Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy

by Sally Mason

  Suddenly powerfully thirsty she pulls on a robe and sets off down the corridor to get a glass of water in the kitchen.

  The door to her mother’s room is closed and she sees no light beneath it.

  Jane wonders how her mother is dealing with this night alone in her bed, in the knowledge that an infinity of such nights lie ahead of her?

  There is a light under her brother’s door, spilling out onto the carpet and she can hear the soft drumming of his fingers on a computer keyboard.

  An impulse that she can’t quite identify has Jane stopping and she almost knocks but she shakes her head and walks on to the kitchen, filling a glass at the sink.

  She drinks it down in two gulps and pours another to take back with her to bed.

  The same impulse causes her to halt outside Jimmy’s door again and this time she taps lightly.

  The typing stops but he says nothing and she is already walking away when she hears him say, “Mom?”

  Turning and putting her face close to the door Jane says, “No, it’s me.”

  Silence.

  “Can I come in?”

  A pause, then he says, “Okay.”

  Jane opens the door and steps inside.

  She hasn’t been in this room in ten years—on her infrequent visits Jimmy had wheezed his way into the kitchen or living room for brief, monosyllabic exchanges.

  The room is dimly lit by a single desk lamp but she can see enough to take in the stacks of comic books, computer carcasses, Xboxes and Playstations of every vintage and a bank of flat screen monitors, some tuned to obscure sci-fi and horror movies, others filled with a cascade of what she assumes is raw computer code.

  Her massive brother wallows on his bed, a laptop almost invisible in the vast pudding that is his belly.

  “Wassup, Janey?”

  “I can’t sleep,” she says.

  “Yeah, me either. But, hey, nothing new there.”

  He wags a huge hand.

  “Take a seat, Sis.”

  Jane moves a half-eaten plate of food and a stack of horror comics from a chair and sits.

  “How are you doing, Jimmy?”

  “Is that like a real question that requires a real answer?”

  She laughs.

  “No, not really.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  They sit for a while without speaking, the hum of electronics filling the silence, then her brother’s stomach rumbles like a cement mixer.

  He slaps his rolls of fat.

  “Gotta feed the beast soon.”

  She stands.

  “I should go.”

  “Nah, sit.”

  She hesitates.

  “Please.”

  She sits.

  “I guess you know that he was real proud of you? Dad? Of you movin’ to New York and workin’ with writers and all?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “What may surprise you is that mom kinda got a kick out of it, too. Especially the last while with this Ivy thing.”

  “She did?”

  “For real. She even kept a scrapbook.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “I’m not. I caught her clipping bits out of The New York Times—Dad still subscribed—that mentioned you. Mom’s part of that generation where things are only real if they’re printed on dead trees.” He wags a hand at the monitors. “None of this counts.”

  Jane says, “I’m astonished really, I always felt she thought that I believed I was better than the rest of you because I moved to Manhattan.”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Come on. Look around you . . .”

  She can only shrug.

  “Real bummer what that Mr. Love asshole did to you.”

  “It’s more complicated than you think, Jimmy.”

  “Yeah? Looks pretty damn simple to me.”

  He taps at his keyboard.

  “He’s staying at The Pierre Hotel in New York City, by the way. Room 506.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I checked his credit card transactions.”

  “How?”

  “Out here in the so-called real world I’m Dumbo, but in there”—gesturing at the monitors filled with code—“I’m nimble as Nijinsky. I have some sweet skills.”

  She laughs.

  “I bet you do.”

  “So, if you want revenge on this dude just let me know. I can make his life hell.”

  Jane shakes her head.

  “I don’t want revenge.”

  They’re quiet for a while then Jimmy says, “What’s your favorite daytime talk show?”

  “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “The Sarah Snowdon Show, I guess. I sometimes watched for work, because she’s got that book club.”

  He taps the keyboard.

  “It’s the highest rated show, too. Nearly four million viewers tuning in per day. Gotta believe most of those are women, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Women between twenty-five and forty? The readers of Ivy?”

  “Yes. Where are you going with this, Jimmy?”

  He finishes typing and laughs.

  “I just told the producer of the show that Gordon Rushworth is hiding out at The Pierre.”

  “Hell, Jimmy, what are you doing?”

  “Little Mr. Love shouldn’t be allowed to just fade away, Jane. He should be forced to get out there and explain why he did what he did.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Hell yes, I’m right.”

  He grunts as he heaves himself toward the edge of the bed.

  “Okay, I need a bathroom break. I’d advise you to vacate the premises, it’s not gonna be pretty.”

  Jane needs no second warning and she quits her brother’s room, closing the door after her.

  Back in her bed, as she feels sleep coming to claim her, she decides that her brother is right.

  Gordon Rushworth does need to explain himself.

  Though she doubts that he’ll man up and do it.

  54

  “Mr. Rushworth?”

  Gordon, crossing the lobby of The Pierre, turns, expecting one of the uniformed hotel employees.

  Instead he sees a fashionably dressed woman in her mid-twenties with a sharp haircut.

  A look that screams media at him.

