Page 41 of The Last Book Party

“Franny was always itching to get back to Choate, but I always found it painful to leave. Henry was so funny and expansive and knew so much about everything. Tillie was more distant with me, sometimes even cold, but now and then she would talk to me about words, what she called ‘the flavor of them.’ Being there was like landing on a different planet. It opened up possibilities for me I had never considered.”

I was jealous that Tillie had encouraged him.

“Henry and Tillie pushed me to consider writing as a real calling. To take myself seriously and work at it like they did. Meeting them was a kind of revelation.”

A revelation. It was how Tillie had described her discovery of Truro in her columns. How I had felt at Henry and Tillie’s partyback in June. As though a door had opened, revealing a world and a way of being I hadn’t believed was a possibility for me.

We lay still, looking at the stars and not speaking.

Slowly, I stood up and stretched my arms toward the haze of the Milky Way.

Jeremy looked up at me, his smile drowsy and sweet. I was tempted to lie back down beside him. Run my fingers along his cheek. But his honesty was unsettling, even a little frightening.

“I’m going to turn in,” I said. “Big night tomorrow.”

40

The next morning, I found my mother at the kitchen table, fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee, paying rapt attention to Jeremy, who was describing the plot of his novel.

“So it’s a tale of unrequited love?” she said.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Jeremy said. “More like love unconsummated. Thwarted.”

“Well, I cannot wait to read it,” my mother said. “And to think, you’re not even thirty!”

I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the end of the table.

“He’s a veritable wunderkind,” I said. “Is that the word?”

“It is, and I’m not,” Jeremy said, looking a little embarrassed.

My mother set down her coffee cup and placed her hands, palms down, on the table. She looked at Jeremy sternly. “Do not shy from your gifts,” she said. “You are a very lucky young man to have been born an artist. Embrace it.”

After breakfast, Jeremy and I set off on a walk down to the marsh and to Corn Hill for a swim, after which I’d promised to drive him to Henry and Tillie’s so he could hang out withFranny and help with last-minute party preparations. It was one of those early fall days, when all the colors seemed dialed up a notch, the grass a brighter green, the water a deeper blue. The sun was warm, but the air cool, as if September were announcing itself.

As we descended the rough path through the beach plum bushes and down the hill to the marsh, Jeremy asked, “Does your mother really think artists are born and not made?”

“That she does. Mathematicians too.” I yanked a long thread of honey-colored grass from the dirt and poked it between my teeth.

“It’s a rather restrictive view,” Jeremy said. “If you need anything to make it as a writer, it’s stamina, not genius. No wonder you have trouble finishing stories. It’s not magic, you know.”

“Isn’t it, though? My best stories have sort of… poured out of me.”

We walked on the edge of the marsh, our feet sinking into the damp dirt as little green-brown crabs scuttled sideways into their holes. A great blue heron glided down in front of us and disappeared into the tall grass.

“Your best stories?” Jeremy said. “And how many would that be?”

“Well, not many,” I said, suddenly feeling foolish. “Four?”

“Out of how many?”

“How many stories have I started? Not quite hundreds, but…”

We climbed up and crossed the path of the old railroad tracks, overgrown with wildflowers, and then walked down the other side and through the marsh toward the beach by the mouth of the harbor.

“No, how many stories have you finished?” Jeremy said.

When I didn’t answer, he said, “I’m guessing you’ve finished four—the ones that came easily.”

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