My Salinger Year

by Joanna Rakoff

  Tonight’s gathering was another loft party: the financial district, the launch of a magazine. And I didn’t realize how much I’d dreaded going—changing my clothes, restoring my energy, getting back on the train—until I told him I couldn’t. “I have a manuscript I need to read tonight,” I said, and put on water for pasta, pleased by the urgency of my work and the prospect of a night at home alone in my pajamas. “By tomorrow.”

  “I’ll stay home, too,” said Don, shrugging. “I need to work.” He had reached the stage where he appeared to be simply moving commas. “Sentences should be worked,” he sometimes said. I agreed, but I also thought, privately, that they could be overworked and perhaps—based on the one story of his I’d read—he was exhausting the microstructure of his poor novel. That it might be time to give the thing some air.

  “Oh, no! You should go.” I peeled off my sweater and grabbed my old pajamas, maroon sateen things from the 1960s purchased in high school at Unique, the giant clothing repository on Broadway in which my friends and I had bought combat boots and army pants, worn Levi’s and rusty black dresses, the accoutrements of alternative girlhood. It had long since closed.

  He shrugged again. “Can you make pasta for me, too?”

  Propped up in bed—or what passed for a bed in our apartment, a futon without a frame—with a bowl of spaghetti, I took the rubber band off the manuscript and stretched my legs. Don lay down beside me and plucked the title page from my lap. “Judy Blume?” He wasn’t quite smirking. “Is she an Agency client?” I nodded.

  “She’s a good storyteller,” he said. “She gets kids. I loved Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. When I was eleven.”

  “You did?” I was less shocked that Don had read anything so pedestrian than I was surprised that he would admit it.

  “Of course I did. I was a kid once, too. Hard as that is to believe. Now that I’m a million years old.” He smiled. “But seriously, I loved that book. I was just like the hero, Tony. My parents were working-class, but then we moved to a more middle-class neighborhood and I didn’t fit in. It’s ultimately a book about class.”

  I nodded as he went on with his Marxist interpretation of Judy Blume’s oeuvre, but my eyes turned back to the pages at hand, the pages I’d begun reading on the subway home. For the past five years, if not more so, I’d purely consumed literature—with a capital L, as my mother liked to say—of the sort defined by my professors and the sophisticated friends I acquired in college, the ones who’d graduated from private schools that offered semester-long classes focused exclusively on The Waste Land or the works of Beckett. And Don, of course. He was eternally amused by the gaps in my education, by the little I’d read of philosophy and political theory and works in translation. “You’re so bourgeois!” he often cried, when he found me rereading Persuasion or The Age of Innocence or Cranford. “You just want to read these books about rich people getting married and having affairs. There’s a whole other world out there, Buba.”

  He was right, but I wished that he weren’t. I wished that I’d grown up not in the cultureless suburbs but in New York, as my parents had. I wished that in seventh grade I’d chosen French rather than Spanish. I wished I’d read more and widely. It pained me to think of all those years when I simply devoured whatever fell into my hands, whatever struck my fancy at the local library or on my parents’ bookshelf: best sellers from the 1930s and 1940s, the names on the spines long forgotten; the comedic writers beloved by my father; and all those Agatha Christie and Stephen King novels, all that pulp. There had been good stuff, too, much of it by accident rather than design: Flannery O’Connor, Shakespeare, whose collected works I’d read in both Lamb précis and true form, the Brontës, Chekhov, and contemporary writers pulled from the “New Releases” shelf at the library, purely because I liked the titles or the covers. But when I thought about all the hours I’d spent lying on my bed or my parents’ couch or our lawn or in the backs of cars on family vacations, all those hours that could have allowed me the collected works of Dickens, into which I’d barely delved, or Trollope, or Dostoyevsky. Or Proust. The list went on and on, all that I hadn’t read, all that I didn’t know.

  My life appeared to be a project in catching up. Thus, it had been a long time since I’d read what Max referred to as “commercial fiction.” I took the title page off the manuscript with something close to anxiety. What if I had outgrown Judy Blume?

