The Vixen

by Francine Prose

  I’d done it for Ethel. For my mother. For the jewfish. For the eighty-seven dead Albanians who finally had their revenge, however mild and bloodless.

  “If it comes to that,” Warren said, “which I hope it won’t, our firm has top-drawer lawyers to whom you will not have access. You, Mr. Putnam, will have a public defender. One week out of community college law school, this loser will be the only thing standing between you and serious jail time.”

  “What would be the charge?”

  “Theft. Treason. Child abuse. Breaking and entering. You name it. A Senate committee decides to investigate how a book so full of bullshit could possibly be published. Published by us!”

  He paused. He wanted me to know he was deciding my fate. He wanted me to know he’d decided.

  “If the worst doesn’t happen, you can thank my political connections. I’ll help you, but only so I won’t have to think about you rotting away in jail just because you’re stupid. I should let you get what you deserve, but it’s easier to save your retarded ass. Easier for me.”

  He kept repeating himself, losing track and starting over again. I wondered if he was entirely well. I felt sorrier for him than I should have. I’d meant to cause him trouble but not to do him physical harm. I hadn’t imagined that I could.

  “Now get the hell out of here.”

  I thanked Warren for hiring me, for how much I’d learned on the job. I said I meant it. I did.

  He said, “Fuck you, Simon whatever-your-name-is.”

  Even after everything, I was hurt that he would say that. That was probably why I said, “You wrote The Vixen. You and Elaine and Uncle Maddie.”

  “Now I’m insulted,” he said. “Now I’m cut to the quick. For you to suggest that I and your uncle and Elaine could squeeze out that piece of shit. I have no idea who wrote it if it wasn’t your insane girlfriend Anya. Or whoever wrote it for her. She wouldn’t be the first pretty girl to make up a crazy story and sell it to a guy who thought her photo was hot. A guy who admired her tits. In this case me. And you. She played us. We were your girlfriend’s marks.”

  Warren didn’t blink, not once. He was a practiced liar. How could I have wanted to be like him? He was right: I was stupid.

  I said, “I don’t think that’s fair to Anya. I don’t believe that’s what happened. And she’s not—she never was—my girlfriend.”

  “That’s not what I heard.” Warren’s tone was insinuating. “Fair to Anya? You’re hopeless. We should never have hired an embryo like you to do an adult’s job. I assume that you wrote this . . . malodorous commie excrement that we sent to the printer. That you sent to the printer. And that has now appeared between hard covers. Of course it will have to be pulped. We’ll have to ask for your advance copies back. You’ll be lucky if the government doesn’t go after you. Plenty of guys in Washington will be mightily pissed.”

  “What happened to Anya?” I asked.

  “How would I know? She’d not my girlfriend. Last I heard, she’d gone to Corfu.”

  I said, “What if I go public about what The Vixen was intended to do and who was paying for it?”

  “Oh, is that a threat? That’s rich! That’s precious! I’m trembling. What will happen? No one will believe you. They’ll think you’re the crazy commie you are. A commie spy like your friends the Rosenbergs. And now you have to the count of five to get out of my office. One . . . two . . .”

  “Don’t bother counting,” I said. “I’m gone. I guess Florence Durgin will need a new editor.”

  “Nice of you to think of her, but Florence is fucked forever. For which she can thank you.” I could hear Warren shout through the door as I closed it behind me.

  There were earlier versions of the manuscript of The Vixen, one of which Warren possessed. He could still have arranged to publish that. But by then, the heart, the energy, and the fire had gone out of the project. No one wanted to touch it. None of The Vixen’s three authors wanted to go public. No one else would think that their work—their joke—was righteous or useful or funny.

  Chapter 16

  That was my last day at Landry, Landry and Bartlett. Nothing was said about unemployment compensation or severance pay. No goodbye party, no after-work drinks, none of the tearful celebrations that mark a worker’s retirement, a cop’s final day on the force.

