see what I could buy to make the recordings. I wanted something a little old-fashioned so it wouldn’t put him off. In the back, they found a machine that took cassettes, of which they had a plentiful supply. The salesman, who looked about sixteen, was amazed at what the older salesman had managed to put his hands on. He examined all of it as if it were dinosaur dung. I drove home so excited; I could hardly believe what I’d stumbled into. This was the expedition that would go right. The dogs (that would be me) would prance forward effortlessly, devoted to their task. Soon we’d glide through to beautiful spring weather, day after day, until we arrived at our destination. Of course, I suspected that my unstated goal was to stop writing my book. That something about Duff and the new project was subversive, as well as extraneous. I almost had a first draft, and as any writer knows, once you have that the going gets easier. Then it’s just editing: adjusting, adding the better word here and there, finding the perfect phrase, the enlightening metaphor, taking away the drift of words that have become too plentiful on the snowy white page. The new book might be better—much better—but it was a distraction from my story, the one I’d been moving forward with for years, in self-imposed near isolation, with only a radio to bring in Mozart to brighten the dark days.
Fate fooled me. Duff moved in with Mrs. Terhune, and together they agreed that I should finish the book I was writing and maybe, maybe we’d talk later, if summer wasn’t too busy. He did not romantically move in with Mrs. Terhune. He did the sensible, New England thing of doubling up. He’d turn off the heat in his house and drain the pipes, and together they’d adequately heat her house, and split the bill. It was as if they’d just been waiting to be better friends and I’d facilitated it by being the hostess of an evening on which they got to know each other better. Duff moved into her back bedroom, the one with the toile de Jouy wallpaper that had been brought back by one of her mother’s friends from her trip of a lifetime (sailing to Le Havre, France), the overall pattern repeating its story of Dutch people in dirndls and bonnets tied under their chins, walking along in their wooden shoes, tending their animals, swinging milk pails as they stroll past windmills.
The whole world’s full of stories. I never doubted that. Every writer will tell you the same thing: it’s next to impossible to find the inevitable story, because so many needles appear in so many haystacks. Most writers spend their entire careers—those who are lucky enough to have them—considering endless piles of hay, praying, just praying that a needle will prick their finger.
I suppose it pricked mine when I opened my door and saw Mrs. Terhune standing there with Duff Moulton. The union radiated inevitability, though I’m sure it was more apparent to me than to them. I was the spinner of tales whose closed-off world had been pricked like a big bubble. As with any accident—because accidents are by definition unexpected—you react instantly to that unmistakable, tiny stab of pain, so you rub your finger on your pant leg or you suck it for a second. It’s a tiny, split-second annoyance unless it’s bleeding all over everything, and you’re embarrassed when people see that you’ve been hurt, so you insist that you haven’t been.
ELVIS IS AHEAD OF US
T he house at the end of our dead-end street had been for sale almost a year when two girls and a boy broke into it through the back bathroom window. They were kids from the neighborhood: Genevieve, Blake, and Ted. Genevieve and Blake were unlikely friends, Blake tall and lively, with ear piercings and blue fingernails, Genevieve very pulled together, more French than her mother born in Avignon (which her daughter had never seen and Mrs. DuPenn did not remember). Genevieve was always called Genevieve, though Blake was sometimes
Fate fooled me. Duff moved in with Mrs. Terhune, and together they agreed that I should finish the book I was writing and maybe, maybe we’d talk later, if summer wasn’t too busy. He did not romantically move in with Mrs. Terhune. He did the sensible, New England thing of doubling up. He’d turn off the heat in his house and drain the pipes, and together they’d adequately heat her house, and split the bill. It was as if they’d just been waiting to be better friends and I’d facilitated it by being the hostess of an evening on which they got to know each other better. Duff moved into her back bedroom, the one with the toile de Jouy wallpaper that had been brought back by one of her mother’s friends from her trip of a lifetime (sailing to Le Havre, France), the overall pattern repeating its story of Dutch people in dirndls and bonnets tied under their chins, walking along in their wooden shoes, tending their animals, swinging milk pails as they stroll past windmills.
The whole world’s full of stories. I never doubted that. Every writer will tell you the same thing: it’s next to impossible to find the inevitable story, because so many needles appear in so many haystacks. Most writers spend their entire careers—those who are lucky enough to have them—considering endless piles of hay, praying, just praying that a needle will prick their finger.
I suppose it pricked mine when I opened my door and saw Mrs. Terhune standing there with Duff Moulton. The union radiated inevitability, though I’m sure it was more apparent to me than to them. I was the spinner of tales whose closed-off world had been pricked like a big bubble. As with any accident—because accidents are by definition unexpected—you react instantly to that unmistakable, tiny stab of pain, so you rub your finger on your pant leg or you suck it for a second. It’s a tiny, split-second annoyance unless it’s bleeding all over everything, and you’re embarrassed when people see that you’ve been hurt, so you insist that you haven’t been.
ELVIS IS AHEAD OF US
T he house at the end of our dead-end street had been for sale almost a year when two girls and a boy broke into it through the back bathroom window. They were kids from the neighborhood: Genevieve, Blake, and Ted. Genevieve and Blake were unlikely friends, Blake tall and lively, with ear piercings and blue fingernails, Genevieve very pulled together, more French than her mother born in Avignon (which her daughter had never seen and Mrs. DuPenn did not remember). Genevieve was always called Genevieve, though Blake was sometimes
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