Albatross

by Terry Fallis

  “Well, I’m not sure that’s quite fair…”

  “I’m not finished,” she cut in. “All I ever wanted was to play on the Tour. Any tour. It didn’t even have to be the LPGA. But I’m just not quite there, and it looks like I’ll never quite get there. So it really pisses me off when someone with your natural talent and skill squanders it, when I’d give anything to have half your ability. It’s disgusting.”

  She spat out her last declaration with such venom, I started to worry and eye the exits.

  I didn’t even notice Alli stand up, but in an instant she was standing right in front of my tormentor, in close enough proximity to trigger anyone’s personal-space alarm. Alli had a fierce look on her face but spoke in a quiet yet intimidating tone.

  “It’s time for you to get out of his face and go back to your table. I’ve never seen anyone behave so rudely in my life. Adam doesn’t owe you or the game or anybody else anything. So step away now, and don’t you ever pull such an insulting stunt again. Am I coming in loud and clear?”

  The woman was caught off guard, but probably not as much as I was. Her mouth was agape, matching mine. Eventually she gathered herself, closed her mouth, glared at Alli, and took a small step back.

  “Fine. I was finished anyway,” she said as she turned and walked away.

  “Oh, you’re finished all right,” Alli replied, holding the perimeter until the other woman was back at her table.

  Then Alli sat back down and smiled sweetly at me.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “Where were we?”

  “Well, I was just about to say that I’d gladly go off to war with you, but I’d never want to go up against you.”

  “Sorry, she just made me very angry,” Alli replied. “She just found out that if you want me to unleash the beast, start abusing someone I love.”

  And there it was. She stopped when she realized what she’d said, her eyes on the table. Then she lifted them to mine with a very tentative, even fearful, look. The beast was gone.

  “Sorry, I could have phrased that differently,” she said.

  I reached out and cradled her hand.

  “I’m glad you didn’t. I love you, too,” I said without thinking.

  Then I briefly started thinking. Uh oh.

  “I mean, assuming you were using that word in the same way I was. Um, if you meant love in the familial or friendship sense, and that would be fine, I guess, but then I’d be sitting here feeling a little exposed and…”

  “Shhh, please,” she said. “Don’t ruin it.”

  I shut up fast.

  We’d avoided going out to dinner for a while after that, but had mustered the courage again after a few weeks. Only one person dropped by our table that night, as we cracked open our fortune cookies. Alli tensed up a bit, but she need not have this time. The older woman stopped only briefly.

  “I won’t delay you,” she started. “I just wanted to wish you well with your writing. Higher callings are very few. Honour it.”

  Then she nodded and left. We left soon after.

  When we arrived back at the condo, I stretched out on the couch. Alli reached into her bag and pulled out a familiar spiral notebook.

  “Okay, the next chapter is finally finished,” she said, waving the book about. “I was up writing it last night into the wee hours.”

  “Well, as we now know, higher callings are very few,” I replied, and held out my hands for the notebook.

  While I read her neat and lovely cursive, she sat in the chair across from me. She pretended to read, but I could see she was watching me much of the time.

  In the antiphonal novel, the relationship was heating up. It was a really nice chapter, so well written, and quite moving in the portrayal of two young people in love. But the last paragraph triggered a sudden and unexpected inhalation that Alli would have had no trouble detecting. The chapter ends with the young woman gently and tentatively proposing that she and her boyfriend move in together.

  I looked up at her and caught her eyeing me over top of her book. I sat up and faced her.

  “Really?” I said. “Are you serious?”

  “What?” she replied.

  “You know very well what,” I said. “Are you serious? Are we ready?”

  “Well, I’m not sure we’re ready, but I feel like I’m ready,” she replied, almost in a whisper. “But if you have reservations…”

  “Reservations? I’ve been ready for months, but wasn’t sure you were. We should really talk more often,” I said, standing up. “This is wonderful. I’m thrilled. Um, when can we start?”