  I left without saying goodbye to Elaine. Our avoiding each other, not saying goodbye, communicated more than anything we could have said. It was like a conversation. After all the talks we’d had in my thoughts, why bother in real life? Neither of us really wanted to hear what the other had to say.

  I bought a bottle of French champagne, way more expensive than I could afford. I took it to Julia’s little house, along with the hundred-dollar copyediting fee. We drank the entire bottle. I was loose but not too tipsy to hold baby Evan. Maybe just tipsy enough. I let him play with my sunglasses. He hummed. Julia wiped the baby spit off my glasses after she took them away from him. That made him cry, but I was getting used to it. His tears no longer scared me.

  By the end of that day, I felt strong and proud, almost good enough for Julia. Sabotaging The Vixen had been a modest gesture of conscience. In the scheme of things, not much. It wasn’t as if we’d conspired to overthrow a dictator. Though it hadn’t been entirely risk-free. Our protest could have gone wrong. I felt we’d averted disaster, steered the Titanic past the iceberg.

  I wasn’t the person whom Ethel had charged with keeping her name unsullied by lies, but I’d done my best. Maybe I hadn’t reacted quickly or decisively enough, but I’d come through. My parents would be proud if they heard what I’d done. But I hoped they never would. My mother would know I’d done it partly for her, but I’d rather she didn’t know. She would hate the fact that her brother-in-law wrote something like that about Ethel. She’d never much liked Uncle Maddie, but still.

  Every trial of the spirit I put myself through, every sentence I wrote and rewrote, seemed, in retrospect, necessary. I should have said no when I first read The Vixen. But I wouldn’t have found my vocation. I wouldn’t have found Julia.

  * * *

  There were rumors and counter-rumors, rumors contradicting earlier rumors, but eventually I found out what happened at the firm after I was let go.

  It came as a surprise to many people that Landry, Landry and Bartlett had a board of directors, and that this mysterious board had the power to fire Warren. Word about the “problem” with The Vixen had filtered down from the anonymous reader “in government.” The mysterious head of the mysterious board called Warren into his office and told him how disappointed they were. The board remembered the day, not long ago, when Warren signed off on every word he published, when he was on top of his game. The simplest oversight would have saved the firm the cost of the thousand copies of leftist propaganda that now had to be pulped.

  Robertson Crowley was on the board of directors, as was Preston Bartlett, ex officio. Neither of them attended the meeting at which Warren was officially censured.

  I was ordered to return the advance copies of The Vixen to avoid some harsh but unspecified penalty. But I was able to save two bound copies that I have, on my desk, as I write this.

  * * *

  For a long time afterward I waited for the two Feds in suits to show up at my door and flash their badges. In my daydreams I faced a committee of senators convened to ruin my life.

  But that didn’t happen. Maybe no one noticed. Maybe no one cared if The Vixen was published. Maybe everyone had moved on.

  Six months after I left the firm, Landry, Landry and Bartlett closed. The office was shuttered, publication ceased, the employees dispersed. I wondered what happened to Elaine, but I never saw her again. When I reentered that world from the other side, as a writer, I kept expecting to run into her, but I never did. Something always kept me from questioning people she might have known, asking if they knew where she was.

  Nothing was said about the writers under contract to Warren, and no one mentioned poor Flo
rence Durgin and her son. From time to time, I’d look in bookshops for her second volume of poems. But it seems never to have appeared, which is something I deeply regret.

  There were formal dinners, panels, and programs celebrating the firm’s achievements. Of course I wasn’t invited, nor could I bring myself to attend the forum, open to the public and chaired by Warren: Landry, Landry and Bartlett: The Glory Years.

  After a decent interval, Warren Landry was tapped to head a small conservative family foundation based in Georgetown.

  * * *

  Julia and I got married. I adopted Evan, whose father got tenure at the University of Cincinnati and was fine with the adoption. We agreed that Evan’s father would get him at Christmas and for a month every summer.

