“You didn’t like it,” I said.
She gazed at me wide-eyed. “Why do you say that?”
“I can tell by your tone. And you didn’t give me my usual hug.”
Getting up, she dropped onto my lap and threw her arms about my neck. I remember thinking she wasn’t as light as she had been as a bride. We were both now in our mid-thirties, and both had added a little weight.
“I did like it,” she said. “Only—”
“Only what?”
“Well, it somehow lacked your usual fast pace.”
I said, “There’s a chase scene, two fistfights and a gunfight in the chapter, for cripes sake.”
“Well, yes,” she said doubtfully. “Probably it’s just me. I’m hardly a literary critic, you know.”
But for my stuff she always had been an excellent one, and her reaction bothered me. Next morning I reread the chapter in an attempt to analyze what she had sensed wrong with it, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything wrong. I thought it literally crackled with action and suspense.
Her reaction to the next chapter was the same, and it remained unchanged clear to the end of the book.
Oh, she said she liked each chapter, and she even forced enthusiasm into her Voice. But sometimes when I glanced up from reading, she looked as though she wasn’t even listening.
And the evening I read the last chapter to her, I caught her yawning.
She told me the book was as good as all the others, though, and at least her hug was enthusiastic.
Having become used to relying so heavily on Ellen’s judgment, I was a little apprehensive when I shipped the book off to my literary agent. But his reaction was as favorable as usual, and so was that of the editor at the publishing house who handled my books. I decided Ellen’s judgment wasn’t as infallible as I had assumed.
It turned out to be better than that of either my agent or publisher, though. The book barely earned the advance against royalties paid me by the publisher, and sold foreign rights only in England and France, whereas my previous books routinely sold in a dozen foreign countries. It’s eventual earnings came to only $3,800.
Meantime, long before I learned how little SENTIMENTAL KILLER was going to earn, I completed my next two books. Since it took my publisher about six months after accepting a script to get it into print, and it was another six months after that before the first royalty statement was due, it was always at least a full year after I mailed off a script before I knew how successful it was going to be. Therefore I can’t claim that loss of confidence because SENTIMENTAL KILLER was less successful than my previous books affected my writing of the next two. I finished both thinking that SENTIMENTAL KILLER had been a success.
It is quite possible that Ellen’s reaction to the books affected my writing, though, because it became increasingly obvious that I had lost her as a fan. She pretended to like them as much as previous ones, but I knew her too well to be fooled. She left no doubt of her real opinion the night she went sound asleep in her chair while I was proofreading to her the final chapter of my eighteenth book.
I read and reread each script, trying to pinpoint just what it was that turned her off, but they seemed to me just as good as anything I had previously written. I finally decided it was Ellen who had lost her touch as a literary critic instead of me who had lost mine as a writer.
But my seventeenth book made only $2,000 in royalties against the $3,000 advance, leaving an unearned balance of $1,000, and sold no foreign rights at all. The eighteenth was turned down by my regular publisher, and was finally unloaded by my agent on one of the minor paperback houses for an advance of $1,500. That was all it ever earned.
After that my career nosedived. And so did my marriage.
As my income dwindled, Ellen’s and my life style naturally had to change. Since there was no way to keep up the payments on our beach home, we had to sell it.
We bought a two-bedroom tract house for $15,000. One of the bedrooms became my office. We dropped out of the country club and stopped seeing most of our friends.
This last was strictly Ellen’s decision. I felt that our reduced circumstances should have no effect on our friendships, but Ellen absolutely refused to have any of the country club crowd see what she kept calling our “tacky house.” And since she refused to extend any invitations, she wouldn’t accept any either. Except for visits from her mother, we became virtual social recluses.
The visits from Mother Bellman increased. She had been only an occasional visitor to our beach home unless she was specifically invited, and then only if she had some actual reason to drop by, such as to bring something she had baked or help Ellen let out a dress. But now she began dropping by several times a week, for no purpose that I could determine other than to sympathize with her daughter for the condition in which she had to live, and to sniff at me.
The personal relationship between Ellen and me underwent as drastic a change as our financial situation. One of the things that had kept our relationship so close, I think, was that I had always basked in her unrestrained admiration for my writing talent. I loved her for many other reasons than just because of her flattering opinion that I was the world’s greatest mystery writer, of course, but that was probably one of the stronger elements cementing our closeness.
After my disastrous eighteenth book, Ellen stopped even pretending she liked my work. In retrospect it is hard to say why I continued, night after night, to proofread my output aloud to her. Certainly it became an ordeal for both of us. I think partly it was because it was such a deeply ingrained habit, we kept it up because neither of us wanted to admit openly that our relationship had changed.
But perhaps another motive, on my part, was simply superstition. Everything of mine Ellen had ever liked had been a literary success; everything she disliked was a failure. I kept hoping desperately I could break the run of bad luck by producing a book she liked.
I didn’t succeed. On the contrary her criticisms became progressively harsher. Of my twentieth book all she said was, “It’s all right, Tom, but I don’t think it comes up to your previous ones.” That sold to the same minor paperback publisher for the same advance of $1,500, and never earned any more.
Of my twentieth book she said, “I hate to hurt your feelings, Tom, but this one leaves me cold.” It was rejected by the paperback house that had published my previous two, and eventually went to a sleazy outfit which paid only a $750 advance. It managed to outsell the advance, but only by a couple of hundred dollars.
My subsequent books for the next couple of years all went to that same publisher. Even though I increased my output to five books a year, we could no longer exist on my earnings alone.
Ellen had to take a job. Her complexion had always been excellent, and she managed to get a job as cosmetician for a large department store. Her starting annual salary was more than my writing was bringing in.
That was another ground for discord. We had always planned together for major expenditures, such as a new car, washing machine or TV. But one morning she drove to work in our four-year-old Buick and returned that evening driving a brand-new Vega. When I suggested she might have consulted with me before making the purchase, she sharply reminded me that she was the major breadwinner in the family.
After that she frequently gave me the same reminder. And she completely took over management of the family finances.
All this time her mother kept dropping by at regular intervals to commiserate with poor Ellen and look down her nose at me.
I will not detail the steady disintegration of our relationship, because I prefer not to think about it. But eventually we reached the point of hating each other. Neither of us openly admitted it, and we continued to observe such meaningless rituals as kisses of good-by and hello when Ellen left for work or arrived home. But deep inside we could no longer stand each other.