Kitabı oxu: «The Editor»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Editor

Dedication

Epigraph

The Quarantine: A Novel by James Smale

Dreams: February 1992

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Go Your Own Way: July 1992

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Yesterday’s Gone, Yesterday’s Gone: November 1992

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Everything Turned Around: December 1992/1993

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

What Tomorrow Will Do: May 1994

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Steven Rowley

About the Publisher

THE QUARANTINE
A Novel by James Smale

The room was warm, too warm, Russell thought, to share with a dead body, but no one seemed concerned. Guests wore their coats cinched tight at the waists, as if taking them off would obligate them to stay. In the back of the room a giant silver percolator was brewing coffee, and there was another kettle for tea. His mother, having had three cups black, did laps around the room like the women who exercised inside the Pyramid Shopping Center—mall milers, they called them—somehow connecting with anyone in her path and simultaneously avoiding everyone.

“Look at her,” Russell said, watching his mother’s path from his vantage point by the casket. “When this is over I swear I’m going to lock her in a room.”

“Who?” Sean tried to follow his brother’s moving gaze.

“Mom.”

“Mom? Why?”

“Why?” Wasn’t it obvious? She’s all they had left. He tugged at his tie. “Is it warm in here?”

“Very.”

Russell ran his hand across the closed casket; his father had it worst of all, stuffed inside in the suit he hated and wore only to church. Or maybe he had it best. If only Russell could give his father some air. “She has to answer some things.”

Sean offered his hand to the Speighs as they approached and gave him and his brother, the sons of Dick Mulligan, a solemn nod. “Thank you for coming.”

“Dick was a good man,” Mr. Speigh said, his nose twice the size it once was, not from the lie but from age. “It’s a shame what he d—”

“… what happened,” Mrs. Speigh corrected, tugging at her husband’s arm. No one wanted to say it out loud.

“Your father had some of my tools …”

“Of course,” Sean said. Eventually they would clean out the garage.

“Another time, Arthur.” Fed up, Mrs. Speigh gave her husband a full yank, pulling him toward the door.

Sean waited until their old neighbors were out of earshot. “What things? What does Mom have to answer?”

“Questions! She has to answer questions. Without circling the room, without walking away. Face-to-face. It’s time.”

“Now? You think now is the time. In the wake of …”

In the wake of, well, this wake.

“YES.”

“And how will she answer them, these questions, locked in a room.”

Russell stared at his brother, his eyes red, cried out, but overrun with inspiration. “I’m going to lock myself in with her.”

And that’s when the idea for The Quarantine took hold. As his mother, on her umpteenth lap, passed the table with the cups and the saucers and decided they needed restacking. As Sean removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves like a politician hitting the campaign trail. As his sister, Fiona, held everyone’s hand and listened as the same drab stories were told again and again and again. As his own head throbbed with torment and heartbreak. A quarantine. Russell wouldn’t go home, back to California. He would stay in Ithaca, secured inside a room with his mother until there were no more secrets, until they knew each other as well as two people could. As two people with the same blood should. It was the only way he could make sense of the gunshot that took half his father’s face.

It needed to shatter everything.

Dreams

ONE

She moves quickly and with purpose, threading the tight corridor between a hedge maze of cubicles and the string of office doors. Her stride is serious; I have a thousand questions, but the snap to her step suggests I should select only one. Maybe two. Nope, one. I try to take everything in, to remember the details—I’m going to want to recount them later, to relive this in my head—but we’re moving so fast. I see paper. Lots of paper. And push-pins, I think, colorful ones, tacked directly into the cubicle walls, holding calendars, schedules, memos, and important lists (more paper!) in place. Marketing standees announce titles as Coming Soon, and a parade of book covers framed like art hang evenly spaced on the walls between door-frames, following me down the hall as if I’m viewing them through a zoetrope.

“I’m sorry, where are we going?” Just like that, my one question wasted. And I hate that I apologize. I have been invited here and I need to act like I belong before they figure out that I’m the wrong guy. An imposter. A dupe.

Without looking back, she says, “Conference room. End of the hall.” Then, with barely a pause, “Would you like some water, James?” The sound of my name startles me. Hers is Lila. She told me, by the bank of elevators, where we were introduced. My agent’s assistant told me it was Lisa, but that’s typical Donna. Thank goodness Lila introduced herself before I had a chance to call her by the wrong name. That would have really started things out on the wrong foot. Lila has blond hair, but not so blond that you can’t take her seriously. I really like her shoes.

“No. No water, thank you.” I can’t imagine walking this fast with a glass of water and not sloshing it everywhere, on my sleeve, or—heaven forbid—down the front of my pants. “I’m sorry I was late.” Another apology, but this one is warranted.

“You were five minutes early.”

Was I? “I’m usually ten minutes early, so in that sense I was late.”

Lila ushers me inside the last room at the end of the hall. “Here we are. Conference room.” She stares at me, and for the first time I notice her clothes are impeccably tailored. She’s serious for a beige girl. That’s what I’ve heard people call a lot of young women in publishing. I’m not fond of the term; it reeks of an unnecessary sexism. They’re called that, beige girls, because they wear understated monotones and sweaters to match. But this girl (woman!) is a different animal. Power beige. Like a café-au-lait color, or camel or ecru.

