Eric moved into Mr. Nevin’s third grade, and other than playing with different kids at recess, it made no difference to him, except that his father bought him a computer and set it up in his room. He spent hours figuring out how the thing worked, how he could make it work in different ways, and one Saturday morning, he said, “Mom, will you take me to the library?” Surprised that this second child of hers was finally expressing an interest in reading, Joan said, “Sure. We’ll go right now.” On the drive over, she asked what kind of books he was looking for, and Eric said, “Coding,” and Joan had no idea what he was talking about.
Daniel made the swim team, the only seventh grader to do so. When the swim season officially started, and the team began attending meets, his events would be the 100-meter individual medley, swimming butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle, and the fifty-yard freestyle. Joan bought him special shampoo and soap to wash away the chlorine, but it stuck to his skin, the scent entering rooms before he did. He did his homework with his usual attention and continued to get top grades. He still read big novels that he took off the living-room shelves or checked out of the library, but he didn’t often want to talk to Joan about what he was reading. And gradually Joan became aware that she no longer heard the plunking of the manual typewriter keys in his room, that he did not mention the squirrel at all.
*
It was the day after Christmas. The house was quiet, their land brown beneath the cold sun, and Joan and Martin were in the living room, the coffee in their mugs cooling, reading the New York Times. Eric had disappeared into his room, reading the books they had given him for Christmas, six coding books recommended by one of Martin’s Johns Hopkins friends, who’d been told that their seven-year-old was fixated on computers and had been reading serious books intended for those already in the computer science field. Though he had never opened a children’s book willingly, Eric read perfectly well when consumed by the subject, and when Joan finally returned the oft-renewed library books, the pages had been frayed. Daniel was at the community center, as he usually was, in the pool with the swim team.
Joan put down the paper and said, “Something’s wrong with Daniel. He’s stopped writing about Henry.”
Martin rubbed his eyes. “He’ll start up again, if that’s what he wants to do.”
“I don’t think he will. He’s doubting himself for some reason.”
“Isn’t experiencing doubt part of growing up?” Martin said. “A useful way to test your limits and surpass them?”
“True, but give me one example where we wouldn’t try to shore up our sons’ doubts, would just allow doubt to hang in the air, pretend not to notice the struggle.”
When Martin could not, Joan said, “You don’t have a lot of experience with doubt. But I do. When the writers I edited faltered, I kept them from falling down. In my own work, there were many times I had to push through. We—I—have to do that for Daniel. I think he’s giving up on something vital, that thing that makes him who he is, and he’s too young to know he will suffer in the future from the actions he’s taking now. We need to help him.”
Martin shook his head. “Sometimes a forceful push can have the opposite effect. Maybe he’s just taking a break. He’s certainly found a new area of interest with swimming. And anyway, isn’t writing something he can choose to do or not?”
“Daniel’s compelled to write, he has been since he was little, just like I am—” she said, feeling heat in her face, on her chest, wondering if Martin noticed the slip. “If the compulsion has disappeared so quickly, something’s wrong.”
Martin hadn’t noticed her slip, and it struck Joan again, as it had occasionally over the past several years, that he had never questioned her, or worried, when she said she stopped writing. That to him, her writing was something far in the past, as if she had never been a writer at all.
“Maybe, but let’s not say anything right now. Let’s give it time. Everyone’s still reeling, no one feels sure about the world anymore. Why should an eleven-year-old be any different?”
“Twelve in four days,” she said.
“Right, but in four days he won’t suddenly process what’s happened any better.”
Joan wasn’t interested in hashing it out, in revealing the existence of Words, so she allowed Martin the last word and they went back to reading the paper. For the rest of the day, she debated about whether she ought to press Daniel. If he had stopped writing, there was something that needed to be aired out and discussed.
In bed that night, she thought how Daniel seemed happy enough, with the swim team, with keeping track of his times, with his books, and his friends, blushing a little when he talked about a girl in his class. In the morning, when no clear answer had revealed itself, Joan decided to default to Martin’s suggestion for just a little while, to see whether Daniel started plunking away again.
*
In early February, she leaned against Daniel’s door. “So, I was just wondering what new adventure you’re considering for Henry.” Daniel looked up from his desk and shrugged. “I’m not.” She saw the hemming in his eyes, there was something he wanted to say, but he shrugged again, swallowed once, twice, then said, “Mom, I’m too busy with everything else. I have a history quiz tomorrow and I have to study. Okay?”
She wanted badly to push, to make Daniel speak, but instead she said, “Let me know if you want me to test you, or you get hungry and want a snack.”
Daniel nodded and dropped his head back down into his history notes.
Perhaps Martin was right. Her son, always an open book, always talking to her about whatever was going on in his life, was closing his covers, with secret thoughts of his own, and perhaps she needed to wait for him to reach out to her, to bring up whatever was on his mind.
*
For a long time, she thought Daniel would, when he had been thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and came to find her out in the gardens, hoeing or raking or reseeding or deadheading the flowers, the gardens still her creative outlet when the family was around and she could not write. He would join her, help out for a while, and she would wait for him to say something, that he missed writing, mention the name of his squirrel, but he did not. He talked of other things: school, friends, the girl he did have a crush on, the swim team, filling Joan in, disclosing details, still as close, even if he had cut one of the ties that bound them together.
She left it in the past, tried not to think of Daniel the writer, until the fall of his senior year, when he was studying for the SATs, filling out college applications. He said he wanted to major in business, to make money, to be rich, to be powerful. Such a completely different future from the one she had thought, hoped, believed he should pursue. It wasn’t so much that she had an expectation of who and what Daniel would become, but an assumption, and that assumption had not included him tossing away the talents and promise of his childhood, allowing them to flag, wear out, and die.
*
It was late October when she found Daniel boxing up his stories, most of them between the sparkling covers she had made.
“I need more room on my shelves,” he said, and she saw the huge hole where they had always been.
She watched him place the last few into the overfilled box. “Those bring back such wonderful memories, you writing and reading them to me, or me reading them to you.”
He nodded. There was a pause, and then he said, “Me too.”