by Nancy Thayer
Every night after lights-out we would sneak out of our rooms and walk down to the pond together. It was really the only way we could be together for any amount of uninterrupted time. We would hold hands as we walked, and we would talk about everything, and finally we would lie on the grass by the pond and hold each other and kiss. That was all. We did not make love. Jeremy didn’t insist, although we lay on top of each other and pressed against each other, wanting to make love. He told me he loved me and that he wanted to work out a way so we could see each other after camp ended. I told him I loved him. Jeremy Gardner came closest to me that summer of all the things in the world, and I could bear the daytime, when I was with the Outsiders or walking alone, surrounded by the hot whispers of the eastern girls.
The third week I was at the camp, an eastern girl named Dottie Collier became friendly with me. She was in the writing and literature class and she wasn’t stupid; after I had read aloud my story about the locket, she approached me, smiling. “That was a really good story,” she said. She left the classroom with me, and walked and talked with me as we went down the hall to lunch. She asked me to sit next to her at the table with the eastern girls. The others ignored me, but Dottie kept talking to me—we were telling each other about our favorite novels, and in that were caught up in a spell.
Dottie wanted to be a writer, too. When we had a chance, we told each other the plots of the novels we would like to write, but there was never enough time, camp was always so regimented and busy, with classes in the morning and sports and homework in the afternoon. I was surprised but thrilled when Dottie suggested that she trade rooms with Olivia so we could talk to each other during the free part of the evenings and after lights-out. Olivia was glad to trade, and from then on, how delicious camp was! Still I swam in the afternoon with the Outsiders or played bumbling games of volleyball with my breasts thumping against my chest; but I had the nights to look forward to, talking in my room with Dottie, then sneaking out much later to meet Jeremy.
“Jenny?” she would whisper, when I came sneaking back into the room. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes,” I would sigh. “Did I wake you up?”
“No, no, I’ve been awake. I worry about you, you know. You know how boys are—you aren’t letting him do anything, are you? I mean—you aren’t doing it, are you?”
Dottie’s voice was so warm, she was so concerned. I was wrapped in bliss.
“Of course we’re not doing it,” I said, sliding out of my clothes and into bed.
“Well, girls can get pregnant so easily, and boys just slip away,” Dottie said.
“That won’t happen to me,” I promised. “I’m not a fool.”
But I was. I lay awake, in my joy telling Dottie everything, telling her that Jeremy was going to help me find ways to apply to eastern colleges, to get scholarships, that he was going to write me, that he was going to try to come to visit me at my farm on his school vacation that fall. The night after Jeremy told me that, and I in turn confided it to Dottie, I met Jeremy at the pond as usual. We lay together, wrapped in each other, rapt in each other, and so we did not hear Mr. McCausland, the headmaster of the camp, approach.
“Mr. Gardner,” he said. “Miss White.”
We rose awkwardly, adjusting our clothes, shaking, the warmth of our bodies disappearing in the sudden numbing cold of fear.
“You will follow me back to the hall,” he said.
We followed in silence, walking back through long grass that tickled my legs as foolishly as it had done when we walked earlier, arm in arm, down to the pond.
“Mr. Gardner, you will go to your room. I’ll deal with you later.”
Jeremy obeyed. He was pale, looking down, and so our eyes did not meet.
“Miss White, you will go to your room and pack. Tomorrow morning our van will drive you to the airport. You may consider yourself expelled. You know our policies. We do not allow girls who let themselves behave wantonly to remain at our camp. I will of course of necessity write to your parents and your school authorities about your actions here.”
There was no compassion in his voice. I did not argue. It was the best I could do not to weep before him. I walked, stiff-backed, to my room. How could I tell Dottie? I was so ashamed.
But Dottie was not in our room when I entered. It was after lights-out, and she was not in our room. There was not a trace of her, all her clothes were gone, and she had not left me a note.
