What next?
She thought she had read somewhere that writers often felt a sadness, and emptiness, when they finished a book. But sadness was not exactly what she felt. Bravely, she sat still and tried to feel what it was that felt so constricting. She was relieved the book was finished, because it had been such hard work. Each morning she had had to force herself to sit down at the card table. Each empty sheet of paper stared at her like a challenge; each crumpled sheet in the wastebasket was a silent rebuke. And it had been hard, too, being so often criticized by Daniel.
But, she realized, it had kept her occupied. The feeling she had now was close to fear. What else did she now have to do? Her labors were over, and from here on it would be Daniel who had to do the work. Daniel would have to begin using his connections to get the book published and bring in the money they so desperately needed. She should be elated, but she was frightened instead. Don’t be silly, she told herself. You’ve done it. You’ve really finished it. You never thought you could.
Judith felt another little chill. What if, despite his boasts and the people he had “collected” at seminars and panels, what if Daniel was wrong and the book was no good? What if he couldn’t sell it? Had she wasted so many hours, so much energy and pain? And whose failure would it be?
Because Judith had not written what she had wanted to write. That book, both she and Daniel agreed, would have been too uncommercial, too literary. How large a market was there for the story of an upper-middle-class girl whose father virtually ran the town they lived in? The girl would find herself pregnant by a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, if there were tracks in their town. It was, as Daniel told her, “too revelatory,” “too small,” and “too artsy.” Just another sensitive coming-of-age book.
This book would be bigger than that one could ever be, if less felt and less real. Like the authors of many commercial books, she—well, they—had plucked the idea from the newspapers. Judith had been reading the horrific story of a woman who had reported her three children missing, only to later admit that she herself had murdered them. Judith had cried over the story, not only for the babies but for the woman’s demented state. Somehow, Judith understood that kind of desperate forlornness. It was Daniel, listening to her talk about it, who had recognized the hook. And so they had come up with the plot for In Full Knowledge.
Now the finished work sat before her, and looking at it, Judith shivered. Although she had invented Elthea, the heroine, Judith felt as if her character was real and Judith knew her: her desperation as her husband cheated and her marriage crumbled; the claustrophobia of being left with the three little boys; the fear and drabness of living on a single mother’s inadequate salary; her father’s refusal to give her financial help; her grasping at the chance for a new beginning with another man, and her hysteria when she lost him, too. Was it coincidence that the real murderess had been abandoned by three males and that she subsequently murdered three? Judith knew that while her fictional Elthea was not a typical sympathetic character, Judith’s own understanding and compassion for her had illuminated every page.
The truth was that Judith identified with Elthea. After all, hadn’t Judith been a victim of her father and of her first boyfriend back in Elmira? The book revealed more of her than she had planned. And perhaps, she thought, I’m also frightened now because I’m afraid no one will understand Elthea. Maybe that’s all it is. But a deeper voice told her that wasn’t all: Somewhere lurked the fear that without this book to talk about, Daniel might not talk to her at all.
“Well, Flaubert, I did it. This occasion justifies a Milk-Bone for you.” The dog gave her a bark.
Judith’s back was stiff, and all at once she felt as if she had to move. Slowly, she pushed away from the card table, stood up, and stretched. What was wrong with her? The book was finished. Daniel would be pleased, and tonight they would celebrate. She walked down the three steps that led to the kitchen and the hall closet. Daniel kept his suit and sports jackets in their bedroom wardrobe, and Judith used the hall closet as her own. She took down the blue wool dress, the one she had bought with her mother the last time they shopped together in Poughkeepsie. She held it up against herself, looking in the hall mirror. It brought out the blonder tones in her light brown hair and the depth of color in her eyes, but she wondered if she could still get into it. “What do you think, Flaubert?” The dog cocked his head. Nothing but approval and a desire for Milk-Bones there. She looked back to the mirror critically. She’d gained weight sitting at the typewriter and moiling around the empty apartment, snacking nervously and out of boredom. She thought she could still manage the dress.
She decided to shower, dress, put up her hair, and apply all the makeup she didn’t bother with most of the time. She’d look her best when Daniel came home tonight, and they’d go out to dinner and have a bottle of wine and celebrate. The book was done, and once they sold it, they could go on to live the life they had planned. Maybe she could even have the baby she wanted so desperately. Judith shook off her gray mood and tried to be cheerful. In Full Knowledge might not have been the book she wanted to write, but she had written it well, and she knew that Daniel was pleased, despite his criticisms. She had made Elthea live, and no one could read the book without understanding why she had done what she did. Perhaps readers might even feel that they, in the same situation, would have done the same thing.
Judith stepped into the shower and let the hot water run down her sore neck and tense back. She used the expensive almond shampoo she saved for special occasions and enjoyed its clean, evocative scent. It was only when she was rinsing off that Judith remembered that tonight was Daniel’s writers’ circle and that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.
When I am dead,
I hope it may be said:
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
—Hilaire Belloc
“What about the new Callard book?”
“Crap,” Pam Mantiss told Gerald Ochs Davis. “Midlist crap.”
“But we’ll have the Peet Trawley,” Gerald said to reassure himself. “That will fly. Especially with the movie coming up.”
“I hope we’ll have it. He’s really sick.”
“He’s been sick for thirty years. He likes to be sick. Münchhausen syndrome. It matters not. Just slap an omega on the cover. It will still sell.” Gerald thought of Dick Snyder’s directions years ago to the Simon & Schuster editor who was trying to cope with an impossible Jackie Susann manuscript: “Just turn it into a book somehow; that’s all I ask.” Gerald looked over the list in front of him. “When does Edmonds deliver the new one?”
Pam shook her head. She read his thoughts. “Forget it. Apparently her old house is still getting returns from her last book. She isn’t going to do it for us.”
Gerald stopped going over the printout before him. Pam had already accused him of buying Edmonds when she was past her peak, paying top dollar. “We’re not forgetting this one,” he told Pam. “I paid twenty million dollars. Her books are going to, sell no matter what we have to do to sell them.”
Pam shrugged. She was smart, but sometimes he wanted to murder her. He thought she actually enjoyed writing off authors. Like Tom Callard, the hot first-time novelist whom Pam had snagged (and probably shagged) before an auction could take place. The book sold two hundred thousand copies. Now his second was suddenly chopped liver? They must have had a lover’s quarrel.
“How about the Chad Weston book? I’ve heard it’s raw.”
“It’s graphic, violent sex. I like it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Gerald