BY LAWRENCE KNOWLES
Copyright is held by the author.
SEVEN-YEAR-OLD NOLA Dinerstein was mad at her older brother, Todd, because he wouldn’t let her play with his marbles. Todd said he didn’t want girl cooties on them. Nola figured her mouth must be full of cooties so when Todd wasn’t looking, she stuffed as many of his precious marbles in there as she could. Nola’s mother shrieked when Todd told her what Nola had done. Having gotten all those marbles in her mouth, Nola didn’t know what to do with them or how to get them out without accidentally pushing one down her throat. Her eyes betrayed her panic. Nola’s dad came into the living room with a plastic mixing bowl and his camera, distracting Nola as he coached her through a careful release of the marbles, head down over the bowl, counting and snapping pictures, as if he’d done this lots of times. He said she might have set a record, that some people named Guinness who made beer in Ireland would want to know about it. Todd thought that would be pretty cool.
Several weeks after the marbles incident, Nola’s dad told her the people in Ireland wrote to say that she had indeed set a record and they wanted to put it in their book. Todd said she’d be famous but he didn’t sound happy about it. He was annoyed because Nola would get all the credit even though they were his marbles. They argued about it. Their dad told Todd to stop being a baby.
For show-and-tell that Friday, Nola told her third-grade class about the marbles and the record that was going to be in a book. She brought a small plastic bag of marbles to school (with Todd’s permission) and was about to demonstrate her record-setting form when the teacher almost tackled Nola to stop her. She lectured the class about the dangers of putting “foreign objects” in your mouth. Bobby, in the front, asked if a toothbrush was a “foreign object”; Danny answered that a “foreign object” was something that wasn’t “made in America.” The teacher told Nola to stay in from recess. Once the rest of the class had gone, the teacher repeated, with greater urgency, the dangers of putting things in her mouth, wondering out loud, “what is wrong with your parents?” She also told Nola that she shouldn’t make up stories, like the “nonsense” about a record. Nola insisted she didn’t make it up, that the story was true. Nola knew her father wouldn’t lie to her. He told her to always tell the truth, even when you make stuff up. That always made her laugh. Nola was angry at her teacher for accusing Nola’s dad of making stuff up and lying. The teacher told her she could think about it while the rest of the class was at recess.
That night, Nola was awakened by her parents arguing in the kitchen. It wasn’t unusual for her parents to argue. This sounded different, louder, angrier, meaner. She heard her mother say that the school had called about Nola and the marbles. Her mother said it was all her dad’s fault because he let Nola get away with everything. Her dad accused her mother of babying Todd and turning him into a “pathetic mama’s boy.” Her mother said that the school thought she was a bad mother and that it was all his fault. Nola worried that it was all her fault.
After that, it seemed to Nola that her parents argued all the time, except when they weren’t talking at all. Sometimes her dad shut himself in the basement when he got home from work. If Nola tried to talk to him while he was down there, he stared blankly at the television and didn’t say anything. Their mother told Nola and her brother not to bother him, that he was “in one of his moods.”
For her ninth birthday, Nola’s dad gave her a diary. She was afraid to write anything in it, not even her name, until she knew exactly what she wanted to say. She didn’t want to make a mistake and ruin the book.
After her birthday, Nola thought her parents might be done fighting. That would’ve been the best birthday present. Things were still tense but the yelling stopped. Then, one day, Nola’s mother told her that her dad had to go away. She didn’t say “for a while.” She wouldn’t answer Nola’s questions, only repeating that it was “for the best.” Nola couldn’t find a question her mother would answer, couldn’t find words to say how she felt, all she could do was cry. She wondered if she had done something wrong. She thought maybe her dad needed someplace bigger than the basement, someplace where she couldn’t disturb him.
That summer, after school let out, they moved to a small town just beyond the fringes of the outskirts of the newest suburbs. Nola wondered if her dad would be able to find them. She started to think he might not come back.
It wasn’t until the following summer that Nola worked up the courage to make the first marks in her diary. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to write but she knew she needed to write something, anything.
Nola wrote about adventures she imagined her dad was having. Writing the stories was Nola’s way of being with her dad. She knew the stories were made up but she tried to make them feel true.
