The Accidental Bestseller

by Wendy Wax

  8

  Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

  —GENE FOWLER

  There is an unwritten rule of writing that the number of trips to the refrigerator a writer makes is in inverse proportion to how well a manuscript is going. When the fingers are flying over the keyboard and the brain is fully immersed in the scene being created, food is completely unimportant. But when the fingers slow and the focus blurs, or worse, when the writer sees nothing but the blank screen and the hypnotic blink of the cursor, food beckons. As does, oddly enough, a load of laundry, the flossing of one’s teeth, and the complete rearrangement of a kitchen pantry or walk-in closet.

  When it comes to bailing out of a scene that is not working, even the most onerous—or fattening—of tasks will do.

  Which would explain why Mallory was now on her fifth trip to the refrigerator, her fourth to the bathroom, and in the middle of her sixth game of Minesweeper. It was only 10:00 A.M.

  “Shit!” She pulled her hair down from its crooked ponytail, raked it back up with both hands, and refastened the elastic band, thinking how shocked her readers would be to see what she really looked like when she worked. Or tried to.

  Then she got up, yet again, to pace her office, stopping to stare out at the gnarled oak, the black wrought-iron fence that bound it, the taffy-pulled clouds strung through the blue sky.

  With a groan she dropped back down into her chair and closed her eyes, desperate to see her characters and the airport lounge in which she’d placed them. But all she could see was how little she’d written and, when she let herself, Kendall’s stricken face.

  Her mind began to race down dead-end paths as the panic closed in. Chris was out and the house was completely quiet, just as she normally liked it. But today the quiet felt both oppressive and judgmental.

  How could you justify not producing when absolutely nothing stood in your way?

  She breathed deeply, taking in great gulps of air in an effort to get enough oxygen to her brain to fend off the paralyzing images: blank pages that translated into no manuscript to turn in, her agent and editor turning their backs on her, a book signing to which no one came, the repo vans taking away her possessions.

  She knew exactly what this felt like, this snatching away of a life, and there was no way in hell she was ever going to experience it again.

  Mallory left her desk yet again and wandered into the kitchen. At the counter she poured herself another cup of coffee. Slowly, as slowly as was humanly possible, she stirred in the nonfat creamer, opened a packet of sweetener and mixed it in. Sipping the milky mixture, she moved to the pantry, where she opened the sliding louvered doors and carefully contemplated her choices—all of them way too fattening. She’d consumed the healthier choices hours ago.

  If she didn’t find inspiration soon, she’d get too big to fit in her desk chair. Maybe she should go outside and take a walk, burn up a few calories. Get a little fresh air to clear her head.

  But that smacked of procrastination, or worse, an admission of defeat. She could not even contemplate that the day’s twenty pages might not get written; like the dieter who skips just one trip to the gym and then never goes again, it could be the beginning of the end. The slip that led to the fatal slide.

  The trips to the refrigerator, the computer games, surfing the Web in the guise of research, the load of laundry she’d started out of desperation—all of those time wasters had put her behind where she wanted to be. But as long as she didn’t leave the house, as long as she didn’t stray too far from the laptop or desktop on which her manuscript was stored, she could not avoid the need to do the pages. Leaving the house felt much too dangerous; she might not come back.

  Mallory turned her back on the pantry. Her life, and its security, depended on the words she put onto the page. All she had to do was write them.

  She walked back to her desk and put her butt in the chair, which as every writer knew was more than half the battle. If she stayed here and faced down the page, she would find the words she needed. She was a writer, ergo she would write. She just needed to clear her mind so that her characters could present themselves to her.

  A flourish of music and the icon of a feathered quill announced an instant message from Faye.

  Mallory knew she should ignore it. Normally she didn’t even have her sound up or her computer online while she wrote, but now she seemed to invite distraction at every opportunity. A click of the mouse and the IM screen appeared.

  “I’m worried about Kendall,” Faye’s message read. “Haven’t been able to reach her. Have you?”

  “No,” Mallory typed back. “She’s not returning my calls or e-mails. What about Tanya?”

  Mallory waited for a response.

  “No. Something’s wrong.”

  The words flew between them. They were in agreement that someone needed to do something, but they weren’t sure what.

  Faye typed. “I’ve got to finish this chapter, but I think I have Cal’s cell phone number somewhere. I’ll call him tonight.”

  “Thanks,” Mallory typed, already feeling guilty for not offering and also envying Faye the matter-of-fact “I’ve got to finish this chapter.” That meant she’d actually managed to start one. “Keep me posted.”

  “Will do.” Faye signed off and Mallory clicked back to Word. The screen was still blank.

  She had had Cal’s number at some point, too, she thought, opening her desk drawer and beginning to paw through the jumble of business cards and scribbled contact info that she hadn’t yet put into her BlackBerry.

  Her fingers moved nimbly through the odd items that filled the drawer: a photo loop, a business card from the firm Chris was with when they met, a masseuse she’d heard about and been meaning to try, a promotional pen with a writer’s name on it.