  Julia’s parents had misgivings about her marrying a Jew, even one named Putnam. My parents said that marrying a woman with a child would never work out. They were wrong, all wrong, and when our happiness proved too obvious to ignore, our families were reconciled. My parents adored Julia. Her parents tolerated me. The in-laws chipped in to help us buy a house in Nyack.

  The house was tiny, but we loved it. It had a large backyard. When every last leaf fell from the trees in winter, we could see the bright consoling ribbon of the Hudson.

  * * *

  The only problem was that, once again, I was out of work and didn’t know what to do next, though this limbo seemed less frightening than the purgatory of my parents’ apartment. Apparently Uncle Maddie had told the publishing world that I had personally torpedoed a project so costly and important that it was largely responsible for the failure of Landry, Landry and Bartlett. His refusal to explain what that project was made the gossip even juicier and more damning.

  I believed that I had been contaminated, early on, by my association with Robertson Crowley, whose secret life turned out to have been an open secret. He was the last person who should have written my recommendation for the liberal admissions committee at the University of Chicago. True or not, I believed that academia was forever beyond my reach. Or maybe I didn’t want that life, and I blamed its inaccessibility on forces outside myself.

  I never spoke to Uncle Maddie again, and he never attempted to get in touch. I avoided the boisterous family gatherings I thought he might attend. My parents told me that he stopped attending them too. I wanted to think that he was afraid of running into me. When I resumed going to the weddings and parties, I enjoyed them less than before. I felt that I’d been tarnished by my contact with people like Warren and Uncle Maddie, that just knowing them had walled me off from the people I’d known in childhood, from a way of life I truly valued only when I’d lost it. It was as if that part of my family was a language I’d forgotten how to speak.

  I’d wanted to separate myself from them. Be careful what you wish for.

  When my uncle was gone from my life, I discovered I didn’t miss him, so maybe I’d only loved the person I imagined he was, and, more shamingly, the ways in which I imagined he could help me.

  I told my parents that Uncle Maddie was partly why I’d been fired, which in some sense was true. But when they asked for details, I claimed to have signed an agreement not to tell. When they persisted, I said that Maddie had given one of Warren’s big books a career-ending review, and Warren took it out on me. I’m not sure they believed me, but they let the matter drop.

  I think my mother was relieved to not even have to consider begging my uncle to arrange a second chance for me at another publisher. I never knew how my father felt about the possibility that his brother was responsible for my misfortune. It wasn’t a question I could ask. I think Dad was secretly glad to have more evidence against a successful sibling who, my father believed but never said, was a defective human being whose moral compass had been broken by too many pretty girls and too much rich food.

  I’m a forgiving person who doesn’t hold grudges, a quality that’s been helpful in our long and happy marriage. But I never forgave Uncle Maddie, who, near the end of his life, wrote a book about all the dear friends to whom he’d stopped speaking because they were crypto-Communists.

  I read about his death in the papers. After some uncertainty, I decided to skip his memorial service in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A reporter who attended noted that most of the brightest stars in Madison Putnam’s literary firmament had long ago ceased to shine. The paper named my cousin Frank as Madison Putnam’s sole survivor.

  * * *

  There was a shortage of teachers in the Nyack public school system. Julia aced the test and was hired. She loved teaching third grade, which endeared her to my mother, who returned to her own classroom for a few years before she retired.

  Julia and my parents approved of my staying home to take care of Evan and, three years later, of baby Aurelia. I knew it was temporary. I enjoyed it. The phrase stay-at-home-dad hadn’t been invented. There was no need for it. This was the 1950s. The playground mothers saw me as the human equivalent of a feral cat that had to be closely watched.

  When I looked back, it seemed strange that I’d begun to panic about my future within days of my college graduation. Because now, weeks and months were passing, and that was fine with me. I read. I took care of the children, the house. Sooner or later I would go back to work. I hoped I’d find work I enjoyed.

