“I don’t want her to think I’m a kid.”
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being sixteen and liking her book.”
“I love her book, Mom.” Jenny clutched the novel to her breast. “She writes with such a deep understanding of tragedy.”
“I suspect that’s because she’s lived with tragedy, Jenny.”
“To lose the man you love, and so mysteriously.” Jenny stared down at the dust jacket of Superior Blue. The cover art showed the dark blue of Lake Superior curving away beneath a menacing blue-black sky. Caught at the edge of earth and air, as if trapped in the mouth of a huge blue monster, was a small sailboat with an empty deck.
“Believe me, Jen, tragedy’s more appealing in the abstract than in the reality. It makes a good read, but it’s awful to live through.”
“Do you think there’ll be a lot of people?”
“If I know Maggie Nelson, she’ll make sure people turn out in droves.”
Two dozen chairs had been set up in the meeting room of the Aurora Public Library. By the time Jo and Jenny arrived, all the chairs had been taken. Along with half a dozen other late arrivals, Jo stood at the back of the room, Jenny beside her. Most of the audience were women, but a few men had come.
“Mom, there he is,” Jenny whispered. “The guy who talked to me in French yesterday. The one who went to the Sorbonne.”
She pointed toward a young man standing against the wall on the other side of the room. Jo pegged him to be in his early twenties. A thin blond mustache dusted his upper lip. He wore scruffy jeans and a white T-shirt that wasn’t exactly clean. Jo recognized him, too. She’d seen him only that morning being interviewed by a newsman at the tent city on the Iron Lake Reservation. He’d spoken ill-advisedly then. She hoped he didn’t have any other ill-advised notions at the moment and was there only because he admired Grace Fitzgerald’s book.
Maggie Nelson stood at the front of the room beside a table on which sat a display of copies of Superior Blue. Grace Fitzgerald was seated at the table, and next to her a boy of nine or ten, with the same honey-colored hair as she. The author wore a light green blouse, probably silk. A small gold cross hung on a thin gold chain about her neck. She was a striking woman, even more so because of her nose, a prominence that resembled a raptor’s beak and that dominated an otherwise soft-featured and lovely face.
Maggie Nelson introduced the author. After polite applause, Grace Fitzgerald said, “First of all, I’d like to thank Maggie for hosting this event. I’d also like to thank so many of you for turning out this evening, although I suspect some of you are here mostly because of the wonderful food waiting for you afterward, courtesy of Fairfield’s. Thanks, Jackie.” She gave a brief wave to a slender, dark-haired woman standing at a table filled with trays of cookies and exotic-looking bars. “And finally I’d like to thank the Friends of the Aurora Library for sponsoring this event and so many others like it.”
She sent a smile in the direction of Jo, for Jo headed that organization and had been the one who’d first approached Grace Fitzgerald with the invitation. Jo had liked the woman immediately and immensely. She found her intelligent-which she’d expected-and also gracious and full of wonderful humor. More important, she felt a kind of kinship with Grace Fitzgerald. In a town like Aurora where not even a dozen years of residence and work on civic organizations were a guarantee of acceptance, she felt as if she’d found someone who could be a friend, someone who, like her, might always be an outsider.
The book, the author explained briefly, was the story of a rich young woman who fell in love with a poor young man. Over the objections of the woman’s powerful father, they married. The young man finally won the father over with his intelligence and integrity and his obvious love for the man’s daughter. A child was born. Life was good. The future looked perfect. Then one day the husband sailed off, as he often had, for an outing on Lake Superior. He never returned. The sailboat was found, adrift and abandoned, but no trace ever of the man who’d sailed it.
Grace Fitzgerald read an excerpt, a scene in which the woman stood on the shore of Lake Superior. It was a cold winter day, months after her husband had vanished. Snow spit from a gray sky and gray waves washed at her feet with an incessant voice that was “the bleak whisper of a bleak forever.” It was the moment she wrapped her heart around the cold truth: He would never come back to her. The voice of the water called to her. She considered the black unknown of death, something that seemed at that moment far better than the stark cold air that sustained her. She teetered, her foot poised to take that longest of steps.
Grace stopped reading. The room held its breath. But Grace Fitzgerald did not go on.
“I’d be glad to answer any questions,” she said. “If you have any.”
A hand went up from one of the chairs near the front. “Ms. Fitzgerald-”
“Call me Grace.”
“Have you had any movie offers, Grace?”
“Honestly, I have no intention of letting Hollywood have my story. I’m sure they’d find a way to slip in car chases and exploding buildings.”
Jo was surprised to see Jenny put up a hand. “Are you really related to F. Scott Fitzgerald?”
“Absolutely. He was my grandfather’s cousin. I’m sure that’s where I get whatever literary talent I have. And just in case you’re wondering, I got my nose from my mother’s side.”
There was general laughter, polite.
“Grace,” Maggie Nelson said. “You’ve written one of the most beautiful books about a man and woman in love. I guess we all know it’s based on your own experience. Does Karl ever get, well, jealous of how you feel about your first husband?”
Grace Fitzgerald shook her head slightly. “They were good friends. Karl’s been very understanding that way.”
“Ms. Fitzgerald, I have a question.”
It was the young man from the tent city on the rez.
“Yes?” The author smiled encouragingly.
“Your current husband rapes the land for his living. He slaughters the forests. He destroys the future for us all. You write about the death of one man. How about the deaths of thousands of other living things?”
Maggie Nelson stepped in quickly. “We’re here to discuss other issues.”
“The trees have no voice. For them, there are no other issues.”
“You’re not going to have a voice either in just a minute,” someone up front called out.
The young man’s face was red, burning with a fierce passion. He moved forward, talking quickly now. “The woman you just read about is thinking of killing herself. Your husband and those like him are killing us when they kill the trees-”
A woman stood and moved to block his way. Jo knew her. Paula Overby, a very large woman with easily enough bulk to squash the young man like a boulder on a beetle. “My husband puts food on our table cutting timber. He’s no killer, you little-” She held herself back from finishing.
Jo, who was more than sympathetic to the cause of Our Grandfathers, found herself irked by the young man’s intrusion and irritated that there seemed nowhere anyone could go anymore to escape confrontation. She was also worried that such tactics did more harm than good.
“That’s all right.” Grace Fitzgerald left the table and walked to the young man. She put a finger to her lips, looking at him closely, thinking. She was a woman with great presence, something Jo noted and appreciated. “I understand how you feel. I share your concern for the environment, I really do. My husband and I don’t see eye to eye on this issue. A lot of issues, actually. But you know-what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Brett. Brett Hamilton.”
“You know, Brett, I’d like to ask you to use a different venue to express your concern, because tonight, we’re just here to have a good time. Have you read my book?”
“No,” he admitted.