Strangers all, they would ford oceans, fly through the skies, pack up old cars and painted RVs, all drawn to a new community in a sparsely populated town in a small unnamed American state. Painters, sculptors, ceramicists, writers, poets, musicians, songwriters, filmmakers, photographers, collagists, doll makers, vintners, and the predictable pot growers who followed the artists—successful artists from the old enclaves of Cologne, Berlin, Paris, London, and Santa Fe, tired of the existing tenets that codified what art could be, and those who had never been artists but had always desired to execute their mindful dreams—would all travel until they reached a narrow, single-lane freshly paved blacktop that sailed up and around purpled hills, and then dropped into a pastoral valley spread out below. They would find themselves in verdant meadows, with dandelion fields, through which brooks with cold, clear water ran, surrounded by bouldering mountains. Near the atmospheric energy vortices, the artists would build a contemporary version of the Old West, reimagined as an artists’ mecca. Buildings would rise, one-room cabins with uneven porches, tree houses with running water, modernized tepees raised above the flood line, rooming houses built with soda cans, using for insulation old rubber gathered from the side of a main highway thirty miles away, blown off the sixteen-wheelers that flew through. Meetings would be held to resolve issues rapidly so that their mecca would run well. Her key characters—Bash, Lila, Minu, Zena, Bernard, and Anton—would create their art and couple in ways that expanded the meaning of honing the work.
By the end of the year, Joan had written fifty tight pages, and she had reams of notes and research. When she wasn’t working, everything was hidden in that box in the front hall closet under the old jackets she had held on to. Her secret was still her secret. She was writing up in her castle, in the tower she had constructed for herself, away from prying eyes and Martin’s need to expose the complicated mechanics of her mind. She was happy, in that unique, specific way that only came to her when she was at work. Her brain was never at rest. The lives of her characters, their motivations, the art they created, the fights they had, the words they spoke, ran through her daily domesticated routine, her dreams when she slept, in the yoga class she still went to twice a week, when the grueling hour was complete and she was in Shavasna. She bought another notebook, kept it in her pocket, along with a pen, jotted down abbreviated notes only she could interpret when she made breakfast, bagged Daniel’s school lunch, drove the boys to school, went to the market, made dinner when Fancy was not around. She was thinking of calling it Words of New Beginnings.
13
“Zǎoshang hǎo. Wǒ de hǎo er zi.” It was Martin, calling the boys on their first day of school. It was just eight on the warm fourth day of September, but Daniel had been dressed since six, in a new pair of jeans and a striped dress shirt, a junior version of what his father wore most days, wanting to look like the seventh grader he was about to become in an hour, and Eric, heading into second grade, which he said he already hated, was in his favorite blue shorts, favorite yellow shirt, his banged-up tennis shoes without any socks, which he hated as well.
She heard Martin’s Chinese greeting on the speakerphone, which she clicked off when both boys had phones to their ears, wanting to hear his every word.
Over the past few years, Martin had become their famous father. Articles about him and his innovative surgeries first appeared in medical journals, and then in major newspapers, and the boys collected copies of every one. Martin did not seem bowled over by the attention—he told the boys he was a doctor, not a celebrity, and the exposure was good only if it served the higher purpose of increasing funding for his research. Joan mostly believed him. She knew firsthand how fame held momentary appeal, the warmth of its bright and special spotlight, how that spotlight could overheat, melt a person down if they weren’t solid, mature, and grounded. But Martin possessed that triad of traits, neither preened about nor discounted his good fortune. In the spring, a reporter from Time magazine had spent several days in Rhome interviewing Martin, shadowing him on hospital rounds, observing a few of his surgeries, talking to the doctors and nurses he worked with, to patients who had given permission, to the boys, asking if they had any interest in following their father into medicine, to Joan, about what life was like with a surgeon whose skills were demanded around the world. She couldn’t help wondering how that article would read when it was published, whether she would be allowed her own name finally, or, as in all the previous articles, identified only as the wife. She tried not to let it, but it pricked a bit, the way she had been rendered anonymous.
From the hall, Joan could see Daniel at the kitchen table and Eric kneeling on the living-room couch, heard their responses to their father’s long-distance questions. Martin was good at calling them frequently when he was away, opening the conversation with greetings in the language of the country he was in.
“Yes, I have my new backpack already, and my lunch, and my newest Henry story because my homeroom teacher, Miss Nilson, called saying everyone had to bring in something to share about ourselves,” Daniel said.
“And I made my own peanut butter and peach jam sandwich,” Eric said loudly. “And Mom said it was okay if I took two bags of Fritos, if I took an orange too, and ate it. And I will.”
Martin was in Beijing, for the third time. On his first trip there, he performed intracapsular cataract surgeries on the eyes of seven old Chinese men. On his second, a dozen orbital surgeries on the eyes of six middle-aged Chinese women suffering from anopthalmia, enucleation, and evisceration. This time he was there to operate on the eyes of several young Chinese boys suffering from dacryostenosis; overflowing and unstoppable tears caused by infections; abnormal growths; injuries of the facial bones or surrounding tissues; and underdeveloped puncta. He planned to probe and irrigate, passing a small metal instrument through the nasolacrimal ducts, but had brought stents he would insert to open up those ducts if the simpler operation failed. He had flown out on the eve of Labor Day weekend and wouldn’t be back until Friday.
“Are your patients nice?” Daniel asked, and a moment later Eric yelled out, “Mom, they’re the same ages as us.” The Beijing-Rhome conversation continued while Joan ran the cereal bowls and spoons under the faucet, put away the milk.
The morning also marked the start of her third year owning the length of each school day, and she felt like a horse on a lead, pawing the ground, eager to be let loose, to run straight back into her artists’ mecca, to return to the arcadian place she was creating in that small town in an unnamed American state, to rejoin Bash, Lila, Minu, Zena, Bernard, and Anton. She had been on a roll, five hundred pages into the first draft, and then Joan’s summer writing plans turned to dust.
*