Chapter 2

Preston Whitcomb, in his Newark studio apartment, rolled out of bed from a night of restless sleep and poured himself a beer. Old newspapers were scattered about. Unwashed plates on which he ate his microwavable meals were fixed to the coffee table. A pile of laundry surrounded his bed. A wilted plant lay half-dead on the window sill. He had a view of an alleyway a couple of floors below, and when he looked straight out of his window he stared at a brick wall. The only thing that Preston kept through the years was a collection of scholarly books that took up most of the small space, as well as some old photo albums and pictures of his ex-wife that he kept for sentimental reasons. He looked out the window to judge the weather. His hands grabbed the flesh of his stomach to see if he’d gotten fatter over the past week, as the scale was much too harsh a truth for the middle-aged man.

He didn’t bother with a shower. Every day was the same without work, and things like bathing and getting dressed seemed like pointless endeavors. He had little idea of how to fill the day when all he did was write poem after senseless poem that no one in his or her right mind would ever publish or even read. He had at one time been a very successful and well-known poet in certain rarified circles, and he had published poems that had won several prestigious and lucrative awards, but he slipped and fell many times thereafter—losing his wife and the home they had made together.

Luckily he didn’t have any children to support, and after his wife left him, he hit rock bottom and had neither the means nor the wherewithal to rise above his troubles. He continued writing but within a vacuum. He lived and worked in his small apartment, the bank account almost used up and his future uncertain. He faced this uncertainty every morning with a drink in his hand before he sat down at his desk to write a few lines.

Every year since his divorce his living arrangements had become increasingly meager. He used to have a large home in South Orange with his wife, a duplex McMansion it was. Then, right after the divorce, he lived in a two-bedroom closer to the university, then a one-bedroom in Newark ever since his bank account dwindled, and now a cramped studio apartment off of South Orange Avenue with whatever little remained. He had black neighbors and bought what he needed from black-owned stores—a real departure from the sea of white he at one time swam in.

At first he found it difficult living in a black neighborhood, but people generally left him alone, and he made sure not to go out after sundown. At night he heard yelling in the alleyway and the ubiquitous sounds of police sirens screaming down the avenue, probably due to a murder or a burglary of the late-night convenience store down the block. Preston had lived in the studio apartment for two years and was still unaccustomed to the dangers of the ghetto.

He welcomed the daylight, thankful to be done with another noisy night of restless sleep. Earlier in the night he circled a few job ads in the Help Wanted section of the Star-Ledger, but these were jobs that either nobody wanted or he was completely unqualified for—truck drivers wanted, plumbers wanted, bookkeepers and accountants wanted, warehouse specialist needed. No one wanted to hire a broken-down poet for a desk job, but he checked the nearby university every month for openings in the English department. He had sent in an impressive résumé, but it was something the university kept on file, even though his ex-wife taught there and was a respected member of the faculty.

He applied for faculty positions at several other colleges and universities, but none of them replied. He waited for some great job opportunity to fall from the sky, but as of yet the doors were closed, and he now considered jobs that would sink him below the poverty line. He figured that bankruptcy was a year and a half away. He didn’t bother finding a minimum wage job in a terrible economy. He thought himself above such dead-end work.

Ever since Amanda left, he drank more. He did everything in his power to keep her. She wanted more than a poet, even though she was a poet herself. Sure they shared a love for poetry, but common interests wore thin when one half of the marriage did better than the other half.

When they met in New York City in the summer of 1993, Preston was a rising star and Amanda a young co-ed just out of New York University. Preston gave a reading there to a packed house, and afterwards the elite few of the university’s writing program were invited to a wine and cheese reception on the top floor of the building. The courtyard underneath a dark blue sky and the tall buildings surrounding them reminded Preston of a museum. An odd assortment of sculptures interrupted a wide space where classical music played softly from a pair of standing speakers. Barmaids stood behind white, tablecloth bars and poured wine, beer, champagne, even the hard stuff when pressed for it. Preston had shared the spotlight with a couple of other city poets, and while he hated to compare art, he still found himself the best of the three, or at least the poet with the best lines and the most experience. He wore a thin beard back then and also a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. He couldn’t get over how clear the nighttime sky was—’as clear as a bell,’ he thought to himself.

