The Accidental Bestseller (6 page)

But Mallory never ever took the day off. No matter what.

She kept her voice purposely light. “Can’t,” she said. “You know I have to do my pages first. I always do my pages first.” What a dreary fact of life that was.

A look of irritation passed across his face.
He
was irritated? Mallory folded her arms across her chest. At the moment even arguing seemed more attractive to her than sitting down to work. “When did that become a problem for you?”

“It’s not a problem,” Chris said, stepping away from her and back to the simmering pan. He fixed his gaze on the cookbook propped on the counter. “I’m thinking about six o’clock for dinner. Will you be able to take a break then?”

But now Mallory found herself unwilling to let him sidestep the issue he’d raised. “You didn’t think my having to write first was a problem when it was paying for this money pit we live in.” The words were out before she could stop them. “Or making it possible for you to leave the architecture firm and go out on your own.”

She was going too far, she knew it, but it was such a relief to let loose after a weekend of thinking about each word before it was uttered. In her study she’d have to think about each word before she wrote it.

“I said, no problem, Mal. There’s no need to turn this into a big thing.”

As always, Chris refused to engage. There were no knockdown drag-outs in the Houghton/St. James household. The man had been determinedly even-keeled practically every minute of their twelve-year marriage. Usually she treasured his calm. Sometimes she wanted to kill him for it.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Then there’s no problem.” She walked briskly to the foyer to retrieve her laptop and then walked back into the kitchen. “I’m glad to hear it!” She was practically shouting now. Perversely, the calmer he got, the more agitated she became.

Angry, she stomped past him and into her study where she slammed the door to prove it.

But once she was behind the closed door of her office, it took an immense act of will to cross to her desk and sit down. Because the real truth was if there was anything she didn’t feel like doing right now it wasn’t making love to Chris.

It was writing.

She glanced around to make sure she hadn’t made the admission aloud.

In fact, she almost never felt like writing anymore. Which was something she’d studiously avoided mentioning to Kendall, Faye, and Tanya, as well as her expensive Park Avenue therapist, and her annoyingly wonderful husband.

It used to be that she could simply sit down, boot up her computer, and the words and images would flow effortlessly from some deep well inside of her. But it seemed the well had dried up. Nothing flowed from her anymore, not even drivel. Now each word was painstakingly mined and placed. Great spans of time were spent attempting to create characters that differed in even a small way from the characters she’d written before. And then she had to find the words to describe them.

She caught herself staring out the window searching the gnarled oak in the garden for inspiration. Stray noises reached her from the kitchen, and she regretted the angry words she’d hurled at Chris. Maybe she should go out and make up with him, coax him into bed for a change.

That would be far more pleasurable than trying to eke out today’s twenty pages. What better way to procrastinate than in bed?

No. Mallory booted up her computer and took out her notes. She was a professional writer and she had work to do. If she was going to make her deadlines, she was going to have to write her twenty pages today, tomorrow, and every day after that. If she allowed herself to think about the number of words she needed to produce, the sheer weight of them would crush her.

She couldn’t let that happen. Because writing had been her ticket back to the world of financial security and she could never allow herself to forget it.

Mallory lifted her fingers above the keyboard and prayed she would find some kernel of something buried deep inside then chided herself for the thought.

If no kernel presented itself, she would have to invent one. She didn’t have the time to wait for inspiration, divine or otherwise. If she waited until she really felt like writing, it would never happen. And then all of the lovely things that filled their lovely home and their lovely life would cease to exist. No sane human being would let that happen more than once in a lifetime.

Mallory shifted purposefully in her seat. She couldn’t afford to be afraid. Nor could she afford to run out of words. So thinking, Mallory St. James tuned out her hurt husband in the other room, her hurt friend down in Atlanta, and the smell of the simmering osso bucco. Then the woman who had once been known as Marissa Templeton placed her fingers lightly on the keyboard and began to type.

