The Last Book Party Read online

  I pulled out the copy of The Secret of the Old Clock and imagined myself in a poodle skirt as Nancy Drew, but I didn’t have the titian hair or the gumption. The more fitting choice for me would be Bess, Nancy’s timid and slightly plump sidekick, but where was the fun in that? I ran my finger over the spines of tattered old copies of Rebecca and The Secret Garden and Sweet Savage Love, one of a series of bodice rippers I had devoured the summer I was fourteen.

  It was hard enough figuring out how to look one’s best for a party, let alone choose some alter ego. Wasn’t costume selection a window into the soul, a clue to a person’s fantasy self? What else to make of those girls at costume parties at Brown who jumped at the chance to wear skimpy I Dream of Jeannie outfits and the frat guys who dressed as devils just to hold a whip?

  I went outside onto the deck, careful not to let the screen door slap. The moon was shining like a spotlight on the marsh, where the tide was nearly high, covering most of the grass. The wind was coming from the south, and I could hear the surf from the bay. The water would be wavy and warm. I climbed up on the deck ledge and let my legs swing down and kick against the wood. I thought of my mother’s suggestion to choose a character from a book I loved. I felt the breeze from the bay and shivered. The first book that came to mind was Jeremy’s, and his wistful, lonely leper.

  16

  The phone rang at seven the next morning, interrupting my chance to sleep late on my first Saturday since I’d started working for Henry. I didn’t have to pick up the receiver to know it would be Danny, and that he’d be calling for one of two reasons: to report on some new mathematical breakthrough that my parents and I would assume was impressively significant without understanding why, or to seek reassurance that despite a less-than-perfect score on an exam or a classmate’s exceptional performance in class, he was not a failure. My parents’ constant readiness to reassure Danny of his brilliance was not just a reflection of their desire for him to be happy but a force of habit. Praised for his intellect since he was a toddler, Danny had only one rubric by which to judge himself.

  Growing up, and through high school, his tantrums were legendary—notebooks shredded, books tossed, doors slammed—all because of a 99 on a test. Suffering when he suffered, my parents would make excuses for his behavior, as if his perfectionism was understandable, even the logical response for someone with his gifts. No one in the family saw the incongruity in my getting praised for getting a 90 on an exam, while we all felt sorry for Danny the few times his performance wasn’t flawless. My parents meant well, but recently I’d begun to wonder if their rapt attention wasn’t reinforcing Danny’s belief that extreme distress was an appropriate reaction to falling short of his high standards.

  Thankfully, Danny rarely wanted to talk to me in these states, which probably contributed to our getting along so well. It also helped that in the Venn diagram of our ambitions, there was no overlap. He was numbers; I was words. We had come to this understanding as children, after years of being suspicious of each other. Danny couldn’t believe how much I read or how fast. Convinced I was skimming and unable to retain what I had read, he used to try to test me. One day he yanked A Little Princess from my hands, flipped through the pages, and said, “Quick, what was the name of Captain Crewe’s business partner?” To which I disappointed him by answering immediately, “Carrisford.” At the same time, I didn’t understand most of his math explanations, like why I should account for compound interest when saving my babysitting money. Eventually, we gave up the battle and resigned ourselves to being different.

  Unable to fall back to sleep, I climbed out of bed and went to the kitchen for coffee. My mother was sitting at the table, twirling the phone cord around her fingers as she listened to Danny. My father hovered over her. “Do you want me to take over?” he whispered, looking, at that moment, much older than his fifty-four years.

  Danny’s episodes were less frequent than they used to be, but the routine was nonetheless predictable. This phone conversation would go on for at least an hour, sometimes two, and my parents would become anxious themselves, unable to think about or discuss anything else, until my mother would brave a return phone call to Danny in the evening or the next day, and we would all know by looking at her face whether his mood had passed. Once it had, my father would reiterate his opinion that something practical, like banking or insurance, might be less stressful for Danny than academia.

