Albatross

by Terry Fallis

  I surfed from channel to channel to watch the story spread. It started on the sports networks: ESPN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, TSN, the Golf Channel. But by about eight-thirty that evening, it had migrated to CNN, CBC News Network, CTV News Channel, and virtually every other network. Apparently, the public’s appetite for celebrity gossip was insatiable. Each hour, the story persisted, airing late in the broadcast and sometimes with new information. They weren’t confirming that I was the author. That was hard to do since I hadn’t yet confirmed it. But as the hours passed, the story became more plausible and more convincing as the evidence piled up. Some networks actually played clips from my infamous ESPN interview as I created the bones of the birthmark story. The online news sites were all over it as well, adding tidbits their enterprising reporters and researchers had dug up to make it even more persuasive. By that stage, I couldn’t reasonably have denied the story, so I turned off my phone and went dark for the night.

  This was going exactly as I’d planned. I felt kind of like the Wizard of Oz working the levers behind the curtain. Though I still wished it hadn’t come to this. For some reason, I slept well that night, though not for very long. I’d turned in quite late. Despite the two-hour time difference, I had managed to reach Alli in her Calgary hotel room. She was frantic. She’d been in a TV studio for a live interview. Just before her segment was to start, the sports anchor had led with my story. She claimed it knocked her off her game a bit, but she survived. After I told her the whole story, she thought my little master plan for world domination was brilliant. We agreed that if anyone asked her about the whole affair, she’d simply say they’d have to talk to me.

  By the time I turned off my iPad, the world seemed convinced the erstwhile Masters champion and gold medallist was also a published author. Right on schedule.

  * * *

  —

  “ALL RIGHT, TIME for phase two of Operation ProsePump Resurrection,” I said.

  I was on a conference call with Susan Maddocks and Edison Hull.

  “Well, it’s been quite a day so far and it’s only nine-thirty,” Edison replied. “But I can tell you that sales of The Birthmark have skyrocketed in the last twenty-four hours. I’ve had calls from the warehouse, my distributor, and even directly from retailers frantically searching for more copies. Orders for at least another five thousand copies have come in. That alone has restored access to my credit line. So we live to fight a little longer.”

  “That’s great news, Edison,” I said.

  “Well, you did it, young man,” he replied. “It was all you and your well-executed stratagem.”

  “I think we need to move quickly to close this circle and let the media drive even more book sales. We can’t wait another day,” Susan said. “So here’s what I’ve set up for this morning, based on our discussions yesterday.”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “Adam, we’re going to deal with sports first, and then move to news. So you start in an hour at TSN for a taped one-on-one with Connor McSweeney. Then they’re going to put you at an anchor desk, and you’ll do six eight-minute segments in a row via satellite with sports shows throughout Canada and the U.S., and one in England. After that, you’re going to the CBC Broadcast Centre for a taped interview on The National, and also an interview for their books webpage. And everything is embargoed until noon, when all hell will break loose.”

  “What about CTV?” I asked.

  “They’ll get the TSN feed. So they’re covered,” she replied.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “It’s almost as if we know what we’re doing.”

  “Well, I’m going to sign off now. I have to get on to our printers to start burning up the overtime. It sounds like we’re going to need a ton of copies of The Birthmark. Keep me posted.” With that, Edison hung up.

  Susan and I conferred a bit longer to make sure we both knew what I was going to say. The questions were quite predictable. And we agreed that I’d simply be as forthright as I could be. Pull no punches. Apply no spin. Just be direct. That made it all easier.

  I dressed up a bit, trying to look like a cross between a pro golfer and a newly published author. I made sure I had my entire schedule on my phone before I walked out my door. Susan had arranged a car to ferry me where I needed to go for the day. It was a black Range Rover. Of course it was. That was Susan’s go-to limo.

  At TSN, I was whisked into makeup and then into a chair on an elevated platform, where I sat facing Connor across a low table. The lights were bright and hot.

  “Okay, Adam. This is great. Thanks for coming in. Of course, we’re really focused this morning on the book, now that we understand that you did in fact write it. At least, that’s what your rep told us. Are you good with that?”

  “Yep. And thanks for doing this. I’m ready when you are.”

  Connor touched his earphone, likely listening to his producer in the control room.

  “Okay, we’re good to go,” Connor said. He paused for a few seconds before starting off.

  “We’re really pleased to have Canadian golfing great Adam Coryell in the studio. Thanks for being here. It’s been a while.”

  “Well, thanks for having me, Connor,” I said with a smile.

  “It was about eighteen hours ago that a story started circulating that you’d added published writer to your impressive résumé. And the rumour is that you are actually the author of this collection of short stories called The Birthmark,” Connor said as he held up the book he’d had in his lap. “The author’s name on the book is MacGregor Wilson. The publisher confirms that it’s a pseudonym. So, Adam, are you MacGregor Wilson?”

  “Well, if you’d asked me that yesterday, and many did, I would have tried to weasel out of the question without giving you a definitive answer. But I think we’re a little too far along in the story for that to work. So the answer is yes. I can confirm that I am MacGregor Wilson and that I wrote those stories.”

