The Plot, Jean Korelitz [read e books online free txt] 📗

couple of months later I drove back to Vermont and I waited till he left for work, and you can color me surprised because that asshole actually managed to write almost two hundred pages. Of my story. And don’t think he was doing it for himself, either. This wasn’t some inner exploration through creative writing, trying to find his voice or understand the pain at the center of his family of origin. I found publication contests, lists of agents, the dude even had a subscription to Publishers Weekly. He knew what he was doing. He had a plan to make some serious money. Off me. People today bitch if you use a culturally appropriated word or hairstyle? That bastard just helped himself to my entire life story. Now you know that isn’t right, Jake, don’t you? Isn’t that what they say in the writing programs? Nobody else can tell your story but you?”

The not so distant cousin of Nobody else gets to live your life, he thought.

“Anyway, I went through the house and I got together everything I didn’t want left behind. All the manuscript pages for his masterpiece, and the notes. Any pictures of me or Rose that were still lurking around. Oh, and I got my mom’s cookbook with all her recipes, including the one for that soup you like. It’s been out there in our kitchen for months, on the shelf over the sink, not that you ever noticed. Where’s that novelist’s eye for detail, Jake? You’re supposed to have one, you know.”

He knew.

“And I found his drugs, of course. He had a lot of drugs. So I waited for him to get home from the tavern, and when he did I said I thought it was time for us to have a civilized talk about selling the house. He needed a shitload of benzos, by the way, before I could get near him with that syringe, but that’s what happens when you abuse opiates for as long as he did. I had no sympathy for him. I still don’t. And the way he went, it was even more pleasant than this. And this is pleasant, I think. It’s supposed to be.

It wasn’t, but it wasn’t painful, either. He felt as if he was reaching out to claw through something that had the consistency of cotton candy, but he still couldn’t get to the other side of it. He might not be in pain, exactly, but there was an idea that kept hammering at him, like when you know you’re supposed to be somewhere else but you have no idea where that place is or why you were going there, and also he kept thinking the same ricocheting thought, which was: Wait, aren’t you Anna? Only that made no sense, because obviously she was, and what he didn’t understand was why he’d never questioned it before, and also why he was questioning it now.

“After that I decided to leave Athens. I’m so not cut out for the south. I stayed down there long enough to pack up and find an attorney to handle the sale of the Vermont house. What did you think of Pickens, by the way? Bit of a douchebag, isn’t he? He got handsy with me once and I had to threaten to contact the bar association. As you might know, he was already on thin ice with them because of assorted other transgressions, so he became very proper and attentive after that. I did call him last week to warn him a guy named Bonner might turn up, and remind him about the sacred bonds of attorney-client privilege, but I don’t think he’d have talked to you, even if I hadn’t. He definitely doesn’t want to get on my bad side.”

No, thought Jake. Jake, also, didn’t want to get on her bad side. He knew that now.

“Anyway, I wanted to go west to finish my degree, but I wasn’t sure where. I was thinking about San Francisco, but at the end of the day I picked Washington. Oh, and I changed my name, obviously. Anna sounds a bit like Dianna, and Williams is the third most common surname in America, did you know that? I guess I thought Smith and Johnson felt too obvious. Also I stopped coloring my hair. Seattle is full of gray-haired women, lots of them even younger than I was, so I felt super comfortable. I never lived on Whidbey, though I had a couple of fun weekends there with Randy. We did have a bit of a thing while I was interning at the station, which I’m pretty sure worked in my favor when the producer job opened up. Hey,” she said. “Why don’t you stop staring at those pills? You can’t do anything about it, you know.”

She tugged on his shoulder until he was on his back again, his eyes sometimes open, sometimes not. It was also getting harder to hear her.

“So everything’s cool. I’ve got a house and a job and an avocado plant, and then, one afternoon, in one of Seattle’s fine coffee establishments, I hear these women talking about a book they’re reading, this crazy story about a mom who kills her daughter and takes her place. And I can’t fucking believe it! I’m sitting there thinking, No goddamn way! I wasn’t thinking it was connected to me, because there wasn’t anyone left who could possibly have known, and besides, I took everything out of that house, and I destroyed it all after I read it. I left flash drives and pages in every trash bin on the Eisenhower interstate system. I threw his computer down a porta potty in Missouri! Like, it had to be some insane coincidence or else my fucking brother wrote his book in hell and emailed it to the publishing firm of Lucifer and Beelzebub, lies and stolen stories our specialty!” She actually smiled. “I went over to Elliott Bay and I asked for a book I’d heard about,