“Trudy’s left Rhome,” Fancy told Joan when she brought the boys home from their last day of school. “She went back to Canada, and I think I should go back too. Right away, if I can. I love all of you so much, and I know I’ll be leaving you in a lurch, but I feel lost without her.” Joan saw there would be no convincing Fancy to stay, so what else could she say but, “I’ll write you an outstanding recommendation, crafted to highlight all of your numerous talents, just write down where I should send it.” When Martin came home and heard the news, he left the kitchen and returned with an envelope for Fancy. “A thank-you, but not enough for all you’ve done for us.” There were hugs and kisses, and the boys walked with her to her car, and stood on the sidewalk holding her hands, not wanting to let her go, both of them crying. Then Fancy drove out of their lives.
Ice-cream sundaes followed her sudden departure and, later, Joan said to Martin, “I’ve always wondered if Fancy and Trudy were just friends, like Fancy always said, or if there’s always been something more between them.” They had come to know Trudy at the holiday parties and summer blow-outs in the backyard Martin liked them to throw, and which Joan had become very good at organizing with Fancy’s help. Trudy was small next to tall Fancy, mousy when Fancy was brave, quiet when Fancy could talk and talk and talk, but every once in a while, Joan caught a look passing between them, or Trudy gazing at Fancy, or Fancy gazing at Trudy, and she would wonder and wish that Fancy felt free enough to live her life completely. “Definitely, they’re together. They’ll buy a little house in that little town they’re from, on the edge of Lake Ontario, and be happy the rest of their days.” He shut off the bedroom lights, and in the dark, Joan hoped that was true, as true as the hole Fancy was leaving in their lives, as true as Fancy’s plans extinguishing Joan’s own summer hope. Later, when they discussed hiring another nanny, Joan looked ahead to the fall, to writing each day in an emptied house, and said, “No one could ever replace Fancy, so let’s not bother.”
But she wasn’t prepared for Fancy leaving, had no summer plans in place for the boys. Had she known, and over their complaints, she would have sent Eric to day camp, Daniel to sleepaway. Instead, they spent the sunny days at the community center pool. Daniel took lessons with the swim coach, wanting, he said, to try out for the school team in the fall. As a seventh grader he could do that. Eric ran around with the other kids, cannonballing into the water, despite threats of expulsion never carried out by the lifeguards. Some mornings Martin gave Joan a break and took Eric with him to the hospital, where he played on his father’s office computer, then dropped him in the early afternoon at the pool. She and the boys saw a lot of Augusta, Carla, Dawn, Emily, Meg, and Teresa there, with all of their children. The six women could field a swim team of their own, eighteen children in total. During the school year, their paths no longer crossed, all those playdates fallen away as their eldest daughters and Daniel found other friends whom they preferred, who were not of the opposite sex. It was nice they could reunite for occasional picnics in the park, barbecues at someone’s house, the children playing tag and hide-and-seek, the men, sometimes even Martin, drinking beers from the bottle.
And it had been the summer of the big challenge; Daniel’s idea, a serious competition between eldest son and mother, and it took all the love in her heart not to groan. She wasn’t sure when it had begun, but Daniel wanted to beat her at anything, at everything—if he could cut up a tomato quicker, or bike faster on the Potomac walk, or say more d words in a minute than she could. His desire to constantly test himself against her was fascinating, tiring, at odds with her own nature—never had she competed in her life. A week into the vacation, he came up with a challenge she actually liked—who could read the most novels over the summer. She agreed instantly and suggested there be a prize for the winner.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “And I know what I want. A typewriter.” He was uninterested in what Joan might want if she beat him; he thoroughly expected to win.
“Wouldn’t you rather we got a computer for home, and you can use that for your writing?” Martin asked, and Daniel said, “Dad, a real writer writes on a real typewriter, a manual one.” Eric, who desperately wanted a computer, had yelled, “No, get a computer, not a stupid typewriter!”
One night in bed, Martin said to her, “If Daniel does win the contest, how about giving him your old typewriter? It’s just gathering dust. I know he said he wanted a manual, but he could adapt. Kind of like passing down history, a hand-off from one generation to the next.”
She was stunned, relieved that the room was dark, that he could not see her face. Of course he didn’t know she was using her typewriter regularly, had been until the start of the summer, would again when the summer concluded. His suggestion that she relinquish it, even to the son she adored, framing it in generational terms, the passing of the writer’s baton, the assumption he was making that she had abandoned her writing life, would never write again, she felt punched in the stomach. She hadn’t been able to clear her mind, to think of anything to say that would not reveal what she had no intention of revealing, and then Martin said, “Probably not a good idea. He’ll want something of his own.” And she had managed to open her mouth, to say only, “You’re right.”
Sometimes Joan read quickly, sometimes leisurely, uncertain whether to let Daniel win, then decided she would, that teaching him to lose graciously was less important than the confidence that would come with achieving his goal. She stopped reading after the twenty-ninth novel, allowed him to reach thirty.
Finding a working manual typewriter had not been easy. Martin found one in mint condition, bought it from a Johns Hopkins friend whose letter-writing mother had just died. The woman had kept it oiled and working like new, stockpiled for years the ribbons it required. It sat now on Daniel’s white desk. The story he was taking to share with his new classmates had been written on that manual typewriter, his first time using it, that uncertain typing, those clunk, clunk, clunks without any rhythm. Every time Joan heard him plucking away, she felt proud, then bereft that she had not written a word during those long and hot three months.
*
“So what did Dad say to you guys in Chinese?” she asked when they were in the station wagon heading down the hill, at last off to the first day of school.
“He said, ‘Good morning, my good sons,’” they said at the same time.
“Jinx,” Eric yelled, and Daniel said, “Don’t be dumb.”
*
She was at the kitchen table by ten, a mug of fresh coffee in hand, her typewriter still in the front closet box, the pages of Words of New Beginnings in front of her. She needed to submerge herself in her own words before she could pick up where she had left off. She began at the beginning.