33.
Jaime finished her novel in the hottest part of August, after three days of clear blue sky and rising temperature. Naked except for white cotton underpants, she sat at her desk with Kira sleeping fitfully beside the desk in her crib. She typed the final words, hesitated a moment, looked at her watch, then typed the end. 4:23 a.m., August 21, 1962. She put the fresh pages with the older ones and hefted the whole manuscript. It couldn’t be finished. But it was. Sweat ran down her sides. She considered waking Charlie and decided against it. She wasn’t sleepy. The humidity had been what got her working nights, and now the humidity seemed to have finished her book for her. All that was left was to title it, add a dedication, and send it off.
She went out into the kitchen. At least she could celebrate with a morning cup of tea. Isis sprawled sleeping on the kitchen table, such a little cat, even stretched out. Jaime stroked the cat’s belly and Isis woke, yawned and stretched even more. Dick Dubonet brought her back because he said the cat reminded him of Louis. Poor Dick Dubonet. And poor Charlie. Poor all of them, she’d been the one to write a book. It sat in the next room innocently, like a time bomb. The current title, the working title, was Memories of My Father. By Jaime Froward. But it wasn’t just about her father, it hadn’t been for a long time. It was about her whole family and their life on Washington Street. It was a memory, a love poem, a recognition. She tried to think of a better title. Song of My Father. No. Sounded used. A Family Memory. Yes, but. The kettle whistled and she poured hot water into her mug. Charlie came into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed, wearing nothing.
“It’s awfully early,” she said.
“I can’t sleep either.” He threw a teabag into his big green mug and went to the stove. Jaime watched his back. Charlie had a beautiful behind, she decided for the hundredth time. For a guy. Nice big square butt, not too big, not too square, just a good solid working butt. “I finished my novel,” she said to his butt.
Charlie turned easily, holding his mug, the Lipton’s tag hanging out, steam rising from the surface. “Great,” he said easily. “What’s it called?” He sat opposite her. The cat got up and arched her back in a yawn, then dropped off the table and walked out the open back door, tail high.
“I don’t know yet.” They had a rule never to talk about each other’s work. This conversation was ground-breaking. Of course she was done, it was all right.
“What’s it about?” He rubbed his face and grinned at her. “I’m taking it awfully well, aren’t I? Really. What’s it about?”
She told him. Just scenes from their life on Washington Street. An affectionate family portrait. Nothing literary, nothing for the ages, just a little book about some ordinary people whose life was gone now.
“Why don’t you call it Washington Street?”
“Perfect,” Jaime said, and it was. She went into her office and typed the words on a blank sheet. It looked just fine.
Charlie came in and picked up the manuscript, 309 pages, and weighed it in his hand. “Yep, it’s a novel,” he said, still curiously detached. “When can I read it?”
“Let me get it retyped first.” She typed well enough, but not perfectly, and she wanted the manuscript to be perfect when she sent it to New York.
Back out in the kitchen they sat at the table and sipped their tea as the sun came up, promising another smothering heat. What would she do with her day? Or at night, when she couldn’t sleep? Her novel had been her anchor, and now it was gone. All the pleasure of finishing, of knowing she was capable of writing a whole book, was submerged under this sense of loss. And she’d been working on the novel, let’s see, only three months and some days. Charlie had been working on his novel for years, she didn’t know exactly how many, but years and years. It seemed unfair. Charlie sat there, pretending to listen to the music on the radio, nodding his head, playing with his teabag, probably stabbed through the heart.
They should celebrate by making love, she knew. But it was so hot, and Charlie probably didn’t feel much like it.
“I’m going to shower,” she said, and stood up. Charlie just winked at her and said, “Go ahead and use all the hot water,” feeble joke, but he didn’t follow her into the bedroom or the shower. Getting cold and wet was some relief. What was she to do with the manuscript? Submit it cold, over the transom? Submit it cold to agents? Call Walter Van Tilburg Clark and ask his help? She decided against it. Time to get out of the bush leagues and into the majors. She didn’t want help, she was going to do this all on her own. At this moment Charlie came into the bathroom and pulled open the glass door, a big lewd grin on his face as he stepped in and joined her under the chilling water.
