Authors: T. Greenwood

The Hungry Season (23 page)

BOOK: The Hungry Season

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M
onty starts in right away. “So, when do I get to take a peek at the next Pulitzer-winning novel, Sammy?”

They are both on their second pieces of
spanikopita.
Lauren had pushed hers around her plate several times and then grabbed an orange from the bowl in the middle of the table. Sam had managed to temporarily fix both the broken fruit bowl and the table leg, but he’s pretty sure they won’t hold out for long. Their dinner, as a matter of fact, might just wind up on the floor. Lauren is sitting next to Monty peeling the orange, scrutinizing a brown patch on the skin. The whole cabin smells like citrus and spinach.

“You know me, Monty. I like to have a good draft before I let it out loose in the world. It’s just a bunch of scattered notes right now; it’s a mess.”

“I’ve been talking to Frank over at Random House. He says they’re thinking about giving him his own imprint. Of course, he may be blowing steam out his ass, but I’ve heard a few things, and I think it might be true. Anyway, we were just talking about you. Really about
Small Sorrows,
and he was raving about you, asking,
What ever happened to that Sam Mason? He should have gotten a National Book Award for that one
. I did have to remind him about the nomination for
The Art of Hunting,
mind you, but he’s a fan. A big one, and I have a feeling he might pay a lot of money to get his grubby paws on the next Sam Mason book. After this one, of course.”

Sam cannot even begin to think of a book
after
this book, or whatever the hell it is he’s working on.

“I met his wife,” Lauren nods. “She’s a publicist. So
well-connected;
I bet we could get her on board too. After everything,
you know,
you’re probably going to need a good publicist. Put a good spin on things.” She’s peeled the orange now and has dissected it into segments. He’s pretty sure she hasn’t eaten a single one of them. There’s a pit in his gut, and he imagines it like an orange seed, planting itself in the bile and trash inside his stomach, growing, blooming and blossoming, filling his body.

“Can you give me a hint?” Monty asks.

“Jesus, Monty. Let it alone for five minutes so I can eat?” Sam is trying to be lighthearted about this, but he’s getting pissed.

Monty keeps pushing. “Just the
premise
. The main character. Can you give me
something
to chew on?”

Sam sets his fork down hard on the rickety table. He thinks about Mena’s fist striking his face. The skin still stings. “
Christ,
Monty, it’s about a starvation experiment,” he says, and then immediately regrets it.

Lauren’s jaw drops. She looks like one of those wooden ventriloquist’s mannequins.

“Close your mouth, Laur,” Monty says. And then he is nodding, his head bobbing like a bobblehead doll.

Sam rubs his temples. He’s gone too far to go back now. “It’s not what you think. I mean, it’s not some god-awful memoir or anything.”

Monty is still bobbing his head; Sam suddenly realizes that he actually looks excited. Eager.

“It’s about these men, conscientious objectors during World War II. They volunteered for this experiment, to be starved and then refed. I’ve only got about ten pages. And to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s anything anyone will ever want to read. Monty, you and I have been in this business a long time. I know what it is that publishers want these days. They want the big guns. The heavy hitters. Or, they want some pretty little girl, some Harvard coed protégée. Or some fucking drug addict who rambles on for a thousand pages about how he overcame his addictions. I’m small potatoes, Monty. A relic.”

“That’s not
true,
Sam,” Lauren wines, a mock frown.

“It is
true,
Lauren. Don’t tell me you didn’t tell all your Colony Club friends that Monty was dragging you up to Butt Fuck Nowhere this weekend to see one of his has-been clients.”

“That’s enough, Sam.You’re just in a slump.You’ve had some big stuff happen. Some really shitty shit happen,” Monty says.

“I may not even want to publish it,” Sam says. “Maybe I’m just writing it for me.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Monty says, laughing. “It’s finally happened. That’s what this Vermont business is about, isn’t it? You came up here to Salinger yourself away. A fucking hermit, writing away, stashing your work in some fucking wall safe somewhere.” Monty looks around the room as if he’s going to find Sam’s hidden treasures behind a picture on the wall.