When Nola’s new teacher asked everyone to tell the class something they’d done over summer vacation, Nola said she wrote stories. There wasn’t much else for her to report. A boy muttered, “that’s dumb.” The teacher asked if she could see Nola’s stories. After looking at them, the teacher arranged for Nola to meet with the school psychologist.
After Nola’s meeting with the psychologist, her mother sat her down at the kitchen table to talk after school. Her mother spoke slowly, carefully; Nola wondered if her mother was talking to herself. She said the psychologist had called her, that he told her Nola’s stories were “a cry for help.” Her mother began to cry, trembling; she asked Nola, “what did you say to make them think I’m a bad mother?”
Nola felt a small movement inside her and realized she was angry at her mother. The anger felt like it was far away. She wondered if she blamed her mother for making her dad go away. She had plenty of questions but they were questions for her dad. She didn’t think her mother could answer them.
“The stories aren’t about you,” Nola insisted. “You aren’t in them. I’m not in them. They’re stories about dad, make believe. They’re all I have. You can see them if you want, I don’t care.”
Her mother stared at her, a distant, disconnected expression Nola didn’t understand. She didn’t want to see Nola’s stories. She said she’d heard enough from the psychologist.
Nola met with the psychologist several times over the course of the school year. He asked the same questions every time. Nola gave the same answers. The psychologist always told her they were “making real progress.” Nola couldn’t understand why he would say that.
In the spring, a counselor from the junior high school Nola would attend in the fall came to see her. The counselor was different, a normal person. The first thing she asked was if Nola was still writing stories. When Nola said that she was, the counselor clapped her hands together, saying, “Thank heavens. I’m so glad.” She told Nola her stories were wonderful, that she had a gift. Nola felt a weight lift that she hadn’t known was there.
During her three years in junior high, the counselor became the adult friend Nola needed. The counselor didn’t treat Nola like something broken, didn’t try to fix her. After three years, Nola had put aside the unanswered questions from her past, not denying them but focusing on her future, her present. She didn’t feel guilty about that.
Nola hit her stride in high school. She became the editor of her school newspaper. Magazines with glossy pages published some of her stories and she received awards. The creative writing teacher encouraged her to apply to colleges with good writing programs. Several admitted her, some offered scholarships. In her yearbook, the creative writing teacher wrote that he hoped she would remember him when she became a famous author.
Nola’s undergraduate writing teachers pushed her, challenged her. Sometimes they told her that something was missing from her writing but they weren’t clear about what that something might be. She tried different forms, experimental structures, absurdist language. She even tried writing poetry. Her instructors encouraged her but she still heard the now familiar caveat: something is missing, absent. It tormented her.
Nola’s third year fiction workshop was led by a flamboyant young MFA student with spiky blue hair, a nose ring, and a fondness for black lipstick. She went by Drusilla, though another student said that wasn’t her real name. Drusilla was perfectly nice to Nola in the workshop sessions, friendly, encouraging, supportive, but her written comments on Nola’s assignments read like suicide notes written in blood. Nola never objected to criticism, always wanting to improve, but Drusilla’s comments felt like personal attacks: Why are you even writing this? Who cares? Does this matter to anyone, even you? Nola didn’t think questions like that were going to help her improve anything.
When Drusilla asked them to write a short scene, no more than five hundred words, from their childhood, Nola wrote about putting her brother’s marbles in her mouth when she was seven. Drusilla handed back the assignments two weeks later. At the end of Nola’s paper, Drusilla had written: You don’t expect me to believe this, do you? This isn’t real. Nola stared at the belligerent comments as everyone left the room. She felt the anger, the fury, she had felt when her third grade teacher accused her of making it up. She wanted to scream.
Nola looked up to see Drusilla sitting at the table, smiling. No one else was in the room.
“It really happened. I didn’t make it up.” Nola spoke softly but that couldn’t hide the intensity of her feelings.
“I know that,” Drusilla replied.
“Then why the hell did you say this? Why did you say you don’t believe me?” Nola shook, holding the marked paper as if it were an incriminating piece of evidence. This wasn’t about a writing assignment.
“I didn’t say I don’t believe you; I said I don’t believe that.” Drusilla pointed at the paper in Nola’s hand.
“I don’t understand. You know I wrote this. My name’s on it. You believe me but you don’t believe what I write?” Nola began to think Drusilla was just messing with her. She didn’t like it.
