Mentor: A Memoir (12 page)
Authors: Tom Grimes
Several weeks passed, and although Frank and I saw each other every week in class, neither of us mentioned the book. But after our final workshop, Frank tilted his head and I followed him into his office. He said, “I’ve read the book. It’s okay.” Seated, he laid one hand on his desk to indicate
A Stone of the Heart
. “But how you got from here,” he said, “to here,” he raised his other hand a foot above his head to indicate the new novel, “is amazing.” Then he lowered his arm and leaned back in his chair. “Honestly, I don’t know how you did it.”
A Stone of the Heart
. “But how you got from here,” he said, “to here,” he raised his other hand a foot above his head to indicate the new novel, “is amazing.” Then he lowered his arm and leaned back in his chair. “Honestly, I don’t know how you did it.”
“I wrote twenty hours a week for ten years.”
“Well, it shows.”
Connie simply said, “I loved it.” She didn’t discriminate between the two novels. To her, I was one continuous being, rather than one who had developed in stages. But to Frank, my life began the moment he read my application manuscript.
With the semester over, people began to leave town. A few friends and I had agreed to help another friend and his wife move. As we hoisted their washing machine and attempted to maneuver it through a doorway, one of them said, “Nice review of your book in the
Times
.”
Times
.”
“What review?” I said. “When?”
“The one in this coming Sunday’s
Times Book Review.
”
Times Book Review.
”
“But it’s Monday.”
“Prairie Lights sells copies early.”
I continued to hold my share of three hundred pounds. Then, not wanting to seem egotistical, I hauled boxes for another two hours. When the last one had been stuffed inside the truck I said, “I have to go.” I walked to the corner, turned, then sprinted to the bookstore. Outside its front door I stopped, winded, less than a yard from Frank.
“The
Times
reviewed my book,” I said.
Times
reviewed my book,” I said.
Inside, we each removed a copy from the periodical stand near the register. The review appeared on page seven. Frank said, “It’s up front, that’s good. It means they like it.” We read in silence:
May 20, 1990A STONE OF THE HEART By Tom Grimes. 131 pp. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. $15.95.Creative writing programs have been springing up around the country like weeds and, for the most part, they’ve been given a bad rap, with critics complaining that they produce only derivative “workshopped” writing. Now here’s strong evidence to the contrary. Tom Grimes is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his compact and affecting first novel, which records a few days in the life of a disintegrating Irish-American family, is a very professional job. “A Stone of the Heart” is set in Queens in 1961, as Roger Maris is striving to break Babe Ruth’s home-run record, a goal that rivets the attention of Michael, the 14-year-old protagonist. “The feat seemed so herculean,” he recalls, “compared to the accomplishments and work of my father.”
Why had I been linked to Iowa? I hadn’t even written the novel at Iowa. I skipped to the final paragraph:
“A Stone of the Heart” renders the afflictions of adolescence in both unique and universal terms, and Tom Grimes is, in workshop terminology, a “natural” writer. He would probably have developed and flourished on his own, but perhaps not so soon or so well.
Frank said, “Not bad,” and returned his copy. While I opened my wallet to pay for one (I wanted to buy five, but was too embarrassed to do so), he said, “See you.” Then he left, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Prairie Lights had arranged a reading and Frank, breaking his policy of not attending student events, arrived with Maggie. He lingered behind the last row of chairs. At one point, he wandered off to browse in the bookstore’s mystery section. Once I finished reading, he appeared, carrying two novels under his arm. Before I began to sign books, he drifted toward me. “You should read slower,” he said. Then he patted my shoulder and added, “Don’t waste the summer. See you in August.” He strolled toward the doorway, and I didn’t see or speak to him again until he returned from Nantucket and fall classes began.
CHAPTER TEN
M
y mother met me at La Guardia airport. Then we drove to Holliswood, where my sister’s psychiatrist had released her for the second time. Early summer had descended on New York and when I stepped out of the car to collect my sister’s suitcase humidity encased me like a glove. Trees surrounding the clinic had bloomed, sunlight shone through gaps between their leaves, and the day’s brightness dulled my sister’s pale complexion, lending her affectless face a putty-colored pallor. She’d been weakened by her medication and, as I hugged her, she felt as boneless as a sponge. After my visit in March she’d been discharged, but within weeks she saw a sign from God on a seltzer delivery truck, she couldn’t remember how to fold laundry, the purpose of socks eluded her, and she again tried to commit suicide, this time by swallowing a quarter, believing it would slice open her stomach and intestines and allow her to bleed to death.
