It Begins

The summer of my 23rd birthday, I moved into my first apartment. A dingy little place with peeling paint and musty corners that shouldn't be examined too closely. It was a tiny one-bedroom cottage on the corner of Fifth and Magnolia, but the rent was cheap, and my landlady, a writer herself, didn't complain about the scraps of poetry and short stories I frequently offered her in lieu of an on-time payment. Living and working in that one-room cottage, the days and the words, and the steady flow of time all jumbled together into a monotonous heap. But that final week of August, when the leaves on the trees were just beginning to think about shifting, and my whole life changed, I will remember forever with immaculate clarity.

It all began on Monday morning when the fog banks rolled in. Thick and formless, they swallowed my little town whole. In the dim grey light, even the most familiar sights were rendered alien and ominous. The neon lights of the diner on fifth pierce through the haze, tinging the world in a deep red glow. Everyone thought that the fog would clear out by mid-day at least, but like most bad things, it had a habit of sticking around.

It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday when renowned writer Margaret Cross collapsed in her back garden on her way back from collecting the newly ripe snap peas. This came as a surprise to very few as Margaret was getting on in age and had been in poor health for some time now. It was her young daughter-in-law, Clarice, who found her, splayed out in the dew-soaked grass, the stone paver walkway strewn with snap peas. Clarice called an ambulance, but it was too late. No matter how soon she got there, it likely would have been too late, as I said before: Margaret's health had been on the decline. She was pronounced dead ten minutes later when the ambulance arrived.

On Wednesday, a different kind of haze descended on the town. The first news van rolled in at six a.m sharp and was soon followed by a steady stream of journalists, paparazzi, and aspiring writers. The fog, too, had yet to dissipate, and the cable news cameramen set up big boxy lights in order to capture the grimly resolute facades of the newscasters. From a distance, it looked almost alien, all those cars and lights in front of Margaret's house, each illuminating only a small fragment of her life within a hazy tractor beam.

Though Margaret's death would have been notable under any circumstance, it was the particular timing of her death that dragged the scavengers out of every nook, hole, and cranny, searching for a story; quite literally it would seem. Not two days ago, the evening before the fog came in, Margaret had announced what was to be her final book. Not to be released for a month. With Margaret gone, the fate of the manuscript was unknown, and that is what had drawn the crowds to her doorstep.

The funeral service began at noon on Thursday. The great bells of the clock tower, still obscured from view by an impenetrable layer of fog, rung in the occasion at double time. Oftentimes, it seems that when someone dies, the whole world slows down. Each second drawn out to its greatest extent so as to wring as much grief from the moment as possible. This was not the case with Margaret Cross; from the moment the basket of snap peas tumbled from her arms, the world seemed to be going hyperspeed. The planning of the funeral, the summoning of relatives, and the collecting of the will. A process that took the entirety of those three days passed for me in the span of a single breath. All the while, whispers about the missing manuscript provided a near-constant undercurrent of background chatter.

Due to the public nature of her works, and Margaret's own flair for the dramatic, both the funeral and the reading of the will were to be public affairs. The funeral was held in the tiny chapel adjoining the local cemetery. The crowd spilled from the wooden doors, umbrellas brandished against the thunderheads that now loomed on the horizon, and the now ever-present gaggle of reporters flitted along the outskirts like carrion birds. I stood squeezed into the far corner of the church. A copy of her novel clutched in my hands as I listened to the parade of people speak about the beauty of Margaret's writing and the kind and giving nature of her spirit. Even this seemed to happen at hyperspeed. No sooner than it entered, it seemed that the crowd had once again begun to filter out. They moved as a single entity, all wordlessly making their way as one towards the lone landmark of the crumbling cemetery.

