Curious to revisit the story after so long, Griffin had stuck it in the satchel with his students’ work. Who knew? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he remembered. Actually being on the Cape as he reread it might help him see the ending that had eluded him in L.A. If so, and if Sid wasn’t calling about a script, he’d revise it over the summer. Unfortunately, in the lazy afternoon warmth on the B and B’s porch, Griffin found it difficult to fully enter its fictional world. Part of the problem was that his earlier assessment seemed to be correct: the story just wasn’t very good. But what puzzled him even more was why he’d tried to write it in the first place. Would he have done so but for the Great Truro Accord? He doubted it. Some stories, even ones buried deep in memory and the subconscious, had a way of burrowing up into the light, of demanding conscious attention, until you had little choice but to write them. But “The Summer of the Brownings” hadn’t been like that. He’d remembered them only when the strike loomed and he was casting about for something he might work into a story or novella. But why write either? Why had he been so willing, even anxious, to concede there was something wrong with the life he and Joy were living? What was so wrong with being young and free? With running off to Mexico on impulse? With turning their cars over to an endless parade of envious valets? That’s what living in L.A. was, if you could afford it, and they could. It was unfair to blame Joy, of course. It wasn’t like she’d tricked him. If anything, he’d tricked himself. In a moment of weakness, besotted by love, he’d imagined himself a different sort of writer from the one he knew himself to be. Joy had simply reacted to his enthusiasm. All she’d done was love him, the man he was, the man he’d been fool enough to believe he might become.
Maybe nobody was to blame, but the end result of the exuberant, love-inspired Great Truro Accord was that he and Joy were now out of plumb. Plumb. Griffin couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t thought of that term in years. One summer he’d worked as a carpenter’s assistant on a road-construction crew that built concrete footers. That whole July and August, in the blistering Midwest heat, he’d worked with the same two guys, Louie and Albert. Where conversation was concerned, they’d been minimalists. “Are we plumb?” Albert would ask after a good hour of silence. “We were a minute ago,” Louie would respond, placing his level on the two-by-four in question, cocking his head to look at the bubble. “We’re plumb some,” he’d tell his partner, shrugging, which Griffin understood meant close enough. “We’re not building a skyscraper.” As they explained it to Griffin, a half bubble off in a foundation was no big deal unless you were going up thirty stories. Of course, half a bubble, factored over thirty floors, was no small thing. That, he now realized, was how he’d been feeling two days ago when he’d packed that bag and headed to Boston alone-thirty floors up and half a bubble off. Plumb the last time they checked, but now, suddenly, plumb some.
Stories worked much the same way, Griffin thought, shoving “The Summer of the Brownings” back into his satchel. A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation. That was the problem with most of the scripts in his satchel. Griffin knew that much without even reading them. They would end unconvincingly because of some critical misstep at or near the beginning. Over the next few days, despite his lack of enthusiasm for the task, he’d carefully examine every one of his students’ rickety narratives, figure out exactly where they went wrong and how to go about fixing them, should their authors want to. They wouldn’t, though. He knew this because he himself didn’t want to revise “The Summer of the Brownings.” As far as he was concerned, if the error was somewhere in the foundation, in some awkward place you couldn’t get at with the tools at hand, it could just stay a half bubble off. Better to forget it and start something new.
He really did hope Sid had something for him.
5 Smirt
That evening Griffin went to a steak house not far from the B and B. The Olde Cape Lounge had a frozen-in-amber fifties feel, but it was mobbed, the line of people waiting for tables stretching out the door. There was, however, a vacant stool at the bar, so he climbed aboard and squinted at the sign above the back bar, which read, in ornate Gothic letters:
The words, somehow foreign and familiar at the same time, sort of reminded him of The Canterbury Tales, which he’d read long ago in college. Pen, hand, ends, devil and no were all recognizable words and should have been helpful in deciphering the whole, but somehow they weren’t. Though devoid of meaning, smirt particularly appealed to him. When Laura was a little girl, she compiled long lists of words she loved, based purely on how they looked and sounded, as well as others she hated. On which list, he wondered, would smirt have appeared?
“A couple martinis and it’ll make sense,” the bartender said when he noticed Griffin studying the sign.
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
“How about Grey Goosely?”
“Done.”
In the mirror that ran the length of the bar Griffin noticed an Asian man in his mid-to-late twenties. Wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit and a handsome tie, he also appeared to be studying the sign. When his eyes met Griffin ’s in the mirror, he smiled and nodded, as if to say, Okay, got it. How about you? Griffin hoped his own look in return might be interpreted as, Yeah, sure, me too, then feigned interest in his cell phone until his drink arrived, unwilling to enter into conversation with some lonely tourist whose English might be marginal. As if on cue, the phone vibrated with an incoming e-mail, Joy writing to say that her meetings had run long, but she was finally on the road and she would stop for something to eat. Expect her around ten. Which was pure, unadulterated smirt. No way, on a Friday evening, with I-95 summer traffic heading for the Cape, would she get in before eleven.
And speaking of smirt, he himself had hoped to accomplish just two things today-get a good start on those portfolios and scatter his father’s ashes-and he’d managed neither. Not scattering the ashes was more disconcerting, and he really should’ve done the deed, wind or no wind. Why drive the length of Cape Cod, out and back, with your old man in the wheel well and not do such a simple thing? He supposed the Cape itself and the memories it had evoked since he crossed the Sagamore were part of it. And whether he cared to admit it or not, the unexpected phone call from his mother (and being doused with birdsmirt) had rattled him. But was there some further reluctance, some unconscious, unacknowledged scruple, at work? Some reason not to put his father to rest?