y mother met me at La Guardia airport. Then we drove to Holliswood, where my sister’s psychiatrist had released her for the second time. Early summer had descended on New York and when I stepped out of the car to collect my sister’s suitcase humidity encased me like a glove. Trees surrounding the clinic had bloomed, sunlight shone through gaps between their leaves, and the day’s brightness dulled my sister’s pale complexion, lending her affectless face a putty-colored pallor. She’d been weakened by her medication and, as I hugged her, she felt as boneless as a sponge. After my visit in March she’d been discharged, but within weeks she saw a sign from God on a seltzer delivery truck, she couldn’t remember how to fold laundry, the purpose of socks eluded her, and she again tried to commit suicide, this time by swallowing a quarter, believing it would slice open her stomach and intestines and allow her to bleed to death.
On the ride home, she remained silent and stared out the window beside her, watching the world pass. Her face was puffy, a pouch of flesh hung from her chin, and, although she was only thirty-two, white roots lined the part in her hair. She’d been prescribed Haldol, an antipsychotic, which slowed her movements and deadened her emotions. As I drove, my mother leaned forward from the backseat and placed her mouth inches from my sister’s left ear.
“Do you want lunch?”
The concept of food seemed beyond my sister and she didn’t answer.
“Your brother’s here.” My mother glanced over my right shoulder. “How long are you here for?”
I’d come to spend a week with the Mets. “Seven days.”
“Your brother’s here for seven days. You think you have all the time in the world to talk to him? You see him once a year, if you’re lucky.” My mother’s use of “you” actually meant “I.”
My sister’s head turned as if a puppet master’s hand had reached up inside her skull and twisted it toward me. But her lips didn’t move.
“And you,” my mother said. “You don’t have anything to say to your sister? Look at her. She could be dead. Does she look like a healthy person?”
I stared at the rearview mirror and waited for my mother’s reflection to appear. When she looked up, I narrowed my eyelids. She understood my warning. I wouldn’t join her campaign to undermine my brother-in-law or influence my sister’s decision to choose her caretaker and living companion. With my father dead, my mother could devote herself to nursing my sister. I also didn’t doubt her ability to infantilize my sister. They’d never lived more than a mile from each other, my mother had a key to my sister’s house, and, excluding my sister’s two-week honeymoon, I don’t believe forty-eight hours passed without them being together. Now, if my sister’s dependence on her became complete, the loneliness that trailed my mother through the house the rest of us had left behind would vanish like an exorcised ghost.
I said, “She looks fine.”
A moment later, my mother leaned back. To avoid my gaze in the mirror she placed her elbow on an armrest and dropped her jaw into her open palm. “Well,” she said, “she doesn’t look fine to me.”
Without speaking to one another, we rode to my sister’s brick row house. Her sons stood behind the storm door’s glass pane as we walked their mother, unsteady from her medication, along the grass-bordered concrete path. The older boy’s hands stayed in his pockets. The younger one’s clutched his brother’s wrist. When we entered, they moved out of our way and my sister glided past them. Inside, the living room’s palpable stillness seemed eerily funereal.
An hour later, I left for Shea Stadium, yet the stillness clung to me until, near midnight, the roar of fifty thousand cheering fans shook it loose.
On my way to the stadium, I stopped to pick up a newspaper. Unlike the sedate
Times
or the middlebrow
Daily News
, the
New York Post
’s sports section stylistically mirrored the front pages of tabloid scandal rags sold at supermarket checkout counters. I dropped thirty-five cents into the newsstand keeper’s palm. Then I turned the paper over and read the afternoon’s headline: “BR AWL IN METS’ LOCKER ROOM!!! STRAWBERRY SLUGS TEAMMATE!” The reason: an unpopular rookie, considered by some to be arrogant, had replaced a well-liked player. The situation may have been tolerated had the team been winning, but when a team loses more often than it wins its locker room grows unnervingly quiet. Some players blame themselves for the losses, some blame others, and some blame everyone: the owner, the manager, the press, the fans, their friends, and their families. Initially, losing streaks irritate players. But when the streak continues, they become angry. The streak’s nature mystifies them. Their losses seem preordained. They feel cursed. Then they begin to play as if they
are
cursed. On the field, their attention wanders; they fumble easy catches; they swing and miss and aren’t surprised by their inability to hit the ball. What’s happening is clear, but no one knows what to do about it. Hence, the silence, then the search for a scapegoat. So when Darryl Strawberry threw a punch, he struck not only his teammate, he also whaled on the team’s superstitions. He pummeled them. He provided the catharsis they’d longed for and ended the locker room’s silence. The players now had something, other than losing, to talk about.
