“That’s her?” John asked.
“It is.” Claire had no doubt.
“She must have been writing under a pseudonym.”
“Or living under one. For all we know, Jess Moran is the real name and Jennie Dell the pseudonym.”
Continuing her examination of Out of the Blue, Claire checked the publisher’s logo on the spine. It was a New York imprint that had long since been swallowed up, digested, and eliminated by the consolidation of a media empire. The copyright page said the book was published in 1963 and gave Jess Moran’s birth date as 1943, which would make her the same age as Jonathan. It was obvious immediately to Claire that Out of the Blue was a book known in the business as a small book, not so much for its physical size as for the size of the print run. The fact that the author’s name was below the title and both were in small letters, the subtle colors and indifferent artwork on the jacket, the lack of glitter and embossing all said this was a book with limited expectations and a small budget. In the nineties a book that a publisher had any intention of promoting weighed a couple of pounds and had silver or gold embossed letters on the jacket, and a red or black background. What would make a book stand out now, Claire thought, was quietness, smallness, subtlety. She didn’t recall as much glitz in 1963, but even so, Out of the Blue was obviously a book the publisher hadn’t spent any money on promoting, a book that had been left to sink or swim on its own.
Claire read the acknowledgments and the dedication. The book was dedicated to the author’s mother, and she recognized none of the names in the acknowledgments. There was nothing left to do but to read it. She couldn’t do that here in the restaurant in front of John Harlan, but she did skim the first paragraph. Claire could usually tell from the first paragraph whether or not an author could write. It was clear from the very first sentence that Jess Moran had style. It was a hook that pulled the reader in and made Claire forget just how tired she was. She wanted nothing more than to go home and finish Out of the Blue, but John Harlan was sitting across the table, laughing.
“Do you really want any coffee?” he asked.
“No,” Claire admitted.
“Take the book home. Read it. Promise you’ll call me when you’re done?”
“I promise,” Claire said.
******
It was a promise she didn’t keep immediately. When she got home she took the book to her courtyard, grateful for the pleasant weather and the sunny seclusion. Warm days in November reminded Claire of a visit to an aging parent; you never knew if each one would be the last. One day you would look up, and all the leaves would be gone from the trees. It would be winter. The parent would be dead. Not that winter in New Mexico was severe, but she was a desert rat and not used to the cold.
She sat down on the banco and read Out of the Blue straight through. It was a short book—a novella, actually—and she was a fast reader. While she read, the shadows moved over the courtyard walls. A datura pod burst and spilled its seeds on the bricks without her noticing. When she finished, she felt she was coming up for air after a deep immersion. She put the book down, too stunned to move or speak. All she could do was sit on the banco soaking up the sun like a pool of still water.
Out of the Blue was a lean book, a book in which silence and space were used nearly as effectively as words. The dialogue struck Claire as accurate, capturing both the emotion of the characters and the period in which it was set. In a sense it was a coming-of-age novel, but mostly it was the story of a daughter’s rebellion against an overbearing mother. It was a corrosive relationship. The story was set in the sixties, and the rebellion took the form of sex and drugs. As the daughter became wilder, the mother became more entrenched. The book ended with no resolution, but with the sense that this battle would continue until both parties were in the grave. The portraits of the mother and the daughter were remarkable, the writing style terse and effective. The daughter liked to escape to Yosemite and the rougher shores of the California coast. The title came from the thoughts she had while watching the surf. Claire thought the nature passages were brilliant. Jess Moran had a strong sense of place and a flair for metaphor. In fact, at one point, while on an acid trip, she described a rock wall at Yosemite as slipping and sliding like the walls of La Sagrada Família.
Why, Claire wondered, had she never heard of a novel as good as this one? It should have become a Catcher in the Rye or A Blue-Eyed Boy, not a book that John Harlan had to spend days tracking down. She suspected that Out of the Blue had sold a couple of thousand copies, mostly to libraries, and had never come out in paperback, where it would have received a wider audience. The copies that remained in the publisher’s warehouse most likely became pulp. With a sales history like that, it would be hard for the author to sell another book.
Had Out of the Blue disappeared because the publisher abandoned it or because the subject was a mother/daughter relationship? Or was the fact that the subject was a mother/daughter relationship the reason the publisher abandoned the book? If publishers believed books about mothers and daughters wouldn’t sell, the belief became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But times had changed. Thelma and Louise had popularized the chick-flick genre. Publishers knew now that women bought most of the books, and they geared their marketing efforts accordingly. Claire was hard-pressed to recall exactly when the change took place, but she knew it was after 1963. In 1963 male taste defined what got read.
Claire absorbed these thoughts until the sun had moved over to the West Mesa and the entire courtyard was in shadow. She realized it was dinnertime and remembered she had promised to call John Harlan. There were few objective standards for judging a work of fiction; reading it was a subjective experience. She wanted to know if John, whose taste she respected, agreed with her. It might be a good time to invite him to dinner, since the need to talk about Out of the Blue would overshadow any thoughts of romance.
