The House on Witherspoon Street
My creative writing professor carried two bags to class. One was an old leather satchel that was well worn and etched with character. It had a large, cumbersome buckle that transformed the simple act of opening a bag into a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a car wash. We’d watch expectantly as he labored to release the metal prong from its hole, then slowly pull the perforated strap from under the bar. Then finally, triumphantly, he’d extract a copy of whichever literary giant we were going to study that day, maybe Tobias Wolff or Shirley Jackson. Simply put, this was the bag we all aspired to have our work pulled out of one day. The stories we wrote, however, were kept in a separate bag. This one was brown, made of paper, and he received it free from the supermarket with his purchase of tuna salad.
As part of the curriculum, the students would often exchange their homework assignments for critique. Some of the kids were wary about putting their short stories in the hands of others. It’s not that they couldn’t take criticism. They were worried that someone might steal their idea and make it their own. I didn’t have that same fear, and it’s not because I was brave. It’s because I was honest with myself.
“I was hoping to talk to you a little more about my piece,” I said to my professor one day after class. I wanted to make sure that my assignment showed improvement over my earlier work. He had scribbled notes in the margin, but they were deliberately vague. “Wow!” with an exclamation point could either mean “Wow, this is good” or “Wow, I can’t believe you thought this was good.” Now, cornered by me and forced to elaborate, he lit a cigarette and crammed it between his lips.
“It’s good,” he said. His voice went up an octave on “good.” It’s good! Voices don’t pitch like that when they’re telling the truth.
I knew the other professors didn’t like my writing, which is why I wasn’t allowed to major in the creative writing program. My problem was this: Good writing requires two things. You need to have something to say, and you need to know how to say it. I had neither—just a deep desire to be heard. But that’s why I wanted to study creative writing—so that someone could teach me how to express the feelings inside me and say them without saying them.
The first time I was rejected from the program, I told myself not to worry. I’d improve and get accepted next year. That didn’t happen, though, and strike two was really hard to take. I dreamed of being a TV writer, and it felt like the school wasn’t just ruling out my future, it was advising me to not even dream. That’s a cold splash of water for a 19-year-old. It was my roommate’s idea to try my hand at something a step easier. Copywriting. He screamed this into my ear while I was giving him a ride to our film-studies class on the back of my bike. This is how we often got around campus, me and Ryan. He sat on the seat with his hands on my shoulders while I stood on the pedals.
“There’s a radio station on Witherspoon Street. Maybe you can get an internship there!” he shouted.
“What?”
“There’s a radio station on Witherspoon!”
“What?”
I couldn’t hear Ryan over the squeaking of the wheels, which screamed with every rotation like they were being murdered. My bike was an old ten-speed with wheels that were so bent out of shape you had to pedal just to roll downhill. It was an anti-gravity bike. Despite being a piece of crap, it was my piece of crap, so I always secured it to the bike racks with an expensive U-shaped lock. It must’ve cost $70, which was way more than the bike was worth. I used to say that I had the bike so that people wouldn’t steal my lock. Once, when I was in a hurry to retrieve a book from the library, I left my bicycle outside without locking it. When I returned, my bike was gone. For a moment, I felt angry and violated. But then I found it, 50 yards away, lying in the middle of the courtyard. The thief must’ve tried to ride away, then ditched it, realizing that some things just weren’t worth stealing. That’s how I felt about exchanging my creative writing pieces with the other students. Who’d want to take them?
I liked Ryan’s idea of working in radio. Having my words broadcast over the airwaves, as opposed to written on the page, seemed glamorous. Not quite Hollywood, but almost Hollywood. I typed a query letter to the station manager, deliberating over every word to prove that I was worthy of such an honor. A week later, my heart jumped when he called to grant me an audience.
According to the map, the trek from my dorm room to the radio station would take about 15 minutes. I didn’t know what the station looked like, but in my mind, it had to be spectacular. This is the power of radio. Lacking the visuals of television, it allows us to imagine. For a building to be worthy of housing all these hit songs by famous musicians, it would have to be postmodern with large glass windows and exposed steel girders. There would be a receptionist sitting in a lobby that would be as white as the gates to Heaven. Behind her would be some kind of water feature. Not the kind that sounds like a toilet flushing, but the peaceful kind that sounds like a toilet leaking water from the tank above. I was looking for a building like this, which is why I walked right past the station, completely missing it. I only realized it three blocks later, and I quickly doubled back.
