The Typewriter

Four

"'Night, Dad," the twins said in unison.

"Goodnight, kids," said Milo.

Anna stepped first into his arms and hugged him, followed by Jake. Always in that order -- for everything. Anna had been the first out, followed two minutes later by Jake, and so, it seemed, the unspoken order of their lives had been determined during those first few minutes of birth, as if they had established in vitro an agreement between them that in all matters great and small, til death do they part, Anna would take lead and Jake would pull up the rear.

Elizabeth marshaled the children up the stairs, as she did every night, ensuring they were properly bathed and tucked in with their requisite stuffed animals and goodnight wishes. It was a routine Milo had once dared invade to disastrous results, and so he remained downstairs, until his wife returned.

On this particular night, his stomach tightened like a fisted hand. He had gone over in his mind everything he intended to say to Elizabeth, the reasons he wished to stay home, rather than accompany her to her family's reunion. Yet, as clearly as he laid out the logic of his argument, he could not stop picturing himself in the car on the road, headed to Exeter, New Hampshire.

After nearly an hour, Elizabeth joined her husband in the family room.

Milo had been sitting quietly, television turned off, with a book on the American Civil War opened, but unread, on his lap. When his wife entered the room, he closed the book with a snap and sat up.

"You have something on your mind," Elizabeth said. She sat on the couch, tucking her legs beneath her. "You'd make a poor poker player."

"Yes," said Milo, "you're right, on both accounts -- there is something I'd like to discuss with you, and I would be a disaster at cards." He pushed a smile to his lips. "But you know what they say about being unlucky in cards."

"I won't argue with you there. You definitely got lucky when I found you."

When she found me, Milo thought. That was an appropriate choice of words.

He had met Elizabeth Brookings when they were both undergraduates. Milo agreed reluctantly to attend a house party given by the friend of a friend. He knew no one there. Which is why Elizabeth found him alone in a corner of the crowded room and offered him a beer.

"You looked so vulnerable," she had told him some time later. "Like a fawn lost in the woods. I just felt sorry for you."

And so it was Milo's complete lack of personal charisma that first attracted the pretty redhead to him. Not because he was the life of the party. Not because of his winning smile and commanding presence. It was because he looked so pathetic.

Elizabeth's protective instincts lost none of their intensity over the twelve years that she and Milo had been married. Without her guidance and support...

I would be alone, Milo thought. Most likely working as a librarian at the town library and going home at night to dine on frozen dinners, followed by an evening of work at the Smith Corona. There I'd sit, night after night, lost in my imagination, summoning characters from whole cloth and placing them in stories that were true and clear and honest. I would have all the time I needed to create --

"What is it you want to talk about?"

Milo blinked at his wife like a sleepwalker suddenly woken, until she and the room and the reason for them being together in that room solidified once more in his mind.

"I don't want to go with you to New Hampshire this weekend."

That wasn't exactly how he'd planned it, but there it was. Now all Milo could do was wait for Elizabeth's reaction.

Which seemed a long time in coming.

She appeared, at first, unmoved by his statement. The expression on her face remained placid, noncommittal, while she mulled over her husband's words. Milo waited on pins and needles, until, finally, she said:

"You don't like my family."

"It's not that," he stammered.

She cut him off. "Yes, it is, Milo. You've never felt comfortable around them. And I understand, I do. Chaz and Doug can be asses, and my father... well, he's a tough nut to crack. They can be intimidating. But what am I to tell everyone when they ask why you aren't there?"

"You can tell them that I have a special project for work that needs to be done by Monday morning."

Elizabeth shook her head. "They won't believe me."

"It's not entirely a lie," said Milo. "There is a project I want to work on this weekend."

"Oh, what's that?"

"I want to start writing again."

Elizabeth said nothing in response, and she didn't need to. Milo read her face. She was disappointed. In her mind, what he was proposing was a waste of time.

She'd been with him during those years of intense effort punctuated by nothing but rejection, and watching him sulk or rail against the impossible subjectiveness of the literary establishment. She saw what all that rejection did to him, how it beat him down, eroded what little confidence he had in himself. She hated to see him go through it again.

Disappointment gave way quickly to pity, and it was the pity in his wife's face that did the most damage. It's the thing that hurt like hell. Milo knew too well what Elizabeth thought of his writing and of his prospects for success. But the writer in the basement had insisted that Milo keep going, despite everything...

"Why?" Elizabeth asked.

"Why what?"

"Why do you want to go back to writing?"

"It's just something I need to do. Something feels unfinished."

Elizabeth pulled her legs out from beneath her and sat forward on the couch across from her husband. "Milo, honey, why don't you take up golf, like all the other men around here? You could make some really important connections. My brothers --"

"I don't like golf."

"You could try, couldn't you?"

Milo didn't think so.

"Do you remember how upset you always got whenever you received a rejection slip?"

"Yes."

"Do you? Because I would think that if you really remember what you went through back then, you wouldn't make the same mistake."

"I don't look at my writing as a mistake."

"I'm sure you don't," said Elizabeth, leaning back against the couch, exasperated. "So what are you going to do... spend the whole weekend down in the basement?"

Milo shrugged.

"That's sad, Milo. That's really sad."

"It's what I want to do."