I did not go to sleep that night. I sat up all night long, packing, smoking every cigarette in the contraband pack I had hidden under my mattress, which Dottie and I had often shared during our late-night talks. It did not take an “academically talented” person to guess how it was the headmaster knew why and where to look for Jeremy and me.
The cabdriver came for me the following morning. He carried my luggage, and I followed behind him, walking down the dormitory halls and into the foyer of the school. Wide double doors gave off the foyer to the dining room, and clustered in that doorway were a variety of students. At the front, lounging against the doorframes and each other, arms folded, eyes drooping with smugness, were the eastern girls. Dottie was with them and she looked right at me with a triumphant smirk on her face. She would be the heroine with her group now; first a spy, then the instrument of my departure, saving Jeremy for Jean.
Behind the eastern girls, weaving and jumping and looking like general fools in order to make themselves seen by me, were the Outsiders. They called and waved; Larry, who was tall, called that he would write me.
I did not wave back. I did not cry or smile or let any expression cross my face. I had learned how to do that at camp. I just kept walking, through the foyer that expanded with Einsteinian magnificence, until it almost echoed around me. All those eyes burned me so that I felt I was walking through flames. But I did not faint. And I did not catch any sight of Jeremy.
Later, the film The Wizard of Oz would capture with bizarre accuracy just what it was like for me to return to Kansas after my stay at the eastern camp: it was like going from dazzling Technicolor back to black and white and gray. Dust and heat and empty spaces, loneliness. My parents and the principal of the school were incredibly kind and understanding. They blamed Jeremy Gardner as much as me for our escapades, and took a compassionate view of what we had done—and really, we had done so little. The principal of the school did not enter my scandal onto my school records, and he kept the information to himself, something of a miracle in our small gossiping community.
I spent the rest of the summer in our basement, reading and writing. Jeremy Gardner wrote to me when camp was over; he had been allowed to stay at camp, because his father knew the headmaster. At first his letters were passionate and full of promises, and he did try to help me get back east; he sent me catalog after catalog about eastern colleges and scholarships. But we were so young. I was so poor. The distance between us was so great. Once school started, our letters tapered off and finally stopped.
What I learned on my summer vacation. I could have knocked my English teacher’s hat off with an honest essay. For this is what I learned on my summer vacation that year: that I had some power over boys because of my looks and my body. That if I was to get anywhere in my life—away from the dust and emptiness of our Kansas farm—I had to use that power, for there was little charity in the world, and no equality. And finally, most important, that I could trust men, to a certain extent, because of my power, but never females: females betrayed, smiled and lied and conned and betrayed worse than any man. I knew I never would have a female as a friend again in my life.
Sara rose and carried the manuscript box to the dining room table. Turning on the chandelier so that its light would blend with the sunlight to illuminate the pages clearly, she carefully went through the manuscript, page by page. Two hundred and five pages of Seraphina and Errol (Errol had turned out to be the hero, after all, and the author had left them in a passionate embrace waiting for the priest to arrive to marry them). Only about fifteen
pages of Jenny. Yet it was Jenny, not Seraphina, who sprang alive from the paper. Where had Jenny come from? Who had written about Jenny? Those pages had a ring of autobiographical truth about them—but so did any good novel written in the first person.
Sara gathered together the fifteen pages of Jenny material and studied them. She compared them to the Seraphina story—almost certainly the two stories had come from the same word processor. At least the typeface was the same, the margins, the weight and color of paper. It seemed that the same person had written them both and somehow gotten the two stories mixed up. Sara looked back at the title page. Could someone who called herself Aurora Dawn actually have written the Jenny material? God, Aurora Dawn.
Sara went to the kitchen phone and dialed Linda Oldham, the senior editor and president of Heartways House. Linda was an older woman, brisk and businesslike, who had been placed in charge of the publishing firm three years ago and had methodically and efficiently drawn up the plans that she thought would make the company a financial success. Basically, her motto was: Give the public what it wants. The public of Heartways House was women, women longing for romance, and Linda had set forth guidelines for romantic novels that would bear the heart-shaped HH insignia, and ruthlessly saw to it that her authors stuck to those guidelines. During the past two years that Sara had done editing for Heartways House, she had never before had occasion to discuss anything as maverick as these pages with her boss. Sara realized her heart was thumping as she began to speak: all her editorial instincts told her that the Jenny book could be good; she must handle it with care.
