Call Me Charlie

Issue 270

You guys,

Virginia DeLuca’s sixty-year-old husband came home one day and announced that he was no longer attracted to her, that he wanted a divorce, that he wanted to have babies and start a family. Up until that moment Virginia had thought she was in a wonderful marriage with a man she had met in her forties, well after her kids from her first marriage were grown. The book follows Virginia as she tries to figure out what happened and how she will move through the rest of her life without Perry by her side.

Shortly after he leaves the house, Virginia writes,

“In the bedroom, I grab two boxes and throw in Perry's shirts, belts, ties, underwear, shorts, and pants, and dump them in the garage. Hopefully, they'll mildew.”

Hopefully they’ll mildew. I laughed. I underlined it. Virginia showed the reader how she was feeling with a petulant thought. Perry was the bad guy in this scenario but this comment was immature—a child stomping her feet.

In today’s podcast episode, I spoke with Virginia about writing and publishing her memoir, If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets.

Ever since I read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls I’d been removing my thoughts and feelings from moments that ran high with emotion. If I only wrote what was said and what actions were taken—what I could hear and see in the scene—then it would be written in a way that was fair and just and as objective as it could possibly be from my perspective. I would present the facts, and the reader could decide how they felt about it without me inserting my own feelings to sway them.

The line, “Hopefully, they’ll mildew,” reminded me there are no absolutes in writing. I had this same realization when I read Kate Gies’ memoir, It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished, and learned that thoughts are actually riveting from the perspective of your past self if they are wildly different from how you’d recall that story in later years. From Virginia’s book, I learned that including an unkind thought about another person is hysterical if it’s immature and there’s no apology afterwards.

Later in the book she writes,

“A few minutes later, Perry texts to tell me he's playing tennis in Portsmouth. I have no idea what these updates on his activities and whereabouts signify. He has a way of texting precisely when glimpses of my possible new life are coming into focus.

I hope he has a heart attack.”

I hope he has a heart attack. Again, I underlined it. Virginia placed us in the moment with her and let us see her real, honest thought, even if the thought only lasted a second. Even if afterwards she thought, of course I don’t really hope he has a heart attack.

I tried to implement this tip when I wrote recently about a trip home to my parents’ house for Easter. The piece was mostly written with the Jeannette Walls approach—here’s what was said, here’s what I could see, no thoughts or feelings—but at the very end, in the last lines, I wanted the reader to see my petulance and annoyance with my sister.

My sister, who has a daughter the same age as my kids, was telling me how I needed to teach my kids to read. I wrote,

“She goes on, the all-knowing middle school Teacher of the Year. I am only half-listening, as I imagine my kids reading in a few years, better and more advanced than her own 3-year-old daughter, and sending her a video of them reading with the caption, ‘Suck a dick, Alexis.’”

Whenever I write something I always assume it will someday be read by the person I’ve written about. If my sister reads the suck-a-dick line it could lead to an uncomfortable confrontation but at least I’ve done what J.R. Moehringer advises in memoir, which is to “write unsparingly about yourself.” I’ve presented my sister as the bad guy but I’ve also admitted my immaturity and inability to speak honestly with my sister about how she made me feel.

“Hopefully, they’ll mildew” and “I hope he has a heart attack” were two lines that gave me permission to include a specific type of thought. Remove thoughts that would manipulate the reader, but keep thoughts that are unkind, immature, or that I’m embarrassed to admit.

Virginia and I also talked about how she came up with her title, how she came up with her ending, what it was like working with the student-run Apprentice House Press, the importance of writing groups, and the importance blurbs—with a story of how the legendary Abigail Thomas wrote one for her book.

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Until next week,

Charlie