“This can’t be right,” I said to myself when I finally found the address on the door. My heart sunk into my shoes. This was just a small, postwar tract house with the station call letters posted on the door. How could something as important as a radio station have a rusting basketball hoop over the garage?
The front door was cracked open, and I called out, “Hi, I’m here to see the station manager.” I said it tentatively, so as not to tear the fabric of the universe. A voice from down the hall replied, “Be right with you.” That, fortunately, turned out to be the receptionist, but it could’ve just as easily been an elderly woman expecting her Meals on Wheels delivery.
I entered the station, which looked exactly like an ordinary home, other than the thin, industrial-grade carpeting that covered the entryway. There were still pegs by the front door where the previous family hung their coats. Upstairs, in what must’ve been a bedroom at some point, was the studio. It wasn’t even in the primary bedroom, but rather in a kid’s bedroom. The youngest one’s, probably. The one who got stuck with the shitty stuff. An on air sign hung over the door, but at one point, it could’ve just as easily been a sign that said, no girls allowed, with a backward letter R. Plastered nearby were industry awards. They weren’t Grammys, although they were designed to look like them. They were just self-congratulatory plaques from various trade organizations. They seemed rescued, suggesting that if they weren’t hanging on the wall they’d be at the recycling center, sliding down a conveyor belt on their way to becoming something more prestigious … like an aluminum can. Radio had always struck me as magical, and now that I was behind the scenes, I saw how the trick was done, and it made me feel stupid for having been fooled.
The receptionist pointed me in the direction of another bedroom down the hall, and when I approached it, an overweight, balding man sitting behind a wooden desk waved me in. His back was to a dormer, where the remnants of a Tot Finder sticker were glued to the window. This turned out to be the man with the highest position there, the station manager, but he couldn’t have looked less dignified if he were sitting on a toilet. He wore thick suspenders, making it seem as if he had a parachute strapped to his back. Any moment he might realize the futility of this place, dive out the window, and drift to safety. I sat down in the chair opposite him.
“So you want to be in radio?” he said.
I nodded, but in reality I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to listen to radio anymore. My eyes landed on the window bench where a laundry hamper must’ve once rested, and I shifted uncomfortably.
“D.J.?” he asked.
“Actually, no. I really want to get into writing.”
His pulse quickened. “You want to get what in writing?” The guy was worried that I might be litigious, and given the creepiness of a teenager meeting a grown man in a bedroom, he had reason to be scared.
“No,” I clarified. “I want to get into writing as a career. Copywriting.”
“Oh,” he sighed in relief. Then he rose from his desk to give me a tour.
“Come meet the staff. Helen Stanhope isn’t in today, but I think everyone else is. I’m sure you know Big Todd.” He pointed to a life-size cardboard standee in the kitchen of their star D.J., Big Todd. He was sipping a large mug of coffee and wore a toilet seat around his neck. The tagline read, “Number 2 in the Mornings.”
“We’re a pretty wild bunch,” he laughed. This place was as wild as a can of Glade Cashmere Woods air freshener. At this point, I was mentally preparing to stay for the tour, then never return. But the station manager had other designs. He escorted me to the main bullpen, which was formerly the living room. There he introduced me to Victor and Laney, who worked in copywriting. Because they had opposing desks next to the fireplace, they looked like an old married couple. This despite the fact that Laney was 15 years younger than Victor and a lesbian. Laney kept a low profile, but you couldn’t miss the plastic wrist brace she always wore. She said it was for the carpal tunnel she acquired at the typewriter, but based on the way she waved it in the air, maybe it was to perch her trained falcon.
“Good boy, Xerxes,” she’d say while retrieving a bounty from his beak. Maybe someone’s eyeballs that he pecked out at her command. Laney had that kind of vibe. Quiet but ruthless.
