Because Rose and I had become so close, I didn’t think it was right for me to keep editing her. I asked Karl if he could take over that duty, and he did. He became our editor, then, in more ways than one: he became a force shaping the myth we were building.
Lock up your interns, he said to us one night, after watching the two of us arrive late to a party and saunter up to the bar where he’d been waiting.
Said Rose: Marry us, Karl.
I am a Mormon, he said. I mean, was.
We do love you, I said. We’ll never be able to work for anyone else. You’ve ruined us, with your good manners and your work ethic and your inspiringly fascistic insistence on everyone taking a lunch hour.
I think you two have ruined me, he said.
I know we did, I said.
Who else is going to ask you every last thing about your three sisters and your two brothers? Rose said. Who else is going to care so deeply about where you went to breakfast after temple?
Karl, smiling, drinking his drink.
On another night, Rose and me telling Karl about a band he had to reconsider. In the beginning they were a runty, snotty amalgam of influences having yet to find a true aim other than taking its lead singer’s ADD out for a walk, I said, but now it’s like they understand that their real gifts lay in their ability to—
Write elegant, said Rose, but still somehow majestically— spastic?—songs.
Yes! I said.
I hate that guy’s hair, said Karl.
Why? I said. Because he has a lot of it?
False prophets, he said. You two know better than that.
The problem of male glamour, said Rose, who was now talking to herself.
Are we being patronized? I said. But secretly enjoying it because it felt like protection, which is to say a desire to possess, which meant something like love could be lurking about.
Not if you stay away from that guy.
What do you know? I said, now suspicious. What does Tracy know?
Karl looked weary in a way that suggested he wanted to remind us that he didn’t have to know something to know something.
If there is no story here about Rose or me getting gloriously mixed up with some lead singer or drummer or bassist, it is because we were deathly afraid of looking like groupies, like hangers-on, like ghouls from the sixties running around in crocheted vests and hot pants looking for a bus, any bus, where’s the bus, back to San Francisco. Like women who didn’t know how to dissect a song, an album, a moment, a movement. Who didn’t know how to properly appreciate or despise or defend or contextualize what they were listening to. Our love for music was pure, even when sex had something to do with it—which wasn’t often, given our time and place and personal preferences—and we needed it to remain pure because, we sensed, we were going to need this love for the rest of our lives, and we did not want to risk having this escape route to contemplation and release cut off because we’d gotten too close to the very flawed, possibly psychotic, people who created it. And mortals like Karl were beautiful enough.
Later, at some quarter to two in the morning, after the three of us had realized that we’d all gone to state schools, and we’d all been spanked with a wooden spoon or bare hands or both, and we’d all been told never to talk with food in our mouths or put our elbows on tables, and realized that our friends were our friends because they’d been similarly abused, and yet here we all were, drinking and writing in New York City right alongside all the Ivy Leaguers, Karl said: We’re the kids they never saw coming.
Give us some nicknames, said Rose. On a Wednesday. March, 9:30 or thereabouts. In London, the staff of the magazine flown over for a festival. The three of us in a pub near Oxford Circus whose floor was covered with Astroturf. She and I on one side of a booth and Karl on the other.
You, he said, pointing his left index finger at Rose, are Rose of Thorndike Hall.
And you, he said, pointing his right index finger at me, are Charlotte of Lavender Lake.
Rose laughed and I clapped my hands together in delight. Explicate! she said.
You want every last thing explained, Rose. But his smile made it clear that there was nowhere he’d rather be, nothing else he’d rather be doing. On a Wednesday. In March. In 1999.
He said he’d remembered the titles of books we’d told him we’d read as girls—because they were the titles of the books his sisters stuffed into the sides of van doors to read on drives out to Nevada campsites. Remembered the titles’ many iterations of girl and geographical root. Rose of Thorndike Hall, then, because she was prickly and dramatically forbidding, as a house with that name would be, and the grand staircase that was her soul climbed impossibly, strikingly high; Charlotte of Lavender Lake because, like the Gowanus Canal, you had no idea what on earth was at the bottom of it, and for how long it had been there.
Mysterious depths, you see, he said.
Rose’s chagrin blew through the booth like a draft from the street—she thought Karl had bestowed just a bit more poetry on me, I guessed. I struggled to find a joke to make.
Rose, said Karl.
She tucked her head down and said Okay, okay, without looking at him, and I knew, I could tell, that they had exchanged these kinds of words before, in even darker, quieter rooms, their clothes no doubt on the floor, and felt my own chagrin start to kick up within me.
Now you, I said to Karl, are the boy with the thorn in his side.
He looked surprised. As if he knew I was capable of a joke—but not a true jab, not a true dig. Then he recovered.
