Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Athena did all her outlining in those stupid Moleskine notebooks. She’s spoken publicly about this process. “I do all my brainstorming and research by hand,” she’s said. “It helps me think better, to identify themes and linkages. I think it’s because the act of physical writing forces my mind to slow down, to examine the potential of every word I’m scribbling out. Then, when I’ve filled up six or seven notebooks this way, I pull out the typewriter and start drafting properly.”
I don’t know why I never thought of taking the notebooks as well. They were right there on the desk—at least three of them, two lying open next to the manuscript. I was so panicked that night. I suppose I thought they’d go into storage with the rest of her belongings.
But a public archive? I mean, fuck. The first person who goes in to write a paper about her—and there will be many, I’m sure—will see the notes for The Last Front right away. I’m sure they’re extensive, detailed. That’ll be a dead giveaway. Then this whole artifice unravels.
I don’t have time to calm myself, to think things through. I need to nip this in the bud. Heart racing, I reach for my phone and call Athena’s mother.
MRS. LIU IS GORGEOUS. IT’S TRUE WHAT THEY SAY—ASIAN WOMEN don’t age. She must be in her midfifties by now, but she doesn’t look a day over thirty. You can see, in that elegant, petite frame and sharp cheekbones, the wispy beauty Athena would have grown into. Mrs. Liu’s face had been so puffy from crying at the funeral, I hadn’t noticed how striking she was; now, up close, she looks so much like her daughter that it’s disorienting.
“Junie. So good to see you.” She embraces me on her doorstep. She smells like dried flowers. “Come in.”
I sit down at her kitchen table, and she pours and places a steaming cup of a very fragrant tea before me before sitting down. Her slender fingers curl around her own cup. “I understand you wanted to talk about Athena’s things.”
She’s so direct, I wonder for a moment if she’s onto me. She’s nothing like the warm, welcoming woman I’d met at the funeral. But then I notice the tired sag of her mouth, the shadows beneath her eyes, and I realize she’s only trying to get through the day.
I had a whole arsenal of small talk planned: stories about Athena, stories about Yale, observations on grief and how hard it is to make it through every minute of every day when one of your pillars has vanished overnight. I know loss. I know how to talk to people about loss.
Instead I cut straight to the chase. “I read that you’re going to donate Athena’s notebooks to the Marlin Archive?”
“I am.” She cocks her head. “You don’t think that’s a good idea?”
“No, no, Mrs. Liu, I don’t mean that, I’m just . . . I’m wondering if you mind telling me how you made that decision?” My cheeks are burning. I can’t hold her gaze. I drop my eyes. “I mean, only if you want to talk about it. I know all of this is—it’s impossible to really talk about, I know, and it’s not like you know me all that well . . .”
“I received an email from the librarian in charge of the project a few weeks ago,” says Mrs. Liu. “Marjorie Chee. Very nice girl. We spoke on the phone, and she seemed so familiar with Athena’s work.” She sighs, takes a sip of tea. For some reason, I keep thinking about how good her English is. There’s only a hint of an accent, and her vocabulary is rich, her sentence structures complex and varied. Athena had always made a big deal about how her parents had immigrated to the States without speaking a word of English, but Mrs. Liu’s English sounds fine to me. “Well, I don’t know much about these things. But it seems like a public archive is a good way to let people remember Athena. She was so brilliant—well, you know that; her mind worked in such fascinating ways. I’m sure some literary scholars might be interested in doing a study. Athena would like that. She was always so thrilled when academics wrote about her work; she said it was better validation than the . . . the adoration of the masses. Her words. Anyhow, it’s not like I’m doing anything important with them.” She nods to the corner. I follow her gaze, and my breath catches. The notebooks are right there, piled unceremoniously together in a big cardboard box, shelved beneath a large bag of rice and what looks like a smooth, unstriped watermelon.
Wild fantasies flood my mind. I could grab them and run out, be halfway down the block before Mrs. Liu realizes what’s happening. I could douse this whole place in oil while she’s out and burn them, and no one would be any wiser.
“Have you read what’s in them?” I ask cautiously.
Mrs. Liu sighs again. “No, I’ve thought about it, but I . . . It’s very painful. You know, even when Athena was alive, it was difficult for me to read her novels. She drew so much from her childhood, from stories her father and I told her, from things . . . things in our past. Our family’s past. I did read her first novel, and that’s when I realized it’s very hard to read about these memories from someone else’s point of view.” Her throat pulses. She touches her collar. “It makes me wonder if we should have spared her all that pain.”
“I understand,” I say. “My relatives are the same way with my work.”
“Oh yes?”
No, that’s a lie; I don’t know what compelled me to say it. My folks couldn’t care less about what I write. My grandfather griped about having to pay the cost of my useless English degree all four years that I was at Yale, and my mother still phones once a month to ask whether I’ve decided yet to try something that will let me earn real money, like law school or consulting. Rory did read my debut novel, though she didn’t understand it at all—she kept asking why the sisters were so insufferable, which baffled me, because the sisters were supposed to be us.
But what Mrs. Liu wants right now is company and sympathy. She wants to hear the right words. And words are, after all, what I’m good at.
“They feel too close to the subject matter,” I say. “I draw a lot on my own life in my novels, too.” This part is true; my debut novel was nearly autobiographical. “And I didn’t exactly have a smooth childhood, so it’s hard for them . . . I mean, they don’t like to be reminded of their mistakes. They don’t like seeing things through my eyes.”
Mrs. Liu nods vigorously. “I can understand that.”
I see my way in. And it’s so obvious, it almost feels too easy.
“And, well, that’s sort of why I wanted to come talk to you today.” I take a breath. “I’ll be honest with you, Mrs. Liu. I don’t think putting her notebooks up for public access is a good idea.”
Her brows furrow. “Why not?”
“I don’t know how much you know about your daughter’s writing process . . .”
“Not much,” she says. “Almost nothing. She hated talking about her work until it was finished. She got so snippy if I even brought it up.”
“Well, that’s just it,” I say. “Athena was so private with her stories while she was putting them together. They draw from such painful histories—we spoke about it once; she described it as mining her past for scars and ripping them open so that they bleed fresh again.” We never spoke about writing quite so intimately; I read the part about ripping scars open in an interview. But it is true; that really is how Athena thought about her works in progress. “She couldn’t show that pain to anyone else until she’d perfected the way she wanted to tell it, until she had complete control over the narrative. Until she’d polished it into a version and argument that she was comfortable with. But those notebooks are her original thoughts, raw and unfiltered. And I just can’t help but . . . I don’t know, I feel like donating them to an archive would be a violation. Like putting her corpse on display.”
Maybe I’m a bit heavy-handed with the imagery there. But it works.