“You are sitting in front of me. I see you, I know you’re here. When I read that, I don’t know where you are, but you’re not there. What makes fiction true isn’t the accurate representation of events; that’s for non-fiction. Truth in fiction is your truth, the truth that is desperate to get out of you. You can only convey that truth if you are present on every page, in every sentence, every word.”
One day, in the spring of her fourth year of college, Nola got a phone call from a policeman. He asked if she was the daughter of William Dinerstein. Nola confirmed that she was, adding that she hadn’t seen or heard from her father in over a decade. The policeman apologized for calling with bad news but said they believed that her father was dead. It seemed Nola’s past had decided to pay her a visit, uninvited. The policeman explained that they had found a body they believed was her father’s but they needed someone to make a “positive identification.” Nola wasn’t sure how positive she could be. He asked her to come down to the station.
As she walked to the police station, Nola wondered if she was ready for this. She knew it didn’t matter if she was ready or not. She felt nervous, frightened, but she also felt present, in herself, and that seemed more important than nerves or fear. At least she hoped it was.
The policeman apologized every three sentences. Nola asked how they had connected the body to her since they had no identification. He explained with barely suppressed pride how he had inquired at a small encampment of homeless persons along the river in which they’d found the body; the people there said a man they knew as Billy had gone missing the day before. He’d been with them for a couple of weeks. They gave the policeman his few possessions, including some newspaper clippings, photographs, and other papers that mentioned Nola Dinerstein, an aspiring writer. The university confirmed that there was a student in the writing program named Nola Dinerstein and that her father’s name was William. They told the policeman how to contact Nola.
Nola identified the body. Its water ravaged, swollen features told her about death, nothing about how this inert mass had lived. She wondered if her mother would say he was “in one of his moods.” Nola thought she was going to be sick but nothing happened. The policeman seemed to think she would want a private moment and stepped back to give her space. The corpse did not call to her nine-year-old self. It had no answers, no explanations, for the questions that gone begging for almost thirteen years. In the greenish light of the police morgue, the lifeless body told Nola she would have to find her own answers. But she already knew that.
The policeman gave her his card and the business card for a local mortuary that he said would “keep things simple” (she knew he meant inexpensive). Nola thanked him. Before she left, the officer took a brown paper grocery bag out of a closet and gave it to her, apologizing once again.
Nola called her mother who said she would contact Todd, stationed overseas (he was a communications specialist in the Marines). Her mother told her she would not travel to attend any ceremony – unless Nola insisted. Nola did not insist.
Nola arranged for the mortuary to take her father’s body from the police morgue. She asked that the body be cremated. There was no ceremony, only Nola and the man who worked the controls. And her father’s body in a small wooden box on a conveyor.
The next day, Nola picked up her father’s ashes. She felt like she’d been holding her breath for three days. She drove to a narrow strip of grass along the bank of the small river that flowed through town, adjacent to a little used municipal parking lot. There were two tents pitched either side of a fire pit. It hardly deserved the word encampment. A feral, scruffy looking young man, around Nola’s age, sat on a camp stool facing the cold fire, drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag. Nola approached. The young man stared at her with unsheathed hostility.
“What do you want?” he yelled as if he were shouting to be heard over traffic noise. “We’re not bothering anybody. We’ve got a right to be here. This is public property.”
“I just came to talk.” Nola tried not to sound confrontational.
“Are you religious? Are you from some church? Why can’t you just leave us alone!”
The flap to the tent across from him opened and someone, or something, crawled out on all fours. Nola thought it was female but whether it was human or ursine she couldn’t have said. When she was out of the tent the woman raised herself, stiffly, to a standing position. It looked like she had just woken up and she blinked to help her eyes adjust to the sunlight reflecting off the river. Once she could see clearly, she studied Nola.
“Billy’s girl?” the woman asked.
Nola nodded. The woman covered the distance between them in two sudden strides and wrapped Nola in an embrace that knocked what little wind she had out of her. Nola collapsed into the shoulder-shaking sob she had needed for two days, relieved that it was a sob in the present moment not an echo from the past. Only when the shaking stopped did the woman release her. Nola saw that the woman was crying, too. She brought Nola to the campfire circle and ordered the young man to get two more stools.
