A Big Storm Knocked It Over

by Laurie Colwin

  Jane Louise sighed. Martin was to be treated with kid gloves, she knew. He had been signed up for three novels about country life of the rather steamy, existential sort: A Big Storm Knocked It Over, Marauding Dogs Will Eat It, and Snow Makes Everything White. He was considered a literary hot ticket, and his first book was ready to be published. Jane Louise had skimmed through it. On the first page a girl says to a boy: “I’d like to bite into you like a grape.”

  Jane Louise regarded Martin, who had round, innocent brown eyes and an adorable lock of brown hair that fell into his eyes. He looked about twelve years old. Jane Louise didn’t so much want to bite into him like a grape as to nip him fiercely, like a terrier. Why wouldn’t he listen?

  “Well,” she said. “Can we cut a little of the desert? That’s a really long section.”

  Martin looked as if she were about to shred his clothes. “Why, no,” he said. “I mean it. This isn’t just your ordinary T. E. Lawrence stuff. This is art. I don’t want to disturb the balance.”

  I’d like to disturb your balance, you petulant little jerk, Jane Louise thought. Why do I have to be nice to this self-congratulatory twit? And why does Erna land me with this stuff?

  Jane Louise said, “Can we cut a little of Hugh Oswald-Murphy? There’s so much on ice. Besides, Erna’s doing his big Arctic book any minute.”

  It seemed to her that Martin gasped. “Cut Hugh Oswald-Murphy?” he said.

  Jane Louise looked at him hard. “I didn’t mean him personally.”

  “No,” said Martin Barlow.

  He was wearing a faded work shirt. His pink, ripe neck and a triangle of hairless chest were revealed. Jane Louise wanted to smack him.

  “Lookit, Martin,” she said. “If you want anyone to buy this book, it has to be cut. Didn’t Erna tell you that? You said you’d cut in accordance with the design. I’m telling you, if you don’t cut this by one hundred pages, no one will be able to afford it. This book, which will have only tiny woodcuts, will cost more than fifty dollars, and we will have to scrimp on important items, such as binding and the jacket.”

  She thought Martin would cry. Then he gazed back, and she had the eerie feeling that he was trying to look down her shirt.

  “Martin,” Jane Louise said. “Erna and I—we went over this manuscript very carefully. All the proposed cuts are carefully marked. I want you to go into the conference room and meditate on these cuts, and then I want you to accept them.”

  “I’ll look at them,” Martin said, “and see what I think.”

  When he left, Jane Louise slumped over her desk, drinking the remains of the lemonade she had brought with her that morning. It seemed to settle her stomach.

  “How’d it go?” asked Sven. He was standing in the doorway, wearing what appeared to be her jacket.

  “He’s a mule,” she said.

  “Your shirt is unbuttoned,” he said. “Maybe that’ll encourage him to give in. Cute underwear, though. Coral—nice color. By the way, is this your jacket or the hub’s?”

  He disentangled himself from the jacket and hung it over her chair. Jane Louise realized what a mistake it had been to tell Sven that she and Teddy sometimes shared clothes, because Sven had promptly discovered that he and Jane Louise also shared the same size.

  “I borrowed it to go to a meeting,” he said.

  “It’s mine,” Jane Louise said.

  “How sweet,” said Sven. “Sort of like wearing you.”

  He also liked to drink out of her coffee cup, which he said was the poor man’s substitute for other forms of contact.

  “Where’s your jacket?” Jane Louise said.

  “Probably being worn by someone else,” Sven said. “Paula Pierce-Williams.”

  Jane Louise felt an unwelcome stab of jealousy. Paula Pierce-Williams was a part-time designer, a trim, straight-haired woman with a generous mouth, a headband, and thick brown hair. She had two small children, a stockbroker husband, and a house in the country. She had a slight air of being overheated; Sven treated her with a kind of deference.

  “Paula Pierce-Williams is the best person who has ever lived,” Jane Louise said sulkily.

  “Oh, for sure,” said Sven. “I knew her older sister Mollie during a difficult period. She was at the tail end of a dead marriage.”

  “Oh, yes?” Jane Louise said. “And were you helpful?”

