Surprise Me (6 page)

There’s little light throughout the store. Isabelle can barely read the titles in the poetry section, which takes up a back corner of the store, but finally she finds what she’s looking for, a copy of Philip Levine’s
What Work Is
.

She wants to take Daniel a small present, a way of apologizing for yesterday, and she remembers from an interview he once gave that Philip Levine, a working-class poet from Detroit, had had a huge influence on his decision to become a writer. If Daniel could write about what he knew—his own hardscrabble neighborhood of Erie, the men who broke their backs doing manual labor and broke their families with the resentment that kind of life causes—well, then, maybe he could become a writer, too.

Finally she finds the slim volume with its brown cover and simple black-and-white photograph of a child at work in a factory and takes it to Oscar at the front desk. He never rings up a purchase without commenting upon it. He may well have read every book in his store.

“He won the National Book Award for this collection, did you know?”

Isabelle shakes her head. She doesn’t much like poetry; it seems a code she hasn’t yet cracked. “It’s a gift.”

“So you want it gift wrapped?”

She looks around the dusty counter with its ashtrays, cigarette butts, stacked books, and old magazines in teetering piles. “You gift wrap?”

“Are you kidding me?” And he grins, his yellow teeth stained from decades of smoke poking through his thin lips. “I always ask just for the reaction.”

“You’re a mean man, Oscar,” Isabelle says as she takes the small paper bag he finds for her book, and he chuckles.

—

SHE KNOWS WHERE DANIEL LIVES.
In the small community of Chandler College, things like that are common knowledge. There’s a row of houses bordering the campus that the college rents out to professors at a much-reduced rate, and with a couple of questions to the right people, it’s easy for Isabelle to find out which one is his.

She walks there now. Her plan is to leave the book in his mailbox with a little note she’s already written. It simply says,
Next Tuesday can we start over? Isabelle.
She spent more than an hour trying out different messages, everything from an out-and-out apology to a note that didn’t mention what had happened between them at all. She feels guilty for exploiting what his son told her—that he has writer’s block—to wound him. She has no idea what he’s feeling—disappointed in her, probably, ready to wash his hands of her; she’s not sure. It never occurs to her that Daniel’s guilt may be exponentially larger than hers.

He doesn’t have a mailbox, not the kind that stands on a post near the curb. He has a mail slot in his front door, which means she has to walk up the front path of his house and try to slip the book in silently.

The problem is, there’s Daniel, watching her from one of the living room windows. So now what should she do? She realizes she has to ring the doorbell. She has to have some sort of interaction, which is the last thing she wants.
Keep it short,
she tells herself.
Don’t make conversation. Leave quickly.

When her foot reaches the doormat, a black rubber number with the school crest on it, Daniel opens the door. He’s barefoot, wearing old jeans that sag even on his ample frame, and a rumpled striped sweater with a tear along the neck seam. He hasn’t shaved and his beard is laced with white. He looks terrible. Older. He doesn’t say anything, simply waits for her to start.

“I was at Oscar’s bookshop, you know, on Lorenzo, and I saw this book of poems, and I remembered that you said in some interview that Philip Levine was a strong influence for you, and I thought I’d pick it up and give it to you…” She trails off. He still hasn’t said anything. “You’ve probably got it anyway,” she says as she hands it to him.

He shakes his head, then opens the door wider. “You want some coffee?”

She doesn’t. She wants to go. This was a terrible idea, but she finds herself saying, “Sure.” Trapped again by indecision, by her inability to state what she’d like, she finds herself closing the front door behind her. She sees his retreating back off to the left, entering a room she assumes is the kitchen. He hasn’t said another word but she follows him.

In the kitchen, he’s pouring two cups of coffee from a large, old-fashioned metal percolator which sits on a very dirty stove.

“You take sugar? Or milk? I may have some in the fridge.”

She shakes her head, and he hands her an orange mug with the Chandler coyote on it, drawn in cartoon style, faintly reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote. He sits down at the large kitchen table and she sits opposite him.

