The Plot полностью

And even if writing it required Jake to come clean about his late student Evan Parker, he’d still be able to control the narrative as he soul-searched and pondered the deep questions about what fiction was and how it got made, on behalf of every one of his fellow novelists and short story writers! Crib’s second telling would be a meta-narrative, destined to vindicate every writer and resonate with every reader, and telling it would render him brave and bold as an artist. Besides, what was the point of being a famous writer if he couldn’t use his unique voice to tell this story only he could tell?

In the cemetery, the last of the light died around him.

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remained.

She’d been renting a small house on East Whittier Street in German Village, about five miles from campus, a quiet neighborhood with not too many OSU students. She still did her bill processing for Bassett Healthcare but mainly at night, keeping the days free for classes: history, philosophy, political science. It was all pleasure, even the term papers, even the exams, even the fact that she was obligated to lose herself among the 60,000 enrolled students on the Columbus campus and never become too familiar to her teachers; the deep thrill of having resurrected and met her once and forever goal, her so long buried goal, carried her through every day of her new life. Where would she be by now without that eighteen-year pause? Working as a lawyer, possibly, or a professor of some kind? A scientist or a doctor? Maybe even a writer! It didn’t bear thinking about, she supposed. She was somewhere now that she had given up all hope of being.

One afternoon at the end of May she arrived home to discover that most unwelcome mouse, Gab, waiting for her on the doorstep with a sad little backpack.

“Let’s go inside,” Samantha said, hustling her into the sitting room. As soon as the door closed, she demanded: “What are you doing here?”

“I got Maria’s address at the campus registrar,” said the girl. She was small, but covered in an extra layer of flesh. “I didn’t realize you were out here, too.”

“I moved a few months ago,” Samantha said tersely. “I sold our house.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. Her lank hair fell against her cheeks. “I heard that.”

“I told you, she has another girlfriend now.”

“No, I know. Only I’m driving to the West Coast. I want to try and live out there. I’m not sure where, yet. Probably San Francisco, but maybe LA. And I thought, I was passing by Columbus, so …”

She did a lot of passing by, this girl.

“So?”

“I just thought, it would be really nice to see Maria. Get some, you know …”

Closure? Samantha thought. She had a particular distaste for the word.

“Closure.”

“Oh. Of course. Well, she’s up at campus now. But she ought to be home in an hour or so. I’ll pick up a pizza for the three of us. Why don’t you come with me?”

So Gab did, which was just as well. Samantha certainly didn’t want her poking around the house with its single bedroom, wondering where Maria slept at night. She asked Gab polite questions as they drove to Luigi’s, where Samantha often ordered pizza, and learned that she—like Samantha herself—had no intention of ever returning to their hometown or maintaining ties to any living person there. Everything Gab owned, in fact, was in the Hyundai Accent she was bravely driving west, and once this last little bit of closure was achieved, she intended to head off, literally, into the sunset. That is, Samantha supposed, unless she made some unfortunate discovery here in Columbus that warranted a return to Earlville, New York. But really, it was all unfortunate discovery at this point. Wasn’t it? “I’ll just be a minute,” she said as she went inside to pick up the pie.

Later, as Gab set the table for three in the small dining room, Samantha crushed a handful of peanuts between a metal spatula and the countertop, and pressed them under the oily discs of pepperoni.

Pepperoni, of course.

Because she remembered that.

Because she had been a good mother, and even if she hadn’t, there was no one left to disagree about that now.

When he arrived home, Anna wasn’t there, but a pot of her green soup was on the stove and a bottle of Merlot open on the table. The sight of the two Pottery Barn place settings cheered him far more than the plain fact of them—or even the soup, or even the wine—might have warranted, but then again: he was home. That, on its own, would have been enough. But also, it had been so worth it, to know for sure.