Plain Jayne (15 page)

Suddenly it occurs to me that he didn’t see me
sitting over here in the corner when he came in. I want to leave the room or at
least signal my presence, but another part of me wants to hear Paulette’s take
on it. I have to say, as much as I hate that I’m in the middle of this soap
opera, I can’t help but be interested in what led up to all this.

She nudges him gently away from the dishwasher
so she can open it and put the dirty dishes into it. While she bends over to
load the appliance, she replies, “It’s not my place to say.”

“I’m asking you, though. I’m giving you a
place,” he insists.

Sighing, she says, “If you truly want my
opinion…”

“I do!”

“She’s always gotten her way. Why should this
be any different? She wants this house back, apparently.”

He runs his hand through his hair. “But what
does she want more:  the house or her parents’ approval? It used to be no
contest. But the threat of divorcing her—usually the ultimate trump card—seems
to be having no effect on her at all this time!”

Paulette simply shrugs. “I don’t know what you
want me to say, Luke. Other than… maybe it’s time you stop threatening her and
do it.”

That statement makes him slouch and stare into
space. “This whole pregnancy nonsense is an interesting complication, though,”
he mutters. “What if she’s not lying this time…?”

Now Paulette peeks over at me. Lucas follows
her eye line. His entire demeanor changes. Gone is the lost little boy look,
the helpless, unfocused stare, and the slack face. His eyebrows ram together,
and he draws to his full height.

“Jayne. I… didn’t realize you were in here. I
thought, maybe, you’d gone out to the gazebo.”

I nod to my plate. “Thought I’d finish eating
first. Unless you think I should forgo eating to finish my manuscript as
quickly as possible.” I’m half-joking. Which means I’m half-not.

He looks confused. “What?” His expression
changes to one of impatience and exasperation. “Of course not. That makes no
sense at all. I invited you to dine with Caroline and me.”

“Yeah. Well… that wasn’t the most relaxing
dinner conversation, as you already know.” I take my plate and glass to
Paulette. After she receives them from me, I move to the other side of the
large kitchen, lean up against the counter, cross my bare legs at the ankle,
and stuff my hands in my hoodie pockets.

“I apologize for that. And I started it, so I
have no excuse.”

“You don’t have to make excuses to me. But
from now on, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll eat in here. Alone.”

His closed-off expression gives no clue as to
what he’s feeling when he concedes, “Fine. Whatever you like.”

I scrunch my shoulders up close to my ears.
“Not that I’ll be here much longer.”

Before I can explain, he jumps on my
statement. “Oh? Are you almost finished?”

“No,” I relate regretfully. “But I can’t stay
here with… all this… going on. It’s uncomfortable and distracting and… none of
my business.”

He curses under his breath, his face resembling
how it looked when he was talking to Paulette before he realized I was in the
room. “Please, Jayne. Give me a couple of days. If I can’t get her to leave,
then by all means, I’ll help you find somewhere else to stay… and work.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to!”

From anyone else, it would sound generous.
From him, it sounds angry.

I pull my head back at his gruff tone and say,
“Whoa. Tone down the intensity, alright?”

Finished with her kitchen cleanup, Paulette
quietly slips from the room, leaving us alone.

When she’s gone, he begins, “I’m sorry, but—”

I interrupt, “What’s your deal, anyway? Why is
it so important to you that I stay here to work on my manuscript? It makes no
sense. I’m one more complication in this cluttered …situation.” I hate how Gus’s
overuse of that word makes me hesitant to use it, even when it’s the best
option for vaguely describing something you can’t otherwise name, like this.

Lucas misinterprets that hesitation as
diplomacy. “I know it’s ugly here. I know
she’s
a hideous distraction.
But…” He nods toward me “Look at you. This place obviously suits you. Or did,
before she ruined it.”

His reference to my appearance makes me
self-conscious. I stand straighter and tuck my hair behind my left ear.

