by Dianne Dixon
It always worries Livvi a little to know that many of the men and women who come to her book signings assume she’s special because she’s written a novel and gotten it published, when all she really did was pour her pain onto paper. Then get lucky enough to have someone put it between the covers of a book.
She’s experiencing the same shyness, the same concern about measuring up to people’s expectations, that has been with her at every bookstore appearance she’s made so far.
All over the room, people are raising their hands, ready to ask questions. The serene old lady in the third row. The pair of impeccably dressed blond men nestled together, their shoulders lightly touching. The fresh-faced group of teenage girls leaning against the back wall. The pretty woman sitting near the front of the room, her left hand ringed in diamonds.
And for an instant, the sight of these people is dropping Livvi into a flash of remembered panic…
…She’s surrounded by strangers. Staring. Curious. A rare trip to town. And she has stumbled, fallen. In new sandals. Onto a summer sidewalk. Blistering hot. An open doorway. A blast of music and air-conditioned air: yeasty, whiskey-sweet. Dirt-covered work boots. And cowboy boots. Hurrying out of the doorway. “Little girl…you all right?” She’s trying to say she’s hurt, needs help, but she can’t catch her breath. The boots. Backing away. Making room. For the angry tap of scuffed blue clogs. “Don’t pay her any mind. She just wants attention.” Lying on the sidewalk: the feeling of tumbling into a bottomless hole. Calista’s lips brushing her ear. “No wonder you’re never taken out in public. You can’t even walk down the street without making a spectacle of yourself…”
This old, ingrained panic—its embarrassment—is, for the briefest flick of time, keeping Livvi speechless. Tonight’s book-signing event has been so lovely, so perfect. Now she’s nervous that she’ll stumble, do something clumsy, and spoil it.
Several more people in the room are indicating they have questions—Livvi is worrying that she has let too much time pass without responding. But whatever awkwardness was created by her momentary silence seems to have passed.
A middle-aged woman, pale and plump as a marshmallow, is rising from her chair, beaming at Livvi. “I want you to know I stayed up all night last night reading your novel. What an incredibly moving story!”
Someone else is calling out: “I loved it, I really loved it!”
Livvi’s nervousness is lessening. She’s taking a slow, deep breath.
While a thick-necked man in a leather jacket is saying: “A woman who has no idea how to get what she wants…to me that feels like a period piece. How did you make the decision to set the story in 2011 instead of, let’s say, 1911?”
“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” Livvi tells him. “I guess I just wrote what I know about, the here and now.”
Then Livvi sees the glimmer of disappointment. The man was hoping for something deeper, more dynamic. And for the space of a breath she feels, on some tiny level, that she’s failed, because she hasn’t met his expectations.
The pretty woman with the diamonds is informing Livvi: “You write beautifully, but your main character’s backstory is a little unbelievable. Having her grow up in almost total isolation is something I simply don’t think would happen. Why wouldn’t she find a way to get out and make friends—find somebody she could get a reality check from? Excuse me for putting it like this, but she comes off as either mentally ill or completely retarded.”
This isn’t the first time this question has been asked, and Livvi still hasn’t found the right way to deal with it. The simplest thing would be to admit that the facts in her book are actually the facts of her life, but she can’t—in the same way some veterans can’t talk about the horrors of war and some Holocaust survivors couldn’t talk about the tortures they endured.
Livvi’s history has left her haunted, disoriented. And she isn’t sure how to find her way out of that.
But the thick-necked man is already turning around in his chair, explaining to the diamond-draped woman: “The kid in the book wasn’t retarded. From the time she was a baby, she was raised pretty much as a prisoner. The only thing she understood was being a hostage.”
And the other woman, the plump, marshmallowly one, is adding: “She knew there was a larger world, but she’d been robbed of the power to get out and make contact with it.”
One of the teenagers in the back is calling out: “It’s like what happened to that girl in Utah, Elizabeth Smart. She wandered all over the place with the people that kidnapped her—not ever trying to escape, or ask for help.”
“That’s right.” The old woman in the third row is leaning forward, eager to have her say. “Elizabeth Smart grew up in a loving family. She’d only been away from them for a short time and was manipulated into submission. The girl in the book never knew anything but cruelty and captivity. The only information she had was that she was unlovable, unwantable…and completely unprotected.”
“You’re right,” Livvi says. “That was the girl’s reality—that she was completely unlovable. And unprotected. Other than in books, and in her own imagination, she had no idea if kindness or compassion were things that really existed.”
Livvi glances at the woman in diamonds—the woman purses her lips and seems unconvinced.
A young mother with a baby in her lap raises her hand. “What I don’t understand was why the stepmother character was so awful to the little girl. It was like she had a vendetta against her.”
The man in the leather jacket looks toward Livvi. “It was some kind of weird jealousy…like in that scene on the sidewalk in front of the bar…the stepmother was pissed off because the girl was the center of attention, surrounded by a bunch of men. Am I right?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she was just plain evil,” Livvi says. Her voice is very quiet as she adds: “There’s a lot about the stepmother that’s still a mystery to me.”
