“I feel better, thanks.” He smiled back, gave me a little nod, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
“Hello?”
“Emma, darling? It’s Beatrice.”
“Oh. What time is it?”
“Eightish, I think. Why, is this a bad time?” I didn’t know if she was being sarcastic. Beatrice had never inquired about whether it was a bad time, ever.
“No, of course not.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. It came out as I’ve been shinking.
“Yes?”
“I overreacted this afternoon. Let’s give it a go with Badosa.”
I sat up in the bed. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“But you said he was going under, he was nobody, he was a deadweight.”
“It’s not a bad idea to get someone in that position. I agree with you that he’ll give it everything he’s got. He might invest a lot in this—it might be his last shot at righting the ship, so to speak.”
Sho to shpeak.
“Oh, Beatrice—” I burst into tears. “I’m sorry about—you know—before. You’re right, I never should have—I just—”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all right, darling Emma, I’m sorry too. I needed reminding I’m not doing this on my own now.”
“Oh God, I’m so relieved—you have no idea.”
“Just don’t do it again, please. All right?”
“Yes, no, I mean, I won’t. Scout’s honor.”
“I do think this is a good move, maybe, but we could have discussed it. That would have been appropriate.”
“I wanted to surprise you, I really did.”
“I know, just don’t do it again.”
I chuckled through my tears. “Scout’s honor,” I repeated.
“Well done, Emma.”
“I love you,” I mumbled.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, all right?”
I hung up. I didn’t know if she’d heard me.
15
It was the happiest day of my life. For the first time since we’d started all this, it was real—physically, undeniably real. It existed outside my own head. That’s what I thought as I held the first printed copy of Long Grass Running in my hands.
Long Grass Running by Emma Fern.
I could smell its paper, feel the gloss of the cover under my fingers. I thought then that this was the most faithful way to distinguish what was real from what was not: What is real has a weight; what is imaginary does not. The imaginary doesn’t fall when you let go; gravity isn’t interested in the imaginary. The earth only pulls to her what has substance.
They don’t call it substance for nothing.
Long Grass Running by Emma Fern.
It was with an understandably great sense of pride and achievement that I placed the copy in Jim’s hands when he came into the kitchen that happy morning, almost six months after signing with Frankie.
“No reason to wait,” Frankie had said. “The sooner we get this book out in the world, the better.”
Even Beatrice was impressed by how quickly it all happened. “Does Frankie ever sleep?” she’d asked when I told her I’d received it.
“Well, well! Here it is!” Jim said, looking down at its cover.
“Look inside.” And he opened the front cover as I stood up to stand next to him, our shoulders touching, both our heads bent down together. I thumbed through a couple of pages and pointed at the dedication.
To my husband, James. Thank you for inspiring me every day. With all my love.
“Are you pleased?”
He looked sideways at me, a small, satisfied smile on his lips. “I’m very happy for you, sweetheart, I really am.”
I was beaming. I’d thought a lot about this moment, and I had at one point wondered whether it was a mistake. Jim didn’t approve of overt displays of affection—he said that kind of thing was for children—and I wasn’t sure whether he’d be embarrassed by my public acknowledgment.
He put his arms around me, still holding the book, and we embraced each other tightly. I let my body deflate, like an old balloon. “I’m very proud of you,” he whispered into my hair, and I held him tight for as long as he would let me, basking in the warmth of his body.
“Isn’t it absolutely wonderful?” He let me go and I actually twirled in the kitchen, laughing with joy, my heart bursting with it.
“It most certainly is, sweetheart. Well done.” He lifted his reading glasses from his shirt pocket and with one hand put them on his nose, but not to start reading the book right there and then, as I’d first thought. Instead he put it down on the kitchen table and gathered the loose sheets of paper that were lying next to it—something he was working on—and started to move toward his study. Was that it? Really?
He must have picked up something of my disappointment because he turned and gave me an apologetic smile as he did so. “We have to go and celebrate. I’ll take you somewhere special for dinner. I just really need to get this done right now.”
Years of solitary work—that’s what he must have believed this book represented for me—and the biggest achievement of my life so far, and yet here I was, standing alone at the kitchen counter. But I managed to smile back through my disappointment and he gave me a little nod, satisfied that he had done what was expected of him and all was well, and he could get back to whatever was on his mind.
To say I felt let down would be an understatement, and as I sat down again, it occurred to me that maybe things between us had been exactly the way Jim liked them: namely that he was the genius, the alpha male, the super-achiever, and that the view, looking down from his lofty perch, was of me, filled with gratitude for the attention he bestowed on me, motivated only by a desire to be worthy of it, secure in the knowledge that I could never do better than him.
Which of course was the truth, but even I had the occasional flash of understanding, even as I strove to manage it, that relationships like this generate a never-ending thirst for approval, and even for a little admiration now and then, which is almost never granted, since the party whose approval is sought is the one who has the most to lose in upsetting the status quo.
