Chapter sixty
It was a phone call from Chuck Fadge that had Jackson Miller fuming. Fadge had proposed yet another inane writing story, something about which writers were dog people and which cat people, and was it true that one or more of the Jonathans had some sort of reptile for a pet. Except for the money, Jackson could see little difference between writing for Fadge’s paper and writing for Whelpdale’s ridiculous rag.
“He thinks I’m some hack,” Jackson bellowed. “After Oink, it was one thing to write those pieces — I needed a platform, a way to get my name bandied about — but not now. Now people want to know what I think about actual issues.”
“You’re the man of letters,” Amanda said, with no audible trace of sarcasm. “Tell him to go to hell.”
“Really?”
He eyed his beautiful new wife, watched her hands as she scrolled out her perfect script on the engraved thank-you cards.
She set down the fountain pen and looked right at him. “Absolutely, straight to hell. You don’t need him any more.”
“Every man should have such a supportive wife.”
“Every woman should have a husband short-listed for the National Novel Award.” She resumed, then paused from her note writing. “Guess what I’ve done?”
“Should I be frightened?”
“No, it’s something nice. I finished Bailiff. I even kind of liked it, so Clarice wrote a review and sent it to Swanky. I thought it might make Henry happy — if he’s still sweet on Clarice.”
“Are you going soft on me?”
She laughed and said, “Never fear.”
In the living room, Jackson read his way through a couple of dozen pages of the book that had beat out Hide and Seek for the prize. It was a relief, really, to find the situation as he had expected. As more than one commentator had noted: the winning book was arty to a fault, written in what the author called “juxtaposed fragments,” and by a woman. No doubt he’d never stood a chance with this year’s panel of judges, and he’d been wise to be “previously engaged” the night of the award ceremony, photo op or no.
According to what his editor had been able to find out, the winning volume had sold only two thousand copies, even after the award announcement. Yet it was also true that he found the book’s language oddly hypnotic, and he continued to read until he heard the squeak of Amanda’s chair suggest that she was done with her note-writing and might be willing to retire to the bedroom.
A scant few weeks later the call came. He found out not from the Pulitzer committee but from a reporter from The Times, calling for his reaction to the good news. He fielded calls all day.
“I think we’re going to have to change our number again,” he told Amanda.
“People don’t realize how hard our lives can be,” she grinned.
“And now we’ll be expected to go out and celebrate in style.”
“Of course,” she said, “but not at Grub. The quality of the food just isn’t what it used to be. I felt sorry for Doreen when I had that manicotti. I read about a new place. I’ll see if I can get us in tonight.”
Jackson nodded. “Amanda?”
She reached for his hand.
“What should I write next?”
“Anything you want,” she answered. “Anything you write will be capital.”
Chapter sixty-one
He couldn’t remember asking her to, not exactly, but Rhiannon more or less followed him home after they left the exhibit. Despite her growing jealousy of anything he happened to be reading and their near-constant bickering, despite the relegation of his writing area to an office made from a kitchen closet, and Rhiannon’s constant pronouncements that everything “is dead,” Henry grew used to living with another body. With Rhiannon, he was not alone with his poverty and ideals; he shared them with her.
And so everything was both bad and good on the evening that they opened their door to find a somewhat stout man, wearing a suit with faux gold buttons and nervously smoothing back his thinning red hair.
“My apartment,” the man explained, spreading his hands as though displaying his empire.
To Henry’s great dismay, his anonymous benefactor was not in fact J.D. Salinger, John Fowles, John Berger, or some other reclusive genius, but simply a businessman named John Young, who had been overcome by eggnog-inspired good will after seeing Henry’s on-camera leap on television. After a year of rent-free property ownership however, he remembered his disdain for skinny, poorly dressed young men who turned out to be living in sin with consumptive-looking girls in baggy pants. He was evicting Henry and Rhiannon from his Harlem apartment.
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Young to the unhappy couple, “but I’ve decided to steer my voluntary donations toward a public sports program for the boys up here.”
“Voluntary and donation are redundant,” said Rhiannon before Henry could stop her.
“What? At any rate, I am sorry, but I don’t think I’ve done you young people a service by putting you on the dole. From the looks of you, I would have done better by you if I’d given you a gym membership. You’ve got to exercise the body first, then worry about the mind.”
Henry eyed the bulging stomach on the man and recognized, from his middle-school nightmares, the football shoulders and chest. He had been first saved and then evicted by a man who had probably never read a real book.
Recognizing the foolishness of arguing, Henry said quietly to his girlfriend: “Back to Hell’s Kitchen.”
“If we can afford it.” Rhiannon crossed her arms and issued a snort. “I saw the other day that another gallery has gone in by that old French restaurant with the jigsaw-puzzle portrait of Edith Piaff.”
“Did you know that Edith Piaff was born blind in a whorehouse?”
“Then maybe your girlfriend Clarice Aames can write a story about her.”
John Young interrupted. “I have no idea what you all are talking about, but I’m a decent man and so I’m going to give you two months’ notice instead of one. No need to clean, because a sledgehammer’s the next tenant. Just take all your stuff, lock the door behind you, and throw away the keys.” He strode a few feet down the hall before turning back and handing Henry a letter. “Found this on the landing. Postman must have butterfingers.”
Rhiannon snatched the envelope from Henry’s hands and opened the letter. “Looks like you’ve got a girly fan. Margot something. Before you know it you’ll have quite a harem. You should remember this, though: polygamy is dead.”
“I did buy your book, by the way, and I really did like the first few pages. Nice to see an author writing about a regular guy.” John Young took only one more step before turning again. “Do throw away those keys when you leave, now, because they’ll do you no good. The locks will be changed the very first thing.”
Chapter sixty-two
There hadn’t even been a campus interview — just the one in the cattle-call pit and then the small surprise of the telephoned job offer, not tenure track, but permanent so long as she held up in the classroom. So Margot saw Rebuke, Illinois, for the first time when she arrived with a car full of her belongings. Driving in, she had been disheartened by the dreary two lane highway peppered with sex shops, hunting stores, and a single behemoth club grocery. Yet the town itself sat on a river, and there was a charm to the old albeit cheaply constructed houses. Rebuke could be walked end to end easily. There would be little, other than her students, to distract her from her work. The teaching load would be heavy, she understood this well, and her nights would be filled reading uninspired compositions about capital punishment and cigarettes and the electoral college and the virtues of sunscreen. She realized already, though, that it would be better to feel as though she had too little time than too much of it.