by Cynthia Kuhn
“You okay?” he asked, remaining by the door. I made another, louder unintelligible sound which prompted him into action. He raced over and ripped the duct tape from my mouth—which stung like anything—and peered into my eyes.
“Can you please untie me?” I begged him.
Gary pulled some silver instrument from his pocket and severed the ties in an instant. The worst pins-and-needle sensation I’d ever had flooded my arms at once, and I moaned.
“Should I call someone?” He was obviously concerned. “You hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I said, gently rubbing my arms for a minute to get the circulation flowing. Then I lightly pressed the area around my mouth to counter the sting factor, which helped somewhat. “And I have to go, but thanks so much for rescuing me.”
“You gotta call the police.”
“I will. Bless you, Gary.” I hobbled out of the booth and moved slowly down the side of the auditorium. It was too late for me to intervene with the reading, obviously, but I wanted to find my mother and let her know what was going on.
When I was about halfway down the aisle, Damon leaned closer to the microphone and said, “But there’s more.”
Chapter 24
I froze, just like everybody else.
“A few years ago, this Jasper Haines came to me.” He pointed to the man sitting on the stage. “Turns out he’d learned his grandfather was the one who wrote the novel.”
Jasper looked self-righteous.
“Yet rather than coming clean right away, which I volunteered to do—I was ready to be done with the whole thing—he had another idea.”
A flash of panic crossed Jasper’s face. “Damon, wait a minute!” he yelled. “We agreed—”
But the author plunged ahead. “He had written a little book, he said, that demonstrated a literary theory he’d been toying with. He wanted me to publish it under my name. I resisted at first, I did. But he said if I would go along with his idea, we wouldn’t have to correct the first theft. He wanted to write his dissertation on both The Medusa Variation and the second one which would guarantee not only the completion of his doctorate but also, probably, a good job afterwards.”
Damon shook his head and looked at Jasper, who had gone limp in his chair, his eyes closed.
“I absolutely did not want to go along with it, but I could understand this would give the kid a chance at success. If his grandfather’s name had been on The Medusa Variation as it should have been, he might have had a better life to begin with. And it was my fault. So I agreed.”
He put both hands over his face for a moment, then slowly rubbed his eyes. When he spoke again, his face was grim. “But then I had to embark on a book tour and claim words that were not mine for the second time. I did everything I could to stop the tour—I misbehaved whenever possible.”
Mina stood up in her chair and went over to him. “Stop, Dad,” she said gently, but loud enough that the microphone picked it up. “It’s enough already. We all heard what you said—you were blackmailed into it. It’s not your fault.”
“There’s more, Mina,” Damon said. “I need to tell the whole story so we can be done with this.” He caught her hand and escorted her back to the empty chair. She sank into it.
He returned to the lectern and leaned forward again. “Minerva Clark had lived next door to me and been my best friend for decades. When Mina was born, we all spent a great deal of time together until Mina went off to boarding school, which was the end of our family unit. Years passed, and Mina showed up in New York to attend graduate school after her mother had died. She told me her mother had confessed I was her real father.”
He paused, looking at Mina. “This young woman has been a terrific companion to me, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.”
Mina smiled at him. But it was a tentative kind of smile, as if she sensed that the other shoe was about to drop.
And then it did.
“But, unfortunately, she is not my daughter.”
Mina spluttered and shook her head. “Dad, what are you talking about?”
He turned to her. “I’m sorry, Mina,” he said sadly.
Damon addressed the audience. “Minerva and I had been involved at one point, it’s true. But by the time Minerva met Mina’s father, who was a married man in a very prominent political position, we were just friends, contrary to what everyone else thought. Minerva never told the father she was pregnant, but I was there for everything—the pregnancy, the birth, and for many years afterwards. I loved Mina as my own as a result of all the time we’d spent together when she was young, so it seemed like a small and proper thing to take her in when she appeared on my doorstep.”
“You’re not his daughter?” Jasper yelled at Mina.
Mina whipped her head back to Jasper and glared at him with such intensity that he jolted backwards, almost falling out of his chair.
“Didn’t you hear him? I thought I was.”
Damon leaned on the lectern, twisted around to observe the exchange.
Jasper recovered his balance and stood up. “You liar!”
Mina rose as well and slapped him across the face.
Jasper put a hand to his cheek and raised his other hand as if to slap her back but then froze as a piercing, agonized wail filled the auditorium, seeming to start in the back and snake through the crowd toward the front. Everyone turned in their seats, craning their necks to find the source of the sound. I swept the rows of chairs with my eyes, ultimately making out a tall figure leaning along the back wall of the auditorium. The wail stopped abruptly and the figure proceeded down the center aisle, gradually revealing a tall, stately woman. Her gray hair, steel-colored suit, and noble carriage gave the impression of being clad in armor. She climbed up to the stage, ignoring the three people populating it, and went directly to the lectern. Damon moved aside, as if pulled by an invisible force.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” she said, her voice strong and clear. “I am the true author of The Medusa Variation.”