Victor, on the other hand, was a man in his mid-50s with a mop of red hair and sad eyes that always looked like he’d been sobbing. He reminded me of a clown. Not a harlequin or a court jester, but the trampy kind of clown you see at the circus. The kind that wears rags and carries a bindle and walks around looking heartbroken because the acrobats overhead are doing something of merit and he’s just taking up oxygen. Victor wasn’t just mediocre, he was aggressively mediocre. He seemed intent on proving to the world that he was the champion at being sub-par at almost everything he almost did. You could see it in the way he dressed, in his baggy cotton Dockers and cheap leather wing tips with rubber soles. You could also hear it in the jokes he cracked, which had the rhythm of a joke but not the humor. He would often interrupt a conversation to try to say something funny, but it would just lay there like a clump of dog shit ossifying on cold cement. As far as I could tell, Victor’s only skill was that he could make it impossible for those around him to feel joy. I didn’t think much of Victor, but I did appreciate his parents for giving him such an ironic name. I imagined them cooing over him the minute he was born.
“Honey, with our genes, this baby is never going to win anything. But wouldn’t it be funny to call him Victor anyway?” And they were right. It was pretty funny.
“What’s this about?” Victor mumbled to the station manager after being introduced to me. He was hunched over his desk, eating a sloppy meatball sub. His face was low and parallel to the plate, so as to not drip sauce on himself. This made it look like he wasn’t eating the sub but rather giving it mouth-to-mouth, then waiting a few seconds to see if it would breathe on its own.
“He’s a sophomore at Princeton,” said the station manager. “He wants to be a writer.”
Victor’s head almost imploded under the weight of this concept, which would’ve scattered not his brains but a fine layer of pulverized clown dust. Thin, like talcum, which he would later scoop off the floor and use to powder his balls. Victor hated his job, and he couldn’t understand why someone … especially someone with a Princeton education … would be dumb enough to do it for free. Although I never grew to respect Victor, I always worried that he might have a point. I think my biggest problem with him was that he enjoyed being a dream-killer. Since his dream was dead, everyone else’s should be, too.
“So what are you majoring in?” he asked while licking marinara sauce from his hobo fingers.
“Well, the way things are going … probably English literature.” Even as I said it, I felt like I had admitted defeat to the powers that be in the creative writing department. I wanted to be a writer, not a reader. Victor’s eyebrows raised to his greasy bangs, which were theater curtains to a matinee no one wanted to see.
“English literature?”
It was obvious Victor thought that was the most useless degree anyone could possibly earn. And again, I worried he might be right.
“Well, at least you must know the alphabet,” and he handed me a crate of old tapes to sort. I spent the next hour putting them into the archives, silently singing the alphabet song because the J and K always gave me trouble. I appreciated the time alone. It afforded me a moment to consider what I had just signed up for. This radio station was just so tragic. People were pulled here by the allure of working in media. Even with the dullest imagination, it could seem fantastical. But they were moths drawn to a flame, zapped into catatonia when they realized their career was located inside a three-bedroom, two-bath with copper plumbing. That’s why everyone here seemed so miserable, and I knew that if I stayed too long, I’d grow miserable, too.
“Anything else I can do?” I asked Victor later that afternoon, hoping he would say no. He was chewing on a pencil while he deliberated over some ad copy. He sighed, then glanced around the living room.
“Umm, nothing I can think of. Maybe you can polish Helen Stanhope’s family crest.” He let out a guffaw and Laney joined in.
“Or hold her opera glasses while she reads from the libretto.”
I didn’t know who Helen Stanhope was, or why she deserved to be mocked, but I laughed anyway—eager for the approval of two people I didn’t like.
When I returned the following week, Victor seemed genuinely surprised. So was I.
“Maybe he can organize the office supplies,” suggested Laney.
“Sure thing!” I responded, filling the air with something unfamiliar in these parts: enthusiasm. This may have offended Laney, because as I walked away, she fired back, “By the way, Helen Stanhope was asking about you.”
“Oh?”
“Yep. She was asking about you.” She repeated this with a smile because it reminded herself of what joy felt like, allowing her soul to take one baby step farther away from purgatory.
This was the third time Helen Stanhope’s name was brought up, and it hit me as odd that people always referred to her by both names. It made her first name sound like a title—like Duchess. But it was used ironically—a show of respect meant to be disrespectful. I considered this on my way to straighten up the office supplies. No one had to tell me where they were kept. They just had to be in the linen closet.
