Paul calls early the next morning. Anna is still in bed but she tells him she has been up more than an hour. It is not exactly a lie; she is awake if not out of her bed. She did not sleep well, her mind sifting through a sequence of images, none of which she can recall now. The sun was not up when she reached for the book on her bedside table, The Collected Works of Jane Austen. For years she has turned to Jane Austen when her nights are broken with dreams that trouble her sleep. The world seemed safe in Austen’s times, safe and regulated. Families stayed together in the same village, in the same country. Even when children became adults and married, they did not move far away. They did not immigrate to foreign countries unreachable except by long hours on an airplane across miles of ocean. Parents could be counted on. Neighbors could be counted on. No one died alone in city apartments, their bodies left for days, crawling with maggots, until the putrid stench of rotting flesh insinuated itself up the noses of the people who pass by. Women had disadvantages in Austen’s world, but in the end there were men with fortunes who married them and promised them good lives.
“What were you doing up so early?” Paul asks.
“Reading,” she says.
“Manuscripts for work?”
“Jane Austen. I find her stories soothing.”
“I know what you mean,” he says, surprising her. “Mind you, I didn’t read Jane Austen on my own. We were made to in school back home. Pride and Prejudice, that’s the one we studied. I remember thinking it was the British plan to make us passive colonials. Give us their stories, tell us how admirable their people are, and we’d be lulled into forgetting our stories, forgetting our histories, forgetting how they stole our island. All we would want is to be like them.”
“Don’t spoil Jane Austen for me, Paul,” Anna says, swinging her legs out of bed.
“How do you think they built those mansions they lived in? The famous Darcy! How do you think he got so rich? The slave trade. That’s how.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What I know is that it’s how England got rich.”
She has not seen this side of him, and though it irritates her that he has poked holes in her fantasy, she cannot say she hasn’t had similar thoughts herself.
“Well, I like Jane Austen.”
“Watch it,” Paul says, but he is laughing now. She laughs too. Would she have laughed if Tony had criticized her in this way, warned her of the perils of admiring the old colonizers? They have taught you self-hatred, Tony once said to her. But she and Paul share their island’s history of negotiation rather than confrontation. Their compatriots may have adopted British customs, but they did not give up their own. They have passed on their stories to their young; they have maintained their rituals, their dance, their art, their music. They are the creators of the only significant musical instrument invented in the twentieth century. Their steel pan is played all over the world, outdoors to the beat of soca and calypso; indoors at stately concert halls, mesmerizing audiences with symphonies by some of the masters: Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach.
“I’m careful,” she says.
“About last night …” His tone has changed. It’s softer, warmer. “I meant what I said. I called to wish you good luck. With the book,” he clarifies quickly.
She is pleased he hasn’t forgotten. “I think I’ll stay home today,” she says.
“They haven’t beaten you down, have they?”
“I need to get the apartment ready for my parents,” she says. But she does feel beaten down. She had closed the book long before the telephone rang, Elizabeth Bennet’s cool defiance in the face of Darcy’s arrogance no longer boosting her confidence. She knows the story will end well: Elizabeth will see her error; Darcy will apologize; together they will ride into the sunset. This morning the happy ending is not enough to raise her spirits. She has been cornered. Paul says she must fight, but it is far too late. The die has been cast; Tanya Foster has made up her mind.
“Good idea,” Paul says. “In the final analysis, family is what counts.”
Family. Hers is so small she must do her best to preserve it. Grandparents on both sides dead, aunts and uncles in England, cousins she wouldn’t recognize if she met them in the street. She must make her parents welcome, do her best to ensure they will be comfortable.
She begins with the den—a second bedroom, the real estate agent claimed when she showed her the apartment. A bedroom fit for a child, she would agree, but Tony has left her, and she is thirty-nine, unlikely to have a child even in the unlikeliest chance she would find someone to marry again. She has made the child’s room into an office of sorts, shelves against the wall piled with books and manuscripts for work. A desk more neatly organized: inbox, outbox, a ceramic jar filled with pencils and pens, an electric pencil sharpener, a cordless phone on its base, a monitor on a stand, the computer on the floor next to a printer. Opposite the desk is a folded futon where she sits when she wants to be more comfortable. She has put a pillow and a thick quilt on the futon. Some nights she has fallen asleep there, her head on the pillow, the quilt drawn up to her neck. She opens the futon now. She will sleep here and let her parents have her bedroom.