He pulls the Levine book out of its brown paper bag as she sips her coffee and avoids eye contact with him. Her note is stuck in the book, and he finds it and reads it while she surveys the dirty dishes in the sink. Several days’ worth, it looks like.

“Yes,” he says simply in answer to the question on her card—
Can we start over?
—and now she can take a breath and look at him. When she does, he’s smiling.

“I was sure you’d had enough of me,” he says.

She shakes her head.

“Well, I’m relieved,” he tells her.

“Me, too.”

He lays the small book of poems gently on the wooden table between them and attempts to give her the gift of Levine’s wisdom. “What Philip Levine taught me is that what you’ve lived, what’s inside you, is worthy enough to write about. You need to believe that.” And then he says her name, “Isabelle,” with so much tenderness in his voice that it sounds like a prayer.

“Can I do it?” They’re looking at each other now, across the table.

He nods.

“But do I have something to say?”

“I think so.”

“Will you help me?” she finds herself saying.

He bows his head over his large hands, wrapped tightly now around his ceramic mug. He doesn’t want her to see his face, to detect in it the struggle going on to remain steady. That this girl believes he can do it despite the wreck she must see in front of her. That she trusts what he doesn’t even trust about himself.

“Yes,” he says finally, and only then can he look up into her expectant, hopeful, very young face.

—

ON THE NEXT TUESDAY
it’s as if they’ve crossed some invisible bridge. The air is clearer on the other side. More supple. There’s laughter, even.

During the previous week as Isabelle worked, her spirit grew lighter. She tried more things, took some risks, and she suspects her writing got better.
Daniel said I can do this,
she told herself whenever her nerve failed, and his belief in her led her forward.

When she walks into his office at ten o’clock, eager, even excited, she holds two sets of the rewritten pages, the end of Chapter One again. One for him and the other for her. The plan is to read aloud as he follows along. That way, she tells him, they can hear the words together.

She paces as she reads, and Daniel finds it hard work to follow the words. He’s drawn to watch her cross and recross the worn floor of his office. She’s performing for him, and he appreciates it.

He likes these pages better, he tells her. Maybe it’s because she’s reading them to him. He tells her that, as well.

“You’ve got an unfair advantage,” he says. “You read well.”

“Part of my plan.” She’s still walking around his office, not able to light anywhere.

“To do what?”

“Bring you over to my side,” she tells him in an offhand way, gently teasing. They both feel so relieved today. So glad to find themselves in this uncomfortable office, so comfortable with each other.

“Isabelle, can’t you tell by now? I am
by
your side and
on
your side. Don’t you know?”

“I do,” she tells him as she stops pacing and looks directly at him. “I know.”

And that’s enough for his face to fold into a grin. “And you know I’m going to reread these pages later tonight, alone, by myself, to see what I think of them then.”

“But you’ll hear my voice in your head as you do.”

“Probably,” he admits. Then: “You stay with me.”

You stay with me, too,
immediately leaps into Isabelle’s mind, but all she says is, “I hope so.”

—

LATER THAT NIGHT,
he does just that—he rereads her latest pages. The house is quiet. Stefan is out somewhere. He often leaves without telling Daniel where he’s going, and Daniel doesn’t ask. His son is twenty-three. It’s not Daniel’s job to ride herd on him. What his job exactly is in terms of his son, Daniel hasn’t quite figured out.

Outside the small sunroom, the backyard is full of darkness, and with the one small table lamp alight beside him, the room feels cozy and cocooned.

As Daniel reads, he of course hears Isabelle’s voice reading the words and sees her striding around his campus office with some kind of newly acquired confidence. Did he give her that? Maybe. But how? Another one of those mysteries that Daniel accepts without questioning, as he accepted his writing gift when it came and mourned when it left him.

The pages are verification—they’re better than any she’s given him. He relaxes into the old-fashioned wing chair, his head resting against the high back, and sees his image reflected back to him in the glass walls of the room. He’s grinning stupidly. The girl is learning. Somehow he is teaching. Amazing, an outcome he never expected.

