Elise Blackwell - Grub

Margot sank down in her chair as Andrew sat up straighter to more fully inhabit his.

“Then name me a journal publishing stories with something at stake, stories with something to say.”

Jackson knew that he should back down, but he also saw no reason why he should have to suffer an old fool, a man of yesteryear, when the codger couldn’t even trouble himself to be civil. And so he spoke: “ Putrid City for one, though, yes, its focus is the city — and not without cause. Swanky ’s great, and, unlike the MidMichigan Review , people actually read it.” Jackson ignored the eye contact that Margot sought. “By people, I mean of course young people. And then there’s The Monthly . I’ve got a regular gig with them, not because I need it, but because I respect what they do.”

“ The Monthly? The Monthly !” Andrew stood up, his face florid, his cheeks inflating. He looked as though he might, quite literally, explode. “You write for Chuck Fadge? That goddamn fucking, conniving, gay, piss ant?”

Jackson knew he should restrain himself, but he was tired of biting his tongue in deference to the old blow-hard. Something about Yarborough pissed him off so thoroughly that he couldn’t stop himself from pushing back, consequences be damned. “Now, let me get this straight: Which adjective there gives you the most trouble? That he gets laid, that he’s as clever as you wish you were? Or is it that he’s a damned homosexual?”

Margot stood and said, her voice a tremolo, “Please.” The word trailed off, and she lifted her hand in a stop gesture.

“Get out of my house!” boomed the old man.

Pleasantly flushed with liquor and feeling more triumphant than sorry, Jackson apologized to Margot and said farewell to Janelle.

“Let me drive you to the train station,” Margot said.

“Not in my car!” commanded her father.

“Fine,” Margot whispered. “We’ll walk.” Her voice restored to its normal volume, she said, “And I’m not funding your journal, Dad, and I plan to leave home as soon as possible.”

She followed Jackson outside, apologizing.

“Please, don’t,” Jackson said, smoothing her hair, patting her shoulder. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It was all him and me. You know men and their pissing contests.”

“But now, well, it’s all so impossible.”

“Walk with me, okay? Let’s talk.” They headed down the hill, stepping around patches of ice, toward the road that paralleled the river. Jackson continued, “I don’t want to damage your relationship with your father. I’d hate to make you choose between your father and me, but do I flatter myself to think you might choose me? You see, I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that a woman worthy of a man’s love is better than he is, that she condescends in giving herself to him — and thus that you might love me in a way that’s better than the way I love you.”

“Your love for me is a bad thing? A low thing?”

“Well, a man’s love is both peculiar and astonishingly common. You’re everything I should want. You’re sweet and cute and smart and kind. It’s that I know that I’m vulgar in comparison, and of course there’s no new way to express love. That’s part of why I didn’t speak of love sooner.”

He felt Margot stiffen each time he said the word ‘love.’

“Jackson,” she asked, loosening herself from his arm and pulling back, “what do you want from life?”

“I’ll be honest with you. I want what money can buy. I want a place in society and culture. I want to live among beautiful things and never be troubled by material want. I want to travel and interact as an equal with interesting people. I want season tickets to the Knicks and invitations to black-tie fundraisers at the Guggenheim. I want people to look at me when I enter a room and wish they were me.” He looked at her steadily.

“And nothing more?”

“That’s a lot, Margot. It will mean that I made it on my own merits, so, yes, I admit it: I want what money can buy.”

“And yet you used the word ‘love’ to me.”

“Suppose I said that my only goal in life was to win your love? Would you believe me?” He paused to give his words gravity. “I hope not. But I can honestly say to you that everything I desire will be even more satisfying if I can share it with a woman who loves me. With you, Margot.”

“I’m not wearing a coat. I should turn around.” Her voice was tight.

“Don’t you care for me? I know that I’ve offended you, but don’t you love me?” Jackson blocked her path, wrapped his arms around her small frame, kissed the middle of her forehead.

“Do you really love me?” she whispered.

“I think so, and too much to croon exaggerations in your ear. But, well, you’re perfect.” Jackson pulled his fingers through her curls.

She pressed the side of her face into his chest. “I’ve been thinking of growing out my hair.”

“It’s perfect like it is, Margot. Every other hairstyle looks ridiculous next to yours.”

He felt her small weight against him, felt her face against his chest.

“Please don’t fret about the row today.” He lifted her chin. “You’ll just have to visit me instead of the other way around. Maybe you can make an honest man of me, now that I can afford it. Trust me on this one: your father will want to be around to criticize any grandchildren he might have.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’d better get hoofing. Call me later, if you can, or send me an email. And don’t worry. We’ll figure something out. We’ll see each other soon.”

Lulled by the slight back-and-forth stutter of the train as it returned him to the city he never wanted to leave again, Jackson replayed the afternoon’s brief dispute. It might be fun, he decided, to write a piece about literary journals and writers’ efforts to publish stories in them. He remembered poor Henry Baffler’s tale of a journal that sat on one of his stories for nearly a year. After considering a few angles, he had the perfect idea: he’d slap a fake name on an impeccable story by a master fiction writer — Chekhov or Babel or Welty or someone — and submit it to a dozen journals to see what would happen.

Arriving home to find Doreen out, he checked his answering machine, hearing Amanda’s big news before falling into a stuporous sleep.

Margot Yarborough was not deluded about the sort of person Jackson Miller was, and she knew his talk of love was certainly overblown. But it was clear he was genuinely enamored of her. In the weeks that followed the nasty contretemps between Jackson and her father, she avoided her father almost completely and spent her time weighing various contingencies. Sometimes she imagined that her book would earn a lot of money — she entertained vague ideas about book-club sales or a film option — or that Jackson would invite her to live with him soon. In the absence of either of these life-changing events, her options were more limited. She sent copies of her résumé to the several area colleges that hired adjunct composition instructors, and, once in awhile, she browsed the New York apartment listings. She read the brochures sent by MFA programs around the country and looked at their websites showing some combination of natural splendor and intellectually engaged twenty-somethings, pencils in hand. She pictured herself among them, drawing inspiration from the surrounding mountains or the shimmering Pacific and sustenance from peers more interested in the writing than the publishing.

Punctuating her holding-pattern of a life were contacts from her editor about the approaching release date of her book. Margot pressed herself to relish every step and task: writing the acknowledgements page (on which she thanked her mother and Jackson and her beloved third-grade teacher but not her father); hearing that foreign rights had been sold in Portugal with other languages still possible; receiving an endorsement from a mid-list writer whose work she admired as solid and who termed hers as “heartfelt” and “quietly moving”; sending her editor a list of her institutional connections (a list limited to her alma maters and the writers’ union she’d had to join to publish book reviews in the Hudson Valley Free Weekly ). This is really happening to me, she told herself.