He only liked the kinds of parties where he was the center of attention, and in this case he certainly found himself lauded by the many who attended. He talked to a couple of professors about a teaching position they considered him for. And he couldn’t talk to anyone without a few glasses of wine in him first. It alleviated the darker, suffering parts of his poet-self and released a happy- go-lucky, meet-and-greet side of him that was normally dormant during working hours.

He shook hands with some of the poets from the writing program who said that they admired his work. They asked him a lot of questions, like who’s your favorite poet or how did you get published or where did you go to school. He answered these questions graciously and viewed these younger people as energetic sponges eager to absorb everything he said. They were delightfully happy and cute and at the same time peculiar in their choice of poetry as a career.

Sure, Preston started out as a poet from the get-go, but he only wanted to do it on the side. He could have gone to law school instead, but he hit it big with his first chapbook. He liked to think of his early success as dumb luck, but in retrospect it was a combination of knowing the right people at the right time and suppressing his big ego while sharing the limelight with other poets. He remained affable, friendly, generous, and never said a bad thing about anyone else’s poetry, even in private conversation. On the day he first met Amanda on the rooftop courtyard, he had just landed a three-book deal with his new publishers, Breakthrough Books. He had money and natural good looks. Nothing could stop him, and other poets envied him. He was thirty-five years old and already well-known. He never expected to meet his future wife at the party.

He made rounds, talking to everyone at equal length, most of them students who boldly discussed poetic trends—modernism, surrealism, feminism—Preston couldn’t keep up. And then he encountered a young woman who was on the cusp of graduating that spring. She wore an elegant evening dress leaving her blond arms, shoulders, neck, and back exposed. Her blond hair was the type that lightened when the sun hit it, and she wore little makeup. Such a combination of features accentuated her natural beauty, and Preston found himself immediately attracted to her.

“How did you like the reading?” he asked her.

“I thought it was wonderful, really. Your use of imagery and metaphor is exceptional. I really felt something when you read it.”

“And you are?”

“Amanda Larson.”

They shook hands. He didn’t know if she thought of him in the same way.

She didn’t come with anyone.

“So I take it you write poetry as well?”

“I try. I’m kind of learning the ropes.”

“Well, I’d love to take a look. I hope I’m not being too forward.”

“You want to look at my poetry?” she stammered.

“Sure. I’m always interested in what students are writing.”

“Soon to be an ex-student.”

“Right. Of course. Verse only gets better when you’re out in the real world.”

“I take it you don’t approve of writing programs.” She smiled.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that with more experience, poetry improves and has—how should I say it?—more of an impact on the reader.”

“You wouldn’t mind reading my work?”

“I’d love to take a look, but I’m leaving town in a couple of days. Maybe you’ll have dinner with me after tonight.”

“Are you asking me out to dinner?”

She blushed when she said this. The curve of her lips gave way to a full smile, and she covered her smile with her hand. Her girlish sense of knowing made her even more attractive, and they laughed with the implicit understanding that it would be a date and not just an exchange of verse. He could tell that she liked the idea of going out with him, and he quickly greeted the other poets near her in an attempt to hide their mutual bashfulness.

He remembered that evening as he gulped down his morning beer. He poured the foam at the bottom of the bottle into the soil of the dying plant. He then opened another bottle. He couldn’t deal with much without the continuous buzz the beer provided. And his slight buzz went south as he remembered more. He was very much in love with her by the time they moved to South Orange.

A year after their first encounter atop the university building they had a church wedding with a hundred guests—family, friends, important artists, writers, and poets.

