AS IT TURNS OUT, I DO GO TO SEE MY MOTHER.
Mom lives in a suburb outside Phillyโnear enough to Boston that I can get on the Amtrak and be there by lunchtime the next day. I have to root around my phone for her street addressโI havenโt been to the Philly house in years, and I never see Mom outside of our yearly Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings at Roryโs. Iโm sure this spur-of-the-moment visit is a product of vulnerability, motivated by fear and childlike regression. Iโm also sure, past the initial hugs and tenderness, that Iโll regret coming at all; that once the โIโve missed youโ and โYou look good!โ chatter turns to the same overcontrolling, patronizing comments that have spiraled into blowout fights in the past, Iโll hop on the train and hurtle back to DC.
Right now, though, I just want to be near someone who doesnโt hate me on principle.
Momโs waiting for me on the front porch when I pull up. I called a few hours ago to ask if I could come stay for a bit. She agreed without even asking what was going on. I wonder how much she knows; if sheโs seen my name smeared all over the internet.
โHey, Junie.โ She envelops me in a hug, and the touch alone makes my eyes sting with tears. No oneโs hugged me in so long. โIs everything all right?โ
โYeah, of courseโI was teaching a workshop in Boston, and itโs just finished, so I thought Iโd make a pit stop here before I head back home.โ
โWell, youโre always welcome here.โ Mom turns, and I follow her into the house. She doesnโt ask how the workshop went. Her blatant disinterest in anything that has to do with writing always stung when I was younger, but today, itโs a comfort. โWatch your step, thoughโsorry about the mess.โ
The path to the kitchen is covered in half-empty cardboard boxes; blankets, bunched-up newspapers, and towels are strewn across the tiles. โWhatโs going on?โ
โIโm just putting some of the clutter in storageโcareful around those vases. The Realtor said itโll look nicer without all this stuff in the way.โ
I pick my way around an array of white ceramic cats. โYouโre selling the house?โ
โIโve been getting it ready for a while,โ says Mom. โIโm headed back to Melbourne. Wanted to be closer to my girls. Cherylโs closing on a condo for me this weekโthereโs plenty of guest rooms, youโll be able to visit. Rory didnโt tell you?โ
No, she didnโt. Iโve known that Mom has wanted to go back to Florida ever since Dad died, that Philadelphia was only ever a compromise because my grandparents lived close by, but I never connected that with the real possibility that we might not call this place home anymore.
I suppose Rory never felt such a deep connection to this house, though. I was the one obsessed with the sycamore trees in the backyard, with hiding out among their roots and spinning stories long after Rory decided it was time to return to the real world.
โDid you pack my room up yet?โ
โIโve just gotten started,โ says Mom. โI was going to put most of your things in storage, but why donโt you go see if thereโs anything you want? Give me some time to wrap up this porcelain, and then weโll meet back down here for dinner.โ
โIโoh, sure, okay.โ I pause on the staircase before I go up. I keep waiting for Mom to ask me whatโs going on, for her to intuit with her motherly senses that Iโm deeply not all right. But sheโs already turned back toward those stupid ceramic cats.
MY NOTEBOOKS ARE RIGHT WHERE I LEFT THEM: STACKED AT THE TOPย of my
bookshelves in neat rows of five. Theyโre each labeled with my name, the year, my phone number, and a ten-dollar reward offer if returned to the owner. No Moleskines hereโmy notebooks were always those college-ruled, black-and-white-splattered composition notebooks that you buy for ninety-nine cents at Walmart while your parents are doing back-to-school shopping. My dream worlds.
I pull them out and set them on the floor.
I used to live my entire life out of these notebooks. Theyโre crammed with doodles I scribbled instead of listening during class; full-scale drawings I sketched out after school; half-finished scenes or story ideas or even fragments of lines of dialogue that came to me throughout the day. Nothing in these dream worlds ever became a fully formed productโI didnโt have the discipline or craft skills then to write a complete novel. Theyโre more like a smorgasbord of creative churning, half-formed doors to other worlds, worlds in which I lingered for hours when I didnโt want to be in my own.
