Page 8 of The Ghostwriter

I imagine returning to Topanga, to the financial troubles that await me there. Of leaving my father to his slow decline, letting Alma deal with the packing up and sale of this house. Finding a care facility for him when he becomes too difficult to manage at home and figuring out how to pay for it. None of those jobs are mine, and yet I feel a stab of guilt for abdicating my role as his daughter. All these years, I’ve been righteous in my decision to cut him from my life. And now, what I feel most is doubt.

“Some good news,” Nicole says, pulling me back. “The first chunk of your advance landed, and we’ll get it out to you in a couple days.” They’d rushed the contract and payment, and while Nicole had tried to get creative with the advance structure, fighting for me to get as much as possible up front, the publisher had held firm: $100,000 upon signing the contract, another $100,000 upon acceptance of a finished manuscript, and the remainder split between the publication of the hardcover edition and the paperback.

Between what I owe John Calder and my attorney’s fees, that first chunk of money will likely spend less than forty-eight hours in my bank account.

“I’ve got a meeting,” Nicole says. “Call if you need anything.”

“I will,” I say, then disconnect.

I slide off the rubber bands, being careful not to tear any of the pages from the spine, and start to read.

The sharp, jagged edges of my father’s handwriting send me back to my days at boarding school, when he’d drop me an occasional card fromwherever he was in the world, telling me about this successful talk or that prestigious award, thef’s and theg’s like spikes striking upward or downward. A handwriting expert would likely have a field day.

But after about twenty minutes, my head begins to ache behind my eyes. What I’ve read so far isn’t the first draft of a book; it’s a man rambling about his childhood. The things he loved, the things he hated. His resentment over having to share a room with his older brother while his sister got her own. This is the kind of stuff I usually let a subject blow through in the first few days of a project, never bothering to write any of it down.

I stand and stretch, then wander over to a stack of boxes and lift the lid off the one on top, finding a jumble of papers inside. Taking a handful, I pull them out and flip through them. Paid bill stubs for cable, utilities, water and power, dated several years ago. Unused pads of paper, promotions from local real estate agents. I toss it all back inside and lift another lid. Advance reader copies of books sent to my father to endorse, wedged in so tight, I can’t squeeze my fingers between them to lift one out. Some titles I recognize, while others are unfamiliar, the publication dates emblazoned on the spines long since passed.

The bed is in the far corner, under a window with a sheer curtain that thankfully looks freshly laundered. I sit on it, noticing the old clock radio flashing the wrong time, and allow myself to finally absorb the fact that I’m back after so many years. Shadows of my younger self dance in the corners, teasing me out, forcing me to remember things I’d long forgotten. The way I used to play hopscotch in the courtyard, my father coming down on his breaks to play with me, the two of us making up ridiculous rhymes as we hopped on one foot. Or the way we’d sit in the living room watching TV—me with a mug of hot chocolate and him with his bottomless glass of whiskey. Those elaborate treasure hunts he’d design for me—sending me racing all over the house and surrounding grounds, never knowing if the final prize would be something big like a new bike,or small like a pencil box in the shape of a dog. Or that dead hamster, suffocated in a box under the bathroom sink. Always exhilarated by the trail of clues, but also cautious about what I might find.

I spent years chasing after my father, hoping the man who showed up would be the version of him that I needed. Occasionally, I got him. A sage piece of advice delivered across the Atlantic on a long-distance phone call. A card with a funny drawing landing in my mailbox for Groundhog Day. But by the time I was seventeen, it had been years since I’d seen that man. He no longer existed. I stayed abroad for college, and by the time I graduated, I knew I needed to cut him out of my life.

“I don’t understand why you’re moving to Paris,” he’d said at my graduation dinner after his fourth whiskey. “You should come home.”

My roommate’s parents shifted in their seats, no doubt surprised to find the famous Vincent Taylor such a disappointment.

“Because you’re a train wreck,” I’d said. “You could live anywhere, and yet you’ve never moved. You claim to be a victim of rumors, but you’re not a victim; you love it.”

He stared at me, as if challenging me to continue. Daring me to say the quiet part out loud. I was happy to oblige. “You love being the suspected murderer, lurking around your hometown, making people uncomfortable. You cultivate it.” I waved my hands in the air in front of me, unable to stop. “It’s all part of your persona, and if you moved, you’d lose that.” I noticed people at neighboring tables were looking at us, and I lowered my voice. “I don’t want any part of that life, Dad.”

That was the last time we had spoken. I moved to Paris. Got married and then divorced. When I finally returned to the United States at age twenty-five to attend journalism school in Chicago, I was a new person with a new name, forged from the flames of my father’s dysfunction.

***

I sit again, determined to make my way through the first full legal pad. Desperate to find something I can revise into an opening chapter. I linger for a moment on the dedication:For Danny and Poppy—This isn’t your story, it’s mine. But I hope in the telling you’ll be able to shine again, if only for a moment.

I pick up where I left off but soon lose the thread. Danny and Poppy flying kites, my father watching them from a blanket. From there the timeline bounces around. Some pages are about my mother, Lydia, who’d been my father’s girlfriend in the months leading up to the murders. Others are about vandalism at the high school. A neighbor’s missing cat. I start to skim, trying to make sense of the whole. Suddenly we’re back in March at a backyard barbecue. Then with Poppy as she’s wandering around with her Super 8 camera. It’s like reading someone’s account of a complicated dream, with abrupt segues and shifting perspectives. I jot some notes:

Riding down a big hill/fall

Family dinners—Mom terrible cook

Poppy’s birthday—got a camera

I latch onto that last idea, thinking it might be interesting to start with that. I flip back through the legal pad until I find the short scene describing the day in early March 1975—a roller-skating party Danny had been allowed to skip but my father had been forced to attend. A second celebration at home with just the family, a meal eaten in the backyard with a fire in the firepit and music. I try to imagine what they might have been listening to. The inside jokes they shared. What they ate. The evening air cool and crisp, requiring sweatshirts, the heat of the fire warming them. Laughter. Singing. Wrapping paper and cake. I begin to see the outlines of a scene, so I open my computer and start revising, growing it into what I think he intended it to be. This is the job of a ghostwriter, and I’m goingto do it with fidelity. It’s his book, his rules, and no one will ever know I worked on it.

***

It’s a short chapter—only six pages—but when I’m done, I feel like maybe it captures the time and place, giving readers a feel for Ojai in the ’70s and the family dynamic. Before I get in too deep, I need to know that I’m on the right track with this revision, so I drop it in an email and send it off to Neil, cc’ing Nicole, then read through it again.

It’s hard to believe this was only five years before I was born. When I think about my father and his siblings, 1975 seems like a different era. But Poppy would have been only nineteen years old when I was born. A fun, young aunt, teaching me how to roller-skate. Braiding my hair. Taking me on fun shopping excursions to Santa Barbara or Ventura, giving my parents a night off.

Who would she have become, if her life hadn’t ended at age fourteen? I close my laptop and stare at the four walls surrounding me, the boxes towering nearly to the ceiling in places, letting myself feel the loss of someone I never had a chance to love.

***

Back with the manuscript, I start flipping through the pages, trying to get a list of things to discuss with my father for our first session tomorrow morning.

But as I continue to read, my father’s handwriting grows sloppy and, in some places, veers off the lines and downhill. He goes from trite memories of his childhood to fragments of ideas. Sentences that start but don’t finish. There’s one page that simply readsShe shouldn’t have gone.Over and over, from top to bottom, that same sentence.She shouldn’t have gone.

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