The Editor

by Steven Rowley

  “Well . . . yeah, I had to learn.”

  Silence. And then curiosity gets the best of her. “How did you learn?”

  “Do you know the way scientists discover new planets? Extrasolar planets?”

  “Extrasolar . . . ?”

  “Planets that are too far away to see.”

  She looks at me, befuddled.

  “Astronomers look for distortions in the gravity fields of larger objects nearby they can see.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I read. Anyway, that’s how I learned. I couldn’t see you were beautiful myself, not at first, you were my mother. But I came to recognize the way other people behaved around you. The way they fawned or tripped over themselves just a bit. A distortion in the field.”

  My mother does her best to take this in, but even I know it’s a lot to process, so we sit and wait for a large gust of wind to die.

  “It’s kind of like that. Tonight. How I’m sure. On some level I’ve always known, but it was confirmed by others around me.” I wonder if she understands what I’m getting at, but in truth I’m not entirely sure I understand it myself. Scott, for one. The other boys in my class, the meaner ones, who somehow had the magic ability to see who I was before I even could. The girls who were my friends, who took me in as one of their own. Even my mother herself, who understood on some level I was delicate and called me by an equally delicate name.

  “You’re almost grown, Fran.”

  I stare at my bottle and wonder why she says “almost.” Didn’t she just hand me a beer? Shouldn’t the way I held my ground against my father suggest I had fully become a man?

  “And?”

  “But,” my mother corrects; she abandons the rest of her thought to the prevailing silence.

  “Do you love him?” I ask.

  “Your father?” Without thinking she says, “I chose him.”

  What an odd non-answer. What does it mean? Chose him when? Chose him for what? Over whom?

  It is only then that I notice the faint sounds of The Carpenters’ “(They Long to Be) Close to You” coming from the record player.

  “They’re playing our song,” I say to my mother.

  She leans in and brushes my shoulder with her own. “I put the record on when I went inside.”

  I have the urge to cry because it’s clear to me now that the most beautiful things in life are also the most fragile. Like Karen Carpenter, a girl drummer with a voice that sounded like pale blue light. I look over at the empty driveway. My father stormed out. Maybe for good. Do I want to cry for that? Or the fear that my mother may disappear next?

  “Fran. There are things you don’t understand.”

  I turn and glare at her, angry at first, as if she’s telling me I don’t know myself, or that the proclamation I made tonight is not true. But I can tell by the way her head is turned, slightly down, slightly away, that if I’m not understanding something it is through no fault of my own. “What do you mean?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

  With the right amount of teenage bluster I announce, “I didn’t think it was.” I sit there and stew in the lie.

  “It’s not your fault,” she repeats, because she always knows when I’m lying. “There are things you need to know.”

  I’m not certain I want to know what she has to say, but tonight I am not backing down. “Tell me.”

  “Not tonight.” She puts the beer bottle to her mouth and seems to consume half of it. When she sets it down she says, “I’m afraid for you.”

  “Because of Dad?”

  “I’m afraid that you won’t be happy.”

  “I’m afraid none of us will.” I don’t really know what I mean by that, other than the world feels like a scary place. And even if the country didn’t have its own problems, there are plenty of people hell-bent on making life miserable for people like me. I take a long sip of beer, tilting my head back to let the ale slide straight down my throat. “I’m scared,” I say, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m scared of. Of growing up, I guess. Of leaving home, of leaving my mother, of having to stop being Francis. Of having to become James.

  My mother brushes the hair off my forehead. “You remind me of someone.”

  I look up at her expectantly, the way a young child might, wanting his mother to fix the world and take all of his pain away. “Who?”

  “Someone,” she says, as if that’s any kind of answer. But in some weird way it is.

  I am someone indeed.

