“Thanks,” I say, two-fisting Diet Coke with Lime now. “I love your daughter, Mrs. Kane, and it would mean a lot to have your blessing.”
“Yes,” she says as she sits down in her recliner, but I don’t know whether she is acknowledging the fact that I would really like to have her blessing or if she is actually giving it to me.
“I’ll treat her right,” I say. “I’m going to love her until the day I die.”
“Is your Diet Coke good?”
I ignore her question. “Thank you for bringing Portia into the world. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. You did something amazing, making her.”
“Portia is a good girl,” she says, still staring at the TV. “A very good girl. Portia’s father was a kind and good man.”
The old woman isn’t going to say anything appropriate—or even relevant—about my wanting to marry Portia. I begin to see how hard my future wife’s childhood must have been. It takes patience to maintain dialogue with a woman who offers you Diet Coke with Lime in response to anything and everything you say. In theory, it hadn’t seemed all that unbearable, but in practice, her mother’s inability to engage is crushing.
I don’t say anything else for a while, but just stand there watching a young woman in the TV trying to convince us to buy tennis sneakers in five different colors. “This will be the spring of the rainbow wardrobe,” she says.
“I’m going to be good to your daughter,” I say to Mrs. Kane.
As I look around the ruined house, completely full of one woman’s memories, which are so trivial and unimportant to the rest of the world but everything to her, I think that Portia and I owe it to ourselves to be something more than what we came from.
In my truck, I pull my Official Member of the Human Race card out of my wallet and read it:
. . . the right to strive, to reach, to dream,
and to become the person you know
(deep down) you are meant to be. . . .
When I arrive home, Portia says, “Just talked to Mom, and she says you stopped by and told her a secret. Is that true?”
“I stopped by,” I say, “but I’m not sure about the secret part. She gave me two Diet Cokes with Lime and we watched the Buy from Home Network like always.”
Portia chuckles at me and then drains a pot of ziti through a colander in the sink. “I finished my novel today.”
“Really?”
She looks back over her shoulder. “Yeah. It’s done. But I need to revise, still, and that can take some time.”
“Congratulations!” I say.
“Do you want to read it?”
“Hell yes!”
“When?”
“Right now, if you’ll let me.”
“Seriously? Because I’m feeling really paranoid about it, like it’s only going to make sense in my head and no one else’s, and it would be really helpful to know that at least one other person gets what the hell I’m writing about—and if you don’t get it, maybe you could help me work through the kinks?”
“I seriously can’t wait!”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She goes into her office and returns with a stack of paper three inches thick.
“Impressive girth. Can you finally tell me the title?”
She smiles and says, “Love May Fail. Do you like it?”
“It’s a reference to that quote at the beginning of that Vonnegut book Mr. Vernon used to talk about in his class, right? I think he had it hanging on the wall.”
“I am so glad you got that,” she says and kisses me on the mouth. “Can you read it right now, start to finish?”
“The whole book?”
“Yes.”
It’s a Saturday, so I don’t have to get up and teach in the morning. I’m able to read through the night, which is exactly what I end up doing, reclined on the couch with my feet propped up on the armrest, stacking each page on the coffee table after I read it.
I haven’t read too many novels since high school, so maybe I’m not the best judge, but I really do love Portia’s book, mostly because I see her on every single page.
As I read, she keeps sticking her head in the room and saying, “What do you think so far?” And when I say, “It’s good,” she says things like, “Good or great?” So I say, “Fantastic!” and she says, “Fantastic how?” And I say, fake annoyed, “Would you let me read the damn thing first before we talk? How am I supposed to enjoy it when you keep interrupting?” And she’ll disappear until she hears me laugh at something and then she comes running in the room, saying, “What made you laugh? Which line?”
It’s fiction, but I recognize so much of our lives in the story. There’s a teacher who reminds me of Mr. Vernon and there is a little girl who could be Tommy’s twin sister and there is an asshole man who seems an awful lot like Portia’s husband and then there is the main character. Her name is Krissy Porter, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those are Portia’s initials reversed. Krissy is funny and witty and damaged and broken, but she’s also kindhearted, and all she really wants is to believe in people—that there is a goodness inside everyone. Her favorite high school teacher’s wife dies, which sends him into a debilitating depression that leads to a failed suicide attempt that lands him in the psychiatric ward where Krissy just so happens to work as a therapist, specializing in matching patients up with emotional support dogs. There are a lot of specific details in the book that make me wonder how Portia knows all this stuff about psychology or whether she just made it up. And I must admit that I get a little concerned when Krissy ends up falling for her former teacher’s handsome son, and they have this steamy love affair in a beach house in Maryland, especially since the sex scenes are remarkably similar to what goes on in the privacy of our bedroom. And I’m surprised to find myself wiping away tears as I read the ending.