Surprise Me Page 5

  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

  During 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.

&n
bsp; “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.

  —

  ISABELLE DELIVERS THE LAST PAGES of Chapter Three the Tuesday before graduation. She comes into Daniel’s office, her long legs in denim shorts, her feet in flip-flops, her hair brushed away from her face into a high ponytail, commenting on the unnatural heat of this early May day. “They say it’s going to be a hundred and one today.” Daniel’s first thought is that she looks maybe ten years old, but he doesn’t tell her that. Instead he extends his hand as he always does.

  And she gives him what she sincerely hopes will be the final pages and situates herself on the floor, her back against the sofa, bare legs stretched out in front of her. She takes from her backpack Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, a novel she picked up solely because she felt Daniel would like it, and begins reading.

  When Daniel finishes her pages, he says, “They’re good.”

  “They are? I thought they were! Oh my God, I’m finished!”

  “Not yet.”

  And she groans. “Daniel, graduation is Saturday.”

  “You have four days, then.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with them. They just can be better.”

  “You know,” she tells him, but there’s none of the anger of their early interactions, “nobody but me would put up with that kind of vague directive.”

  “Isabelle,” he says very quietly, “you know exactly what I mean.”

  She sighs dramatically for his benefit as she drags herself off the floor, stuffs the novel in her backpack. “Unfortunately, I do. You’re going to tell me that Melanie is too intimidated by the cop.”

  “Where’s her famous attitude in that scene?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  When she’s at the door, a thought occurs to her. “Come to graduation. Will you, Daniel?”

  He shakes his head, not looking at her, his hands busy on his desk, his eyes there.

  “You could meet my parents—not that that’s any big inducement, but you could see me up there. You could see me walk across that stage and graduate.”

  “I wish I could. I do. But I just can’t.”

  “Okay.” And she shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, but of course he knows it does. He watches her face close up; her tone of voice become impersonal. “I’ll try to give you these last pages by Friday, but if I can’t, I’ll bring them by—”

  He interrupts her. “I can’t go anywhere.”

  She shakes her head. She has no idea what he’s saying. “You’re here.”

  “Here and my house, that’s it, and if Stefan didn’t show up most days to walk me to and fro like a goddamn preschooler, I probably wouldn’t make it to either place.”

  She walks back into the room, drops her backpack, takes her customary seat on the couch. They’re maybe three feet apart. “What is it?”

  “It’s called agoraphobia. It means literally ‘fear of the marketplace,’ only for me it’s fear of every place that isn’t this office or my house.”

  There—it’s out. She’s the only person besides Stefan he’s ever told, and he watches her face for a reaction. If she’s repulsed by such weakness or flooded with pity or—

  “I know what it is,” Isabelle says with the same matter-of-factness she used earlier to comment on the weather. “My aunt Sarah has it. She can’t even walk out into her backyard.”

  Daniel nods.

  “People get over it,” Isabelle says.

  “A few.”

  “There’s medication and therapy—”

  He stands up behind his desk. “It’s not your problem, Isabelle.” He won’t discuss this any further. “These last eight pages are your problem.”

  She’s preoccupied with what he’s just told her. “That’s why people say you’re not engaged or why you don’t even show up for meetings or why you didn’t—”

  “Stop!”

  She does.

  “Bring the pages to my house when you’re done.”

  “Okay.” She stands again, slings her backpack over a shoulder. “Well, I guess I don’t have to ask if you’ll be home.”

  He looks up at her. What?

  “Any old time should work out fine for you, don’t you think?”

  “Isabelle.” It’s a warning, which she ignores.

  “Here’s the thing—I won’t have to call first or make an appointment.”

  As her hand flies to cover her mouth, he sees the smile anyway. “You’re totally outrageous.”

  No one has ever said that to her before. She’s thrilled. “Good,” she tells him as she walks out.

  —

  THE LATE-ARRIVING PARENTS FILE INTO Kellman Amphitheater, an arena carved out of the hillside which college legend has it mimics the ancient theater at Delphi. Struggling in the heat, the middle-aged people climb the stone steps higher and higher to reach the last few vacant seats at the top. All graduations at Chandler College are held in this outdoor venue, the likelihood of rain in May in Southern California being quite remote. Historically, May is mild, but this year, for some reason, the temperatures are soaring and the sun is brutal.

  Despite the 95-degree heat, many families have been sitting in the unshaded venue for hours, laying claim to their spots. Every parent has a camera in hand, ready to capture that one moment they’ve anticipated for the past four or five or six years, that instant when their graduate reaches out and takes his or her diploma from the hand of the president of the college.

  Isabelle’s father, Eli Rothman, sitting midway up the steep semicircle, wishes they had arrived earlier so they could have gotten better seats, but Ruth takes forever to get herself ready, as if each event they attend is her opening night. And he is worried about Isabelle and this unseasonable heat. How long do they have to be in those heavy black robes? Has she made sure to drink lots of water this morning and slather her face with sunscreen? He would guess not. He glances at his wife, who is fanning herself with the program and s
canning the crowd, looking…well, dissatisfied is the best way he can describe it. The three boys sit between them. It is always the way—the children between them, even though the children are practically grown. Aaron is seventeen and will graduate from high school next year, and the twins are almost sixteen.

  He has one of those moments when he looks at his wife and honestly can’t remember why he married her. Whatever was he thinking twenty-two years ago? He knows Ruth has those same moments, only probably many more of them. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant on their honeymoon, would they still be together? He doesn’t know.

  Thank God Isabelle turned out to take after him. She looks like him and her temperament is like his. He worries about Ethan, one of the twins, because he seems to have inherited Ruth’s self-aggrandizing dramatic flair. No good can come of that.

  He spots Nate’s parents in the crowd, much closer to the stage, of course. Sharon and Greg Litvak are beaming with self-congratulation. Here it is—the graduation, magna cum laude, of their brilliant son, whose future is limitless and who has no stumbling blocks to his success. Eli truly wishes he liked these people better, since it seems their children are moving in lockstep into the future.

  And now, thank goodness, the music starts and the audience begins to settle, although he sees that every mother continues to fan herself with the program. As the graduates file in, it is Aaron who spots Isabelle first. “There she is. Do you see her, right behind that big guy with the ponytail?” And Eli does. He points for Ethan and Noah. And finally Ruth, who has to rummage around in her purse for her glasses, which she refuses to wear unless it’s absolutely necessary, spots her, as well. So they all see her and they can settle back for the speeches and the awarding of the diplomas.

  John Liggins, the president of the college, a large, imposing black man known for promoting diversity and thinking outside the box—Daniel owes his stay at Chandler to him—starts his welcome by thanking them all for coming, acknowledging the unseasonal heat, congratulating the graduating seniors, and then, switching gears, he tells the still settling crowd that he feels it is incumbent upon him to acknowledge the history-making event that occurred on May 10, just a few days earlier, in Pretoria, South Africa: Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as that country’s first black president.