When I was done consolidating boxes of pens and pencils, I returned to the hearth for my next task. Victor, however, was completely tapped out of jobs for me. With nothing useless left for me to do, he finally suggested, “Do you want to like. I dunno, write a commercial or something?”
Did I want to write a commercial or something? I couldn’t believe how he de-valued writing so much that it was now equivalent to stacking bottled water in the fridge. This was the only reason why I was there. Not because I wanted to learn how to organize a closet, but because I wanted to learn how to write, even if it was from someone like Victor.
“Absolutely! What do I do?”
Victor responded as if I was a four-year-old asking how to blow on a dandelion. “You just write the commercial, that’s what you do.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to me. “Here, this one’s a 60-second spot for Ickle Pickle. It’s a deli. Mention their catered lunches.”
My mind was racing with excitement. It all seemed so literature-adjacent.
“Should there be a theme or motif?”
“Just type the thing, Hemingway.” Victor glared at me, then emphasized his disdain by honking his clown horn.
That night in my dorm room, I made an important decision. Instead of working on my final assignment for creative writing class, which would’ve meant more rejection from the faculty, I pivoted into professional writing: a radio commercial for Ickle Pickle, your neighborhood’s choice for meats and cheeses.
I stayed up late, putting as much creativity as I could into the ad copy, which I decided should be about a spy that infiltrated an international ring. Not a crime ring, but an onion ring, and it was operated out of New Delhi, spelled like the city in India. Ickle Pickle wasn’t a new deli. In fact, it had been around for generations, but I decided that if someone took me to court on that, the charges would be dismissed.
My script called for sound effects, background walla, and more accents than a tech-support call center. It was exciting and grabby and completely overwritten—like it was trying to punch its way out of my professor’s paper bag. How could you not be riveted when the world’s supply of potato salad was at stake? I wrote with one hand and used the other to pat myself on the back.
When I dropped off the script to Victor the next morning, I prefaced it with, “This is just a first draft. I’m happy to make whatever changes you want.” His eyes quickly scanned the script, hopping effortlessly over the jokes that I spent so much time crafting. He nodded, then shoved it into the metal bin on his desk. Maybe I was expecting too much from Victor—that he might open his patchwork sports jacket and a dozen clowns would pour out, each one embracing me with approval. But instead he ignored me. I stood at his desk for a moment, wondering if anyone would ever want to hear the words that came out of my head.
“Now this must be our Princeton man,” called a woman’s voice from behind. She said it with an air of aristocracy, and I knew this could be only one person: Helen Stanhope. I turned to discover a matronly woman in her mid-60s, sipping a cup of tea while delicately holding a saucer just below. Her bleached-blonde hair was piled high, like shoveled snow on a bank, and held in place by royal decree.
“Helen Stanhope,” she said, offering her hand.
I glanced at Victor. His translucent skin was fracturing under the pressure of jubilation. This must’ve been the moment he’d been waiting for—when he’d sacrifice me to Helen Stanhope.
“Helen is the host of Princeton’s Talking,” he said. It was a radio program about local culture, but he slurred the words together so it sounded like “Princeton Stalking,” a call-in show for serial killers. As I later discovered, Helen was a big benefactor to the radio station, and in exchange for her generous donations, she was given a weekly time slot, even though her show barely had any listeners. This made the staff resentful of her, like she didn’t deserve the honor of her words being heard. That’s what we had in common.
“Do you listen to my program?” Helen asked, almost rhetorically. I had never heard of Princeton’s Talking, but if I had, it’s not something I would’ve listened to, even if you cut holes in my earlobes and wired them with car speakers.
“I will now,” I responded politely. That was good enough for Helen Stanhope, and she smiled while squeezing lemon into her teacup.
“Come, let’s to the lanai,” she said. I didn’t know what a lanai was, but I was certain her sentence was missing a verb. Let’s what to the lanai? Let’s go to the lanai? Let’s sashay to the lanai? Let’s bring a translator for you and I to the lanai? But that was Helen, always using language as a way of transporting her somewhere else. A trunk was a portmanteau, a suitcase was a valise, and a couch was a davenport. It was pretentious and alienating, and I found all of it to be incredibly amusing.