Amanda came from a wealthy Connecticut family, while Preston’s family severed ties with him long ago for not taking up the family business and going into poetry instead. They wanted him to be a lawyer, and he flat out refused. He was a student in Boston back then, and when they learned of his plans, they cut him off financially, hoping he would eventually come around. Instead he moved to New York, taking odd jobs here and there and writing poetry the rest of the time. Their marriage was probably one of the happiest days of his life, but once he and Amanda abandoned the city and moved into a sprawling South Orange estate, they slowly disconnected themselves from the poetry scene in nearby New York.

They argued a little more each day, worked on their poetry a little more too, but always in mutually exclusive ways. Even though they were together in the household they drifted apart into their own psychic worlds. Preston’s poetry turned detached and aloof, while Amanda’s poetry thrived with fierce descriptions of nature and the environment. Their house sat on an acre of land, and even though a dense suburbia surged in their direction, Amanda still made time to plant a colorful garden of violets, daisies, roses, and tulips in their backyard. She had Preston give a group of her poems to his editor, and the editor took an immediate liking to them. The quality of Preston’s poetry, however, worsened.

He recalled when he worked in the attic of the South Orange home and labored for many hours on one particular stanza in the heat of a very long summer. They had been married for two years and already there was talk, or at least the suggestion, of having a baby. Preston bolted the door of the study and tried hard to find the right couplet to finish off a stanza he labored over, the poem itself just another mediocre bit of doggerel plucked from the tree of boredom. His gears turned as he sat in his chair, the session with this one lunatic poem an epic battle of nerves and discipline. He had the right thought just at the precise moment Amanda knocked on the door.

“I’m busy,” he said from within the attic room. She knocked again, this time a little harder. “I said I’m busy!” he yelled.

And then came a third round of knocks.

He flew into a rage at his desk, the thought that would complete the stanza fluttering into unreachable oblivion. He raced for the door and unbolted it.

“What for God’s sake is it?” he demanded.

Amanda took one look at him in the doorway and did an about-face down the stairwell. He could tell she hid her tears or else was thoroughly pissed off at him for acting the way he did.

“Wait,” he said, chasing her.

They confronted each other on the second floor of the house. A dark and cool hallway led into other large and unfurnished rooms. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m just trying to get some work done, that’s all.”

“And you’re shutting me out. I’m getting sick of it.”

“I’m working. That’s all it is.”

“This is a marriage, Preston. That takes work too.” He put his arms around her, but she refused him.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” she said. “Work or no work I hardly get to see you. Am I that much of an annoyance to you?”

“Of course not, it’s just that sometimes I get frustrated with what I’m doing, and I don’t have time to—”

“Talk to me? Do your own laundry? Help with the dishes? I’m a little more than a maid in your life.”

“I know you are. You’re my wife, I know that, but I’m also a poet.”

“I’m a poet too, and I still manage to get all the work done around here, and I still get time to write. You just lock yourself in the attic and never come out.”

“I know. I’ll be better. I promise.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“I know, but I mean it this time.”

“And you said that the last time too. Is this how you want to live—locking yourself in the attic? My God, Preston, you’re turning into a hermit. I never see you, and we live in the same house, and then you shoo me away.”

“I’m sorry, honey, really I am.”

He held her hands and touched a callous on her index finger. She had been working in the garden for the past month, and maybe she needed a rest. Maybe they needed a vacation from their own home, even though Preston wanted no such thing. He wanted to retreat to his study and lock himself in there until the poetic dry spell ended. He felt worthless when he couldn’t write well and didn’t care so much about what happened outside of his lair. He could have been honest about his inability to write, but he kept it to himself. He hated to admit it, but he came to see Amanda as a rival and not just a wife.

