“I’ve been looking for the right moment to talk with you about your book,” Thomas said. “It’s a magnificent piece of work. He was a genius, this Westerly, and you, my friend, were a genius for uncovering him.”
Embarrassingly undeserved praise, but he’d take it. Certainly no one else at Deerforth had shown any signs of having read the book. “I had a great deal of fun working on it,” he said, hoping it came off as modesty.
“Now I’ll have to read the novels. As soon as I have a free moment. Is there a logical place to start?”
Desmond gave this serious consideration, seeing the opportunity to introduce a new devotee. “It’s a matter of taste, of course.”
Thomas slapped his enormous forehead. “A Matter of Taste. Of course. I should have realized that from the way you described it. I assume that one’s back in print?”
“I’ll check for you. So . . . Jane isn’t a dog lover?”
Thomas brightened at this offer of more familiar turf. “Oh, don’t let her kid you. She loves all animals, even me. Just not in the house. “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals.’”
Desmond supposed he was quoting something from Whitman, but now he felt less obliged to go out on a limb by risking a guess. Come to think of it, Miller probably hadn’t read half of what he spouted but sat at home nights memorizing Bartlett’s. At least Desmond wouldn’t have to go through the charade of praising Miller for his Melville tome. “You said there was something you’ve been meaning to ask me?”
Thomas started to cross his legs, then reached down to help pull one ankle across his knee. “About Jane, actually. When I told her about your book, she went out and read it and was crazy about it. She’s a producer at one of our public TV stations. She’s been after me to invite you out to the house for dinner.” Thomas leaned toward Desmond as if he were about to offer him an unlisted phone number. “She thinks the two of you might be able to work on a project together.”
“Oh? What sort of project?”
Thomas lifted his shoulders to his ears and his chin disappeared into his neck. “I’m not clear. A documentary series of some kind. Biographies. She’ll give you the specifics. She’s always got something up her sleeve.”
Despite everything in his experience that had taught him to view even solid offers of this type warily, Desmond felt lifted by merely having his name mentioned in the same sentence with television. Even public television. What a horribly shallow person I am, he thought; but suddenly the walls of Deerforth College seemed a fraction less confining. He’d have to mention to his class this afternoon that he was working on a TV project even though he didn’t know what it was and wasn’t yet working on anything.
“I suppose you know a lot of people in Boston,” Thomas said.
“Not really. No one, in fact. I’m working on a new book,” Desmond said, “so I’m more or less looking forward to the solitude.”
“‘Solitude is to genius the stern friend,’” Thomas quoted.
“Mmm. True. Whitman?”
“Emerson. I’ll let you know about a date for the dinner.”
3.
A few days later, Desmond was sitting at the sidewalk table of a Newbury Street café, eating a cheeseburger. He’d wanted to order a crusty pastry with mocha frosting he’d seen on the dessert tray, but had decided against it at the last moment, imagining how he’d look, sitting there with a cup of tea, daintily slicing through it with the edge of a fork. It was a bright windy day and all the foreign students from Boston University and other nearby schools were out in force, shopping aggressively and turning that particular Boston neighborhood into a perfume ad—threesomes and foursomes of androgynous young people in Armani sunglasses and expensive clothes behaving toward each other in suggestive ways. Deerforth drew an intelligent and relatively sedate student body, but was too far from the downtown nightclubs to give it a competitive edge in the sought-after foreign markets. Most of these kids appeared to have arrived in the U.S. by way of private schools in Switzerland, and judging from their sleek bodies, they all used personal trainers and had access to high-grade drugs. The strong, warm breeze blowing off the river gave them an especially dashing appearance.
The packet of mail Russell had forwarded had arrived earlier in the day. Uncertain what to expect from the note from his editor, Desmond had decided to escape the confines of his room before opening it. Now that the phone company had finally shown up, he found himself waiting more attentively for a call from Russell, and the anticipation made it feel to him as if the walls were closing in. He was still trying to decode the comment about Boris taking up painting. Last night, lying in bed with the window open above him, he’d begun to wonder if it had something to do with the lanky contractor in the building next to Morning in America, who was, after all, a painter of sorts.