  ◆ THIRTEEN ◆

  When morning comes, I send word to Jackie through Joan that I found inspiration in the night and ask, if it’s all the same to her, could I spend the day working; Joan returns with a fruit plate, a buttered English muffin, a pitcher of coffee, and a message from Jackie that that would indeed be fine. I don’t open the door any wider than I have to for Joan; I don’t want her to see the mess I’ve made with the manuscript and lecture me again on being familiar. Also I’m worried about the tornado of pages that could result from even a mild dawning breeze. I pound cup after cup of coffee, trying my best to recall every detail from a different time, every oddity, to tug at every emotional thread. I pause when working on chapter three—something about the father in this part doesn’t sit right.

  I catch a glimpse of Jackie from my bedroom window. She glides across the lawn dressed in a floral silk robe and yellow bathing cap, carrying a towel and a little white jar. When she reaches the pond she drops the robe to reveal a simple black one-piece bathing suit. It’s hard to see her every move from this distance, but she appears to open the jar and slather its contents carefully on her arms, then legs. Lotion? Sunscreen? Cold cream, perhaps. As always, she’s so graceful in this task, like an egret walking the saltmarsh, I wonder if this is not a daily routine. I admire her poise even when she thinks no one is watching. Or maybe it’s instinctual for her to think that someone is always watching. When she’s finished, she tests the water with her toes before slowly disappearing into the pond’s depths. I watch her bathing cap bob along the surface of the murky water for a few minutes before I break myself from my trance and return my attention to writing.

  At one o’clock I open my front door and there is Joan, as if on cue, holding a tray of charcuterie. The incoming sunlight bifurcates my work in two.

  “Jesus, you scared me.”

  “Compliments of you-know-who.”

  I crane my neck around the corner of the house to perhaps see if you-know-who is near, just as Joan snakes her head around me, trying to get a sense of what exactly I’m doing inside. I see no sign of Jackie; she’s either still in the pond or back in the main house. “Thank you, both.”

  As politely as I can, I close the door.

  After lunch, I flag down Joan as she’s plucking weeds from a flowerbed and ask to borrow the bicycle on the front porch; I’m in desperate need of fresh air. I pedal unfamiliar roads with purpose, as if they will cudgel my brain. Instead of bringing clarity to my work, the mental break from my own family provides the opportunity to daydream about belonging to another. The wind in my face and the way my hair sweeps first across my forehead and then back, coupled with my aviator sunglasses, makes me feel positively Kennedyesque. This fantasy is a trap, of course, but one I can’t help but indulge; I sit even higher on the bicycle seat and pedal a good quarter-mile without holding the handlebars.

  When I stumble upon the Chilmark Public Library, I go inside and look up books on Jackie’s life on the Vineyard; they have several on the shelves, including a book with high-gloss photos that capture my imagination. I’m particularly taken with one snapshot where she is holding hands with her children. After an hour of this I’m overtaken with a sense of profound shame. What am I doing? Simply coming here is a betrayal of sorts; now I’m exacerbating my own disloyalty by, what, compari
ng two incomparable women and letting one come up short? These children in the photo are not me. There are no answers here. I put the books back on the shelf and bicycle furiously around the island, getting lost and finding my way back again.

  At around five o’clock I fall asleep splayed out over chapter nine—I wake up with one of the pages cemented to my cheek and another partially crumpled under my hip. I open the cabinets in the kitchen and find an open bottle of scotch, pour myself a healthy slug, and eat three small triangles of bread from the charcuterie plate that have dried into makeshift toast points. I turn on a few scattered lamps and work for another hour.

  At seven I call a taxi, then ring the house to tell Joan that I’m going out for a bit. I’m not sure this is allowed—am I imprisoned here?—so I ask if she needs anything from town; she seems to brighten from my consideration and tells me that she’s fine and it’s just as well, as Jackie is not feeling quite herself. I can tell Joan is relieved that I’m fending for myself instead of her awkwardly having to entertain me or fix me a meal. I walk up to the main road and wait for the taxi there. I ask the driver about restaurants in town and he says the Outermost Inn is local and nice. I like the clever wordplay as well as his description and tell him to take me there; he warns me that in the summer you often need reservations weeks in advance, but there is another tavern that I could get into, no problem, and it’s within walking distance from the inn. I direct him to the Outermost anyway, deciding to take my chances.

