Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes Page B

stunned, I crept in beside Frank, and with the car’s dusty heating vents blowing dry heat in my face I said, “I can’t believe it! He hates me!” As Frank’s olive green Plymouth swiveled up an icy hill, I read my Canadian classmate’s diatribe aloud. The more vicious the rant became, the harder Frank laughed, enjoying my outrage. “Listen to this! ‘Your misanthropy is matched only by your arrogance. And your snide narrator isn’t a persona, it’s you!’”
     
    When Frank stopped smacking the steering wheel with one hand and composed himself, he said, “What did you expect?” (I had told Frank about my outburst in class.) “He got even with you. So what?”
     
    “Is anything he says true?”
     
    “No. You’re nothing like your narrator.”
     
    “Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”
     
    “It’s a mask. You have to wear it to write the book. When you’re done, it’ll fall off. Just keep working.”
     
    “Too much seems to be happening. Half the time I’m confused.”
     
    “That’s not necessarily bad. It means you’re chasing something.”
     
    “Can you read the new pages?”
     
    “Sure. Leave them at the office. But hey, it’s admission time. Who knows when I’ll get to them? So don’t hold your breath.”
     
    Two nights later, a writer with a huge following came to read at Van Allen Hall, which had several hundred raked seats, a stage, a podium, and a large, sterile, high-ceilinged lobby, much like the one in which I first saw Frank. Charlie had gone into hibernation and rarely came out for social events, so Jody and I went to the reading without him. We were standing amid the crowd when Frank appeared, cloaked in a gray raincoat. He grabbed my forearm. “Come over here,” he said.
     
    Frank found an empty, padded bench and pulled me down next to him. “The new pages are terrific,” he said with an urgency in his voice, an unmistakable but grave excitement.
     
    “You’re sure?” I panicked and felt light-headed.
     
    “Yes, I’m sure.”
     
    “Because I haven’t felt well for months.”
     
    “It doesn’t show.”
     
    “I thought you wouldn’t be able to read the pages for a while.”
     
    “I read the first sentence and couldn’t stop. The voice is incredibly strong. And the rhythms, my God. I read some of it to Maggie.” Then he added, “Listen, you have to finish this book.”
     
    “Okay.”
     
    “I’m not kidding, it’s a big book. You’ve taken things to a whole new level. You understand that, don’t you?”
     
    “I don’t know. Maybe. I write sentences and trust my instincts.”
     
    “Well, it’s working. So keep doing it.”
     
    Then Frank joined the famous writer, whose name I can’t remember and whose image I can no longer see. Trailing the others, Jody and I walked into the auditorium and found seats. “Good news?” she whispered.
     
    “Sort of. He thinks it’s great.” The lights around the podium dimmed, and everyone fell silent. Midway through the introduction I said, “But he told me I had to finish it. What if I can’t?”
     
    “You can.”
     
    “Yeah, but what if?”
     
    “Then he’ll understand. He’s your teacher, not your father.”
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    M arch arrived. In Florida, spring training was under way. My anxiety lifted as the days lengthened, and gradually mysterious pain in my stomach subsided. Sentences found their shape more easily. I didn’t know where the novel would end, but I did know where it was headed. I’d locked into its downward arc, the slope beyond the story’s midpoint. Plotlines began to converge. The book regained its momentum. And, in the midst of this, my sister attempted to kill herself.
     
    We rarely spoke on the telephone, yet the Tuesday night before I left for Florida I had an impulse to call her. But it was after 10 : 00 PM in New York. Her boys would be asleep, and I didn’t want to wake them. So I shook off the odd beckoning, although I told Jody that I felt like