Sometimes Desmond worried about his own sexual restlessness. In his pre-Russell days, he’d found himself becoming ravenously promiscuous as soon as he started dating someone. Did it mean he was unable to commit to a relationship, incapable of dealing with intimacy, afflicted with a sexual addiction he’d have to struggle with in some humiliating twelve-step program? What worried him since he and Russell had been together was that he’d felt virtually no sexual restlessness. Did it mean he was getting old, his hormones were getting sluggish? Most worrisome of all was the possibility that it indicated some lack of ambition that perhaps leaked into other areas of his life. Yesterday afternoon, he’d sat down at the table in his room and tried to write a pornographic story about the bleached blond Roller Blader. But halfway into it, he realized the boy had miraculously metamorphosed into Russell, and he couldn’t very well construct a lurid fantasy about someone he’d been sleeping with for five years.
The mail Russell had sent was the usual hodgepodge of bills, statements from mutual funds, and pleas for money from hopeless political causes. Sometimes it seemed to him that the utter hopelessness of every political cause he believed in was the most consistent part of his life. There was a postcard from his father, who, according to the picture on the front, was on a cruise in Alaska. “Incredible scenery,” he’d written. “Reminds me of the Upper Peninsula, though not as dramatic.” Since the death of Desmond’s mother, Larry had retired from his law practice and spent most of his time on organized tours of exotic places around the globe, every one of which reminded him of someplace close to home. In theory, travel might be broadening, but most people did it to prove to themselves that, ultimately, they were better off staying on the sofa.
He opened the letter from his editor carefully, using a greasy knife to slit along the seam. Inside was a short note, handwritten on a piece of thin blue paper. “Can’t imagine how I forgot to mention sooner, but today’s my last day here. Permanent maternity leave. Been crazy the past few months trying to close out a few books. Tried to find editorial match for Anderton bio, but enthusiasm low. Kira Manoly (new girl, British, Tina Brown-esque, gorgeous hair) willing to take a look if finished by January. Otherwise, prospects bleak. Don’t despair—they probably won’t ask for the advance back and we’ll always have Westerly!”
Desmond held the note, letting the wind blow the paper into a backflip. He was being dismissed. The project he’d been nurturing for years was being passed off to someone with no interest in it or him, someone who had agreed to do his departing editor the favor of looking at it, someone whose main qualification was her hairdo. It wasn’t just bad news, it was a death sentence. And worst of all, the whole business of his project, his career, was considered so inconsequential, the death sentence was announced in a cheerful little note that had been dashed off so hastily there hadn’t been time for complete sentences. A gust of hot wind blew his napkin off the table. He sat watching it float into the pale sky on a strong updraft. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed at his eyes. What am I doing here? he thought. Why didn’t I order the pastry? When he put the glasses back on and looked up, he saw Helen strolling down the street with her unmistakable
arthritic gait, and her yellowing, windswept fur. What’s she doing here? he thought. At the other end of her leash was a swarthy Marlboro man in a gray suit, carrying on a lively conversation with a woman. As they got closer to where Desmond was sitting, he realized they were arguing. “You don’t take her seriously,” the woman snapped. “You’re not sympathetic to her problems.” “Which problems?” “Primarily? You,” she said. “Ah, Janey, you’re so indirect.” The woman grabbed the leash out of the man’s hand, yanked on it and said, “For Christ’s sake, heel!” Helen complied, the man grinned, and the three of them stopped while Helen sniffed at a parched tree.