The woman in the diamonds rolls her eyes. “It’s crazy that the girl would accept that she was totally unlovable…and totally on her own…just because the stepmother said so.”
The old woman in the third row is indignant. “The child’s father hardly ever spoke to her. The stepmother’s opinions were the only ones she ever heard. How can you expect a little girl to know things she’s never been taught?”
The woman in diamonds shrugs. “Sorry. I just don’t buy it.”
It isn’t yours to buy, Livvi is thinking. It was mine to live. And my life being so far from your reality that you can dismiss it with a shrug? You’ll never know how much that hurts. How much it makes me envy you.
A hand has gone up in the back of the room: Livvi turns her attention to one of the teenage girls, who’s asking: “Where did you get the title, The Book of Someday?”
“It’s been in my head a long time,” Livvi tells her. “It seemed like a perfect fit for the character in my book—somebody who doesn’t realize, until it’s almost too late, that she can go out and—”
Livvi is being interrupted by a female voice: “And when you find the thing you want, all you have to do is claim it and not let other people derail you—that’s the key to a really fulfilled life, right?” It’s a mousey young woman wearing large, blue-framed glasses who has said this. Behind the blue frames, her eyes are brimming with neediness.
Livvi, instinctively wanting to give the woman what she needs, responds with an instantaneous “Yes.” But as soon as the yes has been uttered, Livvi is thinking about taking it back—worried that she’s setting the woman up for disappointment.
Livvi’s impulse is to explain that she, Livvi, doesn’t have the easy quick-fix answer to happiness and that the one lie she told in The Book of Someday (its only real fiction) was the unshakably upbeat ending. The manuscript’s original ending was much truer to what Livvi knows. It was far more ambiguous.
But it’s too late. The young woman has already hurried away with a group of people rushing downstairs to the display area, in search of Livvi’s book. And so
meone has put a hand on Livvi’s shoulder, saying: “I’m in awe. You were a star tonight—radiant.”
It’s David. Livvi’s literary agent—her best friend.
David who, three years ago, had been a stranger seated beside her on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. When Livvi was on her way to the funeral of the first person to encourage her talent as a writer: the chairman of her college English department. Someone who, when Livvi graduated, sensed how unready she was to face the world and arranged a job for her in the university’s research library. A woman of ageless elegance named Gwyneth Holly who had retired and moved east—and died a short time later.
Gwyneth Holly had been what David became on that flight to New York, a hero in Livvi’s life.
It was David who had gathered up the scattered pages of Livvi’s manuscript and read them after she’d fallen asleep, after they’d slipped off her lap onto the floor of the plane.
David with his quiet smile and watercolor-blue eyes.
David, the intelligent, soft-spoken man who, as they were landing, had gently woken Livvi to tell her she’d written a remarkable book and that he intended to see it was published.
Livvi adores David.
She’s also a little intimidated by him. He belongs to a life very different from hers. He comes from people of privilege. Who, in summer, roam the beaches of New England. In loose cotton shirts and sun-bleached shorts. And in winter, command the streets of Manhattan. Armored in Armani and black limousines.
Now David is leaning close to Livvi, telling her: “Later, after you’ve finished signing the books all those eager readers are rushing downstairs to buy, I want to take you to dinner, to celebrate.”
Livvi is thrilled. And excited. And grateful.
“We’ll go someplace special, Livvi, someplace that…”
David is continuing to speak, but Livvi is having trouble hearing his voice. It suddenly seems garbled and distant. Her focus is being moved away from David and shifted—entirely—to what she’s seeing over his shoulder.
A man. At the top of the stairway.
His eyes are locked on Livvi’s. He’s loudly calling her name. A name no one has called her in years. “Olivia!”
Micah
New York City ~ 2012
“I think my name’s being called. I’ll email you the stuff about the new exhibit later.” Micah drops her mobile phone into her purse. It’s an expensive phone and an equally expensive purse.
The nurse who’s just coming out from behind the reception desk, a tiny Filipina woman in hot pink scrubs, is saying: “Meeka? Is Meeka here?”
“It’s Micah…like ‘Mike’ with an ‘ah’ at the end of it.” Micah is rising from her chair, conscious of the subtle shift that’s taking place—the attention of the other patients in the waiting room moving from the pages of their magazines and coming to rest on her.
Micah is accustomed to this; she likes it, people looking at her. She knows they look because she’s six-foot-one, and because her legs are long and her breasts are full. Because she has sea-green eyes, hair the color of black cherries, and skin like fresh cream. And because her lips, and ears, and nose are every bit as breathtaking as the rest of her.
The nurse is now ushering Micah into a corridor, leading her past a wall where there are several large, framed photographs. One of them, a Venetian canal scene, dominates the others. It’s an image that’s completely devoid of life. No people, no dogs, no birds, not even a potted plant—nothing but a gondola, a bridge, and the façade of a timeworn palazzo overlooking the water. The photo, taken from an extremely forced perspective, has a cutting-edge style that borders on the bizarre.
While she’s passing the photograph Micah is giving it a quick, critical glance. The nurse notices and says: “Big-name photographer. Very expensive picture—very famous.”