“It’s nice,” I say, about the conference room, which is stupid. It makes me sound impressed, like I’ve never seen such a room before, and of course I have. I’ve worked at pretty much every office in Midtown in a never-ending string of toxic, depressing temp jobs. This conference room is exactly like any other conference room, with a bulletin board, a whiteboard, a phone in the center of a long table (at least I think it’s a phone—it looks somewhat like a light-up game I had as a child), and a set of dry-erase markers.

“It serves a purpose.” Her enthusiasm is considerably less than mine.

Yes, conferencing. For some reason I try to sell her on it. “It has everything. Even a window.” Then, as an afterthought, “Anyone ever jumped?”

“Out the window?” She is appalled. I can tell. She tucks her hair back behind an ear while pursing her lips.

“It’s just … I can imagine these meetings get a little … I mean, I know I’m feeling …” Fraught? Power Beige is just staring at me. “I’m sorry.” I cringe. My third apology inside two minutes. “You’re not interested in my twaddle.”

For the first time in our incredibly brief relationship, she perks up. “I’m interested if you’re going to jump out the window.”

“I promise I’m not going to jump out the window.”

She exhales. Disappointed? Perhaps. “Why don’t you just have a seat, then.” We’ve officially run out of things to say.

Silence.

Which I abhor.

I pull a chair back from the table and start to sit and then stop. There’s a loud ringing in my ears similar to the one I would get as a kid after swimming endless summer hours in Lake George. “I always thought I’d be more of a pills person.”

“More twaddle?” There is the vaguest hint of a smile. She’s joking with me, letting me know to relax.

“Ha, no. It’s just, I don’t like it when other people have to clean up my messes.” Talk of suicide has gone on so long, it may be professional suicide. To change the subject, I try to steer us toward business. “So, my manuscript. You’ve read it?”

“I have.”

I replay that last bit in my head; it doesn’t sit right. “Not that I think my manuscript is one of my messes! I just wanted that to be clear.”

“It was. Clear.” Lila picks up a dry-erase marker from the table and sets it on the lip of the whiteboard. In doing this, she softens slightly. “And even if it wasn’t, that’s an editor’s job sometimes. To clean up.”

“And you’re interested? In being my editor?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s nerves, I guess. I tend to …” I make a motion with my hands like I’m vomiting words. Lila grabs the corner wastebasket and holds it out for me. She smiles again, this time more broadly. I decide I like her; she has the ability to play along.

“No,” she responds.

“Oh.” I can feel the heat in my cheeks.

“You’re here to meet with someone else.”

“Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. I was told by my agent’s assistant to ask for Lila. Well, she said Lisa, but she can’t read her own handwriting.” I’m going to have real words with Donna for putting me in this predicament.

“James, it’s okay. I set up the meeting for you and this editor.”

“And he liked it? The editor I’ll be meeting with?”

“She.”

“Sorry.” Apology number four! I wince. This must be some sort of record.

“Take a deep breath. We’re not really in the business of calling writers in to personally tell them how much we didn’t like their work.”

A wave of relief. “No. I don’t suppose that’s the best use of anyone’s time.”

“It’s easier to do that in a letter.”

“I received plenty of those,” I say, before realizing how unvarnished that truth sounds. “Well, not plenty. A normal amount.” Pause. “Lila.” I use her name as punctuation, unsure if it sounds like an exclamation point or a period.

She pulls the chair out farther and pats the back of it. “It won’t be long now. If you’d like to have a seat.”

I sit before I get myself in any more trouble, and she leaves the room, closing the door behind her. I swear I can hear her chuckle on the other side before heading off down the hall.

Alone, I rifle through my bag to make sure I have a copy of my manuscript, should they ask to see it. I do. I walk over to the window and press my forehead against the glass to look straight down at moving vehicles that look like Matchbox cars. SPLAT. That would do it. I cross back to the phone. What was the name of that game? Simon. There’s one visible button, and without thinking, I push it. It beeps loudly and I jump, but then there’s a dial tone. I push the button again, quickly, and it stops. I pray the commotion doesn’t summon Lila. She would not be pleased.

I’ve been a writer for ten years. Since I graduated college. Or maybe it’s twenty-five years. Depending on when you start counting. My mother had an old Swiss Hermes typewriter when I was growing up; I have no idea where she acquired it or why she had it, but it was a thing of beauty to me. It was robin’s-egg blue and came with a lid that clamped to the typewriter itself, turning it into a stylish, if heavy, attaché. The keys clacked and the bell dinged and I always pulled the lever for the carriage return like I was casting the deciding vote in a crucial election.

“You’re not writing about me, are you?” I remember my mother asking, when I was only seven or eight years old. Like many of her questions, she delivered it more like a command.

