Matthew Quick on a sixteen-year kindness

Matthew Quick is the author of THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR (Little, Brown & Company). His work has been translated into Chinese, Italian, and Spanish; was a TV Book Club pick in the U.K.; and has been optioned for film by The Weinstein Company with David O. Russell directing. Q is married to novelist Alicia Bessette. Please visit him here: www.matthewquickwriter.com

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Kindness, Sixteen Years Later

I’m standing on the corner of 8th and Market in Philadelphia, waiting to meet a woman who grew up in communist Poland. For years, we’ve been meeting for lunch every April.

I see her walking toward me. She dons a cream-colored scarf with an artistic flair and looks young for her age. She greets me with a huge grin, a kiss on the cheek, and a hug. Her gaze is intense; her eyes sparkle. We smile at each other, and then we walk.

“What are you reading?” Helena asks. Her accent is hard to place. She’s been in America for many years, but she doesn’t sound American. I know she’s Polish, but her accent sounds more like a blend of many nationalities, or maybe it’s only my ignorant American ear. Regardless, I love listening to her speak. It’s like traveling to a foreign country. It’s like traveling back in time. Wonderfully exotic, measured. Her words rise and fall almost melodiously.

I tell her I’m reading the new Yann Martel book, and I describe it. She nods, and then says, “I love Pamuk.” She talks about Pamuk and then the Russians. “What street are we on?” she asks. “We are on the wrong street.”

We turn around and walk some more. She continues to talk about the Russians—Dostoyevsky, Nabokov—she talks about Chekhov, her favorite. “Uncle Vanya is playing in Russian, but it will be in Brooklyn. Uncle Vanya in Russian! Can you imagine?”

I listen to her speak passionately about literature and theater. I smile and I remember why I loved her class.

I allow her to lead me through the city.

We find the restaurant she likes and we sit at a booth.

She tells me that her husband is gardening a lot, and that he is calling his garden a swansong. She tells me she wants to go to Poland to visit her son, and California to visit her daughter.

I tell her about my writing career and Alicia’s. Helena smiles and nods and says, “Amazing.”

As we eat she asks me tough questions about writing for money. She asks me if I feel the pressure of having to sell my work, and I tell her I do. I use Shakespeare as a defense. Even he had to make sure the groundlings were happy. And Helena says, “Yes, Shakespeare knew his audience.”

She tells me that my stories are charming and I wonder if that means she thinks that I should be writing more literary stuff. But when I look into her eyes, she smiles, and I know that she is happy for me—maybe even proud of me.

When the meal is over I tell her that I have a present for her.

She says, “This is too much. Lunch and now a present!”

I pull my latest book, SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR, out of my bag and hand it to her. She holds it carefully, as if it were a newborn baby. She reads the blurbs on the back and says, “These are impressive.” She looks up at me and smiles again. I remember that she’s an actress, she has spent a lifetime studying theater, but I feel as though her response is genuine; actually, I know it is.

She opens the book and reads what I wrote inside, the inscription, and, as she reads, I time travel back sixteen years to 1994.

I’m twenty years old.

I’m terrified of the rest of my life.

I want to be a writer, but I’m afraid to tell anyone this, because saying the words seems like madness.

I’m still a kid.

My grammar is shaky.

I’m a poor speller.

But I want to learn and am willing to work.

I’m taking a theater class taught by a woman with a strange accent, a woman who grew up in communist Poland, a woman who has taken a special interest in me. I have no idea why she takes me seriously, but she does. And so, during and after class, we discuss the plays of Tom Stoppard, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Brian Friel, Caryl Churchill, and so many others.

I’m sitting in Helena’s office when I finally get up the courage to tell her that I want to be a writer.

“Then be a writer!” she says to me. “Why not write about your summer job?”

I’m working summers as an industrial flat roofer to help pay for college.

“If you are a writer, you will write me a play,” she says. “Listen to the way these roofers speak. When you are up on the roof, pay attention. Hear how these men speak. Write a play about these men.”

That summer, I listen to the way roofers speak; I write a play about roofers. I send it to her in the mail and she critiques it for free. I don’t yet realize what a gift she has given me.

She sends me ten pages of notes.

She’s very hard on my work.

She writes that my play would be ten hours long if she attempted to put it on. “Longer than Shakespeare even!” But she also tells me to keep writing. And she will keep on telling me this for more than a decade.

Back in the present moment, back in April 2010, Helena looks up from the inscription—in which I mentioned the roofer play—and says, “You should bring back the roofers. Could they not make an appearance in a chapter perhaps?”

“Thank you for encouraging me,” I say.

She shakes her head and says, “I did nothing.”

“I appreciate it. Thank you.”

She waves her hand and says, “You have done the work.”

I smile at her and she changes the subject.

We leave the restaurant and walk back to Market Street.

“Say hello to your beautiful wife,” she says to me with that twinkle in her eye.

“Give Charles my best.”

“You will come to my house this summer? And we will eat outside in Charles’s garden. I will cook?”

“I’d like that,” I say.

“I will read your new book on the train,” she says. “Thank you for the present.”

“It’s written for teenagers, but I hope you’ll like it.”

“I will read it on the train. Right now!”

We hug. We walk in opposite directions. And I wonder whether I would have realized my dream of being a published novelist had Helena not encouraged me when I was a young man, when no one else was paying me much attention.

~Matthew Quick

Next week, an essay by Liz Jensen. Please submit your questions and / or Q4K essays (no longer than 1,000 words, and no attachments please) to questforkindness@gmail.com