Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life (11 page)

But that other notion—the idea that writers live under their “own sky.” They
do
. In writing fiction convincingly, what they have to do is point to a specifically literary sky, a sky under which anything is possible, and move their characters through a landscape that’s right for them, even though their scribes may live elsewhere, or prefer other territory. We could literalize Ms. Porter’s metaphorical sky: when writers are absolutely integrated into their own landscape, and have chosen to place their characters there, they have a clear advantage (Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, Jim Harrison), but for the many writers who grew up anywhere, and belong nowhere, the sky can’t easily be invoked with conviction. I think that’s why it’s not often referred to—or is referred to with self-consciousness. The fiction writer tends to look as high as a tree, or even a mountain, but often the sky seems too much. Poets consider their sky a lot more than fiction
writers. I wonder if the inherent constraints of a poem give the poet an impulse to look at something vast, while the many pages available to the fiction writer nevertheless suggest that the writer focus on detail.

Mrs. Nixon may have had her own sky, one she felt at home under, when she was a child, or remembered wistfully as she spent years under city skies, looking up through smog and obliterating lights. Walking under such gray skies, hiding behind a head scarf pulled over her forehead to provide anonymity as time went on, going out at night so as not to be seen, she might have felt the openness above her both as a vanished world and as a reproach. Her world really did begin to vanish in her lifetime, though her choices in life would have taken her far from that farmland in any case. She believed in facades, as well: she was the one who wanted the White House illuminated at night, its lights bright in celebration. Though she never wanted a life in politics, once she had it, there was no reason the ultimate symbol of what had been attained shouldn’t burn bright.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in “The Crack-up,” writes: “Fifty years ago we Americans substituted melodrama for tragedy, violence for dignity under suffering. That became a quality that only women were supposed to exhibit in life or fiction.” This was written in the 1930s. The notion of a woman’s “dignity” has been somewhat rethought as repressive, though the number of political wives who have had to apologize for speaking out continues to grow. I don’t think Mrs. Nixon would be surprised by the continued assumption that first ladies are to be seen and not heard. Remember Hillary Clinton furiously backpedaling after dismissing as unimportant the idea of baking cookies, and Michelle Obama excoriated for implying that she hadn’t been unilaterally proud of her country every second of her life? Women are coached on how this is done—how they can
say two seemingly contradictory things at the same time, and be true to no one, including themselves—in order to come clean and make amends on
The View
.

The view, indeed: depending on who you are, where you stand, and whether you’ve got the chutzpah to stare down the sky.

T
he idea is that you pick up a pen and just start writing. Can you imagine? If you saw a thread dangling from your hem, would you pull it and keep unwinding and unwinding until the skirt became a miniskirt, and then nothing but a waistband? If you did, what would you have except something you’d destroyed and couldn’t wear?

R
ichard Farnsworth smiled good-bye to the secretary and strolled out of the office, a piece of stationery tucked in his briefcase. John Hayes, his boss, tended to be suspicious of his employees, especially if he thought there might be any romance going on. At the office Christmas party, he’d stood like the former soldier he was when his own wife came in late and threw her arms around him. If you knew John, you could have seen a tiny gleam of pleasure flicker in his eyes, though, as he’d handed her a cup of punch. The office was all about business, and Richard worked hard and wanted to do well—at least as well as he’d done at Princeton.

“Mr. Farnsworth,” Belinda, the secretary, called after him, as he was walking down the stairs. “Mr. Farnsworth, would you have time to sign this letter?”

He walked back to the doorway, where she stood smiling inquisitively. Belinda Hayes had just graduated from school and come to work in her father’s office. She had golden hair and smiling cheeks. She was a clever girl, so she might have known that quite a few men in the office admired her beauty, but would not dare approach because she was the boss’s daughter. He took the
fountain pen she handed him and put his signature on the document, practicing trailing the final
h
of his name into a little upward turn, like a check mark approving his own name.

