The Accidental Bestseller (17 page)

“How in God’s name did I end up married to such a jerk?” she shouted.

Her eyes blurred as the tears welled and then squeezed out to slide down her cheeks, so hot and heavy she was afraid they’d sear her skin. Each rounded drop was weighted with hurt and humiliation, a visible testament to the end of life as she knew it.

She felt completely pathetic as she stood in the middle of the kitchen and cried. Mallory watched her with a baffled and helpless expression that made Kendall cry harder.

And then she was racing for the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself down on the bed, where she buried her face in her grandmother’s chenille bedspread and sobbed.

She had no idea whether she was crying for Calvin. Or her marriage. Or her children. Or her lost career. If this were a multiple choice test, she’d be forced to check “All of the above.” All she knew for sure, as the sobs tore through her, was that everything she’d built her life on had been yanked out from under her. And she didn’t see how she’d ever find her footing again.

Feeling helpless and out of her depth, Mallory stood in the center of the kitchen listening to the sound of Kendall’s sobs fill the house. Though she’d known great despair twice, Mallory had spent most of her life since determined not to feel it again, and she’d never tried to help another person through it. She wasn’t sure she had it in her.

Quietly she retrieved the answering machine from the garbage can, wiped it off, and set it back in its place on the counter. For some time she paced the house, trying to decide what to do, finally coming to a stop outside Kendall’s bedroom door. She wanted to help, but didn’t want to intrude. Oh, who was she kidding? She was afraid to go in there because she might say the wrong thing and somehow make Kendall feel worse. Or give something away.

Finally she pushed open the door slightly. The shades were drawn and it was difficult to see; she could just make out Kendall’s limp body angled across the top of the old-fashioned bedspread. “Kendall?”

“Y-y-yeah?” Kendall rolled onto her side and curled into a fetal position, facing Mallory. Her face was streaked with black mascara and tears.

Mallory stepped inside the room and inched toward the bed. “Can I get you a cold drink? Or a wet rag for your head?”

“N-n-no,” Kendall stammered, and looked at her expectantly.

Still uncertain how to offer comfort, Mallory took another step toward the bed and said the first thing that came into her head. “I hate that Calvin is such an asshole.”

Kendall smiled weakly and sat up. She sniffed. “Me too. He’s a major, big-time asshole.”

“The biggest,” Mallory agreed, casting about for some extra adjectives to throw into the pot. “Calvin Aims is a gargantuan, King-Kong-sized, we-should-throw-him-off-the-Empire-State-Building-and-watch-him-bounce-sized asshole.”

Kendall smiled and this time the smile curved her mouth upward and even reached her reddened eyes.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Mallory asked, encouraged. “Maybe two glasses of wine?”

Kendall shook her head. “Not now. I think I’m going to take a little nap or something.”

“OK.” Mallory stepped back toward the door.

“But when I get up we’ll have a drink, OK?” Kendall said.

“Absolutely,” Mallory promised. “In fact, I’m going to stick a couple extra bottles of white in the refrigerator in case you wake up parched.” She reached behind her for the doorknob.

“Thanks, Mal,” Kendall said quietly.

“No problem.” She swallowed and prepared to leave. “I’ll be out on the deck.”

“OK.”

Mallory closed the bedroom door softly and walked out to the kitchen where she retrieved her cell phone from her purse and walked outside. Shaken, she stared out at an array of distant peaks for a time and then she carried the phone to the only spot from which it seemed able to retrieve a signal.

Chris picked up on the third ring.

“Hi,” Mallory said, her voice still trembling. “How are things in the large apple?”

“Are you OK?”

Mallory almost sighed aloud at the quick concern in his voice. “Yeah. I think so.”

“How’s Kendall?”

“Not so good. Her husband is in a hurry for a divorce, and she, she doesn’t even have an attorney.”

“How’s her book coming?”

“It’s not. Not at all. She won’t even talk about it. She’s become obsessed with fixing things.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” Mallory smiled. “You’d be in your element here. I’ve been to the Home Depot down in this little place called Clayton three times now.”

“You? No way.”

“Way. Yesterday I helped Kendall pick a router.”

She could picture him shaking his head in disbelief. She didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d braved Home Depot for Kendall, but had refused to stop working long enough to share in the nuts and bolts of their own major remodel. Another man would have stuck it to her about that now, but Chris didn’t have a malicious bone in his body.

She waited for him to ask how her own work was going, but he didn’t. Of course, he would assume she was writing away regardless of what was happening around her. She’d never stopped for him, why would he assume she’d stop for Kendall? Not that it was actually Kendall she’d stopped for.

“Patricia’s left several messages,” he said, mentioning her agent, Patricia Gilmore. “And so has Zoe. I wasn’t sure if you wanted them to call you down there?” Chris said. “Or whether they could reach you on your cell phone?”

Hearing her agent’s and editor’s names caused a moment of actual panic, followed by a sharp stab of guilt. For the briefest moment she considered admitting to Chris the stress she was feeling, how frightened she was of her inability to get anything on the page, hell, to even sit down and try. She refused to even consider it writer’s block, let alone call it that. As if somehow admitting it would make it more real, give it more power over her.

She forced a laugh. “The only way you can use a cell phone here is to press yourself into the corner of the deck and lean to the left, hard. But, truthfully, I’d rather not talk to them right now. I’m trying to focus on Kendall.”

“So shall I call and let them know that you’ll be in touch when you get back on Thursday?”

Mallory stared out over the mountaintop, looking for the right words. “About Thursday . . .”