  The inn is a rustic estate with weathered clapboard siding and white trim, and the soft light from inside looks welcoming. I do my best to charm the host, but indeed they are booked up for the night. I ask if I can sit at the bar, but he is not able to accommodate. He too suggests the tavern down the road. I’m tempted to ask if he can make an exception for a guest of Mrs. Onassis, but I immediately think better of it. He says I can have a drink in the bar area, but there’s no seating, so he won’t be able to serve me food. I enjoy a scotch and soda while standing among better-dressed parties waiting for their tables and listen to snippets of people’s conversations. I smile as patrons pass by me, unable to successfully engage with anyone except to exchange a few pleasantries. I leave the inn reluctantly; a woman near the exit is eating a bowl of mussels in a white wine sauce and it looks exactly like what I am craving.

  The road is gravelly, and there are very few cars. I can hear the pounding of the ocean surf, but I can’t see the water over the tall dune grass. My path is lit from the three-quarter moon and the occasional streetlamp, and the very last bits of sunlight on the western horizon. It’s quiet, other than the surf; the cawing gulls must be done scavenging for the night and have gone wherever they go.

  The tavern is a short walk, and it too is a welcoming oasis, but in a rowdier fashion than the inn; I can hear the guests erupt in laughter from a good distance. Inside, the place is lit somewhere between dim and bright, and the entire reddish wood interior is covered in framed black-and-white photos of the tavern and the island from the 1960s and 1970s, all hung slightly askew. A waitress tells me to sit anywhere I like, and while there are a few open tables, I take a seat at the bar; sitting alone at a table feels conspicuous. The menu doesn’t have mussels with white wine sauce; in fact, there’s not much of a wine menu at all (unless you count RED or WHITE as a menu), so I order a fried clam plate and a draft beer. I figure the opposite direction is the best way to go.

  “You visitin’?”

  “Pardon?” I turn to the woman next to me. She’s a hard forty, dressed in a short denim skirt and magenta tee with some sort of ruffled cap sleeve and brown boots boasting embroidery. She sits with her legs crossed, sipping a bottle of local beer, looking like an extra in a movie—a Hollywood version of what a local might look like.

  “You vis-it-tin’.” She says it slow, like I’m hard of hearing.

  “Yes. From New York.”

  “I could tell. Next time get the lobstuh roll. It’s bettah than the cla-yums.”

  The bartender slides a pint of beer toward me and I raise it in a toast. “James.”

  “Deb.” She taps my glass with her bottle. “You stayin’ in Gay Head?”

  I choke on my first sip of beer. How do people ever get used to saying that? “With some friends,” I answer, deciding to count Joan as more than an acquaintance. “How about you. Here year-round?”

  Deb nods. “Up island.” She points heavenward, a direction I’m guessing she thinks is north. “Eighth generation.”

  “What’s that like?”

  “Uncomplicated.” She smiles; her teeth are a smoker’s and there are deep crow’s feet around her eyes. “No, I like it. It gets quiet in the wintah. I do odd jobs. Make ends meet. In the summah it’s easy-ah.”

  I nod and focus on my beer. “Seems like a good place to be from.”

  “Why, you from the city originally?”

  “New York, but upstate.” I point at the ceiling for emphasis.

  Deb shrugs. “What brings you here?”

  I think about that. Directly, a cab and then my own two feet. Indirectly? “I don’t know. I guess I’m a little bit lost.”

  She looks at me suspiciously. Didn’t I just say I was staying in Gay Head? How lost could I be? “That’s what’s good about living on an island. Few-ah wrong turns you can make. Eventually you always hit the ocean.”

  It’s both comforting and frustrating how literal she is. “Not lost, lost. I guess I mean . . . I feel a little out of place in the world.”