He remembered when she went into New York to meet with their editor, and fairly soon a book of her poetry hit the bookstores. From what he had heard through the same editor, Amanda was a rare talent. The editor chided him for not bringing her in sooner. He always thought of himself as the dominant poet, but ever since her poetry took off and she became a celebrity of sorts, that dominance eroded. No longer was she a cute graduate student on a rooftop holding a glass of red wine. She had blossomed into a poet with whom he shared the limelight. He never expected it to happen that way, but she wrote better shit without the same amount of effort. He was, well, a little jealous.

“I’m having trouble with my work,” he confided.

“Trouble? What is it, sweetie?”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to concentrate, like there’s too much stuff going on.”

“But there’s nothing going on. I don’t understand.”

“I can’t explain it, but there’s something that’s making my poems very mediocre. I guess that would be the best way to put it. Ever since we moved out here.”

“Culture shock?” she asked.

“I guess so.”

“What do you want to do? I mean, do you want to move back to Manhattan, because it’s no place to raise a family. We’d have a very hard time being together. I thought that’s why we moved to the country.”

He moved into her and pressed his lips to hers. She responded with an even deeper, slower kiss.

“Does that prove I want to be with you?” he asked.

“You don’t have to prove it. I already know.”

“Maybe I should give up writing for a while. Poetry isn’t everything after all.”

“No, it isn’t, but you have to write. You’re no good when you don’t write, you know that. Plus, you have a deadline.”

“Yeah, I almost forgot about that.”

She lectured him, and he knew that he couldn’t persuade her to sleep with him that afternoon. She had been working in the garden and built up her defenses. Nevertheless her lips were warm and her tongue smooth and wet. He loved the way she kissed and how she tasted, and he could have locked onto her lips forever and not have worried so much about the poems he had to submit. It was to be a collection of poems with excerpts placed in some of New York’s most notable magazines. It was supposed to be a defining moment in his career, and yet he couldn’t write worth shit.

He did eventually make love to her later that night. He rolled on top of her in the darkness, and she threw her arms around his back. She led him into her, and when he came, she rubbed the emollient into her skin, along her arms and chest and stomach, and he felt satisfied for once in a very long time, as though a great weight had been lifted. She tried to kiss him afterwards, but he didn’t respond so eagerly. She got up and took a shower as he lay in bed with a sheet around him. She returned fresh and clean and smelling of baby powder.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” she whispered.

He didn’t know either. After she fell asleep he stumbled up the stairwell to his attic office and tried writing a few lines. Surprisingly his pen moved faster, and the quality of his verse returned. A wave of relief swept over him as he came up with rhymes that slanted every which way, and after an hour or so of straight verse, his forehead beading with sweat and his mind connected to the muses’ wavelength, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and in the window he saw the reflection of his wife in her bathrobe.

He had a hard time putting down his pen, and the rhyme that completed the stanza fluttered into the same nebulous oblivion as his earlier bout. He thought she had fallen asleep. He suppressed the immediate urge to lash out at her for disturbing him. He calmly put down his pen and said coldly:

“What do you want?”

She stepped away from him, bewildered by his tone, especially after their lovemaking an hour ago. The coldness failed to dissipate. He looked upon her reflection with irritation and wanted her gone from the room. She was on the verge of tears by the suggestion that she should leave. He realized then that she had something important on her mind, but the middle of the night, when all of his thoughts and ideas were set free, wasn’t the right time. He wanted to be alone instead.

“I’m bothering you again,” she said. “Am I so much of a bother?”

He calmed himself instead of throwing his hands up and ranting and raving, which he easily could have done. Over the last couple of years she had become sensitive to his anger. He tried hard not to show it.

“Amanda, what could it be at three in the morning?”

She sat on the easy chair adjacent to his desk, the ends of her bathrobe draped between her legs. He put his hand on her knee, pretending to be open with her and responsive. In the silence between them he heard the clock above his desk tick.

“I’m pregnant,” she said after their silence.

Preston sighed deeply and said: “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“When did you find out?”

“Yesterday. I took one of those at-home pregnancy tests.”

“Y’know sometime those things aren’t always accurate. Don’t you think you better check with the doctor?”