Not very original, he said.
Rose laughed. But she’s right, she said.
Otherwise, she and I were a cyclone of words attempting to destroy all specious nonsense with our withering sarcasm, and Karl was a house on the ground with two steady lights on refusing to be carried away by our hoarse demands. A dog in a yard one county down who kept at his bone while he watched us splintering the world away with our anger.
You two are crazy, he’d say, but not without affection.
When Rose left tables or booths to get second or third rounds, I kept talking out of some nervousness at being left alone with the thing I wanted but should not have—and out of some shame, as my big fat suburban parking lot mouth, crammed on a Saturday with cars, encroached upon Karl’s wide-open spaces of Western, self-possessed silence.
Your eyes talk, too, you know, he said, that night in London.
I looked away, into the crowd.
I’d almost forgotten that I’d come to New York to write. I used to joke with Rose that she had Silenced My Voice, and she used to say Don’t joke about that, I was a monster—but on the other hand I was having too much fun exhausting myself from staying out late, from waitressing, from telling Rose everything that had happened in my life until the day I’d met her, from listening to Rose tell me everything that had happened in her life until the day she’d met me, and I’d forgotten that a piece of mine was finally going to run. On a website that many of us read and had started to think was more important than the Voice. It had been written so long ago it meant nothing to me; when I looked at the final version on the screen my eyes glazed over with lack of interest. Am I stupid? I asked myself. These thoughts seem stupid.
But Rose didn’t think so. Why didn’t you tell me? she said, standing at my desk one Monday morning, holding up a printout.
I don’t self-promote. Perhaps I was a little frosty when I said it.
Rose rolled her eyes. I have some comments. Do you want them?
Yes! I said. Please. And now I could make everything up to her by being in debt to her red pen. Which in Rose’s case, and my case, was always purple, because we both thought that red screamed Idiot! too loudly.
Tracy, walking by, heard Rose and stopped. Yeah, I read that thing of yours, too. What are you doing still sitting here? Get a better job.
Rose, staring at Tracy. Tracy, ignoring Rose.
I feel like your friend is judging me, Tracy said, nodding to the cover of This Year’s Model, which I had propped up on my desk behind my computer.
He is, I said.
Get a better job, she said, and walked off.
You’ve given this to Karl? said Rose.
No. I said I don’t self-promote. Also—
Yes?
When I interviewed for your job he told me my writing wasn’t that strong.
Karl! Rose rolled her eyes again.
Who knows what that was about, but I—
That was twelve months ago, she said. Do it.
I dropped that piece in his inbox with a note. Stood at the copier with the magazine after everyone had gone for the day, stapled the two pages together, sat at my desk in lamplight with black Precise V5 in paralyzed hand. I spent thirty minutes attempting seven disastrous notes on hot pink Post-its—
Drink me
A little night music
From the desk of Henrietta Stackpole
From the desk of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
From the desk of the frayed edges of Patti Smith’s black satin necktie
Here’s one more from your radio sweetheart
Hello carnage my old friend. Love, Nancy Spungen
—before I settled on four idiotic words: Hot off the presses. I dropped it in Karl’s inbox and over the next few days watched as a pile of magazines, books, seven-inches, and CDs grew on top of it.
After two weeks went by, I knocked on his office door, entered, and asked if he had read what I’d written.
Why do you need my approval? he said.
I turned red.
You don’t need my approval to be what you’re going to be, he said. You need to be the one believing in yourself. You can’t ask other people to do it for you.
Did you not like what I wrote?
That’s not it.
Is it because it was mediocre?
No. You know it wasn’t mediocre. But I thought it was—sentimental.
The fluorescent light, the stained ceiling tiles, Karl’s black button-down shirt, the gray industrial carpet, the very fake and very dark wood grain of his desktop, the poster of Bob Dylan. I can still see that office, even remember what the weather was like outside, even though the office had no windows. Standing in that office I felt shame—a shame I felt often enough on my own—for being a woman mainly interested in the lives of bygone women. I was no better than a collector of shells. Or Beatles paraphernalia. Even worse: I was looking in a mirror for my reflection.
Is there anything you love? I said.
That’s dramatic, he said. What does it matter what I think? Why should it matter, if you liked it?
I never know if I like it. I can only like it once I hear that someone else does. I only know that I like doing it.
Then that should be enough, he said.
It isn’t. I stared at him.
You’re going to have a lot of trouble if you can’t get that sorted, he said.
You’re being difficult and I don’t know why, I said, and walked out of his office.
Into the ladies’ room, where I locked myself in a stall and cried. Then I went back to my desk, grabbed my things, found Rose, and told her we were going for a drink. It was 3:15, according to Rose’s computer screen.
