Page 23 of The Ghostwriter

“Of course,” he says, and I can tell he knows I’m lying.

I replace the lid and set the box on the floor, imagining him taking it down every now and then, flipping through mementos that suddenly endwhen I turned fourteen and left for school, never to return again. How perhaps he’d planned to fill the box with more memories that had never come. His belief that I would return home. Come over for dinners and the holidays. And how painful it must have been when I didn’t.

I’d assumed the years of womanizing and drug and alcohol abuse were a coping mechanism for the trauma he’d suffered as a child. But now I see that it was perhaps a father trying to forget that he was alone in the world. Immersing himself in the easiest ways to forget.

I swallow hard, not wanting him to see my emotion. “You do have a tendency to fill a box with junk,” I say.

He looks embarrassed. “I’ve been meaning to deal with those boxes for years but…” He trails off, perhaps unwilling to admit aloud that now he’s not in any condition to be making decisions about what’s trash and what’s not. “I know you’re only here to write this book,” he continues. “And please say no if I’m overstepping. But Alma’s hands are full with all of my appointments, medications, and managing the house. Plus, there are probably some valuable things buried in there among the trash that might be worth some money—correspondence with other authors, old annotated manuscripts we might be able to auction off. Alma wouldn’t recognize their value, but you would. Maybe, if you need a break from working on the memoir, you could sort through them?” He gives me a wry smile. “No dead hamsters. I promise.”

I laugh and say, “To this day, I still hesitate before opening a box.”

“Like I said,” he continues, “feel free to say no. You don’t have any obligation other than the book. Assuming you’ve decided to stay on,” he finishes.

I think back to our initial conversation, knowing there was never a question of me accepting this job. “I don’t make it a habit to walk away from hard projects,” I tell him, leaving out how very precarious my financial situation actually is. “And looking through the boxes in the guesthouse might help, given the fact that I’m not allowed to interview anyone.”I wait to see if he’ll respond, but he just gives a curt nod and I push on. “They extended our deadline to July,” I say. “But that’s still only four months. My number one job is to make you sympathetic to the reader. They need to want to spend three-hundred-plus pages with you—either because they like you, or because you’re telling them something they want to know.”

“I think likable is off the table.”

I dip my head in silent agreement. “They have to believe the information they’re getting is new, but they also need to feel your vulnerability in the retelling.”

He nods and I check to make sure my voice recorder is on, then pick up the legal pad I brought with me, flipping around until I get to the page I want. “You have a full page here, with just one single sentence on it, over and over again.She shouldn’t have gone. She shouldn’t have gone.” I start to hold it out to him but then remember he can’t read it anyway, so I set it on the table next to me.

“No, let me look at it,” he says.

I pass it over and he stares at the page, running his fingers lightly over the words, slowly nodding to himself. “‘She shouldn’t have gone’?” he repeats. “That’s what it says?”

“Yes.”

He looks out the window, the light illuminating his profile. “I’m a fool,” he says, almost to himself. “I thought you could come in here, we’d spend a few weeks chatting, and you could take what I’d already written and clean it up.”

“Writing a memoir is challenging, even under normal circumstances. It requires you to face painful memories that have sometimes been buried for years. It’s a commitment to telling the truth, even if it’s hard.” I point to the pad and say, “So tell me about that page. Who is it referring to?”

I expect him to tell me it’s about Poppy, hitchhiking into Ventura alone. That the fault was hers for luring a killer back to Ojai and destroying myfather’s family. Or perhaps he’ll tell me that she shouldn’t have gone back to the house the night of the carnival.

But he surprises me. “I’m pretty sure it’s about your mother.”

“I’m not following.”

“There was a party. A bonfire. Everyone was going, but I was grounded. I was a bit insecure at sixteen, with my first girlfriend. I wanted her to stay back with me and, in the way of young boys everywhere, didn’t know how to simply ask for what I wanted.” He gives a quiet chuckle. “So I left it up to her, and she took me at face value. Went to the party with Danny and Poppy.”

I point to the page, filled with the same phrase over and over again, and say, “Are you sure that’s what this is about? This seems more…” I hunt for the words. “Unhinged. Ominous.”

“I can’t tell you why I wrote it over and over. But I can say with a fair amount of confidence that it was about that bonfire. About a boy who got caught ditching sixth period and was grounded for it, who wanted his girlfriend to choose hanging out with him over going to a party.”

I sigh and say, “Okay.” My panic is slowly rising. I’ve maneuvered myself into an impossible corner. I have one solid chapter about Danny, and another one I have no intention of showing anyone. I was hoping this page would lead me to another scene I could write. But instead, it’s teenage angst. I feel like I’m riding shotgun with a man who has lost control of the car and there isn’t anything I can do but wait for us to crash.

Vincent

March 8, 1975

I sit at my desk, the heat of the desk lamp burning my skin. I was supposed to be doing homework. Supposed to beusing my time wisely, as my father suggested when he’d grounded me. But really, I’m supposed to be at the bonfire with Danny and Poppy.

Lydia.

My stomach does a funny flop, as it always does when I think about her. So beautiful. So funny and graceful. It’s only been three weeks and I’m still astonished she chose me. From somewhere inside of me, I hear Danny’s taunting voice.She only chose you because I’d already rejected her.

From the living room, Lawrence Welk’s voice floats down the hall. I get up and wander into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and staring into it, my mind stuck an hour earlier. On Lydia’s disappointed expression when I told her I couldn’t go to the bonfire. And how it had shifted when Danny—who’d originally called the bonfire a stupid wasteof time—suddenly changed his mind and decided to go after all, inviting Lydia to hitch a ride with him and Poppy. “No sense in you being grounded as well, just because my brother is stupid enough to ditch sixth period and get caught.”

I saw right away what Danny was doing, but Poppy had been thrilled by his change of heart, jumping around, making a racket. “Would you kids be quiet for one blessed minute?” our mother had shouted from the kitchen.

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