This was the afternoon he had long been waiting for, through the long winter with snow that piled up everywhere like reams of untouched typing paper. It was not Belinda Hayes, however, to whom he wanted to dedicate the novel he was planning to write. It was his best friend Bill’s sister, Harriet Reese Miller, who had returned from summer camp the day before, and called Richard just as she’d promised she would.

Harriet Reese Miller, at eighteen, was too old for summer camp, but she loved it so much that the owner of Camp Walla-Wahee had arranged for her to return as a counselor. Though Richard had never seen her in a bathing suit, he imagined her dressed in one every night before he fell asleep, a black bathing suit that drew attention to her beautiful swan neck, with a white band that accentuated her slim waist and provided a clear indication that she was mostly girl and just a little bit swan.

The street ahead was lined with buildings where angels peered from pilasters and columns supported impossibly heavy weights, like performers whose act involved standing stock-still. It was the act performers wanted you to notice, not them, because they were mere instruments of transformation. He looked at the sky and saw the clouds slowly drifting, like sentences trailing other sentences, growing wispy and evaporating if they were not recorded. He should be writing his book, he knew that, but he needed a job so he could save the money to marry Harriet, and when that book was closed, when she was his very own, he would have the courage to take on anything in the world. He noticed, again, the Corinthian column, with its ornate top, and patted his hair to make sure he looked neat, stood upright because rising an inch higher made him
feel a bit more powerful. He had learned from his boss’s manner, without being told.

He went to a florist’s and gazed at the flowers, imagining them as a bouquet Harriet would hold in front of her, walking slowly toward the altar. But today he could pick only one, the perfect flower for the most beautiful girl. He considered Queen Anne’s lace, but his love was an all-American girl, so he decided that was too regal. And if a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, perhaps it would be more imaginative to select something other than a rose? “Does she have a favorite color?” asked the perky young woman behind the counter. Of course! Her favorite color was . . . well, it might be pink. He had never asked, he realized. He remembered the white belt of her bathing suit and decided white might be better. White suggested purity, but also conjured up his secret vision. He pointed to a vase that contained a stalk of something whose name had as many syllables as his heart had constant thoughts of her. The flower was called “delphinium,” and it had many, many blossoms all the way up its tall stalk to the still tightly closed tip, which, too, would flower as time went on. It was carefully wrapped in a cone of lavender paper and tied with a pale green ribbon, whose ends were made to curl into happy confusion as the young woman ran a scissors over the tips.

Back on the street, he walked until he turned in to the park where she said that she would meet him. He was early, because choosing the flower had not taken as long as he’d anticipated, but still he had to write his note. He wanted it to have the immediacy of something deeply felt, but also seem to have been written spontaneously. One of his fears in embarking on his other project, his book, was that so much time would be spent that in every word one might hear the ticking of the clock. He had spoken to no one but Harriet about his dream of being a writer. He would write
their love story, but it would be one that took place in the future, without time passing and parents hovering and the obligations of the office swarming him like worker bees surrounding the queen. Their story would reveal itself as the stars did, small but distinct, sometimes unobserved, but always there in the night sky to lead the way, to remind people of a world whose horizons knew no bounds.

He sat on a bench and began his note, the tip of the lucky pen that Harriet had given him for his birthday caressing the paper in the same sure but gentle way he dreamed of caressing her.