An uproar swept the room. If this had been a Victorian novel, somebody would have swooned. Francisco strode out onto the stage and covered the microphone with his hand while he spoke in an urgent manner to the woman in gray and to Damon, who both stepped backwards to make space for him. After a few minutes, he leaned into the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an unexpected addition to our reading. Please welcome Vera Haines.”
There was a spatter of applause. I joined in, feeling dazed.
She inclined her head slightly in his direction and returned to the lectern. Her body was rigid, and she looked ready for battle.
“I wrote the novel. No one besides my Jasper knew I was the author. I typed in the barn at night sometimes when I couldn’t sleep. It took me two years to write the book and Jasper kept begging me to let Damon to read it. I refused. I didn’t want anyone to know. I wasn’t sure why I wrote it in the first place, other than I had a need to say something about the war that had changed Jasper so dramatically. Before he went, he was a happy man, full of life, content with his lot. We had been married the year before he finished college, and every day felt like a gift.”
She paused for a moment, a slight smile on her face, at the thought of those days.
Then her mouth turned grim again.
“But when he graduated, he had to serve during the last two years in Vietnam. And when he came home, he was so different. Haunted. Like a ghost. He told me things that...well, I felt so helpless. After a few years, I started to write something to...to get the feelings out somehow. To try and make something good out of something so awful. And when Jasper read it, he just stared at me. Finally, he said it was exactly what he would have said about the war if he could. Thank goodness one of us could write, he said. From that point on, he was always after me to submit it to a publisher, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do
it. To me, it was private. I’d written it for him. But the more Damon was around the farm, the more Jasper became convinced he should read it. Damon was a few years younger than Jasper—same age as me, in fact—but Jasper was completely impressed with the whole notion of graduate school. They talked about literature for hours together, and he believed in Damon’s knowledge. You’d have thought Damon was some sort of god,” she said bitterly, looking at him with disgust.
“So I let him give the manuscript to Damon, as long as Jasper said he’d written it.”
There was a long pause.
“Then my Jasper died.”
The audience responded instantly, murmuring among themselves. Vera watched them for a moment, then lifted her chin and continued, “I had a nervous breakdown. I just collapsed, inside and out. I spent a few years in the hospital, and by the time I returned home, the book was out there in the world under Damon’s name. I was furious, of course, but I didn’t know what to do. People already stared at me oddly—this was small-town USA, you understand, and people who went to mental hospitals weren’t treated like your average citizen. It took me a long time to get my son back. It was hard enough to fit back into my community—the looks some people gave me I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I knew no one would believe me if I started talking about being the real author of a famous book on top of that.” She threw her hands up into the air.
“Then my grandson,” she turned and gazed at him, “told me about writing his dissertation on the book he loved it so much. I like to think that maybe, on some level, he recognized my voice inside the story. And I realized here was a chance, at last, for me to give my husband some of the glory he so dearly deserved for what he’d been through for his country. And for me. So I told Jasper his grandfather had written The Medusa Variation. I believed he would do the right thing with that information. He’s a smart boy.”
Vera faced the audience again. “However, to my dismay, instead of simply debunking Damon and putting his grandfather’s name on the manuscript, nothing happened. He didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know he had concocted an even larger self-serving plan until tonight. Jasper, how could you?”
He looked crestfallen. His blond spikes might even have drooped.
“Then I watched Damon Von Tussel go through a completely new cycle of celebration for having produced yet another book—I was pulling my hair out, I’ll tell you that much. And now I hear the second book was also written by a Haines?” She smacked the lectern, and everyone jumped. “Enough!”
“But Grandma—” Jasper began, moving toward her.
“Don’t ‘Grandma’ me, young man. Sit down,” she said. “All of this ends now. I don’t know what will happen for you now that the truth is out. Some people find pleasure in other people’s misfortune, so who knows? But make no mistake: it’s repulsive. Every part of it. And the world will deal with you accordingly.”
She turned to Mina. “I fear you have greater problems than this, and I hope you sort them out.”
She faced Damon. “I’ve thought about this moment for a long time,” she said slowly. “I’ve imagined over and over again what I would say to you about stealing my book and about dishonoring my husband’s name. Or, actually, mine. But listening to you talk about it tonight, I think you’ve genuinely suffered. There will be more to come, unfortunately. But at least you did finally come forward and admit you’d done wrong. Thank you for that.”
Damon swiped at his eyes roughly. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She studied his face, then nodded curtly.
The audience gave her a standing ovation.
After the highly animated crowd had dispersed, I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium, watching Lex talk to Damon onstage. He’d come for my statement eventually; he knew Jasper had been responsible for whatever it was called when someone tied you to a chair in a sound booth against your will. I didn’t want to press charges—but I would explain what happened.
Tally Bendel stomped up to us, waving her cell phone, which was ringing. She paused to see who was calling, then angrily stabbed the screen.
