The column premiered a week after the Miss Brunswick Diner meeting. We agreed to call it ‘Day-to-Day Stuff. Like the old column, it was a gently satirical commentary on prosaic matters. Only now I lost some of my usual metropolitan slant, and focused in on somewhat more homey, parochial matters: like ‘Twenty-Three Dumb Uses for Kraft Velveeta Cheese’ … or ‘Why Leg Waxing Makes Me Always Feel Inadequate’ … or (my personal favorite) ‘Why Women Just Can’t Relate to Beer’.
Duncan Howell insisted that I keep the flip tone which so characterized my Saturday/Sunday columns. ‘Don’t feel you have to write down for your audience. Mainers always know when someone’s condescending to them … and they don’t like it. They might take some time getting used to your style … but, eventually, you’ll win them over.’
Certainly, the first few weeks of ‘Day-to-Day Stuff didn’t win anybody over.
‘What are you doing, employing such a wiseguy gal to write such a wiseguy column in a decent, respectable paper like yours?’ ran one of the first Letters to the Editor.
A week later, another torpedo landed in the Letters column. ‘Maybe this sort of thing plays well in Manhattan, but Miss Smythe’s world view certainly doesn’t seem to have the slightest bearing on life as we live it up here. Maybe she should think about heading back south.’
Ouch.
‘Don’t take those letters personally,’ Duncan Howell said when we met again at the Miss Brunswick for a little tete-a-tete a month after the column started.
‘How can I not take it personally, Mr Howell? After all, if I’m not connecting with your readers …’
‘But you are connecting,’ he said. ‘Most of the newsroom really like you. And every time I go to a dinner around town, at least one or two of the Bowdoin or local business people tell me how much they enjoy your take on things, and what a coup it was to get you for the paper. We always expect a couple of nay-sayers to complain about anything new and a little different. That’s par for the course. So, please, don’t fret: you’re doing just fine. So fine that I was wondering … might you be willing to start writing two columns a week for us?’
‘That’s a joke, right?’
‘No - I’m absolutely serious. I really want to get “Day-to-Day Stuff” established - and I think the best way to do this is to up the ante, so to speak … and make them read you every Monday and Friday. You game?’
‘Sure, I guess. Can you afford it?’
‘I’ll work it out somehow.’
He held out his hand again. ‘Do we have a deal?’
‘And I came to Maine thinking about a life of leisure.’
‘Once a journalist …’
I took his hand and shook it. ‘Right - it’s a deal.’
‘Glad to hear it. One final thing … there are a lot of people around town who would love to meet you. I don’t know what your social calendar is like these days …’
‘It’s completely empty, by choice. I’m still not in a particularly sociable frame of mind.’
‘Understood completely. These things do take time. But if you’re ever feeling in the need of company, do know that there are plenty of opportunities. You have fans.’
Like Dr Bolduck. Not only was he chuffed that, by calling Duncan Howell, I took the bait he dangled in front of me … but also that I had just passed the first trimester mark without problems.
‘No worrying discharges, no constant cramps, no ominous discomfort?’
‘Nothing ominous whatsoever. In fact, this has all been far simpler than my last pregnancy.’
‘Well, what can I say except: good stuff. Fingers crossed. And keep taking it as easy as possible.’
‘Not with Duncan Howell now insisting on two columns a week.’
‘Oh yes, I heard about that. Congratulations. You’re becoming a local name.’
‘And I’ll be even more of a name three months from now, when everyone on Maine Street sees the bump in the belly.’
‘Like I said before, it will not be as big a deal as you imagine. Anyway, why should you care what people think around here?’
‘Because I live here now, that’s why.’
Dr Bolduck didn’t have an answer to that. Except: ‘Fair enough.’
The following week, I began to be published every Monday and Friday. There was another spate of letters in the paper, bemoaning my smarty-pants style. But Duncan Howell called me weekly for an impromptu editorial conference on the next week’s copy - and he constantly sounded enthusiastic about the way the column was progressing. He also said that he was getting terrific feedback about its twice-weekly appearance. So much so that he had some good news: the two largest papers in Maine - the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News - had both enquired about perhaps picking up serialization rights for the column.