Surrounded by long faded headstones and moss coated plaques stood a lone oak tree. Resolute and purposeful, it towered over the memories of the town, sheltering them from the elements as best it could. It was beneath this tree that Margaret's ashes were to be spread, and an iron box containing a copy of her first book was to be buried. But I knew this already; I had read it this morning on the front page of the local newspaper, as I'm sure had everyone else. Once the funeral was over, it was no longer the house but the people who were swamped by reporters, all wanting to know the sordid details of Margaret's last moments and any clues as to what the secret manuscript may contain. Yet I was the only one who lingered in that dusty old church, and as the noise of the crowd ebbed away, I felt that for the first time this week, I was able to see. The book in my hands now felt heavy, and as though guided by an impulse not my own, I carried that book to the front of the hall and placed it atop the choir conductor's music stand. Taking a step back, I felt the eyes of Margaret's photograph, shining from the back cover, alight on me, and for the first time since the fog came in, I felt the tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

The reading of the will was on Friday, the final event in the long domino chain that Margaret's death had toppled. In a twist of fate that seemed a little too on the nose, the reading of the will was to be held at the local library. As with the funeral services, it was to be open to the public. Unlike the funeral, the reading of the will was presided over by the thin weasely man who was Margaret's publishing-company-appointed lawyer. He spoke with an overbearing tone of condescension and seemed to be in a hurry to get this whole affair over with as quickly as possible. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't until about 2:30, almost an hour past when the reading was supposed to start, that it actually began. Even then, it took a harsh shout from the lawyer to actually succeed in quieting the crowd. He then cleared his throat and shook out his blazer in an effort to regain lost dignity before beginning in on the will.

I won't bore you with the monotonous details; however, it's safe to say that between the lawyer's own addendums on behalf of the publishing company and the need to hush the audience every other line, we were well past the one hour mark before the moment everyone was waiting for arrived. Sensing that for a brief second, everyone's attention was finally on him, the lawyer cleared his throat once again before beginning once more with a self-important tone.

"To my son Thomas Cross and his wife Clarice, I leave the rights to my previously published works and the rental property on Fifth and Magnolia. To my three grandchildren: Stacy, Lucia, and Adam, I leave my cumulative fortune to be divided evenly amongst them to be used as they so choose. To the current resident of the home on Fifth and Magnolia, Miss Alexandra Banks, I leave the contents of bank safety deposit box #442 and my own residence at 22 Grove St, valued at approximately 22,000 dollars." A hushed silence falls over the room, amplifying the lawyer's snide comment on the value of the home before continuing on in a nasal tone. But I wasn't listening anymore, and I was certain no one else was either. I sat there, the plastic of the folding chair pressed painfully into my back, not daring to believe what I had just heard. The rest of this meeting fading into obscurity amidst a dense cloud of legal jargon and signatures on a dotted line. The only other notable feature of this meeting was a noticeable lack of discussion of the missing manuscript, but even that I cannot remember. I do remember walking in a trance to the bank and collecting the heavy steel box that sat inside. I remember being escorted to the grove street house by a police officer, fending off the mobs of reporters. I remember shutting the door of that empty house and collapsing to the floor, the steel box still clutched in my hands as the sky opened up and the rain came thundering down.

In my long life, I can think of no more joyful a night than the first one I spent huddled on the floor of that old, old house, listening to the rain drum out a tuneless melody on Margaret's- on my tin tile roof. As I sit here now reminiscing in my old age, I can think of only two possible motives for the decision that Margaret made. The first and more probable of the two is that she took pity on me, a penniless writer going nowhere, stagnant as the fog that settled over the town that fateful week. The second possibility I only allow myself to consider late at night when the thunderheads roll in and hide my thoughts from the world is that Margaret saw something in those lines of poetry that I would trade when I had nothing else to give. In those moments, I allow myself to hope because inside that steel box that I cradled in my arms on the rough wood floor were three things. Margaret's own publishing contract -worth well over 20,000 dollars- something a young writer would never dare to dream of. But secondly and more importantly, was something more valuable to me than gold or any four walls for that matter. At the bottom of the box lay two small black notebooks. The cover of one is worn and the pages filled with beautiful slanting handwriting—a glorious, wonderful, and incomplete story. The second notebook is brand new, the cover glossy, and the pages smooth and bare except for two words: a beginning. In that book, every possibility, every light Margaret ever saw in me, and every hope I had for myself are contained.

Saturday morning, the fog rolls out, a world washed clean by the rain shines anew. A beam of light pierces through the window, filling my world with a dazzling glow, and I can see my whole future ahead of me. Some day, I may finish Margaret's story, but today is not that day, for now, I have my own story to tell.