She arrives at 10:20, hoping to have time to reapply her lipstick and maybe brush her teeth. His reading tonight was very good, and the crowd adored him. Her radio interview in the morning seemed to go okay, and when she called Calgary, the kids were fine. Well, at least the house was still standing, or so they said. But all that day, that note that note that note, oh how it buoyed her up —
But there he is already, how in hell did he escape the mob? The line at the book table ran right out of the hall and into the lobby —
“Well, then,” he says and gestures at the seat across from him.
His imperious tone frees her to insist, “Back in a flash, just have to make a pit stop.”
Her face in the mirror — dread, anticipation, delight. And oh if she could just stop these ridiculous fantasies, these romantic scenarios, You know what I really wish? I wish that I could be given a chance to learn to love you. And he smiles and pats the place beside him —
Back at the booth, and he smirks, “Pit stop? No shit Sherlock? You’re providing me with quite an education, Jay.”
“Well. There you go.”
He grins. “The usual?”
“Yes, please. But are you sure you’re up for this? I heard that you had to cancel your gig on the international panel because you have the flu.”
“A lie. Never felt better. Spent the day in bed, reading.”
“You’re not ill?”
“Not at all. Listen, I read the most wonderful book today; it’s called Richdale and I want to give its author the gift of a reading. From an ordinary reader. A fan.”
“Oh god.”
“Rules: you are to remain completely silent. No protests, no blushing, no — ”
“You’ve forgotten the first rule. The author has to agree to hear the reading.”
“And do you?”
“No!”
He takes her hand as the waitress brings her white wine, and his, what, second whiskey?
“It would be such an honour for me to do this, Jay.”
She has to look down, his eyes are, dear god, she’s going to, god only knows, cryfaintscreampassout?
“Jay?”
“Just give me a minute.” He won’t let go of her hand. His touch is gentle but strong. His thumb moves over her knuckles, exactly the way her father used to, holding her hand when she was a little girl. Safe. A breath, a deep one. Then another. “Okay,” she says.
“Good. Richdale. What struck me the most. The promise of that little town is inextricable from despair. It made me think that possibly the two are inseparable. The graveyard with the single stone, the solitary Mary, the ghost of every lost or discarded child. Very good. And the bit at the end where Sally re-visits the houses, photographing them as a way of attesting to their reality. And then finding the new graves. It would have been far too neat to have exactly the right number; excellent that you didn’t fall into that trap, that temptation.
“But that scene — the scene, okay? — in the little coffee shop in the town near the homestead, the man with bright blue eyes, Jamie’s bastard son, now a grandfather, spooning pudding into his granddaughter’s mouth, looking up, recognizing something in Sally. Lovely. They can’t meet each other’s eyes; it’s a sad moment but somehow deeply funny as well.”
Jay can’t look at him. He gets it, he got it. Her ideal reader, the person she wrote this book for, the consciousness she wanted to address, awaken, touch.
He adds, “I plan to reread, of course. Pick up whatever I missed, on the plane home tomorrow. I need to think more about how the dispossessed, the exiled, have this absence in their histories. My own ancestors were far from rich, but they had their place in the world and they chose to keep it. But Sal’s forebears, like yours I guess, had to begin again. Or chose to. And what a gift that choice was, yet what a burden too. I know where every one of my ancestors is buried. Every house inhabited by a family member still stands, the churches and the schools and the pubs. But with your lot, the past is erased over and over again, with each push west. And yet Sal and the others need to go back anyway, digging in the bloody soil with their bare hands. Sal’s moment in that valley, as if the landscape itself is recognized as her first mother. It goes far deeper than any such I’ve ever read, man or woman.”
Jay’s mouth is parched. Her gums crackle when she opens her mouth to drink.
He watches her, a shy smile. “You may speak now, if you wish.”
Don’t go. don’t go home.
“Or not.” He looks slightly anxious, grabs his glass and drinks.
Hands. That’s it. Something to do with hands. Jay covers his hands with her own, mutters, “Not that this is a date or anything.”
“Pardon?”
She lifts her hands. “I realize that this isn’t what I’m supposed to be talking about at this moment, but for some weird reason, I want to tell you about the worst date I ever had. It was with a poet. Older guy, quite well known. We’d met at a conference in France. And though we’d said goodbye at the last session, we ended up on the same train the next morning, both headed for Paris, he for a long stay in a borrowed apartment, and me just overnight before my flight home. He asked me out for dinner.