I flip through the pages, smiling. Itโs cute to see how derivative my story ideas were of whatever fandoms I was in at the time. Sixth grade: myย Twilightย phase, and I was clearly infatuated with Alice Cullen because I kept describing a protagonist with the same gravity-defying pixie cut. Ninth grade: my emo phase, and everything was Evanescence and Linkin Park lyrics. By then Iโd begun sketching out some gothic, futuristic dystopian cityscape where kids flew around on skateboards and everyone had floppy, skunk-tail bangs and arm warmers. I guess Ayn Rand was an influence at some point in tenth grade, because by then I was writing paragraphs on paragraphs about a male lead named Howard Sharp, who bowed to no one, who had an unassailable sense of pride, who was a โlone believer in truth in a world of lies.โ
I spend the rest of the afternoon going through those notebooks. I donโt notice the time slipping by until Mom calls upstairs asking if I want takeout for dinner, and itโs only then that I realize the sun has set. Iโve lost myself for hours in those worlds.
I call down to Mom that takeout sounds fine. Then I root around for a cardboard box to load my notebooks into. Iโll bring them back to my apartment and let them linger in the closet, maybe take them out whenever Iโm feeling particularly nostalgic. They wonโt suit my current purposesโ thereโs nothing there that I could turn into a sellable manuscript now. But theyโll remind me, whenever I need it, that writing didnโt used to be so miserable.
God, I miss my high school days, when I could flip my notebook open to an empty page and see possibility instead of frustration. When I took real pleasure in stringing words and sentences together just to see how they sounded. When writing was an act of sheer imagination, of taking myself away somewhere else, of creating something that was only for me.
I miss writing before I met Athena Liu.
But enter professional publishing, and suddenly writing is a matter of professional jealousies, obscure marketing budgets, and advances that donโt measure up to those of your peers. Editors go in and mess around with your words, your vision. Marketing and publicity make you distill hundreds of pages of careful, nuanced reflection into cute, tweet-size talking points. Readers inflict their own expectations, not just on the story, but on your politics, your philosophy, your stance on all things ethical. You, not your writing, become the productโyour looks, your wit, your quippy clapbacks and factional alignments with online beefs that no one in the real world gives a shit about.
And once youโre writing for the market, it doesnโt matter what stories are burning inside you. It matters what audiences want to see, and no one cares about the inner musings of a plain, straight white girl from Philly. They want the new and exotic, theย diverse, and if I want to stay afloat, thatโs what I have to give them.
MOM ORDERS DINNER FROM GREAT WALL, THE LOCAL CHINESE PLACE.
โTheyโre new,โ she informs me as I sit down. โHorrible service; I wouldnโt go back there in person. It took me three tries just to get some water. But delivery is fast, and I like their orange chicken.โ She opens a carton of rice and sets it before me. โYou like Chinese food, right?โ
I donโt have the heart to tell her that it was Rory who liked Chinese, and that Chinese food makes my stomach roil, especially now, since that horrible club meeting in Rockville.
โYeah, itโs fine.โ
โI got you the Triple Buddha. Are you still vegetarian?โ
โOh, only sort of, but thatโs fine.โ I split my chopsticks open. โThanks.โ
Mom, nodding, spoons some pork fried rice onto her plate and begins to eat.
We donโt talk much. Itโs always been like this between usโeither placid silence, or vicious fighting. Thereโs no casual in-between, no common interests we can shoot the shit about. Whatever wildness Mom once possessed seems to have evaporated back in the eighties, when she was smoking pot and following bands around and naming her children things like Juniper Song and Aurora Whisper. She went back to work after
Dad died, and since then has molded herself entirely into the American ideal of a working single mother: perfect attendance at her office job, perfect attendance at our parent-teacher meetings, just enough savings to put Rory and me through good schools with minimal student debt and to set up a retirement account for herself. The demands of such a hustle, it seems, left no room for creativity. Sheโs the kind of suburban white mother who buys home living magazines at the grocery checkout counter, who drinks crate upon crate of four-dollar wines from Trader Joeโs, who refers toย Twilightย as โthose vampire books,โ and who hasnโt read anything other than Costco discount paperbacks for decades.
Mom always got along better with Rory. I always got the sense that she didnโt quite know what to do with me. It was Dad who could always follow me wherever my imagination went. But we donโt talk about Dad.
We sit in silence for a while, chewing on egg rolls and stir-fried chicken bits so sweet they taste like candy. At last, Mom asks, โHowโs your, well, book writing going?โ
Mom has always had the particular ability to reduce all my aspirations to trivial obsessions with a simple disinterested question.