Claire went to her kitchen to see if she had anything to offer him for dinner. As a single woman who watched her weight, most of the food she kept in the house had to be cooked. There were no snacks, no chips, no ice cream, no candy. The shelves of the refrigerator were empty ribs. The bagels and tortillas were frozen. The only food that could be eaten raw were the carrots and the pears in the vegetable bin. Claire poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and considered her options. She had frozen pasta and frozen chicken. John wasn’t much of a gourmet pasta eater, so she decided to try the chicken.
He was still at the store when she called. “What did you think of the book?” he asked her.
“I thought it was wonderful,” she admitted. “Beautifully written.”
“Me, too,” John agreed. “Whether she’s telling the truth or not, our Jennie can write.”
Someone could write, thought Claire. Although truth was important in life, it had little relevance in fiction. “It’s hard to believe such a good book could just disappear.”
“It happens all the time, books slipping into the river like fish that get away.”
“That’s depressing, especially when you consider all the terrible books that survive.” It seemed as good a time as any to invite him. “Would you like to come over for dinner and talk about it some more?” Claire asked.
“When?”
“As soon as you’re finished at the store.”
“Give me half an hour,” John said.
Claire turned on the oven and put the chicken in a pot with curry powder, onion, sliced yams, almonds, and raisins. She had a well-loved clay pot that could start the chicken frozen and keep it tender. She poured herself another glass of wine, lit a fire in the fireplace, and was straightening up the living room when John rang the doorbell. It was his first visit to her house.
“This is a nice place,” he said.
“I like it,” Claire replied.
“It looks like you.”
“Oh?”
“It’s calm and peaceful.”
“And gray,” Claire added.
“How about subdued?” John sa
id.
Although Claire always felt subdued, she didn’t feel very calm or peaceful at the moment. She poured John a glass of wine, and while they waited for the chicken to cook, they sat in the living room and resumed their book talk.
John leaned back into the sofa, sipped his wine, and asked, “Would you say Out of the Blue is as good as A Blue-Eyed Boy?”
“Almost,” Claire replied.
“Did you see any similarity?”
“Both are about rebellion. In terms of style, both are rather spare, but the authors have a feeling for nature and a flair for metaphor.” In fact, there was an instance where the authors had used the same metaphor, but John hadn’t read the journal yet and Claire wasn’t at liberty to show it to him, so she kept the reference to La Sagrada Família to herself.
“But one was written by a man…” John began.
“And the other by a woman.” It rattled Claire that she was finishing John’s sentences for him, so she went to the kitchen to check on the chicken.
When she came back she had the sense that their conversation was a ball of yarn John balanced between his fingers waiting for her to pick up the thread. She didn’t, so he did it for her. “An interesting puzzle, isn’t it? Two books, similar stories, one written by a man and one by a woman. The one written by the man becomes a classic, the one written by the woman disappears. Why do you think?”
“Timing. Luck. The one written by the man got more promotion from the publisher. It stayed in print long enough to find its audience. The author was a prominent figure who vanished. Out of the Blue was a very personal book. The background of protest in A Blue-Eyed Boy may have given it a more universal appeal.”
John watched her over the rim of his wineglass. “Just for the heck of it, let’s suppose they were written by the same person. Would you say the author was a man or a woman?”
Claire phrased her answer carefully. “I think it would have been easier for a woman to write like a man in the early sixties than for a man to write like a woman. People with less power study the people with more power, and they understand them better. On the other hand, August Stevenson authenticated the journal by comparing it to the handwriting of Jonathan in the center’s archives, including letters, a previous journal, and the manuscript of A Blue-Eyed Boy. There was a difference in style between the journal and A Blue-Eyed Boy, but the handwriting was definitely Jonathan’s.”
“A Blue-Eyed Boy was handwritten?”
“It was typed, but there were extensive handwritten corrections.”
“Which could prove that Jonathan edited it, not necessarily that he wrote it.”
“Maybe the novels were written jointly,” Claire suggested, although she didn’t believe it. “There are couples who are capable of writing books together.”
“It might also be possible for two people to know each other’s thoughts so well that they write in the same style.” John stared into the fire, and Claire knew he was remembering his deceased wife, with whom he’d had a deep and lasting rapport.
Since the idea of trying to write a book or even share a metaphor with her ex-husband, Evan, was enough to put out her own fire, Claire turned her thoughts to her investigation while John reminisced. For her, it had always been a given that Jonathan wrote A Blue-Eyed Boy and that, if he were still alive, he would have come back and claimed the attention and recognition due him. But if Jennie had written the book and Jonathan were still alive, it would be hard to predict the actions of both of them.
John shrugged off his melancholy and said, “You’ve noticed, of course, that both books used ‘blue’ in the title?”
“I wouldn’t attach much significance to that. Amazon.com lists twelve hundred books with ‘blue’ in the title.”
“Twelve hundred?”
“Twelve hundred.” Claire checked her watch. “The chicken should be done.” They got up, and she put another log on the fire to keep it going until dinner was over.
One thing Claire had always been able to count on in life was her clay pot. She thought the chicken came out well—tender, subtly spiced, delicious—but John appeared more interested in talking about Jonathan Vail than he was in eating.