“Dearest Heart,”
he wrote, then paused. In the distance, two elderly ladies walked arm in arm, their hats as feathered as if birds had dared to perch atop them. What advice might two older ladies have for him about how best to express himself to the one he loved? He almost stood, but thought better of it. They might be frightened by his sudden intensity. He did not think he could keep his voice calm, neutral, as he always did in the office. They passed by, bird-heads bobbing, and he wondered why ladies selected such hats, unless perhaps they had a secret wish to fly away. At night, birds nested and were not seen, just as the hats resided in their boxes. But what were all these thoughts, when his Harriet did not particularly like hats, and wore them only because it was expected? She wore no hat when she raced into the water, unless you might call a swimming cap a hat. Oh, she might wear a sun hat with a wide brim if she sat on the beach, but still he did not think she was the sort of girl who liked a hat, or who needed one to be beguiling. No, when he closed his eyes, he saw her in the black bathing suit with her neck stretched high, her eyes squinting in the sunlight under no hat brim, only her curly hair, slightly reddish blond, sheltering her from the sun’s rays and falling to her shoulders. In the future, he thought, there might not be so many hats. Hadn’t
bathing suits at first had long skirts that had become shorter and shorter until now they were cropped into short pants that hugged the torso? Perhaps hats would also become smaller, no more than a gesture, like a comma. But he was lost again in speculation, putting off writing the letter the same way he delayed writing his book.

“Dearest Heart,”
he began again, but this time his attention drifted to a figure in the distance, coming nearer. It was his friend Bill, the brother of his beloved Harriet, and he suddenly realized Bill would be accompanying them, and his heart deflated. He had envisioned just the two of them on the bench, two stars alone in the night sky who would each take strength from the other’s burning bright.

Except that Bill was alone, and he veered to the right and took another path, striding purposefully in his blue suit, which became smaller and smaller until it seemed to meld into the sky. Lost in thought, Bill had just happened to be walking through the same park where Harriet had promised to meet Richard at half past noon. Bill disappeared, and some part of Richard felt ashamed that he had not greeted him. Earlier, he had thought of jumping up to greet two old ladies he didn’t even know, yet he had failed to call out to one of his dearest friends. Was this what it was to be in love? Preoccupied and jittery and thinking thoughts as jumbled as the tails of ribbons?

He looked at the flower on the bench, alarmed as if the swaddled flower, like a newborn baby, was a miraculous new being whose name he had forgotten. Probably she would know and say its name caressingly, just as she would speak his. He felt his heart skip a beat as he imagined her saying his name. He had already written the greeting. Though he wrote,
“Dear,”
he envisioned her as a deer, bashful until twilight, daring to reveal itself in order to find sustenance as light faded.
Dearest Heart,
he wrote. He continued:
From the first days I knew you, you were destined to be a great lady—you have always had that extra something which takes people out of the mediocre class. And now, dear heart, I want to work with you towards the destiny you are bound to fulfill
. He looked at the handwriting and admired the penmanship. It was almost as if he held a magic wand, the words had flowed so smoothly. There was no going back, no redoing the note, though he wondered if the second salutation of her as “dear heart” had been merely repetitive, making the greeting less emphatic. It was the only piece of stationery he’d taken. He dared not make a mistake.
As I have told you many times
—He stopped. That was wrong. He seemed to be hectoring her, she whom he intended to treat so gently, as if she, herself, were swaddled in wrapping paper. How to turn that aside? By including himself, of course, by assuming they were already together. He reread and continued, anticipating the dash that would add a note of quickness and brightness to the letter:
As I have told you many times—living together will make us both grow—and by reason of it we shall realize our dreams. You are a great inspiration to me, and though you don’t believe it yet, I someday shall return some of the benefit you have conferred upon me.

It is our job
(no going back, but a bad choice of words, as if the quotidian were tantamount!) . . .
It is our job to go forth together and accomplish great ends and we shall do it too.

And, Dear One, through the years, whatever happens I shall always be with you—loving you more every hour and attempting to let you feel that love in your heart and life.

He blew gently on the ink, with so faint an exhale it might have been the stars’ own breath expelled. Such notes were not written every day! Had he said what he meant, with enough conviction that it would be persuasive, providing scaffolding for their climb to heaven?

Another figure approached, a sudden parade of familiar people! Good heavens, was everyone going to be in the park at this important moment? It was Belinda Hayes, but she did not see him any more than Bill had, her eyes cast down with an expression of infinite sadness. Her cheeks were invisible, her hair almost obscuring her face. She looked at the ground, rushing on in a way that made him suspect she must be crying.