The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(85)

A week later a small item on the Boston Globe’s website said that Henry Kimball had been discharged from the hospital. I wondered how much he remembered about what had happened to him. And I wondered what he had thought when he heard that Joan was dead.



I still had the buzz cut but I’d let my hair grow out a little before going to another barber, this time in Connecticut, and my hair was now back to my natural color, a pale red.

When I had first returned from Cambridge my mother had been utterly baffled by my blond hair, and finally I told her I was dating a man who had suggested it, and that I wasn’t dating him anymore.

I don’t know if she believed me, but it made her forget about the haircut and start speculating about the man instead.

My father, who had not initially noticed the new hair, spotted it after we were playing a game of backgammon one night, when I was taking a long time on a move.

“Look at your hair, Lil,” he said.

“Oh, you noticed.”

“I knew you looked different when you came back from your trip, but I was so glad to see you that I barely paid attention.”

“I thought novelists were meant to be observant.”

He smirked. “God, no. No, that’s not true. I actually have a theory about this.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, pretty sure I’d heard it before, but willing to listen again.

“There are two kinds of writers,” he said, “observers and imaginers. Even though my books are supposed to be realism, I’m basically an imaginer, with a little bit of observer dashed in. There’s a lot of writers out there like me. And a few writers who are purely good observers. Updike’s one of those. Incredible observation. Terrible imagination.”

“You’ve given this some thought,” I said.

“A little bit.”

“Isn’t there a William Faulkner quote about this?”

“I don’t know. Is there?”

It was ringing a bell so I looked it up on my phone, no doubt irritating my father. “Yes,” I said. “He said that authors need observation, imagination, and experience. And he said that any two of which or sometimes even one of which can supply the lack of the others.”

My father frowned, then said, “Well, that second part is true. But the thing about experience is that it’s overrated. If we’re alive we have experience. You don’t have to go on a fucking African safari to be a good writer. Barbara Pym never went anywhere. Philip Larkin never went anywhere.”

“Didn’t Barbara Pym go to—”

“No, writers just need either imagination or observation. That’s all.”

“So tell me an author who is purely imagination, besides fantasy writers?”

“I suspect that not all fantasy writers are bad observers, but maybe most of them are. Let me think of a good example. Oh, here’s one and you won’t like it, but your favorite author, Lil, Agatha Christie. All imagination and a terrible observer.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah. She cares about getting her plots right and doesn’t care about getting the world right. Nothing wrong with it.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Trust me, she was probably the same in real life. If you met Agatha Christie on a walk, she’d have no idea where she was. She’d just be dreaming up murder plots. We are who we are.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Don’t get tetchy. It doesn’t make her a bad writer, just a lousy observer. But the best writers, of course, are equal parts imagination and observation.”

“Who are those?”

“Oh, you know, the biggies. Charles Dickens, Jane Austen. Shakespeare, of course.”

“But not you?”

“Good lord, no. My novels are basically wish fulfillment, and I was lucky enough to be able to craft a decent sentence. But, honestly, I have zero idea how this world actually works.”

I’d made my move and was waiting for my father to roll his dice. “I feel the same way as you do. About the world, I mean,” I said, as he rolled a four and a five and groaned about it.



In early December, Henry came to visit. As usual, he didn’t call ahead or send a letter. He just appeared on a cold and beautiful Saturday afternoon.

“This a good time?” he said as I came out onto the front stoop to see him. He had gotten out of his car and was leaning against it.

“It is,” I said.

“What about for your parents?”

“I’ll just tell them you were expected, and that they’d forgotten about it. They’ll never know. And they’ll be glad to see you.”

He had brought a small overnight bag, so I showed him upstairs to the room he usually slept in. On the way we passed my mother in the kitchen prepping green beans for that night’s dinner, and she got up and came over and gave Henry a hug, saying, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” as though she really had been expecting him.

“Does your mother think I’m your boyfriend?” Henry said, after putting his bag down on the single bed in the guest room. I was standing in the doorway. He looked thin, which wasn’t a surprise, and I had noticed a slight limp as he’d gone up the stairs.

“Probably,” I said. “How are you feeling?”