“No,” I would say, and at the time that was the truth. My stories were small, trite, about cats and the neighbors with the horse stables and a pond in the woods that wasn’t much more than a puddle. But I felt they carried literary heft once they were typed. To me, typing was akin to publishing. I lived for that typewriter, and I would agonize when the ribbon became twisted, or the keys stuck, and I needed my mother’s assistance. She didn’t prioritize typewriter repair the same way I did. When I would point this out to her she would roll her eyes and say, “One day you can tell your therapist.” She said that about a lot of things. But instead of getting a therapist, I became a writer. Instead of telling one person, I aspire to tell the world.

I rearrange the thumbtacks in the bulletin board on the wall into a peace symbol before having a seat. At least I think it’s a peace symbol. It may be the Mercedes-Benz logo. I often get those two confused, so I get back up to undo my work in order to keep my mind on track.

I had some early success. As a writer. Two short stories published in two different literary journals. With typical youthful naïveté, I thought it would always be that way, but, of course, it wasn’t. I took odd jobs to pay bills, convincing myself the whole time that these jobs provided life experience—essential to a writer who wants to have something important to say. But I don’t have much insight from these experiences to share other than how to make coffee and remain invisible in a room full of people and battle a growing depression. It’s been years now since I’ve had anything published, so long that I wonder if it’s still acceptable to call myself a writer. That thought in itself is depressing, so I sit. Someone, an editor, is finally interested in my work, I remind myself, and I have to make the most of this nibble. I have to turn it into a bite.

Then I have to turn that bite into a sharklike chomp.

As soon as I’m settled in the chair the door opens. A woman enters, immediately turning her back to me so that all I can see is her slender frame and that she is a brunette and tall. She closes the door, taking pains to do so as gently as possible.

I scramble to my feet, knocking a knee against the table with a deafening whack. And even though I want to scream out in pain, to sink back into the chair and massage my leg, when she turns around and I meet her gaze, I stop. And then, strangely, I begin to bow.

Because … because … I don’t know the protocol.

I don’t know the rules of conduct in this situation.

But I no longer feel any pain. I don’t remember that I have knees, that everyone has knees or what knees are even for. I’m completely mesmerized by her hair, blown back and resting gently on her shoulders, and a demure smile both shy and radiant. I look down at the ground as if I’ve dropped something, convinced when I look up again it will be someone else, a look-alike, perhaps, a woman who molded her style after hers.

But when I look up it’s still …

It’s her.

TWO

It’s you. I almost say it out loud.

She’s immediately recognizable. Her posture, her eyes—there is no mistaking her. Of course I know who she is. But that’s an understatement. I try to breathe. Have I not been breathing? In fact, it’s perhaps the biggest understatement in the history of understating things. Which on its face sounds hyperbolic, but in this case I don’t think it is. It’s not even whatever falls just shy of hyperbole. Embellishment? Overstatement? No. It’s a simple declaration of fact.

Because everyone knows who she is.

Now I try to remember how to breathe. What is breathing? The process of moving air in and out of your lungs. It involves the diaphragm? Something expands, something collapses, the blood gets what it needs. Oxygen in, CO₂ out. My inner dialogue is as deafening as it is dull.

“James,” she says. “Lovely to make your acquaintance.” Her voice is breathy, impossibly feminine, even in her … I try to attempt some quick math … late fifties? She’s wearing dark slacks. A cashmere pullover. A jacket. It has shoulder pads. Chanel, maybe. Something distinguished like that. I’m not good with designers or labels. Daniel would know. He knows these things. She’s very still and her gestures are small, her arms stay close to her body; it’s as if she’s spent a lifetime trying not to make sudden, attention-grabbing moves. When she steps farther into the room, she glides with a seamless light-footedness.

“I’m Jacqueline,” she says, somewhere between the French and American pronunciations. That voice! Is it real? Is it really addressing me? She holds out her hand and I watch as my arm rises reflexively (lifted, perhaps, by an invisible bouquet of helium balloons), and as my hand reaches out for hers, I try to say something, but words fail me. That’s not good for a writer. She looks at me quizzically before moving her hand the rest of the way to meet mine. We shake. Her skin is soft. My only thought is that she uses lotion. “You are James, aren’t you?”

I blink. My own name somehow passes my lips. “James.” I manage another word. And my last name. “Yes. Smale.”

She smiles and our hands drop back to our sides. “Very good. And you were offered something to drink?” She pulls back a chair for herself but hesitates before sitting.

“Not anything strong enough for this.”

“I’m sorry?” Her apology has an airy lightness; it’s not clumsy like mine. It’s less an expression of regret and more a cue for me to make yet another apology myself.

“No, I’m sorry. I may be in the wrong place. I was told by Lisa to wait here for an editor regarding my manuscript.” It’s a sentence, but it ends on an upswing, impersonating a question.

“Lila,” she corrects. Goddammit, Donna! “You’re in the right place.”

I look at her, because it feels like I’m on one of those hidden-camera shows that are becoming increasingly common because they’re cheap to produce. “Are you in the right place?” I say it hesitantly.

“Oh, yes. My office isn’t very accommodating, and closing the door for privacy just makes it seem that much smaller. I thought we would both be more comfortable in here.”