  “Right now, I guess, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “This is the best Christmas present you could have given me,” I said as I crammed myself next to her in the chair that was really only designed to accommodate one.

  “Well, you’re an easy mark if you think me invading your luxurious space is a gift to you.”

  “If you’re worried about this place not feeling like your space, I can sell it and we can move somewhere else, you know,” I said.

  “Adam, I love all this. It’s beautiful,” she replied. “Besides, you’ve haven’t even finished unpacking your boxes yet. It feels like we’re still moving in anyway. But I need to make one thing clear. I’m paying my share of the expenses.”

  “Oh, well, it’s already paid for in full. So there’s no mortgage or rent.”

  “That’s not the point. I’ll be paying, even if I’m paying you. I insist.”

  She moved in within the week.

  JANUARY 2021

  “Hello?”

  “Adam, this is Ingemar,” said the voice on my cellphone.

  “Oh, hi, professor. How are things in Adelaide?” I asked, sustaining the charade.

  “That is an excellent question. I am very pleased to inform you that I am not in Adelaide. I arrived in Stockholm today and hope never to leave again.”

  “Oh, well, that’s great news, professor. You’ve gone home. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, I am extremely happy. I cannot tell you how happy I am. There is no measurement device in all the sciences that could quantify my happiness,” he said. “But you already knew all of this.”

  “I’m sorry?” I replied.

  “Why ever are you sorry? I hope you have no regrets about what you have done.”

  “What? I’m sorry, I’m not really following you,” I stammered.

  “Let us drop the theatrics, shall we? You are the only person on the planet with the knowledge and wherewithal to fund the new chair in my name at my home university,” he said. “The powers that be here insist it is an anonymous donor and they refuse to divulge the benevolent person’s name. But they don’t have to. I wanted to say thank you. You have delivered me, and I thank you.”

  I paused to think, but further sham protests seemed pointless.

  “Professor, you changed the course of my life seven years ago. I am very comfortable, living in a condo that I paid for in cash, pursuing what really makes me happy. You and your PIPP theory made all of this possible. Anything I might have done to help get you back to Stockholm is a very modest expression of my gratitude. But please do keep this between us.”

  “As you wish,” he said. “Again, I am grateful to be home and to be able to continue my research. And I am learning to be nice to everyone around me, which I do not find at all practical or easy, but I will not imperil the new program through my own actions and behaviour.”

  “That is good to hear, professor,” I said with some relief. “I’m sure there are a few ninety-plus G-scores out there in the world, and you will find them. I know you will.”

  MARCH 2021

  You have to give them up at some point, and it was time. I’d worked on them for so long. Each time I reviewed them, I’d find something I wanted to change, but the significance of those edits eventually declined to insignificance. I’d debate with myself over the placement of a comma for an hour or so before removing i
t. Then I’d put it back in on the next pass. It was time.

  I remained committed to having the stories considered strictly on their merits. I was well aware that I’d have absolutely no difficulty finding a publisher, and a major one at that, if I sent out the manuscript under my own name. The way celebrity works in this early part of the twenty-first century, when you have a certain amount of fame—and regrettably, I still had a lot—what you have created is not nearly as important as the fact that it was you who created it. In my case, objective literary criticism of my writing really wasn’t important. Publishers knew there was a welcoming consumer market for anything written by gold medal golfer and kidnapping trauma survivor Adam Coryell. I was not interested in that. I’d spent seven years in the golf world with no real agency over my success. I refused to have my celebrity remove any agency I had over my writing life.

  So I’d decided to submit my short-story collection to publishers under the pseudonym MacGregor Wilson. It was a subtle inside joke for golfers. MacGregor and Wilson were the names of two older and now lower-profile golf equipment manufacturers. Was it a bit cheeky on my part? Maybe. But I didn’t think it would ever become known. And even if it did, it would at least show I had a sense of humour, though perhaps not a well-developed one.