“Yes, my good man,” Victor added. “By all means, walk the grounds.” He smiled coquettishly, then squirted water from the flower on his lapel.
I followed Helen downstairs to the main level, where she pulled open the sliding door to the backyard. She marveled at the view, as if it were the Gardens of Versailles instead of what it was—a patch of grass where an old swing set was decaying. I wondered if Helen Stanhope was aware that Victor, and everyone else at the station, made fun of her. Was she taking the high road by ignoring them, or was she completely oblivious? Either way, Helen was unlike anyone else there. Whereas they saw the radio station as the shithole that it was, Helen saw what she wanted to see—grandeur. She lived in the fantasy of radio and was as crazy as Don Quixote.
“I understand you’re an English major,” she said while pulling a chair from the patio set. She accented the word “major,” which made it sound like I was an officer in the British Army. An English major. Practically a war hero.
“I’ll probably concentrate in the plays of Shakespeare,” I said, sensing that this detail would impress her.
“How marvelous! You’ll have to give me your thoughts on Henry IV, Part 2.”
I didn’t have thoughts on any of the Henry parts, and if I did, I couldn’t imagine having enough to spare. But I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I steered the conversation to Hamlet, which I read not in college, but in my senior year of high school. And it was the Cliffs Notes version. Still, it really perked her up.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” she quoted. “I knew him, Horatio.” She then fell silent for a moment while dramatically gazing at the citronella candle on the picnic table, as if it were a skull and she was mourning poor Yorick. I felt awkward watching her, unsure if I should console her or just let her grieve in peace. What are you supposed to do when someone departs reality like that? Do you just watch them go, or do you follow them out of curiosity or politeness? Strangely, I decided to follow. Not in this moment, but a few minutes later I did.
Helen broke her silence, and the conversation grew light again. As we spoke, it became clear that Helen was fascinated by my life, especially when I talked about my aspirations. Her face lit up when I mentioned I wanted to be a television writer, as if my success was already a done deal. Part of me loved that. It was flattering to have her attention, and she spoke to me warmly, like we were old friends. She was an adult treating me not like a child but like an equal. That’s a powerful thing. But her exuberance also made me feel guilty. I clarified that I didn’t really see a path forward for me, given that I’d already been rejected from the creative writing program not once but twice. I thought this would put an end to this conversation. Maybe she’d offer some half-hearted encouragement or greeting-card platitude about the importance of never giving up, and then we’d both give up. But Helen, mounted on her faithful steed of self-delusion, just galloped ahead.
“And what kind of television show will you write?”
“It’ll be science fiction,” I wanted to say. “Just like this conversation we’re having.” But instead, I took a giant leap. I humored her—going down a path that, in my mind, I had no right going down. And the minute I said it, I felt like a fraud who would one day be exposed.
“Sitcoms,” I responded.
“I love that!” applauded Helen. “I used to watch My Mother the Car. Do you remember that one?” Actually, I didn’t. It was probably 30 years before my time, but I nodded in agreement.
“Heavens, it’s getting late,” she said. “I have to be on-air soon, but you must pay me a visit some time.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a fountain pen, although a quill wouldn’t have been unexpected. Then, with her well-practiced longhand, she wrote her home address on a piece of personalized stationery.
“How does this Saturday at three sound?”
This was the third invitation Helen offered me. The first was going to the lanai. And the second was for me to pretend that I was someone I wasn’t—an important and gifted writer. This would become a pattern with Helen. She was always inviting me deeper into her world of make-believe, refusing to step foot in mine.
“Yes, that sounds … marvelous,” I responded, still getting the hang of this sophisticated-socialite thing. I’m certain I glowed with dignity, which is something that I had been lacking of late.
She gave me her card, and I guarded it carefully in my hands, as if it were a ticket to my own coronation. And with that, Helen the Duchess of Witherspoon returned inside to commence her high-society call-in show, from the children’s bedroom off the hallway.