“
Ten pages,
Monty. And every single one of them is a piece of shit.” Sam stands up and rests his hands on the table’s edge. He thinks of Mena.
It’s our fault,
she said.
It’s
your
fault
. He can still feel the place where her finger met his chest. “I didn’t come here to
write
. I came here to save my fucking family from falling apart. What’s left of it anyway.” His voice is booming now; he can feel his face getting red, his ears are hot. He grips the edge of the table, almost willing the whole thing to just fucking collapse.

“Well then,” Lauren says quietly to Monty. And then to Sam, “I need to use your restroom.”

Sam sighs and gestures down the hall.

After she has closed the bathroom door, Monty says, “I’m sorry about this, buddy.You want us to go?” His voice is full of sympathy. He’s been a good friend. Sam feels like shit for disappointing him.

“If you’re here for a book, I just don’t have it, Monty.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Monty says.

“If you want to go home, go home,” Sam says. “If you leave now, you can get back to the city just past midnight.This was a bad idea. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not over, Sammy. You just need to get through this rough patch.You’re a writer. That’s not going to change.”

“Monty, I don’t even want to write anymore. I just don’t even care. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s just gone. Everything that drove me to sit down and work every day, that excitement, that passion, has vanished. It’s excruciating. It’s literally painful to work. I’m spent.”

“I believe in you,” Monty says. “Just give it time.”

“Ten pages in the last six months, Monty. How long am I supposed to wait?”

Lauren emerges from the bathroom, her cheeks flushed pink, a fresh coat of lipstick on her puffy lips. “I saw a motel on our way here,” she says, clapping her hands together. “Maybe we can take you and Mena out for breakfast tomorrow or something.” And those Botoxed lips pull down into a pity frown. “You look thin.”

Lauren gets in the car without saying a word to Sam. Monty shakes his hand and then hugs him at the door.

“Oh shit,” he says. “I forgot to give you this. They’ve been piling up. It’s about six months’ worth.” He reaches into his bag and pulls out a bulging manila envelope. “Fan mail,” Monty says. “Don’t tell me your career’s over. At least the women still love you.”

D
ale had left Buffalo at 6:00
A.M.
, but the drive to Quimby took ten hours. She pulled off the interstate and into town at 4:00, exhausted. She’d cried almost the whole way there. Without the printouts, she had no idea how to get to Lake Gormlaith. It wasn’t on any of the maps she found at the Vermont Welcome Center. She kept checking the rearview mirror. For about an hour there was a Suburban behind her with tinted windows. Whenever she slowed down, it slowed down.When she sped up, it did as well. She lost it finally when she pulled into a rest area.

She parked the car in the dirt parking lot of a diner and took a deep breath.
Okay, okay.You’re almost there.You’ve come three thousand miles. Just calm down. Eat something. Come up with a plan.
There had to be a place where she could get Internet access here. She’d just print out some new maps. Get up early tomorrow and find the lake. She just needed to get to Sam, and he’d make everything okay.

The bells on the door jingled as she entered the diner, and the smells embraced her. The chalkboard sign said,
PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF,
and so she chose a two-person booth by the window.

She grabbed a laminated menu from the rack behind the bowl of individual creamers and scanned the breakfast (
Served All Day
) items.The waitress,
Maggie
according to her name tag, took her order—a skillet breakfast (bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits and sausage gravy) and a Mountain Dew—and within minutes there was a steaming plate in front of her. She was starving; she had to make herself slow down, take small bites. It was so delicious, she felt her eyes growing wet with each forkful.

When her stomach was full, and the caffeine had kicked in, she felt rejuvenated.

“Excuse me?” she said, motioning for Maggie to come over.

“Can I getcha something else?”

She considered asking her how to get to Gormlaith, but then figured she should be careful. She had no idea who was watching her; maybe this
Maggie
was one of them. “I was actually wondering if you knew of a place where I could get Internet access around here. I need to check my e-mail,” she added.

“Library’s probably the only place,” Maggie said. “I’ve got a friend who works over there. Do you want me to give her a call and see how late they’re open tonight?”

“No, that’s okay. I can drive. Where is it exactly? I’m not from here.”

Maggie gave her directions to the Athenaeum on a napkin. “My friend’s name is Effie,” Maggie said. “You tell her I sent you.”

Dale got in her car and headed out of the parking lot.