  She lets that sink in while taking a swig of beer. “You and everybody else.”

  “I guess.” Does everyone else feel that way? I can hear Jackie making an editorial note if she were to read a transcript of this scene: OVERDRAMATIZING. I think about what I mean and how best to express it, then the silence grows awkward and I decide to change the subject. “You ever seen anyone famous?”

  “You mean like a Kennedy?”

  I laugh nervously, like she’s on to me. But I guess on Martha’s Vineyard, Kennedy is the go-to name.

  “That’s what everyone wants to know,” she says. “You tourists are all alike.”

  “I’ll bet,” I say, just to play along.

  There’s a long pause. The bartender appears with a cardboard plate of fried clams, french fries, a mound of coleslaw with a crinkle-cut pickle slice balanced on top, and a dinner roll. He drops it down in front of me.

  “That was fast,” Deb comments. “You even fry that up fresh for ’im?” she yells at the bartender, who turns and playfully gives her the finger.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m so hungry I’d eat anything.” The smell of seafood and grease is nearly intoxicating. I stab a few of the clam bellies with a plastic fork, and indeed, in this moment, they taste as good as anything I’ve ever had.

  “Yeah, I seen ’em,” Deb says. “Kennedys. John Junior once and a bunch of the cousins. Jackie shops at Alley’s. I seen her there once or twice.”

  “What’s that like?” I’m further taken with the idea of Jackie as a local, as a mere mortal. She washes her dishes and grocery-shops, too?

  “You a reportah?” Deb is suddenly on the defensive and looks me over for telltale signs like a notebook or a hat with a press card.

  “No. Nothing like that.” Although something like that.

  “People leave her be. It’s just sort of the island way. She’s been through enough, you know.” Deb thinks about this while she kills her bottled beer. She gestures for the bartender to bring her another, before looking at me and deciding I need another one as well.

  “It’s on me, though,” I tell her, and she salutes me in response. It’s the least I can do for her company, which I feel a sudden urgent need for.

  “I think that’s why they like it here. People leave ’em be.”

  I study my dinner companion. I used to think my mother was Jackie’s opposite and wondere
d how Jackie could possibly look at her and recognize any of herself. But the simple truth is, my mother and Jackie are in many ways alike. Deb is the true anti-Jackie. I use the pause in conversation while we wait for our beer to shovel more clams in my mouth. When the bartender returns with our beer, Deb squeals like a delighted weasel.

  “Did you want me to have a french fry?” she asks, popping one in her mouth without waiting for my reply.

  I laugh while she chews. And then I laugh again, trying to imagine Jackie doing the same, inviting herself to eat off someone else’s plate. “Did you want me to have a haricot vert?”

  “Oprah. Oprah was here.”

  “Here?” I ask, pointing at the floor to indicate the tavern.

  Deb looks at me like I have three heads. “No. On the island. I ain’t seen her though. Just heard that she was.”

  “That’s a good one. Sighting, I mean.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t see her.”

  “Still,” I say.

  “Why you so interested? You probably see famous people all the time in New Yawk.” Deb immediately turns her attention to a man eyeing the jukebox.

  I do see plenty of famous people in New York. Harrison Ford waiting to cross a street in the West Village. Gene Hackman entering the Brooks Atkinson, where he was starring in Death and the Maiden, and similarly Alec Baldwin in Times Square following a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. Jerry Orbach at a liquor store on Ninth Avenue. All kinds of people, all kinds of names. Even Jackie doesn’t seem out of place. But I’m fascinated by her existence outside of Manhattan, how she maneuvers in a world of Debs, how she negotiates her way around us normals. Maybe that’s a kinship Jackie feels with my mother—or at least Ruth Mulligan, the woman she knows from the pages of my book. A woman who tiptoes outside with trepidation, not because paparazzi are lurking but because she is uncomfortable being noticed at all.

  I’m not quite sure what to say, so I just mutter a simple truth. “New York is different.”