Little Reef and Other Stories Read online

  Gwathmey wrote back on a sheet of thick stationery, in slanted longhand flourishes:

  Dear Matt,

  What a pleasure and a delight to hear from you. Of course I remember you asking a question. As an icebreaker, it was ideal. I’m hot into a novel right now and hope you won’t mind the brevity. Yes, college. My other tips are to read as many books as you can get your hands on. A famous classical musician was once stopped on the streets in New York by someone wanting to know how to get to Carnegie Hall. And this fellow replied, “Practice, practice!” The first novel I published was not my first novel. To get better and to learn to create suspense, I filled up on the masters like Graham Greene, an excellent mentor and to my mind good enough for any aspiring young writer hoping to learn many important points of style from.

  Make discipline your maiden, and remember to stay in the saddle.

  Thank you for asking about my wife, Dina. She’s better and better lately. I’ve been working and staying in the Pelican Hotel a lot recently, but as soon as I return permanently to our home in St. Augustine, I’ll dig up a book and sign it and send it to you. Then you can let me know what you think.

  Ever yours, young sir, and thanks for your great letter …

  “Where did you send it to?” said Vickie.

  “The newspaper,” I said. “I don’t know, can you send things to people in hotels?”

  “Look at the signature!” she gasped. “It’s so old-fashioned and flamboyant. H. Gwa.”

  “Have you ever read Graham Greene?” I asked her suddenly.

  “I’m going to now, that’s for sure.”

  “I was kind of annoyed how he kept talking about suspense. I don’t write like that. I like good literature, period. I’m not into that hope-I-don’t-get-killed-by-another-spy crap.”

  “But isn’t that just what he writes? Isn’t that his whole deal?”

  “J. D. Salinger. Why didn’t he say anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald? F. Scott Fitzgerald could write circles around him, I bet. I wonder if Gwathmey’s actually squandered his talents.”

  Vickie wrinkled her nose and said, “What Gwathmey writes is just more commercial.”

  “But spies, who cares?”

  “I know, but why did he write that part about his wife? Did you ask him about his wife?”

  “Yeah, but to be polite. I’d feel like a jerk if I didn’t …”

  “I wonder. And what does he mean about her getting better and better? It’s weird.”

  “Maybe she’s been sick.”

  Vickie fretted, annoying me, and said, “I must’ve missed that when he was talking.”

  “You didn’t miss anything,” I said, thinking about her and me. “He has special feelings for Dina. You heard what he said about her working two jobs, coming home, typing for him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I was the one falling asleep during the crap on the war in Germany. Pathetic.”

  “But I think I get it,” she said.

  “Get what?”

  “You don’t see it? That maybe she feels used? I could see myself as a wife in a similar situation—and I can tell you, I don’t think it’s any fun for the wife.”

  “I don’t think we should make any conjectures about it. He wrote to me, not you.”

  This was tense and I didn’t know why, although I should have. I was so moody.

  When I showed the letter to my mother, she began reading and drew a breath. “Hey!”

  For her, it was material proof that I was going to be a successful writer. And when she handed it back to me she arched her eyebrows and whistled and added, “Wow.”

  We stood in the kitchen with the sun going down and the oven ticking—waiting for my father to get home. She had a beer in its foam cozy and lit a cigarette. It was her smoking hour.

  My father came home from the plant and put down the Tupperware container he carried the lunch my mother made him in every morning. Dad choogled a bit in his steel-toe boots on the linoleum. “Carolina, Carolina,” he sang, “you’re always on my mina!”

  My mother handed him a cozied beer and the letter and said, “Well, our Truman!”

  I was smaller when she and I would watch Capote’s appearances on Merv Griffin.

  “Truman?” Dad said. “You mean that funny little writer on TV, Truman Capote?”

