The Whore's Child

has a head like a mastiff. It’s huge, even compared to the rest of his bearlike body. His graying, close-cropped hair emphasizes that prodigious skull. Clare and I differ on the question of what Gene’s head is full of. Hypocrisy and bitterness, she thinks, whereas my vote always leans toward injury and rage. We agree on self-loathing, though Clare considers this a sign of his intelligence, while I do not.
    We embrace in the doorway, Gene and I, and in that burly hug I am genuinely glad to see him, never mind that I’ve been dreading this visit. And I can tell that he’s truly glad to see me, so I don’t pull away—partly because I’m content to be hugged by this old friend, partly because when we’re finished I’ll have to hug Gene’s new wife. In this, it turns out I’m mistaken. Portia pointedly ignores our heartfelt hello and goes over to the sliding door that opens onto the deck and looks out across the stirring grass of the dunes. The ocean beyond is the bluest it’s been all summer, almost as if it’s been saving this richest, most intense and embarrassing shade for their arrival.
    â€œSo,” she says, nodding at the view, which is, I admit, breathtaking, “this is how
successful
writers live.”
    Clare and I bought the cottage two years ago. We’d vacationed on the island for a week or two every summer while the children were growing up, always setting a day aside to look at property we knew we’d have a hard time affording. That we couldn’t afford it was something our realtor, Mr. Plumly, had gleaned, and each year he took us around to look at houses with a marginally increased sense of resignation. He seemed to understand that what we described as “our range” was not, in fact, possible for us now, but might be one day, if everything went right. Though he never questioned our right to hope, he clearly saw us as a long shot, at best. Each year he showed us half a dozen new prospects, devoting an entire afternoon to the task, somehow not wanting to just cut us loose—and in doing so set in motion the sort of unlikely harmonic convergence of good fortune that we’d been waiting for.
    At the end of those afternoons we’d always sit in the parking lot near his office, looking out across the harbor, the masts of anchored vessels as still as in a postcard. He always asked us how things were going. He knew I was a writer, and apparently had read, or tried to read, one of my books, since he seemed to know what I was doing wrong. “More sex,” he advised. “More violence. Violent sex and sexy violence.” He claimed to check the best-seller list every time he visited the village bookstore, hoping to see that one of my books had slipped on (by mistake, he seemed to imply).
    In truth, we were probably doing better than Mr. Plumly imagined. For all his realtor’s intuition, he couldn’t have guessed that he was dealing with such fiscally conservative people. Because neither Clare nor I had any experience of money, we never imagined we’d have very much, and when it started coming in, we couldn’t believe it would continue to. We were careful with it, suspicious of it, and tried not to get used to it, preparing for the inevitable day when it would be gone. We even discovered that our fathers had the same favorite saying: “Money talks. It says goodbye.” We had children and college expenses, and knew that everything cost more than you thought it would, and figured the future held more of the same. So, as we sat in the harbor parking lot each summer contemplating the decent advance I’d be getting for my next book, maybe even the possibility of a small film option, we ended up feeling our own reservations as well as Mr. Plumly’s reservations about us, and would decide yet again that this was not the time. On our way back to our rental house we made gentle fun of our realtor and ourselves. “You need more sex,” Clare would say, to which I would reply, “More violence.”
    And then Mr. Plumly’s long shot came in. A young fellow who’d never published anything before wrote a novel that mysteriously crept onto the list. More mysteriously still, the studio that bought the film rights decided I was the man to write the screenplay. “You’re the only man in America who can do this,” the producer told me. “You’re the only one who knows