Old Lovegood Girls

by Gail Godwin

  Crossing my fingers we’ll be able to see each other again.

  Yours faithfully,

  Merry

  … hear from you after so long … Her faithful letters to me … I have some more, in different stages of development … yours faithfully …

  From her apartment-sit on East Fifty-fourth Street, Feron walked the blocks down to the Algonquin (how did Merry know about the Algonquin?). She sat at a desk in the lobby and wrote Merry a note on the hotel’s stationery.

  “She’ll be arriving late evening next Thursday. Jellicoe, Meredith Grace, or maybe M. G. Jellicoe. Or possibly M. G. Petrie. Will you make sure it’s waiting for her?”

  A young man in a bow tie checked the reservation book. “There’s an M. G. Jellicoe checking in next Thursday. Sure, we’ll hold it for her.”

  “Where will you keep it meanwhile?”

  “Pardon?” Cocking his head at her.

  “I mean, do you have a special place you hold mail for your future guests? I want to make sure it doesn’t get misplaced.”

  “We have this.” He brought out a gold-tooled leather folder from under the counter. “See? I’m putting it in right now. So unless it walks off by itself, it’ll be in her box when she arrives.”

  “Thank you.” I am twenty-seven years old and a widow, she thought. How old and eccentric must I seem to this desk clerk?

  “You’re welcome. If you want to make extra-sure, you can always drop by next Thursday afternoon and check that it’s in her box.”

  “That’s an idea. I might.”

  It was Merry tilted forward in an easy chair with no pretense of doing anything other than being on the watch for her friend. Then the tanned and smartly dressed woman was already on her feet, rushing toward her. A stranger would probably take her for a rich woman up from Florida to see a few people and do some serious shopping.

  “Feron!”

  She wore a black lightweight suit, perfect for the mild November weather, and a black narrow-brimmed hat. What had I expected, Feron thought: a farm girl turned out in her Sunday best?

  When Merry was hugging her round her waist, Feron had to bend so their cheeks could meet. She had forgotten how petite Merry was.

  “It’s been a while.” Her own greeting sounded flat and stingy.

  “Oh, it has, it has. You’re looking wonderful, Feron. The city must suit you.”

  “You’re looking fabulous yourself. I like your hat.”

  “Do you? The person I had lunch with said he thought hats went out when Jackie left the White House. Then he fell over himself assuring me that my hat was charming. I’ve saved us these armchairs with the little table in front. Isn’t this the most wonderful room? Can’t you just imagine all the literary conversations that must have taken place here?”

  “How did you know about the Algonquin?”

  “The person I had lunch with put me up here.”

  “The one who said your hat was charming.”

  “That’s the one. Mr. Sterling. He’s a literary agent. But we’ll get to him later. Now, if we want something to drink, we ring this little bell and a waiter will appear. You can also order a sandwich. Are you hungry? You’ve just come from work.”

  “Thank you, no, lunch is on the house at my place of work. As long as we order in and stay at our desks, we have an international choice of menus.”

  “I’ve already checked out of the hotel, so we’ll have more time before I have to leave for the train. I left my suitcase with the bellman.”

  “Maybe I will have a glass of white wine,” said Feron.

  A literary agent!

  “Oh, good, I get to ring the little bell. I’ll have one, too. I’m going to come right out and say it, Feron. I didn’t expect to ever see you again.”

  “Really?” How else to answer such an indictment?

  “Well, we kind of lost touch. I was surprised to get your wedding invitation, but I would have come if it hadn’t been for …”

  “Your brother was starring in Our Town.”

  “You remember!”

  “I remember a great deal about you, Merry. Despite my disgraceful letter-writing habits, you’re an important part of my history. You’re one of the ten or twelve regulars who show up in my dreams.”