I can’t hold it in any longer. “You’re Jacqueline,” I say, although my pronunciation is entirely American. “Jacqueline Kennedy.”

“Onassis.”

“Onassis. Right. And I’m …”

“James Smale. How nice of us to recap.” She offers another shy smile.

“Yes. I guess we’ve covered that ground already. And, believe me, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m just not sure what we’re doing here. Right now. In this room.” And then, to drive the point home, I say, “Together.”

She takes a seat and motions for me to do the same, so I pull back my chair and sit and she reaches out and rests her hand on top of mine. It’s motherly, calming. She’s wearing a distinctive bracelet that rattles softly like a tambourine. “James, I’m the editor who liked your book.”

My entire life I’ve been waiting to hear someone at a New York publishing house say these words. But in the thousands of ways I may have imagined this moment, not one time did it look anything like this. Tiny fireworks are exploding in my head like it’s the Fourth of July. For some reason I can’t take my eyes off her earrings, which are pearl. “This is a lot to take in. Maybe I should have accepted that glass of water.”

“Of course.” She pats my hand twice and then stands. “I’ll get it for you.”

I start to protest—I can’t have the former First Lady of the United States fetch me a glass of water—but she’s already gone. Am I crazy? I scramble to pick up the phone, push the button for the dial tone, but who am I going to call? Lila? Even if I had her extension, wouldn’t I just be humiliating myself further? What’s more, she’s obviously enjoying this, wherever she is. She could have prepared me—that would have been a small act of kindness—and yet she didn’t. This is not off to a good start. I retreat to the corner and do ten jumping jacks, a coping mechanism I’ve developed for writer’s block: ten perfect jumping jacks and blood moves to your brain (in theory, at least). Was my agent really not in on this? He’s a practical joker, the type that likes other people to squirm—it helps, I guess, in negotiation. But would he do that to a client? Would he do that to me? I barely finish my jumping jacks when Jacqueline—JACK-well-in? Zhak-LEEN?—returns, holding a glass of water. She doesn’t notice me at first in the corner.

“Ah. There you are,” she says. I cross back to my chair and she hands me the glass. “I thought perhaps you had jumped out the window.” She nods at the view and I lean in to make sure I heard her correctly, then laugh, probably too hard. Should I explain why that’s so funny?

I hold up the glass of water as if to say “Cheers,” then down most of it in several gulps, and she gestures for us to retake our seats.

“All set, then?” she asks.

I nod and watch her position herself gracefully in her chair, cross her legs, and pull herself in toward the table. When I take my seat, the chair unexpectedly drops several inches and I have to fuss with a lever underneath to bring it back to a proper height. Flustered, I try to say something, anything, to mask this awkward spectacle. “My middle name is Francis.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Francis, my middle name is …” I slow to a stop like a windup toy whose crank has run down.

Jacqueline Onassis studies me; I watch her eyes sweep across my face. After an interminable silence she says, “Bobby.”

“Yes, sorry. That needed some prefacing. My middle name is Francis. After Robert Kennedy. I’m … I don’t know why I’m saying this. Your time is valuable. I will focus.” Deep breaths. “I can’t believe you read my book.”

“I read it twice,” she says. She says nothing about my predicament with the chair as I fidget underneath and somehow sink farther, in a second humiliating display.

“Twice?” I try to sound nonchalant.

“Does that surprise you?”

“I’m still getting used to your reading it once.” I finally master the chair’s mechanics and lock it in a respectable raised position. I pull myself into the table and take another sip of water.

She flips through some notes on a pad of legal paper, and I wonder if they are notes about me, about my book. I strain to see, without looking like I’m straining to see; I’m dying to know her every thought. “It’s quite difficult to put down. Once it gets going.”

“A friend told me it’s slow to start.”

“Not slow. Deliberate. In order to deconstruct the American family, you must work diligently to construct it.”

“That’s what I said!” I brighten, and for the first time feel like I find my footing.

“I’m wondering if we could discuss the book, the two of us.” The way she adds “the two of us.” Persuasion. Just us. Alone in a room. Is she doing this on purpose? Is she luring me in only to lowball me with an offer? How can I think of business at a time like this? Whatever she’s doing, it’s artful. I’d be happy to sit here and talk books—my book, any book—until the afternoon is gone.

Until all of the afternoons are gone.

“I would be honored.”

“The Quarantine,” she says. It’s an almost out-of-body experience to hear the title of my book in her unmistakable voice. I can hear the word’s Italian origins, the way she says it. Quarantina. Forty Days.

“Yes.”

“Did you live through such a thing?”

“An actual quarantine?”

“An isolation.”

“With my mother?”

“With anyone.”

“No. Not as such. Not formally.”

Jackie nods. “How did you come to it as a framing device?”

I take a deep breath. “We all feel isolated, don’t we? At one time or another?” Does she? Oh, God. “People yearn to connect—it should be easy, and yet it seldom is. That’s true with my own mother. We talk, often past each other, somehow unable to convey meaning. It’s fantasy, I suppose. Putting two characters in tight quarters. Eventually they can’t avoid saying the things they desperately need to say.”

