Karl and the dog went out on the front porch to read the newspaper. “You know that you don’t talk about yourself, right?” We were living together. I would leave again on Sunday for Virginia. “This is what’s been missing.”. The two launched their hit podcast Call Your... To see what your friends thought of this book, My son called me earlier today and told me I must read "These Precious Days," a long essay in Harpers magazine by Ann Patchett. “It’s important to think about your intentions before you start,” my friend told us. Then the essay becomes about something bigger, mostly the story of an unlikely friendship with Hanks’ assistant Sooki. There’s usually a guy working the light board and the mics who talks to me for a minute, though tonight the guy talking was Tom Hanks. I wrote again. The truth was that I had no idea how Sooki was doing, and I had no confidence that she would tell me. He recommends books and asks for recommendations. Or maybe I should say I was coming to know her without knowing very much about her. For a while she filled in for a friend and was the assistant to a film director, and then another friend introduced her to Tom, who was looking for someone. Mine was the sin of misunderstanding, of thinking that a clinical trial was the point of the story. By Ann Patchett. Whether all of this together was what helped, or whether she had made up her mind to see only the good, I couldn’t say. How thrilled they would have been to have even a few of the hours she wasted with us. Karl went to talk to the pilots about the plane and Sooki and I sat in the little waiting area. I reminded him that in choosing to work, he ran the risk of killing our houseguest. My son called me earlier today and told me I must read "These Precious Days," a long essay in Harpers magazine by Ann Patchett. Sooki got a stool and a towel and went to sit on the back deck. The first door opened and I walked through. Ann Patchett on Why We Need Life-Changing Books Right Now. Most mornings, Sooki set out in the darkness to walk the two miles to a power-yoga class that started at six-thirty, despite the presence of my car keys on the kitchen counter and explicit instructions to drive. “I think this is just the way I am,” she said. I came back from Virginia and took Sooki to see the daffodils at the botanical garden, but we were too early. Why couldn’t she see that? I’m looking forward to reading this whole collection. I met an old friend from school who lived up in Harlem and she drove me out. Everything was planned so far in advance and my spring was packed with speaking engagements. Free … “I didn’t say that, but I know you’re trying to help Sooki.”. I asked her about her trip to Stanford for the biopsy, her flight to Nashville. After a while she drifted up to the kitchen, taking a stab at the half of banana I had abandoned. He would bring us with his own two small girls, and the four of us would sit in the coils of snaking power cords backstage and fall asleep in dressing rooms, in this very dressing room. “I find these things go better if you just wing it.” Then the two of us stepped out into the blinding light. We had been together for the duration of this new world. The ones Tom Hanks approved of were handed to me. I didn’t say, This thing you live with every minute, this heaving horse’s skull, I held it for you today so that you could talk it out with the people who love you. I had never found a way of asking what having cancer had been like for her, or what it meant to so vigorously refuse the hand you were dealt. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). The grass was still brown and only a handful of the thousands of bulbs had opened. I would be in and out, other people would spend the night, which would be fine, plenty of room for everyone. A friend who was well versed in the experience brought them over early in the morning on Memorial Day. Once I start writing things down, I feel like I’m nailing the story in place. We both wrote for the New York Times. I had a purpose to serve. The spring was cold and wet and endlessly beautiful because of it. It must have fallen off my shoulder when I got in the car.” Sooki was a tiny thing, with thick brown hair and olive skin. “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. “This is what I need,” she said, excited. He read several articles while I waited. “I need to go home,” she would say, like home was another place she could walk to. The problem wasn’t how the trip would be organized, but what it meant—pandemic, cancer, ninety-four. On the few mornings she didn’t come up at her usual time, I imagined her sick, needing something, not telling me because she didn’t want to bother me. Winter came without a word. 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