But then it occurred to me: Maybe the acronym had come before the names and she’d simply selected the names to fit the acronym!
“The List!” I practically leaped up in my seat, like a quiz-show contestant all excited I’d guessed correctly.
But then I checked my own enthusiasm. “I hate to say this, Simon, but haven’t there already been a lot of books published with that title? I mean, it’s not exactly original…”
I could hear him chuckle again. “Oh, but that’s not the title,” he said.
“It’s not?” Apparently, it was the consolation prize for me. “Then what is?”
“Slit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Slit.”
“But isn’t that, um, vulgar beyond belief?”
“Not at all. It’s feminist.”
“A Rashomon-like novel that’s kind of a cross-pollination of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Story of O that’s called Slit is somehow feminist?”
“Well,” he said, “since Cake says it is…”
Great. Now I had a feminist book called Slit to sell. I’d have been better off with Untitled.
Dodo’s date with Stephen Triplecorn had been, er, interesting.
“What did he say? What did he say? What did he say?”
We were at the little Chinese place around the corner from Churchill & Stewart. The food was of questionable origin, but the lighting in the place was dark at least, so it was honors-even.
“Can we at least order first, Jane?” Dodo scanned the menu.
“No, we can’t bloody well order first. Besides, the food here sucks.”
“Well, I’m still hungry, so I’ll have the Moo Goo Gai Pan.”
“Wonderful,” I said, “great. Now, will you tell me about this date?”
“First, you tell me, what are you more concerned with, my dating life or how it affects you?”
“What a question! Of course I care about how it affects me!”
“Of course.”
“Because how it affects me is directly tied to how it affects Emma.”
“True.” Dodo looked a tiny bit embarrassed for having made a fuss.
“And, of course, I also care about your dating life. I always have.” This, of course, was an exaggeration. I hadn’t always cared about Dodo’s dating life other than in the abstract, certainly not back in the days I’d only seen her as my boss. But the more I’d got to know Dodo, the more I liked her, and the more I liked her, the more I cared about her dating life. So the general sentiment was true. It had just taken me a while to arrive at the specific.
“I know that, Jane.” She smiled. “At any rate, it really wasn’t a date, not in the technical sense.”
“Well, he came to your home.”
“But not to see me. He came to talk to me about you.”
And here we were, back at me again.
“Frankly,” Dodo said, “I think Stephen Triplecorn is obsessed with you.”
“Obsessed with me? That’s ridiculous!”
“Yes. The only way I could think to keep him from asking me questions, which I would feel compelled to answer honestly, was by turning the tables on him, by asking him questions instead.”
“What did you ask him?”
“Well, I asked him why this case was taking so long. It seems to me, I said, that what’s taken him months could have been accomplished in a few days.”
“And what did he say?”
“Oh, he gave me that line again about ‘these things take time’ and being ‘underfunded.’”
“But you don’t believe that?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have done some research on foster care and adoption, you know, against the day. Everything I’ve read does point to things taking a ridiculously long time. Everyone says they have the best interests of the children at heart, but you’d think that if that were so, these things would move more quickly, there would be more of an effort made to put babies in situations where they could have a secure and permanent home, rather than drawing it out.”
“Well, and that’s exactly what I mean,” said Dodo. “It’s not like Emma’s birth mother has come forward—or anyone else for that matter—to claim her. I would think, in light of that, that Stephen Triplecorn would want to move more quickly. But instead, he seems content to wait until he’s uncovered every scrap there is to uncover about you.”
I squirmed in my seat. The idea of that made me uncomfortable.
“Don’t worry,” Dodo said. “I didn’t tell him anything he could use against you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I’d known you for several years, that you were clever and resourceful and determined. I said that Emma couldn’t hope for anyone stronger in her corner.”
“Do you really mean all that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said the same thing he kept saying to everyone. ‘There’s something about that Jane Taylor woman. I can’t place my finger on it, but there’s something not quite right there.’”
“Oh no! What did you tell him?”
“I said it was just your determination, that it’s rare to meet anyone as single-mindedly determined as you are, and that that’s what he was reacting to. I told him that at work we call you Dog With A Bone.”
“But you don’t call me that at work!”
“No, but we should.”
I could see that something else was troubling her. “What is it, Dodo? What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?”
She gave me one of those bright-eyed, Dodo-trying-to-smile-but-looking-sad looks. “I like him, Jane.”
I was shocked. “You like Stephen Triplecorn?”
Who knew? Even though she’d never admitted it, probably never would, she had to have noticed his large, er, package. Maybe that was it? I certainly couldn’t think of anything else to recommend him.
“Yes, Jane, I like Stephen Triplecorn. He’s nice and gentle and determined and very dedicated to his work.”
“He has no sense of humor.”
“Details.” She shrugged.
I supposed that I could have pointed out that Dodo was similarly lacking in the humor department—well, except for that Dog With A Bone remark; that was pretty funny—but I kept mum.