“I take it you’re not too thrilled about having a baby.”

“No, that’s not it at all. I am thrilled, really I am.”

It was an ersatz response. He didn’t know what to feel at the moment, but the initial reaction was one of gloom. He wanted to be thrilled but wasn’t, and he was afraid that Amanda saw the truth etched in the lines of his face. Unfortunately for him, she did see the truth just then, and he could no longer hide his despair.

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you were taking your pills. Did you stop taking them for some reason? Well? Did you?”

“I wanted a child. We were drifting apart. We never talk anymore.”

“So you stopped taking them and didn’t tell me about it?”

“I didn’t know it would be such a burden on you. I thought you wanted children.”

“Eventually I do, but why didn’t you tell me about it? You’re having a child without even consulting your husband? You lied to me.”

“I did not lie to you. I thought it would make you happy.”

“But it doesn’t. We’re not prepared to have a child, Amanda. We’re struggling enough as it is. This is something we should have talked about.”

“Oh, right, like we’re struggling more than everybody else. We’re not struggling here, Preston. You may be struggling with your work, but financially we aren’t struggling.”

“That’s besides the point. What happened to being open and honest with each other? What happened to trusting one another? Just because you want to have a baby, doesn’t mean that I’m ready to have one.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

“Well, I am. We’re not ready. What about our careers?”

“What about our careers? I’m doing fine. I just got the galleys this afternoon, and I got an advance. So what’s so wrong with that?”

“You’re doing well,” he pointed, “ you got the galleys! You just got an advance! It’s all you, you, you!”

An expression of controlled anger swept over her. Preston sensed that the tables were turning and that she was sick and tired of being hurt. He wanted it to hurt a little bit, but he knew he crossed the line by pointing and yelling, and it was time she treated him like the child that he was. He braced himself for her tirade and even a slap in the face, but she didn’t say anything on her way out. And after she left, he couldn’t contend with the shame and guilt of not wanting a baby.

He followed her downstairs into the bedroom. The sheets were tossed and tangled around her body as she cried softly on her side of the bed. He sat next to her and touched her arm, but she slapped at it. She turned off the bedside lamp, and Preston turned it on again. She wouldn’t speak to him. She dried her eyes and runny nose with tissues scrunched up into little balls beside her. He didn’t know what he could do or say to mend what had been broken upstairs. He searched for words. He thought they should make love again as they did after every argument, but a tactile reconciliation was out of the question, now that he had reprimanded her. He regretted having said those things, but he had to be honest, or else such sentiments would just pop up at a later, more inconvenient time.

“Look,” he said, “it’s not that I don’t want this child. I’m a little nervous about it. I never expected to become a parent so soon. My life is about poetry, and I’m dedicated to my work, but my reaction was just knee-jerk, and I didn’t mean the things I said. You are my rare flower that blossoms in the sunlight of my love, I swear it, and I love you so much. I didn’t mean that I didn’t want our child, I just meant that we should have decided together, instead of you doing one thing and me doing another. It’s like we’re both drifting apart, and you’re becoming your own poet, and I’m not doing well with my work. See, it has nothing to do with our child.”

She got out of bed and pulled out bed sheets and a comforter from the walk-in closet. She threw these items at him and told him to get out, which he did. He slept on the living room couch for several nights in a row, and the two didn’t speak to one another for four days straight.

Preston couldn’t write during this chilly period. Instead he watched television, ate pizza and take-out Chinese, and made the downstairs living room his new home. Amanda kept to herself on the second floor, and despite Preston’s many overtures—sending her flowers and candy, even buying a crib for the baby—she still refused to talk to him. They passed each other in the living room where Preston pleaded with her. After the four-day chill he pleaded with her several times a day, and on the sixth day of the cold shoulder, when Preston dropped on bended knee and begged for her to say something, she finally acknowledged his presence by slapping him.