“Linda, I’ve got a question,” Sara said cautiously, when Linda’s brusque hello came over the phone.
“Shoot,” Linda replied.
“It’s about an author of yours. I’m editing one of her romances now. Desperate Dangerous Desire. Aurora Dawn.”
“Oh, yes, Aurora Dawn,” Linda said. “She’s one of our old-timers. Turns out one of those babies every six months. People gobble them up like candy.”
“Well—well, have you read anything else she’s written? I’m asking because there’s some other material mixed up in the romance manuscript I’m editing now. It looks like material for another book, a memoir perhaps, or a realistic novel. It’s really good stuff, and I’d like to see more of it.”
“Heartways wouldn’t be interested in a memoir, honey,” Linda said. “You know that. Don’t waste your time.”
“Oh, I know Heartways wouldn’t want it,” Sara pressed on. “But it’s so interesting—I’d like to read more of it. Perhaps encourage her to finish it, to take it to another house.”
Linda was silent a moment. “What’s it about, this other book?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sara began. “About a young girl growing up on a farm in Kansas—”
Linda’s laughter exploded over the phone. “Honey,” she said, “the last thing anyone in publishing is interested in is a farm in Kansas. Good God. You know what people want. They want Dynasty. They want castles and diamonds and yachts. Jesus, not a farm in Kansas. I suppose she writes about cows?”
“Well, yes,” Sara said.
Linda laughed again. Then, calming down, she said, “Now what was your question?”
Sara paused. “Well, I wondered if you could give me Aurora Dawn’s address or phone number. I’d like to get in touch with her. I’d like to read the rest of the farm book and encourage her to publish it—with another house, of course—if the rest is as good as this.”
“All right,” Linda said. “I’ll tell Maxine to give you the author’s phone number. She lives in Cambridge. But listen, tell her not to get so carried away with her cows that she forgets to write her romances. She’s a moneymaker for us, you know.” Linda laughed again, then said, “I’ll put you on hold a minute, then transfer you to Maxine. By the way, are you through editing Desperate Dangerous Desire? We’ve got it scheduled to come back from you this week.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll have it in the mail today,” Sara promised.
A moment later Maxine came on the line and gave Sara Aurora Dawn’s name, address, and phone number in Cambridge. The writer’s real name was Fanny Anderson. Fanny, Sara thought, it was not so far a change from Fanny to Jenny. Fanny was an old-fashioned name. Dialing the number, Sara wondered how old Fanny Anderson was, what she was like—if she was the original beautiful Jenny from Kansas or only her creator.
A woman with an Irish accent answered. “Mrs. Anderson is not at home,” she told Sara. “May I take a message?”
“Yes, please.” Sara was frustrated, so near to talking to the author of Jenny, and yet so far. “Tell her that Sara Kendall called, from Nantucket. Tell her that I’ve been editing her book and I want to talk with her about the Jenny pages. Tell her I used to work for Donald James. Tell her—oh, perhaps I should just call her back. When will she be in?”
“I’m not sure,” the woman said. “I’ll take your number and have her call you.” Her voice was cold.
Discouraged, Sara gave the woman her number and hung up.
She went back to the dining room table and stacked the manuscript neatly back in its box, keeping the Jenny pages out. She stretched and looked at her watch. Just after one o’clock—and here she was, still in her robe. What a luxurious way to work. But now was that wrenching time of day when she had to pull herself away from the enveloping fantasy of the books she edited into the messy reality of life. She wandered into the kitchen and turned on the oven.
Dutch apple pie, she thought, yum. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving and she had been assigned to take dessert to the party at Carole Clark’s house—where everyone in the group would be gathered, including Mary.