* * *
Helen Stanhope lived on the outskirts, just before the town became farmland. During the drive there, the excitement of accepting this invitation began to wane. It was weird enough to be socializing with an actual socialite, but the fact that she was old enough to be my grandmother made it weirder still. We had so little in common. I was nothing like Helen, and Helen was nothing like herself. The pea gravel that lined her long driveway must’ve agreed, because it chattered underneath the wheels of my car like milk on Rice Krispies.
“It’s not too late to turn around,” it mumbled.
“I’m capable of making my own decisions, Pea Gravel.”
“Just be careful,” it urged. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
I had to admit, Pea Gravel was making a good point. I was still a child, entering an adult’s world. But Helen, in sharp contrast to Victor and Laney, was so friendly and warm. Yes, she was strange enough to almost be fictitious, but what harm could come from spending an hour or so with her? She was delightful and interesting, and nothing about it felt inappropriate at all, and nothing was.
The house was a stately old Colonial and perfectly symmetrical, so that if you liked one side, it saved you the trouble of looking at the other. It had hedges that were manicured into spheres and cubes, so that, like Helen, they no longer resembled anything you might find in nature. There was no servant to announce my presence, but there probably would’ve been had I arrived 10 minutes and 200 years earlier. Also very Helen-like was the fact that her house didn’t have a doorbell. Instead there was a large brass knocker. It had a lion’s head with a ring in its mouth. Knockers are a test. If you don’t bang hard enough, the occupant won’t hear you. But if you do, you’re basically yelling, “Open the fucking door!” I tried to find just the right knock.
“Ah, you’ve made it,” cried Helen from afar. A moment later, she greeted me at the door. “Come in. I have tea and petit fours.”
I knew what tea was. I mean, I’m not an idiot. But petit fours was anyone’s guess. It was bad enough that Helen insisted on communicating in Victorian English, but now French? Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Petit fours were just fancy cookies.
I admit it was pretty flattering to be served fancy cookies. When I was a child, my mother used to bring out assorted Pepperidge Farm cookies whenever we had guests. “Company” is what she called them, as if our family was lonely—stranded on a desert island. In a way, we were. My parents were very loving and supportive people. Their children always came first. But dealing with difficult emotions wasn’t their strong suit. If we had a family crest, like Helen did, our motto would’ve been “Get over it.” So that’s why we all sat alone in our pain, waiting for someone, anyone, to arrive and rescue us. “Thank God company is coming over!”
My mother kept these cookies in the pantry, and under no circumstances were we allowed to eat them for ourselves. So if I wanted one, I’d have to wait for company to arrive. The packaging described the cookies as “distinctive,” and they were sold in something that resembled a jewelry box. Lifting the cardboard lid revealed a cellophane window that protected the cookies underneath, like diamond rings in a display case. Moments after our guest sat down, I’d do a cat-burglar drop from the ceiling, snatch a paper doily full of Milanos, and scamper away. That left everyone else with those horrible chocolate cookies, which tasted like they were made from the green dust janitors used to clean up vomit. And now here I was, 10 years later, someone else’s company, pretending to be worthy of such a fancy cookie.
“How’s school treating you?” cried Helen from the kitchen while she prepared a tray.
“You know … it’s hard.” I responded from her parlor, which was both dark and velvety. It had a stillness, her house, and you could hear it loudly between the ticks of her grandfather clock standing in the corner. Tick … Tick … It dripped time like it was trying to get a confession out of me. I knew what it wanted to hear, but I was unwilling to say it out loud.
As I waited for Helen to enter with the tea kettle, my eyes scanned the room. There were photos of her when she was younger—too many of them. These were pictures of travel and life events. Some were intimate and others were public. Some of them hung on the walls, not in a pattern, but scattered like buckshot. Others were perched on shelves in expensive silver frames, crowding each other to get to the front. They were as dramatic as Helen. From the pieces that I saw of her life, I was certain that Helen was once married, and that her husband must’ve died years ago. I could feel the absence in this room, but not the grief. That had long since been tamed and domesticated. For all her socializing and theatricality, I finally got a read on Helen. She was lonely.
“You know, I absolutely loved that spot you wrote for Ickle Pickle,” she said, bounding into the room. The scent of chamomile and cookies respectfully trailed two steps behind her.
“Oh, you read it?”
“No, I heard it in my automobile yesterday.”