  I took my coffee out onto the deck. The sun was already strong, the sky an intense blue. I heard the tat-tat-tat of a woodpecker in the distance. Inhaling deeply, I looked out over the edge of the marsh in the direction of the ocean and Tillie and Henry’s house, wishing I was there instead of here. Soon, Tillie and Henry would begin preparing for a dinner party they would host that night after attending a benefit for an AIDS support group in Provincetown. From what I’d overheard, the guests included a drama critic from The Boston Globe and his painter wife, the editorial director of Provincetown Arts, and “Lanie and Eric,” as Tillie had said, who I now realized were Lane and her sculptor father. Even if she was there only because of her father, Lane’s invitation rankled.

  I had spent twenty-five summers in Truro and felt as if no one knew the place better or loved it more. I knew the way the sun setting over the bay behind Toms Hill could make the windows of the houses across the marsh appear as though they were on fire and at what time the bobwhite in the tree outside my bedroom would start its chant. I knew that the parking lot attendant at Corn Hill Beach filled her water bottles with vodka, and that the Truro harbormaster didn’t know how to swim. Three years in a row, I had entered the Truro Scavenger Hunt, and for three years in a row, I had won, most recently because I happened to know that the Truro artist Milton Wright was Wilbur and Orville’s nephew.

  But now, imagining Lane and her father sitting on Henry and Tillie’s back porch and arguing about the merits of “postpainterly abstraction” as ice cubes slowly watered down their gin and tonics, I had never felt as much like an outsider.

  17

  Still awaiting edits on the latest chapters of his memoir, Henry continued to fire off notes to Hodder, Strike. I could tell by the way he slammed his fingers down on the keys of his old typewriter that he was writing as much to purge himself of his rage at Malcolm’s inattention as to discover when the edits in Malcolm’s trademark green ink would arrive. The first response that came from my replacement, during my second week on the job, exasperated Henry, who tossed the letter over his back in my general direction. I read it, pleased to see that it was neither helpful nor artfully written. But Henry was beside himself. “Eight months! You’d think after eight months, he might have the consideration to read a few chapters.”

  Henry seemed so deflated that, without thinking about it, I offered to call Malcolm to see what I could do. He looked up at me with such a warm and handsome smile that for a moment I felt as if I was looking at Franny.

  To have some privacy, I went downstairs to use the phone on the wall in the kitchen. As I was dialing, I noticed Tillie and Lane standing by the half circle of weathered Adirondack chairs that looked over the tennis court. Tillie held a piece of paper in one hand and shook it from time to time while Lane stood opposite with her arms folded. The conversation looked more heated than a disagreement over an awkward translation.

  A young woman I assumed was Malcolm’s new secretary answered the phone as if she had been given the line to audition for a soap opera.

  “This is Malcolm Wing’s office, and you have reached his editorial secretary, Jessica Blanken. How may I be of assistance?”

  I walked over to the refrigerator, the long phone cord stretching out just enough for me to open it and retrieve the orange juice, and said, “Oh, hi, can you put Malcolm on? This is Eve.”

  “Eve, and the last name would be…?”

  I poured myself a glass of juice.

  “The last name would be Rosen. I used to work for him.”

  “Eve Rosen,” she said slowly, no doubt f
illing in the top page of a pink “While You Were Out” pad. “And to what may I say this is in reference?”

  I sighed. “Don’t worry; he knows me well. It’s a personal call.”

  I didn’t mention Henry, as I figured that by now Jessica would know how far down the list of importance he had fallen. Jessica put me on hold. Taking a sip of juice, I looked back outside. Tillie and Lane were laughing, their argument apparently resolved. The paper that Tillie had been holding was on the grass by her feet, and was then picked up and carried off by the breeze. The phone clicked and I heard Malcolm’s booming voice. “Cherub! How is life in the dunes?”

  “Never dull,” I said, watching as Tillie turned and headed toward the driveway. Lane watched her for a few seconds and then started walking briskly back to the house. I turned so that I was facing inside.

  I asked Malcolm to give me the truth about Henry’s chapters—was there any chance he would get to them this summer?

