The Editor

by Steven Rowley

  “I think we ache for the certainty of our past, perhaps, more so than the goodness of it. Writers open themselves to many perspectives, they put themselves in their characters’ shoes. It muddies your image of things. Much easier to see the past through a single lens, but it’s never the whole story, is it.”

  “This makes sense to you.”

  Jackie looks down and crosses her hands in her lap. “I know it sounds a bit bizarre, but in Camelot, Camelot, that’s how conditions are.”

  I’ve felt so flummoxed by this thought in my little world, and Jackie has lived most of her adult life in the long romantic shadow cast by history. What must it be like to have a whole nation idealize a past that you know firsthand was painfully imperfect? “Do you long for it ever? The past?” It may very well be the most personal question I’ve ever asked her.

  Jackie looks again at the fireplace, as if there were roaring flames that only she could see. “I long for a past that maybe never was.”

  “Saudade, the Portuguese call it,” I say, and then, “Daniel’s mother is Brazilian.” I can’t be sure she’s listening but I add “My Daniel” anyway, and then don’t say anything more. I’m struck with profound gratitude that our paths have magically crossed for this brief moment of existence; she is, I see now, the only logical editor this book could have had. My book, my valiant quest to understand my own Arthurian legend with Igraine at the heart, to define my own Camelot, in the tender hands of Guinevere herself. My eyes well with tears even though knights are not supposed to cry.

  “I’m scared,” I say, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands.

  “Of what?” she asks gently.

  I reach for the second sandwich on my plate before deciding I can’t eat it. “I’m not sure.” But I do know. I’m scared of not knowing how to make things right.

  “You have wells of strength inside you, James.”

  I nod, but I can’t look at her—compliments—and I rub my hands together like I myself might be starting a fire. “I want to thank you. For this adventure. I’m not certain what comes next, but I want you to know how grateful I am that you saw something in my writing that made you want to take a chance on me. I can’t tell you how good it feels to finally be . . .”

  “Celebrated?” Jackie asks.

  I reach for just the right word. “Noticed.”

  “You’re going to be a lot more than noticed at the party.” Jackie leans forward, like she might pat my leg. “I don’t worry about you, James. Some of my authors, I don’t know if they have another book in them, let alone a career. Not you. You are interested in the truth, and that search will always give you things to write about.”

  “Thank you. That means . . . everything to me.”

  In one fluid motion she rises from her chair, standing like a flamingo on one leg before placing the other on the ground. “I have a copy of your book somewhere.” She crosses over to a mahogany secretaire; I follow and she moves some papers around, exposing the desk’s gold foil inlay. “Ah, here.” She holds up the book. “I was hoping you would sign my copy.” She picks a pen out of a desktop pen stand and offers it to me.

  “May I sit?”

  “Of course,” she replies, and pulls back the chair.

  I trace the desk’s gold inlay with my fingers, around the table to the corners, where the leg posts bulge like the corner pockets on a pool table. Like everything else of Jackie’s, it’s flawlessly made. I open the book to the title page and stare at the blank space between ITHACA and my name. Absentmindedly I almost put the pen in my mouth to chew on it while I think, but stop myself just in time.

  Jackie senses my hesitation. “President Kennedy signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty at this desk. So no pressure on you to come up with something momentous.”

  I look up at Jackie with my best You’ve got to be kidding me expression. She laughs and places her hand warmly on my shoulder. “It’s true!”

  I’m acutely aware of her touch.

  “Why don’t I give you some room,” she says, and squeezes my shoulder twice. I hear her refilling her tea before retreating from the study; I look over my shoulder and she hesitates for just a second in the doorway and we share a bashful smile. “Don’t ever stop trying,” she offers again. “Do that for me.”

  My hand starts to shake and I mouth the word promise.

  When I’m certain she’s gone, I put pen to paper, but nothing comes. Complete and total writer’s block. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about this moment, signing a book for Jackie. But nothing ever seemed right. Everything sounded too gimmicky, or trite, and did not encapsulate all that she has meant to me. I glance over at her bookshelf for inspiration and my eyes land on a collected work of poems. The Cavafy poem springs to mind, and I know instantly that it’s perfect. Fortunately, I have the final stanza memorized.

  For Jackie, who gave me the marvelous journey and taught me to understand what Ithakas mean.

  With gratitude, always. James.

  I set the pen down and turn around to survey the room. The books, the wallpaper, the fireplace, the bouquet of fresh red roses on the table beside her chair, the very place she was sitting just moments before, her shoes still on the oriental rug. Of course, she’s just a woman walking around her house in her stocking feet, the way my mother often does. But the sight of her shoes in front of the chair makes it appear that she’s been Raptured. There’s a small moment of dread when my heart feels like a lump—the fear, I suppose, that she’s somehow, at least temporarily, leaving my life.

  Later, when we’ve gone over the publicity plans and she imparts some insight on how to speak to the press and handle any potentially negative reviews, we say our good-byes. Once I’m back in the elevator that will (or will not) return me safely to the ground from my afternoon in the clouds, I crack my gift to read Jackie’s inscription.

