Six Questions for Kate Montclair
An intimate—indeed, clandestine—2020 conversation with the protagonist of The Good Death of Kate Montclair, who had a deep and troubling secret to share…
We caught up with Kate on a warm afternoon in late September 2020 at Rappahannock Cellars winery near her home in Hume, Virginia. We sat in the shade underneath a tree in the yard that spreads before the tasting rooms, well away from the other visitors to the winery, not only because of the social distancing guidelines, but because Kate had a secret she wanted to share—a secret so sensitive that she required that this interview not be published until long after she was dead.
For those who don’t yet know you, Kate, what are the basic facts?
I am an amazingly well-preserved fifty-five year-old (she laughs). Unmarried. A career secondary school English teacher. Well—in my twenties, I spent a few years in New York trying to make it as a comedy writer. Was I successful? I had a limited but loyal following, mostly made up of the regulars at the Medicine Chest, the bar in the East Village where I waited tables. Someone told me that waiting tables was the sure way to make it as a comedy writer in New York. I was misinformed.
Have you been happy as a high school English teacher?
To a point, sure. There are worse things than spending your life trying to turn kids on to literature and good writing. At Christmas, kids bake me my share of cookies and mini banana bread loaves and leave me heartwarming notes along with Starbucks gift cards, so something must be working.
But before you get all Mr. Chips on me, consider the case of Rachel Lord.
Rachel Lord was the brightest, most gifted student I have ever taught. Period, end of discussion. You have to understand, in my classroom, written compositions can only be submitted under the following ‘affidavit’ signed by the author, a statement ending with the words:
So, acknowledging that I remain an apprentice
With still much to do on my way toward mastery
I commend this work to your discernment
Humbly requesting it be deemed acceptable
Pending the appropriate alterations.
After I grade the draft and students ‘confess’ their writing ‘sins’ to me, students are given the ‘penance’ of correcting their mistakes in a fresh draft. It is exceedingly rare for essays to go through less than three drafts. Indeed, the phrase I write on penultimate, almost-but-not-quite-ready essay drafts, ‘Acceptable, with alterations,’ has become a shibboleth among my students and always serves as the caption to my photograph in the school yearbook.
But on two legendary occasions, a student has handed in to me, as a first draft, a perfect essay in terms of literary analysis, critical thinking, grammar, and composition—an essay requiring absolutely no alterations—and Rachel Lord was that student on both occasions. No word a lie, this kid was writing publishable poetry as a sophomore in high school. She graduated from Brook Farm and went on to get a BA in English from Harvard, then did graduate work at Cal-Berkeley. Then last week, Lisa told me that she saw an alumna’s Facebook post that said Rachel Lord had committed suicide. Overdosed on pills in a seedy hotel room in Palo Alto.
“Why, Rachel? What happened to what we used to feel when we read ‘I Heard a Fly buzz—when I died’ or The Bell Jar? What happened to the feeling that we would never be the same again, that our lives were going to burn in every moment from then on?
Why wasn’t the poetry enough to keep the catastrophe at bay?”
What was your initial reaction to your cancer diagnosis?
As soon as I was sure I had heard my doctor say “Glioblastoma Multiforme Stage IV”—those spiky Roman numerals are like nails in the lid of the coffin—I was gone, wondering if I would lose my hair (the hair first, always), about what I would do with my home, Five Hearths, about the timing of my resignation from school, about how I would finance a burial plot, about whether cremation would be cheaper, about whether anyone besides my best friend at school, Lisa, and my neighbors, Evie and Everett, and a handful of former students, would miss me.
How are you going about fighting your cancer?
I’m not “fighting” my cancer. My cancer is not my “enemy” and we are not at “war.” My cancer doesn’t have a mind; it doesn’t have evil intentions. My cancer is just a bunch of brain cells, playing their role in the general catastrophe.
My friend Lisa wants me to fight, and really, I don’t begrudge her that desire to fight. I really don’t. But I would also find it refreshing if someone went around with a t-shirt that said:
I HAVE BRAIN CANCER AND I’LL BE CHECKING OUT BEFORE LONG
And on the back:
DID I MENTION THAT YOU’RE MORTAL, TOO?
So…what are you going to do? Just endure the pain?
This is what cannot be published until well after my death. I am planning to celebrate my “deathday.” Meaning, at a date certain, one that I decide upon, I will take my own life.
I don’t call it “suicide.” A friend of mine—who shall remain nameless—is right: the tumor in my brain is killing me; I am simply choosing to confront the killer on my own terms. In the open field.
It helps to keep reminding myself: there is no real alternative. It is not like I am deciding between taking my life and going on living. There is no choice of that kind. I am going to die soon anyway; it is only a matter of how.
The act itself, the drinking of the cocktails, I think I can manage, though it would be easier if someone were giving me a hot stone deep tissue massage as I shuffled off this mortal coil.
You’ve mentioned the “catastrophe” a couple of times. What do you mean by that?
Am I the only one who has a sense that something has gone horribly wrong? Look at the daily headlines. Look at what’s happening to my brain. This world is damaged. Maybe it was always this way. Maybe it was a catastrophe from the start. Or maybe something catastrophic happened to make the world this way. I don’t know.
What is hardest is the realization that my life is not going to add up to anything, that I am going to take to my grave an existence very much manqué. There is so much more I wanted to have done, so much more love that I had hoped to give and to be given. How I wish I could do it all over again, even if I were only going to die again of cancer in my mid-fifties. But those aren’t the rules of the game. The real game: not my doctor’s or Lisa’s game. The real game is not designed for winning; it is not really designed at all. It is a maze of randomly shifting partitions that shunt you round and round in a circle while you think—you hope—you are making progress. Quite a trick.
The Good Death of Kate Montclair will appear from Chrism Press in March 2023. Pre-order your copy here.