been told that I should become a writer, that I had the divine spark, by a high school English teacher who had never been anywhere, either, who had never seen anything important, either, who had no sex life, either. And what a perfect name she had for a role like that: Naomi Shoup.
She took pity on me, and on herself, too, I’m sure. What awful lives we had! She was old and alone, and considered to be ridiculous for finding joy on a printed page. I was a social leper. I would have had no time for friends anyway. I went food shopping right after school, and started supper as soon as I got home. I did the laundry in the broken-down Maytag wringer-washer in the furnace room. I served supper to Mother and Father, and sometimes guests, and cleaned up afterwards. There would be dirty dishes from breakfast and lunch as well.
I did my homework until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and then I collapsed into bed. I often slept in my clothing. And then I got up at six in the morning and did the ironing and vacuuming. And then I served breakfast to Mother and Father, and put a hot lunch for them in the oven. And then I made all the beds and I went to school.
“And what are your parents up to while you’re doing all that housework?” Miss Shoup asked me. She had summoned me from a study hall, where I had been fast asleep, to a conference in her tiny office. There was a photograph of Edna St. Vincent Millay on her wall. She had to tell me who she was.
I was too embarrassed to tell old Miss Shoup the truth about what Mother and Father did with their time. They were zombies. They were in bathrobes and bedroom slippers all day long—unless company was expected. They stared into the distance a lot. Sometimes they would hug each other very lightly and sigh. They were the walking dead.
The next time Hippolyte Paul De Mille offers to raise a corpse for my amusement, I will say to him, “It is nothing I do not see yesterday.”
• • •
So I told Miss Shoup that Father did carpentry around the house, and of course painted and drew a lot, and ran a little antique business. The last time Father had touched any tools, in fact, was when he decapitated the house and smashed up his guns. I had never seen him paint or draw. His antique business consisted of trying to sell off what little was left of all the loot he had brought back from Europe in his glory days.
That was one way we went on eating—and heating. Another source of cash was a small legacy Mother received from a relative in Germany. She inherited it after the lawsuit was settled. Otherwise, the Metzgers would have got that, too. But most of our money came from Felix, who was extraordinarily generous without our ever asking him for anything.
And I told Miss Shoup that Mother gardened and helped me a lot with the housework, and helped Father with his antique business, and wrote letters to friends, and read a lot, and so on.
What Miss Shoup wanted to see me about, though, was an essay on this assigned subject: “The Midland City Person I Most Admire.” My hero was John Fortune, who died in Katmandu when I was only six years old. She turned my ears crimson by saying that it was the finest piece of writing by a student that she had seen in forty years of teaching. She began to weep.
“You really must become a writer,” she said. “And you must get out of this deadly town, too—as soon as you can.
“You must find what I should have had the courage to look for,” she said, “what we should all have the courage to look for.”
“What is that?” I said.
Her answer was this: “Your own Katmandu.”
• • •
She had been watching me recently, she confessed. “You seem to be talking to yourself.”
“Who else is there to talk to?” I said. “It’s not talking anyway.”
“Oh?” she said. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said. I had never told anybody what it was, nor did I tell her. “It’s just a nervous habit,” I said. She would have liked it if I had told her all my secrets, but I never gave her that satisfaction.
It seemed safest and wisest to be as cold as ice to