She scribbles a thought on her pad. Scribble is the wrong word; I doubt she’s careless with anything. “And that … fantasy, you call it …”

“I wasn’t going to get my actual mother in a room for any length of time.”

“That led you to write a novel.”

“I didn’t set out to. I considered myself more a writer of short stories. I thought I might have one published in The New Yorker one day, like many of the writers I admire. Updike. Cheever. Mavis Gallant. Dreamed I might, not thought.” Ugh, thought has an element of presumption. I bite the inside of my cheek to slow myself down. “So, one of the early chapters in the book? The one after the service? With the argument over pie? That’s the one I wrote first. When I finished it, I imagined this, finally, was my New Yorker story. And then I showed it to a friend, who encouraged me to write more.” I pause here, expecting her to interject; she looks at me, poised and unblinking. “I realize now how unsatisfying it would have been as a short story. That it was inherently … incomplete.”

“What a delightful note to receive as a writer. More.”

I smile at her like a child asking for juice.

“And you. Are you …” She checks her notepad. “Russell?”

“The character in the book? I’m not not Russell.” Check yourself, James. Now is not the time to be cute. “He is a version of me, I suppose, in that we are both seeking and searching—yearning to understand.”

“I would love to know more about the mother.”

“What would you like to know?”

“What would you like to tell me?”

Afraid this is some unanswerable riddle, a test I’m doomed to fail, I revert to her previous question. “If you’re asking if she’s my mother, she would say no.”

“Has she read the manuscript?”

“No.” As soon as it comes out of my mouth I realize just how harsh it sounds on its own, so I say it again, softer this second time. “No.” And then, because it’s a point of contention between us, I add, “Not even once.”

Jacqu—Mrs. Onassis taps her pen twice on her notepad. “Why not?”

“I wish she would. I suppose she’s afraid of what she’ll see.”

“I saw something quite lovely.”

My eyes are growing wet. Mortifying. It’s a little early in the year to pass it off as allergies; I blink twice in an effort to stop it. “I thank you for saying so, but it’s almost beside the point. She doesn’t want to be written about.”

Mrs. Onassis sets her pen down. “Well, your mother’s in good company there.”

“I suppose so,” I say, smiling so that she knows I understand she’s referring to herself.

“So why did you choose to write about her?”

“I’m not sure I did. Choose. I thought I would have endless stories. Deep, complicated, rich narratives that had profound things to say. I started a half-dozen novels centered on characters I thought would jump right off the page. But after numerous starts and stops they all seemed kind of flat in comparison to the most complicated character I knew.”

“Your mother.”

“My mother.” I glance down at the pad between us and it reminds me of the terror of blank pages. “So, desperation, I guess?”

Mrs. Onassis raises an eyebrow. “Well, I think you’ve observed her quite eloquently. I admired her.”

I look down at my nails and am embarrassed to see it’s been a while since I’ve cut them. I quietly move to sit on my hands.

“Since I’m not asking her, I’m asking you—is she your mother?”

“Absolutely.” And then, since I’m also deeply protective of her, I add, “A carbon copy. One that I can place just outside our relationship and stretch and mold and make malleable. Get inside. One that serves the novel, I hope. And one that I can possibly come to understand.”

Mrs. Onassis makes additional notes and I wonder if she’s writing down what I’m saying, which fuels my self-consciousness. Are these thoughts worth recording? When she looks up she asks, “One you can come to set free.”

Your mother’s in good company. Sitting across from someone so well known, I can’t help but conjure a slideshow of every image I have of her, that every American has. The iconic moments, the idyllic portraits. Any one of them is imposing; together they are irrepressible. I try desperately to clear them from my mind—to focus on the woman in front of me—but in person she’s no less an artfully framed photograph: stoic, quiet, still. The exotic bird, caged for voyeurs like myself. Have I done that to my mother? Cataloged her in snapshots? Confined her to a lifetime of observation? “One I can come to set free. I like that.”

A man with a beard and wide tie opens the door, startling us both. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jackie. I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

“That’s quite all right,” she says, and the man quietly closes the door. It’s all so normal—he calls her Jackie, he sees her every day, they probably sit in staff meetings—I want to call after that man just to make sure he knows who his coworker really is.

I take advantage of the interruption. “May I ask you a question?”

“I would be happy if you did.”

“Why am I here?”

Laughter. It’s almost indescribable, the feeling of making her laugh. Like somehow all is right with the world, even if this laugh is at my expense.

“Are we speaking existentially?”

“No, no. Despite how my question sounds. I’m genuinely asking.”

“Why are you here, as opposed to another author?”

“Why my book?”

Mrs. Onassis flips back the pages that are folded over the binding of her legal pad and sets her pen down on top of it. “Well, books are a journey. And I’m always excited to embark on a journey I haven’t taken before. So I wanted to meet you, James.”

“Thank you.”

“I found your book to be very mature for a first effort. I have some ideas, if you are open to hearing them.”

“Of course.”

