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called me regularly, checking my whereabouts, making certain I'd be around, telling me about tour date possibilities and magazines that might do profiles, off-the-book-page opportunities. They even considered hosting a book party, a huge deal these days, an extreme vote of confidence. This time it would happen. It had to.
It
equaled success, and success, of course, equaled money. "Don't think about all this," Theodor told me. "Write." Now if only the reviews would be excellent, if only they'd roll in on time, on their wings the book would lift to the stratosphere. The
if only's
really could align just so this time to unlock the sea of elusive readership. In every part of me I felt that desperate hope.
    But then a bill would arrive: tuition, life insurance, American Express thick with its charges to out-of-network doctors (I refused to believe I couldn't accept the best medical care), gourmet food stores, lessons for my girls—their endless lessons. Late at night before the blue light of my computer I would check my dwindling Vanguard balances to see if a stock had taken off, if there was a bank error in my favor. Want, want, want. Need. The wish for a piece of America, our own home, was a noble desire, like a good education or the ability to pay a bill without it stabbing you in the heart. For what was the sacrifice? For art? I hid behind my confident smile, my hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, jeans and a shirt from Agnès B., strolling to school with the girls on either side of me, holding their hands, the stroll of a mother who has few cares, the stroll of ease and success. I am a tall woman and I do not slouch. "We're spending a part of the summer in Europe. My next novel is set there," I say to another mother whose days are defined by gutting and renovating her little $5 million piece of America, a Manhattan townhouse. She has asked about our plans for the summer. The words glide from me with ease, not a lie exactly, perhaps wishful thinking. Who is the authentic one? My grandmother used to say, "If I don't like it the way it happened, I just say it the way it should have happened."
    A writer is above all this. A writer has the urge, the irrepressible, antiquated instinct to put one word down after another, to create real houses, real cities, real worlds of real people in imaginary gardens. A writer writes because it is necessary—is, dare I say, spiritually sustained by that necessity and not a need for profit. A writer does not care about profit. A writer writes, and because a writer writes, it seems, a writer goes without, and the list is long of the things forgone, all of it on display as Theodor and I happened from one grand summer vacation home to another, refuseniks camping out in the beds of our children's friends' homes. "Socioanthropology," Theodor called it, spinning gamely. This is all that one gives up for art. But the artist does not care.
    Will and Emma Chapman knew none of the weight, the slow, steady pressure, crushing with humiliating might. No, no. They did not, would not ever know all of this. They would not see me on the high wire. My life was beautiful! I was a great literary success! Renowned, as Mr. Hov had said. I was at the top of my career or my game or both, and Will Chapman, the endearing fool, wanted to be me. And so I said to Emma, standing there in that crumbling house that would complete their dreams, on that first afternoon in Maine, the light pouring through the fractured windowpanes, casting rainbows of color on our faces, "We will help you kill them too."
    "The plot thickens," Will said, raising his eyebrows.
    "India is good at that sort of thing," Theodor added. He shot a knowing look at Emma and Will, one that said he knew his wife inside and out, everything that she was capable of, and with that look he knit them into his intimate knowledge of me. I wasn't sure what he meant, nor do I believe did they, but we all smiled anyway. I caught myself up in their dream,