Beatrice had balked at the dedication when I first showed her the proofs.
“It’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?” She meant it to sound lighthearted but I could tell from her tone that she was put out.
“I thought it would cement my role as the author,” I offered. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“Well, it cements the pretense, certainly.” Then she added, with false detachment, “Lots of people know I’ve been helping you with your writing”—she made air quotes around your writing—“so they may be a little surprised that you didn’t thank me instead.”
“I thought about it,” I replied, which was true. My original inscription had thanked Beatrice, for obvious reasons, but then I’d changed my mind. I’d told myself it was because we shouldn’t associate Beatrice too much with the novel, so that her anonymity remained safe. We didn’t want someone familiar with her books to pick up some stylistic similarities between her work and mine and put two and two together. When I explained this to her, she could see some value in my thinking and accepted it. But the truth was I just wanted it to be mine, that was all, and I figured that if I was prepared to act the part she had asked me to play, with all the time and effort and trust it represented, I deserved to get something back. I thought that all the people I knew—the people you know are the only people who matter—would assume that she had guided me through every sentence to the point where she just about wrote it for me, because who would believe that little old Emma could have done this by herself ?
So instead I had then decided to dedicate the novel to my mother, she who’d felt she was born for a life in pursuit of intellectual stimulation and good taste, but only got close to it by cleaning other people’s houses. I wanted to tell her it was all right now, we had arrived, we had made it after all, but at
that point I was still fully conscious that this book wasn’t really mine, and I knew in my heart she deserved better, so I resolved instead to wait until the next one, the book I knew I would write after this, in which the inscription would read, To my mother, with all my love.
In the end, it seemed entirely appropriate to turn my gratitude to my husband, for whom I strove every day to be something that I was not.
It was at least a couple of weeks after that that I returned to my local bookstore, a medium-sized store that always stocked titles I liked. I had been in there twice already in the last few days, but Long Grass Running wasn’t on the shelves, and this time I’d decided I would ask for a copy. Let them order a few, I thought. I wouldn’t come back to pick them up: they’d have to put them on the shelves. It was a stupid idea, but as it turned out it didn’t matter; it was already there.
I always thought that the first time I spotted the book outside my own house would be when I happened past a bookshop. I imagined myself stopping in my tracks, walking back a couple of steps, and staring at copies of Long Grass Running arranged in the window. Instead, I found two copies on the shelves, in the literary fiction section on the back wall, so not quite the same, but still, it made my heart stop.
I picked one up and pretended to flick through it, just a regular customer looking for something to read, and I was going to buy it, but instead I waited until the woman behind the counter was busy helping another customer, and when I was sure she wasn’t looking my way, I lifted both copies from the shelf and arranged them in the small display shelf near the front door, the one with the “New Releases” sign above it, reserved for notable authors who were known to sell books, and I covered up Patricia Cornwell’s latest thriller.
My phone rang loudly in the quiet bookstore, and I jumped and left quickly, feeling rather sly, without looking back to see whether I had been caught, so it was only when I was outside that I realized how it must have looked, like I’d just stolen something. But I didn’t need to worry. When I turned back to glance through the shop window as I pulled my phone from my handbag, the woman behind the counter was still engaged with her customer and seemed to have only barely registered my departure.
“I’ve booked you for tomorrow morning, NPR. Michael Gusek. Tell me you can be there, because I had to call in a favor.”
Just hearing Frankie’s voice was enough to give me a thrill. My publisher’s calling, ’scuse me—I must take this. I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, phone glued to my ear, oblivious to the annoyed stares of people who had to walk around me. It’s my publisher, you see, I’m a published author and this call is very important.
“Michael Gusek? You’re kidding!”
“Certainly not. You’ll be there, right? Ten a.m.? I’ve emailed you some prep questions.”
I could tell he was very pleased with himself—dear Frankie.
I didn’t know it then, but I would come to understand that Frankie viewed this book as his probable salvation, that this was likely to be his last shot at reviving his failing business and, as Beatrice had guessed, he would put everything he had behind it.
“Oh, I’ll be there,” I said, butterflies already forming in my stomach. “But how did you pull this off ?” I didn’t need to clarify my surprise: Gusek was a big-shot interviewer and everyone I knew listened to his morning radio show.
“Like I told you, I called in a favor.”
“But for me? You’re sure you’re not wasting it on me?”
“Oh, I’m sure. Don’t you worry about that.” I heard the smile in his voice. “Call me when you’ve read the email, all right? So we can prepare.”
“I’m on my way home now. And, Frankie, thank you—thank you so much.” I said this with heartfelt gratitude and I meant it. He made me feel like we were in this together, and I most certainly needed someone on my side at this point. I had no idea what was coming, and I was a little scared.