After breakfast that morning they both worked in the garden while Kira played in her playpen on the back porch out of the sun. They had rows of sweet peas, carrots, beets, zucchini squash, a melon patch, and two rows of corn five feet tall and growing. The marijuana crop hadn’t worked out. That which hadn’t been crushed was eaten by forest animals. Not deer. Jaime had to ask one of the neighbors why there were no deer in the area. It seemed perfect for deer. The neighbor laughed. “Up here,” he said, “we eat deer.” So maybe the rabbits were eating the marijuana. They certainly acted strangely enough. Almost every night at dusk, if it wasn’t raining too hard, the little rabbits would come out of the woods to play at the far end of the clearing behind their house. A rabbit would be sitting there hunched up nibbling a bit of clover, then for no reason suddenly jump straight up in the air, somersaulting and landing on its feet, still chewing as if nothing had happened. Kira would scream with pleasure, but it didn’t seem to scare the rabbits.
Jaime had to admit, even as the sweat stuck her tee shirt to her body, she was falling in love with Oregon. So was her mother, who’d found a boyfriend at the Oregonian, a sportswriter. If she married this guy, then Charlie and Jaime could rent out the little apartment behind the garage to Stan Winger, and get him out of that tenement. She worried about Stan. He seemed happy only when he was here, being part of the family. The look in his eyes when he had to go home broke Jaime’s heart. Poor guy, writing away at his pulp stories. Trying to better himself after a life of nothing good. Better to have him here. Maybe he could get a job. Jaime knew he made his living in some way nobody would talk about. She feared that one day he would be arrested and just disappear into prison. Horrible. Strange and silent as he was, Jaime liked Stan a lot. And he obviously worshiped her, though he was even more obviously in love with Linda McNeill. But it was a poet’s love, an unrequited love. She wasn’t sure Stan would always be satisfied with love from afar, but then Dick and Linda’s relationship seemed under a strain after Linda’s son left. Dick was getting autocratic, issuing orders to Linda in a tone nobody liked. Linda, instead of being defiant or funny about it, just obeyed, looking sullen. They were doomed, Jaime decided. Maybe little Stan had a shot.
She pulled off her cotton gloves and wiped her face. She and Charlie had been on their knees digging weeds. She glanced at the porch to see if Kira was all right and saw Dick Dubonet in the shade in a white tee and jeans. He waved and she waved back, even though she didn’t really want company. She was still waiting for Charlie to explode.
“Wanna do some weeding?” she cried out to Dick.
“No thanks,” he said in his deep sexy voice. He pulled his nose and said, “I’ve come for my cat.”
Jaime came up on the porch. Charlie kept weeding.
“I made a mistake, bringing Isis back. I miss her. Linda misses her. Can we please have her back?”
Isis was in the woods somewhere. Dick grimly walked through the trees, calling out, “Isis . . . Isis . . .” Jaime watched him from the porch. She didn’t want him to have the cat. The cat had been given to the child. But she couldn’t refuse Dick. He was too pathetic. He’d lost his child, given away his cat, and now he was about to lose his woman. As far as Jaime knew he hadn’t published anything in a long time, and according to Marty Greenberg he was desperate. “He keeps writing these shitty Playboy-type stories. No wonder nobody will print him. The stories have Playboy written all over them. Which of course Playboy would hate. So the man’s in a hole.”
Jaime fixed lunch and set a place for Dick but he didn’t show up. It wasn’t until three in the afternoon that he emerged from the woods, defeated. “Something’s happened to her,” he said, and sat at the table. Charlie had gone to the store, taking Kira with him, and Jaime had nothing to do. Normally she’d spend this precious time writing. Dick sat opposite her, sweat and dirt on his face. He looked bad. An emotional man, despite his macho pose.
“She’ll be fine,” Jaime said. She got two beers from the refrigerator. “She spends half her life in that jungle back there. And every time we let Kira loose she starts for the woods.”
“How’s your book coming?”
“I finished it,” she said. Into his blank stare she added, “I still have to go over it, you know, get it typed.”
“How long is it?”
“Oh, it’s short,” she said, to appease him. “Only about three hundred pages.”
“Well, I think that’s great news,” he said, although his voice cracked slightly on the word great.
Jaime laughed. She hadn’t felt this good in weeks. “It’s probably a piece of shit,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Dick said. “I’m sure it’s a wonderful little book.”