  I was embarrassed and went to my room. I sat at the Sears office desk they’d bought me and stared at the Royal. Beyond Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs, her paperback book on horoscopes decorated with blue and green bubbles on a celestial field, my mother did not read much. I was a Libra and no matter what I said or did, Mom ascribed it to Libran behavior. When I was sick and had to stay home, she and I would eat Campbell’s soup and cheese and crackers and watch Merv, where sometimes Truman Capote would appear as a spooky, garrulous guest—and no matter how drunk or weird he seemed to act, she’d cackle (a trademark of hers) and cry, “Love that guy!”

  So I wrote Gwathmey one more letter. I told him that I had almost bought that copy of A Shadow at Midnight but didn’t know if this was the book he planned to send me. Then I thanked him, in advance, for sending it to me. I wrote that I wondered if Gwathmey would read a story I was working on, which was getting long, but that—I thought— might actually end up as a novel.

  Gwathmey didn’t write back, and I never received the book he’d promised me.

  Things changed when Vickie and I reached senior high and started tenth grade. Jimmy Carter was no longer president. I entered a countywide writing contest. It was being judged by George Trailer, the arts columnist for the Florida Times-Union, the morning paper that had just absorbed the Jacksonville Journal, which was about to put it out of business. In his column George Trailer covered everything artistic for the Florida Times-Union but the rock concerts.

  My parents and I had driven to the World’s Fair in Knoxville the summer before, taking a triangular route home while I lay in the backseat reading Music for Chameleons. We stopped in New Orleans to stay in the Holiday Inn on Bourbon Street. Our first night there, returning with them to the hotel from a restaurant, I asked if it was okay if I went off and had a look around the French Quarter on my own. Wasn’t fifteen old enough for that? My parents looked at each other and consulted behind the noises of the pushing, shoving crowd. We moved onto the sidewalk, to get away from the drunks running into us in the street. I’d put them on the spot—no time for a real private conference. Finally my father gave me a curfew and said, “Man, we might just find ourselves someplace to go jukin’, your mama and me.”

  Dad liked rednecking out with the speech when the chance served him, and New Orleans was famous, and neither of them wanted to look like clinging parents. I peeled away at the first chance and at Jackson Square a man in his twenties stared at me from the far curb. I crossed and he called out to me in an English accent, “Hello, I’ve just noticed you. I’m Mark.”

  I got tentatively closer to him and smiled queasily and said, “Hi, Mark.”

  He offered me his hand to shake and I took it, then he said, “What are you up to?”

  He wouldn’t let go of my hand. It felt nice, but I looked around, checking all about.

  “Just hanging out before going back to be with my parents. What are you up to?”

  “Same, except no parents. You’re really cute. How old are you?”

  “About to turn sixteen. But wow, thanks for that compliment.”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed sixteen. You seem more mature to me than that.”

  “Lots of people tell me that. Not tonight, but in the past.”

  “Because I’d really like to fuck you. Take you up to my room in the Marriott, fuck you.”

  Hands now in his pockets, he nodded toward the Marriott, the tallest building in sight.

  “What street’s that on?” I said.

  “Canal. So what do you say? It’s under five minutes’ walk from here.”

  My face was burning. I wished I could quit smiling. He stared, smirking, I though
t.

  “Would you like that?” he added.

  “I don’t think so. God. So are you from London?”

  “I’m more from the north originally, but I live in London. I’m from Blyth.”

  “Blyth! That’s hilarious, but no. I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Have you heard of the guitarist and singer Mark Knopfler?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Have you ever heard of Dire Straits?”

  “I’m not living in a cave. I mean sure, obviously I’ve heard of them. That’s so cool.”

  “What’s your name?” he said. “We’re just talking. No need to get defensive.”

  He had a look of disgust, like from some burning irritation I’d just caused him.

  “I’m not getting defensive,” I said. I looked around, then back at him. “What?”

  “I’ve got a really big fat cock,” he said, “and I bet you’ve got a really tight hole.”

  “My parents are waiting for me back at the hotel,” I said. “I think I should go.”

  “Fine then, darling, but you still haven’t told me your name. What’s your name?”

  I thought of my parents, wandering around trying to keep a distant eye on me.

  “‘What?’ Oh come on, you’re not going to disappoint me like that. ‘What?’ indeed!”