  “Why didn’t you use your own name on the book the way most authors do?”

  “It’s quite simple, really. I wanted my writing to be considered objectively and be judged on its merits, without my profile as a golfer influencing it in any way.”

  “But if you’d put your own name on it, maybe you wouldn’t have been published by”—he stopped and flipped open the book—“ProsePump, but could have landed a huge book deal with a huge advance from one of the huge publishing houses.”

  “Well, Connor, that may well be true, but then I’d never really know if I was actually a writer, or just a famous golfer who writes. And I’ve wanted to be a writer for a very long time, long before I ever picked up a golf club.”

  It was quite hot under the lights, but I felt a strange, almost serene calm descend on me.

  “So this is obviously not about the money. You want to be seen as a writer. And that seemed unlikely, perhaps impossible, if you were to use your own name.”

  “Well put. You just said it better than I could,” I replied. “Perhaps you should be a writer.” I smiled when I said it.

  “But why admit to it now?”

  “Well, I think the evidence pointed quite clearly in my direction. It seemed a little churlish, even silly, to carry on with the charade.”

  “At least this should be good for sales, right?”

  “For my publisher’s sake, I hope you’re right,” I said. “It’s often tough for small presses in this country to stay afloat. The folks at ProsePump are wonderful and they publish very good books, notwithstanding their questionable decision to publish mine. But if there is a bump in sales, ProsePump could certainly use it, and I think they deserve it.”

  “Some might say you’ve come forward now knowing that revealing your identity will sell thousands of books and put thousands of dollars into your pocket. What do you say to them?”

  I hadn’t really expected that question, but my synapses seemed to be firing on all cylinders right then. I paused very briefly before responding.

  “Well, Co
nnor, for me, it’s not about money. In fact, I’m donating all of my royalties from this book to the recently announced Bobbie’s Bookmobile program, an initiative to put more mobile libraries on the road, in honour of Bobbie Davenport. The goal is to bring the joy of reading to more remote Canadian communities. Bobbie would have loved the idea. So I can assure you, if someone hadn’t leaked the story yesterday, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  “I understand that you have a novel finished that’s in need of a publisher.”

  “I’m not sure where you heard that, but it is true that I have written a novel and it’s possible that my current publisher will be bringing it out, but nothing is certain at this stage.”

  “A final question. Did you make a mistake choosing the pseudonym MacGregor Wilson, two names synonymous with golf?”

  “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I never thought this book would ever gain enough profile for the pen name to matter at all. But now that you’ve raised it, if I were doing it all over again, I think I’d probably choose a name that had no connection at all to what I used to do for a living.”

  And that was that. I used the same general lines in the rest of the interviews, whether they were for sportscasts or newscasts. I was exhausted by the end of it all. As I flopped on the couch late in the day, Alli texted me a photo she’d taken in the bookstore in Edmonton where she’d been signing that afternoon. It showed a stack of my books on a prominently positioned table near the front of the store. A sign propped up on the table said,

  The Birthmark

  by Adam Coryell writing as MacGregor Wilson

  That was encouraging.

  MAY 2022

  Never underestimate the power of celebrity, even when it’s a reluctant celebrity wielding the power. Sales of The Birthmark took off, as I’d hoped, and ProsePump reaped the benefits. A month after the story broke, the collection had sold over 150,000 copies and there was no sign of it slowing. It had also been published in at least a dozen other countries, boosting sales even more. There were several high-profile reviews that followed, keeping me in a state of high anxiety. Interestingly, many in this new crop of reviews were fairly positive. Not effusive, but more positive than the first batch had been. I suspected literary expectations were lower for professional golfers, so I had an easier ride. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but the goal of this entire escapade was to keep ProsePump’s doors open. And we were successful on that front. They were very happily hopping, trying to meet the continuing demand for a short-story collection penned by yours truly—you know, “a competent stylist” and “an okay writer.” I’ll take it.

  Immediately after that first TSN interviewed aired, all of the mainstream publishers starting rolling out the red carpet. They wanted a crack at my novel and were not shy about it. They were so persistent that I pushed them all to Susan, who collected the offers. By this stage, Edison Hall was keen to continue our relationship, and even though our original contract for the novel was no longer valid, he presented a revised offer and upped his advance to $5,000, leaving the rest of the term sheet as it had been originally.

  I called Susan.

  “So, how goes it with all our new publishing friends?” I asked.

  “It’s like the old days,” she replied. “You are back to being a hot commodity.”

  “Yeah, for all the wrong reasons. They haven’t even seen the manuscript yet.”

  “Well, they’re ready to sign anyway. Let me give you the highlights. We have fourteen publishers in play. I’ll dispense with those whose offers can’t really compete with the big boys. So we’re really left with two. Penguin Random House tops the list with a $6.2 million offer, with HarperCollins in hot pursuit at a paltry $5.9 million.

  “Hello, Adam, hello?”

