She was also afraid she’d weaken and wind up installed back in her old bedroom in Elmira. She was equally afraid to go to the three or four small law firms in this town, for fear that word would get back to Daniel and the faculty, though why she cared was beyond her. Somehow, it just seemed best to keep this secret. Perhaps, if she could threaten Daniel, he could see what he’d done wrong and they could patch things up, before it was all too late. Stealth, it seemed, was the only tactic she could use.
Judith decided that Albany might be her best shot—there were nothing but lawyers in the state capital. But which one? She had no one to ask, so in desperation she let her fingers do the walking. From a phone booth near the student union she began to make her calls. She opened the list at an S page, and Mr. Slater was the first lawyer who answered his own phone and took her call. “I have a legal problem, and I need help,” Judith managed to blurt out. Just saying it out loud made it more real, and her hand began to sweat against the plastic of the telephone receiver.
“Is this a marital case? I don’t do marital law, though I could—”
“No. Not really. It’s about theft, uh, plagiarism.” Judith realized she really didn’t know a word to describe Daniel’s betrayal. “You see, I’ve written something and someone else has published it.”
“And you haven’t gotten paid?” Mr. Slater asked. “That would be a contract dispute. Do you have a written contract?”
“Yes. Yes, well, a contract without my name on it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You had a contract to write something, but you didn’t put your name on it? Whose name did you put?”
“A made-up name, a pen name. And now my husband is saying that it’s his pen name.” Oh, God, it was so confusing. It was so hard to explain. “Could I come in and see you?” Judith asked, her voice shaking. And when Mr. Slater said yes, she quickly accepted the first appointment he offered. She hung up the phone, her hands drenched in sweat.
“So, what you’re saying is that you wrote this book of your husband’s,” Mr. Slater summarized. He was a big man with freckly skin and thinning reddish gray hair. He folded his hands and set them comfortably under his paunch while he leaned his chair back and surveyed Judith.
“The book is not my husband’s,” Judith corrected. “It’s mine.”
“So you say. Well, I’m no expert in copyright law, but this would seem to be a copyright case. That’s a federal issue. Expensive to pursue. Anyway, if it is a copyright issue, then what proof do you have?” He paused. “You say you wrote these drafts in your own handwriting. We have those, to start with.” He lifted up a pencil to take notes.
Judith felt her stomach drop. She shook her head. “No,” she said.
“No, what? You didn’t write them by hand?”
“I did, but I don’t have them. I’ve given them to Daniel.”
“Then what did he do with them?”
“Correct them and give them back to me. But I’d type them, and when I was done he took the typed manuscript and the drafts.”
“And what did he do with those?”
“He corrected the manuscript from them. You know, to make sure I got all the typos and changes. I don’t know what he did with the first draft.”
“So you have in your possession nothing, not one page, of your original handwritten work?”
“No,” Judith admitted, her voice very small.
He sighed. “What did you type on?”
“A regular typewriter. Mine from college.”
“You do have the manuscript you typed?” Mr. Slater asked. “That might be a start.”
“No, I don’t,” Judith admitted. “Daniel had it retyped. I don’t know what he did with my typed version.”
“You don’t seem to know a lot,” Mr. Slater said.
“I didn’t know any of this would happen,” Judith protested.
“How long was this book, Mrs. Gross?”
“Seven hundred and twelve pages in manuscript,” she admitted. At least she knew something.
“And you don’t have one page, either in your handwriting or from your typewriter?”
Judith’s lips trembled. She shook her head.
“And you have no contract or written agreement with your husband?”
Judith shook her head again.
“And he is a professor? He teaches creative writing?” She nodded her head.
“And did you graduate college, Mrs. Gross?”
Judith shook her head. “I quit when I married Daniel. Instead of going to school, I started on this book. We were doing it together.”
“Well, you just said you wrote it alone.”
“I did,” Judith assured him, but she felt flustered. “I wrote it while he was busy teaching classes. It was a project we came up with together.”
Mr. Slater stared up at the high ceiling, tapping his pencil against his legal pad. Then he shook his head, sighed, and looked back at Judith with that narrowed look of dismissal and contempt she’d seen often enough on her father’s face. “Mrs. Gross, let me put it to you this way: Your husband, a recognized professional in the arts, has presented a manuscript to an agent, found a publisher, and gotten a contract on it. You say you wrote it, but you have no written agreement with him, no handwritten draft, no typewritten manuscript, no witnesses. In fact, you have no proof at all to substantiate your claim.” Mr. Slater paused and tapped his pencil again. The sound click, click, clicked. He cleared his throat. “Sometimes, women—wives—of prominent men get confused. They help with a project, or hear a lot about it, and start to think it’s their own. It’s not a lie on their part, it’s more like an exaggeration—”
“I’m not lying or exaggerating.” Judith snapped. “I wrote that book.”
Mr. Slater sighed. “Even if it is true, I don’t believe you could get a court to listen to you. And as I told you, federal-court copyright cases are an expensive endeavor. Do you have the resources to undertake one? I’d require at least a five-thousand-dollar retainer.”
