The Bestseller Read online

  But Gerald’s contract would run out with this latest book, and to justify another huge advance he would have to see some sales. So he was doing his best. It was actually the story of his aunt and uncle, both prominent New York socialites in the Roaring Twenties, who were famous for their style, their parties, and the dissolute ending of their lives. Gerald’s uncle had shot his aunt dead after finding her in bed with another woman—one he had been sleeping with. And Gerald, desperate for a plot, had used this family scandal as the basis for his glitzy potboiler. If he had nothing new to disclose—after all, he’d only met his uncle once or twice—the book revived a forgotten juicy scandal.

  The problem was, what if his best wasn’t enough?

  Now he looked up at his secretary, patiently waiting for him. “Did you review them?” Gerald asked Mrs. Perkins. Gerald enjoyed being recondite—he always tried to use words people would not know. But despite his multi-prep-school education—or because of it—Gerald’s spelling and punctuation still weren’t what they should be, and his senior secretary was allowed to review his draft simply to make it understandable.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Perkins said. “But I think the lesbian love scene is too graphic.”

  “Mrs. Perkins, editor of genius,” Gerald snapped. What he did not need now was negative feedback. What he had to do was push forward, finish the goddamned book, and see what happened then. If worse came to worse, he could always bring Pam in to edit it. Pam Mantiss was his editor in chief, a woman he had slept with, promoted, and piled work onto for more than a decade. She was smart and hard and hardworking. In fact, she did most of his work because he didn’t have the time for it anymore. Now he looked up from his desk, “When I want an editorial opinion, I’ll ask Pam,” Gerald told Mrs. Perkins. “What I’d like from you is some coffee.”

  Mrs. Perkins merely nodded and put the pages down on the right-hand corner of his desk. “Ellen Levine called about that contract,” she told him.

  “Ellen Levine always calls about all contracts,” he snapped. “She reinvents the wheel with every one. Tell Pam to handle it.”

  Mrs. Perkins left the office, and Gerald turned back to the screen of the word processor, staring at its gray and empty face. How would he fill another three hundred manuscript pages? He hadn’t a clue. But he knew he had to do it before the end of next month if he wanted to collect his acceptance money. He rubbed his glabrous hands together nervously. He turned to face the huge windows of his office. Somewhere out there he had to find half a million people who would spend twenty-three dollars each to buy his book. Because Gerald had to be a success this time to keep his show rolling.

  6

  Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

  —Oliver Herford

  Opal O’Neal trudged around the corner, stopping to check the numbered sign to make sure she was on the right street. She’d always disliked the idea of numbered streets—it seemed so impersonal, so anonymous. But, she supposed, that was what New York City was all about.

  She slowly walked along the block of run-down brownstones and tenements. She tried to recall by sight which one had been her daughter’s, but all the buildings looked alike. She’d visited Terry twice but not in the last three years. There hadn’t been extra money for that. Opal’s eyes filmed over with tears, and though she didn’t allow them to fall—not in public—she had to pause a moment until her vision cleared. Then she spotted the black-painted “266” over a building entrance and knew this was the place, the address to which she had mailed so many long and loving letters. The place where her daughter had died.

  Opal had gotten the news over the telephone, from a woman police detective. She barely believed it then, and these few days hadn’t brought much more acceptance. She could have believed that Terry had been mugged or even murdered, but not that she had killed herself. Still, even over the phone, the woman had been quite convincing. There had been no break-in, she said, there were no signs of a struggle, and there were the carefully taped rejection notices, signposts to suicide. Last, there had been the “choice of modes,” as the woman put it. Apparently, women under forty chose hanging more frequently than any other suicide method. Opal wondered, for a moment, what the preferred method for women over forty was. But she shook that thought from her head. It was cynical and mean-spirited, and Opal tried to be neither. She simply wanted to be a good and loving person, a good and loving mother, but it seemed that was out of the question now.