  “I’m here. Did you say $6.2 million and $5.9 million?”

  “I did.”

  “Wow. Did Edison talk to you?”

  “No, he said he’d speak directly with you. Did he call?”

  “He sure did. We had a great chat. ProsePump bumped up their offer to five.”

  “Wow. I can’t believe Edison was able to come up with five million dollars,” Susan said.

  “Ahhhhh, no. I mean five thousand dollars, which, I might add, is five times more than his original offer. He’s never given an advance higher than three thousand dollars, so this is unprecedented.”

  “Well, good for Edison, and three cheers for ProsePump, along with a yellow ribbon for participation,” she said. “But now to the real business at hand. We know the offers and we know the companies,” Susan said. “So what do you think? Penguin Random House or HarperCollins?”

  “Well, it’s an easy call for me,” I said. “Let’s go with ProsePump.

  “Hello, Susan, hello?”

  I SPENT THE next few days, while Alli was still out west, phoning in my schoolwork—though it was all well in hand anyway—and just thinking. I thought a lot, for hours at a stretch. And I wrote. It had been such a crazy time that I really hadn’t had much time to be with myself to think, ponder, meditate, cogitate, and generally reflect on the state of my life. My trip to Lake Temagami nearly two years earlier may have been the last time I’d been able to shut everything else down and just commune with my own thoughts. Now I could, at least for a day or two. As it turned out, I decided or discovered—I’m not sure which—that I’d never been happier.

  “Let’s not be apart for that long ever again,” Alli said when she came through the door from the airport.

  We held on to each other for quite a while with the door open and her bag still in the corridor. Some things can’t wait.

  Twenty minutes later we were leaning in to one another on the couch. At my insistence, Alli gave me a day-by-day play-byplay of her tour. There was a lot of talking into microphones, signing, reading, and shaking hands, punctuated by less-than-stellar hotels and mediocre restaurants. Then I gave an abbreviated version of the hairy events of the last week.

  It seemed like the right time. I was prepared. I was also nervous. I pulled our antiphonal novel out from under the couch where I had hidden it.

  “So, with all my spare time lately, I’ve written my chapter,” I said, handing Alli the tattered spiral notebook.

  “You didn’t! I can’t believe it,” she said. “For the entire flight home I was thinking all I wanted to do was see you. Then I thought maybe you’d written the next instalment when I was gone. We are so simpatico.”

  She opened the coil notebook to the right spot and folded it over so it was easier to hold.

  “Nice. That looks like Montblanc Corn Poppy Red. Am I right?”

  I nodded. Then she fell into it without another word. She was a deep reader. Nothing short of mortar fire could distract her when she was inside a story. It was as if I were no longer in the room. I couldn’t see her face, just the notebook in front of it and the last page of prose she’d turned over. This made it easy to track her progress. We were close now. I slipped my hand into my pocket and got myself ready. Soon, now.

  Right on schedule, I heard her very sharp intake of breath. When she dropped the notebook in mid-paragraph, her eyes and mouth were very wide. When she saw me, they opened just a little bit wider, which was quite an achievement. I was in front of her on one knee. Yes, yes, I know, I know. I talk a good game about rejecting clichés. But sometimes they work. It took another split second for Alli to see what I was holding out to her.

  I had a few lines ready, but I didn’t even say a word. I had no chance. She hugged me hard and burst into tears, again. I’m pretty sure they were good tears. Happy tears.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  WHEN I WAS IN grade eight, I took boys’ golf as an option. (I also took boys’ cooking, but that’s another story.) Every Tuesday, my golf classmates and I would swing nine-irons on the soccer field and occasionally make contact with the Wiffle ball on the grass in front of us. I’ve played golf ever since, experiencing the alternating frustration and elation all golfers understand. Unlike most past
imes, in golf, you seem to need only a little elation—one good shot—to offset a heap of frustration—a dozen bad shots. But despite initial appearances, this is not a novel about golf. It’s about life. Most authors would let you arrive at that conclusion on your own, but I just didn’t want to leave it to chance.

  I’m indebted to my McClelland & Stewart family, who have stood by me for seven novels. In particular, my editor, Bhavna Chauhan, has made this a much better book than it was, and for that I am grateful. My thanks to Erin Kern for her eagle eyes through the copy-edit stage where she caught things I’d never have seen, and to my stalwart publicists, Dan French and Kaitlin Smith, who helps keep me in front of book-lovers across the country. Beverley Slopen, my wonderful literary agent, has always been there for me. And Doug Gibson, who gave me my start at M&S and guided me through my first six novels, still provides wise counsel and constant encouragement. I think of Doug as my editor emeritus, as well as my friend. My twin brother, Tim, is often an early reader of my manuscripts, as he was for this one. His insights are helpful and appreciated.

  As always, my wife, Nancy Naylor, and our two sons, Calder and Ben, continue to encourage my writing life despite the various sacrifices it entails. I’ll endeavour to make it up to them, and will likely fall short. In many ways, they are why I write.

  * * *

  —

  Terry Fallis, Toronto, January 2019