“It was a joke. I didn’t plan to write anything that stupid. Next you’ll be wanting a piece on the gym regimens of Pulitzer winners. If so, I have to tell you I may not be your man.”
“Joke, yes. Stupid, sure. Perfect, you bet. Shall we say eight-hundred words by Friday after next? And don’t rule out that workout story. I’m serious.”
The second Jackson returned the phone to its cradle, he felt it vibrate in his hand. “Hello, Jackson Miller here,” he said, practicing the confident tone of a regular columnist for one of the country’s most recognizable literary publications.
“Jackson.” It was his agent’s voice. “Don’t say anything, just listen to these words: six figures and page one in the catalogue.” She paused, not without drama. “The lead book, Jackson! I told them to put the marketing budget in the contract. That’s rare — they hate doing it — but they want to publish this book more than they want to breathe.”
Chapter twenty-six
Margot Yarborough expected the year between the acceptance and the publication of her novel to be a long agony, but time moved quickly and was punctuated by small pleasures.
Several times during the winter, Margot rode the train into the city to spend a night with Jackson, whose pieces now regularly appeared in The Times and — she knew but hoped her father did not—The Monthly.
When Jackson was with her, she felt the brightness of his full attention. He was always concerned that she get enough to eat. He solicited her views on various events and books. And he seemed to find it difficult to keep his hands off her. She enjoyed this — who wouldn’t, she asked herself — but it was always a bit of a relief to leave the spotlight he shined on her, to no longer measure her words or worry that she had packed the wrong clothes when he wanted to take her out for a drink. And when she was at home, Jackson seemed much further away than an hour’s commute. She thought of him, but it often seemed that he was separated from her by time rather than space, as though he belonged to her past rather than her present. Or, as in a fantastic film, that he existed in some alternate or imagined future that would never arrive in this life, that he lived in a parallel world that was visible, yet fully curtained off.
Between visits to the city, she worked. Among other projects, she wrote book reviews for a small trade journal. Though she received only forty dollars per review, she felt ethically bound to read every word of every book she was assigned. Often she was disheartened by the television thinness of the plots and the poor quality of the prose itself. She kept her mood from plummeting by reminding herself that many good books also make it into print. In her reviews, even of those books she did not admire, she was kind — sensitive to the truth that a real human being sat behind even the frailest effort.
During this time, she also proofread the galleys of both her book and her father’s, going over each carefully and twice. Knowing she would be charged if she changed more than a certain percentage of lines, she chose her edits carefully, debating whether her use of the word ‘night’ in a description of the Creole girl’s eyes was a cliché in need of repair, whether a particular pronoun was absolutely clear in its reference.
One afternoon, a courier hand-delivered an envelope from her publisher, and from the cardboard rectangle she pulled the proposed cover for her book. A beautiful woman with long curly black hair sat under a tree dripping with Spanish moss. Over the tree, in a looping script suggestive of French Quarter ironwork, curved the word Pontchartrain.
She was delighted for nearly an hour, walking around the house with light footsteps, humming, telling herself that, yes, her book really was being published. But the twelfth time she stared at the cover, it struck her that the design was all wrong. The composition was beautiful, but therein lay the problem. It should be the leper, not the Creole beauty, on the cover. Maybe a close up of a man’s twisted face would work, or a blow up of the bacterium that causes leprosy. And if the book was to be called Pontchartrain—it still didn’t sound right to her — then the letters should be solid and austere.
She checked her contract and pondered the meaning of the word ‘consult’: “The publisher shall consult with the author about the design of the book jacket.” She spent the next half-hour drafting and revising a reasoned email to her editor. She argued that tricking romance readers into buying her book might do more harm than good in the long run. And she voiced her concern that those readers who might actually want to read her book, who might understand it, could be put off by the proposed jacket. “And so,” she concluded, “while the last thing I want to be is a difficult author, I wonder if we might try out a different idea for the cover.”
The following day, a day on which her father had gone into the city to have lunch with his friend Quarmbey, Margot finally talked to her mother about Jackson. “I guess I love him,” she said.
Her mother hugged her and kissed her cheek. “That explains so much.”
“I know that he was awful to you down at Blue Ridge. He’s just, well, he’s ambitious. He was trying to impress Dad.”
“You know that I believe that grudges hurt only those who hold them. One of the very best things we can do for our own spiritual health is to forgive those who harm us. One day, everyone is going to practice this, and that will be the end of all war.”
“Not while Dad’s alive.”
“Your father is another sort of animal altogether. At least he’s unarmed. Tell you what, you know as well as I do that I haven’t much sway with your father these days. But I do have a card or two left up my sleeve. I’ll see what I can do to get your friend invited.”
Before Margot could embrace her and thank her, her mother added, “If your stars line up. So to speak.”
It took Margot more than an hour to complete the personality profiles for herself and for Jackson, and then she watched her mother spend forty minutes at the kitchen table, plotting her answers as locations on a nine-point star.
“Let’s see,” her mother said at last. “You are modest and quiet, while he is materialistic and brash. You are studious and introverted, while he is gregarious and power hungry. You are internally motivated, and he is externally motivated.”
Margot sat, hunched, as her mother enumerated the myriad ways that she and Jackson were fundamental opposites.
“Well, my dear, it seems as though your friend Jackson’s rather obnoxious personality may indeed be your true solace.”
It took Margot a few moments to understand that her mother was condoning the match. She straightened. “True solace?”
“If only I’d known the significance of this system before I’d married your father! I could have saved myself decades of his toxicity.”
“Then I wouldn’t have been born.”
“Well, yes, that’s true, dear. Good point. And you know how I dote on you.” Her mother crinkled her eyes and gave her a breast-squishing hug.
Later, at her computer, Margot read the response from her editor. “Of course you aren’t a difficult author,” Lane had typed, “and you know how we all adore you and your book. But we’re certain that we’ve landed on the right title and the right cover to maximize your readership. After all, a writer writes to be read. It may seem odd to you, but you have to trust that we know what we are doing.”
Margot tried to feel comforted; of course publishers hired professionals who knew what they were doing. But she was nagged by memories from her days at the bookstore, reminded particularly of a terrifically dark war novel whose cover — a cameo-like oval on a black background — had been ignored by browsers because it looked like a volume of contemplative poetry.