The Editor

by Steven Rowley

  I look closely and can spot where tears have dripped and stained the sleeves of the blouse that covers her spindly arms. I want to lick them, her tears, like our dog Casper did mine the night my hamster died. I remember how loved I felt in that singular moment, puppy lashings covering my salty face, both rough and soft like the finest-grained sandpaper from my father’s workshop; I want nothing more than for my mother to feel this loved too. But just as I work up the nerve and I can feel the smallest tip of tongue cross the threshold of my lips, my mother inhales so deeply on her cigarette that I can hear the paper and tobacco crackle; somehow it’s the loudest sound in the room.

  She exhales her words. “They killed him just like they did his brother.”

  Nothing my mother ever said has stopped me so cold. This was not grief I was witness to, it was rage. I want to ask who “they” are, who is doing this killing, but I know better than to open my mouth. I want to know how people could be so angry or violent, but I know not to form this thought in words. Not right now. The only way to coax more information out of my mother is to stay silent and let her volunteer it. I delicately trace the five freckles on her forearm; I have them memorized. They are stars, the makings of a constellation filled with stardust and matter that holds the answer to every question that could ever be asked. You just have to be quiet enough to listen, so I put my ear to her arm.

  She stubs her cigarette in the clay ashtray I made for her in Scouts, giving my handiwork her full attention as if soaking in its imperfections, its mottled shape and uneven glaze. She then turns to me, startled to see me leaning against her, and stares at me this time, taking in my imperfections, the excuses she would have not to love me if I were someone else’s son.

  “Remember his name. Robert F. Kennedy. He was a good man.”

  His full name does not help me place him, so I stare at the television, hoping the images will help. Most of the pictures are of chaos, and they move too quickly to clarify much of anything.

  “Who is he?”

  My mother thinks about how to answer. “He was Irish like we are Irish. He was Catholic like we are Catholic.” She clutches the cross that she wears around her neck. “He represented a hope that the future would be good. Now I don’t think I understand the future at all.” She kisses me on my head, as if to wish me luck in these unknowable times, and I lean in, trying to get her to do it again. But she doesn’t say anything else for so long, I think the conversation is over. Then, out of nowhere, she adds, “You share a name with him, in fact.”

  I think of my name, James Smale, finding no overlap.

  “Francis. You have the same middle names.”

  “Dad gets mad when you call me Francis.”

  “Your father gets mad about a lot of things.”

  “I like Francis,” I say, my ability to suck up to my mother knowing no bounds.

  “Your father’s name is James and he wanted you named after him. But I chose Francis, and so it became your middle name.” She starts to quiver again, but this time she doesn’t break. She gets up to turn off the television and I hear the hum of static and then nothing. Silence, except for the twittering of birds by the feeder outside and the faint singing of chimes. I want my mother to stop crying, but I also know that when she feels sad I am the only one who can comfort her—and that means maybe getting out of going to school today.

  So I remain perfectly still.

  ◆ SIX ◆

  It’s been like two minutes.”

  The silence on the other end of the line is so absolute, I swear I can hear my mother’s refrigerator hum. My first instinct was to wait, to tell her about Jackie in person, but I knew in my gut this was news that wouldn’t age well. The best thing to do was to get it over with, rip off the Band-Aid and come clean. I drank half a bottle of merlot for liquid courage, then picked at the $5.99 price sticker while having a staring contest with the phone; eventually I blinked and dialed. When she picked up she said she was glad I called, having just had an uncomfortable exchange with the neighbor over a rapidly growing tree encroaching over her property line. When she finished recounting that, I asked after Domino, her overweight cocker spaniel recently diagnosed with canine diabetes (unsurprising, I suppose, given he’s named after the yellow bag of sugar). Domino’s responding to his medication, she said, but he has to go outside more often to pee. When we exhausted all possible topics of conversation, I dropped my news like I was carpet-bombing Baghdad in Desert Storm.

  I check my watch. “Three minutes. It might help if you say something.”

  The first time I ever mentioned the book to my mother, more than a year ago now, I had already finished a draft. I had an unexpected lull between temp assignments and I drove out to see her. Naïvely I thought she would be curious to know everything about it, so I printed her a copy at the shop near our apartment and had it spiral-bound—the presentation was a nice throwback to the stories I once typed on her typewriter. Instead, she diligently sliced a tomato as I told her about the undertaking, explained the inspiration, and described the long hours I put into the endeavor. When I finished, all she said was, “Have some tomato,” and she pushed the cutting board my way.

  “I don’t want any tomato,” I replied. I wanted a reaction to the fact that I’d written a book. A book!

  “Well, this is dinner,” I remember her saying, “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “Dinner is a tomato?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not dinner even if you weren’t expecting company. I thought we could celebrate.”

  I’ll never forget the look on her face, pallid yet outraged. “Celebrate what?”

  Celebrate what. And that sums up where we’ve been ever since.