  But no one, I suppose, outgrows Judy Blume. When I was a kid, her books had seemed to speak directly to my own experience, to the confusion and loneliness of an outsider. So why was I surprised to find her new heroine, Vix, ensconced in an office in midtown Manhattan, eating lunch at her desk? Not just lunch, but take-out salad from the deli around the corner?

  By the final pages, when Vix says that her only regret is that her oldest friend, Caitlin, couldn’t confide in her, couldn’t explain the choices she’d made, I was quietly crying. It was past midnight and Don had fallen asleep, but he awoke, startled. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Buba, what happened?”

  But I couldn’t explain. “It’s not a kids’ book,” I said, instead, through tears. He looked at me, bewildered. “My boss said she didn’t get it. And I thought it was because she didn’t understand kids’ books or kids. But it’s not a kids’ book. It’s a novel for grown-ups.”

  “Okay,” said Don. “I think you might need to go to sleep.” He yawned widely. “You can tell her in the morning.”

  I nodded. But the minute I put the manuscript down and closed my eyes, my thoughts began racing again. Why couldn’t Caitlin confide in Vix? Because she knew Vix would judge her. Because she knew Vix would refuse to understand. Because it was easier simply to pretend everything was all right.

  The next morning, I rose earlier than usual and dressed carefully in a sober brown knit shift with a matching jacket, purchased for me by my mother. The more closely I resembled a 1965 coed, the more seriously—and calmly—my boss regarded me, and I wanted her to take me seriously that morning when we discussed the Judy Blume novel.

  I smoothed on foundation, dusted my nose with powder, and swiped my lips with lipstick, a futile gesture since it would be gone by the time I got to the office. Then I tucked the manuscript back in my bag and left, the flimsy door creaking shut behind me with an ineffectual little click.

  Don had left hours earlier for his new job, watering plants in office buildings in the financial district—Marc had somehow arranged this for him, through a client—which paid ridiculously well considering how easy it was, but required leaving the house at four thirty in the morning so the plants would be watered by the time the employees of Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley arrived at their offices.

  On Bedford Avenue, other people like me—young men and women in retro office wear, heading to jobs at film production companies and graphic design firms and recording studios—were sleepily converging on the sidewalk, blinking beneath their Navy safety glasses and round schoolboy frames, messenger bags slung across their chests. It was still cool out, oddly cold for May, and I shivered a little in my thin jacket, my legs breaking out in goose bumps, then ducked into the Polish bakery—my favorite of the three on this one block alone—for coffee and a Danish. It was only when I reached into my bag to pay that I remembered the letter from my college boyfriend, now crushed under the manuscript. A rush of longing hit me so hard that the room, ever so slightly, began to spin.

  I’ll read it on the subway, I thought, grabbing my coffee and taking a sticky bite of pastry. But both trains were so crowded I had to stand, clutching a pole, my coffee sloshing dangerously. I’ll read it when I get to the office, I thought.

  But I had underestimated the Judy situation: again, I found my boss waiting for me, this time pacing in front of my desk, cigarette in hand.

  “Well, what did you think?” she asked, by way of a greeting.

  “I liked it.” I pulled the manuscript out of my bag, tapping it on the desk to straighten the pages. Surreptitiously, I ran my tongue arou
nd my mouth, wondering if black prune residue from my Danish was lodged in the crevices between my teeth.

  “Really?” she asked. “But what did you make of it? It’s not a kids’ book, is it?”

  “It’s not a kids’ book,” I confirmed. “It’s a novel for grown-ups. About kids. Or, teenagers. In part.” I hadn’t thought I’d be nervous, but I was, clearly.

  My boss tapped her finger on my desk impatiently. “My concern is: Am I going to be able to sell this? Will adults really read a book about kids?”

