“Just once,” Amanda said.
“Even in a very long book?”
“Yes,” Amanda answered with the confidence of the popular. “Just once per book.”
“Damn it all to hell!” Henry exclaimed before apologizing. “Of course you’re right. It’s just that I was hoping to use it a few times. I’m writing an open book.”
“I almost understand what that might mean, and I certainly look forward to reading it.”
“Goodbye, Amanda.”
“Nice chatting with you, Henry.”
She dropped the receiver into its cradle, knowing she should cancel Clarice’s appearance but already imagining how it would feel to have her friends there listening to her read, even her husband, none of them guessing her secret.
Chapter forty-three
Jackson Miller strode across the room and opened the door to Margot’s light knock.
“Let me take that.” He shook water droplets from her dark umbrella and slid it into the frog-shaped holder that Doreen had given him as a housewarming present.
As Margot arranged her short curls with her fingers, Jackson was smitten all over again by the elegant shape of her head, her lithe arms, her slender waist.
“Your apartment is beautiful,” she said.
“Albeit still nearly empty.” He gestured to his first piece of real furniture: a lone leather sofa.
“So,” she asked after she’d perched on the sofa. “How are your friends the Renfroses?”
Jackson felt peculiar for having told Margot about his friends, about having linked the two spheres of his life, yet he valued her opinion — not necessarily as one he would follow but as one to consider as the most ethical if not the most practical route. That was one role Margot could play in his life: the voice of duty, of how he should act.
“Well, they’re certainly happier now that they have more money,” he said. “Amanda wasn’t cut out to be the supportive wife of a struggling novelist.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of her?” Margot looked quizzical.
“On the contrary. And even the fact that Eddie and I quarreled over her hasn’t changed that.”
“Quarreled over her?” Margot held her voice steady, but it was tight, and Jackson recognized concern, perhaps jealousy.
“It’s nothing really. It’s that Eddie — before his book sold, mind you — blamed me in part for Amanda’s unhappiness with him.”
Margot did not speak and did not lift her eyes.
“It’s funny really. My fault was supposed to have been glorifying worldly success and so contributing to Amanda’s discontent with their lot. Ridiculous, no?”
Margot nodded.
“The thing of it was that Eddie was as serious as a boat taking on water with no way to bail it out.”
Again she nodded, giving away nothing but earnestness in her expression. “But you don’t think your talk had a negative effect?”
“Who knows? I certainly didn’t mean it to.”
“Well,” said Margot, “if it did, then Amanda can’t be very strong minded.”
“You mean if she was influenced by so insignificant a fellow as me?” Jackson smiled, touched her damp hair.
But Margot didn’t take his flirtatious bait. “To be influenced by anyone in such a way, to accept someone else’s values as her own,” she said.
“You think the worse of me now?” Jackson pictured the conversation as something solid, slipping into a place both unknown and unpleasant and himself helpless to right it.
“Of course not, but I don’t quite understand it. What was the tone of your conversation with her?” Margot’s tone was matter-of-fact, but she folded her arms.
“Same as always. You’ve heard me say it before. Unless you’re a genius, then the goal of writing is to make money and gain a reputation. If that’s scandalous, I’m sorry.” He paused, at once hurt and rankled at Margot’s response to what he’d brought up only in passing. “It’s possible that Amanda was a little too vigorous in agreeing with me. She saw that in my case my writing was leading to solid results at the same time that she was frustrated with Eddie for not working so practically.”
“That’s a shame.” Her head tilted, she stared across the room.
“You think it’s my fault?” He heard his own tone tightening, as though the key to his vocal chords had been turned by an unsympathetic hand. He didn’t understand why Margot, who had always seemed supportive, even adoring, was now critical. It’s not like he hadn’t been up front about who and what he was.
“I’m sure you were only speaking in your natural way and didn’t mean to cause your friend trouble. I think you’re probably a very good friend so long as it doesn’t inconvenience you. Didn’t you once tell me something like that?”
Jackson pushed back in his seat, thinking that he’d been too open with Margot. She’d always been so agreeable, so anxious to please him, that he’d assumed he could be frank with her. Before, he had only to speak when he wanted assurance of her devotion. Now she seemed changed, seemed much more self-possessed, even aloof.
“You have doubts about me? Because I recognize the necessity of making money at writing in order to keep writing?”
“You resign yourself quite happily to the necessity.”
Her gaze felt more clinical than adoring as he searched her face, looking for the sweet, insecure girl who could barely pump her own gas.
“You would rather have me bemoan my fate in not being able to devote my life to nobly unremunerative work?”
“That you never do does give me pause,” she said, “but I don’t mean to be harsh.”
“I suppose you think I don’t care about the quality of my work, or that I’m not capable of writing literature?”
A small smile clung to Margot’s lips and she fiddled with her hands, small in her lap.
“I know that some people don’t have a high opinion of me, but I don’t want you to be one of them. You’re one of the few people whose opinion of me matters. Do you think I’m even capable of generous feelings?”
“Of course. There aren’t many people who aren’t capable of generous feelings.” She met his gaze, her small chin lifted with a defiance he had not noticed before.
“Well, that’s good news. I’m a rung up from the lowest of the low.” Jackson’s disbelief in Margot’s changed demeanor gave ground to his rising anger. “Tell me this, then: what do you think of my book?”
“You already know that I like your book.”
“Well that’s a relief. You like my book and don’t think I’m headed straight for hell. High praise from the author of Pontchartrain, who would never let worldly ambitions enter her gemlike sentences.”
He regretted his line as soon as he saw her chin lower and her eyes go gauzy. She got up and moved toward the door unsteadily, like a bird with a wing injury, and tried to rescue her umbrella, which was caught on the others.
“I’m sorry, Margot.”
“If I need someone to make fun of my book, there’s no reason for me to leave the house.”
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Having someone you care about disrespect your work.”
“Oh, just forget it.” She gave up on trying to disentangle the umbrella and grabbed the doorknob.
“If you insist on running away, let me at least help you with that.” He took the umbrella’s handle and worked to untangle its spokes.
“Like I care about a little rain when my whole life is falling apart.”
“You consider me your whole life?” Jackson asked, softening to her small presence.
“Of course not.” She yelled at him for the first time. “It’s my book. And my father. And, yes, you. I came here for comfort, but it seems that I can never say the right thing to you.”