Authors: Tom Grimes
Mentor: A Memoir (35 page)
Eighteen months later, the
New York Times
announced Frank’s semi-retirement. He would continue to teach but resign as the workshop’s director in August 2005. Asked to “reveal the secret to his success” as director, Frank answered, “I wing it.” He didn’t discuss cancer or chemotherapy. Instead, “he said now it was time for him to get on with his own writing.” Then, as if this were more important than his health or his work, I can hear him saying, “
And
I’ve found an ‘angel’ who has offered to give the workshop $1 million for its own library,” adding, as a casual aside, “if I can match the funds,” which Frank blew off as a minor inconvenience. The important thing was, he’d won another game. “A
million
bucks!” he would have told me. But when the reporter asked Frank about his new book, he reiterated advice he’d given me years earlier. “If you talk about it,” he said, “it will disappear.”
New York Times
announced Frank’s semi-retirement. He would continue to teach but resign as the workshop’s director in August 2005. Asked to “reveal the secret to his success” as director, Frank answered, “I wing it.” He didn’t discuss cancer or chemotherapy. Instead, “he said now it was time for him to get on with his own writing.” Then, as if this were more important than his health or his work, I can hear him saying, “
And
I’ve found an ‘angel’ who has offered to give the workshop $1 million for its own library,” adding, as a casual aside, “if I can match the funds,” which Frank blew off as a minor inconvenience. The important thing was, he’d won another game. “A
million
bucks!” he would have told me. But when the reporter asked Frank about his new book, he reiterated advice he’d given me years earlier. “If you talk about it,” he said, “it will disappear.”
But Frank and I knew he’d never write another book. From the day he finished
Time and Tide
, his relation to books would simply be to read them like a boy “seeking only to escape from [his] own life through the imaginative plunge into another.” And his temperament changed. “He was so gentle with everyone,” Maggie said, referring to his sons and grandchildren. No matter how trifling their questions or concerns, they had his full attention. After all, how long would he be able to offer it? Frank knew he’d cheated time. He should have been dead a year earlier. So, regardless of his treatment’s continued success, he expected to die soon. For the moment, though, being surrounded by his family constituted a miracle, and he lived exclusively for them. Once, Maggie said to me, “I told Frank I thought chemo agreed with him.”
Time and Tide
, his relation to books would simply be to read them like a boy “seeking only to escape from [his] own life through the imaginative plunge into another.” And his temperament changed. “He was so gentle with everyone,” Maggie said, referring to his sons and grandchildren. No matter how trifling their questions or concerns, they had his full attention. After all, how long would he be able to offer it? Frank knew he’d cheated time. He should have been dead a year earlier. So, regardless of his treatment’s continued success, he expected to die soon. For the moment, though, being surrounded by his family constituted a miracle, and he lived exclusively for them. Once, Maggie said to me, “I told Frank I thought chemo agreed with him.”
Which seemed to be the case. Whenever we spoke, he was buoyant. But, despite his upbeat mood, I decided not to visit. Sitting beside each other would have wrapped us in a funereal cocoon, and I didn’t want to face the fact that we’d never see each other again. Instead, I needed
my
image of Frank to remain intact. But he was already becoming a memory. Like a magic wand, his cane irrevocably separated the past from the present. Frank had been in my life for fifteen years, and when he died my past died, too. Without him I can no longer be the boy seeking his approval, and worrying that I might not receive it. Instead, I was forced to decide who I am. And I have. I’m the man who wrote this book. I can’t ask Frank if he thinks it’s good, but I don’t have to; this book is one thing alone: necessary.
my
image of Frank to remain intact. But he was already becoming a memory. Like a magic wand, his cane irrevocably separated the past from the present. Frank had been in my life for fifteen years, and when he died my past died, too. Without him I can no longer be the boy seeking his approval, and worrying that I might not receive it. Instead, I was forced to decide who I am. And I have. I’m the man who wrote this book. I can’t ask Frank if he thinks it’s good, but I don’t have to; this book is one thing alone: necessary.
Late one November afternoon, I called to ask about his health. Astonishingly, he sounded lighthearted, his voice strong and clear. He’d quit smoking, and his speech was silky and soothing. Happy that I’d called, he seemed carefree. We talked about Charlie’s recently published
New Yorker
story. “Did you read that?” he said. “I mean, the language, holy shit. How’s he doing, by the way?” Good, I said. “Well, send him my love.”
New Yorker
story. “Did you read that?” he said. “I mean, the language, holy shit. How’s he doing, by the way?” Good, I said. “Well, send him my love.”
We discussed books until Frank said, “You understand, the day I can’t read, it’s all over. And between us, if it weren’t for these chemo treatments, I’d keep directing. But let’s not kid ourselves, this is going to kill me.”
Then, imagining our futures, he added, “You know, running this place will be easier than running your place in Texas. We both know that Connie does everything.” True, some people expected me to succeed Frank, but he and I had never discussed the matter and I thought we had a tacit understanding that we never would.
Surprised, I said, “They need someone with a big name, and that’s not me.”
Frank disagreed. But I directed an MFA program and I knew that if I were running the search, I wouldn’t hire me, either.
I had other concerns, though. To inherit Frank’s job, his office, and his desk would have been like inheriting his ghost. I loved him. But attempting to extend his literary legacy would have diminished it. And Frank’s career deserved a full stop, not an ellipsis.