  The book’s not about kids, I started to protest, but something in her tone of voice—impatience, resentment, exhaustion—stopped me. She didn’t want my opinion, I realized, with a sudden jolt. Maybe she’d told herself that she did, that my thoughts, as part of Judy Blume’s devoted audience, could be valuable. Or maybe Max or Lucy had told her I was a good reader, a helpful reader. Both had taken on clients based on my initial reads. But my boss was different. She didn’t want input from a twenty-four-year-old. She wanted me to agree with her. That was my job.

  “Lots of great novels have child protagonists,” I began instead, knowing this was absolutely the wrong tack. “Oliver Twist—”

  “This isn’t Oliver Twist,” she informed me, with a mirthless laugh. “But you would read it?”

  I nodded. I was certain that I was not alone. “Many people would read this book. Would buy this book. Everyone who loved her as a kid.”

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly, not—I realized later—because she didn’t understand the scope of Judy’s fame, the way her books had reshaped the narrative of childhood, but because my boss’s relationship to literature, to books, to stories, to writers themselves, was entirely different from mine. She’d never loved books in the way I’d loved Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and Deenie. Or the way Don—I felt a strange pang of affection for him—had loved Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. She’d never spent entire days lying on her bed reading, entire nights making up complicated stories in her head. She’d not dreamed of willing herself into Anne of Green Gables and Jane Eyre so that she might have real friends, friends who understood her thorny desires and dreams. How could she spend her days—her life—ushering books into publication but not love them in the way that I did, the way that they needed to be loved?

  I glanced into her cool, intelligent eyes. Was I wrong? Was this all wrong? Had she once been just like me? And time—and publishing—had changed her?

  “I just don’t know if I can sell it,” she told me. And there, I suppose, was my answer. She was a businessperson.

  “There’s a built-in audience,” I said, with more passion than I’d anticipated. “All those kids who read her when they were little.” I paused for a moment, unsure if I should go on. “But also, I just think women will relate to these characters. It’s kind of a universal story. About female friendship.” This sounded like some of the bad jacket material that crossed my desk, but it was also true.

  My boss looked at me and smiled. “Hmm,” she said. “Could be.”

  Was she really, really going to tell Judy Blume that she couldn’t sell this novel? This eminently readable, enjoyable novel that surely many, many people would buy? As a parade of clients walked out her door, never to return?

  “Well,” she said, lighting another cigarette. “You’ve had your fun”—Fun? I thought as she ambled back into her office—“but now it’s time to get to work. I’ve got a lot of dictation for you.” She handed me a few tapes and some correspondence to which I would refer. “Let’s take care of that this morning.”

  I’d barely popped the first tape in, a fresh cup of the office’s dark, bitter coffee on my desk, when the phone rang. It was just after nine o’clock. No one called this early. “Hello?” came a nervous, nasal voice. “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello,” I said smoothly. I had come to love answering the phone. The strange control of it, the anonymity. On the phone, I could be anyone. I could be Suzanne, subject of a Leonard Cohen song. On the phone, I had all the answers. Though the answers were frequently all too simple: No. Definitely not. I’m sorry, no.

  “Is this ——?” The voice asked for my boss. This was, I suspected, a Salinger call. A crazy one.

  “No, I’m her assistant. Can I help you?” There was a long pause, and I waited for an eruption. Sometimes these callers became enraged when they realized they’d been put through to an assistant, insisting their business was too important for a mere underling, that I couldn’t possibly understand the complicated nature of their request.

  “Well, I’m calling because—” The man broke off, clearing his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and less hesitant. “This is Roger Lathbury. From Orchises Press. I’m calling about J. D. Salinger. I—” It was clear that my boss’s letter—with its emphasis on secrecy—had terrified him. He had no idea how much I knew and was afraid of destroying this deal before it had even gotten off the ground. He was also just afraid. Afraid in the way most people become when they get what they’ve long wanted.