  Opal squared her shoulders and walked down the three steps leading to the just-below-street-level entrance to the building. In New York real estate it was called a “semibasement”—Terry had once written that to Opal—but it seemed basement enough to drop the semi altogether, Opal thought. She went through her handbag and took out the case she had carefully secreted in the side pocket. The police had sent Opal her daughter’s keys and requested that she collect not only Terry’s body, which had been held at the Center Street morgue, but also her personal effects.

  Opal had trouble with the key to the building’s front door. The lock seemed loose, as if a million keys had jiggled it, but she finally got the key to fit properly and the door gave under the weight of her shoulder. Dank air met her—there was no lobby or foyer, just the dark hallway that led past one door, on to the metal-tipped stairs upward, and then finally to the door of Terry’s apartment in the back. Opal had just managed to get the second key into the second lock and was pulling the door open when a man’s voice stopped her.

  “Hey! What the hell are you doing? And who the hell are you?”

  Opal straightened herself to her full height of almost five feet. In the dimness she could just make out his stooped shape. “I am Opal O’Neal, and I am here to get my daughter’s things.”

  The man paused for a moment, as if he was thinking about whether or not to be embarrassed, then deciding not to be. “Well, all right,” he said grudgingly. As if he had anything to say about it at all. Opal merely nodded her head curtly, stepped into the last home her daughter had ever known, and closed the door behind her.

  It was a sad room. Swiftly, Opal took in the battered table, the daybed, the single squat, overstuffed chair. Somehow, when she had visited Terry, it hadn’t seemed so grim. Why hadn’t she noticed? Had the bright presence of her daughter obscured the lurking darkness? Although it was a sunny, cold day outside, the room was murky as a cave. The dark blue was a bad color. Opal fumbled for the lightswitch, and the harsh overhead chandelier flicked on. She couldn’t keep her eyes from flicking upward to the place where Terry had chosen to tie the noose. Quickly she looked away. By now the undertaker had picked up Terry’s body from the morgue. Tomorrow Terry would be cremated, and the following day Opal would bring her ashes back home to Bloomington. Their home. A town where streets had names, not numbers. The town she never should have let Terry leave.

  Opal opened her large purse and took out the canvas zipper bag she had folded within it. She went to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Inside were half a dozen pairs of white underpants, a single pair of unopened panty hose, a few nightgowns, and two brassieres. There was also a diaphragm in its plastic case. Opal blushed when she thought of the police searching through her daughter’s private things. But Opal wasn’t a prude. She knew that Terry had had a lover—at least one—and she had not disapproved. She may be a fifty-four-year-old librarian from Indiana, but Opal thought of herself as a modern woman. In fact, she was only against marriage, not lovers. In her experience, men seemed to turn bad only after another man performed the ring ritual over them. She shook her head, scooped up the drawer contents, and opened the next drawer down.

  Opal knew that her daughter had spent the last decade working on her novel. She had encouraged and supported Terry while she worked. And Terry had even shared bits of it with her. Not much, and always diffidently. But it had shown her that Terry knew men, and the writing had been good, very good. Opal was not an indulgent reader. Years at the library, and at home in the
evenings reading Flaubert, Turgenev, Austen, Forster, and the other greats had given Opal an informed and exquisite taste. She knew that Terry shared that taste and, moreover, had the creative wellspring to do more with it than Opal ever had. Terry had been her own harshest critic and most merciless editor. But on those few occasions when she had shared sections of the book with Opal, Opal had seen how brilliant it was.

  Yet the police told her that there were no manuscripts, no papers of any kind found. Only the burnt offerings in the fireplace. Opal simply couldn’t believe that. A mother might kill herself, but she would never kill her child. Or Terry wouldn’t have. Opal knew the manuscript was here. They’d simply overlooked it.

  But at first all she saw in the drawer were neatly folded clothes—a few sweaters, two old shirts. Then, underneath them, she glimpsed a cigar box. Not big enough for a manuscript, but perhaps…Opal’s heart began to beat faster. Terry had been scribbling since she was a toddler. She wrote about everything. Terry’s whole life had been dedicated to writing, and Opal’s to preparing her and helping her to write. Surely Terry wouldn’t go without leaving some explanation, some clue, to help Opal through this. The box looked just like the one Terry had kept letters in back in high school. Opal knew that the box was waiting for her.