  “Always,” said Sven.

  “And did you hire Paula hoping some similarly difficult period would evolve?”

  “Hamish hired her. Paula’s husband is one of his squash partners. That’s the way the world works, honey doll, except for you. You were hired on merit.”

  He spun on his heel and was gone, just as Adele was coming in.

  “Hi! You look awful,” Adele said. “Is Sven being mean to you?”

  “I think he’s going to put the make on Paula Pierce-Williams,” Jane Louise said.

  “She could use it,” Adele said. “What a bitch. She treats me as if I were her personal body servant. Also I can’t believe that anyone who dresses that way could possibly do any kind of artistic work.” Adele believed that creative people should dress accordingly.

  Paula wore what squads of women of her class wore: plain skirts, blazers, little black patent leather shoes, a Chanel scarf, and a handbag.

  “She’s very neat,” Jane Louise said. “And she’s good with type.”

  “Who cares?” Adele said. “Sven likes her around the way cats like to play with mice. They don’t eat them. They just tease them until they give up.”

  “She’ll never give up,” Jane Louise said. “She’s not interested.”

  “Well, speaking of interested,” Adele said, “here’s some news. Dita quit, but you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  Jane Louise did not know; Dita rarely spoke to her now. She seemed insignificant to Dita. Jane Louise had become some mere girl in the art department.

  “She quit?” Jane Louise said.

  “Yes, and she left that huge book on the gardens of France on Sven’s desk with a little note.”

  “A little note,” said Jane Louise.

  “You know, those notes that you could decipher and no one else. Sven seems to think that something is going on between Dita and that guy who has the gardens, or who took the photos, or wrote it.”

  “He wrote it,” Jane Louise said. “Philippe de la Vernard. His garden is in there.”

  “Gee,” Adele said. “She certainly is glamorous.”

  “Well, I have some news,” Jane Louise said. “Close the door and sit down. I’m going to have a baby.”

  Adele sprang from her chair and grabbed Jane Louise’s arm. “Oh, how wonderful!” she said.

  Jane Louise gazed at the rows of books on her shelves, recalling which of them she had designed for Dita. So Dita had quit and was going to run off with Philippe de la Vernard! She tried imagining telling Dita the news that she was pregnant, but it was not a scene she could picture. Dita was not interested in children. The friends she had who had children had grown-up children. One felt they had always been grown up. But it hardly mattered. Dita was quitting without a word to her. Jane Louise was almost embarrassed by how much this hurt her feelings.

  “Oh, I’m so happy for you, Janey!” Adele was saying. “And wait till Sven finds out. He’ll swoon, or maybe you haven’t heard him on the subject of pregnant women.”

  Jane Louise began to feel as if she were in a falling elevator.

  “What are his feelings about pregnant women?” she said. “He hasn’t shared them with me.”

  “Oh, he respects you,” Adele said. “Around us he says any old thing. The other day I heard him tell Dave, ‘It is my fantasy to enter a room full of women, all of whom are pregnant with my child.’”

  “That’s pretty humanitarian of him,” Jane Louise said. “But you know I’m not his type.”

  “You’re one of his types,” Adele said. “Barbara, from contracts, saw him on the street with some girl, and she was tall and dark, like
you.”

  Jane Louise felt an inward flutter, not the sort connected to the early stages of pregnancy. Sven got to her, it could not be denied. Married three times, and it seemed to have no effect on him whatever! A daughter in college, a set of teen twins, and a kinder-gartner, and it all seemed his due. A roomful of women, each pregnant with his child! Jane Louise yawned. Perhaps it was the presence of all those sperm that made men like Sven rove, whereas an egg was like an anchor. The key to Sven was that, if you thought about sex all day long, it drew sex vibrations to you. Sooner or later, the most upright of people would wonder what it would be like to be in bed with you, except of course for Adele, who never thought any such thing. She was about marriage and family in the least sexual of ways.

  What a thing! Jane Louise thought. Just found out I’m pregnant and instead of flowers and sweetness, I have a recalcitrant author and a boss who wants to feel me up.

  “Why is life like this?” she said to Adele.

  “Like what?” Adele said. “Listen. That must be Martin Barlow knocking at your door.”

