“The girlfriend’s young?”
“She’s thirtysomething. Leigh and I are both forty-eight. We met when I had my first job. We were guides in Colonial Williamsburg.”
“Really? I grew up in Charlottesville.”
“Ah, that’s also a beautiful place. We drove there a few times for Leigh to see a shrink. She got pregnant by the candlemaker, during the time she was in love with the blacksmith. She couldn’t decide what to do. I must say, back then when she leaned on me it was much easier to take than her finger pointed in my face like a witch, as though I shared any responsibility for this.”
“So Hannah is the child of Leigh and a candlemaker?”
“No, that happened five years before she had Hannah. She had an abortion.”
“I see. But her relationship with her daughter was good, you thought? Why do you think Hannah did what she did?”
“I’m not saying this to dodge the question, but I think I just don’t understand women. I don’t mean to disparage women. There’s something I don’t get. Me. That I, personally, don’t get.”
“But how can you understand them if they won’t discuss the situation? The Perrier’s on the top shelf, if you’d like more.”
“Let’s go to Dockside! I’m terribly sorry to have brought my problems to you. I’m entirely sure she’s in her room, trying to figure things out, for all I know she’s called her mother and apologized and everything’s fine. I felt like Humbert Humbert checking in with her. The woman at the desk gave us such a skeptical look, even though I said two bedrooms and explained that she was my goddaughter. Hannah’s eyes were red and almost swollen shut at that point, which the woman no doubt noticed. We both had to show our driver’s licenses. I guess that’s become routine. When you check in anywhere.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Rand flew back home from Bangor. He’s a surgeon. There was no way to stay. And the girlfriend couldn’t miss another rehearsal. It was the first time she’d met Hannah, so what use could she be?”
“Are you using vacation time from your own job to make this trip, Terry? Which is a not very subtle way of asking what you do, I guess.”
“What I do? I’m a writer, like you. I published a book in England about Emily Dickinson’s neighbors. An expansion of my thesis. I majored in psychology at Brown, with a minor in American studies.”
“Ah. Understanding psychology would be a prerequisite for writing about Mr. Capote, I should think.”
“I’m not so much writing about him as about people who have negative effects on other people’s lives. People are always writing about their mentors and thanking everyone they’ve ever met on the acknowledgments page. Everybody has wonderful, supportive, devoted people in their lives. All their pets are perfect. I think there needs to be another kind of book, a more realistic book, out there.”
“I see. So how does Truman Capote fit into this?”
“Being responsible for Ann Woodward’s suicide, for example. The woman who pretended she thought her husband was a burglar and shot him?”
“And now Pistorius. Plus ça change. But let me understand: you’re writing a book about people who have adversely affected other people.”
“I suppose that’s it, in a nutshell. Other famous people, of course. America loves celebrity.”
“Any small anecdote I might have about Capote isn’t likely to justify your investment of time.”
“At least you know who he is! When I reeled off some names to Hannah, she’d hardly heard of anybody — even though quite a few lived in Maine. She’d heard the name Truman Capote and she thought he wrote Christmas stories for children! She’d never heard of Diane Arbus, she’d never heard of Elizabeth Bishop. She’d heard of Robert Lowell, though she’s never read anything by him. I suppose he isn’t taught in school anymore.”
“Cal — Lowell — was so much older than we were, but he was very kind to Dem. He wrote a letter that got him a Guggenheim when we badly needed money. That poem Elizabeth Bishop wrote after his death is one of the saddest things I’ve ever read. Will Lowell be in your book? Because of his negative effect on almost everyone?”
“Not on Bishop. They loved each other.”
“That’s true. So he’s exempt?”
“Yes.”
“You’re serious? Being in love with one person is all it takes to get off the shit list?”
“I never considered including him. Phil Spector is in the book.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Wall of Sound?”
“I’m afraid I have to let you down, just like Hannah.”
“Not at all! It’s very nice of you to make time for me. Please, let me take you to lunch. Hannah won’t… she won’t spring out from behind a bush, or anything. You know how they are. They want to be off by themselves to text and listen to their music and reapply all that makeup that doesn’t look like makeup, and then they’re exasperated if you suggest they put on some lipstick and comb their hair.”
