by Melissa Bank
Francine opened her mouth, and I thought she was going to take over but Honey went on.
Honey was a good saleswoman; she’d prepared an eloquent speech but made it sound like she was just talking to us. I noticed that while she compared I. Tittlebaum to the classic writers everyone admired, she compared We to books that had sold millions of copies.
She’d taken the liberty of calling I. Tittlebaum over the weekend to make sure that he hadn’t sold the book to another publisher—he hadn’t—and she went on to say what a wonderful man he was, and also that he was happy to change the book’s title.
I was so captivated by her speech—everyone was—that at first I didn’t notice the change in Francine’s smile. It had been twitchy with excitement, but now it was frozen solid, and I understood why: Honey had made We her acquisition.
Honey apologized for the length of the novel; she said that she’d edit it down by a third.
This was the only shift I saw in Francine’s expression; her eyes came to life for a second.
When Honey finished, she turned to Francine and said, “Is there anything you want to add?”
I admired the way Francine recovered. She tried to make her smile warm and said, “I hope you will all read this extraordinary novel.”
I’d never spoken in an editorial meeting before, and it felt hard to now, especially without having brushed my teeth. But I wanted to do something to make We Francine’s again.
I heard myself say, “Um,” and saw heads at the table turn toward me.
Honey’s look almost stopped me; it didn’t show anything more than surprise, but it made me realize that she hadn’t sanctioned my speaking in the meeting, which made whatever I said subversive.
Everyone was looking at me, waiting.
I thought of saying that Francine had read a thousand manuscripts to find this one, and that she’d read them with care and respect and all the way through. But I wasn’t sure this was the speech I should give, and it was more than my mouth was capable of, anyway. “Francine asked me to read We over the weekend,” I said. “And I loved it.”
I could tell how slowly I’d said these words by how fast Honey cut me off: “Good,” she said.
Then Francine passed out the manuscripts.
Back in the Cave, Bettina dropped hers on her desk and said, “Shit,” at its heft.
Sue said, “Congratulations,” to Francine, who said, “Thank you very much.”
I went over to Francine and said, “I am so sorry.”
Francine closed her eyes, and she kept them closed, and I knew suddenly that “I’m sorry” was the worst thing I could’ve said; she was trying to pretend that nothing bad had happened.
As fast as I could, I said, “I’m sorry you had to copy all those manuscripts instead of me.”
She waited another minute to open her eyes and another to speak. “That’s okay,” she said. “I got the mail room to do it.”
I wanted to ask if she’d seen Honey drop the manuscript off before the meeting, and if Honey had seemed mad that I hadn’t been there. But it seemed wrong to worry about myself after what had happened to Francine, and I thought I’d find out soon, anyway.
I didn’t, though. I didn’t find out until Wednesday morning when I came in, and there was a message from Honey taped to the base of my tensor lamp.
The note said to call her, and I did.
She said, “Can you meet me in Wolfe’s office?”
I said, “Sure.”
. . . . .
Wolfe was sitting at his desk, and Honey stood at the window, too agitated to sit.
“Come on in,” Wolfe said to me. “Have a seat.”
I took the chair I’d sat in during my lunch with Wolfe.
He called Irene and asked her to hold his calls.
When Honey sat down next to me, I wanted to stand up and go to the sofa. But I stayed where I was.
She faced me, her hands clasped like Act One of the hand play This Is the Church.
As it turned out, Honey had gone to the Cave for the last three mornings and found my tensor lamp on, though I hadn’t yet arrived. “It’s the deception I mind,” she said, and her voice was so angry that it trembled a little; for the first time it occurred to me that some of what she felt for me might belong to Jack.
I said, “I never asked anyone to turn my lamp on.”
I worried that Francine would get in trouble because of me, but Honey moved on. Apparently it was not only the deception she minded. She went on about my lateness and the warning she’d given me and my promise to come in earlier.
She was building her case.
I looked at Wolfe: Save me.
But he was looking at Honey. In his face I saw that this meeting was distasteful to him.
He got up and went to the stereo. He spent a minute looking through his records, and I saw Honey roll her eyes. I realized that she didn’t like Wolfe.
I wondered if he liked her. I hoped he didn’t, but I knew it didn’t matter. He was fair, like my father; even if Wolfe liked me more than he liked Honey, he would be on the side of the argument that was right, no matter whose it was. This was the way you were supposed to be at work, and it probably deepened my respect for him, though I couldn’t feel that yet. What I felt was that he was not going to protect or defend me.
He put on Kind of Blue. I took this as a message from him to me, though I wasn’t sure what it meant.
When he sat down again, he nodded at me.
“I am late almost every day,” I said. “But I stay late to make up for it.”
Wolfe’s expression relaxed a little.
“I come in every weekend,” I said.
No one spoke or moved for a minute.
Then Honey plopped down on the sofa as an adolescent might. This seemed to strengthen my case.
“Okay,” Wolfe said to me, my signal to go. “Thanks.”
I felt I’d won for the moment, if only in the impartial court of Judge Wolfe. For the first time in my life, I’d done my homework, and it made me feel strong and hardworking and virtuous, as I never had before; I felt impervious.