She pulled up in front of the library just as a tiny woman with a long black braid was locking the heavy front doors to the building.

Dale threw open the door of the Bug and raced up the steps. Breathless, she said, “Hi, your friend Maggie at the diner said I might be able to get Internet access here? Are you closed?”

The woman smiled. “Shoot, I’d let you in, but our server’s down. We haven’t had access all day. This happens about twice a week,” she said. “We’re open tomorrow at noon though, and the guy who takes care of our computers will have been in by then.”

Dale’s heart thumped heavily in her chest. Her lip quivered.

“Are you okay?” Effie asked, touching her elbow.

Dale nodded.

“You from out of town?” she asked.

Dale nodded again. “Arizona,” she said, motioning to the Bug.

“Oh, I used to have a Bug!” She smiled. “You came all the way cross country in that?”

Then Dale realized she should have lied. Said it was a friend’s car. She looked anxiously down the street.All the other parking spots were empty. She worried that the Suburban would pull around the corner any minute. She was shaking so hard she had to grab the railing to keep herself steady.

“Hey, wait!” Effie said. “I don’t know where you’re staying, but the motel just after you get off the interstate has free WiFi. You have a laptop or anything?”

Dale thought of her laptop, her backpack. All the stolen things. She shook her head.

“Listen, if you come by tomorrow around ten, I’ll let you in. I’m coming early to meet the IT guy. He should have it up and running by then.”

“Thank you,” Dale said, trying to take long, deep breaths. She thought about asking her for directions to the lake as well, but then figured she’d better not call any more attention to herself. She also didn’t want to be out driving in an unfamiliar place after dark. “Can you tell me where that motel is?”

Now at the motel, she sits in the dark watching TV. It’s still early, but she just wants the night to pass. There’s a Clint Eastwood movie on,
Play Misty for Me
. He used to be really, really handsome, she thinks. There’s even some quality about him that reminds her of Sam.

Every time a new set of headlights light up the room, she peers out through the drawn curtains. No Suburban.

She’ll need to be vigilant. She can’t sleep tonight. It’s not safe.

A
fter Monty and Lauren drive away, Sam goes up to the loft and opens the laptop. Ten pages. That’s it. A file full of printouts, clumsy stacks of books, pages dog-eared and marked with Post-its. The office looks like it belongs to a lunatic. He scrolls to the end of the document where he’s been collecting information.

The medieval fasting girls,
Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Siena, Clare of Assisi, Saint Veronica,
lived on herbs, orange seeds, the Eucharist.
Marie of Oignies, Beatrice of Nazareth
professed illness at the sight and smell of meat. Asceticism. Deprivation.
Columba of Rieti
. Self-mutilation.
Practitioners
of hunger, not sufferers.
Anorexia mirabilis
.The miraculous lack of desire for food. They called them
miracle maids,
these holy women who feasted on crumbs, the pus and scabs and lice of the ill.They did not want. They did not desire. They were never hungry.

Sam scrolls through the document, page after page. Girl after girl.

Mollie Fancher, a woman living in Brooklyn in the 1860s. At eighteen years old, she was in an accident in which she fell from a horse car and was dragged for nearly a block before the driver noticed what had happened. After the accident, she was confined to her childhood bed for the rest of her life. She became a celebrity in Brooklyn, falling into trances and exhibiting clairvoyant powers. But most miraculous of all was that she claimed to survive for more than a decade following the accident without nourishment, without food. In a moment, she went from being a normal young woman to a sideshow freak, with hundreds of thousands of visitors traipsing through her bedroom to gawk at her, the girl who did not eat. He wonders if she had any idea that in a single moment she could lose the very essence of what it is to be human.

He thumbs through the Victorian curiosities, these girls and their hunger on display:
Lenora Eaton, Josephine Marie Bedard, Therese Neumann
.These spectacles of starvation. He plucks out the newspaper illustration of
Sarah Jacob,
studies her pencil-sketched face.
The Welsh fasting girl.
She was twelve years old when she stopped eating. At thirteen she died when her parents did not intervene.

He rubs the knot on his head; the flesh is tender. He glances at his reflection in the window beyond his desk. His eye is swollen, purple.

It’s your fault
.

He rubs his chest. Oranges rolling across the floor.

BOOK: The Hungry Season

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