“At any rate,” she sighed, “it doesn’t matter what I think of Stephen Triplecorn, since I’m fairly certain he’s in love with you.”
“Please. Isn’t that laying it on a bit thick?”
“He’s certainly obsessed with you, and in my book, obsession and love are just one murderous killing spree apart.”
“Just what book are you reading?”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m not serious. I mean, I don’t think he’s romantic enough to kill anyone over you.” Then she nodded wisely. “But he is a man obsessed.”
Oh, please God, I thought, she had to be wrong about that one. Whether he was obsessed about me (doubtful) or obsessed about my case (more likely) it didn’t bode well.
Emma was beginning to discover games.
She liked playing peek-a-boo (David was her favorite for this), could play patty-cake (believe it or not, it was my mother who taught her this one), and was particularly proud of her newfound talent of waving bye-bye.
I knew she was very proud of that last achievement, but I couldn’t help it: every time she did it, it made me a bit sad. It made me worry that one day she’d be waving bye-bye to me.
I hoped that, when the time came, it would be because she was going off to school and not because life had somehow conspired to take her from me.
August, the eighth month
Christopher had something to show us.
“Call Mary Jr.,” he said. “Tell her to meet us at the playground. Tell her to call the other women, too.”
Even though it had only been a couple of months since I’d come up with the idea of his redoing the playgroun
d, it was finished. It hadn’t taken long to get the town council to approve it, since it wasn’t like we were asking for anything huge, like better neighborhood housing or anything like that. What money they didn’t have, I’d contributed, no one the wiser.
Still, I hadn’t expected…
“It’s beautiful!” Mary Jr. said, as we all stood there trying not to sweat too much, being caught in the midst of the hottest August that Britain had ever known.
And it was beautiful.
Oh, you know, it wasn’t anything grand like something Disney might dream up, but for a neighborhood playground in a poor part of town…
I looked at it through Mary Jr.’s eyes.
Going to her home the way I had been these past several months, I’d had a lot of occasion to reflect on how amazingly fine the line was between having not much really and having just enough: for me, that line came in the form of having my own bathroom, no sharing with anyone down the hall.
So, looking at the playground not just through my great-expectations eyes, but through hers, I saw:
A trimmed-back grass area; equipment that was new, sturdy, colorful and arranged for maximum use, with not one, but four slides, each a different color, one in each corner so there’d be no fighting or jam-ups, regular swings for bigger kids, bucket swings for smaller ones, a sandbox with a closeable chest next to it for storing buckets and things, and a large multicolored jungle-gym/treehouse thing in the center for the more adventurous, of which I was sure Emma would be one day; plus umbrella/table/bench combos for the mummies with small babies.
As I watched Mary Jr. and the other women move off to experiment with all the new stuff, I grabbed on to Christopher’s arm.
“It is the fucking Louvre!” I said.
He actually blushed.
“It’s amazing,” David spoke quietly. “I’m very proud of you.”
“Yes, well…” Christopher’s voice trailed off.
“So what’s next for you,” I asked, “now that this is done?”
“Next?” Christopher took a deep breath. “I suppose that next I’ll be going back into business.”
David took Christopher’s hand in his.
“I couldn’t be happier.” David smiled.
Stan from Accounting was next on Stephen Triplecorn’s list. I’d been dreading this day, knowing it must inevitably come.
In the intervening months since Stan had hacked into Stephen’s computer, our relationship had not only gone back to its previous each-other’s-nemesis state; if possible, it had worsened.
Whenever we had an editorial meeting—every week, in other words—he blocked my ideas. Basically, every time I wanted to say “yes” to something, he said “no.”
And he got everyone else to say it, too.
He was also back to making breast jokes, calling me Taylor instead of Jane and, whenever I threatened to get the better of him, reminding everyone, “Remember when Taylor had that fake-pregnancy scam running for nine months?”
None of which boded well for his meeting with Stephen Triplecorn.
As Stan sauntered out of Dodo’s office after the meeting, he gave me a bit of a sneer, before heading off to his own office.
This was beginning to look worse and worse.
Nearly right behind Stan was Stephen Triplecorn, talking over his shoulder to Dodo. “Right, then. Friday at eight.” When he saw me, he gave a surprised backward jump, before nodding curtly and hurrying on.
I immediately went into Dodo’s office, closed the door behind me.
“What was that all about?” I asked her. “‘Friday at eight’?”
“Oh. That.” She waved me off. “He just wants to talk some more about you. I swear the man’s obsessed. I’ve never seen anyone so in love before.”
Was Dodo nuts? I’d never seen anyone act less in love with someone than Stephen acted with me. It was all he could do not to spit on me when our paths crossed. Still, I remembered when I was little, and Gran Taylor used to say that the boy who made fun of me most in the schoolyard only did it because he liked me so much. I supposed that Stephen’s behavior might be an adult version of that. And yet the thought made me shudder, not least of all because Dodo, sweet Dodo, clearly was besotted with the jerk.