“Ideas that would strengthen the work and amplify the book’s central themes. It’s a wonderful setup, and there’s work to be done on the ending, but we can fix all that. In short, I would like to acquire this novel for publication. It is my sincere hope that you’re willing to work with me.”

And just like that, I’ve completed the slow climb to the top of a roller coaster. I’m about to experience the first drop and people all around me are clutching their hats and sunglasses and screaming in both fear and exhilaration and my mouth is open to scream as well, but no sound comes out. The feeling is so intense I have to look down to make sure my chair hasn’t collapsed again.

“James?”

I close my mouth in a vain attempt to appear sane. “It would be an honor to work with you.”

“Would you like to take some time to think about it?”

“Should I think about it?”

“My father always advised me to sleep a night on important decisions.”

“My father had no such counsel.”

“Well, if I may.” The way she asks permission suggests both a timidity and a deliberate command in steering our conversation. “It’s a rare editor anymore who is more … well known, shall we say, than her authors. So, immediately, there’s that to consider.” She pauses, as if to make sure I’m following. “It would also mean you saying ‘no’ to me when you believe I’m wrong. Do you think you could do that?”

“Oh, no.”

She leans back, hopefully amused. “Is that a joke?”

I have to think about it. “Perhaps. A lame attempt at one rolled in the truth. I could learn to.”

“Make a joke?”

“Say no.” It feels like a little rapport we’re building. Daniel’s heart is going to stop when I recount this bit for him later.

“I would like us to have a conventional editor/writer relationship. And that means I’ll stand up for the things I believe in strongly, and you’ll stand up for the things you believe in strongly. And we’ll debate until there’s a victor.”

For a brief second, I picture us going toe-to-toe in a boxing ring, performing the most delicate pas de deux, me too afraid to ever throw a punch. “I would like that too. For us to have a normal relationship.” No boxing gloves. “Although, it might knock my friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt down a peg.” I say the roo in Roosevelt like in kangaroo, as that’s how Dustin Hoffman says it in the movie Tootsie, and it always makes me laugh. Mrs. Onassis, however, doesn’t. Laugh. “Another joke,” I clarify.

“You must have more questions for me.”

I do. I have eleventy million questions, but synapses are firing, or misfiring—if synapses even fire (or misfire)—and all that comes out is one of those passing non sequiturs that are embarrassingly easy to access in moments of great awkwardness. “How tall was Charles de Gaulle?”

She cocks her head, like I’ve started speaking in tongues, before finally emitting a laugh. “How tall was …?” She stops to give it some thought. “Tall.”

“I don’t suppose that’s the kind of question you had in mind.”

“No, it was not.”

“I didn’t want to be obvious.”

“In that you’ve succeeded.”

“I’m sort of a Francophile. I love Paris. Which sounds dumb now that I say it—I mean, who doesn’t love Paris. But here you are and you’ve met Charles de Gaulle.”

“Well, he was very tall. He …” She starts to say more, then stops. She studies me, scanning my eyes to see if I can be trusted. She proceeds, but does so with caution. “This is neither here nor there, but I suppose I will follow your lead and be unexpected. He struck me as somewhat sad. He rode with President Kennedy and me through Paris, and when we got out of the car I remember thinking of Shelley’s Frankenstein monster. It was something about the way he moved, slowly, deliberately, and the streets were lined with villagers. I tried my best to be charming. At the time I was very focused on bringing the Mona Lisa to the United States—it had never been on loan before to a foreign nation. I wanted to be bright, sunny, for my mission. As for the monster himself, it was hard to pierce that sadness.”

I’m struck by her answer, the way she attributes Frankenstein to Shelley—in case anyone listening would miss the literary nature of the reference; I want to linger on it, but there are so many other things I want to know. About today, and every other day. About history. About the world and our place in it. About everything she’s witnessed. About why she says “President Kennedy” instead of my husband or Jack. But I can’t delve into any of that so I simply ask “Were you successful?”

“In getting the Mona Lisa? Oh, yes. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. Even to monsters.” This time she winks.

I understand that in being allowed to ask questions I’m being further persuaded. But I can’t stop. “How long have you worked at Doubleday?”

“Fourteen years.” She crosses her hands in her lap. “And several at Viking Press before that.”

“That’s probably more in line with what you were expecting.”

She dips her head in agreement.

“And you have an office? In this building?”

“I have an office here, down the hall. It’s a regular size and stacked high with manuscripts. I get my own coffee and wait in line to use the copier, same as anyone else.”

“And, this is embarrassing. But what do I call you?” Is there a title for former First Ladies? “Ma’am?”

“I think Mrs. Onassis would be appropriate, if you agree.”

I nod. I’ve been nodding a lot in this meeting, overwhelmed to find all the right words.

I lean in, set my arms on the table, and join my fingers. “And you want to work together.” I should feel awkward for retracing so much ground, but surprisingly I don’t.

“I see great promise. The work needs polishing, if I may be blunt, but now that I’ve met you I’m confident we will accomplish good things together.”

