A/N- I feel extremely cruel but I'm pretty much free the rest of the summer so I'm gonna try and update every couple days. :)
P.S. Don't fight me for changing a fictional character in a fictional story's name, please. I wanna make this my own as much as I can(And I'm only saying this because it's happened before). And I kinda but not really changed the name of the author too.. If you care, let me know I guess. :-)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize.
Texts
I go to bed a little early, earlier than the night before. I crawl under the comforter of my queen-sized, pillow topped bed, my favourite place to be. And I start reading An Imperial Affliction for the billionth time.
AIA is about a girl named Tessa —also the narrator— and her one-eyed mom, who's a professional gardener and overobsessed with tulips. They have a lower-middle-class life in a small California town until Anna gets this rare blood cancer.
But it's not a cancer book, because cancer books freaking suck. Like, in virtually all cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this whole commitment to charity reminds them of the essential goodness of humanity and makes them feel loved and encouraged because they'll have a cancer curing legacy. But in AIA, Tessa says that being a cancer person who starts a cancer charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts The Tessa Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.
Also, Tessa is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: throughout the book, she refers to herself as "the side effect", which is totally true. Cancer kids are, essentially, side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life possible. So, as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mum falls in love with a Dutch tulip trader that Tessa calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has a lot of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Tessa thinks he might be a conman and maybe not even Dutch. And just as the maybe-Dutch man and her mom are about to get married, and Tessa is gonna start this weird new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of
I know it's a very literary decision and everything and probably part of why I love the book so much, but there is something to recommend a story that actually ends. And if it can't, then it should at least continue into perpetuity like with Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem and friends.
I understand the story ends because Tessa dies or gets too sick to write and this ending-in-mid-sentence thing is supposed to reflect how life actually ends and stuff, but there are characters other than Tessa in the story, and it seems unfair that I'll never find out what happens to them. I've written, care of his publisher, at least a dozen letters to Peter Clark, each asking for answers on what happens at the end of the story: whether the Dutch Tulip Man is a conman, if Tessa's mom marries him, what happens to Tessa's hamster that her mom hates, whether Tessa's friends graduate— that kind of stuff. But he hasn't responded.
An Imperial Affliction is the only book Peter Clark has written, and all anyone knows about him is that after the book came out, he moved from the States to the Netherlands and became kind of reclusive. I imagine that he's working on a sequel set in the Netherlands, maybe Tessa's mom and the Dutch Tulip Man end up moving there and trying to start a new life. But it's been ten years since An Imperial Affliction came out, and Clark hasn't published so much as a blog post. I can't wait forever.
As I reread, I keep getting distracted imagining Ellington Ratliff reading the same words. I wonder if he likes it.. Or if he's just dismissed it as pretentious.
I remember my promise to call after reading The Price of Dawn, so I find his number of the cover page and text him.
Price of Dawn review: too many bodies. Not enough adjectives. How's AIA?
He replies quickly.
As I recall, you promised to CALL after you finished, not text.
And so, I call.
"Ross Shor," he says upon answering.
"So have you read it?"
"Well, I'm not quite finished," he says. "It's 651 pages long and I've had twenty-four hours."
"How far are you?" I say.
"453."
"And?" I probably come off as too excited. But, I am, so..
"I will withhold judgment until I'm done. However, I will say I'm a little embarrassed to have given you The Price of Dawn." he says.
"Don't be. I'm already on Requiem for Mayhem." I say.
"A wonderful addition to the series. So, okay, is this tulip guy a crook? I'm getting a bad vibe from him."
"No spoilers," I grin.
"If he's anything other than a total gentleman, I'm gonna gouge his eyes out."
"So you're into it."
"Withholding judgement! When can I see you?"
"Certainly not until you finish An Imperial Affliction." I enjoy being coy.
"Then I better hang up and start reading," he says.
"You better," I say, and the line clicks dead without another word.
Flirting is new. But I like it.
This morning I have Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gives a lecture where she manages to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever quoting a word of Sylvia Plath.
When I get out of class, Mom is idling at the curb in front of the building.
"Did you just wait here the whole time?" I ask as she hurries around to help me haul my cart and tank into the car.
"No, I picked up the dry cleaning and went to the post office."
"And then?"
"I have a book to read," she replies.
"And I'm the one who needs to get a life," I smile, and she tries to smile back, but there's something flimsy in it.
After a second, I say, "Wanna go to a movie?"
"Sure. Anything you wanna see?"
"Let's just do the thing where we go and see whatever starts next." She closes the door and walks around to the driver's side. We drive over to the Castleton theatre and watch a 3-D movie about talking hamsters. It's kinda funny, actually.
When I get out of the movie, I have four texts from Ellington.
Tell me my copy is missing the last twenty pages or something.
Ross Shor, tell me I have not reached the end of this book.
OH MY GOD DO THEY GET MARRIED OR NOT WHAT IS THIS
I guess Tessa died and so it just ends? CRUELTY. Call me when you can. Hope all's okay.
So when I get home I go to the backyard and sit down on the rusting latticed patio chair and call him. It's cloudy, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in. Our small backyard is dominated by my childhood swingset, which is looking pretty waterlogged and pathetic.
Ellington picks up on the third ring. "Ross Shor," he says.
"So welcome to the sweet, sweet torture of reading An Imperial—" I stop when I hear violent sobbing on Ellington's end. "Are you okay?"
"I'm grand," Ellington says. "I am, however, with Riker, who seems to be decompensating." More wailing. Like the death cries of an injured animal. Ell turns his attention to Riker. "Dude. Dude. Does Support Group Ross make this better or worse? Riker. Focus. On. Me." After a minute, Ell says to me, "Can you meet us at my house in twenty minutes?"
"Sure," I say, and hang up.
A/N- because I'm cruel, I'm stopping now. But I will try to have the next one up very soon. :)