Clair got up and lifted her key ring from the nail by the door. She’d never changed the key ring; it was still the clunky little geode dangling from the end of a brass chain Dem had always carried, saying he’d gotten it from the Lilliputians, who swung it to knock out their Lilliputian enemies. Enemies. What a concept. Something people emphasized during wartime. Or that they still might call political opponents or predators in the animal kingdom. Down the street, the lawn service was unloading a riding mower. The violets would go under, and the dandelions with them. The service had pulled up where Adver’s ex-wife lived — the woman he still sometimes dropped by to see after he made repairs. Those times he wasn’t too hungover to make the repairs he’d promised to make. (“Just turn off the valve. I’ll be there early Tuesday.”)
“So you knew Lowell,” Terry said. “I envy you that. Did you ever meet Elizabeth Hardwick?”
“I did. At a dinner in New York. I sat next to her and we talked about Trollope. Or she talked about him and I listened.”
“That was one classy lady.”
“She was. She had very curly hair and it kept blowing all through dinner, though there wasn’t a fan anywhere. It just blew.”
“How do you account for that?”
“Maybe her ideas, disturbing the currents of the air?”
“You’re quite funny. I’m sure people tell you that.”
“At my age, friends don’t pronounce on other friends any longer, and no one new I meet ever takes the slightest notice of me.”
“Do you miss Virginia?”
“Particularly in April, when spring doesn’t come here, and doesn’t come.”
“Blackflies do,” he said.
“That’s right. What about you? Do you miss it?”
She realized, now that the talk had turned banal, that earlier they’d been having a little flirtation. To no end, but they’d had an amusing volley. She touched her hair. She rubbed the tip of her nose, delicately. It never helped to scratch the itch in allergy season.
“I try not to miss places, because they’re all so different now. Maybe not the heart of Williamsburg, but that’s a sort of Disneyland, isn’t it? Everything else changes.”
“You’re too young to think that way. You’re supposed to see it as progress. Or not to notice at all.”
“I’m a writer. I have to notice.”
The waiter introduced himself. Michael was six feet tall, with blazing blue eyes. He recited the specials like a choirboy sight-reading complicated music for the first time. His eyes locked on the nothingness of the middle distance as he spoke. When he walked away in his white shirt and black pants, Clair saw that he was wearing yellow sneakers without laces. Had Terry, with the imperative to notice things, noticed that? They both ordered coffee.
Clair said, “I’ll tell you my one Truman Capote story and get it over with, then you must tell me something you’ve discovered writing your new book. What you know will be far more interesting than anything I have to say, but here goes: I was friends with one of Johnny Carson’s ex-wives, Joanne. She took a road trip with Capote to visit her sister, who lived just outside Charlottesville, but her sister suddenly came down with what turned out to be mumps so they ended up staying with me for a night. Dem wasn’t famous then. He and I were housesitting for some university couple who’d gone to Spain, taking care of their garden and feeding their cat. I cooked a chicken and made a salad. I wasn’t going to a lot of trouble just because the famous Truman Capote was coming to dinner. He’d like me or he wouldn’t. Dem always said one of the things that attracted him to me was my self-assurance. Anyway, to my surprise, he was rather shy. He kept calling some friend named Leo on the telephone and leaving dollar bills ‘for the phone bill.’ Maybe ten dollars. When he was leaving, he reminded me that the money was by the phone and said that if I wanted, he’d sign his name on the bills. Can you imagine? Sometimes people say things like that to test you: how impressed are you that they’ve been in your house? Did I say Dem was away on an assignment? I said something like ‘Do whatever you think best,’ and he hesitated, then walked back to the kitchen. We stood there while he autographed dollar bills. Joanne was rolling her eyes, but she adored him. She thought everything he did was amusing. After they left, I saw that all the signatures were different. They all said Truman Capote, but some of the writing was slanted backward, and some of it looked like calligraphy, and in one the T had curlicues at the top like ram’s ears. If I still had them, I might be able to list them on eBay. He also guessed almost to the penny what the phone bill would be.”