Times
or the middlebrow
Daily News
, the
New York Post
’s sports section stylistically mirrored the front pages of tabloid scandal rags sold at supermarket checkout counters. I dropped thirty-five cents into the newsstand keeper’s palm. Then I turned the paper over and read the afternoon’s headline: “BR AWL IN METS’ LOCKER ROOM!!! STRAWBERRY SLUGS TEAMMATE!” The reason: an unpopular rookie, considered by some to be arrogant, had replaced a well-liked player. The situation may have been tolerated had the team been winning, but when a team loses more often than it wins its locker room grows unnervingly quiet. Some players blame themselves for the losses, some blame others, and some blame everyone: the owner, the manager, the press, the fans, their friends, and their families. Initially, losing streaks irritate players. But when the streak continues, they become angry. The streak’s nature mystifies them. Their losses seem preordained. They feel cursed. Then they begin to play as if they
are
cursed. On the field, their attention wanders; they fumble easy catches; they swing and miss and aren’t surprised by their inability to hit the ball. What’s happening is clear, but no one knows what to do about it. Hence, the silence, then the search for a scapegoat. So when Darryl Strawberry threw a punch, he struck not only his teammate, he also whaled on the team’s superstitions. He pummeled them. He provided the catharsis they’d longed for and ended the locker room’s silence. The players now had something, other than losing, to talk about.
When I reached the ballpark, an armed guard admitted me. I drove past the autograph seekers and girls hoping to score a date with a player, then found a parking spot amid the array of BMWs, Mercedes coupes, Ferraris, and, beside me, a single van with a toy-littered interior and an infant’s car seat secured to the rear bench. Crossing the asphalt, I glanced up. The stadium dwarfed the team’s spring training ballpark. As a kid, I’d come here to see games, and inside the stadium’s twenty-story-high walls, the vivid green field, the random, multicolored pattern of shirts, jackets, and caps that spanned the upper and lower decks, and the crowd’s restless buzz before game time electrified me. Unfortunately, the directions I’d been told to follow led me beneath the field into a painted cinder-block tunnel illuminated by caged, yellow-tinted light-bulbs. Voices bounced off the walls, creating a harmless but dispiriting bedlam. Players hurried past me, some out of uniform, some carrying travel bags, some towing children toward the ballpark’s playroom. Ahead of me, I saw Jay standing with his arms spread and his back pressed against the clubhouse doors, denying reporters locker room access, even if it meant being crucified. I took the executive elevator up to Mr. Cashen’s office. In it, a prim, middle-aged woman sat at a large, elegant wooden desk. Championship plaques hung from the room’s walnut paneling and a plush carpet muffled my footsteps. Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, I felt conspicuously poor. I said hello, then showed her my letter. She lifted the telephone receiver and whispered into the mouthpiece. Moments later Mr. Cashen burst through a pair of tall doors, wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and bow tie. “Thomas!” he said, shaking my hand. “Here to steal more secrets?”
“As many as I can,” I said. Then I handed him a signed copy of my novel. He studied its cover, flipped the book over, looked at my photograph, and read aloud the quote my publisher had added to the jacket. “‘Talented newcomer Grimes writes elegantly about inelegant lives in this debut. . . . Small, polished, and moving.
Kirkus Reviews
.’ You’re famous!”
Kirkus Reviews
.’ You’re famous!”
“Not quite.” I extended a copy of Alice Munro’s new story collection,
Friends of My Youth
. “I brought this, too,” I said. During spring training Mr. Cashen had mentioned that his favorite author was García Márquez. But García Márquez had published nothing since
Love in the Time of Cholera
, two years earlier, so I chose the Munro book as a gift, hoping their narrative similarities—their fluid use of time and flashback, their complicated characters—might appeal to his imagination. “I thought you’d like it,” I said.
Friends of My Youth
. “I brought this, too,” I said. During spring training Mr. Cashen had mentioned that his favorite author was García Márquez. But García Márquez had published nothing since
Love in the Time of Cholera
, two years earlier, so I chose the Munro book as a gift, hoping their narrative similarities—their fluid use of time and flashback, their complicated characters—might appeal to his imagination. “I thought you’d like it,” I said.
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