Abigail Thomas - What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir

ALSO BY ABIGAIL THOMAS

Getting Over Tom

An Actual Life

Herbs Pajamas

Safekeeping

A Three Dog Life

Thinking About Memoir

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Copyright 2015 by Abigail Thomas

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First Scribner hardcover edition March 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-8505-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-8507-3 (ebook)

The author is grateful to the editors of the following magazines for publishing, usually in different form, pieces of this book:
O, The Oprah Magazin e ; Tin Hous e ; Sonora Revie w ; Open Cit y ; Drunken Boa t ; and The Ocean State Review .

For Chuck Verrill

I

UNBREAKABLE CONNECTIONS

Painting, Not Writing

I have time to kill while waiting for the sun to dry, and Im mulling over the story I spent years writing and failed to turn into anything, trying not to be depressed. Nothing is wasted when you are a writer. The stuff that doesnt work has to be written to make way for the stuff that might; often you need to take the long way round. And if youre writing memoir youre bound to discover things about yourself you didnt realize before, may indeed prefer never to have known, but there you are: progress of some sort. Still, years. Thats a long time to get nowhere. The story was about a thirty-year friendship that had a hole blown through it, but somehow survived.

So instead of not-writing, I am painting. Im not a painter, but I make paintings anyway. I use glass and oil-based house paint, which is toxic, and which you cant buy just anywhere anymore. Its being phased out in favor of latex, which doesnt stick to glass, and acrylic, which I havent tried. Stacked on my garage windowsill are seventeen quarts of the stuff in various primary colors, in case the whole world stops selling it.

I love the oiliness, I love how it spreads on the surface of the glass, how tipped at an angle it rolls and drips, and merges. I love how one color overtakes another on the downward slide. I use about a tablespoon of orange to make a sun, and I have four quarts of this color. I figure it will last me till I die. Anyway, I cant put the sky on until the sun sets, and this orange, this molten fire, takes forever.

Write a Book

T his is some years ago. What can I do for you? I asked Chuck. He was depressed. So was I. He had hepatitis C. He had been diagnosed with stage four cirrhosis. It was not a rosy picture.

What can I do for you? I asked again. I figured if it was good for him, it would be good for us both.

Write another book, he said.

What kind of book? I asked.

Make it fiction, he told me. Youll have to lie sooner or later. Might as well start off on the wrong foot.

I dont know where to begin, I said, wondering if we were talking about the same thing.

Start in the middle, he said.

I always do, I answered. What book am I writing? I asked, to be sure.

The one about me, he said.

The one about the three of us?

Yes. That one.

I dont know, I said carefully. I dont know anyones story except my own and I dont even know that.

It has to end when one of us dies, he said, and that should be me.

I dont know, I said again. I didnt say, Youre not going to die, dont be silly.

Make it up, he told me.

Yes I Was

Y ou were never depressed, Chuck tells me now. I was depressed. You were always trying to talk me out of it.

I was too, I say. I was totally depressed. We are standing on the curb at Forty-First and Broadway. Its quarter to seven at night, March 2010. We have known each other for thirty-one years. He is a literary agent now, I am a writer.

Youre the least depressed person I know, Chuck says, as the light changes.

How can you even say that? I ask, but stop there. This is a ridiculous argument. Getting me into a ridiculous argument is a specialty of Chucks. Like one of those Chinese puzzles where the harder you pull the tighter your fingers are stuck in that straw tube, only Chuck does it with words.

So I give up. He smiles.

Hows your hip? he asks, offering me assistance as we start across the street. I have arthritis.

Oh shut up, its fine , I say, taking his arm.

When It Started

W e met in l979. I was thirty-seven; he was twenty-seven. I had been twice divorced and had four children, Chuck was happily married and had none. I was working at a publishing company as the slush reader, which meant I handled everything that came without an agent. He took over my job because I had been promoted to editorial assistant. Slush was the only position lowlier than editorial assistant, but instead of a cubicle, it came with its own small office. It had a door that closed and a window that opened. The walls were lined with bookcases, the bookcases filled with manuscripts, some read, some waiting to be read. I would read and return, read and return, putting aside for further consideration the few too interesting to reject out of hand. The trouble was that after a week I regarded those partially read manuscripts with the same lack of enthusiasm one might feel for somebody elses half-eaten sandwich, which made me so guilty I began to resent them, so Id box them up and send them back without reading another word.

The big gray desk took up most of the space.

It was my job to train him, but all I wanted to do was make him laugh. He was good-looking and nervous, an interesting combination. Open everything that comes without an agent, I told him. Open everything addressed to the president of the company, or the editor in chief. And then make it go away. If anything is good, you can show it to a real editor. And you know what you never want? You never want to encourage somebody who tells you she has been writing since she was five years old.

I may have been a little intense, because I remember his face twitched, out of anxiety maybe, or the pressure of having to pay close attention in such a small space. We were both smoking our heads off, the window wide open, the door shut.

We took out a manuscript dedicated To my wife and children whom I love very much, and to the memory of all those who have died by choking. Im certain we took a look at the book (who could resist?), but all that remains is the dedication.

When I had nothing pressing to do, I helped Chuck with the stuff that piled up on his desk. Listen to this, wed say, in the weeks that followed, waving a manuscript around. And there would be something hilarious, or terrible, or sad. We particularly loved the letter from a man who had managed the produce section in a big supermarket on Long Island. He wanted to write a novel about his experiences in the retail grocery businesshe had seen so muchbut didnt know how to begin. He was so earnest. He thought we really were the editors in chief. Just tell me what to do, he wrote at the end. Ill do anything you say. We laughed. We werent laughing out of meanness. We werent unkind. We laughed because it was all so hopeless.