Elise Blackwell - Grub

“Yes, dear?” her father asked, inflating and deflating his cheeks as he worked the unsuccessful cigar.

“Your book,” Margot said quietly, noticing that it was quite cold. “It’s finished.”

“Thank you,” her father replied. “I just never feel quite right about sending a book out without a second pair of eyes on the proofreading. Glad you had a few minutes to spare for me.”

“Dad?”

“Well, now, well, of course you’re more of a copyeditor than a proofreader. I’ll be sure to put your name in the list of people I thank on the acknowledgements page. I can’t single you out, because that might ruffle other feathers, but you and I’ll know you’ll be the most important person in the list.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that I want to invite a friend up for a day, for a visit. He’s a writer, in fact.” Margot was about to add that Jackson’s book was being represented by a top agent when she realized Jackson’s agent was the woman who occupied the number-four slot on her father’s list of enemies.

“Oh, I see,” her father was saying. “It’s a he, now, this friend, A he.”

“Yes, Dad, my friend is of the male persuasion. You’ve actually met him, though it’s unlikely you’d remember.”

“I have a great memory for faces and names. Never forget one. Who is your young man, my dear? I must say I’m jealous like any father would be, but I think it’s high time for this sort of thing. The way you always read and avoid the sun, and even your mother knows more about a kitchen.”

“I have had boyfriends, Dad. And I do cook — for myself. But here, well, you know. Between you and Mom, there’s really nothing I could make.” Margot stopped herself, got back to the point. “The thing of it is, Dad, the thing of it is that you met my friend and — I’m sure owing to circumstances more than anything else — you two got off on the wrong foot. But really he’s a very good guy, and you have a lot in common. You’ll find him good company. And he’s a gentleman, he really is. A bit of southern charm.”

“What father’s heart doesn’t warm to the term gentleman ?”

Margot was relieved to see that her father finally was inhaling smoke from his cigar. She paused to give the nicotine time to make it into his bloodstream.

“Yes, terrific, so what’s his name?”

Margot smiled. “His name is Jackson. Jackson Miller.”

Giving her every hope, her father’s words started quiet and slow. “Ah, Jackson Miller. A nice young gentleman with literary aspirations. I’m sure he’s a top-drawer, first-class, A-list sort of chap. Ah, yes. I’m sure he’s a truly fine human being. Well, that’s wonderful for you, and I’m sure you will have nice visits in all sorts of houses.”

“Dad?” she asked, frightened by his increasing speed and volume.

“But here’s the thing of it: not one of those houses will be mine. I’m sure he’s upstanding and talented and the king of all the dance cards.” He worked his cigar expertly now and seemed to enjoy the crescendo of his own voice. “But I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him, and he will never set foot in any house I own.”

Margot’s shoulders stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his tone back to normal. “I know I sound like an asshole. But I promise you that I’m doing you a favor. Jackson Miller is not a good guy. You can do much better, my dear. Much, much better. Hold out for a real talent — or at least a man who’s a lot nicer than your father. Take a look at what I’ve turned your mother into.”

He looked almost sad, and the uncharacteristic candor made Margot’s come-backs die in her throat. She sealed her mouth, her swallow dry, and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“Now that that’s out of the way, my dear, I wanted to talk to you about using your advance to best advantage. Take some time to think it through, but don’t dismiss this idea: The Hudson Review .”

“It’s freezing out here,” she said, stepping toward the house.

Eddie Renfros surprised himself, finishing his first draft of Conduct ahead of schedule. When he compared the experience to the exultant day he completed Sea Miss or even the quiet, proud moment he typed the final word of Vapor , he found that his happiness was watered down, the sense of satisfaction mixed with some more common substance. He wondered whether this marked a more mature stage in his life as a writer, or whether it was simply because he’d never felt passion for this book.

Still, it was an accomplishment: two hundred ninety-seven pages sat stacked next to the computer under a title page that bore his name. And there was something to the idea of story; this book had a plot. Yet it wasn’t completely inorganic. Despite his detailed outline and, under Amanda’s tutelage, his strict adherence to it, there had been discoveries. He hadn’t planned, after all, for the reader to suspect that the narrator’s promiscuous friend was, despite her promiscuity, really in love with the cellist all along. That had been suggested by the material itself; it had come the way that writing used to come for him — from the act of writing itself.

Of course the manuscript was a mess, full of many ordinary sentences and lines of dialogue that were mere filler for the more interesting, stylized dialogue he would weave in during revision. It needed to be curried with a very fine-toothed comb.

Though Eddie had finished the draft of Conduct and Amanda celebrated with him that evening, in general she seemed no happier with him. She was silent more often than not. Eddie knew that silence was reproach and that Amanda used it to conserve energy. “Just because you’re unproductive,” she’d once explained to him, “doesn’t mean you can drag me along for company.”

But now that he was productive, it seemed unfair of her to pout because his book needed revision. “Every book needs revision,” he said.

She tried to explain her mood away, to blame it on the fact that she was now preoccupied with her own work. But then one day he rounded the blue shoji screen and saw that the stack of his pages was gone. He sat, his hand resting on the spot where his novel had been, until he heard the door to their home open and the tips of Amanda’s heels clicking softly on the wood floor.

“Where is it?” he asked, projecting his voice over the screen but not shouting. “Where is it?”

He heard her sigh, soft and tired. “I gave it to your agent.”

Amanda knew that the book wasn’t ready for his agent. He had overheard her at parties and on the phone telling not just Jackson Miller but also Henry Baffler and Whelpdale, whom she loved to loathe, that her husband had written a book he would be unwilling to read. Should his agent accept the novel and then sell it — both events seemed far-fetched — everyone he knew would greet the publication date with private scoffing or a sad shake of the head.

Sitting there, his hand still where his pages had been, he imagined for the first time what his life without Amanda would be like. Not the vague fear of abandonment — that muted hollow terror he’d experienced before — but an actual conjuring of the days, some of them lonely, but all of them free of the tightness in his stomach, the creeping guilt of failure, the extra pair of eyes always on his work.

What he said was this: “Thank you. That should expedite things.”

She rounded the screen and looked at him as though his face was new to her. “I thought you might react differently. I’m pleased that you’re pleased.”

She smiled, and in that smile Eddie read recognition: they both knew that something had changed between them.