She was seven years and eight hundred pages into the third draft of the novel, but was not yet at the finish line. Some writers knew where they were going from the start, tacked up graphs and flow charts, plot points on notecards, but Joan had never written that way, could not write like that, her characters needed room to breathe, to find their own ways, as she did. She wasn’t sure if she had a hundred pages to go or more. She kept herself from thinking about the book’s future, about her future when she completed it, she was still at the stage where the only thing that mattered were the words on the page.
Perhaps she was projecting, perhaps the loss she felt for Daniel was misplaced, that the loss she was mourning was her own, that she was this age and still had not completed Words of New Beginnings, still had not published that first novel now no longer eagerly expected. She hadn’t heard from Volkmann in years, other than a card at the holidays, a dashed note along with the statements identifying the number of copies of her collections sold that year, the Storr & Storr checks written out to Joan Ashby tucked inside. She knew very well that the book represented her own new beginning, whenever that day might finally arrive. That was her focus; she could not worry about Daniel. He was old enough to know his own mind. If he had decided he was not a writer, then he wasn’t, and she would have to respect that.
CREATED BY THE GODS
Dēvatā‘ō? kē dvārā nirmit
18
If it was true that infants were born with all knowledge and talent, it seemed to Joan there were three potential roads thereafter: the knowledge solidified, intensified, the budding talents flourished, turned tenacious and lasting, as her own had; or all that knowledge, all that childhood talent lacked the tenacity to remain everlasting, like with Daniel, at least with the writing—what he might do in the future was a complete unknown—or the knowledge and talent was hidden by obstreperousness and emerged later to stunning effect, like what happened with Eric.
*
At the start of the new year, the small Manning house began filling up with strange boys who played no games, no pranks, and told no jokes, but the snacks and cold drinks Joan set out in the kitchen for them vanished without a trace, without her ever seeing them come and go, and they left behind no crumbs, no used napkins, no empty cans. Eric never cared much about having friends, but now he was somehow the leader of these boys, ghostly boys who were pale-faced and jean-clad, but did not look scary or rabid, did not wear solid black or trench coats, did not listen to heavy metal or any music at all, but along with Eric, they spent evenings after school and every weekend at the Mannings’, searching for some Holy Grail, following a mosaic trail only they could see. She thought they were older by more than the year that separated Eric from his eighth-grade classmates, and she was right, his troop of quiet and intense and intensely quiet followers were all juniors at Rhome High.
“Computers, Mom,” Eric said. “We’re teaching ourselves to code. Well, really, I’m teaching them because I’ve been teaching myself.”
His having friends was a change, good or bad Joan wasn’t sure, but he was becoming social in a way he had not been before, even if he lacked the easy charm Daniel inherited from Martin, their shared ability to make friends quickly, adored equally by old women and children. Joan took to throwing open the front door when she saw the ghostly boys coming up the snowy path, welcoming them in dulcet, happy tones. Even then, they merely nodded, avoiding her eyes, shy maybe, but several bent at the waist, a half-bow in her honor, as if they were at a cotillion. She laughed when she told Martin about it later.
In February, Eric began campaigning to attend, for ten weeks, a summer computer camp for advanced children that specialized in coding and programming and development, held at a college a hundred miles away.
“Well, he’s advanced,” Martin said to Joan. “Or at least that IQ test said he was, though his grades don’t really reflect he has any smarts at all.” And Joan said, “He’s never once wanted to go to camp. What if we send him and he calls crying the first day, the second, after the first week?”
They took their concerns to Eric, who said, “I will never call and beg to come home. This camp is different than those places you wanted to send me. I won’t have to do things I don’t want to do, like swim races in a lake, or ride horses, or make lanyards, or sing songs around some stupid campfire. This camp is critical for me. For my personal growth. There’s no computer science teacher at school and I’ve learned everything I can learn on my own, and the camp has all these PhDs as counselors. If you let me go, I promise I’ll work harder and get better grades next year.”
When did he learn the term PhD, Joan and Martin wondered, and when Joan said, “Eric, it’s only February, you can start working hard at your schoolwork now, get good grades this year,” Eric said, “Sure, sure. That’s what I meant.”
Joan and Martin traded looks, and Eric saw the looks that they traded, and he said, “Just wait, I’ll show you,” and he loped out of the living room, down the hall to his bedroom, and then loped back, never much of an athlete, handing the camp’s brochures to his parents.
“I wrote away for this stuff before Christmas,” he said proudly, head held high. He certainly knew how to take care of those things that mattered to him.
The camp was incredibly expensive, the cost greater than a semester’s tuition at the undergraduate Wharton program Daniel was hoping to be accepted into. But Joan didn’t care. A dozen PhDs were indeed listed as counselors in the brochures, their full bios and CVs, the schools they had attended, the breakthroughs they had made in their fields, the professorships they held at major universities—MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton—during the school year. In capitalized and bold letters, the brochure stated ONLY THIRTY STUDENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED. An application was required, including an essay written by the aspiring computer whiz. And that’s what the application said: An essay of no less than 1,000 words written by the computer whiz.
Joan read through the brochure, as Martin was doing, and all she could think about was that this child of theirs who now, more than ever, required a keen, watchful eye, who still had the tendency to put foreign objects into his mouth, to suck on a nickel when he was at his computer, who said, “The nickel keeps my attention from wandering,” whose attention never did seem to wander as long as he was engaged in what he loved, regardless of the nickel, whose clothes were often grimy, reused for days after his quick five-minute morning shower until Joan said, “No more. New rule. Fresh underwear, fresh jeans, fresh shirt every single day,” and Eric humphed and said, “Mom, I always put on fresh underpants,” though it was clear he didn’t care much if he was perceived as a slob, this son who had made friends with a number of equally odd boys, this son would be those PhDs’ responsibility for ten glorious weeks.