  I’m about to switch the phone to my other ear and check my watch a third time when my mother finally speaks. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” If I’m not mistaken, there’s panic in her voice, but maybe it’s just surprise.

  “You should at least read it.”

  Another long silence.

  “You’re still not going to read it?”

  “What difference does it make if I read it now?”

  I’m confused. “Do you not get this? It makes a difference to me.”

  “Well, I just assume not.”

  “You’re being crazy.” I don’t mean to be accusatory, it just comes out.

  “How wonderful for you. Now you can tell Mrs. Kennedy I’m crazy and mean it.”

  “You think I told her you were crazy and didn’t mean it?” I smile because it’s a clever line, though I’m aware my mother can’t see my smile over the telephone. I swirl the remaining wine in my glass; shame sets in as I watch it slow and then fall still. I know my mother’s not in the mood for jokes.

  “I have no doubt you meant it.”

  “I didn’t tell her you were crazy.”

  The clanging of pots and pans. She’s always doing some ridiculous task when I call. Today’s project, it seems, is emptying the cupboards. “Maybe you didn’t say it in those exact words.”

  “Maybe not in any words. I don’t think that you’re crazy, so it’s not something that’s in my head to tell.” When speaking on the telephone, it’s easy to conjure the mother I know from the past, when we were close. Her voice sounds much as it always has, at least since she gave up smoking. I like to think she’s frozen in time, and that’s mostly true; she looks to me the age she was when I was maybe fourteen—not young, far from old, with a kind of natural, easy beauty. The only difference: Her hair has gotten lighter over the years, dyed, perhaps, to mask the gray. I wonder if she’s all too aware of time passing, self-conscious about aging, but I could never ask. Certainly she doesn’t see herself through the same softening filter of nostalgia. And I’m sure it’s much harder for her to look at me and imagine I’m still fourteen.

  “People are going to read this now. Is that wha
t you’re telling me?”

  I clear my throat. “My novel? I hope so. Which is why it’s important you read it first.”

  “They’re going to read that I stood on the table and made up words to ‘Carol of the Bells’ when I burnt the Christmas ham.”

  “So you have read it.”

  “Naomi told me.”

  “Naomi told you,” I repeat, imagining this conversation between her and my sister. “Well, you did stand on the table and make up words to ‘Carol of the Bells’ when you burnt the Christmas ham. Or new words. ‘Carol of the Bells’ already has words.” I can tell by her silence she thinks I’ve wandered into the reeds. “And you conducted an invisible orchestra with a wooden spoon.”

  “Then how is it a novel!”

  I have to push past this because we can’t litigate every scene from the book she may or may not have heard of secondhand. Certainly not over the phone. “Dad had just . . . Forget it. You are not insane. You are a human being. It was quite beautiful, that moment, and I wrote it that way. What does it matter if strangers read that?”

  “Mrs. Kennedy is not a stranger.”

  I’m momentarily puzzled. “Are you friends?”

  “She read that I stood on a table and waved a wooden spoon.”

  “Yes, she read that.” And then I add, although I don’t know why, as it certainly doesn’t help my cause, “Twice.”

  I’m in my own kitchen now, with no recollection of getting here—when I first dialed her I was down the hall. With the cordless pinned between my shoulder and my ear, I reach for a box of croutons and pop a handful in my mouth.

  “What are you eating?” she asks.

  “Croutons.” When I swallow I add, “It’s nonstop glamour over here.” It is glamourous now, though, in my mind. Starving writer is far more chic than starving office temp.

  “Croutons,” she repeats disapprovingly, but after the tomato incident I doubt she eats much better. We should get together more often; between us, we could almost make a salad. “I can’t believe you let her read those things,” she finally says. “About me.”

  “About Ruth Mulligan, a fictional character.”

  “Based on me, Aileen Smale.”

  “She doesn’t know you.”

  “She knows you have a mother.”

  “I assume she does not think I was immaculately born!”

  My mother aggressively exhales. I’ve skirted too close to blasphemy.

  I hear a cabinet door close and all I can think is that she should sell the house. That I’ve moved on, and she needs to also. Naomi came closest to convincing her a couple years ago, introducing her to a Realtor friend. “It’s too big for you,” we all told her. But she got skittish and we backed off. I remember I cried at the time, because I was so ready to say good-bye. I’d been ready for a good while.

  “Everyone’s going to know that it’s me.”

  “Everyone who?”

  “Everyone who reads it.”

  “So what!” I fail to see what the big deal is; I would be honored if someone wrote a book about me. “I think people who buy books have a firm grasp on what fiction means.”

  “Write what you know. Isn’t that what they say writers do? They write what they know. You know me, therefore she is me.”

  I’m almost impressed with her logic. “Res ipsa loquitur.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “What.”

  I sigh. “It’s Latin. The thing speaks for itself.”

  It’s surprising to me that this is now her concern. When I asked her to read it the first time, she was quite adamant that the mother character was not her.

