman screamed at me on the fourth call. Whit can’t die. Whit can’t die! We got an unlisted phone number after this.
“Okay,” I said. “What did she do?”
“You really want to know?” she asked. I nodded. “Phoebe and Whit, and their entire story, are mine. Your mother stole it from me.”
I felt my mouth fall open—to my knowledge no one had ever accused her of this—and quickly closed it. Writers borrowed and stole from each other all the time. But I had a hard time believing that my mother (you had to be tough, resourceful, and smart to be a female Miltonist, my dad once said) would stoop to stealing Phoebe and Whit’s entire story from this woman. “How did she steal it from you?”
I started to shake and stuck my hands under my thighs. I didn’t want this woman to think that she’d unnerved me.
She studied me for a moment before speaking. “Your mother was, well, my savior. For a while. If it weren’t for her, because I was having such a terrible time, I probably wouldn’t have stayed in school that year. One day I took a short story I’d written into her office hours—I was always going to her office hours—and asked if she’d read it and give me feedback. She agreed.”
Wait, my mother was her savior? I pulled my hands out from under me. Every part of my body felt at attention.
“The next week, I went to office hours again, and she told me that my story would never be published because a young narrator wouldn’t work in an adult story,” she continued. “I said, ‘but there are plenty of adult stories told from a young person’s point of view.’ She shook her head and said that it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t work. I’d never get published. I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t have what it takes.”
My cheeks had grown warm and my heart was beginning to beat faster. This woman was making an outrageous claim. Yet at the same time, I felt a sudden sliver of doubt—could it be possible? —that I didn’t like or want. “So, you’re saying that my mother stole Phoebe and Whit from a short story you wrote.”
Lucy seemed not to hear me. “That day I went back to my dorm, devastated. I’d expected criticism. I hadn’t expected humiliation. Two weeks later, I went home for Thanksgiving, put the story away in a box under my bed and forgot about it and writing. I even switched out of English. That’s how much I believed your mother, that I was no good as a writer. So, imagine my surprise, years later, when I read in the news about your mother’s book. And imagine my anger when I actually read it and saw what she’d stolen.”
My mother was many things but not a thief of this caliber. I shook my head. “These are serious allegations. Why didn’t you contact the publisher’s legal department if you were so sure about this?”
“I’d never shown the story to anyone else. And when I went looking for it at my parents’ house, I realized that it had been tossed out with the rest of my papers from college. Which was so typical of my family. Let’s erase anything Lucy ever did! Let’s erase Lucy! Christ! Anyway, it was essentially Eleanor’s word against mine. You don’t believe me, do you? You probably think your mother is above this.”
I wasn’t sure what I believed but I certainly didn’t want her to know this. I thought of another woman who burst out crying in the grocery store when she told my mother that she’d found her father hanging from a rafter in the garage when she came home from school one day. Please write about this, she’d cried.
“You can’t believe the claims people have made on her.” I glanced at the envelope. I wanted her to leave and folded my arms across my chest again. “So, what do you want?”
She sat forward, her sad eyes opening wide again. “I want to talk to her. I want to know why she stole my story. And I especially want to know why she turned against me, after she said that she’d help. I want to hear these answers from her.”
I felt sudden, sharp needles race up and down my back. They were warning signs, telling me that something wasn’t right. Something was off. I was beginning to feel angry, too, although I didn’t know why. “My mom is working and doesn’t meet with people very often. If you think I can talk her into meeting you, you’re wrong.”
“You don’t believe me.”
She was making me angry. I shook my head. “I’m sorry that you think she stole your story. But I can’t imagine her doing that. I’ll give her the letter, however, and maybe she’ll write you back.”
Her nose flared and then her eyes seemed to shrink—she was skeptical—as she stood and hoisted her big bag on her shoulder. Then she was gone.
I sank back in my chair. What the hell? I imagined Logan, if I told him about this, saying, She’s lying! She’s after our cash!
I rubbed my forehead.
My mother had always been mum on the origins of Phoebe and Whit. I assumed she took a little from my life, a little from her own life and a whole lot of imagination to come up with the story. I held the sealed envelope up to the light but couldn’t see through it. I imagined telling my parents about this and both of them shaking their heads and saying, not again. That poor woman! I slipped the envelope into my backpack. I wasn’t going to worry about this. In two hours I’d be at the house, picking up my credit card, and I’d hand the letter to my mother and ask about Lucy’s accusations. And then I’d know who was lying and who was telling the truth.