Chapter fifty-two
After reading the how-to books he’d ordered, most of them written by marginally successful literary agents or blatantly unsuccessful novelists, Eddie Renfros decided that he might as well make the final stop before he hit rock bottom and try his hand at poetry.
Thanks to Amanda’s out-of-control success, they no longer needed what money his fiction might bring in, and it was clear to Eddie that he had lost his wife’s respect for him as a novelist. He assumed that he was going to lose her fully, in feeling, probably in deed, but he harbored a small hope that he could win back her affection with the very thing that had driven her away: his commitment to language rather than the literary marketplace. Besides, he reasoned, he might more easily manage verse since his concentration was too soggy to sustain an entire novel. It would be good for him, too, to move away from the computer screen and work again in pencil. He’d always loved the sound of soft graphite moving across paper.
He waited for Amanda to inquire, or at least to notice what he was doing, but it had been weeks since she had last asked him about his work. What had once seemed like aggressive nagging, he now yearned for as evidence of wifely interest. Amanda was always coming in or going out — rarely in the apartment except to sleep and write. More and more, though, she left each morning with her new laptop, saying it was easier for her to write in public than at home.
One Saturday afternoon she breezed in with several shopping bags. Eddie recognized the names of expensive department stores, women’s boutiques, and a lingerie retailer. It had been months since he’d seen Amanda in anything other than full street clothes or her oversized bathrobe and hair towel. It seemed as though a decade had passed since the early days of their marriage, when she would rush in from shopping and then materialize in the living room wearing a corset and garters, or adorable panties and ankle socks, or something cake-like with layers of white lace.
He wanted to ask her to model whatever it was that she’d just bought, and he hated her because he could not. “You’re spending a lot of money lately,” he said instead. “The advance may not last forever.”
“I’ve got another one and it’s going to last a long time.”
“Another advance? I didn’t know you’d even finished the new book.”
“Yep,” said Amanda from the bedroom. Eddie could hear the rustling of bags and tissue paper. “Last week. Sorry, I should have told you.”
Eddie walked slowly to their bedroom. “You weren’t going to have me read it?”
“I’ll give it to you when I get the galleys. You’ve seemed busy — writing letters or whatever it is that you’ve been up to with all that pencil sharpening.”
“Not letters. Poetry.”
She turned and cocked her head, her smile not unkind. “Poetry?”
“I’d really like to read your new book.” He moved behind her and stroked her back tentatively, wincing as her body tensed against his touch.
“Capital,” she said. “I’ll print you a copy. Meanwhile, can I see a poem?”
Eddie sat across the room on the sofa while his wife read three of his poems at the dining room table.
She looked straight at him when she finished. “These are good. Especially the sonnet.”
“Really?” he asked.
She nodded. “Really good. You might consider applying for a fellowship or grant of some kind.”
“The kind where I go away for a few months and leave you alone?”
She pushed the pages away and stood. “No, Eddie, for once I wasn’t thinking of myself. These are really good poems, and I’d like something good to happen for you.”
Two days later, working through a blunt headache and a slow breakfast of coffee and toast, Eddie realized that Amanda still hadn’t given him a copy of her new manuscript.
“Print me a copy right now,” he said to his wife as she checked her purse to go out. “Or don’t you want me to read it?”
“The truth is that I do and I don’t. I haven’t quite recovered from your remarks about the point-of-view scheme in The Progress of Love.” In jeans and a white turtleneck and no make-up, she looked very much like the graduate student he’d courted and married.
“May I remind you that your responses to my work have occasionally been less than sensitive?” he said.
Amanda sat down across from him, nodding slowly. “Fair enough, and I’m sorry for that. I guess I understand better now how it smarts. But I really can’t bear to field any snide comments about what’s literary and what’s commercial. I write what I write, and frankly that’s what pays the bills.”
“I’m sure that if I forget that, you’ll remind me.”
“It’s just that you make me feel like I’m a bad writer, and I’m not. I’ve just made a decision to try to write things that people are interested in reading.”
“Then let me read your new book. I’ll bite my tongue about that other stuff.”
“The truth is that I kind of wish I hadn’t written this new book, that I’d written about something else instead.” She chewed her bottom lip a little, her face clouded by a rare shadow of uncertainty.
“I’m sure it’s really good, Amanda. Really, I’d like a copy to read — just as a reader. You know I’ve always admired your prose, the way you can end a paragraph with a punch that doesn’t feel like a gimmick.”
She walked around behind the sofa and folded her arms around his neck. Her sleek hair slid against his cheek, and he breathed in the clean, sharp smell of citrus.
“I don’t know how we ever let things get so difficult,” she said in a tone he couldn’t parse.
“It’s not too late, don’t you think?” He tried to turn his head to face her, but he didn’t want to break the embrace. “I hope it’s not too late.”
She pulled over and went to the counter to retrieve her purse. “If you really want to read the book, ask me next week, and I’ll print you a copy. But remember that it’s not what I wanted to write. I wish I could have written something else.” She sought his eyes and gave several small, earnest nods before leaving.
By the time Eddie remembered to ask her where she was going, she was already out the door. At the window, he watched for her to appear on the sidewalk below, saw her step into the street and hail a taxi to wherever it was that she was heading.
Chapter fifty-three
Standing by one of his nine windows as night sank into Harlem, Henry Baffler argued with Eddie over the difference between flash fiction and prose poetry. His inebriated friend claimed that the two were synonymous and could be used interchangeably, only that poets were more likely to use the term prose poem, while fiction writers and most readers tended to say short-shorts or flash fiction.
“That may be the case, but it shouldn’t be the case,” Henry insisted and laid out the case for flash fiction as a distinct form.
“Fine,” Eddie said, with a stretched sigh. “To go on debating this might lead you to believe that I actually care about this particular issue.”
“How can you not care?” Henry asked, more bewildered than indignant.
On the other side of the glass fell a slow, steady snow — distinct flakes visible against the lighted store signs and streetlights.
“The art of living is the art of compromise or, in my case, of not giving a damn, which amounts to compromise. Who are we to foster our precious sensibilities and act like the world gives a rat’s ass about our petty ideals? Ideals lead to misery for others and ourselves. That’s true in politics, so why shouldn’t it be true in literature and in life? You and I need to learn to cultivate genial vulgarity — that’s what we need — if we’re to get anywhere at all in life. What right do we have to make ourselves and others miserable for the sake of our stubborn idealism? We must make the best of circumstances. Why cut bread with a sharp razor when a serviceable bread knife is at hand?”