That came as news, and it shook me. Victor never once mentioned my script. I didn’t even know he liked it, much less thought it was worthy of producing. I should’ve been excited to learn that it was now being broadcast over the airwaves, but I wasn’t. I was hurt. Even though it was just a commercial, this was a big deal for me. It was validation. It was proof that words that I had put onto a page had value. And now they felt worthless and disposable. My mood immediately soured. I think Helen could tell, because she dramatically crossed to the bookshelf, as if compelled by a fiction larger than both of us.
“You know,” she said, “I think you’d make a wonderful guest on my program. We can talk about your writing career.”
It’s amazing how quickly my disposition changed when Helen offered to put a microphone in front of me. I felt important. Like I had a voice. And I answered enthusiastically, as if words had never before come out of my mouth.
“I’d love to!”
The following Sunday, I rode my bike downhill to the radio station. I was wearing dress shoes and an itchy sweater that I reserved for special occasions. Together, they made me feel like a person of note. I pedaled slowly so that others could enjoy me as well. I was on cloud nine. Someone had decided that my voice was worthy of being heard, and because it came from a stranger, it meant even more. I was a person who could put words on a page that would move people. They would then thank me for having entertained them but also for illuminating their own lives. I was a writer now.
Parking my bike outside the radio station, I no longer saw it as a house on Witherspoon Street. I saw it the way Helen Stanhope saw it. It was now a high-rise on Madison Avenue. The sticky carpet in the entranceway had been replaced by a marble floor worthy of my feet. I stood tall, almost regal, as I entered the station. On my way to the booth, I was surprised to find Victor at the water cooler, still hunched over from his long commute in a tiny clown car.
“What are you doing here on a Sunday?” he asked.
“Helen Stanhope’s having me on her show,” I said proudly. “I’m going to talk about my writing.” I said it loud enough to echo off the refrigerator, and when it hit my ears, I almost shivered with excitement. Victor, who I assumed would melt with jealousy, didn’t have the same reaction. Instead, a puzzled look came to his face.
“You’re going to talk about your writing?” he asked, sincerely. “What writing?”
I jolted, the way you do when you dream you’re falling. It was such an obvious response, yet hearing it from Victor made me realize the stupidity of my own words. “Yeah, what writing?!” Was it the commercial I wrote for the local deli? Or was it the various short stories I submitted that left my professors feeling empty and unfulfilled. Victor was right. Leave it to the fool to show us our folly. I wasn’t a writer. I was nothing close to it. And here I was, caught up in the fantasy that Helen had created for me. I had accepted yet another invitation from her, only this time there would be consequences. Consequences from the public upon discovering my delusions. The blood drained from my face, and I became as white as the greasepaint on Victor’s cheeks. Now we were both clowns.
I walked slowly to the booth, still stunned by the realization that I was a fraud who was now walking into a trap. Helen waved to me from down the hall. She was standing next to the on air sign, the meaning of which suddenly became obvious to me: “on air,” as in “not grounded” or “putting on airs.”
“Michael!” she exclaimed, pulling me inside and shutting the door behind us. The room was padded with thick foam, making it feel a holding cell for the insane. The minute the door shut, all the small sounds in the room simply vanished, creating a space that was eerily silent. It reminded me of Helen’s living room, where the photos on her shelves pushed each other out of the way to be seen.
“Are you excited?” she asked, her words creating a ripple in the calm. She handed me a set of earphones, and I nodded unconvincingly as I put them on. I was almost surprised that they fit, given how big my head was only a few minutes earlier.
“How close am I supposed to get to this thing?” I asked, nervously sliding my chair toward the microphone. I could’ve just as easily been referring to the truth. How close should I get to it? Do I go on-air and play along with this charade, or just call the whole thing off?
Helen fiddled with some knobs and buttons, flicking some on while turning others off. It looked like she was prepping a plane before takeoff. Everything seemed complicated and cumbersome, and for a moment, I felt like I’d been given a reprieve—that maybe this whole radio interview would be too difficult to get off the ground. I could reschedule. Or maybe never schedule at all. Before I could even entertain that possibility, the red on air light came on, and Helen introduced me to her audience. I tried to convince myself that no one would be listening to me, since no one ever did. But there had to be a few. Dozens? Hundreds? I couldn’t see them, and I couldn’t hear them. But they must there. And soon they’d be judging me, and rightfully so.