My cheeks grow flushed and I start to sweat and it dawns on me that we could be spending some real time together, beyond this meeting, beyond today. And if she opened up to me about Charles de Gaulle, even momentarily, she might open up to me about much, much more. That maybe she sees me as some sort of kindred spirit. That we might become … friends. My brain marches ten steps ahead of me and I do all within my power to reel it back.

I see Mrs. Onassis glance at the clock on the wall, and it’s obvious from that one small signal that our time is almost up.

“So.” It’s that awkward moment at the end of a first date. “What do we do now?”

She stands and offers her hand and I leap up to take it. We shake. I lean in, just a little bit, just enough to absorb her intoxicating presence a heartbeat longer; her hair smells like perfume and also, surprisingly, of cigarettes.

“Why don’t I have a conversation with your agent to work out the details. And then the hard work begins.”

I laugh nervously, realizing how difficult—crushing, even—it might be to hear real criticism, constructive though it may be, from this woman. When she lets go of my hand, I desperately try to think of anything to prolong this good-bye—clamber to name other mid-century heads of state and devise pressing questions about them. Alas, my mind roars only with the flat hum of an ocean, a momentous sound for a consequential occasion.

“We will be in touch.”

I open the conference room door for her, as any gentleman would, and as quickly as she entered my life she is gone.

THREE

I manage to stay collected until I reach the bank of elevators, even though I can feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walk down the hall, back through the paper and push-pins and cubicles and past the framed book covers; I trip and pause only when it hits me that my cover will perhaps one day be among them. Miraculously, I get an elevator to myself for four floors, leaving just enough time for me to self-defibrillate before the doors reopen and three chatty coworkers enter the elevator and join me for the rest of the ride to the lobby, complaining the whole way about a new brand of powdered coffee creamer that leaves a residue in their mugs. I wonder if they have any idea what just happened. I’m curious if they can glimpse my secret, if they can smell it on me, my own residue, and the coffee-creamer conversation is a cover. I try to smell myself, to see if there is some trace of Jackie’s perfume, or, better yet, some faint whiff of American decorative arts from her White House restoration, leather or oils or fine upholstery. It occurs to me they think I’m crazy, a man in a corner with a stunned expression, smelling himself for any trace of 1962.

Does Jackie (surely she’s not Mrs. Onassis in my thoughts) drink office coffee with powdered creamer out of a foam cup—does she like it, or just choke it down to fit in? Does she talk about her weekend in dreamy terms (“How was your weekend, Mrs. Onassis?”; “Fine, I reframed the Chagall and then got some sun in Belize”)? Or is she just one of us, stretching her lunch breaks when spring is in the air, stealing uni-ball pens from the supply closet to use at home.

When the elevator reaches the ground floor I let the others off first, then push through the lobby and revolving door, almost forgetting to exit on Fifty-Second Street. The sharp February air enters my lungs and jolts me like a shot of ice-cold vodka. I line up in front of the first hot dog vendor I come to, even though I don’t eat hot dogs; when I get to the front of the line I pretend not to have my wallet and continue toward Times Square as I start to replay what just happened.

I lied to Jackie in our meeting, about how I came to write about my mother. Because it was a choice, even if I said it was desperation. We were once close—very close—and slowly as I grew older we were not. She blames me for the end of her marriage, for my father. She never said so explicitly, but honestly how could she not? My father was a difficult man, older, not just from another generation but from another time. He never knew what to make of me. He certainly didn’t approve of me, my sensitive nature, my creative ambitions, my wanting to live in the city, my insistence on being myself. He called me foppish once, and I think we both knew it was a placeholder for another derogatory f-word. My mother spent a lot of time running interference. I think she thought she was doing what was best—shielding me from him—but it cost my father and me any chance at a real relationship and she paid a price for it too.

I retreated into adolescence; a casual observer would say I was barely there as my parents’ relationship crumbled. But I was ever-present, lurking in the shadows, an aspiring writer already reading Tennessee Williams, fascinated by human behavior. I mastered the spell of invisibility, at least as much as a powder keg could. I knew instinctually I was the catalyst, the spark for the fury around me. I dimmed my light as long as I was able, but gunpowder is made to ignite—especially when that gunpowder is repressed teenage sexuality. The explosion was not something the three of us survived.

After they divorced, my mother withdrew and she became a mystery for me to unravel. A more patient son might have waited for this to self-correct. I could have led by example as I grew into the man I was meant to be, been a beacon for truth that somehow lit the way. But the more closed off she became, the louder the invitation was to unscramble her; I would pursue, she would retreat—it became an endless, vicious loop. Eventually I chose fiction as a way toward fact. It was inevitable that she would become my subject.

“I’m writing a book about Mom,” I remember telling my sister, Naomi, when I completed a particularly inspiring writing intensive. It was a three-day workshop and I came out feeling the time for a novel was now.

“Oh, God. Why?” was her response.

It was so obvious to me. “Have you met her? C’mon. Why not.”