  Gordon hurries out onto a busy sidewalk washed with Fall morning sunlight.

  The young woman is at his side.

  “Mr. Rushworth, I’m Alexis Banks, assistant to the producer of the Sarah Snowdon Show.”

  Gordon veers away from her, jaywalking across Fifth Avenue, and nearly gets crushed by a taxi, the driver bellowing at him.

  Alexis Banks grabs his arm.

  “Easy, there. This in New York not Vermont.”

  Gordon, finding the refuge of the opposite sidewalk, is tempted to tell her that he is no hick, that he is a sophisticate with knowledge of many of the world’s great cities.

  But why bother?

  She’s nothing to him.

  He walks on and the woman stays glued to his side, continuing her patter.

  “Sarah would love to have you on the show. She’s a big fan.”

  He stays mute.

  “Mr. Rushworth, you must know you’re the focus of a media feeding frenzy? Appearing on our show, where Sarah will treat you with sympathy and respect, will do a lot to end that frenzy. The rest of the media, having been scooped, will move on to the next daily drama.”

  He knows she’s right, but still he refuses to speak.

  “Don’t you think you owe it to your readers? To explain your deception?”

  This stops him and he looks down at her.

  He doesn’t give a damn about his readers—despite the unseemly amount of money they are pouring into his bank account—but he does still owe somebody an explanation.

  And a real apology.

  Jane Cooper.
<
br />   He needs to say all the things that he was unable to say to her on the phone last night.

  And if he says them before an audience of millions, so be it.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

  “Excellent.”

  Alexis Banks has an iPhone in her hand.

  “I’ll call my producer right now and schedule you for sometime this week.”

  “Today,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll do it if I can appear on today’s show.”

  She shakes her head.

  “That’s impossible, Mr. Rushworth. We’re on air in less than six hours. There’s already a confirmed line-up with guests flying in from around the country.”

  Gordon is walking again.

  “We do it today or I’ll find a show that will.”

  She chases him down, grabbing at his arm.

  “Okay, okay, Gordon. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “Good,” he says, turning into a coffee shop. “Now buy me an espresso, make your calls and fill me in on everything I need to know.”

  It’s just gone 4:00 P.M. and Gordon is alone, pacing what Alexis Banks referred to as “the green room” when she left him here after he was done getting made up.

  The room is not painted green: the walls are off-white and the couches are an oatmeal color.

  The color scheme, in fact, of the Sarah Snowdon Show opening titles that twirl on the giant wall mounted TV, to the strains of some elevator-muzaky strings.

  Gordon, dressed in one of his spanking new Saks outfits, glugs from a bottle of water, watching the monitor as Sarah Snowdon, with the unlined face of a woman who is on intimate terms with cosmetic surgery, wafts from the wings dressed in her trademark whites and beiges.

  She is skinny at the moment—every fluctuation in her weight the stuff of gossip columns—and bends with the ease of a Pilates junkie as she takes a little bow in acknowledgement of the enthusiastic applause of the studio audience.

  Gordon, after months of being exposed to this show—Bitsy is an ardent follower—feels that he knows Sarah Snowdon, although he has not yet met her.

  That dubious pleasure awaits him in mere seconds.

  The door opens and Alexis Banks beckons him.

  “It’s time, Gordon.”

  He dumps his water and follows her into the studio, waiting in darkness in the wings of the set amidst a tangle of cables and whispering technicians.

  He watches Sarah Snowdon standing glowing in the lights.

  She grins, stills the applause and says, “Welcome to today’s show. A verrrrry interesting show. We have Gwyneth Paltrow here to talk about her latest cookbook.” Applause. “Don’t you just loooove Gwyneth? And Kate Hudson is here to give us the lowdown on her new Broadway show.”

  More applause, then Sarah holds up a finger.

  “But, first a huuuuuge scoop. We have with us the author of the blockbuster book, Ivy.”

  Squeals of delight and thunderous applause as the camera finds the entirely female audience.

  My readers, Gordon thinks, his gut cramping with fear.

  “Now,” Sarah says, “who of you have read Ivy?”

  It seems every hand is raised.

  “Okay. Who hasn’t read it?”

  Maybe three hands go up, slowly.

  “Where have you beeeeen, ladies? Wow! Okay, it’s a blockbuster of a book and also the center of a media storm since the revelation that Viola Usher, the author, is in fact a man, Gordon Rushworth, who is joining us in a few seconds.”

  Sarah pauses, staring into the audience.

  “Who believes that Ivy could have been written by a man?”

  No hands are raised.

  “Anybody want to tell us why?”

  A huge show of hands.

  Sarah picks a woman a few rows from the front.

  “Tell us.”

  The woman, who looks like everybody’s next-door-neighbor, stands and says, “No man—and I’ve been married three times so I know what I’m talking about—is able to get women like that. To understand our emotions. Our feelings. Never mind our libidos!”

  There are roars of approval and agreement.

  “Well, ladies, no matter what you think, Gordon Rushworth is the author of this book. So let’s get him out here. Please welcome Mr. Love himself, Gorrrrrrrdon Rushworrrrrrrth!”

