The Last Book Party(19)
in disgrace,
a filament.
How does a teacup swallow in disgrace? Or swallow at all? Why is it a filament? What is a filament? I closed the book and listened to the wind whistle through the window frame. I’d been so happy to return here, but on this second day of my job as Henry’s assistant, and alone in the house for the first time while Henry and Tillie were in Orleans, I felt as if I didn’t speak its language.
My first day had started awkwardly. I arrived hot and sweaty, having ridden my bicycle. Ushering me into his office, Henry apologized that he didn’t have a proper place for me to work. At least for now, I’d have to make do with sitting in the wingback chair by the window and using a small wooden side table as a desk. “I wanted to put you downstairs at the writing table in the living room alcove, as I’ve done with assistants in the past, but Tillie wouldn’t have it,” he said, glancing at my damp shirt, which I was flapping against my stomach in a vain attempt to stop sweating. Running his hand through his hair, he explained that Tillie’s office was off the kitchen, but she’d taken to writing in the dining room, reading in the living room, and pacing in the kitchen, and would find it disconcerting to have someone in close proximity.
“And you won’t mind?” I asked, surprised that we’d be working in the same room.
“Mind?” he said, looking amused. “I don’t expect you’ll pose a problem—unless, of course, you hum while you work?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Crack your knuckles?”
I shuddered. “Never.”
“Chew gum?”
I had a pack of Wrigley’s in my pocket.
“Only in the privacy of my own home.”
He let out a hearty “Ha!” and said, “I knew we’d get along just fine.”
Henry’s charming playfulness had relieved my early-morning jitters that taking this job had been a big mistake.
Handing me a thick sheaf of paper and a pile of index cards, Henry asked me to summarize the handwritten notes he had gathered for a two-part article he was planning to write on the construction of the Cape Cod Canal. He also asked me to go through some Army Corps of Engineers documents and make a timeline of key events.
The material was dry, but I appreciated the weight of it and lost myself in details about dredging and debris disposal. While I worked, Henry clacked away on his typewriter until he was interrupted by a phone call from a fact-checker reviewing a “Talk” piece about the Truro harbormaster. It went smoothly until they began discussing the correct term for the water just before the tide changes from incoming to outgoing. Henry had written “dead tide,” while the fact-checker was arguing for “stand of tide.” My father was an avid fisherman, and I knew they were both wrong. Uncertain if I should chime in but sitting so close it was impossible to pretend that I wasn’t listening, I whispered, “It’s slack tide.” Henry’s face lit up, as if I’d jogged his memory and returned to him the phrase he’d wanted all along. It was a small, insignificant thing, but it lifted my spirits to give Henry two of the words that would eventually appear under his byline in The New Yorker.
Arriving on my second day, I was disappointed to find a note saying that Henry and Tillie would be out all day, and that I should continue summarizing his notes and do some filing. Alone in the house, I worked quickly, surprised to learn that the dynamo industrialist who financed the Cape Cod canal, August Belmont, Jr., had also built New York City’s first subway. I sorted through the papers to be filed. They were disappointingly dull—royalty statements, invoices, check stubs, a few letters from Malcolm that I had typed myself, and a few of my notes to Henry. I was flattered that he considered them worthy of being kept, though they were probably just documentation for the second half of his memoirs.
When I finished my work, I sat at Henry’s desk and rested my fingers on the keys of his old typewriter, imagining banging out the beginning of a short story. Feeling a little guilty, I opened the middle drawer, hoping to find something interesting. But there were no love letters or a diary, just a jumble of things you’d expect to find in an old desk—paper clips, loose change, pencils, and a few cards for local businesses, the Top Mast Resort and Cap’n Josie’s restaurant.
I walked down the hall and into Franny’s room. Without his clothes and sketches and paints strewn around artistically, it seemed more of a child’s room than when I had been there before. A faded patchwork quilt was folded at the end of the wooden bed, which I noticed now was a trundle. The shelves above his small desk held remnants of a boyhood by the sea: a dried-up horseshoe crab, half a clamshell, a slingshot, and a framed photograph of a young Franny standing in front of a bucket holding a clam rake and looking devilishly pleased with himself.
I opened the desk drawer and found some cassette tapes: Elvis Costello and the Rolling Stones, a few musicians I hadn’t heard of, and some rolling papers. I sifted through a small stack of old photographs of Franny as a teenager, looking more hippie than preppy. In one photo, presumably at Choate, Franny was carrying Jeremy on his shoulders, slightly off-kilter, as though they were about to fall. Franny looked carefree and mischievous—as if boarding school presented a glorious abundance of rules to break. From their expressions, I could imagine the whoop of laughter before they tumbled to the ground. Jeremy, with long, messy hair, looked lighter, without the serious air he carried now. I envied their ease with each other.