Coral Diana DeWitt was difficult to find. Cal had never mentioned his ex-wife’s name, and neither had the other profiles I’d read. I doubled back and checked them. Most didn’t reference the divorce at all. Two articles alluded to it, but only in passing.
I Googled Cal’s full name and the words marriage, divorce, and wedding announcement in every possible permutation. I found nothing.
Was divorce a matter of public record? I Googled that, too, and discovered that the right lawyer could seal nearly any document.
I continued to comb the Internet (and add different words to my search) until, at last, I stumbled onto a DeWitt family reunion event page. It dated back to 2011 and listed Caleb David Bright, Coral Diana DeWitt-Bright, and Caleb Seth DeWitt-Bright Jr. as guests. Cal was thirty-one now, meaning he would have been twenty-six then. I scribbled a few more calculations on a notepad.
He had moved to Colorado four years ago, in 2012.
His son was five, so he’d had the child when he was twenty-six.
His three novels had been published between 2007 and 2012, the first when he was just twenty-two years old, an instant literary sensation.
I chewed on my pen cap and stared at the figures. What had happened in 2012, when he had stopped publishing, quite possibly divorced his wife, left his one-year-old son, and moved to the middle of nowhere, alone?
I wrote and underlined the question: What happened in 2012?
Having found his ex-wife’s full name, I easily located a few former addresses and landline numbers. The most recent address placed her at a gated community in Charleston, South Carolina. I wrote down the number.
Guilt pricked at me as I tapped the digits into my phone. Cal had said that his ex “wouldn’t comment” and that I didn’t “want to deal with her.” But what if she would comment, and what if I did want to deal with her? There had been no mistaking his meaning, though. He didn’t want me talking to her.
But three weeks had passed since my first meeting with Cal and we weren’t making any progress. Sure, he no longer slammed me into walls or snapped at me for falling, and yes, he had been very forthcoming about his rosy upbringing, but I was no closer to knowing him. If anything, he was holding me back—deliberately, effortlessly—from any real or nuanced understanding of his life. And it was infuriating.
I had promised him that I wouldn’t publish anything private, and besides, he and his agent would give the profile their final approval (or disapproval). If I was going to write about Cal at all, though, I needed to see him completely.
Now I understood why the other profiles on Cal were superficial and trite. He had probably fed those journalists the same bullshit he was feeding me. Maybe they had tried to get below the surface and he hadn’t let them, either. It hurt me, though. Looking back, I guess that was the truest sign of my inexperience. It hurt me that he didn’t trust me. It hurt me that I couldn’t be the exception to his rules.
So I called his ex-wife, and to hell with his feelings on the matter.
The phone rang again and again, until I was sure it would go to a machine, and then someone with a sleepy, lilting voice, and the barest trace of a southern accent answered. “Hello?” she said.
Something about the voice, and even the five or six rings before it answered, made me sit up straighter. I pictured that voice belonging to a southern belle in a milk bath. I pictured my phone call invading a warm, leisurely afternoon.
“Hello,” I said. “May I please speak to Ms. Coral DeWitt?”
“This is she.”
“Oh, hello. This is Michael Beck”—I hesitated—“with The New Yorker. I’m writing a profile on your ... on Caleb Bright.”
“I really have nothing to say about that.” She sounded embarrassed.
“I was hoping you could give me some insight into his relationship with his son,” I said, because asking this woman about her relationship with Cal seemed suddenly, incredibly off the table. Cal had been right; I shouldn’t have imposed on his ex-wife like this, but curiosity pushed me forward. “Anything you could tell me would help.”
She was silent for a while.
Then, carefully, she said, “He doesn’t see his son.”
I blinked. “No?” Cal had told me that he saw his son whenever he wanted.
“Well, we barely see one another. And I don’t think you should be asking me about it.” Her delicate voice cut me down completely. “Who did you say you are, again?”
Cal was going to murder me if he found out about this: This disclosure of information, even this call.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I’m very sorry. You’re right. I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t think you should call again.”
“No, you’re right. I apologize.”
“Goodbye.” She hung up.