ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part One, Chapter 66: More White Boxes

Connecting our living room to our bedroom is a narrow hall. Just now, Ernie’s sitting cross-legged on its oak floor facing an open cabinet whose bottom shelves contain his unpublished work, most of the manuscripts stored in white boxes. He pulls out the box labeled, in his clear script, The Thoroughbreds. A black line slashes through that title, then Bloodlines. A line slashes through Bloodlines, then Secrets.

Ernie’s never come up with a title for his big novel that satisfies him, but in our family of three, we always call this story of Bryan Campbell and Arabella Taylor, set in the Bluegrass during the 1940s, by its original title: The Thoroughbreds.

“I haven’t read it in years,” Ernie says. “I’m a better writer now. I’ll go over it, page by page, and re-work every clumsy sentence. I’ll tighten it. Every word needs to belong. Brick by brick, that’s how a story is built. Maybe Jessica will be willing to take this one on, too.”

Ernie revises each chapter, and I patch in his revisions. When we finish, he lies on the camelback in the living room as I rest against the smaller settee across from him and read aloud each chapter. Usually, he catches something. He can listen and think and revise, all at the same time.

Ernie ships Secrets to Jessica. She returns it. “I’m sorry, Ernie, but I sell mysteries, mainly.”

He phones her. “Every novel is a mystery, Jessica. Even the author doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen until he finishes the writing of it. Maybe not even then. I finished Missing Faces, and I still don’t know what’s going to happen between Canyon and Rock. I’ll have to write another Canyon Combs mystery to find that out. Or maybe two more. . . . People hurt each other. Kill each other, sometimes. We don’t know how life will unfold in reality or in novels. That’s the mystery inherent in each.”

He can’t talk Jessica into taking it on, so Ernie puts The Thoroughbreds back in its white box and returns the box to its place in the cabinet.

“Look at all these boxes, Ernestina. Here’s Jacob and His Friends. I haven’t looked at it in years. And Summer Afternoons, a summer in a young boy’s life. Guess what young boy? Here’s my memoir, Dinner with D. W. Griffith and other memories. You’d think the title alone would sell it. How many people can claim to be related to David Wark Griffith? He and my grandfather were double first cousins. My father married in a suit handed down by Cousin David.”

Ernie opens another box. “My short stories: Brooks Brothers Blues, The Man With Two Hats. And my plays: The Dodge, The Closer, Frankie Stein’s Revenge. Here’s the original of The Marvelous Kingdom of Wee.”

“At least you published Crinklestitch yourself. And you found a publisher for the memoir, even if it’s an on-demand one.”

“I guess.”

Ernie closes the cabinet door, gets up from the floor. “How can I consider myself a failure when I’ve done what I always wanted to do? I’ve written my stories. I tried to sell them. I couldn’t sell them, but does that make me a failure?”

I don’t answer him. I think he knows my answer.

Ernie tries so hard. He tries in so many ways. But Ernie’s like his Crinklestitch. He still feels like a failure, and he wants to do something so outstanding, so courageous, that all his friends will whistle and applaud and call out his name.