For the next day and a half, Margot’s mood alternated between elation over the sale of her novel and anxiety over broaching the subject of Jackson’s visit with her father. Long possessed of the ability to work under any circumstances, she concentrated on completing her father’s manuscript. Its delivery, she knew, would improve his mood. Meanwhile, her mother did little to help the atmosphere at home and had inflamed her father by advertising — in the local paper as well as the bulletin board at the health food store — a new workshop based on an ancient system of personality types. To make matters worse, the new workshop was not limited to poetry, about which Andrew cared little, but included fiction, about which Andrew cared deeply, and memoir, which Andrew actively loathed. Memoir was fifth on her father’s “enemies list”, a page topped by Chuck Fadge, The Monthly, the editor who had granted Fadge a full page to respond to Quarmbey’s review, and an agent in Manhattan who had once rejected Andrew’s single attempt at a postmodern novel and who now accepted only clients under the age of thirty-two.
Margot decided to approach her father about Jackson’s visit when she handed him the completed and copyedited manuscript. She convinced herself that, as stubborn as her father could be, he would not be able to ignore the hard work she had donated to him. And if she could make him understand her affection for Jackson, then surely he would be happy for her. Perhaps he could even understand Jackson’s ambition and grudgingly respect the success that she believed was about to come to her friend.
One of the few rules her mother had succeeded in enforcing in their home was the no-smoking rule. So when Margot finished her work on the still-untitled manuscript, late in the afternoon after working practically through the night, she was unsurprised to find her father outside, in a lawn recliner, in the midst of one of the year’s first snows.
He puffed angrily at a cigar. “Damn thing’s rolled too tight. They’re making cigars for people who don’t actually smoke them, that’s what’s happening.”
Margot rolled a sympathetic sound from her throat and refrained from making a comment about people with real problems.
“So we should put word out about your book, line up some reviewers sympathetic to the Yarborough name.”
Margot’s purr caught in her throat like hair. She’d given no thought to reviews, and almost no thought to the idea that publication meant that people would read her novel. She pictured the shelves at The Shadow of the Valley of the Books, the short queue of buyers with a twenty-dollar bill or a credit card. She pictured her pretty hardcover — imagining Spanish Moss tangled with the long dark hair of the Creole girl on the cover — and realized that people would be asked to spend more than twenty dollars to read what she had written alone in her room.
“Yes, dear?” her father asked, inflating and deflating his cheeks as he worked the unsuccessful cigar.
“Your book,” Margot said quietly, noticing that it was quite cold. “It’s finished.”
“Thank you,” her father replied. “I just never feel quite right about sending a book out without a second pair of eyes on the proofreading. Glad you had a few minutes to spare for me.”
“Dad?”
“Well, now, well, of course you’re more of a copyeditor than a proofreader. I’ll be sure to put your name in the list of people I thank on the acknowledgements page. I can’t single you out, because that might ruffle other feathers, but you and I’ll know you’ll be the most important person in the list.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that I want to invite a friend up for a day, for a visit. He’s a writer, in fact.” Margot was about to add that Jackson’s book was being represented by a top agent when she realized Jackson’s agent was the woman who occupied the number-four slot on her father’s list of enemies.
“Oh, I see,” her father was saying. “It’s a he, now, this friend, A he.”
“Yes, Dad, my friend is of the male persuasion. You’ve actually met him, though it’s unlikely you’d remember.”
“I have a great memory for faces and names. Never forget one. Who is your young man, my dear? I must say I’m jealous like any father would be, but I think it’s high time for this sort of thing. The way you always read and avoid the sun, and even your mother knows more about a kitchen.”
“I have had boyfriends, Dad. And I do cook — for myself. But here, well, you know. Between you and Mom, there’s really nothing I could make.” Margot stopped herself, got back to the point. “The thing of it is, Dad, the thing of it is that you met my friend and — I’m sure owing to circumstances more than anything else — you two got off on the wrong foot. But really he’s a very good guy, and you have a lot in common. You’ll find him good company. And he’s a gentleman, he really is. A bit of southern charm.”
“What father’s heart doesn’t warm to the term gentleman?”
Margot was relieved to see that her father finally was inhaling smoke from his cigar. She paused to give the nicotine time to make it into his bloodstream.
“Yes, terrific, so what’s his name?”
Margot smiled. “His name is Jackson. Jackson Miller.”
Giving her every hope, her father’s words started quiet and slow. “Ah, Jackson Miller. A nice young gentleman with literary aspirations. I’m sure he’s a top-drawer, first-class, A-list sort of chap. Ah, yes. I’m sure he’s a truly fine human being. Well, that’s wonderful for you, and I’m sure you will have nice visits in all sorts of houses.”
“Dad?” she asked, frightened by his increasing speed and volume.
“But here’s the thing of it: not one of those houses will be mine. I’m sure he’s upstanding and talented and the king of all the dance cards.” He worked his cigar expertly now and seemed to enjoy the crescendo of his own voice. “But I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him, and he will never set foot in any house I own.”
Margot’s shoulders stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his tone back to normal. “I know I sound like an asshole. But I promise you that I’m doing you a favor. Jackson Miller is not a good guy. You can do much better, my dear. Much, much better. Hold out for a real talent — or at least a man who’s a lot nicer than your father. Take a look at what I’ve turned your mother into.”
He looked almost sad, and the uncharacteristic candor made Margot’s come-backs die in her throat. She sealed her mouth, her swallow dry, and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“Now that that’s out of the way, my dear, I wanted to talk to you about using your advance to best advantage. Take some time to think it through, but don’t dismiss this idea: The Hudson Review.”
“It’s freezing out here,” she said, stepping toward the house.
Chapter nineteen
Eddie Renfros surprised himself, finishing his first draft of Conduct ahead of schedule. When he compared the experience to the exultant day he completed Sea Miss or even the quiet, proud moment he typed the final word of Vapor, he found that his happiness was watered down, the sense of satisfaction mixed with some more common substance. He wondered whether this marked a more mature stage in his life as a writer, or whether it was simply because he’d never felt passion for this book.
Still, it was an accomplishment: two hundred ninety-seven pages sat stacked next to the computer under a title page that bore his name. And there was something to the idea of story; this book had a plot. Yet it wasn’t completely inorganic. Despite his detailed outline and, under Amanda’s tutelage, his strict adherence to it, there had been discoveries. He hadn’t planned, after all, for the reader to suspect that the narrator’s promiscuous friend was, despite her promiscuity, really in love with the cellist all along. That had been suggested by the material itself; it had come the way that writing used to come for him — from the act of writing itself.