The mania that was in his eyes the last time I saw him—it’s vanished.
Mr. Vernon has found something.
“Who’s this?” I point to the little somewhat-poodle-looking mutt that seems to be a permanent part of Mr. Vernon’s lap, if the dog’s comfort level is any indication.
Mr. Vernon smiles proud as any father. “This here is Mr. Yo-Yo Ma.”
“You named your yellow dog Yo-Yo Ma? Seriously? Isn’t that racist?” I say before I can stop myself.
“I certainly didn’t intend it to be.” He shrugs off my accusation, looking down at his pet the way mothers gaze at newborn babies. “No one will ever replace Albert Camus, but Yo-Yo Ma is my new buddy. Well, I’ve had him for almost a year now, so he’s not exactly new. But our life together feels fresh—like we’re still at the beginning. It’s a new life for us—for me.”
“What do you mean? What new life?”
He smiles at me. “I read your book.”
My heart skips a few beats. “When?”
“At the right time,” he says rather ominously.
“The critics crucified me.”
“I don’t read critics,” he says. “I read novelists.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
Finally, in this embarrassingly small, needy little-girl voice, I ask, “Did you like it?”
He looks into my eyes for an awkwardly long time. Then, rather than answer, he says, “Come on, Yo-Yo Ma. Let’s show Ms. Kane what we’ve been up to lately.”
The little mutt jumps down onto the grass, and Mr. Vernon stands with his wooden cane in one hand and the leash in his other. “Your book inspired me to do some volunteer work. Every Tuesday afternoon now. And today just happens to be Tuesday. Come on. I’ll show you.”
I follow Mr. Vernon, the familiar rhythm of his cane making me flash on our time together in Vermont and New York City as he crosses the street and little Yo-Yo Ma’s nails click on the concrete and asphalt. Then we walk for several blocks without saying a word. I need Mr. Vernon to help me believe again, and yet I fear he’s going to let me down. The whole time my heart pounds at the thought of where he might be leading me, but my brain does its best to kill any hopes that arise, popping every beautiful shiny bubble that floats up from my subconscious, even though deep down I’m pretty sure Mr. Vernon is going to show me something wonderful.
“This is it,” he says. “Where I volunteer.”
It’s a large tan brick building with some sort of World War II military cannon out front.
These words are etched in stone over the entrance:
Garvey Public High School
I start to feel lightheaded.
“Are you really teaching again?” I ask, wondering why he’s not in his classroom, if so. It seems like the time when a typical school day ends, but too early for teachers to leave the building.
“No, I’m not technically teaching. Not employed, anyway. No paycheck. Like I said before, I’m volunteering.”
“For what?”
Instead of answering, he says, “I want you to see something.”
We don’t go inside, which surprises me. I follow him to the side of the building, which is striped by three rows of rectangular windows.
Mr. Vernon turns around and faces me.
We lock eyes.
“The books we read in literature classes—just innocuous letters and symbols on paper, until we run the words through our brains and allow the fiction to manifest in the real world.”
“How do we allow fiction to manifest?”
“Through our actions.”
“What actions?” I laugh.
“Some students beat the hell out of you with a baseball bat, and some students save you by writing novels. And we’ve got to thank our saviors no matter how many times we feel attacked and broken, because we damn well need them. So that’s what today is about. Thank you, Portia, for Love May Fail.”
“I’m not sure I understand what’s going on here. Why did we need to come to the side of the building?”
“Look up”—he points to the third-floor row of windows, which open en masse—“and meet the Garvey Public High School Fiction Writing Club.”
Dozens of smiling young faces appear, arms emerge, and then paper airplanes are dive-bombing and gliding and loop-de-looping through the air above. The sky is full of the written thoughts of young people, and I’m instantly transported back almost three decades to when I threw a paper airplane out of a good ol’ HTHS window, when I first was challenged to believe in possibility and a life that was something more than my mother would ever know.
I start to cry again.
Mr. Vernon puts his arm around me. “Remember—this is your fault. You did this. The relentless Portia Kane. You.”
Arms keep popping out of the windows above, and paper airplanes continue to soar down toward us.
Before I have a chance to say anything, about two dozen high school kids pour out of the school and surround me. Each holds a neon-green copy of my book.
“You bastard. You’re actually teaching Love May Fail?” I ask Mr. Vernon.
“But courtesy will prevail,” he says proudly, finishing the opening rhyming quote from Vonnegut’s Jailbird. “And they genuinely love it. Just look at their faces. You can’t fake that level of enthusiasm, right, my future novelists?” His club members are beaming, nodding shyly, and smiling like they’re actually meeting a real fiction writer for the first time. It’s a weird dynamic, because I don’t feel like a “real” novelist. But Mr. Vernon’s huge, knowing grin somehow makes everything okay again, and I realize that this isn’t about Mr. Vernon, or me, or even my novel. It’s about something much larger. Cosmic forces are at work today. And maybe “real” is whatever you believe it is, in any given time or place.