The Plot Jean Korelitz (drm ebook reader TXT) 📖

that is.” Jake shook his head. He was feeling, for the very first time, some actual respect for Evan Parker, his fellow writer. And his fellow victim.

“I don’t think this was ever about plagiarism,” Jake said. “Or theft of story, or whatever else you decide to call it. It’s never been a literary issue at all.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means, okay, even if I did take something that wasn’t technically mine, Evan Parker took it first, and the person he took it from was furious about it. But then he died. So: end of story.”

“Obviously not,” Anna observed.

“Right. Because then, a couple of years later, along comes Crib, and unlike Parker’s attempt it’s actually a finished book, and somebody’s actually published it. Now the story’s out there in black and white, in all its glory, and two million total strangers have read it—in hardcover, paperback, mass market, audio, large-print editions! Now it’s translated into thirty languages and Oprah’s putting a sticker on the cover and it’s coming soon to a theater near you, and every time this person gets on the subway somebody’s got a copy open, right in their face.” He paused. “You know, I actually understand how they must feel.”

“This is really scaring me.”

I’ve been scared for months, he didn’t say.

Then she sat up. “Wait,” Anna said. “You know who he is, don’t you? I can see that you do. Who is he?”

Jake was shaking his head. “She,” he said.

“Wait,” she said. “What?” She had a lock of her gray hair coiled between her fingers, and she was twisting it.

“She. It’s a woman.”

“How can you know that?” she said.

He hesitated before answering her. It seemed insane, now that he was about to actually say it out loud.

“At Evan’s tavern last night, the woman sitting next to me knew Parker. She loathed him. Said he was a complete asshole.”

“Okay. But it sounds like you already knew that.”

“Yes. And then she reminded me about something else. Parker had a younger sister. Dianna. I knew about her, but I never gave her any thought, because she’s also dead. She died even before her brother.”

Anna seemed relieved. She even attempted a smile. “But then it isn’t her. Obviously.”

“Nothing about this is obvious. Dianna had a daughter. Crib is about what happened to her. Do you understand?”

She stared at him for the longest time, and at last, she nodded. And then, for what it was worth, there were two of them who knew.

CRIB

BY JACOB FINCH BONNER

Macmillan, New York, 2017, pages 212–13

For weeks, they didn’t speak, and even after a lifetime of not speaking something about this felt different: harder, colder, relentlessly toxic. When they passed in the corridor or on the stairs or in the kitchen their eyes slid past each other, and Samantha felt, at certain moments, the actual physical vibration of what was accumulating inside her. She had no intention, still, just a growing idea of something approaching that would not be averted, even with effort, so what point could there be in trying to avert it? It was so much easier to just give up, and after that she felt nothing at all.

On the night Maria left home forever, she knocked on the door of her mother’s office and asked if she could borrow the Subaru.

“What for?”

“I’m moving out,” said Maria. “I’m leaving for college.”

Samantha tried not to react.

“What about senior year?”

Her daughter, maddeningly, shrugged. “Senior year is bullshit. I applied early. I’m going to Ohio State. I got a scholarship for out-of-state students.”

“Oh? When were you going to mention all this?”

Again, that shrug. “Now, I guess. I thought maybe I could drive my stuff out there, then I’ll bring the car back. Then I’ll take a bus or something.”

“Wow. Great plan. I guess you’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“Well, it’s not as if you’re going to take me to college.”

“No?” Samantha said. “Well, how can I if you haven’t even told me it’s happening?”

She turned, and Samantha could hear her stalking back along the corridor to her room. She got up and followed.

“Why is that, by the way? Why did I have to hear from my high school math teacher that my daughter is graduating early? Why do I have to look through your desk to find out my daughter’s going to college out of state?”

“I thought so,” Maria said, her voice maddeningly calm. “Couldn’t keep your paws off my stuff, could you?”

“No, I guess not. Same as if I’d thought you were doing drugs. Proper parental oversight.”

“Oh, that’s hilarious. Now you’re suddenly interested in proper parental oversight?”

“I’ve always—”

“Right. Cared. Please, Mom, we’ve got, like, a couple more days to get through together. Let’s not blow it now.”

She got up from the bed and stepped in front of her mother, on her way, perhaps, along the hall to the bathroom, where Samantha had once confirmed her predicament with a pregnancy test from the Hamilton ThriftDrug, or down to the kitchen where Samantha had once tried to persuade her own mother that it made no sense—no sense!—to have or at any rate to keep this baby she had never wanted, never for one moment wanted, not then, not since, not now, and as that body passed before her she saw, shockingly, herself: slender and straight, with thin brown hair and that family way of slouching, both as she was now and as she had been in that long-ago moment, only wanting, hoping, and waiting for the day she could leave like Maria was about to leave. And without understanding what she was doing or knowing she was going to do it she reached out for her daughter’s wrist and yanked it hard, swinging the body attached to it powerfully back along an invisible arc, and as she did she had an idea of herself, swinging a little girl up into the air and smiling into her smile as the two of them spun around and around. It was something a mother