  The door opened and Martin came in as Adele slipped out. “I’ve been through the manuscript,” he said.

  “That’s impossible,” Jane Louise said. “You haven’t been in there long enough.”

  “I know this manuscript front to back,” Martin said.

  He set it down and came around to stand next to her. She could feel his warm breath near her face. He leaned very close. He radiated heat. His cheeks were flushed.

  “Martin,” said Jane Louise. “You’re breathing on me.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, sitting closer. “Now look, I’ve accepted this cut on page three twenty-five.” He leaned his arm across her, brushing her ever so slightly.

  “You accepted one cut, and I’m supposed to be glad?” Jane Louise said. “How about the other fifty?”

  Martin looked at her. His round glasses and round eyes made him look like a little spotted owl.

  “Okay,” he said petulantly. “All right. But it isn’t my book anymore.”

  “Oh, shut up, Martin,” said Jane Louise. “This is an anthology, not a novel. Erna claims she never lays a glove on your golden prose. I’m asking you to knock out a little Hugh Oswald-Murphy and Gilbert White. One’s in Greenland, and the other’s dead, so what’s it to you?”

  “You also cut Hal Borland,” Martin said.

  Jane Louise shrieked, “I did not cut Hal Borland. I took out two very similar passages about summer, for crying out loud. And he’s dead, too!”

  “It’s about integrity,” Martin said.

  Jane Louise felt like baring her teeth. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to put this manuscript in as is. I’ll ask Erna to take money out of your ad budget so you can make cuts in galleys. I give up.”

  “I think you’re doing the right thing,” Martin said. “This is the right thing. You’ll see. I’m starving. You wouldn’t like to come out and have lunch with me? My treat, of course.”

  He beamed at her with a kind of expressionless radiance that Jane Louise identified as the deep warmth of self-love. How happy Martin Barlow must be.

  “Are you all right?” Martin asked. “You seem to be yawning a lot.”

  “You’re a very tiring guy,” said Jane Louise.

  “Well, maybe I’ll just go back on the train. I’m pretty tired, too. We have a little baby named Lucy, and she gets up very early.”

  “Oh, a baby,” Jane Louise said. “How nice! How old?”

  “Ten months,” Martin said, “I think. I never quite get it right.”

  “It’s really easy,” Jane Louise said. “You try to remember her birthdate and then count forward from there.”

  He gave her an unfocused look, as if this hadn’t occurred to him.

  “Good-bye, Martin,” said Jane Louise, who passionately wanted to see him leave. “Think small.”

  He gave her a crushed look and slunk out.

  CHAPTER 18

  According to her birth book, with each day Jane Louise’s salamander was becoming more and more a human creature. The fact that this process was happening inside her was often so startling to Jane Louise that it caused her to lose her breath. Why? Even Sven’s wives had had babies, and Sven was a father.

  Jane Louise and Sven both took their vacations in August. Sven and Edwina went to Martha’s Vineyard with little Piers and his half-siblings: Anik, who now studied at the Sorbonne, and Allard and Desdemona from San Francisco.

  Anik was gorgeous, with white blond hair and very dark eyes. Her mother was also a great beauty. She lived with a French Marxist aristocrat.

  “Her stepfather’s a count and her father’s a Jew prole,” Sven said of Anik.

  Jane Louise said she did not think there was anything particularly Jewish or proletarian about Sven.

  Anik was a very sensible girl who treated her father as if he were totally beside the point. Jane Louise enjoyed watching Sven get cut down to the size of a normal, boring parent.

  Sven always brought Anik to the office. This was like the switch that threw many things into motion: the summer desk clean-up, the last wrap-up meeting, the pre-vacation lunch.

  In August Jane Louise and Teddy would house-sit for Teddy’s mother while she toured the gardens of Britain with her old college friend. Teddy’s father had hated driving and touring. Although a Brit himself, he was firmly expatriate and never wanted to go back. He hated gardening, and as soon as he and Teddy’s mother had gotten divorced, he had moved to a suburban housing complex where he met his second wife, Martine. Eleanor had brought Teddy up in her mother’s summer house. There Eleanor gardened freely and joined the garden club and the Cottage Garden Society. She was perfectly happy to raise her child in the tranquillity of the country, where she was known to everyone and knew everyone. She only wished that Teddy’s father might have died so she would not have to bear the stigma of divorce.