She was a tall woman, with long, shapely legs and the kind of robust figure that would have been described as womanly in a more generous decade. Her brown hair was brushed back in a casually unkempt fashion, and loose strands of it were blowing into her mouth in the strong breeze. Underneath the hair was a freckled, weathered face with the untended beauty of a minor European film star who’d started to let herself go around the edges. For one brief moment, Desmond thought she was looking at him, but then realized she was gazing at the half-eaten cheeseburger on his plate. With her free hand, she reached up and adjusted a string of colorful Bakelite beads, and then, as he was about to stand and introduce himself, the three of them moved on. She was wearing an immoderately short skirt that tugged slightly at her hips, and there was something provocative and sensual in her long strides and even in the way she held the leash.
When they were half a block away, she stopped and pulled out a cell phone while the man squatted down to pet Helen. Then the man took her arm and the three of then continued on in the direction of the river.
The breeze came up again and fluttered the letter he still clutched in his fingers. He couldn’t have been distracted by Jane Cody—undoubtedly this was she; Celeste Gray was still hospitalized and Thomas had dog-sitting responsibilities—for more than a couple of minutes, but for that brief time, he’d nearly forgotten that his life and livelihood were crumbling around him. He looked down the street again, but Jane and her companions had disappeared.
And then it struck him, the wonderful irony of seeing Jane Cody just as he read this letter. This was fate reminding him that as one door closes, another opens. Jane Cody was his salvation. She, with her long resolute strides and her television connections, was the break he’d been waiting for all these months. This hadn’t been a coincidence, seeing her on the street; it had been a sign. What better way to finish the book and revive big-haired editorial enthusiasm than to work with her on a television project? A series of biographies. Surely he could slip Anderton into the mix. A collaboration, a fresh eye to spot whatever it was he’d been missing. The dinner was only a few days away. He tossed back his coffee, bundled his mail, and pushed back from the table. He hadn’t received a death notice at all, merely a prod. On his way out of the restaurant, he dumped the pleas for money and bank statements and the editor’s letter into a trash barrel. Newbury Street was lined with expensive hair salons and overpriced clothing shops. Maybe it was time he walked into a few of them and saw what they had to offer.
Seven
The Circumstances
1.
Jane often wondered what made people so angry these days. The country was in the middle of a blizzard of economic prosperity and peace, job and real estate markets were booming, virtually everyone you bumped into had gaudy academic credentials, even if they were completely uneducated, and if all that wasn’t enough to drive away the demons of fury, you could take pills. Some of the men at her office spent half their time cruising the Internet in search of the best deals on Viagra, Propecia, and Human Growth Hormone.
And yet, after sitting in Dr. Berman’s office for fifty minutes, playing cat and mouse with the truth, here she was driving home along the river through a sea of immense, truck-sized pleasure vehicles with drivers hanging out their windows, honking, swerving, swearing, and very possibly getting ready to pull out guns and start shooting. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on something too unwieldy to steer and too big to park, people discovered—surprise!—they had no real need for them and so had to assert the practicality of their purchases by turning the roads into battlefields.
Jane stopped at a red light and almost instantly a frizzy-haired woman in aviator sunglasses stuck her head out the window of the vehicle behind her and started to shout and gesticulate wildly, something about making a right-hand turn on red. Jane gazed at her in the rearview mirror. The best part of uncontrolled anger was that it made people look fantastically ugly, which was why she preferred to subvert all her own ire into more subtle forms of aggression and, if that didn’t do the trick, into good old self-hatred. When the woman in the sunglasses didn’t let up, it was obvious her wrath was getting out of line. Jane undid her seat belt and stepped out into the damp heat of late afternoon. As soon as the woman saw her coming toward her armored vehicle, she rolled up her window. There was a wailing baby strapped into a complicated seat in back, and on either side of that, two fuming children with their arms folded across their chests. A golden retriever was panting in the passenger seat. The Whole Catastrophe on wheels, road rage and all.
Jane tapped on the window. “I’m going straight.” She pointed. “Straight, see? I’m not turning right at all.”
“Then why are you in this lane?” the woman screamed, her face contorted behind the tinted glass.
“Better view!” Jane said.