I set down my chopsticks. โItโs, uh, fine.โ โOh, thatโs good.โ
โWell, actually, Iโm sort of . . .โ I want to tell her why Iโve been so miserable these past few months, but I donโt know where to begin. โIโm in a difficult place. Creatively. Like, I canโt think of anything to write about.โ
โYou mean like writerโs block?โ
โSort of like that. Only usually I have all these tricks to break out of it. Writing exercises, listening to music, going on long walks and whatnot. Itโs not working this time.โ
Mom shoves some bits of chicken aside to snag a candied pecan. โWell, maybe itโs time to move on, then.โ
โMom.โ
โIโm just saying. Roryโs friend can always get you into that class. You just have to fill out the application.โ
Mom has suggested that I do a masterโs in tax and accounting at American University every time Iโve seen her in the last four years. Sheโs even gone so far as to print and mail me the application the summer after my debut novel flopped and I resorted to tutoring kids for the SAT to make rent.
โFor the last time, I donโt want to be an accountant.โ โWhatโs so wrong with being an accountant?โ
โIโve told you, I donโt want to work an office job like you and Roryโโ I know what sheโll say next. Weโve been hurling these lines at each other for years. โYouโre too good for office jobs? Junie the Yalie wonโt put
in a hard dayโs work like the rest of us?โ โMom, stop.โ
โRory puts food on the table. Rory has a retirement accountโโ
โI make more than enough to live on,โ I snap. โIโm renting a one-bedroom in Rosslyn. I have insurance. I bought a new laptop. Iโm probably richer than Rory, evenโโ
โThen whatโs the problem? Whatโs so important about this next book?โ โI canโt rely on my old work,โ I say, though I know I canโt make her understand. โI need to write the next best thing. And then another. Otherwise the sales will whittle down, and people will stop reading my work, and everyone will forget about me.โ Saying this out loud makes me want to cry. I hadnโt realized how much this terrified me: being unknown, being forgotten. I sniffle. โAnd then when I die, I wonโt have left any mark
on the world. Itโll be like I was never here at all.โ
Mom watches me for a long while, and then places her hand on my
arm.
โWriting isnโt the whole world, Junie. And thereโs plenty of careers
that wonโt give you such constant heartbreak. Thatโs all Iโm saying.โ
But writingย isย the whole world. How can I explain this to her? Stopping isnโt an option. Iย needย to create. It is a physical urge, a craving, like breathing, like eating; when itโs going well, itโs better than sex, and when itโs not, I canโt take pleasure in anything else.
Dad played the guitar during his off time; he understood. A musician needs to be heard; a writer needs to be read. I want to move peopleโs hearts. I want my books in stores all over the world. I couldnโt stand to be like Mom and Rory, living their little and self-contained lives, with no great projects or prospects to propel them from one chapter to the next. I want the world to wait with bated breath for what I will say next. I want my words to last forever. I want to be eternal, permanent; when Iโm gone, I want to leave behind a mountain of pages that scream,ย Juniper Song was here, and she told us what was on her mind.
Only I donโt know what it is I want to say anymore. I donโt know if I ever did. And Iโm terrified that the only thing Iโll ever be remembered for, and the only method by which I can produce good work, is slipping on someone elseโs skin.
I donโt want to only be the vessel for Athenaโs ghost.
โYou could work with Aunt Cheryl,โ Mom suggests, oblivious. โSheโs still looking for an assistant. You could move out of DCโitโs too expensive anyhow. Come down to Melbourne with meโyou could buy a whole house in Suntree with your earnings. Rory showed meโโ
I gape at her. โYou asked Rory for my tax returns?โ
โWe were just planning for your future.โ Mom shrugs, unbothered. โSo with what you have in savings now, itโs smart that you make some property investments. Cheryl has a few houses in mindโโ
โJesus, itโs precisely this . . .โ I take a deep breath, force myself to calm down. Momโs been like this since I was a child. Nothing short of a brain transplant will change her now. โI donโt want to have this conversation anymore.โ
โYou have to be practical, Junie. Youโre young; you have assets.
Youโve got to take advantage of themโโ
โOkay, stop, please,โ I snap. โI know youโve never supported my writingโโ
She blinks. โOf course I supported your writing.โ
โNo, you didnโt. You hated it. Youโve always thought it was stupid, I get itโโ
โOh, no, Junie. I know what the arts are like. Not everyoneโs going to make it big.โ She rubs the top of my head, the way she did when I was a child, only now it doesnโt feel remotely comforting. A gesture like this, between adult women, can only be patronizing. โAnd I just didnโt want to see you get hurt.โ