  “Don’t imitate me,” I said and started away, looking back to ward him off I thought.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said, his tone shifting to neutral. “Don’t be a little puritan.”

  I wasn’t afraid of him. He had a nice face and wasn’t too tall.

  “Daft little queen. Tease!”

  “I’m not,” I said, then turned again as I yelled, “and who are you calling little?”

  I wanted to go back but he was treating me like a kid. That’s what I was to my parents. I hurried toward the Holiday Inn, my face hot and pulsing. I thought about Mark up in his room at the Marriott and felt horny and miserable knowing I was sharing the room with them, and when I got to the corner and looked back I was relieved not to see them. The only one I could tell about this was Vickie, and even that would take me time to work up to, though strangely I wanted to. I wanted to write about this stuff, what I really thought and put myself through. I wanted to write, so I chose what I thought were pretty safe, shopworn topics, and I started a new story in time for the countywide contest, and I spent hours writing it each night, typing slowly, getting unsatisfied and using Wite-Out to change lines until I realized the whole page was wrong and started it over.

  My story was about a teenage girl waiting for her boyfriend to get back to the motel room with their dinner the evening before her abortion. In the story, I never say why, but the boyfriend never returns. Lying under the covers, she goes over the story in her head of how she got there.

  Somehow I was that girl waiting all through writing the thing, and when I was done I was pretty sure I was a genius on the order of Truman Capote.

  I’d taken the Pinto wagon out with Vickie when George Trailer called to say that I’d won a writing contest. “Who’s George Trailer?” my mother said when I got in. A pinched smile and arched eyebrows. “He said you’d won this Timucua County Young High School Writers thing.”

  “What the hell?” I said, starting to dance.

  “Well you won a contest I didn’t know you’d entered. Now, is it a writing contest?”

  “Oh, Mom. Think. You just said that he told you I’d won a writing contest.”

  “And that I didn’t know anything about your having entered, G. d. it.”

  My father dragged in. We were in the kitchen again. When we were together we were always in the kitchen. He put his hand on his hip. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Asshole wins a writing contest, gets an award, and didn’t tell me he’d entered.”

  “Didn’t tell me, either. ‘Jambalaya, crawfish pie!’” he holler-sang. “This is splendid.”

  We kept a novelty notepad next to the phone. Each sheet of paper was headed:

  You better get on this

  RIGHT FUCKING NOW:

  My mother had written Trailer’s home number on it and said he expected me to call him.

  Trailer, I had deduced, knew about everything from classical music to books and would be a sort of ticket to important taste for me—and I didn’t want him to think I came from a home where we tackily Christmas-shopped for my parents’ fishing buddies at Spencer Gifts. Before I could dial him, my English teacher, who by the contest’s rules had submitted my story, called to congratulate me. She was originally from Massachusetts and I badly wanted to impress her, too.

  “My darling!” said Mrs. Waddington. “What a wonderful, creative young man!”

  “Ma’am, I want to thank you and tell you how grateful I am for nominating me.”

  “No one else tried. You were the only one who gave me a story, and such a story! But I will tell you, I’ve a hunch yours likely would have been the finest, if he or she had. I knew.”

  I felt relieved, but then complained, “I’m so ambitious. I want to be the best.”

  “Oh, I know. Believe me, I see it. I saw it on that very first day of class.”

  She spoke lyrically and matter-of-factly, with a measured delirium in her voice.

  I exulted to her, “I can’t believe George Trailer was the judge and he picked me.”

  “He certainly did pick you. But I do have to go make dinner now. I’ll see you in class tomorrow, Matthew.” I’d forgotten that teachers had housework to do, too, like everyone else. In class when we were discussing a book, she looked at me a lot, pretending not to wait for me to raise my hand. “Tell your mom I want to meet her soon, all right, Matthew?”

  “Okay, that’d be great. Good night, Mrs. Waddington. Thank you again.”

  “Not at all, Matt.”

