The Memory Book(5)

“Stu just got a short story published. In an actual literary magazine. A high schooler. I mean… my god.”

Stuart lets out a little laugh, eyeing Ms. Cigler.

“Ploughshares is a publication I wish I could publish in, folks. Give this young man a round.”

People clap halfheartedly, except for you. You don’t clap. Because you are staring at him, your hand holding a strand of your hair. You shift in your chair, leaning toward him. You catch your eyes running up from his lace-up shoes, to his jeans, across his waistband, to his brown neck, his smooth lips, across his eyebrows like black brushstrokes, down to his eyes, which meet yours again.

You turn hot and look down at your to-do list.

He leaves the classroom, and instead of listening to Ms. Cigler, you find yourself tracing a letter S.

Later, you wonder aloud to Maddie about him at debate practice, and she notices your drifting eyes, your fingertips playing on indiscriminate surfaces, your little sighs.

“Sammie McCoy is crushing,” Maddie says.

“I’m just curious. You know, like professionally. I wonder what it’s like to be published.” That word, published. It comes off the lips like an adult drink, like sweet cherry liqueur. It means that Stuart’s way of seeing the world is so complete, so sharp, so fascinating that important people want to spread it around.

You want your words to be like that. I mean, not in a fictional story, you could never do that, but in general. You want to be a debater (and then a lawyer) so you can look at the world from above, so you can cut it into neat, manageable pieces and fit problems and solutions together like a puzzle, making it fair for everyone. You want to tell people what is correct, what is real. Stuart is already doing that in his own way, and he’s only eighteen.

Over the next year, wherever he goes in the halls of Hanover High, he glows. You make excuses to switch lunch periods so you can watch him pop rolls of sushi into his mouth with his fingers from Tupperware he brought from home, his other hand holding The New Yorker or other publications with important names like The Paris Review or small, worn novels of every conceivable color. You make note of their titles and read them, too, so you can know what scenes are passing through his head. Once or twice he catches you reading the same book he is, in the cafeteria or elsewhere, and gives a little nod of recognition, which sends your lunch swirling.

But eventually he spends less and less time in the halls, and more in the backseats of Jeeps headed to the swimming hole or Dartmouth parties or trips to Montreal with his friends. As he should, you think, because he’s cool. You get to school early to study, and you stay late to do your homework. You are not at the parties where he is, or joining Hanover’s literary magazine where he’s the editor, or making friends with groups of girls who laugh loudly and wear revealing clothes, which might catch his attention.

On his graduation day, you watch him from the bleachers, standing between his parents, wearing sunglasses, shaking hands with all the teachers, smiling bigger than ever, trying to keep his cap from falling off. Last you heard, another magazine, The Threepenny Review, had seen his work and picked up a second story. Ms. Cigler told your class that he had been writing short stories since he was your age, and he’s hoping to publish a collection, and then a novel, then who knows? He’s off to New York now, because his parents have an apartment there anyway. He won’t go to college. He’s just going to write, because he’s found what he wants to do and what he’s good at, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep doing it. The thought of him still sets a fire in you, and before he leaves for good, you catch one last sight of him, taking off his robe and draping it over his arm, then disappearing into the crowd.

That is, until this morning. That’s right, Future Sam. It’s been two years, and I saw him this morning.

I was feeding the stupid chickens with Harrison and Bette and Davy (because even when it’s one of their turns to do chores it automatically becomes my turn), and suddenly Puppy jets up from whatever he was doing in the backyard and runs around the house past us, down the front slope. I followed the dog for a bit and watched him head toward the main road. He started trotting alongside a person walking, which wasn’t unusual. Our twisted little two-lane highway is too tangled and nestled among the mountains to allow for cars to go very fast, and people bike and jog and walk along it all the time, sometimes from as far as twenty minutes away, in Hanover. But this person was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. This person had dark hair and brown shoes. I squinted but I couldn’t be sure.

Then Puppy came back, and Davy and Harrison and Bette and I piled into the pickup and set off toward the elementary school, where I would drop them before I went into town. On the way, we passed the guy in black walking along the road. I slowed down and we all craned our necks backward. Stuart waved behind his sunglasses. All my siblings waved in reply. I just stared forward and tried not to scream.

I have held the scream in my throat all day and am now having trouble keeping it in while Maddie goes over her opening. Okay, I’m swallowing it, but I keep seeing his face against the Upper Valley morning, his hand up in a wave, his mouth lifting in a smile, as if he recognized me.

Stuart Shah is back.





THE WAITING ROOM


Two days, no sign of Stuart anywhere. I looked for him again on the drive to and from school, around the bend at Center Hill, up every winding driveway into the oaks, birches, maples, in every car we passed along the Connecticut River. I looked for him on the streets of Hanover coming out of Lou’s, or maybe sitting on a bench near the Dartmouth campus, reading a book. There aren’t too many guys of Indian heritage wearing black jeans in this town, but I managed to find two, and neither of them was him.