  Lane walked right by me and into Tillie’s office. She looked at me without saying a word and closed the door behind her.

  Malcolm clucked his tongue.

  “Eve, Eve, Eve. Can’t you put him off as cleverly as you used to?”

  “C’mon, Malcolm. I work for him now.”

  I heard music coming from Tillie’s office.

  “Indeed, and we feel so betrayed. Do we not?”

  Lane was singing along; it was Bonnie Raitt.

  “We? Are you using the royal we now?” I asked.

  “Most certainly not,” Malcolm said. “We all miss you, pine for you helplessly. Don’t we, Jeremy?”

  My stomach twisted. I was caught off guard by the news of Jeremy’s presence. I heard their muffled voices. Malcolm must have had his palm over the receiver.

  “Scratch that. I spoke too hastily,” Malcolm said, his voice now clear. “Jeremy does not pine for you helplessly, which would be a silly indulgence. He has just informed me he will see you before summer’s end.”

  I stepped outside, walking as far as the phone cord would allow.

  “He will?” I asked.

  “Yes, apparently your mutual friend has invited our young wunderkind to Henry and Tillie’s book party.”

  So Franny would be returning for Labor Day weekend. I couldn’t help hoping that he was coming to see me, even if his complete lack of communication clearly suggested otherwise. Would he bring Lil? I cursed myself for feeling jealous.

  “It’s a legendary party,” Malcolm continued. “I went once, but haven’t been on the guest list in years, which is probably my own fault, but nevertheless a shame, considering the concentration of literary talent there.”

  I saw my opening.

  “I might be able to finagle you an invitation, but you’ll have to return the favor.…”

  Malcolm whistled. “I hear you loud and clear, sister.”

  When I went back upstairs, Henry was writing in longhand on a yellow legal pad. Picking up my research notes as if looking for my place, I said, “So, have you thought about inviting Malcolm to the book party?”

  Henry stopped writing and looked up. “That scoundrel? Why would I do that?”

  “Because Malcolm is all about good manners,” I said slowly. “He knows his delays are bad form, and he wouldn’t dare show up without your edited chapters.”

  Henry pursed his lips and then broke into a big, appreciative smile, which made me feel surprisingly good. “Consider it done,” he said, with a wink. “And thank you.”

  I went back downstairs and called Jessica Blanken. I asked her to convey the invitation and to put reminders in Malcolm’s calendar to edit the manuscript and bring it to Truro on Labor Day weekend.

  18

  It was raining the next day, so instead of taking my lunch outside on the back porch, as I usually did, I settled into an armchair in a corner of the living room to eat my turkey and cheddar sandwich. A wicker basket by the chair held a pile of old magazines, covers curled by the humidity. I grabbed an issue of Yankee Magazine, a surprising find in Henry and Tillie’s house, as it was a far cry from The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books.

  I’d never read Yankee Magazine but I had the impression it was the magazine for people who crocheted potholders and went by bus on fall foliage tours. I flipped through the pages, reading the captions on a spread about the covered bridges of the Connecticut valley and on the photographs accompanying a long profile of a straight-jawed boatbuilder from Bar Harbor. He and his wife were tall, thin, and clean-cut. They reminded me of the grown-ups in the Robert McCloskey books I’d read as a kid—men who wore button-down shirts and khaki pants while driving old motorboats and women who wore shirtwaist dresses to pick blueberries.

  Then I turned the page to discover a full-page column, “My Pamet,” by “Tillie Sanderson, poetess and Cape Cod resident.” Surprised, I flipped back to the cover of the magazine, which was from September 1982. When I gathered the rest of the magazines from the basket and stacked them on my lap, I discovered they were all from the early eighties and that each featured a column by Tillie. The oldest was from May 1980. I decided to start there.