The woman introduced herself as Grace. She said Billy had told her about Nola, showing her the clippings and pictures he carried with him. He never said it but Grace understood that he was there to find Nola.
Grace told her that earlier that week, Billy set out dressed in the “new” clothes he’d gotten at the thrift shop, not saying where he was going or why. He didn’t come back. The next morning, Grace walked up the embankment toward the bridge just behind her and she found Billy’s hat in a thicket along the bank. She knew something must have happened. She told the policeman who came by to check on them that Billy had gone missing. He told her they had recovered a body.
Nola said she wanted to scatter her father’s ashes on the river. She asked if they would like to join her. The young man shook his head emphatically, “that sort of thing gives me the creeps.” Grace suggested she and Nola walk up the bank a little ways.
“This is where I found Billy’s hat. He must have gone into the water near here.”
Nola noticed that Grace chose a noncommittal verb concerning the manner in which Nola’s father entered the water. Nola wanted to tell her she didn’t need to dance around anything for Nola’s sake, but she realized Grace may have been protecting herself.
Nola took off her shoes and socks, rolled up her pant legs and waded into the cold stream. Grace followed. Nola slowly, gently emptied the container into the moving water, mindful of what she held in her hands and of what it had once been. She pretended not to notice the chunks that splashed. Her dad would have said something gross but funny.
“Bye, Billy,” Grace said.
“Bye, Dad,” Nola whispered.
That afternoon, alone, Nola opened the paper bag with her father’s things. At the top she found a flat cloth cap, tan, that snapped in front. She’d seen it once before. She’d been walking across campus when she heard a commotion from in front of the building she’d just left, her building. She turned around to look. Two campus policemen were helping a man get up from a bench. She only glanced at the scene, not wanting to stare. She didn’t get a good look at the man’s face, but he was wearing the hat Nola held in her hands, Billy’s hat. That was two days before she got the call.
She must have walked right by him. She didn’t recall noticing him or the hat. Had he seen her? With her short hair, plain clothes, no makeup, an androgynous look, she was practically anonymous, indistinguishable, unrecognizable. Had she looked at him without seeing him, pre-occupied, lost in her thoughts? She was capable of that.
At the bottom of the bag, she found a packet of papers held together with rubber bands. There were clippings from the weekly newspaper back home, one about her brother joining the Marines, the rest about her, including an article about her high school graduation with her picture; she had been class valedictorian. The name of the college she planned to (and did) attend was circled. How did he get all of this? Nola’s mother would never have sent anything, even if she’d known where he was. Maybe her dad’s mother, Nola’s grandmother, took out a subscription to the paper and kept these for him. Her grandmother had died only a year earlier. Maybe he hadn’t seen all of this until after she died.
The last item was a piece of heavier paper, light cardstock. It opened into a sheet about seventeen by thirteen inches. At the top was a navy blue circle with white letters reading Guinness World Records over a gold star. A navy border enclosed a box of text headed CERTIFICATE. The text proclaimed that Nola Dinerstein held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles, and so, according to the final words on the certificate, she was “Officially Amazing!”
She had never seen it before. Here nine-year-old self didn’t need proof, but Nola was relieved to have confirmation that he didn’t make it up.
When she was twenty-five, Nola Dinerstein published her first book, Stories My Father Never Told Me, her MFA thesis collection. The dedication read:
In memory of my dad, Bill Dinerstein, with gratitude for showing me that even when you make stuff up — especially when you make stuff up — it’s important to always tell the truth.
Below that she added:
And with thanks to Drusilla for helping me learn what that means.
The writing program hosted a launch party for her book. She wore an elegant, understated beige suit that she couldn’t really afford. When she was introduced for her reading, she took a deep breath, walked to the lectern, and placed Billy’s hat on her head.
***
An honours graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Lawrence Knowles published non-fiction articles on the arts, education, coffee culture, and the environment, among other topics, in such publications as Education Week, Planet, Crafts (UK), Coffee Journal, and The Times Education Supplement (UK), while pursuing his day job as a lawyer. He appeared as an audiobooks reviewer on BBC Radio 4, completed a memoir about his apprenticeship at the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris (unpublished), is working on his second novel, and also working on finding an agent for his first (not as much fun as writing it). He lives in Middlebury, Vermont.
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