  I remember a story Mark once told me where Jackie was feeling obligated or pressured by a business acquaintance to give her autograph. She relented, but signed only Jacqueline Onassis, denying them what they wanted most from her: the allure of Jackie and prestige of Kennedy. But here she has written:

  For James, a son who would make any mother proud.

  With great affection, Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

  As the elevator descends, I jump, knowing full well that the force of my landing may compromise the elevator’s already questionable integrity. But I don’t care. With the floor dropping beneath me, I stay airborne for fractions of seconds longer and it is there that I feel truly alive.

  ◆ THIRTY-TWO ◆

  I’m standing in the middle of the room and people are buzzing about and my tie is too tight, the room is too loud (how can sixty people make the noise of a jet engine picking up speed down a runway?), and this jacket makes it hard to lift my arms quickly enough to snag a glass of champagne from the passing waiter’s tray. I curse my jacket. Tweed. Obvious. I’m playing the role of writer as relic, just as I have to imagine these parties in dark-paneled rooms with brightly dressed literati will soon be a part of a publishing museum; the publishing world, it seems, is changing.

  I maneuvered out of a rambling conversation with a forward-thinking lunatic who congratulated me on the book and then rejoiced in telling me that in ten years there will be no more bookstores. Or there will be bookstores, he said, but they won’t have any books. They will just have a computer and a giant printer, and everything will be print-on-demand and you will choose your own cover and binding, depending on how much you want to spend. Want a leather-bound copy of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers? Fork over your wallet and take a seat. Booksellers like LensCrafters—your chosen title in under an hour. The thought of it is bleak. I mean, I can live without book parties. I can’t live without bookstores. I look across the room, and someone who looks a bit like Gay Talese (but who is not Gay Talese) has witnessed my champagne fiasco, so I playfully wobble my
empty champagne flute between my fingers while raising my shoulders and making a face.

  Can’t get a drink at his own party, the man seems to say.

  What are you going to do? I shrug in return.

  Upon our brief introduction, Doubleday’s editor-in-chief told me they used to keep a suite on Fifth Avenue for book parties and random entertaining back in the halcyon days of publishing, when authors were stars and editors were names and books were events. My editor is still a name (and a star and an event, for that matter), and the publisher has high hopes that my book could do well, based on its association with that name, and a party is just the way to announce that this is a capital N (ENNN) Novel even if I’m a capital N (ENNN) Nobody. But these parties are growing increasingly rare and publishing houses no longer keep suites, so we’re in a large reception area on one of the floors in the Broadway building Doubleday is in the midst of moving into. Because of this, people don’t really know how to act. Guests smile and nod and we make polite conversation about the state of the business or about my chances of making “the list,” which is for most people the New York Times Best Sellers list, but for one gentleman, a writer himself, it was eventually revealed to be the long list for the National Book Award, which I can’t imagine is on anyone’s radar but I suppose is what passes for cocktail chatter at these things.

  Making me feel even more like a nobody is the fact that I barely know anyone here. Daniel is not even by my side. His show was extended, but the actor who played the lead dropped out.

  “Guess who they want to replace him?” he asked. He was eating a banana in our kitchen and you could tell he was suppressing a smile.

  “You?” I must have said it with some degree of judgment, because he tossed the banana peel in the sink instead of in the trash.

  “You don’t think I can do it?”

  “Obviously I think you can do it,” I told him. “I said as much on opening night. Remember? You would be a better Bruce. I said that!”

  “I sense a but,” he said.

  “Of course there’s a but!” If he was now going to be onstage, how was he also going to be at my book party? “You can’t be in two places at once,” I told him. That seemed like a simple statement of scientific fact.

  “Congratulations.” A woman in funereal black interrupts my thoughts by resting her hand on mine. The veins on her hand are alarming.

  “Thank you.”

  She looks around the room for Jackie (it’s always for Jackie), and when she doesn’t see her she carefully but swiftly removes her blue hand and moves on.

  The waiter passes with more champagne, and this time I’m able to swap my empty glass for a full one by keeping my elbow close to my side (it’s best not to fight the jacket) and reaching out with just my forearms, looking tragically like a Tyrannosaurus rex. I take a full, long sip and let bubbles explode in my mouth like Pop Rocks.

  Perhaps because we’re similar in age and most everyone else is at least twenty years older, the waiter feels comfortable leaning in. “I heard Jackie Kennedy is going to be here,” he whispers, like an old-timey gossip. Swirling headlines, swirling headlines.

  “Oh, you heard that too?”

  Of course Jackie Kennedy is not here; her absence is dubious, and the party feels disquieted and unresolved. A bunch of worker bees and drones, waiting for their queen, standing in this newly constructed hive.

  “Congratulations.” It’s the publisher. Or CEO. We’ve met once before. He’s the only other gentleman here wearing tweed; we’re both hanging on tightly, he to the past, me to a future I’m not sure I’ll even like.

  “Thank you. Very kind.” I offer my champagne flute and we clink glasses.

  “She’s very proud of you, you know that.”

  “I was hoping she would be here.”

