Carrie Diaries

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Gorgon

“Why don’t you write about it?” George asks.

“No,” I say, snapping off the delicate tip of a tree branch. I examine it, rubbing the soft dry wood between my fingers before tossing it back into the woods.

“Why not?”

“Because.” I push forward on the path that leads up a steep hill. Behind me, I hear George breathing heavily from the effort. I grab a sapling around the middle and use it to pull me to the top. “I don’t want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it.”

“Then you shouldn’t be a writer,” George says, puffing.

That’s it.

“I am so sick of everyone telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. Maybe I don’t want to be your idea of a writer. Did you ever think about that?”

“Hey,” he says. “Take it easy.”

“I will not take it easy. And I will not listen to you, or anybody else. Because you know what? Everyone thinks they know so goddamned much about everything and no one knows fuck all about anything.”

“Sorry,” he says, his mouth drawn into a prim line of disapproval. “I was only trying to help.”

I take a breath. Sebastian would have laughed at me. His laughter would have briefly pissed me off, but then I’d have found it funny too. George, on the other hand, is so damn serious.

He’s right, though. He is only trying to help. And Sebastian is gone. He dumped me, just like George said he would.

I should be grateful. George, at least, has had the decency not to say I told you so.

“Remember when I told you I’d introduce you to my great-aunt?” he asks now.

“The one who’s a writer?” I say, still slightly miffed.

“That’s right. Do you want to meet her?”

“Oh, George.” Now I feel guilty.

“I’m going to arrange it for next week. I think it will cheer you up.”

I could kick myself. George really is the best. If only I could fall in love with him.

We pass through Hartford and turn onto a wide street lined with maples. The houses are set back from the road — large, white, practically mansions — with columns and decorative tiny paned windows. This is West Hartford, where the wealthy old families live, where, I imagine, they have gardeners to tend to their roses and swimming pools and red-clay tennis courts. It doesn’t surprise me that George is taking me here. George’s family is rich, after all — he never talks about it, but he must be, living in a four-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue with a father who works on Wall Street and a mother who spends her summers in Southampton, wherever that is. We pull into a gravel driveway edged with hedges and park in front of a carriage house with a cupola on top.

“Your great-aunt lives here?”

“I told you she was successful,” George says with a mysterious smile.

I experience a jab of panic. It’s one thing to imagine someone has money, but quite another to be confronted with the spoils of their loot. A flagstone path leads around the side of the house to a glassed-in conservatory, filled with plants and elaborately wrought garden furniture. George knocks on the door, and then opens it, releasing a cloud of warm, steamy air. “Bunny?” he calls out.

Bunny?

A red-haired middle-aged woman in a gray uniform crosses the room. “Mr. George,” she exclaims. “You startled me.”

“Hello, Gwyneth. This is my friend Carrie Bradshaw. Is Bunny home?”

“She’s expecting you.”

We follow Gwyneth down a long hall, past a dining room and a library, and into an enormous living room. There’s a fireplace at one end with a marble mantelpiece, above which hangs a painting of a young woman in a pink tulle dress. Her eyes are wide, brown, and authoritative — eyes, I’m sure, I’ve seen before. But where?

George walks to a brass cart and holds up a bottle of sherry. “Drink?” he asks.

“Should we?” I whisper, still gazing up at the painting.

“Of course. Bunny always likes a bit of sherry. And she gets very angry when people won’t drink with her.”

“So this — er — Bunny. She’s not cute and fluffy?”

“Hardly.” George’s eyes widen in amusement as he hands me a crystal glass filled with amber fluid. “Some people say she’s a monster.”

“Who says that?” a booming voice declares. If I didn’t know Bunny was a woman, I might have guessed the voice belonged to a man.

“Hello, old thing,” George says, moving across the room to greet her.

“And what have we here?” she asks, indicating me. “Who have you dragged to meet me this time?”

The insult is lost on George. He must be used to her nasty sense of humor. “Carrie,” he says proudly, “this is my aunt Bunny.”

I nod weakly and hold out my hand. “Bu-bu-bu...” I falter, unable to speak.

Bunny is Mary Gordon Howard.

Mary Gordon Howard arranges herself on the couch like she’s a precious piece of china. Physically, she’s frailer than I remember, although George did say she was eighty. But her persona is just as terrifying as it was four years ago when she attacked me at the library.

This cannot be happening.

Her hair is white and thick, swept back off her forehead into a bosomy arrangement. But her eyes look weak, the irises a watery brown, as if time has leaked out their color. “So, dear,” she says as she takes a sip of sherry and slyly licks the excess from her lips, “George says you want to be a writer.”