‘The money they’re offering isn’t great: about sixty dollars each per week for the two columns,’ Mr Howell said.
‘Of which I’d receive how much?’
‘Well, this is new territory for me. Because the Maine Gazette has never really been in a situation where one of our columnists has ended up being syndicated. But I spoke with someone at our lawyers, and they said that a sixty/forty split between the writer and the originating newspaper was commonplace.’
‘Try eighty/twenty,’ I said.
‘That’s awfully steep, Miss Smythe.’
‘I’m worth it,’ I said.
‘Of course, you are … but how about seventy/thirty?’
‘I’ll settle for seventy-five/twenty-five, nothing less.’
‘You drive a tough bargain.’
‘Yes. I do. Seventy-five/twenty-five, Mr Howell. And that covers this, and all future serializations. Fair enough?’
A pause.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll have our lawyers draft an agreement for you to sign.’
‘I’ll look forward to receiving it. And thanks for getting me into Portland and Bangor.’
‘Am I ever going to get you over to dinner? My wife is really dying to meet you.’
‘In time, Mr Howell. In time.’
I knew I was probably coming across as some affected solipsist … but the combination of my pregnancy and my ongoing grief made me shy away from any social gatherings. I could handle my weekly dinner with Ruth, but the idea of making polite conversation over a dinner table - and answering well-meaning questions like, “So, what brought you to Brunswick?” - made me want to steer clear of all social possibilities. I was still succumbing to outbursts of despair. I preferred to keep them private ones. So I kept refusing all invitations.
But when Jim Carpenter suddenly asked me out one afternoon, I surprised myself by saying yes. Jim was an instructor in French at Bowdoin. He taught the class I was auditing. He was in his late twenties - a tall, gangly fellow with sandy hair, rimless glasses, and a retiring, somewhat shy demeanour that masked a mischievous streak. Like everyone else at Bowdoin (the students included), he dressed in the standard New England academic garb: tweed jacket, grey flannels, button-down shirts, a college tie. But, in the course of our conversational lessons, he dropped the fact that Bowdoin was his first teaching job - and that he’d landed in Maine after two years of work on his doctorate at the Sorbonne. I was the only auditor in the class. Though I was also the only woman student (Bowdoin was resolutely all-male back then), Jim remained quite formal and distant with me for the first two months of the course. He asked a few basic questions - en francais - about my work (‘Je suis journaliste, mais maintenant je prends une periode sabbatique de mon travail’ was all I’d say about it). He made discreet enquiries about my marital status, and whether I was enjoying my time in Maine. Otherwise, he maintained a professional stance of complete disinterest. Until one afternoon - a few weeks after the column started - he caught me on the way out of class. And said, ‘I’m enjoying your column enormously, Miss Smythe.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, feeling slightly embarrassed.
‘One of my colleagues in the department said
you used to write for Saturday Night/Sunday Morning. Is that true?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘I never knew I had a celebrity in my class.’
‘You don’t.’
‘Modesty is an overrated virtue,’ he said with a slight smile.
‘But immodesty is always boring, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps … but after a couple of months in Maine, I really wouldn’t mind a dose of good old-fashioned Parisian arrogance. Everyone is so polite and self-effacing here.’
‘Maybe that’s why I like it. Especially after Manhattan, where everyone’s always selling themselves. There’s something rather pleasant about a place where, five seconds after being introduced, you don’t know what the person does, how much they earn, and how many times they’ve been divorced.’
‘But I want to know that stuff. Maybe that’s because I’m still trying to shake off my Hoosier roots.’
‘You’re actually from Indiana?’
‘It happens.’
‘Paris really must have been an eye-opener then.’
‘Well … the wine is better there than in Indianapolis.’
I laughed. ‘I think I’ll use that line,’ I said.
‘Be my guest. But on one condition: you let me take you out for dinner one evening.’
I must have looked surprised, because Jim instantly blushed, then said, ‘Of course, you’re under no obligation …’
‘No,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘Dinner one night would be fine.’
We arranged the date for three days’ time. Twice before then, I thought about calling up and canceling. Because going out with anybody was the last thing I was interested in at this moment. Because I didn’t want to have to do a lot of explaining about everything that had happened to me over the last six months. And because I was pregnant, damn it.