  “Really? Oh, you don’t know how much that means—” Merry had teared up at the mention of her brother but now required a folded handkerchief from her purse to blot her cheeks. “I was completely stunned after that awful day. Next month it will be ten years. I felt like someone who had died but had a duty to stay around and preside over things, like old Horace Lovegood in our college play. I had to watch Ritchie grow up and keep Jellicoe Enterprises in business. And I did do that. Well, up to a point I did. We sent a record crop to the tobacco auctions this year and Ritchie had a secure adolescence, though I couldn’t prevent him from enlisting for Vietnam even before he had to. And now there are all these protests, Feron! They’re saying the whole war was an evil mistake. But you’ve had your own sorrow. What was he like, your husband? I remember when I received your wedding invitation, I wondered who William Michael Avery was. I tried to imagine the kind of man you would be marrying. Does this upset you, my talking about it?”

  “No, it brings him back. You really want to hear?”

  “Yes!”

  “He was my professor, he was fifteen years my senior. While I was in his Medieval History class, I worked harder than I ever had to earn his good opinion. This was the second semester of my junior year. It wasn’t until the following semester that we ran into each other in the campus coffee shop. It was a Sunday and I was depressed. I’ve forgotten why. He asked me to drive with him to visit his mother. I was really taken with her and the house and the garden and the way they were together and the way they included me. At the end of the afternoon as we were driving back to campus, I found myself imagining being the daughter-in-law in such a family. And then I sneaked a side look at him and something tipped upside down in me and I thought, how amazing if I could marry this man.”

  “How romantic.”

  “Well, that was from my side. It took a while longer before he looked at me sideways and saw more than the hardworking A student in his class who got along with his mother. He was one of those consecrated scholars who lived more inside his subject than he did in the world. I knew I had to be careful or I’d scare him off. Fortunately, his mother started a correspondence with me, so I learned about him slowly, how he’d always preferred his mind to other people, that kind of thing. She and I did most of the groundwork.”

  This was the place for Merry to pounce: Good thing you kept up your correspondence that time! But Merry didn’t say it, didn’t even think it, probably. Merry wasn’t the pouncing type, springing at you out of a forest of undermeanings. (“Merry is easy to be with,” Feron had told Dean Fox back at Lovegood. “There’s nothing underhanded about her. We’re comfortable together.”)

  “Your wedding invitation … I remember being surprised you weren’t getting married in your uncle’s town.”

  “It was at my uncle’s fiancée’s house in the next town over. She took care of everything. She loves organizing events. Blanche Buttner and my uncle have been engaged for, let’s see, twenty-five years now.”

  “Good grief, what’s holding them back? They were engaged when we were at Lovegood.”

  “Well, she likes planning and overseeing other people’s weddings, but I think she dreads getting trapped on the other side of them. The wedding was small and perfect. We didn’t have it at Blanche’s church, because she’s a Roman Catholic, so we had it in her beautiful house with the Methodist minister from Uncle Rowan’s church officiating. And I was more than ever in love now that I knew Will loved me back. It felt incredible. Even when we were standing together at the altar, I felt that upside-down thing.”

  “Do you keep in touch with Will’s mother?”

  “No, she died. Not long after Will, in fact. She was already sick at our wedding, but nobody knew it yet,
not even her. Oh, that whole period with Will was incredible. Everyone should get what they want at least once. I tried to write a novel to capture some of the feeling before it was lost.”

  “You wrote a novel?”

  “That’s what I thought I was doing. It was more like an impressionistic elegy. Only one editor invited me to his office. A nice older man. He said a lot of nice things, but he had to turn it down.”

  “Why?”

  “He said that I needed to put in more, well, intimate scenes between them to make it work.”

  How expert she had become at making up lies!

  “You mean, like bed?”

  “Like bed.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “Well, that’s where I’m up to in my present draft. I still can’t see a way. Nothing really fits what Will and I had together. Right now, I’m working on a new opening, something else the editor suggested. He said I should show how they met, right from the start, before they are in England.”

  “Did you ever read that Chekhov story about the man and the woman with the little dog? It’s not one of his stories Miss Petrie read to us in class. I discovered it later.”