“Violet, call me when you’re back in New York. Let’s go to lunch and vent. I can’t believe how many years I’ve had to put up with this son of a—”
“You’ve been a saint, it’s true,” my mother said quickly.
“You too, doll,” Tally said. “Time for both of us to quit it.” Her phone began ringing again, and she made a tsk of annoyance as she checked the screen and held up one finger. “Gotta take this one. See you in the city.” She pointed at my mother and wheeled around to leave, her oversized bag flying out in an impressive arc.
“She’s right, you know. To think how much time I spent praising his writing,” my mother hissed out of the side of her mouth in an angry whisper. “That’s what you have to do when you date an author, you know.”
I decided now was not the time to make the obvious comparison to those who date artists.
She turned one of her bracelets around her wrist as she continued into a refrain I’d heard before. “Although artistic types do need some appreciation, it’s true. One does hope for the tiniest morsel of encouragement after putting your art into the world, darling. After all, it takes every ounce of creativity and determination.”
I gave the traditional response—“you’re right”—to this comment. Next up on the familiar playlist was the disproven but still repeated Why It Doesn’t Matter If No One Likes Your Work. She had produced variations of these ideas—minus the Damon aspect—as far back as I could remember. Which topic was rehearsed depended on where my mother was in the artistic process. I knew she had just completed an installation, so she was in the I Did My Best And That’s All Anyone Can Do phase that accompanied letting go of her latest project.
I gave her a quick side hug.
A flurry of movement caught my eye. Jasper and Mina emerged from the wings. He was escorted by a tall police officer, and she trailed behind. The officer called over to Lex, saying something I couldn’t quite make out. Lex nodded. The officer aimed Jasper into a chair not far from where we were sitting.
I stood, went to the edge of the stage, and looked up at Jasper. Even though he’d recently manhandled me, I wasn’t scared of him, and I still had questions. Tall Officer hovered nearby.
“Are you okay, Jasper?”
He grimaced. “I’m sorry about the booth, Lila.”
I dipped my chin, registering the apology.
“This was never about you...you just got caught in the middle of it.” His lips tightened. “You heard what Damon said, but it all came from a good place, I swear. I had vowed to get revenge on Damon for having ripped off my grandfather. But I didn’t want to just blurt it out—accuse him face to face. I wanted to humiliate him in front of an audience. I also wanted to make sure a correction was made, that the name Jasper Haines would be reinstated, connected, forevermore, with one of the most celebrated novels of the twentieth century. Grandfather would have wanted it, right?”
“So you tried to use your own fraud to expose his?” I wondered if he saw the irony in his plan.
“No. I wanted to rip off his effing mask and expose him for the viper he really is.”
Apparently, he didn’t see the irony.
“Does your dissertation expose Damon?”
“Yes and no. As it stands, it’s an examination of personae in both The Medusa Variation and In Medias Res. That’s what my committee saw and what was submitted to the university press. Purely literary analysis. But the final chapter, which I’ve already written, had to wait to go into the manuscript until Damon publicly stated his crime. That explains everything from my insider perspective and will increase the value of the study enormously.”
“Ah,” I said. Intentionally non-judgmentally.
Jasper grinned, surprising me.
“I can’t wait to be done. I’ve spent years wo
rking on this project. You know what it’s like to write a dissertation. Grueling and all-consuming. No matter how much you love the subject matter.”
He appeared to have rebounded from having been exposed to the world as a blackmailer in a surprisingly short period of time, acting as if now he’d just go back to school and pick up where he left off.
“My defense is scheduled for next month,” he said. “I am so ready.”
What? His dissertation defense was likely the least of his worries at this point. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him yet that there were more pressing defenses in his future.
“Back to Damon for a minute—were you planning to kill him?”
“No way.” Jasper shook his head vehemently. “Why would I kill him? I want him to suffer the humiliation. To do penance. To live as long as possible enduring the mockery and rejection of others who have learned the truth. Wishing him a long and miserable life, actually.”
He didn’t seem to register that his own part in the story was something not many people would celebrate either. Lex gestured to the front of the stage and Damon followed him. Another officer came out of the wings with a folding chair, which she set up neatly across from Jasper’s. Damon was invited to sit.
“So we have ascertained that Jasper Haines’s grandfather was the original author of The Medusa Variation,” Tall Officer said.
“Grandmother,” said Lex. “It was Vera.”
The officer snapped his fingers. “That’s right. I forgot. Sorry. But in any case, Mr. Von Tussel is not the author.”
Damon didn’t say anything.
Tall Officer continued, “So neither of the books which have your name on them were written by you.”
Damon nodded, looking weary.
Lex jumped in. “Let’s cut to the chase, if we can. The books, at this point, are not the focus of our investigation. Lawyers will sort that out. What we are trying to clarify at the present time is who is responsible for tampering with the spotlight thrown onto Mr. Haines, the drugging, and the attack by statue.”