She spends the day moving books from her bedroom into the den, washing the linens at the laundromat three blocks away, making the beds. She cleans the stove and refrigerator, mops the kitchen floor. The room facing the kitchen, which is painted off-white, serves as both dining room and living room. In the dining room are two chairs and a small table; in the living room, on either side of a glass-topped coffee table, are two brown leather armchairs and a matching leather couch with decorative pillows on either end. Colorful prints and posters on the wall are a perfect balance for the browns and beiges in the apartment. Anna dusts, she vacuums, she polishes. By late afternoon, her apartment is thoroughly clean. Her parents will arrive in six days, but tomorrow she must return to work and she will not have time to prepare her bedroom again, so tonight she will begin sleeping in the den. She makes one final inspection. Her apartment is attractive, better than most she has seen. She was foolish to panic at the thought of her parents staying here. Paula is right: they will be proud of her, or should be. She owns the apartment, and the neighborhood is fashionable. Or becoming fashionable.
At work the next day she calls Bess Milford. She tells her she has good news and bad news. The good news is that the salespeople are excited about her novel. They think it will sell well.
“And the bad news?” Bess Milford asks.
“You may not like the cover,” Anna says. Anna faxes the cover, and, as she predicted, Bess Milford blows up. “I thought writers had input about their covers!” she yells angrily into the phone. It is clear she means to implicate Anna.
Anna reminds her that she signed a contract giving the publisher the rights to market her novel.
“Aren’t you the bigwig at Equiano?” Bess Milford sneers. “Do something!”
Anna says she’ll try, but she’s not sure that whatever she does will make a difference.
“The cover is a lie,” Bess Milford says, her voice terse with indignation.
Anna knows her author is right but she also knows her salary is paid by the company that has decided on the cover for the novel. “It’s a poster, Bess,” she hears herself saying. “It’s an ad to draw readers to your novel.” Her words fall back on her ears. She is a hypocrite. She is trying to pacify Bess Milford with the very lie Tim Greene thought would mollify her. Anna had resented his patronizing solicitude and can imagine that Bess Milford resents hers too. Yet she does not want to raise her hopes. Tanya Foster makes the final decisions for the company; Anna cannot override her. She tells Bess Milford she will do what she can to change the cover. “Let’s see what happens,” she says.
Later she busies herself answering e-mails, avoiding contact with Tim. She knows he’s in the office. She hears the rustle of papers and the swishing of the wheels of his desk chair, back and forth in the cubicle adjoining her room. Her door is open and the sounds filter in. What work can he be doing? Anna does not know. He is an assistant editor assigned to her but she has not yet given him books to edit.
Tanya calls. She wants to see Anna in her office. She does not say why. Anna hangs up the phone and walks down the corridor.
“Sit, sit.” Tanya indicates the chair facing her desk and gets straight to the point. “I’ve given Raine’s books to Tim.”
Anna sits down and composes herself. She folds her hands tightly on her lap.
“I thought you’d like that. I know how you feel about Raine’s books.”
Books like Raine’s are not the ones she wants to edit, but books like Raine’s are the ones that pay her salary.
“I know you didn’t like editing her books,” Tanya continues when Anna does not respond.
Anna crosses her legs. “What about B. Benton?”
“I’ve given B. Benton to Tim also,” Tanya says. “Tim has a feel for those books, if you know what I mean.”
Anna tells her that she does not know what she means.
“He’s African American,” Tanya says.
“And?”
“And you are from the Caribbean.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Tim understands African American readers. He knows what they want.”
“And what is that?” Anna asks.