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

“I, um, don’t feel like I can leave Kendall so soon. I thought I was just coming in for a quick check and maybe a pep talk, but she’s in a really bad way.”

“We’re supposed to leave for the beach house on Friday. It’s Labor Day weekend.”

This time she was the one who remained silent largely because she didn’t know what to say.

“We’ve been planning this for months, Mallory.”

She didn’t speak, couldn’t really.

In the silence, his voice hardened, became very un-Chris-like. Underneath was the hurt and anger but on the top was a steeliness she’d never heard before. “
I’ve
been planning this for months. We agreed we’d take the time off and spend it together.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

She waited while he absorbed what she’d said. She’d promised to take the time off when she cancelled the last trip he’d planned and she had had every intention of going.

She heard Chris let his breath out on a big gush of air and could picture him running his hand through his hair. “I’m such an imbecile,” he said. “I keep thinking that once you finish a manuscript, or a tour, or whatever the hell you’re onto next, you’ll make some time for
us
. Give a shit about
us
. But it never seems to happen.”

“Chris, I just can’t leave her right now.” Mallory heard the urgency in her own voice, the need to make him understand. “I thought I’d get Faye and Tanya to come in for the weekend so we can help Kendall brainstorm her book. She hasn’t written a single word and its due December first. This has nothing to do with us.”

“I’ve tried to understand, really I have.” He almost seemed to be talking to himself now, which sent a chill down Mallory’s spine. “I think it’s commendable that you want to help your friend. Somewhat surprising considering how self-absorbed and driven you generally are, but commendable.”

No, she wanted to say, not self-absorbed, just scared. Not just driven but terrified of failure. But, as usual, she said nothing.

“The thing is, Mallory. I can’t wait forever for those occasional slivers of your attention. And you’re completely wrong if you think blowing off our time away has nothing to do with us.”

He hung up without waiting for a response. A gentle click and then he was gone. Even pissed off, Chris was admirably polite and restrained.

But that didn’t keep Mallory’s heart from pounding or her head from ringing with all the things she might have said.

14

—RAYMOND CHANDLER

 

 

 

The sun had begun its swan dive behind the mountains when Kendall finally padded out onto the deck, her bare feet slapping on the aged wood. She held a bottle of wine in one hand, two goblets threaded through the fingers of the other.

Plopping down on the deck chair next to Mallory, she set the opened bottle and glasses on the small table between them. Without asking she poured two generous glassfuls, placed one in Mallory’s hand, and clinked hers against it.

They sipped the dry white wine in silence as the last of the daylight faded. Kendall’s brain was still slightly numbed from sleep, the overweening sense of worry cushioned by the clean mountain air she drew into her lungs and Mallory’s companionable silence. She wished she could sit here like this forever with nothing more pressing than watching the lights blink on down in tiny Dillard, Georgia.

“You need an attorney,” Mallory said.

Kendall took a long sip of wine. “That would be admitting it’s really over.”

Mallory turned from the view to look at her. “That call today wasn’t an attempt at reconciliation.”

Kendall remained silent, clinging to her new family motto.
Avoidus, avatas, avant.

“Avoiding it isn’t going to make it go away.”

Kendall sighed. “If you’re going to remain my friend, you’re going to have to stop reading my mind.”

They sat in silence again as the dark gathered around them and the temperature began to drop. There was a rustle in a nearby bush. The faint tap of a woodpecker echoed somewhere not too far off.

“Seriously, Kendall. You need representation. You can’t just let him proceed without having someone looking out for your interests.”

Kendall closed her eyes against the whole idea. She was far from the first of her friends or neighbors to get dumped for someone younger; in her neck of the suburbs, it was practically a cliché. The fact that it had happened to her made her long for her bed and a darkened room.
Avoidus, avatas . . .

“And I think we should get Faye and Tanya to come in for the weekend so that we can brainstorm your book for you.”

“Jesus, Mallory. You’re like the self-help Energizer Bunny. You just keep right on pushing.”

Mallory remained silent but Kendall could feel her intention like a palpable force, so at odds with the serenity that surrounded them.

“Besides, what makes you think they can just drop everything and come running here? It’s a holiday weekend.” She turned to face Mallory. “Don’t you need to get back to New York? I thought you and Chris were going on a vacation or something.”

“You wish.” Mallory took a sip of her wine. “I’m not going anywhere and if we get Faye and Tanya here we can plot out your whole book, maybe even do a detailed outline.”

“You are something, aren’t you?” She studied her friend’s face. “Was Chris upset?”

“A little.” Mallory shrugged, but when she spoke her voice didn’t match her nonchalant air. “We can go away some other time. He’ll get over it.”

“Do you really think Tanya and Faye will come?” Kendall asked.

“Well, we won’t know unless we call and ask them. But I’m guessing yes. Steve’ll be too busy to care. And Tanya’s probably already exhausted again. I can’t figure out how she keeps up the pace—
she’s
the Energizer Bunny in the group. I’m just the pushiest bunny.”

Kendall didn’t dispute the comment, nor did she mention how grateful she was that someone had the energy to push at all. Every action that needed to be taken would set off a whole slew of potential reactions, most of them negative. Just thinking about them made her tired.

“You know if I see an attorney I’m going to have to tell Melissa and Jeffrey. I just don’t see how I can face them.”

“They’re not children anymore, Kendall,” Mallory said quietly. “And I think you’ll be surprised by how much they already know or suspect.” She looked away for a moment and then back at Kendall. “But if you’re not ready to face them yet, just see the attorney and talk to the kids later when there’s something concrete to tell them. All you really have to let them know is that you’re strong enough to deal with this, that everything will be OK.”