“Did you learn anything new in Utah?” he asked, spearing a slice of yam and balancing it on the end of his fork.
“Sam Ogelthorpe told me the man he saw on his ranch in 1966 wore dog tags and an army fatigue jacket. He said if the man wasn’t Jonathan, he believed he was a deserter.”
“I’d never heard that one before.”
“Neither had I, but Sam claims he told Curt Devereux. Ada Vail wouldn’t allow me to show you the journal, but I think it would be all right to tell you that it mentions a fan named Lou Bastiann. I met him, and he claims he was in Vietnam in 1966. The journal never says that Lou was in Slickrock Canyon and Jennie denies it, yet Tim Sansevera claimed he saw a duffel bag in the cave when he found the journal. When Curt and I went back to the cave, the duffel bag was missing, and it still hasn’t been found. There’s always the possibility that the duffel bag was Lou’s, and that he went back to claim it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“It explains what happened to Jonathan?”
“Does he look enough like Jonathan that Sam could have confused them?”
“He doesn’t now; he’s got gray hair and he’s heavier than Jonathan was. He might have looked very much like him in 1966, though. He has brown eyes, but Sam was too far away to see the color.”
“There must be a way you could find out if a person was in Vietnam and when.” John still hadn’t put the yam in his mouth and it quivered on the end of his fork. “Have you searched the internet?”
“No,” Claire said, and she didn’t intend to. She believed the information she wanted could be found at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire. She’d made up her mind to go there for the ceremonies on Tuesday and confront whatever she found then.
John put the yam down and put a piece of chicken in his mouth. While he chewed, he pushed the rest of his meal around his plate, separating the raisins, almonds, and yams from the chicken and onions. A picky eater, Claire thought, a meat-and-onions man. The chicken and onions would be gone when the meal was over, but the yams, raisins, and almonds would still be on his plate. She hadn’t given him the datura test, but he was failing the dinner test miserably and the confidence test as well. This was her opportunity to tell him the rest of the story—the visit to Otto, the van in Jennie’s garage—but she didn’t do it. There were many ways a man and a woman could be compatible and incompatible. It was possible to enjoy talking to someone and not enjoy having sex with him. She’d never actually had the experience, but she was sure the reverse was true. Eating dinner with a man ought to be a prelude. If he didn’t like your cooking at its best, how would he feel about your less-than-perfect body?
She hadn’t lit the candles, and the overhead light was harsh, laying shadows beneath their plates and turning John’s uneaten yams a garish orange. The wine was wearing off, and Claire felt the ragged edge of sleeplessness. It was either have another glass of wine to revive herself or show John the door when dinner was over.
Claire cleaned her plate. John finished the chicken and the onions, and put down his knife and fork. He peered down the hallway toward the living room, anticipating, perhaps, the sofa, the fire, a renewal of the previous conversation or the beginning of a different dialogue.
“I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, John,” Claire said. “But I didn’t get any sleep last night and I’m very tired. I need to go to bed.”
“Can I help you clean up?”
“There’s nothing to it. All I have to do is put the uneaten food in the refrigerator and the dishes in the dishwasher.”
“Thanks for the dinner. I enjoyed it very much.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” John said. “Let’s do it again.”
Claire walked him to the door. On her way back through the living room she shut the glass door to
the fireplace and closed the vents, depriving the fire of oxygen and letting it go out.
Chapter Seventeen
VETERANS DAY WAS CELEBRATED IN THE ELEVENTH MONTH on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day. Claire had 165 miles to drive to get to the memorial at Angel Fire. She needed to leave by seven to be sure she’d make it by eleven. She explained her absence from the library by implying she’d be looking at a rare book collection in Taos, 35 miles from Angel Fire. Before she went to bed Monday night, she looked out her window at the sky. The nights in New Mexico were usually so clear that she could follow the moon in all its phases, but tonight clouds sat on top of the Sandias. The forecast predicted blustery winds and a temperature that would dip into the low twenties.
When Claire woke in the morning the clouds had lifted, turning into gray wings hovering over the peaks like sinuous falcons. The mountains had received a dusting of snow, and the wind had blown the remaining leaves off the trees. The winter she had been anticipating had arrived. The normally muted desert colors of blue and brown had been replaced by Arctic white and brooding gray. If there was snow on the Sandias, there was likely to be more snow farther north. Driving in snow made Claire uneasy, but she was determined to get to Angel Fire.
The interstate was clear to Sante Fe, and there was little traffic this early in the day. The Sangre de Cristos wore a white blanket, but the city hadn’t gotten any snow, making Claire optimistic that she wouldn’t see any more until she approached the higher elevations near Taos. North of Santa Fe she saw three gray falcon clouds hanging together in the east She lost sight of them when she dipped down near the river north of Espanola on Route 68, which snaked along the Rio Grande through a deep and rocky ravine. The road was dry here, and the ribbon of sky that Claire could see was robin’s egg blue. She looked at her clock and saw that she was making good time. At this rate she would get to Angle Fire early, which would give her a chance to do some investigating before the ceremony began. The memorial was full of resource materials—books, computers, photographs, handwritten notes.
The Vanishing Point Page 17