When I told Rose what had happened, in the bleached and ancient Irish bar that sat across the street from the office, she became gloriously indignant for a good half hour—so indignant I felt compelled to play devil’s advocate. But she would not listen.
Fuck Karl, she said. Fuck him. It was not eloquent or wise, but she drove those words into the ground with such conviction that I let it become a pole I could string a flag up.
I wrote at night and on weekends. I wrote until two, three, four, five in the morning because I wanted to make Karl stand up and applaud. Because I wanted him to stand up and say that he was in love with me but could not admit it. I wrote for Karl the way some girls might have thrown him on a bed. I wrote to make sure I was real.
Soon I was assigned a piece in The New York Times Book Review. An essay on the back page. The paper I’d spent high school Sunday nights in summer reading, the paper I’d pick up on my way into my waitressing job and read at the counter when it was slow. The cooks—well, one cook in particular—used to tease me about the book review. Because he had a tattoo crawling across his right knuckles, and I was the only college girl among the waitresses. The only nice girl, as the other waitresses liked to say.
Whaddya got there, Marian Librarian? the cook would say. Or Whaddya got there, Snow White? While pouring himself some coffee. He liked it burnt, in a thirty-two-ounce Styrofoam cup, and I made it my job to always keep the pots fresh, just to antagonize him. Kevin. Large and pink and ruddy and ponytailed. Falstaff with a pack-a-day habit.
The Scholastic book order form, I’d say, turning the pages, never looking up.
He’d tear open three packets of sugar, toss them in. You ever do a three-way? he’d say. You ever see a porno? You ever sit too long on a washing machine? You ever do it in a McDonald’s bathroom? I could hear him smiling through the words.
When I do, Kevin, I’d say, I’ll call collect to let you know. Or: Here’s a fun fact, Kevin: the manager likes me way more than he likes you. And: I swear to God, Kevin. Stop being a dick, Kevin. Still not looking up from the pages. Then he’d get a can of whipped cream out of one of the refrigerators under the counter and shoot it into the cup.
You know I’m just busting your chops, Snow White. Or Marian Librarian. Laura Ingalls. Lady Di. My endgame here is to see you crack.
He never screwed up my orders, so I knew he didn’t mind me too much.
Go bust someone else’s, please.
As you wish, he’d say, and go out back to smoke.
And then I’d wonder if I shouldn’t just read the Atlantic City Press at the counter just to avoid the hassle.
Or, as my grandmother used to say to my mother and my aunts and my cousins and me whenever we talked back: Who do you think you are?
Rose’s grandmother used to say the same thing to Rose’s mother, and Rose’s mother, when the time had come, turned around and said it to Rose.
I gave Rose the piece for the Times the morning before I had to turn it in. I had never given her my writing to edit before; it had always been the other way around. She was on deadline herself, and I didn’t hear back from her until 10:30 that Sunday night, which made me spend the whole day taking long walks between anxious checks of my answering machine, and, as we paced our bedrooms with our cordless phones and looked out at the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building from different perspectives, that building the center of a clock’s face and our apartments at ten and half past, respectively, both of our roommates asleep because they did not have better things to do, she told me I was dancing around my most important and interesting thoughts.
I can feel you not saying what you need to say because you’re afraid to, because you think it’s stupid. But just say it. Because nine times out of ten your stupid is someone else’s I-wish-I’d-figured-out-how-to-say-that.
Anne Frank? I said, relieved that I didn’t have to rewrite the whole damn thing, just elaborate in spots.
Yes. We don’t want to be trivial here, but yes, Anne Frank. What would she say if she knew we were wasting our time worrying about what others would think of our thoughts? This is why Karl thought your writing was weak, way back when, she said. You thought he meant you didn’t have style, but it’s that you have too much of it. You describe more than you think. These sentences are like, oh, what’s the word, right, strongboxes. I can hear the things you want to say rattling around in them, but you have to let them out. Let them out!
She went on to point out every place I knew I’d stalled and punted. Circumspected and headed for the too-elaborate metaphor.
So all you have to do—and here we both laughed—is just tell me what you think. Tell me! Rose Pellegrino. Not whatever asshat, as Tracy would say, is paying you.
I sat down at my computer and finished at three in the morning. From then on, whenever I found myself stalled and squirming, I heard Rose’s voice telling me to just write what I meant, and saw that I could. Mostly.
The Times editor was impressed, she told me, because I had written to word count exactly and, not only that, turned it in on time, and, not only that, she said, I had written something she didn’t want to do a blessed thing to.