“Will you talk to me now?” he asked, a beet-red handprint glowing on his face.

“I can’t stay mad at you forever,” she said, “but you deserve it.”

“I want this baby very much. I didn’t mean the things I said.”

“You were scared, I know.”

“You have to believe me. I was scared. I didn’t want it changing our lives.

That’s what children do, and yes, I got scared, but I want this baby, and I want you as its mother and you as my wife. Nothing else matters but that. I’m finally seeing things for the first time.”

“I don’t know whether to believe you,” she said.

She had never been this difficult before, and he wanted things to return to normal, but their relationship crossed a threshold, and he realized there was no going back to the isolation and gloom of his work upstairs. Maybe he became addicted to the fierce battle between poet and the blank page, and he needed that battle to continue, because it made him a man. It made him a fierce intellectual, a gladiator in a bloodthirsty arena, and he craved doing battle with himself on the page, even though it came at a high price. But things were going to be different from now on, and he wanted the baby, really he did. He reprioritized and decided to put his poetry second and the baby first. A new and strange world had arrived, and he embraced it instead of returning to a place where he couldn’t get along with his wife. The baby would make him happier, he reasoned. The dream of being a great poet fizzled and another, radically different dream was constructed in its place—to have a healthy and happy family in the beautiful South Orange home with his beautiful wife. He would have to teach, and so would she after a while. But first she must believe him, and whether or not she did at this moment mattered more than any new dream. His wife and child had to come first if he were so bold as to pursue this. Something as small as a tick lured him back to his old life, but a greater force hurled him forward and away from his old routine. He looked into her eyes, and she said, “I believe you.”

They kissed and soon made love on the living room sofa. They forgave each other for being unreasonable, and together they shared the same new dream for the first time since they married. Her cold shoulder could be as frigid and as piercing as a glacier, and it was something he never wanted to experience ever again. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, he needed a family, and he needed a change. Another life awaited him, and he thanked the good Lord for granting him the gift of a child.

He imagined the child as a lawyer, just like his parents, getting A’s in school, winning prizes, having a tenured position at an esteemed university. He imagined him playing baseball as an outfielder for the Yankees, or making tons of money as a Wall Street trader or heading some multinational corporation, or even winning a trial by arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court, or a congressman or mayor or senator. The possibilities for this child were as endless as the love he had for Amanda, and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief knowing that he didn’t have to do battle with himself in the upstairs attic anymore. He could instead take his time, write when he felt like it, and create wonderful and joyful verse that fed on his precious reawakening. He could devote many lines to Amanda and even more to the child. It was as wondrous as his first sunrise and fulfilling as his first sunset. He never imagined how beautiful his life could look—taking his son to school every morning or teaching him how to make his bed, or should it be a girl, dancing with his daughter on her wedding day many years down the road.

After Amanda told him she miscarried the baby a few weeks later, he bought a bottle of expensive scotch and locked himself in the upstairs attic for a week straight. He only resurfaced to buy more scotch from the town’s only liquor store. He hardly ate. He wrote for a week straight and hid his sensitivities within the dark and brooding lines of his verse. Nor did he comfort his wife who cried herself to sleep every night and cancelled all of her readings at area universities and bookstores.

Preston slept in the upstairs attic, and he awoke just to write and drink, write and drink, as though there were nothing left to be taken away. He didn’t know what to say to Amanda thereafter. He didn’t want to see her so much. He preferred being alone and kept to himself, and he chastised himself for having hopes and dreams that ventured beyond the limits of a tragic reality. He should have known better than to trust his familial visions. Even when Amanda’s parents showed up to console her, he locked himself in, too tired and agitated to talk to them. He slept during the day as his hangover caused a comatose slumber. He awoke in the dead of night when the attic window in front of his desk showcased every bug and mosquito in Essex County, and he wrote emotional gibberish that no one would ever read. In the abyss of darkness he free-fell, and just when he hit bottom, he dug even farther.