  Maybe she could find Cal’s contact info and get it to Faye. And maybe she could organize this drawer while she was at it. The act of sorting and throwing out might free up her subconscious so that it could figure out the story she was working on.

  As she rifled through and tossed things out, she realized that her desk was even messier than the drawer and she decided to tidy that, too. No wonder she couldn’t think straight with all this . . . turmoil around her. She didn’t need to panic or be afraid. She’d just give herself the rest of the morning to straighten up her office. First thing after lunch, she’d get right down to work.

  Kendall was in her car heading north toward the one place that Calvin didn’t like and couldn’t touch: the home in the North Carolina mountains that her grandparents had left her.

  No blond-haired real estate agents would be prancing up her front walk there. In that neck of the woods a person didn’t traipse onto another person’s land without expecting to meet up with the business end of a shotgun. She regretted how civilized they’d become; granny’s shotgun would have come in handy when Laura Wiles had come to call.

  Kendall barely checked her speed as she merged onto Highway 85 at Spaghetti Junction and expertly changed lanes to avoid the slowpokes in the right-hand lanes. About an hour and a quarter into her drive she spotted the swell of foothills that heralded the beginning of the Blue Ridge chain. She passed the scenic overlook at Tallulah Gorge, where a member of the tightrope-walking Flying Wallendas had performed headstands as he crossed the gorge on wire, then continued along the two-lane highway toward Clayton, Georgia, where uncomfortable signs of progress reared their heads: a big boxy Walmart stood next to a shiny new Home Depot, their tar-topped parking lots rectangular slashes in the red clay landscape. The red dust of construction hung in the air and settled on the hood of her car.

  At the new twenty-four-hour grocery store, she stopped and bought a haphazard mix of junk food and staples along with a case of assorted wines.

  She was through the tiny towns of Mountain City and Dillard in a matter of minutes and then began to wind her way upward, the air cooling as she climbed
. Kendall lowered the windows to allow the crisp mountain air to caress her cheeks and rifle her hair. Curtains of kudzu shrouded the landscape, looking much too vibrant for a vine bent on suffocation. To the right, the mountainside fell away in a dizzying drop, leaving vistas of air and sky and tree-topped mountains.

  She breathed deeply, savoring the mixture of altitude-cooled air and sun-warmed earth as she passed over the seamless border between Georgia and North Carolina. Mountain laurel, rhododendrons, and fat blue hydrangeas spilled over stone walls and split-rail fences. It was hard to ignore the signs of new construction, but she did her best, focusing instead on the spill of water down a distant rock face, the sun-bleached clapboard of antique stores, and the home-hammered shelving and hand-lettered signs of on-your-honor vegetable stands. Around the next bend a lone horse grazed in an expanse of meadow. From somewhere beyond a cow lowed.

  The old and the new did not always coexist happily or seamlessly here, but for Kendall there was still enough of the long-known to make the drive one of homecoming. And when she turned onto the unpaved road that continued to wind upward to her grandparents’ homestead, each tree and shrub seemed planted in order to point her way there.

  The house itself was old and worn. It sat in the clearing, its last coat of gray paint long since faded. Two brick chimneys, one at each end of the house, poked up from its oft-patched roof. Two basement-level bedrooms and a bath crouched underneath, their large corner windows maximizing both light and view. Porches and decks shot off the one-story structure providing views, if not architectural symmetry, in almost every direction.

  Up here there was no garbage pickup, no mail or newspaper delivery, and no local cable service. Kendall had whiled away her summers here, tending the flower and vegetable gardens with her grandmother, taking long rambling hikes with her grandfather, sitting wordless on one of many wood rockers with a book in her lap, her gaze lifting every so often to follow a hawk riding an updraft or to locate a distant peak of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  She was twenty-five when her grandparents died and left her the house along with the money to maintain it. She tried to share the house with her new husband, but Calvin never warmed to its rustic charm or understood the hold it had on her. He preferred the restaurants, shops, and golf farther north in Highlands, and once the kids were old enough, Kendall brought them instead—all three of them spending the two months of summer together with only occasional visits from Cal.

  Now she carried in her groceries and her overnight bag and dropped them on the kitchen floor. In a burst of energy, she went from room to room, throwing open windows and removing dustcovers from the furniture. She carried the outdoor furniture from the screened porch out to the back deck and plopped down into a chair so that she could prop her legs up on the deck railing. The trickle of a distant waterfall carried on the wind and there was a tinkling of wind chimes outside the master bedroom.

  The stillness both filled and surrounded her, muffling, if not halting, the litany of fears and disappointments that had been running nonstop through her head. She wasn’t fooled. The panic wasn’t completely gone. It lay coiled inside her, ready to rear its diamond-shaped head and strike at the slightest provocation.

  But for the moment she was in the one place she felt safe calling home and once she pulled herself together—please, God, let that happen soon—all she had to do was write a book. And find an attorney. And get a divorce. And explain it to her children. And . . . No, she couldn’t think about any of that right now.

  Because right now she was going to sit on this deck where her grandmother once shelled peas and her children had swung lazily in the old rope hammock and do absolutely nothing. That was all she had to do. Just sit right here and breathe.