  “They kept seeing each other, that’s all I remember. Not one of his typical endings.”

  “I read it again recently. Reading Chekhov makes me feel closer to Miss Petrie, and it improves my writing. It also makes me feel closer to you and what we had at Lovegood, though I probably shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I might scare you away. I might as well say it, Feron. Oh, I’ve already said it, I really didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “Well, here I am” was Feron’s lame reply.

  “With Chekhov, he can write so little, but it’s exactly the right little. I mean, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ is a story about a love affair, but there’s surprisingly little ‘bed’ in it. Instead there are these firsthand touches that make it just their affair, like her hotel room being stuffy and smelling of some perfume she bought in a Japanese shop. And how he’s aware of a feeling of embarrassment between them, like someone has just knocked on the door. Isn’t that wonderful? It’s so true to life. And at the same time, he’s recalling other women, who were false or predatory, and how, when the passion was over, the lace on their underwear reminded him of fish scales!”

  “Fish scales!”

  “Yes, you wouldn’t think of the comparison, but he did, because he’s such a well-imagined character. And then there’s a description of her face after they’ve made love. He thinks she looks like a repentant sinner in a painting. And then another great touch is, while she is having a fit of remorse, he is eating a slice of watermelon. Then he comforts her and they end up laughing and go out and sit by the sea, and he realizes the sea will go on perfectly well after they are dead, and that it’s our own small thoughts and actions that prevent us from seeing that the world is beautiful and human beings have dignity. That’s one way you could do it. Just little details that belong to nobody but them.”

  “Fish scales and Japanese scent and watermelon! I’m going to stop by the library on my way home. Think of me reading that story tonight, while you’re on the southbound train. Tell me about your literary agent. Did you find him or did he find you?”

  “He was really kind, but I’m afraid he sees me as more of a prospect than I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he wrote me care of the magazine after my story came out, and they forwarded it. He offered to pay my expenses if I would come up here and talk to him. But he has in mind a book of connected stories about people living their daily lives in a southern tobacco town and all their secrets. Also he thinks I should use my real name and describe myself as the owner of a tobacco enterprise. I told him I’d been working on about a dozen stories on and off, but they’re not ready yet. And that my real name and the tobacco farm part were out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe if I try to explain it to you, it will become clearer to me. If it doesn’t bore you.”

  “It won’t bore me.” She would deal with her feelings about Merry’s success on her walk back to the apartment.

  “What I told him, Mr. Sterling, was that I had to remain M. G. Petrie. First of all, the farm is named after my great-great-grandfather. Jellicoe’s bright leaf tobacco is an old concern. A Jellicoe who published stories about people in a tobacco town wouldn’t sit well with people at home. I’d be an insider turned informer. I mean, look at ‘The Curing Barn.’ There are more characters in that story than the sister and brother. There are the other workers. And those workers are somewhat based on real people, though I tried to mix it up and disguise things.”

  “That’s what writers do. Mix up and disguise.”

  “But if ‘The Curing Barn’ had come out under my name, those workers would be trying to guess which parts I had stolen from them. Then Mr. Sterling asked why I used the initials. Why not Meredith Grace Petrie? Was it that I wanted to be gender-neutral? If so, Meredith without the Grace could be either a man or a woman. But he didn’t push it, and I was grateful. He said whatever made me happy was fine with him. Though he said it would probably come out at some point that M. G. was a woman, and at an even later point, especially if I were to win some prize, people would find out that Petrie was really Jellicoe. But we didn’t need to worry about that yet, he said; all I had to do was go back home and write more stories.”

  “That was a smart thing for him to say.”

  “Well, here’s something I didn’t tell him. Jellicoe’s has fifty workers on the payroll. Forty-three of them are men. I think one reason I’ve made a go of it is that those men feel protective of me. I’m the poor little woman who had this huge responsibility thrust upon her, who lost the last male in the family who was supposed to take over, so it’s up to them to take care of me and make sure I keep the business going. I would lose that advantage if they started seeing me as the writer who’s going to use them in stories. ‘The secrets and sorrows in a southern tobacco town,’ the agent said. But I couldn’t reveal real secrets, even if I knew what they were. I mean, everyone has secrets no one else should know.”