I thought I could show my mother how much I understood her, how grateful, in fact, I was for everything she had sacrificed for me. My brother Kenny told me there were certain questions about Mom that were just going to remain unanswered, and the sooner I accepted that, the happier I would be. He was able to make peace with it. Naomi was able to go about her life just fine. But a child wants to be close to his mother, and I was forever the baby. I think Kenny and Naomi felt that by not kicking the hornet’s nest, they would be just close enough. Not so for me.

I started writing and I didn’t stop. I was obsessive, writing for an audience of one. I stayed up nights, wrote through lunch breaks, and canceled plans with friends. Daniel had to remind me to eat, and even at times to sleep. Nine months later, right on cue, I delivered a novel I called The Book of Ruth, after the mother character, despite the heavy-handed allusion to the Hebrew text. Because of the Jane Hamilton novel I settled on a new title, The Quarantine, after the self-imposed isolation (literal and figurative) at the heart of the book.

Did I say any of this to Jackie? No, because I lied and said it was desperation. Although, wasn’t it? Just not desperation for a subject, desperation for something else. Reconciliation. Repatriation. Damn. Why wasn’t I better prepared for this meeting?

My agent!

Allen sent me walking into the lion’s den with no warning of the lioness. I pass a pay phone by a Sbarro pizza and empty my pockets of their contents. I fish dimes from a pool of pennies and subway tokens, then pick up the receiver, making as little contact with it as possible. How many drug dealers and prostitutes and (worse) tourists have used this phone before me today? I dial my agent’s number, which I memorized after our first meeting. The phone rings three times before his assistant picks up.

“Donna? It’s James Smale. Could you put Allen on the line?”

Donna laughs. “He said you’d be calling.”

I hate being obvious (should I ask him about former French presidents?), but there’s no way around it. “May I talk to him, please?”

“How was your meeting with Lisa?”

“It was Lila, Donna. Her name was Lila.” Actually, that wasn’t her name at all.

“I can never read my own chicken scratch. Anyhow, he’s on another line.”

“Have him hang up!” I’m shouting, but I can’t tell if it’s from excitement or from the din and chaos around me.

“What? It’s hard to understand you. Where are you? Do you want me to interrupt him?”

It occurs to me he might be on with Doubleday, that the call might be about me. “No, no!” I say, both to her and to someone who has just approached with a cigarette, harassing me for a light. “Just have him call me. I’ll be home in twenty minutes.”

I hang up the phone and turn around to see a black man dressed in drag as the Statue of Liberty approaching, torch in the air and all. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, honey,” he says.

I smile and think of the last line of the poem, which has stuck since I learned it in Mrs. Chaddon’s sixth-grade class. “I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

“That’s right you do, baby,” he says, before disappearing into a tour group wearing green-foam Statue of Liberty visors exiting the Sbarro.

A bus stops at the red light in front of me with the high-pitched squealing of poorly maintained brakes. I glance up at the people on board before noticing that the bus sports a tattered poster for Oliver Stone’s JFK, released in theaters this past Christmas. The poster is faded and torn, as if some drunk NYU student tried to pry it off for his dorm room wall and abandoned the theft halfway through.

I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I just met a woman in a conference room who is also somehow everywhere, even in the image of a tattered American flag draped over Kevin Costner’s face on the side of this bus.

It’s impossible to reconcile.

Across Seventh Avenue, I spot a mother holding her child’s hand. Her eyes dart from one potential danger to another, and she places her other hand on the boy’s shoulder so as not to lose him—that single touch a time machine for me. My first ever visit to this neon circus, I think I was seven. My parents decided to drive us into the city from our sleepy upstate home so we could feel the energy, walking us all the way up Fifth Avenue from the Empire State Building to Central Park. On the way back to the car, my father charged forward, insisting that Times Square was a sight everyone should see. Kenny and Naomi were teenagers, able to withstand the bustle of the city and seemingly unfazed by it all. But my mother held me so tightly, at times I thought I might bruise.

“Keep up, Aileen. The boy’s fine,” my father bellowed. And then, “What we should really do is see the subway. A marvel of urban transportation.” Those were the things that interested my father, tunnels and bridges and trains.

But I didn’t want to go underground, like rats—I could barely breathe above; I looked desperately for patches of sky. I glanced to my mother for help, prayed she would never let go, and she leaned down and whispered in my ear the words that would one day change my life: “You know, all the great writers live in New York.” And just like that, the city transformed from menacing commotion to inviting possibility.

In eight years of living here, I’ve lost the sensation of my mother’s excited whisper and firm grip. Times Square came to mock me—symbolic of the dismissal I faced trying to make it as a writer. It was every rejection letter, every failed job interview, every face that chuckled when I revealed my dream, every horrible, soul-crushing temporary job. It led to my hating New York. Hating myself. I never felt the same energy of that day again.

Until now.

I count to ten to just “feel the energy,” giving my father at least that much, then blow into my cupped hands to warm them. Gloves! I have gloves. I find them in my coat pocket and put them on before scurrying west across Forty-Ninth Street. I have to get home to Hell’s Kitchen. I have to get home to tell Daniel and to be there when my agent calls.

I have to get home before I wake up.