“You’ll be fine,” Beatrice said when I told her the news. I’d called her immediately of course. “It’s always the same formula: He’ll introduce you and the book by summarizing the story, then he’ll ask you to read a couple of pages. After that he’ll bring up the main characters and you’ll have a conversation about them. He’ll probably ask about the period the novel is set in, how you got the idea, that sort of thing. It’s your first book, and since no one knows anything about you, there’ll be questions about your background, etc. Gusek’s very good—he’ll keep it going seamlessly, you’ll see. All very straightforward, I assure you.”
“Okay, good, I think.” I was already nervous, but a bit gratified that she’d been impressed when I told her.
The traffic was making it hard to hear her, so I turned into a small street and leaned against the wall, trying to calm my nervous excitement, which was gravitating perilously toward anxiety by that stage.
“I admit I underestimated Frankie,” she said. That was especially nice to hear. Told you so, I wanted to say. “Come over now, we’ll go over it together. I don’t think you should read the very beginning; you won’t have enough time to establish the scene. I’ll give it some thought while I wait for you.”
“I told Frankie I’d go straight home and go over the questions he put together, and then call him.”
“Don’t worry about the questions. Gusek will do what he wants anyway, and you can call Frankie from here.”
I didn’t hesitate. I needed all the help I could get, and Beatrice’s more than most. Half an hour later we were settled in her study.
She had marked the pages she wanted me to read, and I could see why she’d chosen that passage. It was early in the book, and beautifully conveyed the longing and regret that would later propel the story forward. But I had a different chapter in mind, one of my favorite scenes in the book, and I was sure that because I loved it as a reader, other people would feel the same.
“There won’t be enough context, you’ll only have a few minutes to read, ten at the most,” she said. She handed me the book, open at her selection, and I knew we wouldn’t be discussing the alternatives. “Read it for me.” She settled back in her armchair. I wasn’t very happy about it, but I lifted the book and did as I was told.
“Jesus, Emma! What’s the rush?” she interrupted almost immediately. “Take your time, breathe. You’re telling a story. You’ll hardly inspire the audience to buy the book if you sound like you can’t wait for it to be over.”
I took a deep breath and started again. She corrected my delivery here and there, but overall it was fine, and we spent the next two hours going over possible questions, discussing the book and everything that Frankie suggested when I got around to calling him, so by the time I left Beatrice, I had relaxed a little bit, feeling as prepared as I could possibly be.
16
The radio studio was way smaller than I’d expected, and I felt a little cramped in it, which didn’t help. It was time for the news bulletin, so Gusek was free to show me the ropes, how close I should get to the microphone, the various hand signals to indicate whether we were on or we were wrapping up. We put our respective headsets on, and then he made a gesture with his index finger that we were about to begin.
“Long Grass Running tells the story of three sisters during World War One who are left to run the family farm after their brothers leave for the Front. It’s a sprawling novel, and much of the action takes place in the struggles of the sisters to keep the farm going while the men are fighting the war. Emma Fern joins me to discuss her fascinating debut novel. Welcome, Emma.”
And like the true amateur, incompetent dilettante that I was, I nodded. On the radio.
“It’s good to have you on the show,” Gusek said, raising an eyebrow in my direction that perfectly conveyed his irritation. It wasn’t easy to get a spot on his show, and it was especially difficult for a first-time author. He’d probably decided in that moment that he’d get this interview wrapped up as quickly as possible, and would have to work extra hard in the process.
“Thank you for having me, Michael, and thank you for the summary of the novel you just gave, because you nailed it. The heart of this novel lies indeed in the relationship between the three sisters, but I’d add something to that: that the landscape is almost as much a character as they are. The landscape, I think—I hope—provides the tension in the story.”
I knew he had the summary in the notes Frankie had provided.
Gusek raised an eyebrow again, one of his mannerisms I decided, but this time he had a little smile, like a punctuation mark to his evident surprise that I might just turn out to be “good talent” after all.
We fell into an easy conversation, peppered by a spot of flirting here and there on my part, all in good fun. It added a little banter between us during the proceedings. He even waved an index finger at me at one point in amused admonition, and I raised an eyebrow at him in return, which made him chuckle silently.
We got to the part of the interview where I was to read a passage, and with the book in my hand already opened at the right page, I changed my mind. I decided to go with my first instinct. This interview was going well and I felt a sense of ownership of it. I figured it would be all right for me to veer a little from the script.
“Now, Emma, it’s an ambitious work, this novel, and it doesn’t follow a traditional narrative arc. Interspersed in the novel are excerpts from agricultural bills being presented at the time, some that never became law, and there are extracts of bills of sale for wheat exports. It’s quite fascinating and very original. Can you talk a little about that?”
“Yes, thank you for asking about that. As you can imagine, I did a lot of research into farming conditions at that time, and the political and economic repercussions, on women particularly, and I wanted to explore different styles of narrative and try something completely different from my previous books. I mean, as a writer of contemporary crime fiction, I follow a more conventional storytelling approach, as you know, so I—”
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