  She carefully lifted out the brightly colored box and wedged her thumbnail under the lid, flicking it open. Inside there was nothing but a collection of pencil stubs, markers, and the kind of click-top ballpoint pens that had the name of various businesses on their sides. Opal bit her thin lower lip and threw the box in the trash. She put the sweaters and blouses into in her canvas bag. Terry was—had been—a big girl; Opal couldn’t wear these things, but somebody could. Neither of them had approved of waste.

  One drawer left. Something had to be there. Slowly, Opal opened it. But all it held was a few pair of neatly folded corduroy slacks and a Columbia sweatshirt. Opal remembered Terry wearing it on her last visit to Bloomington, and her eyes filmed over again. Fighting back the tears, she emptied the contents of the drawer into her bag.

  Next she went into the tiny bathroom. Terry had never been one to fix herself up much—she took after Opal in that respect—but even Opal was surprised by how little there was. A toothbrush and a plastic cup, toothpaste, a stack of neatly folded washcloths, a bar of soap, and a hairbrush were all the objects laid on the sink and shelf. Opal cast all but the hairbrush into the trash and looked carefully at the brush before she put it in her canvas bag. Terry’s hairs were wrapped around the bristles. Was that all of herself that Terry was leaving behind? Opal opened the medicine cabinet, but it was stocked as sparely and impersonally as a hotel’s. A can of Band-Aids, a deodorant bar, cheap hand cream, tampons, aspirin, and a plastic tube of petroleum jelly sat primly on the little glass shelves. Opal shook her head and didn’t have the heart to clean any further. She’d leave that for the next tenant.

  She walked out of the bathroom, past the fireplace and over to the single closet. Even with the light on it was difficult to see into it, but Opal didn’t need to see much to know how little there was inside. A worn London Fog raincoat (which Opal had given Terry for Christmas six or seven years before), a brown cloth coat that Opal did not remember, and a few skirts hung there beside a broom and a small upright vacuum cleaner. On the shelf above, two blankets and a pillow were arranged neatly. There was Terry’s computer, which the police told her had been emptied of all files. On the floor was a pair of rubber boots, two pairs of sturdy shoes, and a dustpan, along with a box of unused garbage bags. There was also a cardboard carton.

  Opal squatted down, her heart racing as she reached for the box. Is this where Terry had stored early drafts of the book? But as Opal pulled the box toward her, its weight and its clanking gave her the bad news. She opened it to find nothing more than empty cans and bottles, ready for recycling, that was all.

  Opal looked again at the room. She felt so very tired, it was as if she could not stand up for another minute. For her whole life, it seemed, Opal had stood for something. She had stood for education, she had stood for the idea that one could better oneself, she had stood for single women getting a place in the world and for individuality in a place that preferred conformity. She had stood up for her daughter’s dream, her talent and creativity, and believed that Terry could become a writer. Now Opal could stand no longer. She sank onto the daybed as if she, like Terry, would never rise again. She looked at the fireplace and the ashes in it. That was what her life was reduced to—ashes. There was no point in going back to Bloomington, to go on cataloging books, to go on reading. Terry was dead, and she had left nothing behind her.

  Opal knew she was neither pretty, nor well dressed, nor well educated, but she was not so naive that she couldn’t see the message in the lack of a message. Terry was—had been—furious, not just at those publishers who had rejected her work, but also at Opal herself, who had encouraged her in the first place. Otherwise she would have left a word of comfort.

  From all she had read, Opal knew that the writer’s life was a lonely one. But surely Terry had the muscle to live with that. As Opal had told Terry over and over during her childhood, you can never be lonely if you have a good book. And in this dingy apartment, on the bookshelves flanking the fireplace, there were plenty of those. But Terry must have been lonely, and desperate enough not to care. Lonely and desperate and angry.