This lasted about thirty seconds, until I got back to the Cave and realized what I’d done. Even if I’d won with Wolfe, I’d lost and lost big with Honey. I’d made my own boss look bad in front of hers, and it occurred to me that I was now in roughly double the trouble of lateness and deception, and I didn’t know what punishment might come next.
Still, I didn’t feel scared. I felt calm. I felt like I was beginning to understand something.
Across from me, Francine was reading a manuscript. She was more virtuous than I would ever be, she had done more homework than I would ever do, and here she was, buried in slush.
Adam, the embodiment of discretion, called me on the phone.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I told him that I was alive and unfired.
. . . . .
I. Tittlebaum drove in from New Jersey later that week.
Honey called and asked me to come down to her office to meet him. “Bring Clarisse,” she said.
I said, “Francine.”
Francine looked up at me.
I. Tittlebaum was taller than his name seemed to suggest, and much younger than the character in his novel. He couldn’t possibly have teenaged children, and if his wife had left him, she’d come back or he’d found somebody else; he wore a wedding band.
Wolfe nodded at Francine and me, but he let Honey make the introductions. She said, “Irv, I want you to meet the assistant who found your book in the slush pile: Francine Lawlor.”
For some reason, he reached out to shake my hand.
“No,” I said, and my voice was louder than it should’ve been, because his thinking I was Francine, or wanting me to be, added insult to the injury of her not getting her due.
Honey’s expression didn’t change, though I was pretty sure she thought my faux pas had ruined her faux tribute.
“This is Francine,” I said, thoug
h she was already shaking hands with the author.
She said, “It’s a wonderful book, Mr. Tittlebaum.”
He said, “Thank you,” and in it you could hear that he was thanking her for everything, thanking her for more than Honey would’ve liked.
He stood there gazing at Francine until Honey nabbed the attention back. “And this is my assistant, Sophie Applebaum,” she said, pronouncing my name like it was an important one for him to know.
I said, “Hi.”
Wolfe said, “Francine, will you join us for lunch?”
“Thank you,” she said, “but I have work to do.”
. . . . .
Francine and I walked down the hall back to the Cave without talking. She stopped at her desk, but I knew that if I were in her place, I would need to cry—I felt like crying in my own place—so I said, “Come on,” and led her out the back door and past the restrooms. Her eyes widened a little when I opened the door to the smoking balcony.
“I’m surprised it isn’t locked,” she said.
I said, “I know.”
The sky was cloudy, with a pale sun. It was almost spring. I’d never seen Francine in natural light, and in the sun I saw now that her hair was more white than blond.
We were both looking out at the buildings, though there wasn’t really anything to see. I was trying to think of something reassuring to say to her; I was trying to think of what I’d want someone to say to me.
But when I looked over, her face wasn’t sad. If anything, she looked serene. Maybe she was remembering the grateful look I. Tittlebaum had given her. She might have just felt glad that she’d done her job well and found a good book for Steinhardt to publish. Or maybe she knew that in a few weeks Wolfe would promote her.
Whatever it was, I was relieved that she wasn’t upset. It made me feel less guilty about giving We to Honey.
I took my pack of cigarettes out and offered one to her almost as a joke, but she took it. I lit it for her.
I thought she’d just hold it and take non-inhaling puffs like my grandmother, but she smoked like a smoker.
“You smoke?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
This cheered me up a little. It made me think that there might be other things I didn’t know about this talented editor, Dreiser lover, Ursinus alumna, and citizen of Carteret, New Jersey. I hoped there were.
RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN
RUN RUN RUN AWAY
WHENMYBROTHER tells me he’s been seeing a psychiatrist, I say, “That’s great, Jack.”
He says, “What—you think I’m fucked up?”
I say, “How’d you find him?”
He says, “What makes you think my psychiatrist is a man?”
Her name is Mary Pat Delmar, and Jack tells me she is brilliant. He says, “She blows me away,” and I think they must be talking a lot about junior high.
“Wow,” I say.
He smiles. “I told her you’d say that.”
When he tells me how beautiful she is, I say, “But not so beautiful that you have trouble concentrating?”
“She’s pretty beautiful,” he says. Plus impressive: She won a scholarship to college, for example, and put herself through medical school; she grew up in rural Tennessee, where her parents still run a luncheonette.
I say, “She told you all that?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”
“I don’t think of psychiatrists talking that much.”
It’s not until he tells me that they’re not in Freudian analysis and breaks out laughing that I realize he’s not in analysis at all. Mary Pat is his new girlfriend.
He laughs like a madman, and I say, “Very funny,” though it is, in fact, very funny just to hear Jack laugh, as well as a huge relief: Our father died not even two months ago.
My eggs and Jack’s pancakes are set before us, and we stop talking to eat; we’re at Homer’s, the diner around the corner from his apartment in the Village.
I ask how he met Mary Pat.
He tells me, “Pete referred her.”
For a moment he gets waylaid talking about the fishing shack he helped Pete restore this summer. Pete lives year-round on Martha’s Vineyard with his Newfoundland, Lila, who expresses her heartache by howling to Billie Holiday records: Dog, you don’t know the trouble I seen.