  “It’s not about me,” she had said at the time.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. And you know how I know? Because you don’t know me.”

  It was the ultimate slap to the face. A son a stranger to his mother—how could he have written an entire book about her? A mother, a stranger to her son—she had let herself be observed but never seen.

  Naomi was our mother’s defender at first. When I called to complain, she told me, “You would feel differently if things were reversed.”

  “If I exposed something of myself?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t think there are pieces of me on every page of that book? What do you think writing is?”

  I remember she paused, not awkwardly, but like she was genuinely giving it thought. “I don’t think I ever considered it.”

  At least I had ushered one ally over to my side.

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried,” I say to my mother now, when we’ve been quiet so long I almost forget we’re still on the phone. The box of croutons is empty. “Nobody’s perfect. I think people will recognize that.”

  “Certainly not in this family.”

  “In any family.”

  “I don’t—” My mother stops. “It too late now.”

  I consider the world’s imperfections. Not even the world’s, our family’s. The way everyone has tacitly agreed to leave so much unspoken. Everyone, that is, except me.

  “I don’t want to be written about. Let’s leave it at that. Good night, James.”

  “Don’t you even want to know what she said? Mrs. Kennedy?”

  The sound of another cabinet door closing and then things go quiet again. I’m almost certain I can hear her click off the kitchen light. “I want to go to bed. I’m tired.”

  “It’s worth adding two more minutes to your day.” I almost add “promise,” but it’s not a promise I’m certain I can keep.

  “I’m not tired from the day. I’m tired from forty years of my children.”

  “Your children haven’t kept you up in years.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  I plow forward before she can hang up. “She said she admired the mother. She said the reason she responded to the book so strongly was because she admired the character at the heart of it.” I let that sit before emphasizing, “She was saying she admired you.”

  I can hear my mother breathing, the labored way she used to when we were young and a migraine headache was bearing down. “And you believed her.”

  There’s a click and then the line goes dead.

  ◆ SEVEN ◆

  My agent’s office occupies a small suite on West Fifty-Ninth Street. It’s cozy and dim; the wooden shutters are kept mostly drawn and the office is lit with Tiffany table lamps, giving it a soft glow. It has the requisite characteristics of what you think a literary agent’s office once was, and still should be: someplace where you’d like to curl up with a good book and read. And you could find plenty of them—books—as the walls of the main room where Donna sits are lined with dark walnut bookcases crammed with endless titles. The rest of the office is littered with stacks of dusty newspapers, old copies of The New York Times Book Review, and past issues of The New Yorker. Sometimes I have to move papers out of a chair just to sit down.

  Donna usually greets me with the enthusiasm of a poodle who has been left home all day. Most of Allen’s business is conducted via phone and fax, as his clients are spread across the country; I don’t think they get many visitors. But when I walk through the door, the office is quiet and empty, and I jump when the door closes behind me.

  “Allen?”

  No response. I take a precursory look at Donna’s desk to see if there’s any paperwork with my name on it. I don’t see any, and head farther into the office, nearly tripping on a box from UPS. Usually I can hear Allen on the phone, but it’s so quiet I start to wonder if this idyllic agency setting isn’t also an exemplary place to stumble on a body or two. Mrs. Peacock in the office with the quill pen.

  “Allen?” I ask again, this time a little louder.

  I hear motion in his office and I freeze (is the
killer still here?), and then Allen peeks his head out the door. “I thought you were Donna.”

  “Nope. Just me.”

  “Come here.” Allen waves me into his office and shuts the door behind me. He starts unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Did you spill something?”

  “No.” He looks me square in the eyes.

  “Allen . . .” When he has the shirt all the way undone, I put up my hands like I’m fending off an attack. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  “Just look at this.”

  I jam my eyes closed. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but . . .”

  For my own safety I lift one eyelid just enough to peek. He slides his shirt off his shoulders, revealing a surprisingly broad, muscular frame.

  “Allen, I’m flattered, it’s just . . .”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of red; curiosity gets the best of me, so I open my eyes fully. His back is battered and the color of a rich cabernet.

  “Is there bruising?” he asks.

  “Jesus, what happened to you?”

  “Reggie.” Allen excitedly nods his approval.

  I lower my voice to a whisper. “Should I call the police?” I make a quick scan of the office for weapons. Do I have it in me to three-hole-punch an attacker?

  “No, no. Of course not.” He slips his shirt back on and starts buttoning.

  “Was this part of a negotiation?” I’m thoroughly confused and maybe a little impressed, as I’m left to wonder if Allen would really go to the mat in this way for his clients.

  “Reggie’s this guy. In Chinatown. I pay him to do that.”

  I’m appalled but also fascinated. “Beat the shit out of you?”

  Allen’s eyes swell with pride. “I got in a few good hits.”

  Of course the writer in me wants to know everything, but he’s already crossed behind his desk to move on.

  “So, contracts,” he says, tucking his shirt into his pants. He looks under a stack of papers.