The Body Of Jonah Boyd - By David Leavitt Page 0,46

their toys.”

“But why should any of it matter now? Daphne doesn’t even live in Wellspring anymore. She lives in Portland. She has a house of her own.”

“My feelings exactly. Nor should we allow ourselves to forget that she’ not the one who’ just been offered a plum position thanks to a reputation she worked very hard and many years to attain. She tried to get a job herself here, remember, and failed. Still, I’d be foolish to assume she’ll react rationally. These things are so personal. And anyway, she never understood my mother’ spiritual attachment to that house. For her it was just plain greed. She wanted all the space. She wanted the pool.”

“Well, maybe if you approach her in the right way, she’ll come around,” I said—lame, but as a response, it seemed close to the probable truth.

Ben lifted his glass. “Let’ have a toast. To 302 Florizona Avenue.”

“Cin-cin,” I said.

“That’ funny. Cin-cin was how my father always toasted. I wonder what he’d think of all this—how things have turned out. He never had much faith in me.”

“That’ not true.”

“Oh come on, Denny, you know it as well as I do. He pretty much wrote me off as a loser from the get-go. Wouldn’t he be surprised to see where I’ve landed? A higher salary than he ever pulled in.” He was gazing at his wine as he said this, his expression more introspective than gloating. “You know, I don’t usually think of myself as a religious person, or even a particularly spiritual person, but when you look at how things have turned out—well, how can you help but wonder if it wasn’t all meant to be?”

“In what sense?”

“I mean, consider the coincidences. The very year I decide to look for a new job, Wellspring endows a position for a writer-in-residence. Fifty people must have applied, yet they choose me. I ask about the house, figuring there isn’t a chance in hell it’ll be on the market, and the Shoemakers say they’ll sell. So now, by getting the house back, I’ve fulfilled my mother’ fondest wish. By getting the job, I’ve fulfilled my own. When things work out like that, it’ hard not to think that there’ a pattern, or a purpose, or that you’ve got a guardian angel. Although God knows if I do, he fell down on the job. For years.”

“Well, but you’re discounting your own books. They’re what got you the job. Oh, and by the way, I’m afraid I haven’t read the novels, only the memoir, which I liked very much.”

“Don’t even bother with the first one. The first one is pathetic. Since my stuff started selling, my publishers have been trying to convince me to let them bring it out in paperback, but I won’t allow it.”

Our food arrived—a depressing vignette of salmon filets and heartless little vegetables, two carrots, three potato balls, a sprig of parsley: the sort of meal after which you have to go out and get yourself a cheeseburger. I took an unencouraging bite (the salmon was dry); thought suddenly of Jonah Boyd, that last dinner I’d eaten with him and Anne and Ben at the Pie ‘n Burger. Odd that in all the years since, Ben and I had never talked about that Thanksgiving. And now, as if he were reading my mind, he suddenly said, “Remember the Thanksgiving when the Boyds came?”

“Funny, I just was.”

“Very strange, what happened.”

“It still surprises me that the notebooks never turned up. You’d think that eventually someone would have—”

“Well, but Denny, you don’t really believe they were lost, do you? You know what my mother thought.”

“What—that Phil stole them?”

“It would make sense. He did a lot of creepy things—hounding girls in the psych department, stealing things. He hated my father, he hated Glenn. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“But what would the notebooks have to do with any of that?”

“Who knows? Who can penetrate a psychotic mind? Maybe he was jealous because Dad and Glenn were paying so much attention to Jonah Boyd that night. And of course, we’ll never find out, will we, because even if we asked him, Phil wouldn’t tell us. Not where he is.” Ben drank more wine. “And to think that all those years he came to Thanksgiving, and nobody ever guessed . . . You know, since then I’ve read both Boyd’ novels, and I’ve got to tell you, I really don’t see what the big deal was. Does that sound callous? I guess what I mean