“I read the bottom line, Anna. That’s all. People tell me what they want; I don’t ask them what they want. The sales numbers give me all I need to know. Here, here.” She rifles through a stack of papers on her desk as if searching for proof, for the report on sales figures.
“You don’t have to bother,” Anna says. “I read the sales report.”
Tanya lays her hand flat on top of the papers and fixes her eyes on Anna. “You’re not upset, are you?” She wrinkles her forehead as if perplexed. “Because I thought …” Her voice drifts.
Anna is sure she is feigning bewilderment. She decides to ask the question that has troubled her since Tim arrived.
“Is Tim Greene to be my assistant editor or yours?”
“We work for the same company, Anna,” Tanya says, smoothing back the furrows on her forehead. “There’s no yours and mine. There’s only what’s best for the company.”
“For Windsor or for Equiano?”
“Anna, Anna,” Tanya coos.
“Equiano is my responsibility,” Anna says.
“And I am the publisher of Windsor. Equiano is an imprint of Windsor. I don’t think I need to remind you of that, do I?”
“So that is it?”
“You surprise me, Anna. I thought this would be what you’d want.”
“I want to publish more literary fiction, but that does not mean—”
“But that does not mean what, Anna? Are you saying you want us to publish more novels like Raine’s?”
“I’m aware those books keep us afloat,” Anna says.
“More than afloat,” Tanya says sternly.
“I’m aware they are profitable.” Anna cools down her tone.
“Good, good. Then you understand.” Tanya stands up. “If you take your emotions out of this, Anna, you’ll see this is a win-win for both of us. Tim knows the territory; he has a feel for the kind of books Raine and Benton write. He’ll make money for the company. It will be good for you and for me. I’ll have a better bottom line and you will have a better bottom line. Think it over. You’ll see how this makes sense.” She comes around her desk and places a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Look, I didn’t mean to upstage you or usurp your authority or anything like that by speaking to Tim. It’s just that I thought it would be better if the assignment came from me. It wasn’t easy getting Tim to leave his company for us. I wanted him to know we appreciate having him here.”
An apology. Anna is not convinced it is sincere. Even if she suppresses her emotions, the fact remains that twice Tanya has bypassed her and made decisions that should have been hers to make.
“You are still in charge, Anna,” Tanya says as if reading Anna’s mind. “I’ve made that clear to Tim. You have to approve the final edits. No manuscript from Equiano goes to the printer without your approval.” Her hand remains resting on Anna’s shoulder; she squeezes it playfully. “This will be good for you, Anna. You’ll have more time to concentrate on what you enjoy. You’ll like Tim, you’ll see. He’ll expand your list. Equiano is going to get even bigger.”
Back in her office, Anna e-mails Paula who responds right away. She’ll come over to her apartment after work. They’ll sort this thing out.
What Paula notices first is Anna’s tan. “God, I miss the sun,” she says, flopping down on the couch. “Look at you. You’re golden brown.”
Anna has taken off her workday suit and changed into blue jeans and a white T-shirt. The bright whiteness of the T-shirt is a strong contrast to her sunburnt skin. “And you are warm chocolate,” Anna says.
Paula grins. She is already dressed for fall in an olivegreen cardigan and matching full skirt which she pulls tightly around her large though shapely thighs. Anna wishes Paula would go on the diet that worked for her, but Paula dismisses the idea. She has one life to live, she says, and she won’t deny herself the pleasure of good food. She has been denied other pleasures. She means sex, she means a meaningful relationship with a man, but Anna thinks Paula has given up too soon. Thirty-nine is not old, she tells her. Thirty-nine is ancient in the dating game, Paula responds, and quotes a Harvard study. “A woman my age has less than a 3 percent chance of finding a husband,” she says.
Anna does not give up. Paula is a curvy woman. There are men who like curvy women.
“In Africa,” Paula says. They both burst out laughing.
“Back home too,” Anna says.
Home. They are no longer laughing.
Now Paula surveys the living room. “Everything here is virtually sparkling. The parents?”
“I’m getting ready,” Anna says.
“Looks like your mother’s house.”
“And ten times smaller.”