5

—SALMAN RUSHDIE

 

 

 

Unfortunately fainting was only a temporary escape. You couldn’t rely on it on a regular basis, though it occurred to Kendall, when she came to on Sunday evening on the bed where Cal had placed her, that the women of Scarlett O’Hara’s day probably hadn’t fainted so often because their corsets were laced too tightly, as was rumored, but because there were so many unpleasant things they didn’t want to deal with.

Kendall could relate. Between her failing career and her suspicions about Cal, the list of things she simply could not face was growing by the minute.

When the kids were still at home, when the foundation of her career could still bear weight, she might have tried to discuss things with Cal or suggest seeing a marriage counselor to help them save what they’d had for the last twenty-three years.

But with everything collapsing around her at the same time, Kendall was afraid to talk to Cal. She had a very bad feeling that if she did, the first words out of Cal’s mouth would be, “I’m leaving!”

Earlier when he’d lifted her from the floor, she’d roused long enough to refuse to let him call a doctor or take her to the nearby walk-in clinic. Claiming exhaustion, she’d curled on her side and feigned sleep until she finally nodded off for real. Now she lay awake beside her snoring husband, staring at the wall trying to figure out her next move. When nothing came to her, she eased carefully off the bed, tiptoed into Melissa’s bedroom at the opposite end of the hall, locked the door, and slid between her daughter’s sheets, where she fell asleep sometime before dawn.

A sharp knock on the door awoke her about 8:00 A.M. Monday morning. “Kendall? Are you in there? Are you all right?”

Only half awake, Kendall tried to process her next move. For lack of a better alternative, she remained quiet while Cal rattled the doorknob. “Are you all right, Kendall?”

No response.

“We really need to talk.”

If there was anything in the world Kendall did know, it was that she didn’t want to do that.

“I’ve got to work on the Bryer report tonight,” he said finally when she didn’t say anything. “But I’m not leaving until you tell me you’re OK.”

“I’m OK,” she called from bed, wanting him to leave.

“I’ll try to be home by ten,” he called back. “There are some things I want to tell you.”

Most likely the very things she didn’t want to hear. Kendall lay in bed listening to Cal clomp down the stairs and tromp through the kitchen to the garage. She thought he might have been whistling. Then the garage door went up, actually making Melissa’s bed vibrate. Kendall felt it go down, too, but she stayed in bed awhile longer listening, just in case he had just pretended to leave in an effort to flush her out.

Exhausted, she wandered downstairs and poked in the refrigerator for something to eat but found only half an out-of-date container of blueberry yogurt and a shriveled peach, which she disposed of. Whatever Cal had been doing all weekend had not included a trip to the grocery store. Or eating at home.

Settling for coffee, Kendall carried the steaming mug into her office and set it next to her computer monitor. Still looking for comfort, she checked her e-mail and found one each from Tanya, Faye, and Mallory giving her hell for sneaking out on them. Each message ended with the instruction, “Call me.”

When the phone rang, she practically leaped for it, thinking it was one of them, but it was Sylvia, which she would have known if she’d taken the time to look at the caller ID. At the sound of her agent’s voice, Kendall envisioned a new family crest, something fancy in Latin for Avoidance at All Cost.
Avoidus, avatas, avant?

“Hello?”

“Boy, you sound like shit,” Sylvia said.

“Thank you,” Kendall replied. Catching a glimpse of herself in the computer monitor, she added, “I look like it, too.”

Taking a deep, hopefully bracing breath, she waited for Sylvia to get to the point of her call. Since it was Sylvia, this took about two seconds.

“I talked to Jane at Scarsdale this morning. If you want to give them back that thirty thousand dollars in order to terminate your contract, I can make it happen. But I don’t advise it. Brenda Tinsley is notoriously vindictive. I think you’d be better off giving them the book and then moving on.”

Kendall, of course, didn’t have the money anyway and given the state of her marriage, she couldn’t quite picture Cal dashing off a check out of their savings. For all she knew he was already squirreling away everything he could; yet another thing she should be paying attention to.

