We’re a minor hit, my Dear William and me.
The book launches, landing on the bottom of an obscure national bestseller list, getting favorable reviews from the handful willing to take a look, and the readers who do find the book are responding better than I anticipated, as I’ve never experienced with other books.
“I never doubted you, David,” Esmond says, and the slight humor is not lost on me.
I do the math. It took ten years, nine months, and thirteen days from the moment I emailed him, excitedly explaining how I’d write my next book on family and healing, for the dream to become reality. And it was my next book, as it turned out, since I didn’t publish anything in the years between. Instead, I was percolating the life, healing, and understanding for the project, birthing it at the right time, because everything has a time, and it’s never on our time. The book is making a difference with others already, since there’s a saying when you want to help that if you can touch one person, you’ve had impact, and since publication, Dear William is reaching one person and another, day after day. I can barely keep up—physically and emotionally—with the messages I’m getting from readers. A reader in prison connects on social media and says, “You’ve given me hope.” A reader who lost a child connects and says, “I know I’m not alone.” A reader struggling with addiction connects and says, “Just finished your book, going to treatment tomorrow.” A reader in treatment connects and says, “I’m coming back to the world next week, and I believe I can do this.”
I’m at peace, a peace I’ve not experienced before, since I’ve written a book that speaks truth; I’ve written a book I’m proud to claim as mine. I’ve written a book that is reaching others and positively impacting lives, getting them to a better place, helping them find the path that I’ve found, that many others have found, when the darkness turns to light.
“Come speak at our church in Alabama,” a reader asks. “Come speak at our school in New Jersey,” another reader asks. “Come speak at our university in Texas.” Destiny is no longer in my head, it’s in my hands—my book about family recovery is making a difference. I can’t make every invitation, but I take the ones I can get to, regardless of size, regardless of whether it’s paid or not. This is a mission, not a moneymaker. Besides, public speaking is as writing: practice and revision deliver better work. And besides, you never know what seeds will be planted in a young audience especially.
That’s how I felt earlier today, addressing the student body and parents from the fifth grade at North Delta, the school to which I’d transferred those last two years of high school—the school I never graduated from. They gave me a hero’s welcome, never mentioning that fact. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn’t, but after a college degree and best-selling book, I was feted with adoration, and it felt good, it did, because in the bleachers where I spoke, in the same gym where I’d graduated, which hasn’t changed a bit except for the addition of air-conditioning, was my teacher, Mrs. Trotter. I’d heard she was coming, scanning the crowd the minute I arrived. And there she was, sitting up straight as if a board ran down her back, glasses perched upon her nose, not a hair out of place, the posture of a precisely folded napkin set for a special dinner that you hoped never unfurled.
A group of students from my class invited me to lunch after my talk. I was thinking, sure, five or six of us will go, but there’s thirty here—not bad, considering I graduated with twenty-one, or nineteen, depending on who’s counting. They invited Mrs. Trotter and students from above my class and below, and the room is buzzing like a reunion. We’re spread across nine tables in the Batesville Country Club dining room. I’m seated by Mrs. Trotter, because she’d waved to me when I walked in, Sit here, as if I’d have chosen anywhere else. She’s in her eighties now, she says, with more than twenty years since her husband, Jimmy, passed away. She walks with a cane, but her presence fills the room, just as when she was my English teacher for the eleventh and twelfth grades.
She asks for a picture to be taken of us. “Here, use my phone,” I say.
Click.
I take a look. The teacher. The student. The love and appreciation bursts from our smiles. I wouldn’t have seen that coming, in high school, forging a relationship with my teacher that outlasts the years, and the quality, and the admiration of most any relationship I have had. But that’s the thing about the pictures we pose for—there’s usually more occurring than just our smiles.
Over lunch, a friend tells me in a whisper how Mrs. Trotter helped me get into the school when Dad had called, asking if they’d take me even though I’d failed tenth-grade English. “She suspected you had things going on, things distracting you,” the friend says.
I look across at Mrs. Trotter, beaming gratitude, tears filling my eyes.