“You have her taste. There’s nothing in here she won’t love.”
It is true; her taste in decorating has not strayed far from her mother’s. Her style is conservative and muted, the colors in her living room a palate of earth tones: taupes, deep browns, beiges, off-whites. Even the prints on the wall are understated: watercolors by Jackie Hinkson, her favorite artist, of the sea and the mountains at dawn, fishermen pulling in seines on the beach at the end of the day. There is one exception. It is a painting of La Diablesse by Boscoe Holder, the colors intense, smoldering. But her mother would approve of this one too. She has the original in her living room.
While Anna puts on the kettle for tea, fills a bowl with brown sugar and the creamer with evaporated milk, they talk about her plans to take her mother to the hospital. Paula recommends a car service that she swears by, but Anna says that won’t be necessary, since Paul has offered to arrange for a car to bring her mother to the hospital.
“Paul?”
“Dr. Bishop,” Anna says, and brings cups, saucers, and cutlery to the cocktail table.
“So he’s Paul?”
“The son of a family friend. My father worked closely with his father years ago.”
“I like him already. Paul, the male counterpart to my name. You have chosen well, Anna.”
“Don’t.” Anna wags her finger at her friend and returns to the kitchen.
“So I take it this Paul is not simply the doctor who will do your mother’s surgery.”
“I told you who he is,” Anna says. She drops two tea bags in a teapot and fills it with boiling water from the kettle.
“But you didn’t tell me he’s Paul.”
“Black cake.” Anna returns with a tray bearing the teapot, a cake, two plates, and two forks.
“Black cake!” Paula is immediately distracted.
“My mother’s helper made it. Here, try it.” Anna puts a forkful in Paula’s mouth.
“My God, it’s practically dripping with alcohol.”
Lydia, her mother’s helper, promised it would be. She had soaked the fruit in rum and cherry brandy for weeks before she folded it into the cake mixture.
For the second time Paula says, “I miss the sun. I miss all this.” She takes the fork from Anna’s hand and pulls apart another piece of cake. The sounds that come out of her mouth when it reaches her taste buds are sounds of pure, unadulterated pleasure. She sighs. “Why are we here, Anna? Why?”
“Because we are here,” Anna responds.
Few immigrants will open the Pandora’s box of the whys—why they left behind familiar lands, familiar faces. They ride the waves of nostalgia, hoping they will not last. There is the road ahead; America promises rich rewards if they are patient, if they work hard. It’s futile, a waste of precious time, to look back.
“Come, sit next to me,” Paula says, and she makes space for Anna on the couch. “Let’s hear what happened today at work. Tell me everything.”
But Anna takes the armchair. She does not want to be coddled; she does not want Paula to agree with her just because they are friends. She wants her to be objective, to support her because she is right: Tanya Foster will damage Bess Milford’s novel with the sexually explicit cover she has approved.
“The guys in the art department think I’m an old fuddyduddy,” she says. “They think I don’t know anything about what people want to read. They think their youth gives them special access to the times. But the times are constantly changing, constantly evolving. If you are a slave to the times, you’ll always be playing catch up. Styles come and go. What’s trendy today is already on its way out, another trend pushing behind it to take its place. But human nature is human nature. That has not changed. All of us are flawed; all of us have the same basic desires, needs, fears. Between birth and death our lives are a constant struggle to stay alive. A novel about our human condition, regardless of the color or ethnicity of the characters, is one that will last.”
Paula concentrates on the cake she is eating and listens without interruption. Anna tells her about Rita, whose only desire seems to be to figure out what Tanya wants and give it to her. She says Tanya tried to apologize. “As if she could pacify me. This morning she told me that I’ll see. That it will be a win-win situation for both of us.” Anna leaves Tim Greene for last, saying simply that he’s a new assistant editor assigned to her. He won’t take the chance of disagreeing with the publisher of the company who hired him.
“What exactly did he say?” Paula sits forward on the couch.
“He said a book cover is a postcard.”
“Did Tanya agree?”
“She informed me that Tim Greene is African American.”
“Oh?”