  I tried George Trailer, but each time the line was busy. I tried again after dinner but there was no answer. He’d already lost interest in me. Around ten, my father told me to stop trying.

  A week went by. Mrs. Waddington read my story aloud in class before we got back to Tom Jones, and at the end, when the girl about to have an abortion sadly and quietly sings “Que Sera, Sera” to herself, my classmates clapped politely. I hovered above them, I thought, briefly.

  My mother volunteered at a hospital. When I got home that afternoon I found her note saying Trailer had called that morning and apologized for before, but that his mother had died. Could I try him again? I paced the diamond-designed kitchen linoleum catching my breath.

  “A pistol, that mama of yours,” he said when I got him. “I want you to hold her in your heart and love her as dearly as you might,” he went on. “That lady is looking out for you.”

  “Well, Mr. Trailer—”

  “George.”

  “Ha ha. That feels odd to me. But I was going to say, it’s almost like a dream.”

  “That’s it, that’s it. It is a complete dream. Enjoy it, the way I’ve really enjoyed my two talks with—Barbara? Is that her name? I know she thinks the world of you.”

  “It is Barbara, and we’re very, very close, or always have been,” I said, trying to sound suddenly tired and disabused. “People in the mall think we’re brother and sister.”

  “And she sounds so young. She’s a big booster of one Matthew Hammer I know of. I want to tell everything, hear from you everything, learn it all. Unfortunately, I am on deadline just now and have to sit down right this instant and write-write-write my next review.”

  I heard him sigh and asked him what was the matter. He sounded rather old.

  “I’m afraid I will have to disappoint the Rialto Little Players, regarding their tepid little Cabaret. I have friends in the cast, as well as the director, and oh! it is a tepid little, treacherous and lackluster, bloodless, uninspired, utterly boring little mess of a thing.”

  I said, “I love, love that movie. I watch it every time it comes on Cinemax.”

  “Ugh! Wh
y take a show so originally, deliciously abject and turn it into Oliver!?”

  I giggled and George Trailer said, “Although. My friend Renny Quinn as Cliff is pretty good. I’ll give him one thing, he’s a talented singer. He doesn’t know of the calamity about to befall his production, but I suspect he’s counting on me to be present at the anniversary.”

  “The tenth anniversary of the theater.”

  “You’re pretty with-it, son. How on earth did you get to be so smart?”

  “You announced it in your ‘Out and About’ column a while ago.”

  “That’s right, so I did. Have you ever attended any of the shows at the Rialto?”

  “No, sir, but I do like plays and musicals. We’ve read a lot of drama in English.”

  “What are your favorites?”

  “Pygmalion. Last year in gifted we saw My Fair Lady out at the dinner theater.”

  “They had an interesting idea with the minimal sets. But please, an old sitcom star?”

  “He was no Rex Harrison, I agree.”

  “An out-of-work sitcom star? Let me have your address, so I can stay in touch.”

  “Sure.”

  “And Matt? Congratulations. Your story … oh, we’ll talk. I promise you that.”

  I called Vickie and she laughed and hooted and said, “But what’s he want from you?”

  Trailer lived in a fancy part of town where rich people lit their lawns and houses like theme parks. Since I’d gotten my license Vickie and I would sometimes go to a movie at the mall then take the expressway and drive around San Marco talking about owning one of these places. She liked the ones with columns, tall porches, and magnolias, the Taras, and I liked the mock Tudors with carefully trimmed firs. The only trees we agreed on were the grandly spreading live oaks lit from beneath to show the joint-like gnarls of their shinily leafed, massively shouldered branches.

  George Trailer lived in an old-fashioned apartment complex resembling a Spanish castle with stucco walls and a slot-windowed turret topping each of the four corners of the building, the skinny pane in each of the turrets dark and blind. You entered El Morro through an iron gate that led to a courtyard full of shabby shrubs and bushes, then up a few cracked steps into a tiled open-air hallway, like a dim tunnel of pointed arches (where only one of the lantern-shaped lamps was working and glowing a watery amber)—and then through to the back where Trailer lived.