A Novel Idea

Sunday morning, I stepped out of the coffee shop sipping my coffee, and the man walking in front of me dropped something onto the sidewalk. I couldn’t see his face, but he’s probably in his mid-forties with short salt and pepper hair. He’s dressed in a nice suit and jacket. I bent down to pick it up and saw that the fallen object is a little black book.

“Excuse me, sir!” I called out.

He didn’t seem to hear me or notice that he’d dropped it. I turned the book over in my hand trying to decide what to do and how to return it to its owner. Carefully, I opened the front cover to see the name James Taylor written inside along with an address. I blinked a few times, James Taylor? It can’t be. That’s the name of my favorite author. Surely, it’s some coincidence.

My interest piqued, I glanced at the pages to see that it’s a notebook filled with what appears to be a rough draft of a novel. Can it be?

I decided to read the first few pages of the story scrawled onto the pages. It’s good, so good in fact that I went home to finish reading it. I could hardly contain my excitement on the way home at the thought of reading the next big novel from my favorite author before it is published.

As I read, I noticed that the main character is strangely similar to myself. Same age, career, shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes, round chin, pointed nose, family life, and even takes her coffee the same way. Who knew that James Taylor would want to write about an only child raised by a single mother who is still single in her late twenties? I never imagined a life like mine being interesting to anyone, let alone a famous author wanting to write about one. Seriously, the main differences between this character and myself are our names and a couple key personality traits; she’s outgoing and fierce, but I’m timid and shy.

I couldn’t put it down. Like my favorite books, there were so many twists and turns in the plot that I had no way of predicting how it would end. I finished reading at one o’clock in the morning and decided to take it to the address inside the cover after work the next day.

I arrived at the address at 6 p.m. It’s a large Victorian style house with a huge, perfectly trimmed yard. I rang the doorbell and waited. I heard the rustling of papers and then footsteps. The door swung open, and I saw the man whose image I’d seen a hundred times in the covers of my books. He’s dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt looking disheveled. His eyes widened when he saw me and he just stared at me for a moment.

I held out the black notebook and said, “you dropped this yesterday. I saw your address in the cover and wanted to return it.”

He slowly reached for the notebook and asked, “did you read it?”

I felt my face turn red and nodded slowly with my eyes focused on the ground. I hoped he wasn’t angry. We stood there in awkward silence for a moment.

“Please, come in,” he finally said.

He led me down the hallway to an office and I saw things misplaced everywhere as if he’d been searching the house. He asked me to sit down. I sat in a chair facing the large desk and noticed that we have the same eyes and nose. Funny, I never noticed that from his pictures. He sat at the desk, opened a checkbook, and proceeded to write a check. He handed it to me, and I looked down at it. I saw my name spelled correctly, weird I didn’t give him my name.

It took me a moment to regain my thoughts when I noticed the check is for $20,000. My mouth dropped. That’s more than the amount I still owe on my student loans.

“Think of that as overdue child support your mother should’ve received through the years,” he stated.

“What?”

Shocked doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt at that moment. I saw the similarities in our features, but before this moment I knew nothing about my father. My mother only ever told me that he was a poor artist when I was little, and I stopped asking before I was nine-years-old. I watched him as he straightened the papers on his desk, avoiding eye contact with me.

He said, “I mean, you’re grown now, so you should have it instead of your mother. How is she doing?”

“She’s great. She just got home from a cruise to Hawaii and loved it.”

“Good, good. Tell her hello for me.”

He looked up at me for the first time since he had opened his front door. His eyes looked sad, maybe even a little nervous.

I stayed silent for a moment, then replied, “I don’t get it, are you telling me that you’re my father?”

He nodded his head as he spoke. “Well, yes. I’ve been keeping tabs on how you’re doing, but never really had the courage to contact you. I figured you probably hate me for not sticking around. You see, a writer doesn’t always have a steady income or normal work hours. I figured you were better off not knowing me.”

I stared at him in disbelief. Is this happening? My mother never wanted to tell me anything about my father especially his name. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but nothing came out.

Finally, I found the words and asked, “Why is the main character so much like me? How did you get all of that information about my life?”

He sighed. “Mostly, from your mother. She sends me pictures, too. I saw you yesterday, and I had to get away before you realized who I was. Sorry if it looked like I was ignoring you.”

With my mind reeling, I said “Wait, you heard me calling to you? I didn’t think you heard me. I just wanted to give you the notebook. Why did you ignore me?”

I felt confused and angry, but the way he was nervously wringing his hands together made me feel bad for him.

He answered, “well, I thought you’d hate me. So, I figured it was best for me to just disappear and pretend you never saw me.”

I said, “I don’t hate you. Actually, I love reading your books. Funny how things like that happen.”

“You’ve read my books? How many have you read?”

“Well, 25 published and one little black notebook I found on the sidewalk yesterday.”

“So, you’ve read most of my work. I’ve published 28, but my first 3 didn’t sell and were pulled from the shelves after about a year. I still have a few if you want a copy of them.”

“Seriously, I’d love that. Wait, you never told me why the main character in the notebook is like me. What made you do that?”

He took a deep breath before he replied, “I wanted you to know that you are capable of achieving any goal. I hoped that by writing you as a confident woman, maybe you would see that you can let go of whatever keeps you in the sidelines and really put yourself out there. Take risks and achieve great things.” He laughed, then continued, “I planned to mail you a copy as soon as I published it with a check and letter explaining everything inside the front cover. I guess, you beat me to it.”

I saw him in a new light, not just as my favorite author or as the man who’d abandoned me as an infant, but as a broken man who had made mistakes. We talked a little more about his work, and I left holding three unread books in my hands. We made no plans to see each other again, but he promised to send me a free copy of his new books in the future. I went home feeling the irony of the situation, but I was very glad I didn’t have to worry about my student loan debt anymore.