The Celebrity

by Laura Z. Hobson

  Tonight’s, news about more “esoteric, stuff,” he suddenly realized as he met her glance in the mirror, must have thrown his wife a bit off keel. It was never pleasant to have one’s theories assassinated by facts, and for anybody like Cindy, it would be very nearly infuriating. A rush of sympathy warmed him and he said, “You’ve never looked awful in your whole life and right now you look wonderful.”

  Cindy’s eyes cleared and he was reassured. How natural had been her comment about Florida, and how disloyal of him to find it troubling, even momentarily. Cindy had faults, many faults, but she was as incapable as he of being jealous of Gregory. Consolingly he said, “Gregory won’t be taking a vacation just yet—he’ll be too busy and so will I.”

  “You?”

  “Who’s going to be handling all his business detail?”

  “Of course. I hadn’t thought of that at all.”

  “For a while, anyway, and there’ll be plenty of it.”

  “There will?”

  “Sure. A stream of phone calls about splitting up the payments, people to meet and discuss things with—”

  “What people?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. From Digby and Brown, I guess, maybe from Best Selling Books, Incorporated. I’ll find out tomorrow how these things are done.” Cindy was watching him with a strange look, almost a look of, well, whatever it was a look of, it flattered him. His mind raced; he felt himself reaching confidently into new areas of living. “There might even be a movie sale in this,” he heard himself saying with calm authority, though this was a notion which had just been born. “And that would mean people from Hollywood too. Producers and people.”

  Cindy’s head lifted and her shoulders straightened. She turned and looked about the room expectantly, as if guests were due. “It’ll be fun, won’t it?” she said, and smiled at him.

  If Gregory Johns had been as close and constant an observer of human nature as authors are popularly held to be, he would have noticed long before this that the happiness of some of his nearest and dearest relatives was no longer unmixed.

  But Gregory Johns was not such an author. He always needed time to develop the impressions left upon his mind during moments of high import, and only in retrospect did the subtleties of behavior take on their true values for him.

  Thus it was that the small signs of distress here and there seemed to escape his notice. He had heard his sisters grousing about baby-sitters, had seen Cindy’s scrutiny of her own face in the mirror, and had a fleeting impression that though Thorn had been pensive, even sad, until after the call to Chicago, he had swung into violent, almost manic, good humor before it was over.

  But none of these notes jotted down upon the surface of Gregory Johns’ mind were, as yet, easily legible even to him. For some time, his most active preoccupation had been with the idea that it would be nice to go home, and now that he had escaped from the noise and hilarity in the living room, he found himself longing for the moment when he and Abby could be alone.

  He looked about him vaguely. He was in Cindy’s and Thorn’s bedroom; it was cool and blessedly silent. He sat down near the telephone table but made no move to lift the receiver. Ed Barnard had driven down to Philadelphia to work with an invalid author and would get home at two or three in the morning. He wondered if Ed knew, and what he would feel about it when he did know. Apart from Abby, Ed was the one person in the world with whom he might be able to discuss this, turn of fortune and the unprecedented emotions crowding his breast because of it.

  Never as long as he could remember anything would he forget that first moment when Jake Zatke’s slow-paced voice told him his book had been selected. There was one dazzling, blinding instant of joy, unequivocal and pure, at the vision of hundreds of thousands of people reading something he had written, something into which he had put his faith and his love. Never had he worn a face of scorn for the size of one’s audience; never had he pretended that it mattered not whether ten people or ten thousand saw one’s work. Now many times ten thousand people would see his—the knowledge was a huge burst within him, exalted and exulting.

  Later, when Jake had reached the part about the money, there had been another kind of pleasure, of a different nature, less private, more gaudy. This second pleasure one could describe more easily; it dealt with bills and expenses and physical things for Hat and Abby—he thought fleetingly of a large and very white refrigerator. But that first, that inner delight—could he ever share that, even with Abby?

  All evening, startling new emotions had been crowding his mind, jostling each other, trampling and shoving, fairly shouting for attention. Not all of them were wonderful.

  Gregory Johns suddenly recalled snatches of anecdote he had heard from Ed Barnard about certain authors who had begun to regard themselves as virtually immortal the moment they had their first collision with a large success. The details had varied, but never the underlying pattern: a new air of importance, a shy inability to dissuade those who used the word “great” or even “genius,” a newly discovered passion for extra Lebensraum via duplex apartment or remodeled farmhouse in Bucks County or Westport, Connecticut. There was, too, a universal docility toward anyone who insisted on an interview, a photograph, a radio or television appearance, or a private talk at the Stork Club during the height of the rush.

  “All he has to do,” Ed had once said about one such docile newcomer to the Halls of Fame, “is say, ‘No.’ Instead he swills it like a hog and then grieves constantly about how exhausted he is, how unable to work, how astonished at the penalties the world exacts from its authors. And on his desk, he has two framed pictures”—here Ed had begun to laugh—“one of Shakespeare and the other of Abraham Lincoln.”

  Remembering, Gregory wished this unfortunate train of thought could be broken at once. Outside in the hall, Thornton called, “Hey, where are you?” and he answered eagerly, “Right in here.”