  My plan was to avoid literary agents, as they would obviously insist on meeting me before agreeing to represent me. This limited my opportunities to smaller publishing houses that accepted unsolicited manuscripts. And I had to land a publishing deal while maintaining my anonymity. It was an uphill battle to find a publisher at the best of times. It was an even steeper climb when a pseudonymous manuscript was your only asset. I drafted a cover letter explaining that for personal reasons, I was submitting my short-story collection under a pseudonym and that I could not reveal my own identity, even to publishers. I tried to assure them that it was not for any untoward or unsavoury reasons. It was just a personal choice, to allow me to be judged on my art alone. I felt compelled to note, though Alli advised against it, that even if it were published, I wouldn’t be able to make any appearances to promote the book publicly in my own true name. I wondered briefly if maybe such a scenario would intrigue publishers and even enhance my shot at a book deal. Probably not, but I was looking for silver linings in a sky filled with dark clouds.

  Over the course of two weeks, I sent out customized query letters and my manuscript to dozens of publishing houses in Canada and the United States. It didn’t take long to hear from some of them. The swift rejections that rolled in to the fake email address I had created leaned on one predictable rationale. They simply weren’t prepared to consider a pseudonymous submission without knowing the identity of the author. They were protecting themselves from the unknown. I probably would have done the same thing. But I was protecting myself, too. I only brought Alli, my parents, Lisa Griffiths, and Susan Maddocks into the MacGregor Wilson tent.

  In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself checking my MacGregor Wilson Gmail account every twenty minutes or so, and found an empty inbox almost every time. When there was a rare response, it was always a rejection. I’d been warned that the publishing industry seemed to move in geological time. So I waited, and waited.

  When I wasn’t checking my email and waiting, I worked on my novel. I used Alli’s line Star or Stars as the working title. I learned quickly that I didn’t really know how to write a novel. It seemed daunting. But as I mapped out the arc of the story and began to identify major plot developments and key events, I felt much more confident. I kept breaking the story down into smaller and smaller segments, adding detail as I outlined. I prepared character sketches of all the major players in the novel and invented plausible backstories for them. Then I determined my settings and learned what I could about them. I could really feel the freedom offered by a novel’s larger playing field. I resisted the temptation to start writing the manuscript until I really felt like I understood the story. Finally, I wrote a rather detailed chapter-by-chapter outline in bullet-point form. I discovered that uncertainty was the enemy of my writing. The bullet-point outline reduced my sense of uncertainty to negligible levels. It felt like it was time to write.

  With only about fifteen hours of classes each week, I had plenty of time to sit in my library, look out the window at the city sprawled out before me, and write. It was quite straightforward to write a chapter when guided by four or five pages of bullet points. Writer’s block was never an issue, so the chapters piled up. Of course, I still constantly checked my MacGregor Wilson email, with demoralizing results.

  Alli was about a month away from completing her master’s when it happened. She’d just arrived home. I was cooking chicken thighs, rice, and carrots for dinner. I not only golf and write, but I can also hold my own in the kitchen. I’m no culinary savant, but if there were a Gunnarsson number for cooking, I think I’d score reasonably well.

  “Hey,” she said as she came through the door.

  “Hey, how was your day?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply, but kicked off her boots and hung up her coat. She had a strange, kind of flushed and concerned look on her face that I couldn’t remember ever seeing.

  “Alli? Everything okay?”

  She walked towards me and sat on one of the leather bar stools at the kitchen counter.

  “Yes, sorry, everything is fine,” she replied. “But we do need to talk. I got some news today.”

  She said it the way you might if you’d just been given a terminal diagnosis, or your mother had died.

  “Alli, what’s wrong? What’s happened? We’ll get through it.”

  My heart was pounding.

  “Um, well, I just signed a publishing deal for my novel with a big New York house,” she said, still in her stage-four-cancer-diagnosis voice.