“Stop!” he startles me by barking. When I
freeze, he explains, “See? You’re already tensing up and reverting to that
awkward, insecure person who walked into my office and walked back out with a
severe case of writer’s block. That can’t happen.”

Before thinking about it, I reply, “Well, no
offense, but you and your wife don’t foster a sense of carefree…ness.”

“‘Carefreeness?’ Oh, boy. This is bad
already.”

“I’m not writing; I’m speaking! You can’t
judge me based on un-edited… words… I’m saying off-the-cuff.”

“But when the words don’t flow in your speech,
that means they’re not flowing in your head, and if they’re not flowing in your
head, they’re not going to flow from your fingers to the screen to the paper,
and… Oh, shit. Why does she have to ruin everything?! Everything!” He paces the
kitchen, muttering things of which I only hear snatches, like “…ants in her
bed…” and “…bad smell…”

“I’m writing fine,” I insist.

“You were!” he counters, ceasing his pacing.
“You
were
writing fine.”

“Am!”

He shakes his head and wags his finger in the
air. “No. I can tell a definite difference between the stuff you produced this
morning and afternoon and what you tried to write before dinner, after Caroline
arrived and interrupted your flow.”

My blood drains into my feet. “What? What do
you mean, you can tell? I haven’t shown you anything.”

His eyes widen momentarily but return to their
bored shape so quickly that I almost wonder if I imagined it. Casually, he says
with a wave of his hand, “Oh, I took a peek when I finished my walk, and you
had already come inside to get ready for dinner.”

“You what?!”

“It’s not a big deal. You wrote
a lot
today.
And most of it was good. But like I said…”

“You had no right!”

“I’m your editor.”

“But it’s not ready to be edited. It’s rough.
Rough rough.” I feel more exposed than if I were standing naked in front of
him. Well, maybe not
that
exposed…

While I’m contemplating that horror, he
stubbornly ignores my outrage and offers, “The cemetery scene is excellent… to
a point. Your descriptions of the physical surroundings are so vivid that I can
see
the place. It’s a horrible place, even on a bright, sunny day, like
in the book.” He looks down at the floor, as if he can read the manuscript
there. Gesturing at his shoes, he continues, “And I’m there. I’m feeling the
hot summer sun. I’m hearing the grass crunching under my feet. I’m hearing the
cicadas offering up their unholy high-pitched drone in unison.” Now he looks up
at me, his face blank. “And then… nothing. I’m yanked from the scene by the
flat prose that follows. Prose that should be so heavy with emotion that I can
almost feel it weighing down my shoulders. I should feel burdened with what
this character is thinking and feeling. Yet… I feel nothing.
That’s
what
you wrote—or tried to write—when I left you to take my walk. I can tell. The
shift is obvious.”

“Maybe you’re the problem, then,” I snap, not
appreciating his criticism or his invasion of my privacy, even if I was the
fool who left her laptop plugged in and out in the open for anyone to see. I don’t
even have my manuscript password protected.

As if reading my mind, he says, “You might
want to think about password protecting that document, you know. As glad as I
was to see that you hadn’t done so, it’s not very smart to leave yourself open
to plagiarism like that.”

“Nobody even knows who I am,” I argue
listlessly.

“And they never will unless you learn to write
with feeling when it counts. That scene in the graveyard…
that’s
your
money scene. You ever read anything by Blake Redmond-Womack?” Without waiting
for me to answer (because I’m not going to admit it), he says, “Of course, you
have. Everyone has. Or at least seen the movies based on his books. Anyway, that’s
the sort of passage that Womack pumps out before he’s even had his morning
shit, because he knows women who read chick lit love a good cry.”