Oh no. Not this again. My hand shakes as I pick up my glass.

“She doesn’t want to be a writer. She is a writer,” George interjects, beaming with pride. “I’ve read some of her stories. She has potential...”

“I see,” MGH says with a sigh. No doubt, she’s heard this too many times. As if by rote, she launches into a lecture: “There are only two kinds of people who make great writers — great artists: those from the upper classes, who have access to the finest education — or those who have suffered greatly. The middle classes” — she looks at me, disapprovingly — “can sometimes produce a simulacrum of art, but it tends to be middle-brow or slyly commercial and of no real value. It’s merely meretricious entertainment.”

I nod dazedly. I can see my mother’s face, the cheeks sunk right down to the jaw, head shrunken to the size of a baby’s.

“I — um — actually, I met you before.” My voice is barely audible. “At the library. In Castlebury?”

“Goodness. I do so many of those little readings.”

“I asked you to sign a book for my mother. She was dying.”

“And did she? Die, that is,” she demands.

“Yes. She did.”

“Oh, Carrie.” George shifts from one foot to another. “What a nice thing to do. Having her book signed by Bunny.”

Suddenly, Bunny leans forward and, with a fearful intensity, says, “Ah, yes. I do recall meeting you now. You were wearing yellow ribbons.”

“Yes.” How can she possibly remember? Did I make an impact after all?

“And I believe I told you not to become a writer. Clearly, you haven’t taken my advice.” Bunny pats her hair in triumph. “I never forget a face.”

“Auntie, you’re a genius,” George exclaims.

I look from one to the other in astonishment. And then I get it: They’re playing some kind of sick game.

“Why shouldn’t Carrie become a writer?” George laughs. He seems to find everything “Aunt Bunny” says extremely amusing.

Guess what? I can play too.

“She’s too pretty,” Aunt Bun-Bun responds.

“Excuse me?” I choke on my sherry, which tastes like cough medicine.

Irony of Ironies: too pretty to be a writer but not pretty enough to keep my boyfriend.

“Not pretty enough to be a movie star. Not that kind of pretty,” she continues. “But pretty enough to think you can get by in life by using your looks.”

“What would I use them for?”

“To get a husband,” she says, looking at George. Aha. She thinks I’m after her nephew.

This is all too Jane Austen-ish and weird.

“I think Carrie is very pretty,” George counters.

“And then, of course, you’ll want to have children,” MGH says poisonously.

“Aunt Bun,” George says, grinning from ear to ear, “how do you know?”

“Because every woman wants children. Unless you are a very great exception. I, myself, never wanted children.” She holds out her glass to George, indicating she needs a refill. “If you want to become a very great writer, you cannot have children. Your books must be your children!”

I wonder if the Bunny has had too much to drink and it’s beginning to show.

And suddenly, I can’t help it. The words just slip out of my mouth. “Do books need to be diapered as well?”

My voice drips with sarcasm.

Bunny’s jaw drops. Clearly, she isn’t used to having her authority challenged. She looks to George, who shrugs as if I’m the most delightful creature in the world.

And then Bunny laughs. She actually guffaws in mirth.

She pats the couch next to her. “What did you say your name was again, dear? Carrie Bradshaw?” She looks up at George and winks. “Come, sit. George keeps telling me I’m turning into a bitter old woman, and I could use some amusement.”

The Writer’s Life, by Mary Gordon Howard.

I open the cover and read the inscription:

To Carrie Bradshaw. Don’t forget to diaper your babies.

I turn the page. Chapter One: The Importance of Keeping a Journal.

Ugh. I put it down and pick up a heavy black book with a leather cover, a gift from George. “I told you she’d love you,” he exclaimed in the car on the way home. And then he was so excited by the success of the visit, he insisted on stopping at a stationery store and buying me my very own journal.

I balance Bunny’s book on top of the journal and randomly flip through it, landing on Chapter Four: How to Create Character.

Audiences often ask if characters are based on “real people.” Indeed, the impulse of the amateur is to write about “who one knows.” The professional, on the other hand, understands the impossibility of such a task. The “creator” of the character must know more about the character than one could ever possibly know about a “real person.” The author must possess complete knowledge: what the character was wearing on Christmas morning when he or she was five, what presents he or she received, who gave them, and how they were given. A “character,” therefore, is a “real person” who exists in another plane, a parallel universe based on the author’s perception of reality.

When it comes to people — don’t write about who you know, but what you know of human nature.