I try to speak gratitude across the table, mumbling something to Mrs. Trotter about her being one of the most important people in my life, and it comes out clumsy, in language interrupted with feelings, but she doesn’t mind, reading the emotion like poetry that touches her heart.
“Mr. Magee,” she says, for all at the table to hear, “I expect we’re to the stage as teacher and pupil now that I can say this.”
I brace myself with a hand on the table.
“I love you,” she says.
Tears stream down my cheeks.
“I love you, too, Mrs. Trotter,” I say.
———
The phone rings.
It’s the CBS Mornings show with Gayle King. A copy of Dear William found senior reporter Jim Axelrod the way neighbors share recipes and pass along seeds. He read it in two days, he says, and pitched an in-depth feature story to Gayle King and team. They’re sending a four-person crew to my house next week, shooting for two days.
It feels like I did when I’d raised the money in youth league baseball, earning my first kiss—excited, but a bit nervous. CBS isn’t sending a national reporting crew of four to our home in Oxford, Mississippi, for two days to snack on our town’s popular chicken-on-a-stick from the convenience store up the street. They are coming for me to tell America about how I cheated on my wife and torched my family and to share the lessons I’ve learned in the comeback and recovery.
The next week, the truck is parked in the driveway, the crew almost finished setting up lights in the living room, while the producer, Amy Birnbaum, asks questions, preparing for Axelrod’s arrival. “You wrote about infidelity,” she says, “so I assume you are comfortable discussing all on camera.”
Not really, no. Who’d get comfortable speaking that truth? But I’m telling this story for transparency, to break stigma, to spark healing. I’m telling this story to make a difference, to let others know—there is a way out, the joy can and will return, with focus in the right spots and consistent small steps in the right direction. I figure plenty who need the message will see it, since CBS Mornings averages more than two million views daily, and one out of four marriages in America has a spouse who cheats, and one out of ten individuals battles addiction. I’m finding my niche audience, it seems. Everybody.
It’s easier to write an uncomfortable story and email it in to the publisher than it is to look into Jim Axelrod’s eyes with cameras rolling and label yourself as an addict and cheater, though. We’re taught to hide these things, not air them out on national TV. Still, I’m hoping the appearance is worth the risk—the more you give, the more you get in return, the saying goes.
Perhaps Oprah, Gayle King’s best friend, who births best-selling books with a gentle nod, will watch, get intrigued by the story, check out the book, and sprinkle some extra magic on Dear William. Or, perhaps this is the reality show, in mini, the one I’d told Kent I’d star in years before, my brief but large moment to tell our story of hope and healing on national TV, just as the Dreamer told me about ten years, nine months, and thirteen days ago. Perhaps these are the cameras, the action, the final piece to the Destiny puzzle I’ve been chasing.
Jim Axelrod arrives at our house, where the shoot is taking place. He’s tanned for the camera, primed for the story. Lights are on. We take our seats. The sound operator checks mics. Thumbs up.
“You ready to do this?” Jim asks, eye to eye, three feet from my face.
“Yes and no,” I say. “I’m a little nervous. The subject is hard. William’s death. Divorce. But I’m hoping this can reach some people and help them.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Jim says.
“And, we’re rolling,” the camera operator says.
After the shoot, when the crew has packed up and headed on after day two, we sit back on the couch, together, and Kent smiles, thinking back to when I’d told her I’d land on national television.
“Well, you did it,” she says.
“We did it,” I say.
The segment airs two weeks later. Dear William appears in the top fifty books selling on Amazon—not the top fifty memoirs or the top fifty nonfiction books; it cracks the top fifty of all books. Oprah doesn’t call, but that’s fine because the phone is ringing. More schools want me to speak. More students wish to help. More parents want to know: What do we need to know? It’s hard, honestly—“My son has been smoking pot every day since middle school, and we’ve tried most everything, and it’s put my husband and me at odds. Can you help?” and “My daughter has suicidal ideation and an eating disorder, and I don’t know where to turn.”
Yet, the calls are also hard to ignore because someone in need needs, before the moment is gone, so I take them all because I feel each of them deeply. After all, I have been there, and others have been there for me.