Abridgments

Describe a sea that’s full of gnashing sharks. Then throw your lovely lady protagonist in. So many fins: narrow silhouettes of hunger. The lovely lady is mighty close to getting her bodice chomped. Add to it, perhaps, that she has an irrational fear of sharks. She mentioned it earlier, like “There’s just one thing I’m terrified of . . .” This is the worst thing and the worst thing is happening. It’s like the sharks knew. It’s like the sharks were just skulking around, minding their carnivorous business, nowhere near the lovely lady’s boat. But when she said it, they perked up their sharky ears, pushed their snouts together, and made a plan. We’re the worst thing, and we’re happening. Salt water sluices the lovely lady’s gasp. A skein of blood unfurls from her big toe.

But you turn to your audience and say, maybe in a stage whisper, “She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time.”

Now the mouths feel mechanical; now the sharks are like wind-up toys, their gulp-gulp ticking out. It’s nice, right? To jump out of the story. Not even to the end of the story. No: entirely outside.

That’s a quote from The Princess Bride. It actually goes: “‘She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time,’ my father said. ‘What?’ ‘You looked like you were getting too involved and bothered so I thought I would let you relax.”’

I’m drinking red wine, grading my students’ note checks in my study. My husband is asleep down the hall. All the doors in our house are dark wood, overly shiny; there’s a lot of carving and varnish between us. It’s April but my electric heater’s still on. In this season, this not-spring, it’s the hope that kills.

This paper—the one with the Princess Bride quote—came from my student Maddie. Maddie is charming and inquisitive, like the younger Gilmore Girl but less annoying. A month ago she really wanted to go to the college I myself had gone to. I could see Maddie at Barnard. I could see her auburn bob leaning over books, her urbane boots walking the quad. Maddie’s an English teacher’s dream. Most mornings I see her on the subway reading books, sometimes ones I’ve mentioned in class—Gay, Didion, Diaz, Biss. She’s got her travel mug and her British-looking coat and she’s ignoring the garish orange plastic of the subway and just reading. Sometimes she talks to her friends but she’s always got her index finger in the book. Maddie recently took The Great Gatsby—the book, complete with tiny paper pink suit—to prom as her date.

And then right after prom, that same weekend, she learned her father was going to die of brain cancer, probably within the year.

I’m sitting in my office. Despite the heater I feel quite frozen and alone. I read: “She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time.” The words are tucked comfy in quotation marks. The parenthetical citation (Goldman, The Princess Bride 45) formatted exactly right. Other kids’ note checks are poxed with extraneous quotation marks. But this paper is trim, elegant, organized—just like Maddie herself.

I read the quote again, not sure if it’s the wine or a thought that I’m having. Then I burst into tears.

Maddie had handed in this note check late; this was because I’d told her that she should—not could but absolutely, absolutely, emphatically should—hand it in late. I wanted Maddie to hear how italicized my instructions were. She’d handed it in late but not as late as I’d told her I’d be happy to—be happy to—take it. “I just wanted to get it done,” she’d said. “To not have to think about it.”

I write some comments down on the page, nothing about the lateness of course, just the usual suggestions on how to use these quotes in her paper. I don’t write anything...