  Gordon feels a nudge in his back and he steps out into the glare.

  Sarah Snowdon takes his hand in both of hers and leads him toward the famous couch where she grills her guests.

  “So, Gordon, let me leap right in. Did you write Ivy.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “So you’re Viola Usher?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not lying?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “But you did lie before? Passing the book off as your sister’s?”

  “Yes, I lied. And I coerced my poor sister into being party to a hoax.”

  “Why? Why did you do that?”

  Gordon pauses.

  Then he shrugs.

  “I’m an assistant professor of English Literature. I’m steeped in the classics, the great novels. I believed a book like Ivy fell into a somewhat lesser genre.”

  “Chick-lit?”

  “If you will.”

  There are grumbles of disapproval from the audience and Sarah holds up a delicate hand.

  “Ladies, I’ll be debating the literary merits of the book with Gordon very shortly. But first, let’s get the heart of what has been mystifying me. How does a man, an academic at that, get to write a book like Ivy?”

  “When I was twelve I fell in love for the first time with a wonderful girl named Suzie. While all the other guys were playing sport or getting into the kind of trouble that pubescent boys get into, I hung out with her. We were inseparable. Suzie was unique, a force of nature, and I learned, I believe, to see and understand the world through her eyes.”

  “What happened then?” Sarah asks.

  Gordon hesitates, then he plunges on.

  “Suzie died. In her thirteenth year she lost the battle to leukemia. I watched her waste away and I couldn’t understand the brutality of it. The unfairness of it all.”

  Gordon stops, choking up, and he realizes he’s behaving in the manner that had so revolted him when he sat with Bitsy watching this show: he’s airing his emotional laundry before millions.

  Sarah takes his hand and, on the giant monitors that flank the set, he sees close-ups of women in the audience dabbing at tears.

  “So how did this loss, this pain, affect you, Gordon?”

  “I guess I performed an emotional lobotomy on myself. I became all about the intellect. I went to Harvard, I joined the world of academia and lived the life of the mind. I also wrote a novel inspired by Suzie.”

  “Ivy?”

  “No, no. This was a serious novel. A huge, weighty tome that grappled with the important and ultimately unanswerable questions: why we are born and why we die. I sweated over this book for more than a decade.”

  “Will we get to read it?”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “Why?”

  “It stinks. It’s trite, humorless, hackneyed.”

  He makes a dismissive gesture.

  “When I finished that book, I started hearing Suzie’s voice talking to me for the first time in years. When I couldn’t ignore it any longer I surrendered and wrote Ivy.”

  “So Suzie Ballinger is based on your first love?”

  “Suzie Ballinger is pure fiction: but her spirit, her feistiness, her scorn of convention is what I had so admired about the young girl I was in love with.”

  “That’s so beautiful, Gordon.”

  Sarah turns to the audience.

  “Do we believe him, ladies? Do we believe this guy wrote that book?”

  Roars of yes.

  Sarah turns back to him.

  “So what happened? Why did you retreat from the book? Why w
ere you ashamed of it?”

  Gordon knows that the moment has come where he can try for redemption, try to undo some of the damage he is done.

  But as he is about to bare his soul Sarah holds up a hand and says, “Gordon Rushworth, Mr. Love, you’ll get to answer that question right after the break.”

  55

  Jane, back from a walk through the sad streets of Hicksville, opens the front door of her mother’s house and hears Gordon Rushworth’s voice.

  Hears him saying her name.

  Hurrying through to the living room she sees her mother sitting watching The Sarah Snowdon Show.

  “Jane, your Mr. Love is on,” Myra Cooper says, “and he’s talking about you!”

  Jane sits on the edge of a chair, eyes on the screen, as Sarah Snowdon says, “The person you’re talking about, Jane Cooper, was the literary agent representing Ivy, is that right?”

  “Yes. She still represents the book.”

  Sarah raises a plucked eyebrow.

  “Really? I thought she was fired?”

  Gordon shrugs.

  “What does that matter? She’s my agent, that’s all that counts. But what I was saying is that Jane was a victim here. She knew nothing of the lies and represented my sister in good faith.”

  “I understand you want to apologize, Gordon, but what does this have to do with you denying authorship of Ivy?”

  “I was ashamed of Ivy, true. I thought it just another example of a genre I despised: the bleeding heart, ten-tissue weepy kind of stuff about love affairs and failed marriages. So I distanced myself from it. Then Jane Cooper, whom I met when she was representing my sister, challenged my dismissive attitude toward women’s fiction. She asked me a question that has stayed with me.”

  Gordon looks into the camera and it’s as if he’s looking straight at Jane.

  “Jane, maybe you’re out there somewhere watching this, so I’m doing my best to reproduce your question. Forgive me if I don’t do it justice, but here goes.”

  He looks back at Sarah.

  “She asked me why supposedly lightweight feminine themes like divorce, adultery and family life suddenly become important when tackled by male novelists like Updike, Eugenides or Franzen?”

  “A good question.”

  “Yes, a very good question.”

  “And what was your reply?”