“Kendall?” Sylvia’s voice broke the silence. “I know this is really hard, but you’re a pro, you can do it. While you’re writing I’ll start putting out feelers at other houses. How far along are you?”

Kendall closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She hadn’t written a single page, not one. She’d originally been very excited about the idea—a book about four writers at various stages of their careers loosely based on her, Mallory, Tanya, and Faye. But with all the bad news and lack of interest from Plain Jane, Kendall had been unable to hold on to that enthusiasm. Then the kids had gone off to college and left the house so empty she couldn’t seem to think. Then Cal had started disappearing physically and emotionally and she’d gotten caught up in the possibility of winning the Zelda.

“Kendall? You can meet your December first deadline, right?”

Kendall instructed her brain to do the math. It was August 1; that would give her exactly four months, which was one hundred pages a month. If she worked six days a week, she’d have to write five to six pages a day. She normally wrote a book a year and took up to seven months for the actual writing of it, but she knew plenty of people who wrote much faster. With the kids gone and her time her own, she should be able to manage it, assuming she didn’t let the story meander or take any wrong turns.

Except, of course, for the fact that she could barely think, let alone write. And if her marriage actually ended . . . No, she could not let herself go there. “Sure,” Kendall said, trying to sound perky, willing to settle for upbeat. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Good,” Sylvia said, and then added in an uncharacteristically gentle tone, “You’re very talented, Kendall. Don’t let them throw you. Just get this book done and then we’ll find you a more appreciative home.”

Kendall lay on the couch the rest of the afternoon in a half-awake, half-dozing state, flipping from channel to channel until she settled on Turner Classic Movies.
Houseboat
with Sophia Loren and Cary Grant was the afternoon feature.

The phone rang periodically, but she didn’t answer even when she saw Faye, Tanya, and Mallory’s numbers on the caller ID. Her misery didn’t seem to be interested in company.

With no food in the fridge and the idea of actually dressing and leaving the house unimaginable, she began to forage from the pantry. A bag of chips, two granola bars, and a handful of ancient vanilla wafers got her through the day. At 9:30 that night, she dragged herself back up to Melissa’s bedroom, locked the door, and climbed into bed, where sleep eluded her until long after Calvin had come home and rapped on the door. “Kendall?” he’d called.

She squinched her eyes shut and pretended it was all just a bad dream.

“Damn it. This is unbelievable. You can’t think we’re going to be alone together and not talk to each other?”

As if this would be the first time this had ever happened
.

“At least give me a sign that you’re alive,” he said.

She knocked three times on the wall behind her head then shouted, “I’m alive! But I have nothing to say to you!”

Kendall listened to him stomp off then spent the rest of the night staring up at the ceiling trying to understand how her life had unraveled so rapidly. At dawn she fell into a fitful sleep and was once again awakened in the morning by Cal’s voice on the other side of the door. “Kendall, this is ridiculous. I’ve got to leave for the office. Open the door so we can talk.”

She remained silent. After all these years of begging him to communicate more, it figured he’d want to do it now when there was nothing he was likely to say that she’d actually want to hear.

“I’m not leaving until you at least answer so that I know you’re alive,” he shouted.

Kendall debated whether to respond or not.

“Seriously, Kendall. If you don’t answer right now, I’m calling nine-one-one and then I’m going to break down the door.”

For a moment Kendall actually considered remaining silent just to see if he’d follow through on his threat. But since her goal was avoiding a discussion with Calvin, she reasoned that his coming into the room via battering ram or otherwise would make that close to impossible.

“I’m alive,” she shouted back. “And I’m not stupid.” She let him think about that for a couple of seconds. “Now go away and leave me alone!”

Agitated and exhausted, she waited for him to leave for work, then pulled on her robe and dragged downstairs. There she skimmed through her e-mails while munching on a breakfast of Ritz crackers and chocolate bits. She didn’t go back into her office or near her computer that day nor did she see any reason to shower or dress. Whenever her thoughts strayed to the manuscript she should be writing or the husband she should be talking to, she’d scavenge something from the pantry and carry it back to the couch for consumption.