B0092XNA2Q EBOK (35 page)

I climbed the steps.

Katie met me, locked her arm in mine, led me to the microphone, and whispered, “
Mon cheri
.” She placed the microphone in front of me then walked to the shadows and stood. With the spotlight on me, the audience began to make sense of my face, which appeared on all the screens. A few recognized me. Pin-drop quiet would be one description. The only sound was my short, shallow breathing echoing over the microphone. Up front, some one hundred kids sat woven together amid wheelchairs, crutches, IVs, thick glasses, casts, scars, and Band-Aids. I looked at them, then at the audience. I smoothed the top page, looking for an entrance. A place to start. I looked to Katie but she made no movement toward me. Steady stood beaming in the back. Sweat poured from every pore in my body.

I stood alone—need in one hand, fear in the other, hope just
beyond my reach. “I—” It was a tough place. Maybe the toughest. “I—” No matter how I tried, the words wouldn’t come.

Tongue-tied, I took the microphone off the stand, walked to the edge of the stage, stepped down onto the carpet, and sat down, cross-legged. I motioned to the kids and the nurses who assisted them. “Come on in. Closer. Gather ’round.”

They scooted to the edge of their seats. The nurses offered a hand. Katie, too. A hundred kids engaged in a game of pick-up sticks. Logjam in front of the stage. I waited while they penguin-shuffled, crawled, or flopped down with me. It took several minutes. Many wore T-shirts depicting Pirate Pete or Piet Hein or
Long Winded
with her sails full of wind. A couple wore imitation brass monoscopes around their necks. Several were clutching older editions of my books. “It’s always better if our knees are touching.” They edged closer. The huge screen above my head showed me seated among a sea of broken and laughing children. I stared up at me and stared at myself staring at myself. A clear picture.

Seated among the misfits. My place in the world.

Many in the back of the crowd stood in order to see me. Cameramen from the networks filmed from the stage above my head and the row in front of me. Three rows back, my former publisher waved. My editor cried. I had some explaining to do.

Some of the kids hung back. Unsure. I motioned. “Come on. I’ll wait. I don’t bite.”

They laughed. The pile grew.

I placed the manuscript on my lap. The once-waterlogged pages were wrinkled, yellowed, and oil from Steady’s thumb had darkened the outer edges. I could smell the faint remnant of his pipe. I wondered how many nights he’d savored this. Jody’s voice echoed from beyond the walls. Tears blurred my vision. I wiped my face on my sleeve, lifted my head, and said, “Hi, my name’s… Peter Wyett—and I have missed you.”

K
atie said she wanted me to call her Katie, which I took as some relief. She’d had so many names that I was glad she settled on just one. As for her costumes and disguises, she set them aside, only unearthing them onstage, the other side of the camera, or the occasional trip to Paris. The absence of so many personas meant that Katie became Katie—comfortable in her own skin.

She calls me “P.W.” in public and, occasionally—when no one is listening, “
Mon cheri
.” I like the sound of either one, but the second does something on my insides that the first can’t. For my part, I’ve taken to calling her “Bella” and she doesn’t seem to mind. I don’t think her father would, either.

Following our reemergence into public life, the publishing world went sort of crazy trying to get us to tell our story. Katie hammed it up and before too long they were all frothing at the mouth. Katie said she would only tell it if I told it. Sort of a two-for-one deal. I agreed. An auction ensued—five publishers competing—a contract
followed. In short, we’ll be making some more broad-scale additions at the hospital.

To get the story on paper, Katie postponed everything and the three of us spent a month on
Gone Fiction
. Steady took a leave of absence from the church and, in truth, was invaluable filling in the details that both of us had forgotten about our respective stories and how and where they intersected his. ’Course, we never let the writing interfere with catching a tarpon. It was a mending process for all of us.

Given that it was my first venture into nonfiction, I was a bit pensive and spent each night rewriting. Truth be told, it probably read a bit more like a novel than a typical memoir. Often, the sun found me just as the moon had left me. I wanted to deal carefully with what had been entrusted to me, because, to her credit, Katie opened up and revealed details I did not and could not have known.

With the writing finished, the publisher told us they’d love to put us on tour. She jumped at the opportunity, said yes, that she’d never been on a book tour and couldn’t wait. Then she turned to me, thinking I would be equally excited. I said, “No, I’d rather not. Book tours really aren’t my cup of tea.”

She doesn’t like being told no.

I told her to get used to it.

She pouted. Then she said, “Please.”

So, I’m packing. So is Steady. Said he wouldn’t miss this for the world. I, on the other hand, am selfish and I miss my hammock. Miss the quiet of the Glades. Miss the crimson sun off the tip of my toe. Miss the quiet rhythm of the tides. Miss the sound of my drag being peeled backward. Miss the kids at the hospital, where I’m now a regular. Katie picked up on my pity party and promised to get me back a day or so a week. She has a jet, so…

The tour starts at the hospital. Reading to the kids. We thought it fitting. Plus, they all wanted their picture with Katie. They like my stories but they love her.

