It was, he told himself, the life he would have chosen had he not married Amanda and her ambitions. Though it would take years to complete the revision in his head, he began to tell himself a different story of their relationship. In this new story, he cast himself as a somewhat roguish but very fine literary writer, who briefly slummed with a shallow writer of slick fiction for the usual reasons that men marry down: beauty and sex.
Chapter fifty-eight
After their second criss-crossing book tours, Amanda Renfros settled happily into near-married life with Jackson. His decision to turn down the talk show had proved a brilliant publicity move. There was no other way to explain how a novel about the rather mundane life of a not-particularly-well-known Dutch artist could top the fiction bestseller list.
“Do you mind,” Jackson had asked, “being number two?”
“Not as long as I’m your number one,” she’d said in the voice she’d perfected for delivering sweet clichés in a way that made them sound at once ironic and genuine.
And, indeed, it was true that she did not mind. After years of marriage to Eddie, it was a relief to feel that she was finally wedding up.
Their apartment, located behind the locked gates of Sniffen Court, so perfectly suited her taste that she suspected Jackson had had her in mind when he bought it.
She kept busy conforming the interior of the apartment to her tastes — adding a grand piano, selecting window coverings, choosing colors for their guest room. She grew busier still planning a wedding likely to be covered in the society page of The Times and at least mentioned in The Fair or Monde.
Still, ever mindful of the disastrous fate of the has-been, she typed away at a new novel every morning. Titled True Story, the book told the story of a woman whose marriage destructs after she publishes a thinly disguised novel about her own adultery.
Occasionally, when Jackson went out to a party that didn’t interest her, she coughed up a Clarice Aames story. She toyed with the idea of killing Clarice dramatically — perhaps in the line of fictional duty — but she loved and perhaps even needed her alter ego. She enjoyed having two different fan bases; she certainly didn’t want to write only for women. But it was more than that. The truth she admitted to herself was that she liked Clarice’s fiction more than her own. Clarice’s stories seemed more important, telling the awful world into which she’d been born not what it wanted to hear, but what was wrong with it. She even liked the idea that she didn’t get paid for most of Clarice’s work, and so her bleeding-edge stories formed a kind of penance or tithe to literature, in exchange for the money she earned under her own name.
About two months before their own nuptials, Amanda and Jackson attended the wedding of Doreen to the insufferable Whelpdale. As Amanda expected, the ceremony — held in Grub’s banquet room — was a rather appalling affair of interdenominational hoo-ha and weak floral artistry. Still, Doreen looked like the sweet girl that she was in a simple ivory satin dress. Amanda and Jackson were seated at the bridal table, together with two of the Jonathans. She had to hand it to Whelpdale; he’d put together a fairly impressive literary guest list.
“I have news.” Doreen sounded slightly manic.
“Do tell,” replied Jackson, ever charming and on cue.
“She’s signed a book contract!” said her groom, pride visible in his smile and expanded chest.
“Oh my, my!” answered Jackson. “And this, after I had to sit through your little everyone-doesn’t-need-to-be-a-writer speeches. What happened to culinary training?”
Doreen blushed and popped her shoulders up and down twice. “I admit it. I was wrong. Besides, we want to start a family, so I can’t be working long restaurant nights.”
“A children’s book?” Amanda asked, scooting backwards as the waiter set down a plate of goat-cheese manicotti before her.
Whelpdale continued to beam.
“Let me guess,” said Jackson, pausing as though really thinking. “A chick-lit novel.”
“Close,” answered Doreen, eating gingerly across the satin of her bodice. “Two. Well, they’re really two versions of the same book, geared at different audiences.”
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” said Whelpdale, his mouth not quite closed around his food.
Doreen turned back to Jackson. “One is for that adult chick-lit line, “Thong,” and then I’m toning it down and younging it up for their new teen chick-lit series, which will be called “Kiss and Tell.” My book will be the first in the series, and they’ve got some other writers lined up.”
Other writers, Amanda thought, knowing those words would have elicited angry laughter from Eddie.
Jackson raised his glass. “To the author, on her wedding day!”
Chapter fifty-nine
As the edges of his mind frayed, Andrew Yarborough often remembered how he’d felt before his bitterness had turned him into the self-and others-loathing version of himself that he had become. Related to this reawakening of his more likable self was his new life’s work: the cleaning of his office and ordering of his papers and mementoes. This work would take months, perhaps even his remaining lifespan, but already he was reaping the rewards of less clutter and pleasing rediscoveries. He’d re-read letters from the best and brightest novelists from the generation after his, thanking him for reviews, recommendations, behind-the-scenes help. He had been someone, damn it; he had been known and respected.
One morning he tried to explain to Janelle this remembered sense of being someone, of mattering, of needing to be reckoned with. She’d set his breakfast before him — he might need her to cook, but he could still feed himself — and suggested that perhaps he’d been most powerful when he had concentrated on helping others. “It’s when we focus on our own ambitions that they begin to outpace us.”
Sharp come-backs were harder and harder for him, so he just muttered, “Mumbo-jumbo, write it up in a gift book.”
But what he was thinking was that Janelle had held up remarkably well. He reached up and grabbed at her breasts before she backed away. Maybe there was something to that upside-down crap. And the gift books had saved their finances, he had to admit. She wasn’t getting rich, but she was pulling in the money that he used to. They would be able to keep up with the property taxes and stay out of the poor house, particularly now that Margot was leaving home.
He could never have forced a real apology to Margot, but he made amends as best he could. They played the games they had played together when she was that cute, sweet little girclass="underline" checkers, jacks, twenty questions, guess the word.
He still had ill-tempered days when he grumbled at the women in his house. These usually came on his sharpest days, when he was closer to the man he had most recently been and could muster only rage at the prospect of his future. But more often than not, he gave way to the softening of his mind and enjoyed the declining responsibilities that accompanied his growing professional obscurity.
“Just don’t ever let me be undignified,” he said to Margot before she drove away. “When I die, don’t let them bang my head on the floor of the morgue.”
“I’m going to miss you, Dad.” His daughter looked up at him with the same wide eyes she’d opened the day she was born.
“I was there when you were born, you know. I at least did that.”
He stood in the driveway, feeling a sudden weakness in his left knee, as though he were standing on a slope and not level concrete. He lifted his hand, more in salute than in a wave.