“I’m here with my guest, writer extraordinaire Michael Jamin—a sophomore at Princeton University.” My heart was racing now.
“Creative Writing Program reject,” I wanted to clarify. Helen continued to heap praise on me while quoting lines from my commercial, as if it were in contention for a literary award. I cringed when she asked me how many ideas I came up with before landing on the premise that I used. Just one. Was I supposed to give it more thought? Helen was so excited and so proud of me, and yet I just wanted her to shut up. While the hyperboles leaped off her tongue, I decided that I had learned a valuable lesson: that I would never talk about my future until it was my present. From this moment forward, if there was a version of me that I wanted to live, I wouldn’t share it. I’d keep that secret locked inside my own dark and velvety parlor. In other words, I’d leave Helen behind and live in reality.
As she spoke, I glanced at my watch, mentally willing time to move faster. Six minutes left. Five minutes left. Just when I thought I might escape with my dignity, my biggest fear came true—the phone bank at Helen’s side lit up. First one line. Then two more. They were listeners on the other end, eager to call me out for my grandiose bullshittery. The phone blinked incessantly, demanding to be acknowledged, like Helen’s grandfather clock. I became obsessed, my eyes nervously checking it every few seconds. What was Helen going to do? Would she pick it up, allowing the caller to expose me on-air? And if so, would she defend me, because that would only make things worse. I was mad at her for preying on my ego this way—for setting me up to be publicly shamed just so that I would participate in her crazy little socialite game. I mean, who does that to a kid?! But then Helen did something completely unexpected. Without ever breaking eye contact, she leaned in toward the microphone, putting her body between me and the phone bank, so that I couldn’t see the flashing lights.
“Stay here,” her eyes smiled. “Please, just stay here with me.” This time, it didn’t feel like an invitation. It felt like she was pleading with me not leave.
For all I know, the phone continued to blink for the rest of the interview, but she never took any calls.
* * *
The walk back to my dorm room after my near miss with humiliation felt especially far. It was mostly uphill, and I was now carrying the weight of my useless bicycle on my shoulders. This was my fault. I enjoyed the ride downhill while it lasted, but the price for that had to be paid. It’s something you don’t think about when you’re wrapped up in the fantasy. Along the way, I tried to make sense out of Helen Stanhope, but I was too young to have any understanding. It was this same lack of understanding that was always missing from my creative writing pieces. I couldn’t figure characters’ motivations out, and I couldn’t figure Helen out, so I stopped trying. Instead, I decided I should sweep this horribly embarrassing experience under the rug, pretending it never happened. And that’s what I did. I never talked about it, I never returned to the radio station, and I never saw my friend Helen again. I heard she died years later.
I’m ashamed that I just disappeared from her life that way. It was wrong and selfish. I imagine it hurt her feelings the same way it hurt her feelings to be mocked by the station employees. And now I was no better than them.
On the occasions that I allowed myself, I’d think of Helen Stanhope and circle back to that big question: Why did she hype me up that way? What function did I serve in her odd world of make-believe? Was I simply there to keep her company? At first, I thought it was because I was a student at Princeton, and therefore a man of letters, worthy to be in her presence. But that never felt right. As I got older, I decided it was the excitement of my youth that she was feeding off of—when all the photos of your life haven’t yet been taken. But that wasn’t it, either.
It’s only recently, when I got much closer to Helen’s age, that I realized I’d been looking at it all wrong. Helen didn’t want anything from me, and how foolish I was to think that she ever did. She was giving me something. And amazingly, it was the only thing I wanted. Somehow she understood why it was important for me to be a writer in the first place—so that I could make sense of the loneliest thoughts inside me, share them with the world, and maybe feel like I had company too. Quietly, in between the ticks of her grandfather clock and flashes on her phone bank, Helen did just that. She heard me. And now I can hear her.
“But of course you became a television writer!” she laughs. “Was there ever any doubt?” Then Helen, Duchess of Witherspoon, raises her teacup and proposes a toast. And I laugh, too.
