Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

“Vivian Feld. Why do I know that name?”

“Small world? I knew your son,” ventured Viv. “Briefly.”

“Yes, well, women tend to know Ben briefly.”

Viv stifled a laugh. Patti wasn’t laughing. Because she wasn’t terribly outspoken or performative, Viv could give the impression of being quiet or shy. But she wasn’t. She was more socially skilled than she gave herself credit for. She could keep people talking. She seemed to be collecting material she continually collated into an ever-evolving manual for how to live. “It was a long time ago,” Viv continued. “But he’s married now, isn’t he? I saw the announcement in the Times. ”

“That announcement is going to outlive the marriage. They used to call that sort of thing fishwrap. Now everything lives on forever, doesn’t it?”

It sometimes seemed to Lee that they were all engaged in a kind of generational cold war. It was clear who would win (had already won) but what a hollow victory. Is that what their parents had wanted? For their children to live in their shadow? It would seem that Patti had only vanquished herself. Once appealingly tart, she had completely soured.

“Listen to me.” Patti softened a bit. “It’s not even ten-thirty and I’m in full hypercritical bloom. Let’s blame it on end-of-semester stress. Tell me, what can I do for you?”

“It’s a long story. But I would really like to find Marion Washington. I haven’t had much luck tracking her down. We happened to be close to campus and I thought, I don’t know, maybe you might know something, having been a part of that world.”

“That world, yes. What do you want with Marion?”

“I’d just like to talk to her about my father and their time together, whatever she remembers of it.”

Patti inhaled through her nose, her mouth a thin, imperfect line. In her eyes that quick inner spider nimbly went to work.

“I never quite got Marion. But then I never quite got Jesse either, much as I wanted to. Much as people thought I did. Linda, though, I understood. Every now and then, I think, if I’d been just a little more imaginative at the time, a little less convinced of my own perspective, she’s the one I should have written about. The more interesting subject. Though I’m sure, in retrospect, she’s more than happy I gave her short shrift. I didn’t paint the most flattering portrait of your parents. I did a very good job of using them, though. Maybe you hold that against me. Maybe this is what it feels like when one’s chickens come home to roost. Though maybe I’m projecting, and that bad blood seems like ancient history to you.”

“My mother still thinks of you as her nemesis.”

“Nemesis! That’s a little strong. I didn’t realize I was anyone’s nemesis. I should be honored anyone cares that much.” Lee couldn’t help but think that Patti knew exactly how much Linda cared.

“But I’ve always been partial to that Faulkner line,” Patti continued. “‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ I’ll admit my first thought, on seeing you standing in front of me, after the instant it took me to realize who you were, is that you’d come seeking revenge on Linda’s behalf. Or even your own.”

Revenge? Lee had read Patti’s much-lauded essay about Jesse, with its brief, condescending inclusion of Linda, but she hadn’t thought it was all that riveting or all that revealing or all that anything, really. Not enough to warrant vengeance. Like Linda, she didn’t quite get why everyone thought Patti was so great.

“I’m the first to grant that it was damning, that piece I did on Jesse. But that was a defense mechanism, me trying to hide my infatuation with him. If you read it again, you might find it to be one of the most fawning profiles ever committed to the page. I have my regrets. But it’s a time capsule now. Linda has lived a lot of life since then. As have I. Marion, too, I’m sure.

“I had the same impulse as you, some years ago, to find Marion. Mine may have been more journalistic, more essayistic, though maybe that’s just what I told myself. There had to be some more valid reason to legitimize my lingering interest in Jesse. It couldn’t just be an obsessive schoolgirl crush on a dead man. I also thought a profile on Marion might truly be fascinating. Marion and Linda and the other women in Jesse’s life. I’d just finished writing my second novel, and I was tired of being in my own head. Ready to get back to something more reportorial. It was about a dozen years after the crash. The world was already a different place, and Marion wasn’t in it much from what I could tell. But I did some digging, connected some dots, and I found her. She wasn’t going by Marion Washington anymore. She had changed her name to Marion Morris and was living in Big Sur. She became a psychologist. I called her up at her practice in Carmel, and she was cordial enough but she didn’t want to talk to me. Can I ask you what it is you’d like to know? What do you hope to get out of talking to Marion?”

Lee’s guard went up. “What did you hope to get out of talking to her?” Lee challenged. Patti seemed mildly amused to have the tables turned on her.

“I wanted a story. I also wanted a little bit more of Jesse.”

“That’s what I want, too. A little more of my father.”

Patti softened for a moment, in her eyes, her posture. The gaze she’d directed at Lee became more searching, less critical. As if she’d initially been looking at Lee to find exactly what she expected and now she wasn’t sure what that was.

“I hope you have more luck with Marion than I did.”

“Thank you for the information.”

“You’re welcome.” Patti, to judge from her writing, had never been much for sentimentality. To feel strongly about things in a negative, critical way was all right in Patti’s world, but to express the positive was to make yourself susceptible. Patti checked herself. “Speaking of fishwrap, I read an article recently about Linda and her company, her wildly successful move into e-tailing, or whatever you call it. She’s done very, very well for herself. I always knew she would. I should consider myself lucky she still harbors such strong feelings about me. It doesn’t seem right to ask you to say hello to her for me, though.” Patti eyed her one more time then turned to Viv.

“What about you, Vivian? Shall I give Ben your regards?”

“WELL, THAT WASsomething,” said Viv. “I almost want to call up Ben Driggs Stern now and ask him how I can help. Do you know, when we were dating, he showed her a short story I’d written and she told him it reminded her of her own work, when she was starting out. I thought she was dismissing it as derivative, but he said, no, that was high praise coming from her. That she was always looking for her own reflection but she didn’t often find it.”

They were outside on a bench below Patti Driggs’s office. Though Lee wanted to run with what Patti had just told them, what she wanted more was to sit there for a moment and let the sun warm her face and her bare arms.

“Why don’t you write anymore?”

“I do. I write all the time.”

“I don’t mean for THATH.”

“I don’t know. At a certain point you have to grow up and let these things go.”

“What’s so grown up about letting it go?”

“There’s only so much time in a day. There are certain realities in life you have to accept, you know? Maybe you don’t know.”

“I understand realities, Viv.”

“I know you do. I’m sorry. I’m just being defensive about it.”

“I wish you didn’t have to be. You have something that engages you.”

“Maybe if I go with you to find Marion in Big Sur it’ll inspire me. Bring out my inner Henry Miller.”