  Thorn opened the door carefully as if fearing to disturb a conversation. “Did you get Barnard?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “I’ve been thinking, too. What do you suppose Digby wanted to know all about your other rights for, in the middle of the night?”

  “Why, because—” It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why. “I don’t know.”

  “I bet he thinks there’s a big chance for a movie sale.”

  “He couldn’t. It’s not that sort of—”

  “Is it the sort for a book club?”

  “I’m positive there’s no movie in it.”

  “Don’t be positive about anything, not now.” They stared at each other. “Listen, I’m going to send a messenger out for the manuscript first, thing tomorrow. Or maybe Digby and Brown would let go of another set of galleys now. I’ve got to read it right away. O.K.?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll call you the minute—no, you’ll have to call me.”

  “All right. When?”

  “Early. Right after I’ve talked to—hell, let me think.” He scratched his right nostril thoughtfully. “You’ll be going in to the office tomorrow, won’t you?”

  “Your office?”

  “Digby and Brown. You’ll have to go see them about all this, won’t you?”

  “I—” An odd reluctance began to form in his heart, vague and directionless. “Yes, sure,” he said heartily. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but sure, I guess I’ll be seeing them pretty soon. I want to call Ed Barnard anyway.”

  “You’ll have to go there, too. Look, I’ll find out everything by phone first, and you call me before you go over.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Good. And, Gregory—”

  “Yes?”

  “You’d better get your phone back in as fast as you can.”

  “My phone?” Suddenly he was uneasy, even apprehensive; there was no sense to it, but there it was. His vague reluctance had become a nipping, tugging pull of unwilling
ness.

  “This changes things,” Thorn said earnestly. “Not only will I need to call you about things, but Digby and Brown will, and maybe B.S.B. The news is going to break and then a lot of people will want to talk to you about this or that, and it would drive everybody nuts to wait on the mails.”

  “I suppose it would.” He hesitated. Of course he would have the phone again. A telephone was essential to modern life necessity alone had made him do without one. “I’ll do it the minute I can,” he said, and for no reason at all found himself remembering the awful, the angry helplessness he had felt as a child whenever is parents made him leave an engrossing story and go do his homework.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ON THE MORNING FOLLOWING these events, along the Eastern seaboard of the Continental United States, sunrise was scheduled for 7:25 o’clock, but the only members of the Johns family who could have attested that it occurred even approximately on time were Gerald and Geraldine.

  “There’s the sun,” Gerald said, gazing beyond his wife’s shoulder as they sat at breakfast together in their night-chilled kitchen. “Imagine having breakfast at”—he consulted the electric clock beside the breadbox, but Geraldine, as she did every morning despite the fact that it unnerved him, had disconnected it a few minutes before for the toaster—“at sunup,” he concluded lamely.

  “It’s better than lie there tossing for another two hours.”

  “Maybe for you,” he said. “But I can’t get a nap later.” He remembered how often he had promised himself that he would install a cot or day-bed at the rear of the store, and foolishly given up the plan each time because the delivery men from the pharmaceutical companies’ trucks would think the proprietor of the Johns Pharmacy was getting to be an old man. What vanity; what self-delusion. They could look at him, couldn’t they?

  “Nobody needs to nap when they’re this excited,” Geraldine said comfortably, “but it’s too bad you’re going downtown today. It would be nice to talk out everything a little more.”

  He laughed. “We didn’t skip much last night.”

  “No. Except one thing. One thing we didn’t think of at all.” She sounded serious.

  “What one thing?”

  “The one thing we mustn’t do. I thought of it after you were asleep.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell people about Gregory. Go around just telling everybody in town. No matter which way we told it, it would sound like bragging.”

  Gerald nodded. “I suppose it would,” he said.

  “They’ll hear about it on the radio in a few days, anyway, or read it in a newspaper. Anyway, they’ll hear it somehow and then they’ll think, Why those two knew it all the time and didn’t go shouting from the housetops.”

  “It would be better that way.”

  “A lot,” she said. “Because your friends are always a little upset if one of your children gets rich and famous.”

  How wise she is, Gerald thought; she looks like a perfectly ordinary person, but her intelligence is often astonishing. Well, intuition then; her intuition is often astonishing. She understands human nature so well and she has more self-control than I have. I’d have blatted to the first customer that came into the store.

  He looked at her admiringly. She was in her old flannel bathrobe, but she never looked sloppy, even in the early morning. Her white hair was cut short and it curled over her head like a child’s. Her blue eyes had the odd three-cornered shape that Thornton alone, of all the children, had inherited, and though she had slept even less than he had, they were clear and rested. She was just plump enough so that her cheeks were round and firm; compared to her he must look all skin and bones. Some people filled out and expanded in flesh as they grew old; others seemed to shrink into themselves and get wizened. He was a shrinker.

  “I can’t imagine getting upset if one of the Heston boys got rich and—” He broke off and then said, “But you’re probably right. I won’t say a word.”

  He finished his coffee and put his palms on the table. Pushing down on them, he rose to his feet. His knees felt like cement. It would be good to go back to bed, but he never felt comfortable letting Hiram run things alone all day, filling prescriptions as well as managing the counters. He sighed and started for the stairs.