  “Mr. Lathbury,” I cried, interrupting him. “My boss has been looking forward to hearing from you. Let me see if she’s in her office.” She was, of course, in her office, but I had been instructed to say this to all callers before putting them through to her. I was always to check and make sure she wanted to talk or at least to warn her as to who was on the line. There was no intercom system, though, between my desk and hers—or there seemed to be, but I couldn’t figure it out—so I simply rapped softly on her half-closed door.

  “Ye-es,” she called irritably without turning toward me.

  “Um, Roger Lathbury is on the phone.”

  Jumping in her seat, she turned around, her face a mask of anger. “Well, for God’s sake, put him through. And close the door.” A wash of tears sprang into my eyes and I turned away quickly, running the few steps to my desk and pushing the appropriate buttons without a word.

  An hour later, as I finished the last of my typing, a tanned, skinny woman in narrow-legged jeans and a close-fitting white T-shirt walked hesitantly through the finance wing, toward my desk. As she crossed the threshold into my domain, something caught her eye and she retreated back into the corner, crouching down in front of the obscure bookcase where I’d found Judy Blume’s books. Oh no, I thought, as a frown arranged itself on the woman’s face. No. No, that can’t be her. She didn’t look at all the way I’d pictured Judy Blume. How had I pictured her? More plump and smiley? I wasn’t sure. Regardless, this had to be her. An overwhelming impulse to protect my boss, the Agency, overtook me, and I considered running out from behind my desk to greet her, explaining that we’d just renovated—true!—and the books were all out of order; we were in the process of reshelving them.

  Before I could move, my boss cried, “Judy!” and raced out of her office. Pam must have warned her. Still frowning, Judy rose and allowed herself to be led away from the narrow bookcase. “It’s lovely to see you!” Judy did little more than nod and followed my boss into her office.

  A few minutes later, they left for lunch in grim silence—Judy glancing darkly back at the obscure bookcase—without even slowing as they passed me. I gathered my typing and placed it on the corner of my boss’s desk for signature, put on my coat, and grabbed my bag. On the corner of Forty-Ninth Street, I decided to splurge, as I occasionally did, on a tray of gyoza at the Japanese restaurant on the ground floor of our building. The restaurant was always packed with suit-clad Japanese businessmen, and I tended to be both the only woman and the only Caucasian, which lent me a lovely anonymity. I was so out of place that I disappeared. Perched on a high stool at the bar, I ordered my gyoza—the cheapest thing on the menu and the only one I could afford—when I again remembered the letter. There it was, at the bottom of my bag, jostling with the Arts section of the newspaper and the previous week’s New Yorker, which I’d intended to read at lunch. I pulled the letter out and, before I could think better of it, slit the envelope with my thumb. Inside lay two sheets o
f the thin, airmail-like paper my college boyfriend favored, both sides covered in his neat print. I read the salutation, “Dear Jo,” and, without intending to, let out a great, gulping sob, for no one in my current life called me Jo. Just my family and my old friends. And my college boyfriend. I missed him so. Missed all of him, in every way. “Dear Jo.” Oh God, I thought, what have I done? A moment later, my gyoza arrived, lightly charred, their green skins glistening with oil. I slipped the letter back into its envelope, and though I knew the dumplings were too hot, I pulled one off the neat row, biting into it. Hot oil and broth spurted everywhere and my eyes watered all over again. For days afterward, the roof of my mouth prickled with pain, but for a moment I relished the burning.

  The next morning, the phone rang in my boss’s office just after she arrived. “Judy, hello!” I heard her cry, with manic cheer. Her door closed. When it opened again, she was standing in the frame, blinking forlornly. “Hugh?” she called. He came running out of his office and looked at her expectantly. “Well, that’s over,” she said.

  “Judy?” he asked. She nodded. “She’s leaving?” It was more a statement than a question.

  “Yep,” said my boss, with a raise of her pale brows. “She’s leaving.”

  “I won’t ask for whom,” said Hugh.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said my boss.

  I wondered what my boss had said to Judy about her new novel. But I kept my head down, my eyes focused on the contract in front of me, for my thoughts were utterly disloyal: if I were Judy, I would have left, too.