Joanna Rakoff - My Salinger Year

I’d barely popped the first tape in, a fresh cup of the office’s dark, bitter coffee on my desk, when the phone rang. It was just after nine o’clock. No one called this early. “Hello?” came a nervous, nasal voice. “Hello?”

“Yes, hello,” I said smoothly. I had come to love answering the phone. The strange control of it, the anonymity. On the phone, I could be anyone. I could be Suzanne, subject of a Leonard Cohen song. On the phone, I had all the answers. Though the answers were frequently all too simple: No. Definitely not. I’m sorry, no.

“Is this ——?” The voice asked for my boss. This was, I suspected, a Salinger call. A crazy one.

“No, I’m her assistant. Can I help you?” There was a long pause, and I waited for an eruption. Sometimes these callers became enraged when they realized they’d been put through to an assistant, insisting their business was too important for a mere underling, that I couldn’t possibly understand the complicated nature of their request.

“Well, I’m calling because—” The man broke off, clearing his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and less hesitant. “This is Roger Lathbury. From Orchises Press. I’m calling about J. D. Salinger. I—” It was clear that my boss’s letter—with its emphasis on secrecy—had terrified him. He had no idea how much I knew and was afraid of destroying this deal before it had even gotten off the ground. He was also just afraid . Afraid in the way most people become when they get what they’ve long wanted.

“Mr. Lathbury,” I cried, interrupting him. “My boss has been looking forward to hearing from you. Let me see if she’s in her office.” She was, of course, in her office, but I had been instructed to say this to all callers before putting them through to her. I was always to check and make sure she wanted to talk or at least to warn her as to who was on the line. There was no intercom system, though, between my desk and hers—or there seemed to be, but I couldn’t figure it out—so I simply rapped softly on her half-closed door.

“Ye-es,” she called irritably without turning toward me.

“Um, Roger Lathbury is on the phone.”

Jumping in her seat, she turned around, her face a mask of anger. “Well, for God’s sake, put him through. And close the door.” A wash of tears sprang into my eyes and I turned away quickly, running the few steps to my desk and pushing the appropriate buttons without a word.

An hour later, as I finished the last of my typing, a tanned, skinny woman in narrow-legged jeans and a close-fitting white T-shirt walked hesitantly through the finance wing, toward my desk. As she crossed the threshold into my domain, something caught her eye and she retreated back into the corner, crouching down in front of the obscure bookcase where I’d found Judy Blume’s books. Oh no , I thought, as a frown arranged itself on the woman’s face. No. No, that can’t be her . She didn’t look at all the way I’d pictured Judy Blume. How had I pictured her? More plump and smiley? I wasn’t sure. Regardless, this had to be her. An overwhelming impulse to protect my boss, the Agency, overtook me, and I considered running out from behind my desk to greet her, explaining that we’d just renovated—true!—and the books were all out of order; we were in the process of reshelving them.

Before I could move, my boss cried, “Judy!” and raced out of her office. Pam must have warned her. Still frowning, Judy rose and allowed herself to be led away from the narrow bookcase. “It’s lovely to see you!” Judy did little more than nod and followed my boss into her office.

A few minutes later, they left for lunch in grim silence—Judy glancing darkly back at the obscure bookcase—without even slowing as they passed me. I gathered my typing and placed it on the corner of my boss’s desk for signature, put on my coat, and grabbed my bag. On the corner of Forty-Ninth Street, I decided to splurge, as I occasionally did, on a tray of gyoza at the Japanese restaurant on the ground floor of our building. The restaurant was always packed with suit-clad Japanese businessmen, and I tended to be both the only woman and the only Caucasian, which lent me a lovely anonymity. I was so out of place that I disappeared. Perched on a high stool at the bar, I ordered my gyoza—the cheapest thing on the menu and the only one I could afford—when I again remembered the letter. There it was, at the bottom of my bag, jostling with the Arts section of the newspaper and the previous week’s New Yorker , which I’d intended to read at lunch. I pulled the letter out and, before I could think better of it, slit the envelope with my thumb. Inside lay two sheets of the thin, airmail-like paper my college boyfriend favored, both sides covered in his neat print. I read the salutation, “Dear Jo,” and, without intending to, let out a great, gulping sob, for no one in my current life called me Jo. Just my family and my old friends. And my college boyfriend. I missed him so. Missed all of him, in every way. “Dear Jo.” Oh God , I thought, what have I done? A moment later, my gyoza arrived, lightly charred, their green skins glistening with oil. I slipped the letter back into its envelope, and though I knew the dumplings were too hot, I pulled one off the neat row, biting into it. Hot oil and broth spurted everywhere and my eyes watered all over again. For days afterward, the roof of my mouth prickled with pain, but for a moment I relished the burning.

The next morning, the phone rang in my boss’s office just after she arrived. “Judy, hello!” I heard her cry, with manic cheer. Her door closed. When it opened again, she was standing in the frame, blinking forlornly. “Hugh?” she called. He came running out of his office and looked at her expectantly. “Well, that’s over,” she said.

“Judy?” he asked. She nodded. “She’s leaving?” It was more a statement than a question.

“Yep,” said my boss, with a raise of her pale brows. “She’s leaving.”

“I won’t ask for whom,” said Hugh.

“Doesn’t matter,” said my boss.

I wondered what my boss had said to Judy about her new novel. But I kept my head down, my eyes focused on the contract in front of me, for my thoughts were utterly disloyal: if I were Judy, I would have left, too.

A week later, Jenny came by my office at the end of the day. I had succeeded in convincing her to stay in town for an early dinner, though I worried that my small victory was Pyrrhic, that she had agreed to this plan purely out of guilt or obligation. She’d not been excited about seeing the Agency for herself—though I’d been to her office quite a few times—and this, more than anything, distressed me: she no longer cared about the details of my life apart from her.

Still, she was trying, sort of, and she arrived at the Agency in her duffle coat, for though it was now June, the weather patterns appeared to be stuck in March: at 5:00 p.m., the skies outside Hugh’s window—just barely visible from my desk—grew dark and ominous, a gray rain pelting down, fierce winds shaking the blinds. “Hello!” I cried, embracing her. Pam, at the reception desk, averted her eyes from this unseemly display of emotion.

“I’m here,” said Jenny, smiling, though her eyes flashed discomfort.

“Let me take you back,” I said, and gestured for her to follow me down the front hallway. “I have to get my coat. And you can see my desk.”

“Okay,” she said, in the sort of tone she used with her mother. “It’s really dark,” she whispered. “Are they trying to save money on electricity?”