  As I hung out the laundry and cooked dinner and walked the kids to school, I sometimes thought about The Vixen. Out of all my time working for Warren, I kept focusing on one moment. I can’t pretend that I forgot about Anya and the dark ride. But more often I returned to that afternoon when Warren first gave me the manuscript of The Vixen, the Patriot, and the Fanatic.

  How I’d hoped the blood-colored folder contained something other than what it did. I’d so wanted to find a novel about the Vikings, reasonably well written, a book that could make the reader care about men and women, heroes and villains, who led such romantic lives and who had been dead for so long, if they’d ever existed. I imagined a Viking novel populated with complicated characters whom we would feel we knew, though they lived at a different time and according to different rules. There would be violence and bloodshed, but not as much as in the sagas.

  The Vixen was not that book. There was no book like the one I imagined, and so, in the break I was taking from work, taking care of our children while Julia taught, I decided to write the book I had in mind, or try.

  Baby Aurelia was two when I began.

  I used everything I learned in college, everything I’d figured out from revising The Vixen. I worked when Evan was asleep, then when he went off to school; when Aurelia was asleep, then when she was in day care. When I mentioned the novel to Julia, I made it sound like something I was thinking about so she wouldn’t be disappointed when I stopped after a few chapters.

  I wrote slowly. I made charts and timelines of the lives of characters who vanished from the narrative and later reappeared. I needed to know how old they were, how they were related by blood and marriage, how greedy or generous, how hard-hearted or romantic, how each one responded to the murders and battles and feuds.

  I hid the notebooks when Julia came home. I didn’t want to disappoint her. I waited until the manuscript was finished before I gave it to her to read.

  She read it in two nights. By then I knew her well enough to know that she was telling the truth when she said she loved it.

  Through a publishing friend of Julia’s, I sent out the book under an androgynous pseudonym: E. S. Rose. It found a champion, an editor who was comfortable with my desire to write under an assumed name. At first I was still hiding from Uncle Maddie and Warren, from whatever damage I imagined they could do to a book with my name on the cover. And maybe the pretending—pretending not to have written a book instead of pretending to have written one—made me think I might still understand Anya.

  In fact I liked writing as E. S. Rose more than I would have liked it as Simon Putnam. It made it easier—made it possible—to not be myself, to let the story pour through me. Those
moments of grace, of transcendence, were more satisfying than whatever celebrity Simon Putnam might have enjoyed.

  The book found its readers, more than I’d dared to hope. E. S. Rose wrote five sequels, and, though there were many difficult moments, days of near despair, the truth was that I liked writing each book better than the last.

  As I wrote, I thought of Crowley’s stories, forever tainted for me by what he’d done. But they were still good stories, and I borrowed from them when I could. At first there was lots of revenge in my books. But over time I was less drawn to plots about murder and vengeance than to tales of rescue and reconciliation, of divine and human peacemakers, of spirits who swooped in to save my characters from the lion’s cave, the sinking ship, the burning house. The Albanian sworn virgins reappeared as Valkyries in The Shipwreck, book number four. My readers were happy to think about something gathering them up in its powerful wings, plucking them out of the battle and taking them to an eternal feast in the Hall of the Gods.

  Chapter 17

  Eventually, my mother’s headaches returned, a symptom of the disease that killed her. It turned out that the Harvard-grad Roosevelt-biography-reading surgeon had misdiagnosed her condition. It turned out that my mother’s brain was not, after all, a piece of cake. This was before patients sued their overconfident doctors, but not before the doctors’ secretaries sent flowers to the patient’s hospital room, just in case there was any ill will.

  When we believed that my mother could no longer see or move, when it was too late for heartfelt prayer or magical thinking, when we could do nothing but endure it, my mother slipped off her ring, the one that said 1931, and with trembling fingers handed it to me.

  It was like a fairy tale: I tried the ring on all ten fingers. It didn’t fit over my knuckles. I was sad that it wasn’t for me. I gave the ring to Julia, who slipped it onto the index finger of her right hand. My mother saw it and nodded.

  “Take care of your father,” she said.