“I was so excited about this. A famous poet, a romantic evening in Paris. And it was such a fucking disaster. For a variety of reasons, but one was that he saw me as this, I don’t know, cushion or something. Munro has a line about ‘undifferentiating welcome’ when she describes a mildly retarded girl at school who is sexually used by the boys. That’s precisely what this man seemed to expect from me, to want me for: undifferentiating welcome. He seemed surprised that I didn’t know his work, but did not say anything or ask anything about mine. He basically performed the whole date. Really. It was as if he was the performance and I was supposed to be the adoring audience, beaming, gasping, applauding. Every move, from the inside story on the Cambodian waiter who served us aperitif at the sidewalk cafe in St. Germain, to the carefully selected cosy little bistro and, ‘May I take the liberty of ordering for both of us?’ to the after-dinner stroll down to the Seine, the big finale on the Pont Neuf with Notre Dame illuminated in the background, where the music swells and she falls into his arms and and and . . . But I swear, Leland, by the time we got to the violin part, I was so goddamn furious, so insulted by his condescension and his complete lack of interest in me or my work or my opinions — hell, an inflatable doll would have served his purposes just as well, better — that I very deliberately said, ‘Nice view. Hey, I have to get going. Can you show me where to find a taxi?’ And yes, there were a variety of things I was pissed off about, but a big one was that in that whole evening — can you imagine spending an entire evening with anyone, say from 6:30 ’til nearly midnight, and not asking one question about that person’s life or interests?”
Jay sips her wine, and goes on: “What happened afterwards, though, was what cut it for me. Because I went home, and after I’d cooled off a bit, I went to the library, not the bookstore, mind you, the library, and took out several volumes of his poetry. Because if you meet a person who is a writer and you want to . . . respect or know that person, then you read their work. And then I sent him a polite note of thanks, on email, for the dinner, and made some comment on his work. And then I waited for some word from him. He knew I was a writer, my publications were listed on my bio for the conference, and he could have given the slightest indication that he knew I was a writer too. But no. His reply was, if possible, even more arrogant than his behavior in Paris. It was one of those email replies where the person just returns the sender’s email with his own responses inserted between the paragraphs, or even sometimes the sentences. Lazy as hell for one thing, and insultingly like receiving a graded undergrad paper back for another. I sent no reply and haven’t heard from him since.”
Leland begins to speak, but she raises her hand to stop him. She needs to take a moment to assemble the last fragments of thought.
“So. I can’t seem to find the right words for how I feel about what you’ve said. Not flattered, that’s servile. So is honoured, as if some higher being has deigned to give my work his attention. I mean, I know that my work is not me, but it’s a bloody important part of me. I can’t find any word that explains how your reading — which by the way is absolutely dead wrong on every friggin’ count — how this reading…”
He waits, alert now.
Again she places her farmwife hands over his, simply covers his fine white hands with her own. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And how did you manage to get the book so late last night?”
“I was heroic. I braved the madding crowd at the bar downstairs, found that silly heavyset woman with the big square glasses and browbeat and pleaded and bloody well had to offer to marry the silly bitch before she’d take me into the storeroom where they lock up the book tables for the night. Read ’til three or so, then slept a few hours ’til it was time to send you the message — ”
“Valued, maybe that’s the word.”
“Possibly. Read again straight through with a couple of calls to cancel things. I knew I couldn’t get out of my mainstage reading, of course, but all the rest of it — ”
“Believed in?”
“Cherished, maybe. So I got a few people irritated, but a bloke can only do what he can do, and the flu defense was airtight and I figured that the world would probably go on today without another wise and witty encounter with The Author. Now, finding your first book has posed a larger challenge, I’m afraid — ”
“Publisher sold, distributor broke.”
“But I’m on track and expect to have it in my hands for the flight home tomorrow.”
Home. Tomorrow.
“Recognized, perhaps,” she muses.
“Or: beheld.”
“Beheld. I like that. Munro uses that word in ‘White Dump’.”
“Can I get you folks another round?”
Home. Tomorrow. “I don’t want you to leave. Oh fuck, did I say that out loud?”
“Yes, I believe you did. Yes, same again, thanks.”