The Last Book Party(50)

“I’ll be right back.”

Inside, the raucousness of the party was jolting, an affront after the scene that had just unfolded on the dance floor. I could barely move in the kitchen, where a bunch of people surrounded a shaggy-haired guy wearing black Ray-Bans and a dark suit, trying to guess what character he was dressed as. “Here’s a big hint,” the guy said. “I have no name. Here’s another one.” He bent over the kitchen counter and took a big sniff, miming snorting cocaine. As I pushed my way through the crowd toward the front hall, someone shouted, “I’ve got it! You’re the guy from Bright Lights, Big City!”

The bathroom door was locked, so I headed up the stairs, maneuvering around a couple sitting on the steps holding hands and whispering. Their costumes were the most obvious I’d seen all night, but it was still disorienting to witness what appeared to be a romantic tryst between Sherlock Holmes and Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter. Upstairs, I was dismayed to find the door to the hall bathroom closed and to hear laughter from inside. By now, I not only wanted a moment alone, but needed to find a toilet.

The door to Henry and Tillie’s bedroom was closed. I knocked lightly. When no one answered, I walked through the room to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and rested my head in my hands. How had I missed all the signs of what really had been going on in Tillie and Henry’s house? I wanted to find Henry, to say something to him, but what would I say? I looked in the mirror, dismayed to see how disheveled I was. I splashed water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair, which was a mess. My earrings were pinching my lobes, so I unclipped them and left them in a clamshell on the back of the toilet.

From the window, I could see people milling around the lawn and hear the strains of “Rock Lobster.” It seemed impossible to me that the party was in full swing, that despite what had happened, what so many people must have witnessed, the festivities continued. I saw Henry, presumably trying to act normal, talking to Malcolm, who had his arms folded against his chest defensively. I hoped he hadn’t just told Henry that he still hadn’t edited his chapters.

I stepped out of the bathroom and looked around the bedroom. It was just as it had been the first time I’d been there. The white sheets, the casually made bed. Candles everywhere. I remembered how I had thought the bedroom had told me all I needed to know about Tillie and Henry’s marriage. Why had I thought that the way things appeared—or even the way people said they were—had any relationship to reality?

On the night table beside the bed was a small silver picture frame. I picked it up. It was a picture of Henry I had never seen before. He looked young and strong, balancing on one leg on a wooden swing that hung from a tree, smiling as though he was in love with whoever was taking the photograph. I would have liked him to look at me that way. When I put the frame down, a small booklet caught my eye. A thin gray journal. The cover read Nerves: A Novella. Honors Thesis of Henry C. Grey. Yale University, Spring 1955. I smiled. Henry never told me he’d written fiction. Curious, I opened the booklet.

As I read the first paragraphs, my heart quickened with a sense of déjà vu. The novella began with the description of a girl wandering through a lush garden. Climbing up a wrought-iron fence and peering through its bars toward the sea. The girl, I read, was on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, which was notable for two things: it was shaped like a shark and was home to Kalaupapa, a leper colony.





43





I scanned the pages of Henry’s novella in disbelief. There was a lonely protagonist, trapped in the colony. A handsome adolescent boy. I scanned the pages, flipped to the last chapter, to the girl’s disappointment, watching from up high in the tree as the boy she loved walked down a long path through the lush jungle. I was so confused. I couldn’t figure out how Henry could have known the story in Jeremy’s novel—before I realized that was impossible.

I ran downstairs and outside to find Jeremy leaning against one of the Adirondack chairs. When he saw me approaching, he smiled, until I got closer and his expression changed from happy to wary.

“You stole the story!” I said, my heart pounding. I was so outraged and disappointed.

Jeremy blanched. He glanced at the journal in my hand.

Folding his arms and stepping back, he said, “I didn’t steal anything.”

“No?” I flipped through the pages, barely able to speak clearly. “Not the girl with leprosy? The boy she loves? An impossible love affair? From what I’ve read, it’s the same story.”

“Calm down,” Jeremy said quietly.

A bearded man in a long dark coat and a convincing-looking wooden leg hobbled toward us. “Have you seen Joan?” he asked. “She’s dressed like a whale. Can’t find her anywhere.”

Jeremy shook his head and grabbed my wrist, pulling me farther from the house, halfway down the sloping lawn that led to the tennis court. He turned slightly before stopping. He was on higher ground than I was. His grip on my arm was tight. “My book is nothing like Henry’s,” he said, towering above me. “I used the scaffolding of it, that’s all. It’s totally different—not to mention the fact that his writing is completely wooden.”

“Wooden? What does that matter?” I said, stepping up the hill to be on even footing with him. “You can’t write the same essential story and pass it off as your own.”