“I don’t write chick lit.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

I walk to the back door and stare at the
reflection of the setting sun in the surface of the sea. “I know what you’re
implying, and let me clue you in on something. I didn’t write this book to
manipulate people’s emotions and give them an outlet for the ‘good cry’ they
need when it’s that time of the month and they’re curled up on the couch with
their heating pad and a book. I wrote it—I’m writing it—for me.” I stop,
knowing I’m getting dangerously close to saying too much. “It makes
me
feel
something. And if it doesn’t elicit the same response in someone else—you, for
example—that’s not my problem. I can’t make people feel what I felt—er, I mean,
what I
feel
when I write it.”

“Then you’re, at best, a diarist. And you have
no business with a publishing contract, because, if what you say is true, then
what’s the point in publishing your book? If your goal is to make yourself feel
something, and you’ve accomplished that, why do you need to publish it for the
world to see? And if you can’t make other people feel what you’re feeling, then
you’re a sucky writer.”

I whirl around to face him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“Screw you.”

He laughs. “Nah. You heard Caroline earlier;
that’s highly overrated.”

I ignore his attempt to get me off track. “No,
I’m serious. I’ve poured my heart and soul for the past five years into this
book, and everyone else who’s read it has deemed it brilliant. You’re the only
one who wants to change it or has a problem with it. So, I think
you’re
the
problem. And it’s not my fault you don’t know how to feel.”

“I’m the reader. The
real
reader, not
one of your friends or your agent or your
mom.
”

His reference to my mother makes me physically
flinch.

I wish so much that my mom could read my book.
And my dad. And my sisters. I wish this were all a product of my very active
imagination. I wish I were spewing theoretical feelings and thoughts into the
manuscript. And if sometimes those feelings don’t come across as strongly as
I’m feeling them, it’s only because I’m restraining myself so that I don’t
cross the line into sentimentality, which I’m sure Luke-Ass would also
criticize. I can’t win with him, so he can go screw himself. There. That way,
nobody but himself has to be punished with his reportedly-abysmal bedroom
techniques.

Without another word, I yank the door open and
speed-walk across the lawn toward the brightly-lit gazebo. At the last second,
though, I veer away from it and head for the beach.

*****

I wonder if my mom ever saw the ocean. I
wonder if she ever sat and watched the waves, like I’ve done for the past two
hours. By the time she was my age, she already had three children, and she was
a full-time employee of the family business, farming. It was one of those
livelihoods that didn’t allow for vacations. We never went on vacation as a
family, that’s for sure. For the most part, we stayed at the farm. Three
hundred sixty-five days of the same routine.

But sometimes Mom would take the three of us
girls somewhere for the weekend. Or Dad would go away for a weekend, usually
hunting with old buddies from high school. I think my parents went somewhere as
a couple once, but I was too young to care about the logistics, so I don’t
remember how they swung that. I doubt that Mom saw the ocean once she was
married to Dad. If I remember correctly, their trip together was to a
landlocked city not too far from home (in case they needed to get back
quickly). Probably Chicago. Or maybe Cincinnati.

Neither place strikes me as romantic, but what
do I know about that? Bupkiss. College flings can teach you a lot about sex,
but they’re not particularly romantic. At least the ones I had weren’t. If I
were a romance novelist (or a writer of chick lit, as Lucas keeps suggesting),
that would be a professional liability. No, the only professional liability I
possess is the inability to make people feel. Or one person in particular.

I’ve tried as hard as I can not to think about
that person since I stormed away from him. I walked for a while, but the breeze
off the ocean was getting chilly, and the water was surprisingly cold on my
feet, so I turned around and walked on the cool, packed sand back to the
Edwardses’ private beach. Now I sit on the other side of a dune obscuring the
house from my view (and me from the house’s view), my knees drawn to my chest,
my hoodie pulled over my knees, as I stare at the water.

The sand next to me shifts, and Lucas appears
over the gentle rise. He’s carrying a blanket and stops short when he sees me.
Due to the darkness that only the moon is nervy enough to try to penetrate, I
can’t see the expression on his face, but his curt, “Oh, there you are,” gives
me a decent idea of what he’s feeling.