Hope and Other Luxuries (7 page)

But all of this was lost on Joe. He had spent his childhood playing Little League.

“Well, aren't writers supposed to get agents or something?” he asked. “The agent does the letter writing and begging for you, right?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “I don't know anything about agents. I guess I ought to find out how this works.”

When we got back from vacation, we both turned to the Internet. I looked for information about agents while Joe went through a stack of YA books from the girls' rooms and searched the websites of their various publishers.

“There's this book that lists all the agents,” I told him when we reconvened. “But it's not at the library, and it's not in our bookstore, either. I can ask my mother to copy the young-adult agents' pages and send them to me.”

“Well, it looks like that's the only way you'll get published,” Joe said. “The publishers in this stack won't give you the time of day unless you've got an agent. Except one—they'll look at your manuscript as long as you give them a couple of months to do it. It's”—he pulled out a Post-it note and consulted it—“Henry Holt and Company.”

“Holt? Oh, that's nice,” I said. “They published Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series.”

Even to the engineer beside me, that comment had meaning. Lloyd Alexander is my hero. I'd loved his Prydain books so much as a child that when the girls were old enough for them, I'd sat the whole family down, including Joe, and we had read them out loud together.

“What great books!” Joe said, his eyes dreamy. “Wouldn't it be great if your book could come out from the same place that published his?”

I laughed. “It's not going to happen.”

Nevertheless, I had nothing to lose except the cost of a box and some printing paper, so the next morning, Joe posted a bulky package to New York City. Then I got on the phone with my mother to request the photocopies.

A thick packet of copied pages arrived a couple of weeks later. I brewed an extra-strong cup of coffee and sat down to read through them. Page fees, commissions, percentages, extra charges, instructions on what
not
to send—my heart sank as I slogged along.

This wasn't my idea of the venerable guardianship of culture. It felt more like selling a used car. This was exactly that uncaring world, that shark-toothed, dog-eat-dog world that was the antimatter to my worlds of imagination.

Market analysis and genre breakdowns . . . what did
that
have to do with magic and wonder?

Oh, well
, I thought.
At least I gave it a look
. And I set the stack of photocopies aside and did other things. I think I may even have finished the ironing.

Weeks went by. The photocopies started to gather dust. Meanwhile, Joe kept talking about publishers and contracts.

“Did you find some people to send your story to?” he asked.

“Not today,” I said. “I don't know. Maybe tomorrow.” And
maybe tomorrow
is exactly where my publishing career would have stayed. But that's when it happened: that's when something so extraordinary took place that it could have come right out of my dreamworlds.

The email materialized in my inbox late at night, like a disembodied voice from another dimension:

Dear Ms. Dunkle,

The Hollow Kingdom managed to fall into the hands of the editor here at Holt who would most appreciate it. I am a big fan of this kind of fantasy, and I very much enjoyed reading your novel . . .

Was I asleep? Was I actually reading this?

Here was no hard-bitten analysis of fees and markets. This was the voice of a friend, a kindred spirit, telling me what was great in my story—and what could improve. As I read her suggestions, I felt them fall into place in my mind. Of course! I had known those were problems, hadn't I?

“If you'd like to discuss anything I've said (or haven't said),” that magical letter concluded, “please feel free to email or call me.” And there followed the contact information of a real, live editor ensconced in one of those semimythical castles of my childhood—the actual number of an actual phone that rang on an actual desk halfway up an actual skyscraper in the heart of really-truly New York City.

Joe's proposal of marriage didn't sweep me off my feet the way that midnight email did. I wandered to bed in a rainbow-colored haze, in a cloud of pure, blissful romance. I was every bit as happy and giddy as any girl who ever went to a ball. All I needed was a rose to hold as I drifted off to sleep.

The school year went rattling by as my editor—
my
editor!—and I worked on perfecting Marak's story. And every three weeks, Valerie and Elena rode the train home from school, changing at the huge Cologne train station. Germans from northern Germany heard them speak and thought they might be from Bavaria. Germans from southern Germany thought they might be from up by Bremen. But no German could tell that they were foreigners anymore, a fact that brought them endless amusement and delight.

Each free weekend, the girls would burst back into our lives and fill them with color and excitement. “Guess
what
!” Elena would announce breathlessly as she flung herself down the steps onto the platform at the train station. And, no matter how hard I tried, I could never guess.

If I was growing through my writing, both girls were growing through their experiences at school. Untidy by nature, Valerie was learning to enjoy the order and routine of her contained little world. She was laid-back and well liked, and her language skills were brilliant. It annoyed Elena to no end that Valerie seemed to learn German by effortless osmosis.

But Elena, too, was changing in amazing ways. Given before to anthropomorphizing objects and living a rich imaginative life, Elena had turned her attention outward, and her lively sense of compassion had blossomed into real goodness to those around her. She tucked homesick little girls into bed at night. She helped the older girls study English. Like Don Quixote, she couldn't resist tilting at windmills: she took frightened classmates directly to Sister to plead their causes, and she fought pettiness and injustice in any form. Every penny of her allowance went to thoughtful little gifts.

A whole group of girls had flocked to Elena and nominated her their leader. Lively and creative, she set the tone for their free time: if she took up jogging, they all took up jogging. When I pointed out to her that
she could be an influence for good, she announced that they would all attend daily Mass, and they lined up next to her in the church pew like lambs.

“It's a lot of responsibility,” she confided to me with distinct satisfaction. “I think they would help me commit murder if I asked them to.”

By the time Valerie and Elena came home again for the short summer break, I had written three complete stories for them, and my editor and I had polished the first manuscript to a fine gloss. And late in August, in the middle of the night, I woke up my entire family one by one to tell them the news: The same house that had published Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series was going to buy and publish my first book.

