My Last Innocent Year(73)

Crushgirls sold well, very well, and I became, in my own small way, famous. One night at a reading in Union Square where five hundred people showed up, some dressed as Eliza Cherry, I felt certain Connelly was there, watching me. I still remembered how he walked into a room, the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders, how he stood more on his left foot than his right. I could almost smell him, woodsmoke and peppermint. When the reading was over, I looked for him but he wasn’t there. Gone again, like a ghost.

I bumped into Andy at a dinner party one night a few months later. He’d moved to New York after grad school and started working at a literary agency; he was now one of their top agents. We saw each other sometimes here and there. He wasn’t married but had lots of girlfriends, including the one he was with that night, a young Asian woman with arms roughly the circumference of a silver dollar. He still wore his hair long, although it was thinning on top. Over cocktails and canapés, he told me about Joanna’s new book, a memoir called Daughter about the kidnapping and the abuse she had suffered in her marriage. Early reviews were stunning, and there was talk of a movie deal. Igraine had graduated from Wilder and was writing now, too. Andy hoped she’d sign with him when her novel was ready.

It was January 2017, a few days after the inauguration. We were shaky and brittle, and it felt good to be among friends, even Andy. It was late when I got home, so I was surprised when the phone rang. I thought it might be Debra canceling our plans for the weekend or maybe Abe calling to check in. Alice was with Bo so it was just me and our cat, Sidney Fine (carrying on the Benson family tradition, we’d named him after our accountant). I opened a can of cat food and picked up without checking the number.

“Is this Isabel Rosen?” a woman asked as Sidney turned figure eights between my legs.

“Yes, this is she.”

“This is Roxanne Stevenson. From Wilder College.”

I tossed Sidney the can and forced out a hello.

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to do this.” She sounded nervous. “I’m Randall Connelly’s wife. I wanted to tell you—I need to tell you that Randall’s dead. He died a few months ago.”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to identify the feeling that washed over me. Shock, sadness—whatever it was, it was powerful. I fell back on the sofa and fumbled for my phone, searching for the Google alert that hadn’t come.

“What happened?”

“Heart attack, they think. He crashed his car over by Corness Pond. It was raining, and he really shouldn’t have been driving.” She ran through the details quickly, and I could tell she’d told the story many times before.

“When?”

“October. Anyway, I thought you should know. I know you’ve been trying to reach him.”

October. That was three months ago. I tried to remember the last thing I’d sent him. An article that put Crushgirls in the context of female anger surrounding the election. I wondered if Roxanne knew about everything I’d sent him over the years. I imagined she did.

“We hadn’t seen each other in a long time,” I said.

“You don’t need to explain,” she said curtly. “I just didn’t want you to wonder why he hadn’t answered.”

“I’m so sorry. I should’ve said that first.”

“Thank you.” She let out a breath. “It’s a lot to take in. To tell you the truth, I have a hard time believing it sometimes. This morning, a flying squirrel came down the chimney, and I called out for Randy to do something.”

“After my mother died, I used to come home and wonder why she wasn’t there. I always felt so stupid when I remembered.”

“Sounds about right,” she said. “Well.” She sounded like she wanted to get off the phone.

“We used to watch you on TV,” I blurted out. “In those documentaries. My mother—she loved the royal family.”

“It’s amazing how many people watch those.” I heard the whistle of a kettle in the background and I realized she was in her kitchen, the one I’d sat in with her husband almost twenty years ago. “May I ask, how did you know my husband?”

“He was my professor.”

“Ah.” Roxanne was quiet for a minute. I could hear Sidney’s noisy eating from the kitchen. “Things weren’t the same for him after he stopped teaching. The last few years were hard. He was writing again, stories mostly, a little poetry, but he really missed teaching.”

“He was a good teacher,” I said and as soon as I did, I realized it was true.

“Are you a writer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love it?”

I answered without pause. “Yes.”

She sucked in her breath. “That’s the secret, isn’t it? They want us to think it’s hard, maybe so we’ll stop. But we know it’s a gift.”

As we talked, I pulled up a picture of her on my phone. Her face was thinner, but she had the same piercing eyes, same strong brow. Her hair was completely gray. The last time I’d seen her, she must have been the same age I was now. I’d thought she was ancient. I remembered what Connelly used to say about her, that she wasn’t a writer, not like we were: “She’s an academic. It’s not the same.” But listening to Roxanne now, I felt she understood something he didn’t. I’d always wondered how he could walk away from it. I still wondered.