  Here Merry stopped, as though censoring herself. She had gone red under her tan.

  “Of course they do. Secrets are the only personal assets some of us have.” Feron realized this was true as she said it.

  “And even as M. G. Petrie, I wouldn’t feel free to put their secret sorrows—or what I might guess about them—in my stories. It wouldn’t be playing fair.”

  “Merry, what exactly is it you do to keep the business going?”

  “I mostly sit in an air-conditioned office when I’m not out inspecting the fields, which my dermatologist warns me not to do anymore. I had three cancers cut out of my face this past summer. They were all on the forehead, and luckily I can cover up the scars with my bangs—and hats, of course. And, let’s see, I make payroll once a week. I enjoy that, I don’t know why. Maybe because it reminds me that others have lives that are just as important to them as mine is to me. And I order the supplies and I pay the bills. And I tend to all our correspondence and spend half a day with an accountant who comes once a month from Raleigh. I meet with my manager, Mr. Jack, who keeps the outdoors going. He oversees repairs and maintenance of the heavy equipment, and he’s completely in charge of our big harvesting machine, which we’re still paying for. He calls it his demanding baby. And he delegates people for all the chores that have to be done every day when you have a crew working for you: like seeing that water coolers are filled every morning, sending workers to the sick bay for heatstroke and minor wounds. He goes up to NC State and meets with soil consultants and comes back with all these figures he tries to explain to me. And now we’ve got a new problem to deal with. You probably haven’t heard of the antitobacco movement, but we have to start thinking about what other crops would be profitable in our soil. I grew up being a little afraid of Mr. Jack, but he’s a loyal pers
on and I’d be lost if I didn’t have him behind me overseeing things.”

  “He worked for your father?”

  “He was my father’s manager. His last name is Rakestraw, but everyone, including me, calls him Mr. Jack. Daddy got him straight out of graduate school. He has five and a half years’ more college than I do.”

  “When do you write?”

  “In the evening if I’m not too tired. I curl up on a lounge on the back porch or write in bed.”

  “At Lovegood you’d crawl into bed and start writing in your notebook. As if you had someone inside, dictating the words. It used to unnerve me. Do you still write by hand?”

  “I do. When I get a halfway decent draft, I type it up in the office and then I go through the typescript, reading it aloud. That’s when the bad writing really screams at you, when you hear yourself reading aloud. Then I copy my marked-up typescript back into the notebook and begin the process again.”

  Good God, no wonder it took her so long to finish anything.

  “When do you write, Feron?”

  “Same as you, in the evening. After work.”

  “What do you do at your job?”

  “My first job was in something called ‘the Tandem Room.’ I worked with a partner. We sat across from each other and read the consultants’ reports aloud, correcting the typos and grammar mistakes and then sending them to the higher-up editors who worked on the structure and content. It sounds boring, but I enjoyed my partner. She advised what we should order from the menus; she even taught me to use chopsticks. And she could be so wise about how to avoid bitterness. She’d say, ‘I try to stay away from any situation that promises to bring on dissatisfaction with myself.’ Her name was Shawna Samuels.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Oh, she’s still in the big Tandem Room downstairs, working with another partner and ordering out Chinese and Italian meals. What happened was, I got moved upstairs to become one of those higher editors. Now I have a room to myself, with a window, and I revise clumsy syntax, move paragraphs around, see if it lacks pace, check that it’s accurate, and I send it back to the consultant for more work if the content seems skimpy. Then it goes to the typist, and after that to the editorial director, who adds her final touches and sends it on to be vetted by the top brass before it’s delivered to the firm that paid a lot of money to hire the consultant to tell them what they were doing wrong and how they could do better.”