Maybe that’s what it was, I thought. Maybe Dodo’s own vision where Stephen Triplecorn was concerned was so cloudy that she was projecting her own strong feelings for him onto him as being his strong feelings for me. Got that?
I shrugged it all off. As important as Dodo’s happiness was to me, I needed to worry about Stan right now, because Stan in a strange way equaled me, and I equaled Emma.
Dodo didn’t seem to mind changing the subject. On the contrary, she was clearly relieved to no longer be discussing what she perceived as Stephen’s romantic inclinations towards me.
“Stan was amazing!” Dodo crowed.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not. He stuck strictly to the truth, but he was selective about it. He told Stephen, and I quote—” and, by the way, her ability to exactly quote Stan didn’t surprise me; like many good editors, she had an amazing memory for text and was one of those ones who could do “Ozymandias” while popping peanuts at cocktail parties, which may also explain why she didn’t get asked out much “‘—Jane and I have never really gotten along. No. Scratch that. Jane and I particularly detest one another. When she says “yes,” I say “no” and vice versa—and not because we necessarily hold the opposing view either, but because we like being opposed to one another. We’re like a battery—if you have two positive ends or two negative ends, you may have a matched set, but you’ve got no light. All of that said, I can’t imagine a better woman, apart from my sisters, to be a mother. Around here, we like to call Jane Dog With A Bone—’”
“You told him to say that!”
Dodo blushed. “Well, yes. I did prep him on that one. May I go on?”
“You mean there’s more?”
She nodded. “And then Stan said, ‘Can you think of anyone better to have taking care of a baby than a woman who’s known as Dog With A Bone? I don’t even like Jane Taylor, but I’ll tell you this…if I had a baby needed taking care of, and for some reason I couldn’t do it myself, I can think of no one else I’d rather trust that baby to than Dog With A Bone.’ And then he left.”
“But if he said all that in my defense, then why did he sneer at me on his way out?”
Dodo frowned, clearly as puzzled as I. “I dunno,” she shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him that yourself.”
Knock! Knock!
Stan’s voice: “Yeah?”
I entered, closing the door behind me.
“Stan,” I said, “I want to know, I have to know, why did you sneer at me on your way out of Dodo’s office?”
“Oh. That.” He snorted. “Because that’s what you and I do with each other, isn’t it?”
“I know that’s what we’ve always done, but I don’t understand. If we have such a sneering-at-each-other relationship, then why did you stand up for me with Stephen Triplecorn?”
“You call what I did standing up for you? That whole Dog With A Bone thing?”
“Coming from you? Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you why I did it. I did it because psycho-bitches are a pound a dozen. But good mothers? Got to encourage them wherever you find them, however unlikely they may seem.”
Who would have ever guessed? Stan had a soft spot for what he perceived as good mothers and, wonder of wonders, he thought I was one of them. I must have been beaming at him too much, because he reddened.
“Don’t think that just because I helped you out today, I’m going to stop saying ‘no’ whenever you say ‘yes,’ because I’m not.”
“Okay.” I beamed.
“And I’m going to keep saying ‘yes’ whenever you say ‘no,’ too.”
“Okay.” I beamed still.
“And stop smiling at me like that!”
I figured that, in the interests
of our new camaraderie, I’d best change the subject to one Stan would be comfortable with.
“Did you notice anything particularly different about Stephen Triplecorn?”
“Christ, yes! The guy’s got the biggest John Thomas in England!”
For Stan, that was like coming home.
Perhaps it was finally feeling a grandmotherly instinct towards Emma that was making my mother act differently.
Was such a thing possible? Could family members ever really change? Whatever my mother’s reasons, she’d called me on the phone and it wasn’t even for anything negative.
As she invited me, in a rather nice—if cautious—tone of voice, to meet her and Vic at an upscale bar called Tarquin’s, I thought over the past several months, during which time it seemed as though at least once a month we either talked to each other or saw each other at some event like the shower or her visit to see Emma. For us, that was a lot of contact. Weren’t we supposed to keep on being absent from each other’s lives in the vain hope of becoming fonder? Was it really possible that one day we might remotely resemble a nice family?
And now here she was, inviting me to meet her lover.
“Of course, I’ll come,” I said, feeling far more ambivalent about it than I was endeavoring to sound.
“There’s something you should know about Vic.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping my “okay” projected a note of openness.
“Oh, never mind,” she said, sounding nervous, my “okay” clearly not having been okay enough. “We’ll just meet you at the bar.”
Tarquin’s catered to the well-heeled set, but it also really did look like the kind of place your mother would go to. The wait-staff, as I sat in mahogany-and-red-leather comfort, were far more polite than I was accustomed to. In addition to some polo prints on the walls, there were some photos of the large woman who owned the place shaking hands with celebrities, like that Patricia woman from Keeping Up Appearances and another woman who was a dead ringer for Emma Thompson. In fact, something about the room made me feel tempted to order a Dubonnet, save that I didn’t know what a Dubonnet was. So I settled for a decent Chardonnay and watching the door.
Crossing the Line Page 17