Judith shook her head. “I thought perhaps you’d just take your fee after we won.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gross. I don’t work on a contingency fee. And I don’t think there’s a judge or jury who would believe you. For what it’s worth, I can tell you that I don’t either.”
Judith managed to get down the hall of the office building, find the ladies’ room, and lock herself in a booth before she began to sob. She had at least that much dignity. For a moment she stood leaning her head against the back of the stall door, but the purse hook got in the way. She moved to the toilet seat—it had no lid—and sat weeping.
How could everything be so wrong? The affair with Daniel, quitting school, losing her friends, the marriage, the lonely months of writing; all of it added up to this humiliation. She’d been a fool, and she’d been used. Remembering how disappointed Daniel had seemed when her father had disowned her, she wondered whether she would rather have had him steal her money or her words. Well, actually, he had managed to do both. He’d take not only the credit but probably the money, too. Judith pulled some of the toilet paper off the huge roll and wiped her runny nose, but it was hopeless to try and stem the flow. She had turned to liquid, and it was running out of her eyes and nose and mouth. She leaned her head against the side wall and continued to weep, for how long she didn’t know.
She was surprised when, sometime later, she heard a noise in the stall beside her. Someone must have come in. She’d been making so much noise she hadn’t heard the door open or any footsteps. Judith tried, for a moment, to calm herself and stop her gurgling and sobs, but she couldn’t do it. After a few moments the sound of her weeping was accompanied by the noise of a tinkle in the next booth, then the flush of the toilet.
Judith tried again to take a few breaths and get control of herself. But then the memory of Mr. Slater’s face and his tone of voice as he told her that no one would believe her came back. She couldn’t help but moan and continue crying. Her eyes were b
adly swollen by now, and she could barely see, but when there was a knock on the booth she managed to look down and observe the chubby legs of a woman in scuffed suede flats. Oh God. This was so mortifying. Judith couldn’t stand it.
“Excuse me. Are you all right?” the woman asked. Judith tried to clear her throat but didn’t manage to. The voice continued. “I mean, obviously, you’re not all right, but can I help?”
No one could help, and that realization sent more tears, this time silent ones, dripping out of the corner of Judith’s eyes. “I’m fine,” she choked out.
“That’s ridiculous,” the woman’s voice said. “You’re not crying for goddamned joy in there.” She had a thick city accent—Judith couldn’t tell if it was Brooklyn or some other part of New York City, but it was definitely not local. “Come on,” the woman coaxed. “Open the door.”
“You can’t help me.”
“How do you know? And I won’t hurt you. Hey, trust me. I’ve done my share of crying in toilets. Come on, open the door.”
Sitting there, alone in the stall, Judith felt more lonely than she could bear. Whoever the woman was, she was trying to be nice, and no one had been nice to Judith in a long time. So without thinking, she leaned forward and threw the bolt. The door to the stall swung open, and a heavy, dark-haired woman stood there. She looked Judith over. “It’s your husband, right?” she asked, and once again Judith burst into tears. The woman put an arm around her, and Judith leaned against her shoulder, sobbing for what seemed like a long, long time. The woman didn’t try to stop her or pat her or question her. But her bulk was comfort enough. Finally, Judith was empty of tears, and when at last she finished, the woman silently walked her over to a basin, ran some cold water, took down a few paper towels, and gave them to Judith so she could wipe her face.
“My name is Brenda Cushman,” the woman said. “You don’t have to tell me your name, not if you don’t want to.” Judith pressed the cold towels against her eyes.
“I’m Judith,” she managed to say.
“Well, Judith, if you’re trying to get a divorce from the bastard, my friend Diana has an office down the hall. She’s a good attorney. She’s not looking for work, but—”
“It’s not that simple,” Judith gasped.
“It never is,” Brenda told her. “But if he’s hitting you, we can find a place for you to stay. And if he’s withholding money, we can probably get you some interim financial help. And if it’s about custody, well, Diana is the best when it—”
“He’s cheating me,” Judith said, her voice still thick.
“They always cheat on you,” Brenda told her.
“No, not cheating on me. I mean, he’s stealing from me.”
“Stealing your money?”
Judith shook her head.
“He’s stealing the kids?”
“We don’t have children,” Judith told the woman. “Not yet, anyway. It’s worse.”
Brenda lowered her heavy eyebrows. “You’re upset. I’m confused. What the fuck is this guy doing to you?”
“He’s stealing my book,” Judith wailed, and began to cry again.
After humiliating herself with the first lawyer, Judith was more hesitant, as well as more organized, in telling her story to the second one. Brenda Cushman had brought her down the hallway to the office of Diana La Gravenesse, Esq. Diana was a tall, cool blonde in an elegant suit who sat and listened quietly without asking any questions until Judith was through. “I know it sounds impossible,” Judith said. “I know I sound really stupid and like it didn’t happen this way, but it really did. It’s unbelievable, but it really did.”
“And it’s happened before,” the lawyer said. Judith looked up at her. “Have you ever heard of Colette?”
“She’s a French writer, isn’t she?”
