And, no great surprise, she spent even more than she gave away: a thousand dollars on the contraption that allowed her to bend upside down for hours on end — against gravity, she said — and who knew how much on her ridiculous clothing and the horrible things she hung on the walls of what was supposed to be his home.
They’d helped Margot with school some. Janelle had argued that they should give her a full ride, but Andrew had countered that it had been good for him to make it on his own and that he hoped his daughter could feel at least some of that pride. It was true — he’d admitted as much — that college cost a lot more now than in his day, but that was the reality of her times. His retirement fund held some money, but the stock market had seen to it that it wasn’t as much as he had expected. There was the house, of course, which had cost five figures and was now worth close to seven. But they had to live somewhere, and he was too old to be thinking of moving. Plus, it was the only insurance he had against the nursing home should something happen to dear Margot. She’d take care of him, he knew, but he didn’t trust her mother farther than he could smell her sandalwood perfume.
And so, as much as Andrew would have liked to launch a new literary publication, a journal that would be in every way superior to what Chuck Fadge had turned The Monthly into, it hadn’t seemed possible before the sale of Margot’s novel. Andrew was man enough to admit that it was a little humiliating that his daughter’s modest advance was equal to his own, but that was the way of the publishing world — always insulting older talent in the pursuit of youth.
Eyeing Margot’s advance, Andrew told himself he was not merely being selfish. No, Margot was young enough to take the financial risk that he could no longer afford, yet old enough that she should invest in her career rather than frittering away her money. It was in her best interest to use her bit of good fortune to start something worthy, something she could be proud of and eventually take over when he and Quarmbey retired.
Margot had always been a wonderful daughter — almost all a father could hope for despite the unfortunate DNA inherited from her mother — and he promised himself to be more obvious in his displays of paternal affection. And so, for several weeks after Margot finished proofing his galleys, he made a point of joining her at breakfast and of inquiring about her welfare and her work over dinner. He called her into his study several times a week to tell her a joke someone had sent him or to solicit her opinion on some book or other. Once, he asked her what she intended to do with her advance. She shrugged and said that she had put the money in the bank. She was pleased to know where it was, she said, and she’d be glad to have it when she was ready to take her next big step in life. Andrew took this to mean that she was at least agreeable to his proposition, though he worried when brochures for MFA programs began to arrive in the mail.
Taking advantage of the holidays as an excuse for entertaining, he invited Quarmbey over for some good cheer. “We must convince Margot that the time is ripe,” he told his old friend over the phone. Next he called a younger man, Frank Hinks, who had published a novel that had met with mixed reviews but of which Andrew approved. Hinks was just the kind of writer Andrew hoped to publish in his new journal — and the sort despised by Chuck Fadge because of his solid, old-fashioned craftsmanship. Andrew believed that Hinks’s presence would help Margot see the value of the undertaking. He also thought he’d be pelting two birds with a single stone if the young man happened to be good-looking enough to bump the horrid Jackson Miller from her affections.
Andrew instructed his wife to prepare some snacks and drinks but to stay out of the conversation beyond the initial pleasantries.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Nothing at all. I just don’t want you frightening our guests with any of your psychobabble.”
“If you knew me at all, you’d know that I believe that Freudian analysis has done the world far more harm than good. Women especially. Jung is a different matter, of course, but that’s not psychobabble.”
She would have continued ad nauseam, he was sure, had the saving doorbell not sounded.
“Would you be so gracious, dear,” he said, “as to open our home to our guests?”
For the first time in years, his wife surprised him. She stuck out her tongue.
“The orator’s last recourse?” He inserted a sneer in his tone, but what he was thinking was that his wife was still an attractive woman underneath the swirling prints and absurd earrings and layers of so-called natural cosmetics. He pressed this thought from his mind and mixed himself a Scotch and soda.
The smell of cigar smoke on wool moved with Quarmbey into the kitchen, where he made himself at home stirring vodka around a large tumbler of ice.
“What’ll it be for you?” Andrew asked Frank Hinks.
“Wine, I think,” said the younger man, who hurriedly added, “or beer is fine.”
Andrew worked the corkscrew into a bottle of red wine while he took stock of Hinks. Though nondescript, his face was not unattractive. The nose was all right, and he had a decent jaw on him. But Andrew’s hopes shrank to nothing when Hinks removed his blazer, revealing sloped shoulders and womanly hips. The young man had a severely inclined neck, making his face jut far out in front of his body; it was clear that he would look more and more like a turtle as the years went by. He doubted that Margot would go for such a fellow, nor could he wish on himself an old age surrounded by terrapin-like grandchildren. He pulled out the cork with a loud thwop and consoled himself that Hinks could still serve the primary function of convincing Margot to finance the journal.
The three men sat in the living room and talked about the state of literature, Quarmbey arguing that the relegation of literary fiction to university writing programs had drained the vitality from the short story and Hinks arguing that the academy was as good a home and patron to literature as any other arrangement.
“Margot!” Andrew bellowed. “Do pour yourself something and join us.”
When she finally entered the living room, Margot was wearing a simply cut black dress and sipping half a glass of wine.
“What’s your view, Margot,” Quarmbey asked. “Should the country have a fiction laureate in addition to a poet laureate?”
Hinks, who was sitting in the room’s most comfortable chair, huddled himself up and offered the seat he had been occupying to Margot.
She sat and tucked a curl behind her ear. “I think it might lead to more literary quarrelling, and we have quite enough of that as it is.”
Quarmbey and Hinks laughed, murmuring “True, true,” and Andrew produced a smile before steering the conversation to periodicals.
“There’s really no journal or magazine that publishes uniformly fine short stories. The problem with the university-based journals is that it’s always decision-by-committee, or student readers who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, or else editors trying to boost their meager circulations by including the drawer-leavings of anyone with a name bigger than their own. It’s the usual suspects, but it’s the stories The City didn’t want.”
“And of course,” chimed in Hinks, “they all publish their friends.”
“And each other,” Quarmbey agreed. “You publish me, and I’ll publish you, and we’ll all get tenure.”
“But the magazines outside the university are just as bad in their own way. Hopping on trends, half of them, or surviving by bilking aspiring writers with contest after contest with ever-higher entry fees and ever-smaller prizes.”
“I’ve spent hundreds of dollars this year,” Hinks said, “and I don’t mean to sound immodest when I say that the winning stories are worse than what I submitted.”