When Stefan comes home sometime after midnight, he finds his father fast asleep in his chair, his jaw drooping open, snoring slightly, Isabelle’s pages spread across his lap.
He looks pathetic,
Stefan thinks,
like some kind of old guy.

“Dad…”

Daniel doesn’t stir.

“Dad,” Stefan says much louder, but that doesn’t wake him, either. He has to walk into the room, shake his father’s shoulder, and finally Daniel rouses.

“You oughta be in bed.”

Daniel mumbles something that sounds like “shit.” He’s half asleep as he pushes himself up from the chair, Isabelle’s pages floating from his lap to the floor like settling birds. Stefan kneels and picks them up.

“These that girl’s? The one I met in the hall?”

“Isabelle,” Daniel says as he makes his way out of the room, his hips tight and aching from hours of sleeping upright.

“Are they any good?”

“Finally, yes.”

“I told her not to work with you,” Stefan says to his father’s retreating back, and that stops Daniel. He turns around so that Stefan will hear him clearly.

“Well, you were wrong. She should very much work with me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

D
uring the spring months, Isabelle lives with a constant commotion inside her head. She carries on conversations with Melanie and her other characters, sometimes arguing with them, often rewriting dialogue or even paragraphs of prose. The process feels as though she is running a low-grade fever, just enough to make her normal reality seem glassy and unreal. It doesn’t matter. All Isabelle cares about is the world she is creating with her words, the one she shares with Daniel. Everything else falls away. Waking up, eating, sleeping, are only valuable because they enable her to write and then deliver those pages to Daniel on Tuesday mornings.

One hour a week, and yet each week whatever occurs in that room sustains her, pushes her, and finally rewards her. She doesn’t stop to examine the mechanics of how that happens. She only knows the whole transaction feels private, her words almost a transfer of a secret language that only Daniel will be able to decipher. Pure in a way nothing else in her life has ever been.

And yes, there’s a freedom she’s never known. Daniel was right: the freedom to express exactly what she wants to say without a filter, and the freedom to be received with generosity, because Daniel is capable of great generosity, at least with her.

Each Tuesday session begins with Daniel behind his desk as he always seems to be, reaching out and telling her, “Hand ’em over,” as she steps into the room. No preamble. No
How are you, how was the writing this week?
Simply his large, open hand reaching toward her, a gesture of giving—
Here is a place for your words
—as much as asking—
Tell me, tell me what’s in your heart.

“Be kind,” she wants to say, and sometimes does as she hands over her pages.

“I will not,” Daniel tells her.

“Then be honest.”

“That I can do.”

And she sighs with relief—that’s exactly what she wants to hear, and he knows it. They are united in common purpose; they are on a mission and they’ve set a goal. She will have the first three chapters finished to his satisfaction and hers by the time she graduates in May.

Nate has no idea what has become of the calm, steady, reliable Isabelle he’s known since high school, but he particularly doesn’t like how unavailable this new Isabelle has become. She no longer listens to the stories he wants to tell her, has no patience at all if he begins to complain. She cuts him off when he wants to discuss the pros and cons of the various law schools he’s applied to. She needs to work. She has to finish these chapters before graduation.

“What difference does it make?” he asks her, annoyed, one night over dinner, which
he
has had to make because she’s been too busy to shop or even think about what he might like to eat.

“I made a promise to Daniel that I’d be finished by graduation, finished so that he agrees it’s finished.”

“And if you don’t?”

“That’s not an option. I promised Daniel.”

“So fucking what?”

“So honoring that promise means more to me than anything else.” This is said very calmly. She’s not baiting him. She’s simply stating what is.

“There’s something whacked about this.”

She stands up, plate in hand. She’s had enough of him and this conversation. “I’ll eat while I’m working,” and she leaves him alone at the kitchen table.

“We’re having dinner! Hey, Isabelle, we’re eating here!” He’s yelling. She can hear the exasperation in his voice, but she ignores it as she closes the bedroom door, settles herself on their unmade bed, laptop in front of her, her half-eaten dinner forgotten on the nightstand. If he comes in after her, she’ll pack up and go to the library. But he doesn’t.