This morning, Katie and I were guests on a live show. They sent
a team to
Gone Fiction
to film us. Set us up on the deck. Sun coming up. Trout feeding in the current just off the bow. Smoke from Steady’s pipe wafting over us. The anchor turned to Katie. “The book is entitled
Unbecoming Me.
Can you tell us about that?”

Katie never blinked. “Two reasons: When I was young, given my general physical appearance, I was told that I was unbecoming. Since then, I’ve tried to unbecome me. But doing so was like dying every day.” She turned to me. “I went to bed dead. Woke up dead. Never knowing who I saw in the mirror. Ever fearful of resurrecting someone I can’t be.” She shook her head and grabbed my hand. “Peter… changed that.”

“How so?”

A confident smile. “He taught me how to live without a script. A life where I get to write the words that become me.”

The anchor turned to me, smiling. “It would appear that Piet Hein did not, in fact, get the better of Pirate Pete.”

It was a good opening. I smiled. “The end of that story has yet to be written.”

A nod. “A lot of readers will be glad to hear that. And none more giddy than my kids.” He straightened, changing topics. “Nonfiction is a new venture for you.”

“Yes.”

“The book comes out tomorrow. As of this morning, preorders have placed it at number one. A lot of people are watching this broadcast right now, curious about you and this story. Wondering if you still have it. So, do you?”

Katie held my hand. Smiling. I said, “I don’t know if I still have ‘it,’ meaning the gift of writing.” I waved my hand across the camera. “You’ll have to be the judge of that.”

“What can you tell us about the story?”

I crossed my legs and said, “Allow an analogy. Imagine me carrying around a bag. Maybe like a big laundry bag that spans the length of my back—right shoulder to left cheek. Maybe it reminds you of pictures of Santa Claus that you saw as a kid only this isn’t
really a bag of gifts I’m all that excited about giving to somebody. In fact, I’d rather keep it hidden because inside the bag are a bunch of broken pieces—like a million—that once made up me. See, I was once one piece but then something happened and I broke, or shattered, and now I am many. Then, you and I meet and I realize that you’re bleeding ’cause you’ve been broken, too, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put you back together again. And then I realize you’re fading and in need of triage. You won’t last the night. So, I give you the only thing I have—I hand you my bag and tell you that you can have any or all of those pieces to stuff in the wound. And what’s more, they don’t cost you anything. They’re free. I paid for them in the breaking. And because you’re desperate, and you’ve tried most everything else, you empty my bag across the floor, spilling them like splinters, and you rifle through each one, and somewhere in that furious discovery you find the one piece you’ve been missing. One piece out of a million. Or ten trillion. And when you insert that piece into the puzzle that had become you, it stops the hemorrhage, and for the first time in maybe your whole life, the wound starts to heal. And, when it does, you hand me your bag because I’m still bleeding.

“The book would be something like that.”

“Can you read some of it to us?”

Katie nodded so I opened the book and read the first few lines.

“ ‘She knelt. Genuflected. He sat alongside the kneeler. Hands in his lap. She pushed the curtain open, to smell the Vitalis and Old Spice. She liked being this close to a man who did not feel compelled to touch her. To conquer her. She looked past him. Beyond the present. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…” ’ ”

In 2000, I was hired to write a book. The assignment was to pen a biographical story about a fleet of hospital ships called Mercy Ships and the remarkable people that live and work on them. The process paired me with an early-sixties, salt-encrusted Kiwi named John Dyson who had traveled the world extensively as a writer for
Reader’s Digest
—writing some two hundred stories over the span of his career. My assignment was to write the story; his was to look over my shoulder. Make sure I was on the right track. He was the mentor. I, the mentee.

So I flew to London, we met, had a delightful time. How do the Brits say it?
Lovely. Just lovely.
I learned he’d been a writer for a few decades, and had probably forgotten more about the craft and process of writing than I’d know in two lifetimes. For two days we met and he helped me outline the book I was to write. No real flags here. Just two writers talking. I liked him. Liked him, a lot. With the two of us “on the same page,” I flew home and got to work.

Over the next four months, I spent a lot of time on planes. Africa.
Central America. The UK. Several states. My research complete, I sat down and penned what I thought was a pretty good story. Eighty-plus-thousand words. When finished, I sat back and nodded. It was good. Even very good. Proud of myself, I let my mind wander and in my naive admiration I made a pretty good argument for how this story would soon climb the nonfiction side of the
New York Times
list, allowing me a platform for my soon-to-be-discovered fiction. This was my ticket. I was on my way. So I clicked Send and awaited John’s positive praise.

It might be best at this point to simply let you read snippets of his response. An unadulterated view. To do this, I dug back through my inbox and unearthed a few of his editorial notes. They speak for themselves, so I’ll let them.

Note: these are his words. Exactly. I’ve not altered a letter. Not one period. And yes, they still hurt and there’s a reason why so many writers drink heavily.

I’m not proud of my initial internal reaction. I think it sounded something like,
Who does this clown think he is and who is he to tell me any of this about my writing?
I scratched my head. I’m positive that when we met in London I made it clear—maybe on more than one occasion—that I did have a BA in English, a Master’s in journalism, and a PhD in communications. That should have sufficed.

More emails followed: