Margot Mayer’s office in Paramus, New Jersey, occupied the entire second story of a nondescript five-floor office building. I walked into an open space with books piled everywhere, lining the walls from ceiling to floor, stacked on desks and in heaps on the thin carpet. Her secretary was at lunch, her brother and partner, Cal Mayer, out at the printing plant to check on production. He’d left a striped tie draped across his chair, which was laden with comic books. And so it was only Margot and I who sat down, facing each other across the mounds of papers crowding her desk.
“Miss Leithauser. Darling. Let me begin by telling you a bit about what we do.” Margot herself looked to be about sixty, with a Long Island accent that sounded as if it were being strained through a cigarette filter. She wore a jaguar-printed jacket with padded shoulders, and her hair in a frothy beehive. “We are not a prestige publisher. We do crap like this—this is one of my brother’s titles,” she said, holding up a copy of Green Women from Outer Space Meet Earth’s Wolfmen, Vol. 7. “We’d do a mass-market run of your book for one month and see how it does. You wouldn’t get any reviews, or anything like that. You’re not going to win awards for anything we publish here.”
“Awards aren’t what I’m after.”
Margot shrugged. “One-month print run, we see how it does. After that, the thing might be dead in the water.”
I recrossed my legs. “Miss Mayer, with all due respect, I believe you’re my only hope.”
Three weeks had passed since I’d met with Joe, and in that time, I’d heard from none of the publishers Eli had promised to connect me with. Soon I’d be essentially penniless.
Margot stared at me a minute, tapping her cheek. “I’ve read your manuscript. It’s good. It’s also dangerous.” She shuffled things around on her desk, shoving a great ream of paper to the floor and ignoring it. Somehow, she found my book. Mumbling to herself, she rummaged through this drawer and that, at last finding a pair of half-moon glasses on a gold chain and a nubby rubber fingertip, which she shoved onto her thumb. Then she leaned back in her squeaky chair and began turning pages.
I watched all of this expectantly. Despite the strangeness of this office, despite the green women and the wolfmen, I meant what I’d said: W. P. Fullerton Books felt like my last hope on Earth. I held my square black purse tight against my bouncing knees. I didn’t know if I’d ever been so nervous to meet someone.
“Yep,” she said after a while. “This might be the most dangerous book we ever publish.” She unhooked her glasses from her ears and let them dangle against her chest. Then she smiled at me. “You realize what you’re asking me to print, don’t you? Katherine gives birth to a bastard; then she has the nerve not to insist Sergey marry her! She runs from him! Not to mention what you put in there about the CIA.” Margot’s hand slapped her chest, mimicking a heart attack. “My dear, this could amount to treason.”
“But it’s all fictitious. There was no faked lunar landing. There is no CIA conspiracy.”
“Isn’t there?” She mashed her thin lips together thoughtfully. We looked at each other for a moment.
“Look, Miss Mayer.”
“Oh, you can call me Margot. ‘Miss’ reminds me I haven’t got a fella.”
“Margot—this would only be a dime novel for girls. Would anyone be paying attention?”
“I think this would be a”—glasses back on, she consulted a chart on her desk—“thirty-five-cent novel. We’d do it in digest format. Make it an itty-bitty book.” Her eyes gleamed. I had the sense that she was toying with me a little, that she was the kind of person who liked to keep her audience in suspense. “So itty-bitty no one would ever give it a second glance. No one who matters, that is.”
I felt a faint glimmer of hope squeeze at my stomach. I hadn’t eaten all day. “Will you publish it, then, Miss Mayer?”
“Margot. And don’t get ahead of yourself, sweetie. There’s the matter of the ending.” She slapped my manuscript back on the desk, tossing it toward me.
I caught a few loose pages. “The ending? What’s the matter with it?”
Margot’s eyes got wide. Her lashes nearly touched her eyebrows. “What’s the matter with it? It’s sad, that’s what! You’ve got Katherine living alone on the island, you’ve got Sergey—what a beefcake, by the way!—he’s God knows where, probably in some labor camp in Siberia. Our readers won’t stand for that kind of ending, Miss Leithauser; you’re going to have to make it happy.”
“It can’t be happy,” I said, indignant. “He betrayed her. He lied to her the entire time.”
Margot waved a hand at me. “Did he, though? The man was a deserter, he needed the gig, they gave him orders not to say anything to her. It seemed to me as if he wanted to tell her everything. He loved her!”
I couldn’t help smiling, hearing her speak about the characters, even argue with me about their motives, as if they were real. They’d become real to her. It was a thrill like I’d never imagined. “I’m not so sure he loved her, though. He could have been faking it. In any case, Katherine isn’t sure.”
“Then have him prove it.” Margot put her glasses back on and began shuffling papers around again. It seemed the meeting was almost over. “You write me a better ending, we’ll see about publishing this novel.”
“Margot.” I stood over her, my hands flat on her desk. “You’re looking at a desperate woman. I need to know, before I go any further, how good are the chances you’ll offer me a book contract.”
Slowly, her eyes rolled upward. She was smiling out of one side of her mouth. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t even let my brother read this one. But, yes, my dear, I’d like to publish this. It’s rare that any of the dreck that comes across my desk sticks with me in any way, and Sergey and Katherine have kept me up at night. I’m very interested to see if our readers agree with me on that.” She stood up so that we were eye to eye. Hers were gray and piercing. As she spoke the next words, a chill passed from my scalp to the bottoms of my feet.
“I think you and I can pass this one right by the censors, and—who knows?—we might just get a few girls out there thinking.”
I exhaled. “We might, indeed.”
She shook my hand, then pulled back and shook a finger at me. “But you have to write that ending. How many days do you need?”
I thought for a second. “Three?”
“Good. I’ll look for it in the mail. Then I’ll call and talk contracts.”
“Thank you, thank you. I won’t let you down.” I grabbed my purse and the disheveled manuscript, anxious to get back to Ossining and begin writing.
“Oh, and Louise…?”
I turned at the door. “Yes?”
“Add a few more words about Sergey’s build, would you?”
I went home to my parents’ house feeling buoyant, as if I’d found a little trapdoor to Wonderland. Thank goodness for Margot, thank goodness for the drugstores that carried her books, for the thousands of girls who read those books and to whom nobody else paid much attention. My novel would find its way into their hands, its flashy cover a Trojan horse concealing the message inside: The government lies to us. Men lie to us. I felt like a code talker. I felt powerful.
As I turned my mother’s Packard up the hill toward her house, I noticed an unfamiliar car parked across the street. I slowed my approach till I was creeping up the hill, but they saw me coming and quickly started their ignition. As the car, a gray Chevy with whitewall tires, passed me, neither of the men inside looked at me. Both wore sunglasses, and it sure as hell seemed they didn’t want me to see them waiting outside my parents’ house.
I peeled into the driveway and ran up the wooden porch steps. My mother was inside, talking to someone on the phone with the cord stretched from the kitchen to the living room. She had Francie on a blanket on the floor, lying on her belly, her head bobbing up as she batted at a rubber ball.
“How long were those men waiting out there?” I picked up Francie and began bouncing her jerkily. She started to fuss.
My mother had muttered a quick goodbye and hung up the phone. “What are you talking about? Did you see what Francie can do now? She can hold up her own head!”
“I saw. The men in the silver Chevrolet—how long were they out there?”
“Oh, I don’t know—twenty minutes? I thought they came to visit the MacPhersons.”
I stared out through the torn window screen, rubbing Francie’s back. “Or to keep tabs on me.”
“Louise, what’s going on? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
It took me a minute, but I assembled my face into an unworried smile and spun around. “No, Mother. I’m not, I’m just being silly.”
“Good,” she said, though her eyebrow was arched in skepticism. “Remember, it’s bridge night for me. I’ll have to go take a bath, wash the baby smell off.”
“Certainly,” I said in a hurry. “I’ll take care of Francie tonight. You deserve a break.”
She went upstairs, and I turned back toward the road, rocking Francie slowly, shifting my weight from side to side. I’d meant what I said about my mother needing a break, but that wasn’t all. I needed practice taking care of Francie on my own. We couldn’t stay here and put my parents in danger much longer.
That evening, I gave Francie her bottles and a long, cool bath in my mother’s bathroom sink. She was a beautiful baby, with long eyelashes and skin like a fresh peach, and I enjoyed watching her blink and sigh as I dribbled water gently down her back with a wet sponge. She seemed the only thing that had gone right for me in a long time—a lovely, healthy baby with a gentle demeanor—and when she fell asleep on my shoulder in the rocking chair, I let her snore softly against the fine hairs of my neck for quite a while before I finally laid her, on her belly, in the crib. I pulled the soft pink blanket up to her shoulders, caressed her cheek with the back of my forefinger, and crept from the room.
The house was quiet. My mother’s bridge game, the one place I suspected she could truly let her hair down, went late, and my father was God knows where. I went out to the porch, where I’d left my typewriter. I intended to begin crafting the ending Margot demanded, but what came out first was a letter.
Dear Joe,
I had some visitors outside my parents’ house tonight. They didn’t have time to come inside or even to introduce themselves, but I’m quite sure it was I whom they came to see. I don’t even know why I ask, as I’m no longer certain I will ever get the truth, but I sure hope you weren’t the one who sent them my way.
I have been thinking a great deal about endings. What sort of ending, for example, will be in store for you and me? They call it a “happy ending” when the prince wakes the princess at the end of a fairy tale. But that isn’t really an ending, not for them, is it? It’s a beginning. At the moment I cannot imagine us having any such beginning, only an ending. I don’t know. Perhaps circumstances will shift in some unforeseen way, and the future will be different.
This brings me back to my first question, regarding truth. The only way I can imagine you and me having any sort of beginning is if we stop dealing in lies and half-truths, and tell each other only full truths. I am entitled to the truth about the visitors outside my family home, and the truth about Harry.
In the meantime, a girl can only dream about the beginning I wish could have been possible for you and me.
Francie continues to do well. She is starting to lift up her own head.
—L
I sealed the note into an envelope, wrote down Joe’s address, didn’t bother with a return. Chances were, Francie and I would be gone by the time he replied. I planned to instruct my mother to return all my mail to the senders. At least he’d know why we left; the letter would make that clear.
Something had to be said to Eli as well, but what? I went and got the cigarettes I’d been hiding and lit one, blowing the smoke out through the porch screen as I paced and smoked. My fingers shook when I thought about him sending the hounds after me. How long would it be until one of them approached me to make it abundantly clear I was to keep my mouth shut? I knew it wouldn’t matter if we left this place, if we changed our names, if we moved out of state to someplace where we hoped they wouldn’t find us. I’d never stop looking over my shoulder.
Finally, I sat back down at the typewriter, the butt of the cigarette dangling from my lips.
Dear Mr. Cohn,
Would you believe it, so much time has passed since our dinner walk that I can’t remember which of my stories I showed you. I’ve got two pans on the burner right now, you see. If it was the romance we discussed, what do you say we forget all about it, old chum? I doubt the editors would be interested in that one, anyway. I’m quite sure you’ll agree.
Now, the other project I’ve gotten my hands on, that’s the real gem. You remember, right, from the funeral? It’s a collaboration between Harry Billings and myself, a sort of Ernest Hemingway interview, part two. I’m not sure where I’d like to place it, but I think I’ll hold on to it for now.
Thanks a heap for the offer of help in any case.
Sincerely,
Louise Leithauser
I paused for a moment, staring out at the spot where the gray Chevy had been parked, before adding a postscript.
P.S. It is a shame that we skipped dinner. It would’ve been nice to try the lobster.