“Yeah. I know,” Micah tells her. “I’m the one who took it.”
“Wow.” The nurse is impressed. And then she asks: “Is it true you never have people in any of your pictures?”
Micah nods.
“Why?” There’s interested eagerness in the nurse’s voice.
“Because I erase them,” Micah explains. The statement is made quietly—almost reluctantly.
***
After a quick check of her weight and blood pressure, Micah has been brought to the doctor’s office, not into an examining room. All the complicated stuff, the tests and scans, were completed days ago—no more need for fluorescent lighting and paper gowns. It’s time for the Persian carpets and diploma-lined walls.
Micah is in a stylish low-backed chair upholstered in tobacco-brown suede, and the doctor is seated behind an imposing Park Avenue desk. He’s studying the contents of a file folder and hasn’t spoken, or looked up, since giving Micah a brief nod when she first arrived. This is confusing her—she rarely enters a room without creating a microsecond of intense concentration. A moment in which her exquisite face and body capture everyone’s attention.
Her confusion is now rapidly being replaced by irritation. Micah doesn’t like people wasting her time, and this doctor has left her sitting for several minutes with nothing to do but map the bald spot on the top of his head.
She lets out an annoyed cough and glares at him.
The doctor continues slowly flipping through the documents in the folder.
Without looking up, he says: “I see that it’s been quite a while—back in 2004, eight years ago—since you had your last medical check-up, Ms.—” He stops and riffles through the paperwork, scanning for her name.
“Lesser.” There is a deliberate edge in Micah’s tone. She wants him to know he’s getting on her nerves.
“Lesser. Right.” He remains impassive, intent on the data in her medical reports.
Micah is making no attempt to conceal her irritation as she tells him: “How about we skip the doctor-patient chat and go straight to you signing whatever piece of paper it is that says I qualify for the big fat insurance policy I’m about to take out. I have things to do.”
The doctor remains focused on the paperwork. “It says here you’re forty-one. Unmarried. No children.”
“Not that it’s any of your concern, but this has nothing to do with my personal life. My new business partner and I are both increasing our life insurance—it’s a standard corporate practice.” Micah looks from the doctor to the Mont Blanc pen that’s lying a few inches away from her file. When he makes no move to reach for it, Micah grabs the pen and slaps it down on top of the open folder. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this is a monumental waste of time. You don’t need to sit there memorizing my medical history; trust me, we’re never going to see each other again. I don’t go to doctors—I’m too busy. So just mail me the damn papers. Or ship them to the insurance company. Do whatever it is you’re supposed to do and send me the bill.”
Micah has already left the tobacco-colored suede chair. Heading out of the office. Not noticing that the doctor has looked up—and is finally giving her his full attention.
She’s almost at the door when she realizes that he has begun to speak. In a flat, detached monotone.
This is when she knows she will need to hold on to the doorframe.
To keep from falling down.
While he’s delivering this murderous blow.
“In all likelihood you have an aggressive breast cancer, Ms. Lesser. It appears you may have had it for a significant amount of time.”
Micah is afraid to inhale—as if the air is rapidly filling with thorns. The doctor’s drone is coming at her in disjointed bits and pieces. “Oncologist.” “Biopsy.” “Possible complete removal of—” “Surgery.” “Chemo.” “Radiation.”
When Micah is finally able to let go of the doorframe, when she has the strength to turn and look at him, the doctor is consulting a calendar on his computer, mumbling: “…set up an appointment for the day after tomorrow, but no later than the end of the week…”
There’s sudden, uncontr
ollable fury. And Micah’s response is a rasping scream. “No!”
“No? To what…?” The doctor seems genuinely at a loss.
“To hacking my breasts off, you son of a bitch.”
There is terror—everywhere—in Micah.
The doctor is coolly telling her: “I don’t think you’re taking quite the right attitude, Ms. Lesser.”
And Micah says: “What attitude would you take if we were talking about doing away with your dick?”
He pauses for a moment. Then clears his computer screen. “Is there someone we can call? A family member? Someone you’re close to?”
A cynical, bewildered voice in Micah’s head is wondering, Who do other people, regular people, call at a time like this? Their commuter-train husbands? Their crappy mothers, their bullshit fathers? Maybe the chatty best friend they go to the mall with? Somebody who just fucking loves the shit out of them?
The doctor has closed the file folder, and is pushing it aside. “Ms. Lesser, is there anyone we can call?”
“No. There’s no one.”
Micah’s response is coming from a place of undiluted emptiness. She can hear very little of what the doctor is explaining to her—because, for a fleeting moment, she isn’t in his office. For some reason she’s in a place that doesn’t exist anymore. Hasn’t existed for a long time. A late-summer garden surrounded by an expanse of soft green grass, and a sea of coral-colored lilies. She’s being held in a heartfelt embrace—listening to a voice that’s light and lilting, like music, saying, “Believe that I love you…won’t you please?”
And then Micah is back with the doctor, in his office—hearing him ask where she’s going—and unable to give him an answer.