By the time she got back to her car, the light had changed. And just to prove a point—what point exactly she wasn’t sure—she decided to turn right anyway. The woman in the safari vehicle roared past her, and Jane burst out laughing. Jane was heading in the wrong direction and would have to go a good mile out of her way to turn around, but it had been worth it. True, she was running late for her own dinner party, but two days ago, when she had the bright idea of inviting her brother and his wife, she’d called the culinary school in Cambridge and hired some student caterers, so she didn’t have to worry about cooking. Her mother-in-law was looking after Gerald (babysitting didn’t seem, had never seemed, the appropriate term for watching over Gerald), so even if she was half an hour late, no serious damage would be done. Sarah could just add this to the tally of resentments and petty offenses she was doubtlessly keeping on file in the computer Thomas had recently bought her. Thank God it was only another month or so before she moved out and went south to live with Thomas’s right-wing sister and her racist (though admittedly sexy) husband. The sister, Beth, was one of those sweet, God-fearing types who attended regular meetings of a prayer group where they discussed “philosophy and miracles,” which Jane was sure meant trading statuettes of angels and planning abortion clinic bombings.
“It’ll be good for Sarah to have something new to stew about,” Jane said aloud. “It keeps her brain cells active.”
The comment was addressed to Helen, who was flung out across the back seat like a hunting trophy. Celeste Gray was still in the hospital, and it looked as if she’d be there for a while. After fixing her shin, the doctors had moved on to her kidneys, and Jane suspected they’d run through all the major organs before they let her out. Jane had met Celeste a few times and hadn’t liked her. She was one of those older women you’re supposed to admire as intelligent and courageous because they’re hypercritical and insulting. Despite her initial resistance, Jane had grown attached to the creaky old dog. She had all the virtues of a bloated alcoholic friend, the kind of nonjudgmental lug you could confide in because she had no attention span or memory. (“I just shot my husband and ate his body.” “Aw, that’s a shame.”)
The first week they were watching over her, Jane had been forced to take Helen to work one day and everyone at the station had been so amazed, in that jokey, irritating way, at the spectacle of seeing her, of all people, with a dog, she realized that most of her co-workers regarded her as a hard-edged, slightly bitter person, the type who had neither the tenderness nor the patience to care about
a pet. Chloe Barnes had looked from dog to Jane to dog to Jane with her usual pitying gaze. In truth, Jane was proud of her lack of sentimentality about house pets (a trait Gerald had inherited in an extreme form), but she’d begun dragging Helen into work with her almost every day, just to prove that people didn’t know her as well as they all thought. Thomas bled sympathy for the dog—“Poor old Helen, what’s going to become of you?”—although he did little to actually care for her. Upon seeing her arrive for one of their talks with Helen in tow, Dale had said, “I never figured you for a dog-lover, Janey.” “You seem to forget,” she’d said, “that I’m a mother,” a comment which she’d meant as proof of her ability to nurture but had sounded all wrong.
Jane adjusted her rearview mirror and said: “I suppose I should have told Dr. Berman that Dale and I exchanged a few kisses last time I saw him.”
Helen replied with an unruffled sigh.
“Well, I intended to, but when I told him we’d gone out for coffee four times—which is the truth, if you count the martinis as coffee—he gave me one of those knowing looks of his, as if to say he could see the handwriting on the wall. And believe me, Helen, I’m not paying him all that money so he can cop a superior attitude.”
Not to mention that the business of their encounter along the Esplanade last week—mid-afternoon, in a moment of azure beauty when the wind that had been blowing all day just died and the sailboats in the river basin went still, as if someone had flipped the switch on a magnetized electronic game and the surface of the water became a sheet of stretched silk—had been a harmless lapse in judgment, nothing more or less. It was part of Dale’s compulsive need to flirt. It would have made more of an event of the whole thing if she’d pushed him away or berated him instead of letting him wrap his arms around her and nuzzle his face against her neck and start nibbling her ear.
True Enough Page 11
