An Unfinished Story(57)
Three days passed before she visited again. He opened the door to find her standing on the stoop with her arms crossed. She wore short, ripped denim shorts and a deep V-neck. Three necklaces of varying lengths hung down her chest. Whitaker noticed turquoise beads, a few tiny silver medallions, maybe a feather. Though he could have gotten lost in her V-neck, he kept his focus on her face.
She removed her glasses and folded them. “I’m sorry I disappeared.”
“I know. You don’t need to explain.”
Her eyes drew him in more than the V-neck. Pupils the color of tigereye crystal, thirsty for life, unsatisfied yet undeterred.
A wave of the afternoon heat pushed past her into the foyer. He invited her in, and they faced each other awkwardly. Other than the coatrack with a set of binoculars and an umbrella, the room was empty and echoed as they talked.
Claire fiddled with her keys. “How’s the writing coming?”
He shrugged. “Good. Maybe another week, and I’ll be ready to tackle the ending. I’m really proud of everything else.”
“The part you read me was really touching. I can’t wait for more.”
“There are some great nuggets in there.”
“Look, Whitaker. I’m sorry, seriously. I’ve been beating myself up.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Your husband died. I get it. You have every reason to . . . I don’t know . . . to not get out of bed in the morning. I think you’re awesome to even do that.” He clasped his hands in front of him. “Just know that I care about you. I mean, as a friend. I’m here for you and always happy to listen. Don’t run out on me, okay?”
A tear slid down her cheek and settled near her jaw. He stepped toward her, wiped it away, and pulled her into a hug. “We can’t stop now. Are you with me?”
Claire sniffled into his neck, nodding.
As he held her, he realized he might have a larger role to play than simply finishing David’s book. And maybe it wasn’t in dating her, in losing himself in her eyes. Not everything in life can be a romance. Maybe he was supposed to help show this wonderful woman the light again, even if that meant she found someone other than him to grow old with. We all needed that selfless person, someone willing to jump into our own darkness and drag us out of it—even when they get nothing in return.
But the truth was . . . Claire had definitely pulled Whitaker out of his own steady decline. Now, it was time to return the favor. If you cared about someone enough, their happiness trumped your own.
As the middle of May came around, Whitaker was reaching the end of David’s manuscript but was stalling some. That was okay, though. His stalling had led to many more hours of polish with the rest of the manuscript, and each scene leaped off the page. But he knew that he was only hours of work away from facing the flashing cursor and the blank space. He kept telling himself to have faith. The only way he could create an ending worthy of David’s story was to take himself out of it and let the great mystic take over.
He’d been writing so much lately that he was starting to feel some pain in his wrists and arms, carpal tunnel of sorts. But he knew he couldn’t stop. On this Saturday morning, he’d soaked his arm in ice and popped a couple of Advil, and now he was writing standing up at his counter in the kitchen.
Whitaker pondered a question. What was it that had made David suddenly empathize with the boy in the beginning? Was it simply the realization that Orlando was eleven years old, a long way from being a man? No, it had to be deeper.
As a dramatic rendition of a Henryk Górecki symphony rose from his Amazon device, the idea came to him. An ensemble of violins and cellos sawed on their strings, and Whitaker said, “Alexa, turn it all the way up.” A solo soprano sang in Polish of the Second World War, a melody that pulled at Whitaker’s heart. He plugged in and let his fingers and imagination fly.
Growing up in Sarasota, Kevin was going through a rough patch when he met a teacher who taught him to sail and asked him to join his crew in a weekly amateur race. Through sailing, the world had opened up to him, and he had found the father he never had. When fate brought Orlando to Kevin’s door, it was time to pay it forward.
Whitaker finished typing the flashback, amid a crescendo in the Górecki symphony—the soprano belting out several impossibly high notes—and he lifted his arms in the air. “There it is!” David’s presence filled his body as tears filled his eyes. He didn’t even know where some of these sentences had come from.
What a feeling it was, a story rising from the source. He’d searched for the truth about Kevin, but it turned out all Whitaker had to do was stop searching and let his muse give him the words. He smiled brightly, wiping his eyes. What a wild adventure, this writing life. Nothing could be more frustrating and discouraging, but times like these made him feel like he was on top of the world. Someone had once told him that when you experienced such moments in the creative process, you were cocreating with God. No matter what religion or what one believed, how right that was. This was where he belonged, connecting to the muse, putting her words on the page, a vessel for the story.
Only as he came down from his high did he remember about dinner tonight. He had to tell his parents he’d quit his bank job and that he was not accepting a position with Grant Construction. That would go really well. His right wrist began to throb in pain. The writer wondered how much Sadie and Jack knew already. St. Pete could be the smallest town in the world sometimes, and the matriarch and patriarch of the Grants often knew things before they happened.