Well, she had this much to thank Mary for—The Virgin’s “innocent” question about her weight had spurred her into action and for two weeks now she had been dieting and exercising again. Already she looked different: better, slimmer, tighter. She could get back into some of her favorite clothes. And she’d found a new way to style her hair. She brushed the bangs forward and the sides back; it was a pretty look, less punk. She was pleased with her hair now, and with her temperature, with everything. Everything in the world seemed possible.
Sara turned the radio on to the classical music station and sliced apples and rolled pie crust dough to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. While the pies baked, filling the house with the fragrance of cinnamon and sugar and apples, she showered and dressed—the size-fourteen jeans were too loose for her now. Hoorah. She took the pies out of the oven and admired the perfectly fluted crusts, then, on the spur of the moment, picked up the phone and once again dialed Fanny Anderson’s number. It was just after three-thirty in the afternoon, a decent time to call.
Again, the Irishwoman’s cold hello. But this time, “Just a moment, please, I’ll get Mrs. Anderson for you.”
And then, softly, “Hello? This is Fanny Anderson.”
“Oh, Mrs. Anderson,” Sara said. “This is Sara Kendall, calling from Nantucket. I’m a freelance editor for Heartways House. I’ve been editing your Desperate Dangerous Desire. But I worked for several years as Donald James’s assistant at Walpole and James, so I’ve had quite a bit of experience in editing—all kinds of books. And I’m calling because I found some pages in your romance novel that didn’t fit. The pages were about a girl named Jenny …” Sara let her voice trail off. Before she plunged boldly into suggesting that Fanny Anderson work on a Jenny novel, she needed to hear more from that woman than just hello.
“Oh, yes,” Fanny Anderson said. Her voice was soft and lilting, with a slight drawl that Sara assumed had lasted from her Kansas days. “I was wondering where those pages were. I didn’t realize—” She didn’t finish her sentence.
“Well,” Sara said, “I called you because I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the Jenny pages. I thought they were wonderfully well written, and Jenny is fascinating. I’m so curious about what happens to her. And so I thought I’d call and see if perhaps you are working on this as a novel, and if s
o, how far you’ve gotten, and if you need an editor, and also, perhaps, well, it’s possible that Donald James might be interested in seeing the story. Although I haven’t of course talked with him about it yet.”
For a long moment there was silence. Then Fanny Anderson spoke, her voice softer than before. “I didn’t intend for anyone to read my Jenny pages yet,” she said. “Not just yet. This is all most confusing. I’m not sure just what to say. I really hadn’t meant for anyone to read that particular piece yet.”
“Oh,” Sara said, disappointed. The woman seemed so hesitant, so unsure. “Well, there were about fifteen pages mixed up with the romance novel,” she said. “And I couldn’t keep from reading them—as I said, they were wonderful.”
“You really liked them?” Fanny asked.
“Very much. Very much.”
“Well, my goodness,” Fanny said. “This is just so very—perplexing. I don’t know what to say. I think I need to have some time to think about all this. You see, I was really writing the Jenny pages just for myself, although of course I can’t say I didn’t have the thought of a novel about Jenny in my mind. But I really wasn’t ready for anyone to read it. Yet here it turns out you already have read some of it—and liked it—it seems just a little bit like fate, doesn’t it?” Fanny laughed, huskily, softly. “We writers are so superstitious, you know. We rely on fate so much it’s really foolish. But it does seem—I was trying to decide what to work on next. Whether to start another romance novel, or whether to really settle down with Jenny … and now here’s your phone call. And you say you worked with Donald James?”
“Yes.”
“Well. My. That’s quite impressive. Oh, dear, I don’t know what to do.”
After a moment Sara asked, “Well, do you have any more written about Jenny? That I perhaps could see?”
Silence. A long silence. Then, softly, “Yes. Yes, in fact I do have quite a lot more written.”
“I’d love to see it,” Sara pressed.