What Is Andre Dubus Doing, Anyway?
Photo by Marion Ettlinger.
Andre Dubus and I were once on book tour together. Because he was wheelchair-bound by this time, we were transported by hired car. Outside Boston, actually not so close to Boston, the car broke down. Do I remember correctly that this happened on a holiday weekend, or am I still trying to make sense of it? We sat in the back seat. Andre’s friend Jack was in the seat next to the driver. There were numerous phone calls, many moments when we had, or lost, hope. We reached our publisher’s voicemail. Nobody responded—well, there was talk, but no one did anything, as time passed and time passed. Finally, we tried to get a car by calling 1-800-RENTACAR, but that didn’t work either. A cop car pulled into the breakdown lane, assessed the situation, and raced off, lights blinking. That was the end of that. Hours into this, my husband and his best friend fetched me. They insisted: I must go because they were all going to get down the hill somehow and pee. I’d be seeing him soon, he said. One of the group had finally managed to summon help: a tow truck, another rental car, I don’t remember. I left amid cries of “Good sport!” and “See you next week!” feeling that I should stay. (Yes, I should have.)
During this debacle, I doubt I had reason to reflect on the fact that Andre and I were writers. What would that matter? If you’re busted flat in Baton Rouge, who cares that it’s a double entendre? Off I went. My pal and I would rendezvous soon in Portland, Maine.
As it turned out, Andre didn’t make it to Portland. In a coffee shop there, I overheard a young guy trying to convince a pretty woman he’d just met to go to the library reading. “He’s a kind of a Raymond Carver character,” he said. “And I’ve never heard of her.” Off “her” went, to do a solo.
When I think of Andre, a visual image of us in the back seat inevitably returns: the world whizzing by, everyone’s bright ideas totally ineffective, the distracting and effective bleak humor that soon set in, how strange it was that a car belonging to a big