“Well, she was. She’s been dead for quite some time. But her husband used to lock her in their room until she passed manuscript pages under the door. For every page she wrote, he’d pass in a slice of buttered bread. Then he took them and had them published under his byline.”
“Did he kill her?” Judith asked.
Diana La Gravenesse smiled. “Well, I’m sure she felt as if he did. No, she eventually left him and began writing on her own. In the end she wrote a lot of wonderful books, all with her name on them.”
Judith blinked and took the first deep breath she’d been able to inhale all day. “You believe me?” she asked.
“Yes, of course, I believe you,” Diana La Gravenesse told her. “Unfortunately, I’m not a judge. And I don’t specialize in entertainment or copyright law, so I don’t know if I ought to handle this case for you. Probably not. But I do know it would be helpful if you could get your hands on your original manuscript and typed draft. Do you think you could do that?”
“I don’t know,” Judith said. “We packed everything up when we moved. But I can try.”
“What I suggest,” Diana explained, “is that you say nothing to your husband yet. Try to gather these documents, and then we will assess the situation: whether to go to the publisher, to confront your husband directly, or to simply begin court proceedings. But generally going for a settlement first is your best, least painful option. If you go to federal court, we’ll certainly have to get you another lawyer.”
“I have no money,” Judith whispered.
“I understand, but after you sue or settle, there will be money. And I think I can convince an attorney I know to work based on a percentage of that expectation.”
Judith leaned toward the woman. “Thank you,” she sighed. “You’ve been so kind.” Diana La Gravenesse simply patted her hand and gave her a card.
“I hope you can find the manuscript,” she said. “Or even the typewritten draft. Call me one way or the other.” Judith stood and picked up her bag, stuffing the card into the side pocket. She walked to the door. The lawyer had already put her head down, writing notes and looking at her calendar.
“One more thing,” Judith told her.
“Yes?” Diana responded, looking up.
“If I have to have one, will you also handle my divorce?”
75
Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one’s virginity, it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.
—V.S. Pritchett
Opal looked up from the counter and turned toward Roberta, who was busy boxing returns. “Do you have any more stamps?” she asked. “They’re in the left-hand drawer,” Roberta told her, and Opal pulled it open and found the neatly stacked books of postage.
“I’m paying you back for all of this,” Opal said. Roberta shrugged.
“Believe me,” she said, “it won’t make much of a difference.” Opal watched her friend as she addressed the carton being returned to Random House. Sales were not good, and there had been a lot of returns lately. With all of the daily worries of running the bookstore, Opal was deeply touched that Roberta had found time to put together a mailing campaign to most of the independent bookstores across the country. Each day, the two women tailored several dozen letters about The Duplicity of Men, hand-addressed them, and sent them out. Opal had no idea if it was doing any good, but she supposed it couldn’t hurt. And Emma Ashton had helped. Two evenings a week she stopped by with lists of important people in the book trade.
Book sales on Duplicity in the shop were certainly good, but that was due mainly to the big window display Roberta had created, as well as her insistence that every regular customer buy the book. They had already sold close to sixty copies, but Opal knew there was no other bookstore in the country that was going to do that.
“Is Vivien Jennings at Rainy Day Books a Miss, Mrs., or a Ms.?” Opal asked as she began to address an envelope.
“Definitely a Ms.,” Roberta said, straightening up from her last carton. No one had been in the shop all morning, and Opal wondered if it was the gloomy weather or the superstore that was keeping them
away.
When the doorbell sounded, Opal looked up to see a young man in a good black jacket over an undershirt swagger into the store. He looked around for a moment and, once oriented, moved toward the fiction section. Roberta dusted off her hands, pushed the carton to the side of the counter with her foot, and prepared to assist the young man, if he needed it. He was already running his finger back and forth across a shelf and turned to Roberta as she approached him.
“Have you got SchizoBoy?” he asked.
“The Chad Weston book? No, I’m afraid we don’t,” Roberta informed him. He looked back at the shelf.
“You don’t have any of my books,” he said. “This is unbelievable. Man, I’m not prepared for this shit. I was told that you ran a literary bookstore. That’s why I came up here.”
Roberta blinked. “Are you Chad Weston?” she asked. From behind the desk Opal watched her friend. “I don’t like to discourage any writer, Mr. Weston, but we don’t carry every book, and personally, I was—”
“Every book? I’m not talking about every fucking book. I’m talking about my book. Don’t you read Time? How about Vanity Fair? Or the New York Review of Books?” Weston had raised his voice and now was shouting. “Do people like you understand the important issues of the day? The ACLU is going to handle my suit against Davis & Dash. It’s not just my book, it’s a blow for literary freedom everywhere. It’s a First Amendment issue. Not that I expect you know what free speech means.”
“Mr. Weston, I’m very well aware of the controversy around your book, and I received an advance copy long before Davis & Dash decided not to publish. I read it. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. I know you say it’s satire, but I believe good satire has to come from anger, not a prurient delight in the subject.” Roberta paused. “Frankly I don’t think the book has any literary merit.”
The Bestseller Page 51