  I was immediately taken with the tone of the writing, which was as accessible as Tillie’s poems were not. The first column described a spring walk along the abandoned railroad track from the Corn Hill Beach parking lot to Pamet Harbor. Layered in with Tillie’s descriptions of walking through the scratchy wildflowers, the water of the incoming tide sparkling “bright and cold” as it flowed between the rocks of the jetty, were reminiscences—snippets, really—of Tillie’s childhood, far from the ocean in a tough, working-class neighborhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  In clear, beautiful prose, each column chronicled a single walk—down Ballston Beach to Brush Hollow, through the cranberry bog to the ocean, out by the cemetery off Old County Road—and each column revealed a little more of the hard life Tillie had left behind. A father who couldn’t hold down a job, a mother who reserved her scant affections for her sons. An “unimaginative” family whose reading rarely extended further than the comics pages of the Scranton Tribune or Reader’s Digest and who scoffed at Tillie’s interest in poetry. The escape of a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College and a move to Manhattan.

  An hour later, I had finished the columns. My turkey sandwich half-eaten, I sat in the empty living room, the pile of magazines in my lap, marveling at how Tillie had managed to put into words so much of what I loved about being in Truro. She described how the splendor made her—and me—feel closer to believing that our futures would be as magnificent as the landscape around us. She wrote with a lover’s eye for detail about “the throaty roar of the sea,” the tumble of foam when the waves rolled in, the barely noticeable scent of a slick of blue fish approaching the shore.

  I returned the stack of magazines to the wicker basket and listened to the rain drumming on the roof. Tillie seemed to have grown used to my presence in that she often didn’t feel compelled to acknowledge my existence. When we crossed paths in the kitchen while she was pouring herself a cup of coffee or grabbing a handful of the almonds she kept in a bowl in the refrigerator, more often than not she didn’t say a word. Her columns, though, renewed my hope that we might find common ground.

  19

  Right before leaving that afternoon, I finally got up the nerve to ask Tillie about her columns. I found her rooting around in the armoire by the front door, mumbling about what a mess it was. I asked if she needed help. Without taking her head out, she said, “Only if you can conjure a goddamn umbrella.” I’d seen one that morning outside the kitchen door and went and got it.

  “Here you go,” I said.

  She turned toward me, saw the umbrella, and sighed, as if the whole search had exhausted her. “Thank you.”

  Then, forgetting all the subtler ways I had considered starting this conversation, I said, “I love your columns in Yankee Magazine.”

  Tillie seemed caught off guard. She looked at me inquisitively, as if, for once, she was interested
in what I had to say.

  “I love the way you write about the landscape not only as an object of beauty, but as a reflection—a confirmation, even—of your inner life.”

  “Thank you,” Tillie said. “That’s a lovely compliment.”

  She pulled a raincoat from the armoire and shook it out.

  “It’s something I’ve thought about but never articulated,” I said. “And the way you describe your struggle to leave home and become a writer, it’s like that overwhelming drive you had was part of the natural world too.”

  She pressed her lips together with the slightest of frowns.

  Perhaps stupidly, I was not yet dissuaded from continuing the conversation.

  “The columns are incredible.”

  Tillie raised an eyebrow.

  “Incredible? As in not to be believed? Let’s not get carried away.”

  She fished into the pockets of the raincoat and pulled out an old bunch of tissue.

  “Why did you stop writing them?” I asked.

  She put on the raincoat, smoothed it down.

  “I got bored. Being direct is dull.”

  “Your writing is not dull at all.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s not dull,” Tillie said, the clipped haughtiness back in her voice. “Poetry. Coming at things sideways is not only not dull, but often leads to greater clarity.”

  She smiled, though not warmly, opened the door, and stepped outside.

  “And … exit stage left,” I whispered.

  The conversation made me wonder how Jeremy had done it, how he had not only found common ground with Tillie and Henry but had gotten enough warmth from them to feel part of the family. Had they sensed Jeremy’s extraordinary talent and welcomed him as a fellow writer, someone whose gifts reflected back on them the same way their acclaim had lifted him? Did they find it easier to connect with Jeremy than with Franny? Was Jeremy the son they’d always wanted?