Shortly after New Year’s, Frank’s new regimen of chemo treatments began, and I called to see how they were progressing. Frank answered, but I was no longer Tom! or Professor Grimes! Those words were already memories. I detected no fear in his voice, no grief or despair, only exhaustion. We spoke for less than a minute. I told him to take the fall semester off, stay on Nantucket, and then drive Tim to Wheaton in September to watch him enter college. “We’ll see.” Frank said. “We’ll see.” He lacked the strength to say good-bye, and I wouldn’t say it for us both.
On February 8, 2005, he walked into Connie’s office and said he had to leave. He never saw the Dey House again.
Frank had arranged to die at home, not in a hospital. “He planned it all,” Maggie said. Frank spent his days in the upstairs bedroom in which I’d spent two hundred nights. He permitted few visitors. James Salter, his closest friend and the workshop’s visiting writer the semester I entered the program, traveled to Iowa City to have a final lunch with Frank. A photograph shows them smiling, their arms around each other’s shoulders, each holding a glass, Frank’s filled with clear liquid and curiously resembling one used for drinking a martini. Otherwise, only his sons and grandchildren came and went whenever they could.
As for Dad’s last days and the hospice care
, Will wrote to me,
I’ ll say two quick things about what I experienced firsthand
:
, Will wrote to me,
I’ ll say two quick things about what I experienced firsthand
:
First, Dad stayed cool. And he didn’t ever complain to me (nor, to my knowledge, to anyone else) about his fate, and in fact when the end was near he once quietly mentioned to me—as far as longevity—that he appreciated his 69 years. I’ll always remember how well he handled himself in his last days, and I’ll always be grateful to him for it.Second, there was only one time I saw him discouraged. They were still saying he had a couple months left, and since he’d been beating their projections for a few years there was no reason to think it would be less. I was visiting him in Iowa City. Late one afternoon I jogged upstairs to ask some little question and I found him sitting on the edge of his bed, looking ashen and staring out the window at nothing in particular. I understood right away that something new was wrong. “I can’t read,” he said, sounding sort of amazed by the fact. I guess he and Maggie had thought maybe there was something wrong with his glasses or something, but Dad had quickly realized it was his mind. The meds, the illness, whatever, he could no longer process words on a page. That was a hard moment, I’d say. He didn’t apparently dwell on it, but he put down whatever book he was reading and from then on I think he just wanted to get things over with.
Frank couldn’t read the card I mailed to him; Maggie had to. I remember writing,
You changed my life and I hope that in some small, happy way I’ve changed yours. After that, there’s nothing I can say or send but love, love, love.
When he heard what I’d written, Maggie said, “Frank gave a little smile.” It was his final gift to me.
You changed my life and I hope that in some small, happy way I’ve changed yours. After that, there’s nothing I can say or send but love, love, love.
When he heard what I’d written, Maggie said, “Frank gave a little smile.” It was his final gift to me.
In early April, he asked the hospice staff to stop his morphine. For three days, his body curled and twisted, spastically, like a helpless infant’s, as his organs died. Then his heart stopped, and he no longer belonged to time.
I spent sixty hours writing and revising what became my 1,019-word eulogy. I printed pages, spread them across my dining room table, circled sentences I wanted to keep, and struck those I didn’t. Jody assembled the survivors. And Charlie said, “You have to say something about a public man who was also your friend, so which side of that do you address for such an occasion? Both, I guess. You don’t have to sum him up for all time, though. Just stick with what you feel is truest and you’ll do great. Go the Whitman route—what is true for you will also be true for the rest of us. I think you can trust that.”
When I finished writing the eulogy, I read it aloud until I’d numbed my emotions so I would be able to read it to others.
For Frank ’s memorial service seven hundred people packed a campus auditorium, and a three-page program was printed. A photograph of Frank, taken when he was in his mid-fifties, appeared in the center. Below it, his name and the span of his life, 1936-2005.
To Frank ’s right was a photocopy of a handwritten manuscript page of
Stop-Time
. Three paragraphs described his decision to leave his New York high school and return to Florida. His first draft began:
It might have been the thought of school that crystallized me.
Frank scratched that.
It might have been the thought of school that changed me, the impossible prospect of another day inside that soul-destroying prison.
Frank blacked out several words, then wrote,
That might have been what did it—the stillness inside me, the thanatoid silence frightening me into a last-ditch effort. Or the thought of school, the prospect of another day in prison crystallizing my formless mind as the pencil tap crystallizes a super-saturated solution.
The paragraph ended:
I turned from the window, walked down the hall and went out the door. It was as simple as that.
Then he blotted a phrase and added,
I disregarded the pounding of my heart.
Stop-Time
. Three paragraphs described his decision to leave his New York high school and return to Florida. His first draft began:
It might have been the thought of school that crystallized me.
Frank scratched that.
It might have been the thought of school that changed me, the impossible prospect of another day inside that soul-destroying prison.
Frank blacked out several words, then wrote,
That might have been what did it—the stillness inside me, the thanatoid silence frightening me into a last-ditch effort. Or the thought of school, the prospect of another day in prison crystallizing my formless mind as the pencil tap crystallizes a super-saturated solution.
The paragraph ended:
I turned from the window, walked down the hall and went out the door. It was as simple as that.
Then he blotted a phrase and added,
I disregarded the pounding of my heart.
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