That’s right, I said to myself but did not say to her, I am not messing around. This is life or death with me. With me you get all of the Harvard brain at a quarter of the price. With me you get someone with everything to prove and everything to lose. With me you get all of the resentment but consequently all of the fire. And by extension what the hell, I continued to myself but did not say to her, is everyone else up to, if you’re so impressed by me doing exactly what the job requires? Who is blowing this off and screwing it up as if their life did not depend on it?
I wrote three more times for that editor until she informed me that they were giving the back page over to the daughter of a famous writer.
My sense here is that I may be the better writer, I said. Is that correct?
It’s completely unnecessary to say out loud what the both of us already know, said the editor. She had never sounded this impatient.
And why is that? I asked the editor, who then hung up on me.
Let’s figure out where this girl lives and set fire to her, Rose said, when I informed her of this development. Because obviously writing circles around her isn’t doing the trick.
The night before that first essay appeared, walking back to the train so late on a Saturday night it was morning, Rose and I spotted a truck delivering the Times to a bodega in the East Village. The radio in the cab of that parked truck had started to play Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” while its driver unloaded it.
No, I said, watching the papers pile up on their bench as the saxophone and piano swung punches at each other in the night-on-cusp-of-day.
Yes, said Rose, reverentially and giddily, as if life would never again send such a comet of serendipity through our skies.
I wish I had been able to be content with traveling just that distance, with making it just that far: standing in New York City under the stars, staring at your name in print in a publication that you respected, in a font of record, next to a friend who was somehow even more excited and impressed than you were about your achievement, a friend who knew just how much luck, determination, sacrifice, and forbearance of arbitrarily dished-out nonsense perfumed the ink that was staining your hands.
I asked the driver if I could have a copy of the paper, and he tossed one my way.
Nice catch, he said.
I played softball, I said. He needed to know he wasn’t talking to some trust-fund princess.
She’s in there, Rose said to the driver, as he stacked more papers on the bench. I elbowed and shushed her. My friend has a piece in there.
We were ignored, and rightly so. We huddled together under the awning of the bodega, stood in blinding fluorescent light, gloried in the scent of bacon coming from the grill inside, and looked at my words, which took up a whole page. I could not read what I had written. I glanced at the space the words occupied, pleased at the expanse of it, pleased to see my name, my thoughts, in the familiar typeface, and then closed the review. We went in to the store to pay and Rose—I almost wrote my sister—said to the man behind the counter, My friend has a piece in the paper.
Oh! The man behind the counter smiled. Take it! For free!
No! I said.
Yes! he said.
If it happens to one of us, it happens to both of us, said Rose, as we walked out of the bodega.
I used to think that Rose must have uttered a magic spell when she uttered those words, because a month later it was her name that appeared in the paper of record. In the Sunday Arts and Leisure section. She rewrote it eleven times in two weeks, and I drank as much coffee and slept as little as Rose did while she worked on it. She wanted to send me every draft, and she tended to send them at one in the morning.
You’d be a good mother, she said, over the phone at three in the morning, draft five, as I typed, rewriting one of her sentences, cordless to shoulder, and watched the B41, lit from within like a glowworm, float down Flatbush.
Rose always slept late, so I headed out that Sunday morning and bought three copies—two for her and one for her mother. My arms felt heavy with flowers as I walked to meet her at Tom’s on Washington Avenue, where we settled in to omelets as large and misshapen as maps of the United States on our plates, Western for me, Mexican for Rose, and we never deviated from this order, even though we always talked about it, and complained to each other about not being brave enough to court disappointment even in this small way, but this was a ritual as steadying as Mass, so why deviate from coffee in thick white mugs; rye toast glistening with butter; scratched tin forks, sometimes missing tines; buttered, crumpled napkins; swipes of butter smeared on the front page; hot sauce on hash browns. The clatter of plenty for $7.95.
Rose in a red-checked housecoat with nearly all of her curls tucked in a green and orange jungle-printed turban she’d started wearing because she’d seen an ancient receptionist at Condé Nast sporting one; me in pigtails, cuffed jeans, my red Pumas, and a gray sweatshirt that falsely identified me as a counselor for Camp Longhorn at Inks Lake in Texas. I called her look Auntie Mame Gone South in More Ways Than One; she called mine Landlocked and Loaded Pippi Longstocking.
You believe in me, she said. I used to think only my grandmother did.
Rose, I’ll probably believe in you more than I’ll ever believe in myself. You and New York! That’s probably all I’ll ever believe in.
Rose grabbed my hand across the table with a theatrical flourish, lowered her voice to a whisper, and, as the waitress poured us more coffee, and, as if she were parched and had just crossed a desert, croaked out the words Don’t ever leave me.