Jack says Pete called when M.P. moved to town. “I think he’s always been a little in love with her.”
I say nothing; I have always been a little in love with Pete.
. . . . .
Though Jack didn’t say he’d bring Mary Pat, I’m a little disappointed when he arrives at Homer’s without her. “Just coffee,” he says to the waiter.
He tells me that M.P. was mugged on her way home from work, and he was up half the night trying to calm her down.
“Jesus,” I say, and ask where and when, and was there a weapon?
A knife; ten P.M.; a block from her apartment on Avenue D.
I say, “She lives on Avenue D?” D is for Drugs, D is for Danger, D is for Don’t live on Avenue D unless you have to.
Jack says, “It’s what she can afford.”
“I thought psychiatrists cleaned up.”
“Maybe in private practice,” he says.
As Dr. Delmar, Mary Pat treats survivors of torture in a program at NYU Hospital.
From spending weeks at my father’s bedside I have become alive to a level of pain I’d never known: Now I feel it on every street of Manhattan, in every column in the newspaper, and just the idea of someone who works to ease suffering eases mine.
I say, “When can I meet her?”
“Soon.”
Sounding like a worried mother, I say, “She should take a cab when she works late.”
“She says walking is her only exercise.”
. . . . .
When I arrive at the White Horse, Jack says, “Want to sit outside?”
It’s November. “Why would I want to sit outside?”
He tells me that M.P. will; after spending all day in the hospital, she craves fresh air. He takes off his leather jacket and hands it to me, an act of chivalry in the name of Mary Pat.
I give in. “You love this girl.”
He howls a mock-forlorn, “I do,” imitating a country singer or Newfoundland.
We maneuver our legs under a picnic table; we are the sole outsiders, and Jack has to go inside to get the waitress.
We both order scotch for warmth.
Jack yawns and tells me that he and Mary Pat were up most of the night, discussing his new screenplay. He tells me that her notes are incredibly smart, unbelievably smart—smarter than his actual screenplay.
It occurs to me that I have never heard him more sure of any woman and less sure of himself.
He catches sight of his dramaturge across the street, and I turn to look.
She is tall and skinny in high heels. She has long, wavy hair. Her cheeks are flushed, and when she sees Jack she smiles, activating dimples.
Her hand is limp in mine, her voice shivery as she says, “Pleased to meet you.”
She kisses Jack full on the mouth and then says she thinks she’s coming down with something; do we mind sitting inside?
Once we’re seated, I pretend, as I always do with Jack’s girlfriends, that I already like her: I tell her that I can hardly sit in high heels, let alone walk in them, and how does she do it?
“I don’t know,” she says.
Jack puts his hand across her forehead, and his eyebrows slant up in worry. “You have a fever.”
“If you’re sick,” I say, “we can have dinner another night.”
“No, no,” she says. “I like a fever.” Her smile is wan, her skin shiny. “You know, through the glass darkly.”
I do not know; I’m not even sure I’ve heard her correctly. Her voice is so quiet I strain just for fragments.
We pick up our menus.
“I’m going to have a cheeseburger and fries,” I say.
Jack says, �
��Same here.”
Mary Pat says, “I don’t think I can eat a whole one myself.”
“You can share mine,” he says.
“You don’t mind?”
My brother, who usually slaps my hand if I take one of his fries, does not mind.
When our burgers arrive, Mary Pat ignores the extra plate brought for sharing and eats right off Jack’s. Instead of cutting the cheeseburger in half, she takes a bite, and then he does. She even uses his napkin to wipe her mouth. I am reminded of the aid organization Doctors Without Borders.
“Jack told me that you met through Pete,” I say.
“Oh, yes.” She says, “He warned your brother about me,” and the two of them seem to think this is funny.
I play along—ha, ha, ha: “What did he say?”
Jack asks Mary Pat, “What did he say?”
She says, “I’m trouble?” her voice so lush with sex, I think, Hey, M.P., I’m right here, Jack’s little sister, across the table.
Her body reacts to the smallest shift in his; they are in constant bodily contact. She doesn’t touch Jack directly, but rubs herself against him almost incidentally, like a cat. The one time he reaches for her hand, she lets him hold it for less than a minute; then she takes it back and hides it in the dark under the table.
Maybe because of her whispery voice or her ethereal skinniness or her glass-darkly fever, Mary Pat gives the impression of not quite being here at the table, here at the White Horse, here on Earth. To assure myself of my own existence, I counter her quiet voice by raising mine, counter her little bites by taking big ones.
I try to talk to her, but it is just me asking questions and her answering them. My questions get longer, her answers shorter. Still I don’t quit. I’m like a gambler who keeps thinking, Maybe the next hand.
The name of her parents’ luncheonette? Delmar’s.
The division of labor? Her father cooks; her mother serves.
If we were at Delmar’s now, we’d order . . . ? “Meat ’n’ Two.”
I say, “Meat and two?”
“One meat and two sides.”
I love sides; I ask which are best.