“Well, that’s kind of you to say. But the reason I got in touch, I just heard that a student of mine passed away. And I saw your post on that Ripley Facebook page. So I thought—”
“Evan, you’re talking about. Right?” said Martin Purcell.
“Yes. Evan Parker. He was my student.”
“Oh, I know.” All the way up in northern Vermont Jake could hear Martin Purcell chuckle. “I’m sorry to say, not your fan, though. But I wouldn’t take that too personally. Evan didn’t think anyone at Ripley was good enough to be his teacher.”
Jake took a moment to run through this sentence slowly. “I see,” he said.
“I could tell within an hour or two, just that first night of the residency, Evan wasn’t going to get much out of the program. If you’re going to learn something, you need to have curiosity about it. He didn’t have that. But he was still a cool guy to hang around with. Lot of charm. Lot of fun.”
“And you kept in touch with him, obviously.”
“Oh yeah. Sometimes he came up to Burlington, for a concert or something. We went to the Eagles together. I think he came up for Foo Fighters, too. And sometimes I drove down. He had a tavern down in Rutland, you know.”
“Well, I don’t really know. Would you mind telling me a little bit more? I just feel so badly I’m only hearing about this now. I would have written to his family when it happened.”
“Hey, would you give me a second?” said Martin Purcell. “Let me just tell my wife I’m on a call. I’ll be right back.”
Jake waited. “I hope I’m not taking you away from anything important,” he said, when Purcell returned.
“Not at all. I said I’ve got a famous novelist on the phone. That kind of trumps talking to our fifteen-year-old about the party we don’t want her going to.” He stopped to laugh at his own wit. Jake forced himself to join in.
“So, do you know anything about Evan’s family? I suppose it’s too late for a condolence note.”
“Well, even if it’s not, I don’t know who you’d send it to. His parents died a long time ago. He had a sister who also passed, before he did.” He paused. “Hey, I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but I never got the impression you two had much of a … rapport. I’m a teacher, myself, so I’m sympathetic to anyone who has to deal with a difficult student. I wouldn’t have wanted to be Evan’s teacher. Every class has that person who slouches in his chair and just glares at you, like,
“And
“Exactly.”
Jake had been jotting down notes:
He knew all that from the obituary.
“Yeah, that was definitely Evan in that particular class. But I was used to having an Evan. My first year of teaching, my answer to ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ would have been ‘I’m nobody. Who are you?’”
He could hear Martin laugh. “Dickinson.”
“Yeah. And I’d have been out of the room.”
“Crying in the bathroom.”
“Well.” Jake frowned.
“I meant me. Crying in the bathroom. First year as a student teacher. You have to toughen up. But most of those kids, they’re just marsh-mallows, really. And seriously miserable, in their own lives. Sometimes they’re the ones you worry about most of all, because they have no sense of themselves, no confidence at all. But that wasn’t Evan. I’ve seen plenty of false bravado—that wasn’t Evan either. He had absolute faith in his ability to write a great book. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he thought writing a great book wasn’t all that hard, and why shouldn’t he be able to do it? Most of us weren’t like that.”
Here Jake noted a cue—endemic among writers—to ask about Martin’s own work.
“I haven’t made much progress since finishing the program, to be honest.”
“Yes. Every day’s a challenge.”
“You seem to be doing okay,” Martin said. There was an edge to that.
“Not with my book in progress.”
He was surprised to hear himself say it. He was surprised that he’d given Martin Purcell of Burlington, Vermont, a complete stranger, more of a suggestion of his vulnerability than he’d given his own editor or agent.
“Well, sorry to hear that.”
“No it’s okay, just need to push through. Hey, do you know where Evan was with his own book? Did he get much done after the residency? He was just at the start, I think. At least the pages I saw.”
Martin said nothing, for the longest seconds of Jake’s life. Finally, he apologized. “I’m just trying to remember if he ever talked about that. I don’t think he ever told me how it was going. But if he was using again, and it looks like he was, I really doubt he was sitting down at his desk and turning out pages.”
“Well, how many pages do you think he had?”
Again, that uncomfortable pause.
“Were you thinking of doing something for him? I mean, for his work? Because that’s incredibly kind of you. Especially since he wasn’t exactly a fawning acolyte, if you know what I mean.”