“That's great news,” Valerie murmured. “You deserve it, Momma.” And she closed her eyes again.

“That's great, Mom,” Elena said blearily. “Now you can make us a million dollars.” And she rolled over and went back to sleep.

As I tiptoed back to bed in the middle of that peaceful night, my heart brimmed with happiness.

I'm so lucky
, I thought.
Except, there's no such thing as luck
.

When I was a young loner of a teen, I used to help my mother get everything ready for Mass. Priests would fly in every week to say the old Latin Mass for our small congregation in any venue we could provide: a hastily converted hotel room, or, later, a small recital hall. In those days, the Latin Mass was frowned upon as old-fashioned, and the local bishop disapproved it. The priests who looked after our congregation were a small missionary order, and each priest had a territory that covered several states.

One day, I was loitering outside in the parking lot, and I found a penny. I saw this week's priest nearby, walking slowly back and forth as he read his breviary. Having nothing else to do, I brought the coin over to him.

“Here's a penny for luck,” I said as I held it out.

His eyes twinkled.

“There's no such thing as luck,” he said. “But I'll be happy to have the penny.”

That caught my attention, and I took a closer look at him. The missionary priests were practically interchangeable to me; they wore their
long black habits, and they no longer looked like people—they weren't regular people anymore, they were priests. But this priest was only a young man, and in spite of his smile, he looked exhausted. He had flown in that morning from Oklahoma City, and he would fly out again in another few hours. He spent half his life crammed into small commuter jets on monotonous airline flights.

While other men his age were waxing their cars and taking out girls, this young man was spending all his time bringing the sacraments to congregations like ours. And what could we offer in return? We didn't have the money to provide a pretty church. We barely had the money for his airfare. He lived out of a small suitcase, and the nicest thing he owned was his breviary. No wonder he was happy to have the penny.

I watched him walk away, turning the pages of that breviary as his lips moved silently to the ancient prayers. It hit me why he was doing that work on his feet. If he sat down, he would be asleep in seconds.

He's telling the truth
, I thought with a sudden flash of insight.
He doesn't believe in luck. No one chooses a life this hard if he believes in luck
. And in that moment, my small, lonely, bitter world stretched and became a little bigger. I wasn't quite the same person I had been, thanks to that young priest.

And a decade later, when Joe and I got married, he officiated at our wedding.

So now, as I was falling asleep again, a real author with a real book contract, I gathered peaceful, happy thoughts to myself as I snuggled down into my pillow.

We're so lucky
, I thought.
Except, there's no such thing as luck
.

There's no such thing as luck
.

A
few days later, Elena was sitting on a high stool at the kitchen counter, talking to me while I cleaned the kitchen. Listening to Elena talk was an occupation that demanded just as much energy as the cleaning. An Elena talk was a rapid-fire barrage of new ideas, and I enjoyed it every bit as much as she did.

Just now, she was educating me in popular culture.

“So, I read an article about the Lord of the Rings actors,” she said. “Did you know they all got the same tattoo? Even Gandalf!”

“You're kidding!” My imagination tried to produce images of Gandalf with a tattoo. Nope! I couldn't do it.

“High school and college girls pick Orlando Bloom as the actor they'd want to date,” Elena continued. “But women your age pick Viggo Mortensen.”

“My age?” I inquired, still struggling with the tattoo.

“Well, you know, old women. The ones out of college.”

“Old! Okay, got it,” I said. I gathered up the breakfast dishes and ran a sink full of suds.

“So, anyway, the article said Elijah Wood is most popular among preteens and thirteen-year-old girls. That's so mean! Think how he must feel. I'll bet they tease him for it. And anyway, I don't think it's fair.
I
think he's really cute.”

“Hmm,” I said as I scrubbed oatmeal out of bowls. “And you're—how old?”

“Thirteen,” Elena replied. “Hey!” And then she laughed. “Oh, well, I'll bet I'd think he's cute anyway. But it's a shame! The article said he's a
Kettenraucher
.”

“A
Kettenraucher
? What's that?”

“I dunno,” Elena said, helping herself to some Hershey's Kisses. “I don't know that word in English.”

Languages have always been a passion of mine, and it doesn't matter much to me which one I'm learning. It's the thrill of absorbing new structures of thought that I love, the thrill of matching a familiar idea to a new one. It's all those beautiful new words to pick up and marvel over, like ocean-washed seashells on a beach.

Like
Kettenraucher
. As I wiped the kitchen counter, I took the word apart in my mind.
Ketten
. My imagination showed me steel links, rattling together and making metallic music.
Raucher
. Now my imagination sent me chimneys, incense holders, and spicy, heavy meats.

“
Chain smoker!
” I cried, and I felt that little frisson of joy that comes from seeing something ordinary from an entirely new point of view.

“Whatever,” Elena said as she dropped a handful of candy wrappers onto the counter. “Anyway,
I
think he's cute, and so do all my friends.”

“Speaking of which,” I warned, “you'd better get to packing.” And Elena, who did nothing by halves, flung herself out of the room and up the stairs, yelling for her sister in a messy mix of two languages.

The summer was ending, and Valerie and Elena were getting ready for another academic year. September had just started, and tomorrow afternoon, my girls would be headed back to school. I felt wistful and a touch melancholy at the thought of the quiet days ahead, but the girls were feeling no such pangs about leaving me.

All that day, the house was in an uproar. The old Dalmatian saw suitcases come out of the closet and grew nervous and started licking his paws. The old black cat assessed the situation and got out of the way. Late that afternoon, I found her curled up in a patch of sunshine in the garret room at the top of the house.

“Where did that stack of photos go? They're for the pinboard on my locker.”