  While it would have been the Hollywood thing to do, I didn’t drop the wooden spoon I’d been using to stir the rice. But I easily could have. She’d only recently started sending out queries to publishers. They didn’t usually move this fast.

  “Sorry, did you just say you signed a big New York publishing deal?”

  “No, I signed a publishing deal with a big New York house. It’s not quite the same. The book will be released first in Canada, and then shortly thereafter in the U.S.”

  “Is there an advance?”

  “Well, um, yes, there is,” she replied.

  “And?”

  “And, it’s quite satisfactory.”

  “Okay. Are you comfortable sharing the magnitude with me or should I continue wriggling in anticipation?”

  “Right. Well, the advance is sixty thousand dollars.”

  That’s when I dropped the wooden spoon.

  “But it’s against royalties. So in a way, I still have to earn it,” she said. “And it was an auction, so the number is artificially inflated.”

  “Alli, this is fantastic! You’ve hit a home run on your first trip to the plate! Wooohooo!”

  I was jumping up and down by this stage, grains of rice flying off the wooden spoon I’d just picked up off the floor. One grain landed on Alli’s cheek. She reached up to wipe it away.

  “This is wonderful, stunning, glorious news! This is what you’ve always wanted and now it’s happened! Congratulations!”

  The counter separated us, or I’d have grabbed her and danced her around the room. But it wasn’t just the counter that stopped me. She still looked bereaved.

  “Alli, what’s wrong? You’re not reacting at all like someone whose dreams have just come true.”

  It took me a long time to wrestle it out of her. Turned out she was so reserved because I’d also been waiting to hear some good news from publishers, any publisher, but hadn’t.

  “Wait. Let me get this straight. The only thing holding you back from ripping off your clothes and doing naked celebratory handsprings around the room is your concern that I don’t yet have a publishing deal?”

  “Well, the wraparound wall-o-windows also makes the naked-handsprings
manoeuvre unlikely.”

  Then I did walk around the counter to her and put my arms around her.

  “Alli, please, I could not be prouder of what you’ve accomplished. I knew when I sat up all night reading your novel that this moment would come. This is about you. It is your moment. It is a time to celebrate. This is not about me. It’s about you. And anyway, I’m hoping that someday I’ll find someone to publish me. But your awesome news does nothing but inspire me and fuel the fire in my belly to be a writer. This is what we’ve worked for. We were never going to sign publishing deals at the same time. The odds of that are astronomical. So do not waste any more time, energy, and emotion worrying about how I’ll react to your fantastic news because now you know. I’m so happy for you and proud of you. So enjoy it. I insist. You deserve this. You’ve earned this.”

  Then she cried as she held on to me. I was learning that Alli was easily brought to tears, often in a good way. I’m pretty sure this was good crying, happy crying. Eventually the details came out. It was an imprint of Penguin Random House in New York. The deal was for world rights and the advance was very generous for a debut novel from an unknown Canadian writer. They were planning to publish it in the fall. She’d done it.

  JULY 2021

  In mid-July, when I checked my MacGregor Wilson Gmail account for about the sixth time that morning, an email was waiting for me. It had arrived a few minutes earlier and was from ProsePump, a very small publishing house. I vaguely remembered sending them a package back in March, but I’d heard nothing from them, or from many others, since. Every time I’d received a response from my spring outreach, it was a short, terse, direct, clear, even resounding, rejection. So I steeled myself for yet another and clicked on the email.

  Dear MacGregor,

  ProsePump is a small literary press based in Peterborough, Ontario, with a focus on short-story collections, particularly by writers just waiting to break through. I founded the press nearly thirty years ago and remain one of our lead talent scouts. I have read and reread “The Birthmark” and have been entranced by its quirkiness and inventive writing. I think these stories deserve a broader audience and I also believe Canadians will enjoy them. With that in mind, I’d like to offer you a publishing deal with our humble house. While we do not have deep pockets, we are committed to our authors and we’ll do whatever we can within our modest means to put your prose in front of people.