  At last, Opal began to weep. There was nothing that Terry had left behind—no message, no manuscript, no nothing. Just these rejection letters the policewoman had given Opal. They’d come from the ignorant, stupid, shallow publishers who had helped to kill Terry. Those and the key to this death scene. That is all that Terry meant for me to receive, Opal thought. That and my guilt. The hardness of it was shocking.

  Opal cried as she hadn’t cried for thirty years. And while she wept, she cursed herself for encouraging Terry in a life so difficult. She carried my hopes with her, and the burden was too heavy. It’s my fault, Opal told herself. But what else could I have done? Terry was talented. Terry was an artist. It wasn’t just that she was my daughter. She was brilliant. Did she blame me because nobody else agreed? Did she lose faith in herself because mine was the only voice that supported her? Did she come to hate me? Opal looked around the grim room that accused her. She must have. She did. Opal moaned and nearly choked. She felt as if she’d go on crying forever.

  The knock on the door startled her. She wiped her eyes with her hand and looked for a tissue. Before she could fumble for her purse, the rapping at the door began again. “I’m coming,” Opal said, and managed to get to the door. But she didn’t open it. She wasn’t stupid, after all, and she read the newspapers. In fact, she read the New York Times every day at the library. She knew what trouble could lurk outside a New York City door. “Who is it?” she asked, her voice wet and deep from her tears.

  “It’s me.”

  Well, that was the least helpful response she’d ever heard. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Me, Aiello, the super.”

  Opal rolled her eyes and then wiped them again. Just what she needed! Some stranger’s condolences and morbid curiosity. If she wanted that, she’d have brought Terry’s body back to Bloomington, where all the townspeople could gape. She opened the door. “Yes?” she asked.

  “I’ll need the keys back,” the man said. No “excuse me” or “I’m terribly sorry” or “Can I help you in your moment of need,” but a bald-faced demand for the keys! Opal was outraged. This city was heartless. No wonder Terry hadn’t been able to face it.

  “I believe the rent is paid till the end of the month,” Opal informed him, “so I believe that gives me a legal right to the keys until then.”

  The grizzled man’s face reflected his surprise. Then he shrugged. “Yeah. If ya want to stay in there.” He shook his head. “If I was you, I’d just want to clear out.” Opal did want to clear out—more than anything—but there was the cremation and the memorial service tomorrow.

 
“If you were me, which is unimaginable, you would be polite and helpful.”

  Aiello stood there and blinked. Opal watched while his Neanderthal mind processed what she had just said. Light dawned on Marblehead.

  “Oh, well, if you need anything…you know, boxes or something…” His voice trailed off.

  It seemed the man did know shame. Good. Opal nodded to him. “I’ll be just fine,” she lied and firmly shut the door.

  7

  You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

  —Susan Sontag

  Camilla spent her single day of holiday doing what she liked to do best—simply looking. But first she slept in, and after a breakfast of delicious hot chocolate and biscotti, she further indulged herself by sitting in the sunny hotel courtyard and reading a few chapters of Forster’s A Room with a View. It was fun to read another British writer’s send-up of tourists in Italy. Camilla, of course, didn’t put herself in Forster’s league. But she had just finished writing her own novel about the subject.

  The pots of evergreens and homely violas, the beautiful stonework all around her, the blue of the sky, all were improved by the piquancy of anticipation. It was delightful to have the evening dinner with her new acquaintances to look forward to. It made this time alone seem splendid, and the coming company a nice contrast.

  But from time to time, as she read about Lucy Honeychurch and her meddling, silly aunt, Camilla had to stop. Her attention would wander until she found herself reading a whole page without taking in a word. Instead she felt a vague shadow, as if the brilliant sky had clouded over. It was because of what Frederick Ashton had brought up. How shall I ever get my book published, she thought, and a chill ran through her. Who did I think I was, to write it? Who will ever look at a book about a coachload of middle-aged ladies in Italy and want to give me money for it?