“As if I couldn’t see that. More tea?”
Paula nods.
Anna rises and walks toward the kitchen, taking the teapot with her. Almost there, she turns back abruptly. “I haven’t told you everything. Tanya has given Raine and Benton’s books to Tim Greene. She says I’ll have the final approval, but I know she says that just to keep me quiet. Tim Greene will make all the decisions on those books, I’m sure of it.”
“That should be okay by you, right?” Paula knows Anna’s views on the books Raine and Benton write.
Anna hugs the teapot to her chest. “They are our best sellers,” she says.
“But not the books you want to publish.”
“Tanya says Tim Greene knows what African American readers want. She says he’ll make money for the company.”
Paula puts down her plate with the cake. “You understand what she’s really saying, don’t you, Anna?” she asks gently.
Anna does not turn around from the stove. “I brought back some tamarind balls too. Would you like some?”
“But you must, Anna,” Paula insists. “You have to understand that while we may have passports, politicians are not talking about us when they talk about real Americans.
We are not on their radar screen. Never forget that, Anna.”
The week passes uneventfully, or at least without the major upheavals or confrontations that Anna certainly thought possible when she informs Bess Milford that the final decision on the cover for her novel has been made. Bess says simply, “The more things change …”
She does not finish the sentence but Anna knows the ending well: the more they stay the same.
The despair in Bess’s voice cuts a wound in Anna’s heart. Months ago, when Anna called with the good news that Equiano would make an offer for her novel, Bess Milford was beside herself with joy. “This is the best day of my life thanks to you.” Anna felt like a fairy godmother then. “Things are different now for writers like me,” Bess had said, “because there are black editors in charge like you.” And what difference had that made? It’s all business, according to Tanya Foster. Race has nothing to do with business; the bottom line alone is what counts.
For the most part, Tim Greene stays out of her way. Anna continues to hear noises drifting out of his cubicle: papers shuffling back and forth, the thud of something larger hitting the floor, the computer keyboard tapping furiously, sometimes low murmurings when he speaks on the phone, sometimes outright laughter. Once or twice he pops his head into her office to apologize. “Sorry, boss,” he says. “Old friend with a joke not fit for ladies’ ears.”
He continues to address her as boss: Boss, I’m going out for lunch. Can I get you anything? Boss, let me take that for you, as he reaches for a stack of manuscript papers she is carrying. Boss, nice morning! Never does he ask her a question about work, not a word about the books assigned to him. He never mentions Raine, he never mentions Benton. Magically, overnight—for Anna is sure it was at night, when she had left the office—their manuscripts disappeared from her shelves. She had almost finished editing Raine’s manuscript and is sure Tim Greene has seen her blue pencil markings. Either he disagrees with the changes she recommends, or he means to ignore her opinion completely. But he is always polite to her; always greets her with a smile. When she says, “You don’t have to call me boss,” he smiles coyly and replies, “But you are my boss, boss.”
He continues to wear suits to work. Sometimes he wears a sports jacket, but whatever he wears is always in style, from the fashion pages of GQ magazine. He changes the color of his shirts from one day to the next—white, then pale yellow, blue, and pink. Always they are carefully matched with designer ties.
Anna spots him one day having lunch in a café with a man equally decked out in sartorial splendor. They are sitting next to the window. She is walking down the street to a nearby deli. He is looking in her direction. She waves, but he does not wave back.
“Gay,” Paula speculates, but Anna saw when he touched his friend’s arm that he was not looking in her direction at all. He was looking at a young woman, half her age, strutting across the street. She was wearing a tightfitting sweater and a miniskirt. Her four-inch spike-heeled black boots reached up to her thighs.
A couple of days later Anna sees him again with the same man, and again Tim Greene does not notice her when she passes by. This time he and the man are huddled over a stack of papers, what seems to her like a manuscript.
The receptionist on the ground floor of the building tells Anna that Tim Greene is the last to leave the office. He says twice that week Tim Greene left the building as late as ten o’clock.
“Watch out for that one,” Paula says to Anna.