  In the bedroom, he slowly drew on the socks Geraldine had remembered to lay out, along with fresh underwear and a shirt, before getting into bed last night.

  Last night? This morning; less than five hours ago. He should have made her turn the light out much earlier, but he had felt as much like talking as she had. At Thorny’s, with everybody around, neither of them had said much; they never did any more when they were with young people, even with their own children. Once you were close to seventy, you knew that everything you said sounded pokey or silly, except to other people of seventy; and more and more you kept things to yourself. Even Geraldine hadn’t said much until they had left the party; then she had started and not once during the whole drive home had she stopped.

  If Geraldine had any serious fault, that was it. That not-stopping, that need to tell him every tiny thought she had about every single thing, from the reasons she had decided to paint the kitchen or top a cake with a new kind of icing, to the reasons she felt wonderful that this great success had come to Gregory instead of to Thornton or one of the girls.

  Well, at least this wasn’t paint or icing; this was enough to make anybody want to talk forever. Gregory, of all the children! There was always something strange and special about that long string bean of a boy, but who in his senses would ever have thought he could turn into a famous author? He suddenly remembered the day Gregory had gone off alone to see the editor—he was fourteen and had never traveled on a train by himself. He hadn’t opened his mouth about his plans but he left a note so they wouldn’t worry. “Gone to New York, back soon,” it had said, or something equally laconic. They had worried; the boy was so immature and impractical compared to the way Thorny had been at fourteen. Why, even at ten, Thorny had a paper route that took him three miles from the house every afternoon; by eleven, he was earning two dollars a week mowing neighbors’ lawns; at thirteen, he was regularly employed every Saturday as delivery boy for the store. But at ten Gregory showed not a spark of ambition or gumption; he kept his nose forever in a book, and if you asked him to phone anybody, he would freeze with shyness.

  Maybe Geraldine and he hadn’t been clever about bringing Gregory up. It was so much easier and quicker to send Thorny to the phone, to tell Thorny to water the lawn, to get Thorny to hammer in a nail. It was a real shock when Gregory came jauntily back from New York that day and said, “I’m going to write school news for the Sun. I saw the school page editor and I’m the correspondent for Freeton High.” A boy who had never written anything except bits for the school magazine, having the nerve to tell newspaper editors what he wanted! He never earned more than fifty or sixty cents a week for the items he sent the Sun about class elections and Arista and the S.O.—what had S.O. stood for?—but he was prouder of being “on a real newspaper” than if he’d been captain of half the school teams like Thorn. Maybe that alone should have tipped them off that someday he’d be a big author. Student Organization, that’s what it was, and Thorn had been president of it in his last year, while Gregory had never been elected to anything.

  Gerald shook his head, and consulted his watch. It was much too early to go downtown, but he could Start on the Squibb cartons that came yesterday. And, behind the locked doors, alone, he would be able to think everything out. He finished dressing quickly. The store was a good place any time. He was proud of the Johns Pharmacy, especially now that it was the only independent drugstore left in Freeton. He didn’t care how many Liggetts and Rexalls and Walgreens opened up on Main Street, there still would be folks who preferred getting their drugs and cosmetics and sodas in a store that was the lifework of somebody who had belonged to the town for over forty years. They never could have that same confidence, or even affection, for a s
alaried manager of a unit in a big chain.

  His father had owned a pharmacy before him, and his only ambition, as a boy, had been to own one too. From the moment he had married, he had never loved any human creatures except Geraldine and the children, but the store was the other half of his nature and he always went to it with an eagerness that was like love. Once inside, looking out at the world through the plate-glass window, he was undisputed master of everything, challenged by nobody. It was a kingly feeling and he would never be truly old as long as he had it.

  Mysterious vitality, coursing through Geraldine’s nervous system, reduced the burden of her housework to the merest chore, and by nine, she had swept and dusted and made beds and washed dishes, had sprinkled and rolled up yesterday’s wash, had made the chocolate nut pudding which would be dessert for supper, had dressed for the street and started down the path to the front gate. She left the house as hurriedly as if she were late for an appointment. Then she paused uncertainly. Nothing was ahead but the marketing.

  It was mild for January, but the wind was blowing in steadily from the bay and she shivered. Across the street, Amy Persall, wearing only a gingham house-dress without even a sweater over it, was briskly sweeping the steps of the porch. Gazing vacantly at Amy’s back, Geraldine thought, That’s what it is to be young—she can’t be more than a couple of years older than Gregory, and how surprised she would be if she knew that he had just made a fortune! Geraldine stared at Amy thoughtfully.

  The broom made a pleasing swish-swish-swish across the dry planks of the steps. If she were to go across and tell Amy, her broom would drop, her mouth fall open, and her eyes start from her head. Geraldine smiled and remembered her own wisdom at the breakfast table. She promptly opened the gate and turned left. At the click of the latch, Amy looked around and called, “Hello, there.”

  “Morning, Amy.”

  Amy’s broom came to an expectant standstill, but Geraldine only said, “My marketing,” and went right on. She had said she wouldn’t and told Gerald he mustn’t and that was that.