He felt Margot stiffen each time he said the word ‘love.’
“Jackson,” she asked, loosening herself from his arm and pulling back, “what do you want from life?”
“I’ll be honest with you. I want what money can buy. I want a place in society and culture. I want to live among beautiful things and never be troubled by material want. I want to travel and interact as an equal with interesting people. I want season tickets to the Knicks and invitations to black-tie fundraisers at the Guggenheim. I want people to look at me when I enter a room and wish they were me.” He looked at her steadily.
“And nothing more?”
“That’s a lot, Margot. It will mean that I made it on my own merits, so, yes, I admit it: I want what money can buy.”
“And yet you used the word ‘love’ to me.”
“Suppose I said that my only goal in life was to win your love? Would you believe me?” He paused to give his words gravity. “I hope not. But I can honestly say to you that everything I desire will be even more satisfying if I can share it with a woman who loves me. With you, Margot.”
“I’m not wearing a coat. I should turn around.” Her voice was tight.
“Don’t you care for me? I know that I’ve offended you, but don’t you love me?” Jackson blocked her path, wrapped his arms around her small frame, kissed the middle of her forehead.
“Do you really love me?” she whispered.
“I think so, and too much to croon exaggerations in your ear. But, well, you’re perfect.” Jackson pulled his fingers through her curls.
She pressed the side of her face into his chest. “I’ve been thinking of growing out my hair.”
“It’s perfect like it is, Margot. Every other hairstyle looks ridiculous next to yours.”
He felt her small weight against him, felt her face against his chest.
“Please don’t fret about the row today.” He lifted her chin. “You’ll just have to visit me instead of the other way around. Maybe you can make an honest man of me, now that I can afford it. Trust me on this one: your father will want to be around to criticize any grandchildren he might have.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’d better get hoofing. Call me later, if you can, or send me an email. And don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. We’ll see each other soon.”
Lulled by the slight back-and-forth stutter of the train as it returned him to the city he never wanted to leave again, Jackson replayed the afternoon’s brief dispute. It might be fun, he decided, to write a piece about literary journals and writers’ efforts to publish stories in them. He remembered poor Henry Baffler’s tale of a journal that sat on one of his stories for nearly a year. After considering a few angles, he had the perfect idea: he’d slap a fake name on an impeccable story by a master fiction writer — Chekhov or Babel or Welty or someone — and submit it to a dozen journals to see what would happen.
Arriving home to find Doreen out, he checked his answering machine, hearing Amanda’s big news before falling into a stuporous sleep.
Chapter thirty-five
Margot Yarborough was not deluded about the sort of person Jackson Miller was, and she knew his talk of love was certainly overblown. But it was clear he was genuinely enamored of her. In the weeks that followed the nasty contretemps between Jackson and her father, she avoided her father almost completely and spent her time weighing various contingencies. Sometimes she imagined that her book would earn a lot of money — she entertained vague ideas about book-club sales or a film option — or that Jackson would invite her to live with him soon. In the absence of either of these life-changing events, her options were more limited. She sent copies of her résumé to the several area colleges that hired adjunct composition instructors, and, once in awhile, she browsed the New York apartment listings. She read the brochures sent by MFA programs around the country and looked at their websites showing some combination of natural splendor and intellectually engaged twenty-somethings, pencils in hand. She pictured herself among them, drawing inspiration from the surrounding mountains or the shimmering Pacific and sustenance from peers more interested in the writing than the publishing.
Punctuating her holding-pattern of a life were contacts from her editor about the approaching release date of her book. Margot pressed herself to relish every step and task: writing the acknowledgements page (on which she thanked her mother and Jackson and her beloved third-grade teacher but not her father); hearing that foreign rights had been sold in Portugal with other languages still possible; receiving an endorsement from a mid-list writer whose work she admired as solid and who termed hers as “heartfelt” and “quietly moving”; sending her editor a list of her institutional connections (a list limited to her alma maters and the writers’ union she’d had to join to publish book reviews in the Hudson Valley Free Weekly). This is really happening to me, she told herself.
She also tried to savor her times with Jackson, the night or two she spent at his place every couple of weeks. But the disturbing truth was this: it was the idea of him that made her happy. While she was with him, she fretted over saying the wrong thing or sounding stupid, about talking too much or too little, about the time passing too quickly or too slowly. And sometimes — she needed to face this — his rants were repetitive. He espoused the same ideas over and over; they never seemed to develop or move toward any deeper truth.
She was happiest, perhaps, when looking forward to their next meeting or reflecting on an earlier encounter. She would go over each weekend spent together as if shuffling photos from a nice vacation to a country you don’t necessarily want to visit again once you remember the details — the cold water or mosquitoes or unsettling food — that aren’t visible in the snapshots.
Yet each time she started to draw the obvious conclusion — that she probably wasn’t in love — she stepped back from the line. She wanted to be in love. And she didn’t like the idea of being post-Jackson, of not having him as her boyfriend, of not celebrating their twin publications. Such were her thoughts one morning when the phone rang while she was alone in the house. She gulped a small breath and readied to hear Jackson’s voice.
“It’s Lane,” said the voice. “I need you to steel yourself. There’s nothing to worry about, mind you. Circus reviews are always first and commonly negative, even vicious. Just remember that it was written by some thirty-five-year-old loser still living in his mother’s basement and picking his zits.”
“That’s not a very kind characterization,” Margot said, processing what Lane was trying to break to her.
“Believe me, sweetheart, you’re going to have worse things to say about him after you read the review.”
Her stomach clenched. “Review of my book?”
“Can I fax it to your father’s number?”
It took Margot a moment to realize that she was nodding rather than answering Lane’s question in an audible manner. “Sure,” she croaked.
“Remember, now: first and worst. The good reviews will follow in short order.”
Margot’s hands trembled just a little as she lifted the sheet from the fax machine in her father’s office. Her intestines churned as her eyes skimmed phrases like “term-paper-like,” “curiously unmoving,” and “childishly romantic.”
Only when the urge to spit had safely passed did she try to call Jackson. She hung up on his answering machine once before calling back and leaving a message: “I really need a friend to talk to. Please call me.”