  He puts his hand on my shoulder. “She does this. She wants the spotlight to be . . .”

  “On the author. I know. I get it.” It’s exactly her modus operandi. But in this case her fame wouldn’t detract from me, it would draw attention to the book. Moreover, I could use a friendly face.

  “Working on anything new?”

  “One wasn’t enough?” We both laugh. “I may have something up my sleeve,” I say.

  “Good. We like our writers writing!” He smiles and squeezes my shoulder before letting go. “Oh, there’s . . .”

  He looks at me apologetically before slipping away.

  “It’s okay. Go.” I give my permission to the empty space where he just stood and am left once again without even the waiter to talk to. I flash back to my argument with Daniel.

  “Your book party isn’t going to be over before I get there,” he promised at the time. “I will let you be the toast of the evening, then I will race across town and I will be there to celebrate you too. I may be wearing some makeup still, but I will make an entrance, and I will be there.”

  Toast of the evening. Ha. Most people don’t seem to know who I am. I take a few steps and set my drink down on a counter that I think is some sort of reception desk. I look around to see if I should grab a napkin to use as a coaster but quickly decide not to bother. I mean, the veneer is nice, but let’s be honest—it’s not like any nuclear test ban treaties were signed on its surface.

  “Having fun?”

  I spin around to see Mark.

  “Oh, thank God.” This time I hug him and don’t feel like letting go. Since I can’t raise my arms in this jacket, my hands meet around his waist in a way that feels even more intimate. I inhale deeply and his skin smells like wet soil after the rain, but in a really high-end way; it’s clear he paid a lot for a fragrance expertly designed and tested to make the wearer seem like he is not trying very hard. Of course this wearer is, trying hard, but it smells so good and I am so desperate it’s all I can do not to lick him. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” he asks.

  I realize I don’t know. It just kind of slipped out of my mouth. “For believing in me.”

  “Are you kidding? Your book is maybe my favorite of ours.”

  I squeeze him again before letting go. “I’m being weird. I’m just so glad to see someone I know.”

  “You know people.” Mark leaves his arm around my shoulders and starts discreetly pointing around the room. “That’s Liz, your publicist. You know her. And that’s the features editor from the Times. He’s good friends with Jackie. I can introduce you. Over there is the team from marketing, and Peter did your book cover, and Janet did the story on you for Kirkus.”

  As Mark talks, all I can hear is an electric hum, the buzzing of telephone wires hot with voices. It takes some time for the sounds he makes to form words and another moment still for me to remember their meaning. “Oh, right. I know Janet.”

  “Where’s your agent?”

  “I’m right here,” Allen says, materializing from behind a cluster of other guests.

  “I thought you’d left.”

  “No, duty called. I was pitching an editor on another client.”

  “Allen, this is Mark, Jackie’s . . .” I struggle in this moment not to embarrass him.

  “Assistant. I’m Mrs. Onassis’s assistant.”

  They shake hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mark.”

  “Did Donna come?”

  “No, no. She was going to but then got in some fight with her mother over childcare. Listen, this time I really am leaving.”

  “Allen,” I object.

  “I know, and I love you, kid. But I’m going to catch the second act of Shakespeare for My Father.”

  “Nothing happens in the first act,” Mark offers.

  “That’s what I heard,” Allen confirms.

  “Something happens in the first act,” I protest, in defense of playwrights. Still, I shake Allen’s hand and we agree to have lunch and as fast as he appeared he is gone.

&nb
sp; “So that’s your agent,” Mark says.

  “Yup.”

  “He seems—”

  I honestly don’t know how Mark is going to finish that sentence, but I cut him off anyway. “You have no idea.”

  “What about your boyfriend? Where’s he?”

  “Not here.” I raise both eyebrows suspiciously.

  “I see,” he says. Is that glee he’s trying to mask? “Another drink?”

  “Sure.” I say it with just the amount of disinterest I know he responds to, and he scuttles into the crowd. I survey the room because now we’re playing a game, or, more accurately, now I am playing a game. (Mark, it seems, is always playing.) I spot someone else not involved in conversation—young, handsome—and I hurry over, hoping for some common ground.

  “Hi. James. The author here tonight.” I smirk, but not in a smarmy way, just enough to let him know I’m in on how ridiculous all of this is.

  “David.” He reaches out to shake my hand. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, thank you very much.” It comes across as a second-rate Elvis impression and I wince. “What are you doing here?” A poor rebound.

  David laughs. “Are you this accusatory with all of your guests?”

  “You know what? I think I am. I’m having a hard time believing that anyone is here for me.”

  He laughs. “It’s okay. I was the same way at my book party. Couldn’t believe any of it either.”

  “Oh, you’re a writer! Thank God.”

  “I am. I wrote a book for Jackie, in fact. And we’re doing another one together. A biography on Jean Harlow. Comes out this fall.”

  “Jackie,” I say, as if trying to place the name. I take a quick scan around the room to see if she has arrived fashionably late. Fashionably very late. European fashionably late.

  David can tell what I’m doing and he puts his hand on my arm. I squeeze my bicep, reflexively. “She doesn’t like these things.”