  For as long as she felt like it.

  Kendall inhaled then exhaled. And then she repeated the exercise, drawing the fresh piney air deep into her lungs. And then, with the steady drone of insects as background, she closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the late afternoon sun and let the breeze sweep over her skin.

  An hour and a half after their conversation, Faye received an e-mail from Mallory with nothing but Calvin Aims’s name and cell phone number in it. She printed it out and left it sitting in her printer tray while she finished the chapter she was on and roughed out notes for the next.

  She’d offered to help because she was worried about Kendall, but she wasn’t looking forward to speaking to her friend’s husband. The few times she’d met him, he’d struck her as self-important and self-centered. His support of Kendall’s writing career had been totally monetary, and he’d managed to get in plenty of digs about her disappointing earning power when he’d finally understood how little most midlist writers earned.

  Some markets were more lucrative than others, but the publishing business was very cyclical; what was hot one year might be over the next. There were paranormal writers who couldn’t get arrested five years ago, who were riding the crest today. The same had happened to historicals, comedies, chick lit, mystery. If it had been popular, it also had not. And a writer couldn’t necessarily change her voice or style, simply to fit the current market.

  She worked steadily through the afternoon and then broke at about 4:00 P.M. to see what could be organized for dinner. The freezer bulged with carefully labeled Tupperware and disposable containers undoubtedly delivered by female parishioners convinced that Pastor Steve might starve to death without a wife to cook for him for two and a half days. Never mind that he had a married daughter who lived less than a mile away. Or opposable thumbs completely capable of removing plastic wrap and operating a microwave.

  Faye selected a tuna noodle casserole, a loaf of crusty cheese bread, and a rectangular container labeled, “Maybelle’s marvelous marbled brownies.” After all the food she’d consumed in New York this weekend, she was not about to quibble over a few extra calories now.

  She had no doubt that if she ever disappeared for more than a day or two, the women of the congregation would be lined up to provide Steve with much more than casseroles and home-baked desserts, but she chastised herself for the uncharitable thought.

  Tonight it was just the two of them for dinner—an unusual and welcome occurrence. Tomorrow Faye would babysit their granddaughter, Rebecca, while their daughter, Sara, took her yoga class and did her Saturday afternoon stint in the church resale shop. Sunday was largely spent at church, though Faye sometimes got up very early to work before she had to leave for the morning service. Every once in a while when she was on deadline, she worked the entire Sunday, not out of disregard for the day of rest, but because she believed in a God who understood the importance of meeting one’s deadlines and commitments. And who, she hoped, would also understand the lengths a woman might go to in order to protect and support her family.

  Faye set the casserole and brownies out on the counter to defrost and went out into the garden to cut flowers for the center of the table. She was arranging them into a cut-glass vase when the phone rang. Answering, she was delighted to hear her granddaughter on the line. “Hello, Gran Gran,” Rebecca singsonged into Faye’s ear. “Mom tole me you were back from France.”

  Faye smiled. “That’s conference, Becky. France is a country in Europe.”

  The five-year-old’s voice dissolved into a giggle. “I see Egypt, I see France, I see Gran Gran’s under—”

  Sara’s voice replaced that of her daughter. “Rebecca Simmons, how many times have I told you to think before you speak?”

  “But . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.” Sara lowered her voice. “I think it’s that Lowry girl she’s gotten friendly with. She does not get enough supervision in my mind.”

  “Oh?” Faye put the upper oven on preheat and unwrapped the casserole. The brownies looked good even in their frozen state.

  “I let Rebecca play there last Saturday afternoon while you were in New York. And when I picked her up at five in the afternoon, her mothe
r was lying around in her bathrobe reading one of those trashy romance novels.” Her voice went even lower. “The kind with S-E-X in it and a bare-chested man on the cover.” It was clear Sara was completely scandalized.

  Faye frowned at the disapproval in her daughter’s voice. Faye had always thought of motherhood as a softening experience, but becoming a parent had turned Sara from mildly opinionated into downright judgmental, a change in her daughter that Faye wasn’t sure how to address.

  “I know how to spell, Mama.” Becky’s voice piped up in the background. “I learned it on Sesame Street!” And then, “Why are you whispering about the number six?”

  Faye covered her mouth to disguise her laugh. Still she felt compelled to defend her profession and her colleagues. “And I would think you of all people would know that romance novels do not deserve the adjective ‘trashy’ attached to them,” Faye said. “The romance writers I know produce well-written stories for today’s women, not trash. Your mother included.”

  “Oh, mother,” Sara chided back, “you don’t write books that need clinches to sell them. You write for the inspirational market, that’s not the same thing at all. Why I’d have to move away in shame if you ever put your name on a book like she was reading.”

  Faye thought about her own body of work. And about Tanya juggling her daughters and her jobs while still trying to hold on to her dream of publication. Then she thought about Kendall, who wrote more mainstream women’s fiction and whose identity was so caught up in her writing. And Mallory, with her kick-butt heroines and twenty-pages-a-day compulsion and the fame to show for it.