  Jane Louise and Sven always had lunch together before they went away. They would discuss the upcoming fall list, like good colleagues. Jane Louise never thought of these lunches without a kind of compelling dread. It would be bad news if Sven ever decided to focus on her.

  On the day of the meal she went to find Adele for moral support, but Adele had already gone out to lunch, leaving behind on her desk a magazine called Consumer Bride.

  Sven sauntered out of his office wearing a biscuit-colored linen jacket. He poked at the magazine as if it were a dead mouse. The fact that Adele was getting married was nothing to him.

  They went to Sven’s hangout: a highly polished, old-fashioned saloon with sawdust on the tiled floor and really good food.

  “So,” said Sven absently, surveying the menu. “You and Teddy—same as usual this summer?”

  This caused Jane Louise to blush. This summer would not be quite the same as usual. At the end of it she would be almost five months pregnant.

  “The same,” Jane Louise said brightly. “We’re going to visit Martin Barlow. He lives about half an hour from Teddy’s mother, and I’m going to beat him into line.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sven. “He’s very pushy.”

  “He’s really just a sweet, spoiled boy,” Jane Louise said.

  “You watch him,” Sven said. “Those nature boys are like octopuses—or octopi, I’m sure he’d say—all hands.”

  “He seems pretty harmless in that way,” said Jane Louise, who did not believe this for a minute.

  “Mark my words,” Sven said. “He probably hasn’t recovered from the sight of our coral-colored underwear.”

  A truly integrated person, like Erna, who did not have little parts of her personality flying around, would have been immune to Sven, especially when pregnant. But Jane Louise felt overheated and therefore much more vulnerable.

  “And your vacation?” she said.

  “Oh, ever the cheerful dad,” said Sven. “Everything as smooth as silk. Anik and Desdemona work on their tans and meet the not-too-well-behaved sons of rich, well-heeled
writers and lawyers, Allard plays softball, and little Piers digs in the sand, covered with sun-block. We all watch the meteor showers with Allard, since he’s the family astronomer.”

  “I’ve never seen a shooting star,” said Jane Louise. “Teddy says they’re very cheering.”

  “That’s the difference between us and them,” said Sven. “Gentiles are on such chummy terms with the unknown. I find shooting stars intimidating.”

  “I never think of you as finding anything intimidating,” Jane Louise said.

  “Only the void,” Sven said. “Let’s order.”

  After the waiter had departed, Sven sipped his gin and tonic and mused on summer weather.

  “I like a meteor shower,” he said. “I like those sultry, hot nights when the sky looks dark red instead of black. I like when it’s clammy and sticky. People kind of stick together or they get all slippery.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Jane Louise. An elaborate club sandwich was set before her. It looked somehow sinister, with nasty pieces of bacon poking out and mayonnaise dripping down its toasted sides.

  “It’s a good thing we’re both going away,” said Sven. “I’ve been dreaming about you. Maybe it’s the change of season.”

  Jane Louise stared at her sandwich. A wave of something or other washed over her. How uncool it would be to be sick while at lunch with Sven.

  “I dreamed about Teddy, too,” Sven said. “In my dream he was . . . oh, never mind what he was. Like should never get together with like. That’s why homosexuality is so impossible to a guy like me. Jews should marry gentiles, women should marry men.”

  “You must think my friend Edie has a match made in heaven,” said Jane Louise sleepily. She really did feel sort of awful.

  “That cute dark husband. It sets the mind to work,” Sven said. “Basically people are against one another. That’s what sex is. The great bridge across.”

  Jane Louise stared straight ahead. She was ravaged by exhaustion. After this lunch, how was she going to put one foot in front of the other and actually walk back to the office? If there was an us and a them, she wanted to be a them like Teddy, whom Sven felt was on such happy terms with the unknown. At least Teddy’s conflicts were clean and clear and not a holy mess of sex and office politics, and marriages and children all over the place, like Sven’s.