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By Root 935 0

worthy of it. I decide I am going to apply to M.F.A programs in Creative Writing and try to become a writer. After years of writing press releases and articles in communications and marketing jobs, I’ve learned to forget about writing what I wanted to write, that I even have my own voice. The fantasy alone gives me a secret thrill. The thought of being among writers, of living as a writer, being back in academia, teaching even, feels like a naughty thought. But it feels good. It feels rebellious. It feels like I’m taking up arms against my circumstances and finding a new way into my life. It’s thumbing my nose at the past and deciding that I can start over at thirty-seven, that I won’t capitulate, that I won’t let myself go to ruin, but that I will renovate. And I spend the next weeks writing words that will become applications. I take walks in the mornings and drive into town in the afternoons, then write in the evenings until the middle of the night. I go to the library in Bourbonne les Bains to use the Internet, and I dare to ask three people across the ocean to recommend me to be a writer. I dare to write a statement of intent and proclaim my worthiness to be a writer. And I send the applications off to nine universities, asking them to help me to be a writer. And then I wait.

One morning, I am awoken early by the distinct sound of a man’s voice inside my house, calling out. I bolt up in a panic and rush out to the kitchen to confront the intruder. The front door is wide open, but nobody is there. Confused, I go to it just in time to see a man get into his Renault and drive away on the road below. I’m puzzled and alarmed, but I scan the room and see nothing out of place, so I close and lock the door before crawling back in bed. Fifteen minutes later, as I am drifting off again, there is a frenzied knocking at the front door. Again, I get up and go to the kitchen. I open the door, but there is nobody there. The same Renault from before is idling down on the road, the doors flung open. “Oui, hallo!” I call out into the wet gray morning. I hear knocking at the back door now. So I walk to the back door and open it. Nobody. I call out again, “Hallo!!!! Oui?!!!” So I return to the front door. And from around the side of the house the neighbor Hans appears with the same man I had seen drive away earlier. “Oh! Thank God you are O.K.!” Hans says. The man begins to speak excitedly in French, grabbing his head, pointing at the front door.

Hans translates, as the rapidity with which the man speaks is too much for me to follow. It appears that he had passed my house on his morning stroll and had seen the door ajar. It had bothered him, so he returned with his car after his walk and saw that it was still open. He had come up to the house and poked his head in the door, called out for me. When there was no response and he saw that my car keys were lying by the front door, he became convinced that I had been kidnapped and murdered by an intruder. Afraid to go further into the house, he left quickly to get help. Asking around the village, he ended up at Hans’s house, where Monsieur Moreau, a carpenter, was working on the facade. He informed Monsieur Moreau that I had been kidnapped and murdered by intruders. Zut alors! Together they raced to the front of Hans’s house and banged on his door. Hans appeared and together they told him I had been kidnapped and murdered by intruders. Hans jumped into the car with the man. They raced back to my house and ran up the stairs, leaving the car running, where they finally encountered me, befuddled and sleepy and not murdered. And here we stand. The man is very embarrassed. But I am deeply touched by his concern. I had not thought anyone in the village was paying much attention to me, but it turns out they have been keeping a quiet eye on me all along, looking out for their American neighbor. I thank him for his concern, and assure him I am fine. It’s likely that the door had been left open absentmindedly the night before, when I had gone out to the barn to get more wood for the stove.

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