But another voice within my head told me to stop being such a cautious stiff. It was only a dinner, after all. He didn’t seem like the sort of guy who had fangs and slept in a coffin. Though I was eschewing social gatherings, I was suddenly beginning to rue the absence of company. So I put on a decent dress and a spot of make-up, and let him take me to the dining room of the Stowe House for dinner. He was somewhat nervous and hesitant at first - which was both endearing and annoying, as I had to work hard initially at making conversation. But after the second cocktail, he started loosening up a bit. By the time he had most of a bottle of wine in him (I restricted myself to two glasses), he began to show flashes of a genuinely amusing mind … albeit one forced to hide behind a button-down countenance.
‘You know what I loved most about Paris?’ he said. ‘Besides, of course, the sheer absurd beauty of the place? The ability to walk until dawn. I must have squandered half my time there, staying up all night, wandering from cafe to cafe, or just meandering for miles. I had this tiny room in the Fifth, right off the rue des Ecoles. I could pay my rent and stuff my face for fifty dollars a month. I could spend all day reading at this great brasserie - Le Balzar - just around the corner from my garret. And I had a librarian girlfriend named Stephanie who moved in with me for the last four months of my stay… and couldn’t understand why the hell I wanted to exchange Paris for a teaching post in Brunswick, Maine.’
He paused for a moment, suddenly looking embarrassed. ‘And that’s the last glass of wine I’m drinking tonight - otherwise I’ll start sounding like a walking edition of True Confessions.’
‘Go on, encore un verre,’ I said, tipping the rest of the bottle into his glass.
‘Only if you join me.’
‘I’m a cheap date. Two glasses is my limit.’
‘Have you always been that way?’
I was about to say something foolish and revealing like, ‘I’m under doctor’s orders to drink no more than a glass or two a day.’ Instead, I kept it simple: ‘It always goes to my head.’
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Sante.’
‘So why did you throw away Stephanie and la vie parisienne for Bowdoin College?’
‘Don’t get me started. I might commit an act of self-revulsion.’
‘Sounds like a grisly prospect. But you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘What can I say … except that I’m the son of an ultra-conservative, ultra-safe insurance executive from Indianapolis. And if you’re brought up in the insurance world, you always think cautiously. So, though Paris was a great dream, when the job offer from Bowdoin came through … well, it’s a salary, right? And the potential for tenure, security, professional prestige. All that boring, cautionary stuff … about which I’m sure you happily know nothing.’
‘On the contrary, my father was a big cog in the Hartford insurance machine. And my guy did public relations for …’
I suddenly cut myself off.
‘Oh, there’s a guy in your life?’ he asked, attempting to sound as nonchalant as possible.
‘There was a guy. It’s over.’
He tried to stop himself from beaming. He failed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It all happened around the same time as my brother … You know about my brother?’
He put on a serious face again. ‘Yes. When I mentioned you were auditing my course to a colleague at the college, he said that he read a news story about him …’
‘Dying.’
‘Yes. Dying. I really am sorry. It must have been …’
‘It was.’
‘And that’s why you moved to Maine?’
‘One of the reasons.’
‘Was your former guy another reason?’
‘He added to the mess, yes.’
‘God, what a tough year you’ve …’
‘Stop right there …’
‘Sorry, have I … ?’
‘No, you’ve been very sweet. It’s just … I really can’t take much in the way of sympathy …’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll play tough and cynical.’
‘You can’t - you’re from Indiana.’
‘Is everyone from Manhattan as smart as you are?’
‘Is everyone from Indianapolis as fulsome as you are?’
‘Ouch.’
‘That wasn’t meant in a derogatory way.’
‘But it wasn’t exactly fulsome either.’
‘Touche. You are quick.’
‘For a guy from Indianapolis.’
‘It could be worse.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You could be from Omaha.’
He shot me one of his mischievous smiles. And said, ‘I like your style.’
Truth be told, I liked his too. When he walked me back to my front door that night, he asked if I might be willing to risk life and limb by taking a day-trip in his car this coming Saturday.
The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) Page 62