The Last Book Party(21)

“Tillie’s going titilly, you know.”

“Titilly?” I asked, not even knowing what I was saying.

“Yes, to Rome. In September.” To Italy, I realized. Lane continued: “For a reading, and then a month as a visiting scholar at the American Academy. She’s really on the up-and-up, you know, finally getting her due as the genius she is.”

Lane then proceeded to give me her assessment of Tillie and Henry as writers. Her take boiled down to the “fact” that despite Henry’s “epic tenure” at The New Yorker, Tillie was the “mind to watch.”

“There was a time when Tillie was swept away by Henry, when he was at his younger, swashbuckling best, at the height of his powers and all that. But now? He’s a good journalist and, in person, a great raconteur, but his choice of subjects is absolutely unfathomable. He wrote an incredibly long article about—I kid you not—crop dusters. He’s a great wordsmith, but he overreports so much that it’s just kind of lame.”

Lane took a sip of tea. I was shocked by how harshly she critiqued Henry. His reporting from the Vietnam War, some of which was included in the collection of columns that Hodder, Strike had published long ago, was richly detailed, riveting, even emotional. And many of his profiles were funny.

Lane looked at me and frowned. “Why ever would you leave a job in publishing to work here?” she asked.

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, I suppose you think you’ll learn something working for Henry,” she said, with a quick, cold smile. “Perhaps you will.”





13





The next morning, dishes were piled high in the kitchen sink. Henry and Tillie, both wearing Indian-print cotton drawstring pants that may have been pajamas, were standing at the counter looking at some kind of drawing.

“It makes no sense to put the bar table so far from the driveway,” Tillie said. “It goes here, by the beach plums, as usual, so the guests can pick up a drink as they walk in.”

I leaned on one of the rickety wooden chairs around the kitchen table, figuring I’d wait for a pause in their conversation to make my presence known.

“The ground is slanted there,” Henry said. “Very awkward.”

He planted his thumb on the paper. “The booze goes here, I man the table, I get a direct view as everyone arrives.”

Tillie put her hands on her hips.

“Fine. Put the table where you want it. But you make absolutely no sense—as soon as ten people are at the drinks table, you won’t be able to see a thing but who’s off the wagon.”

Henry sighed and stepped out the door onto the back porch. With a quick glance my way, Tillie continued talking, as if I had been part of the conversation all along. “You’d think we would have this down by now but sparring over the planning of the book party is as much a part of the tradition as the party itself. But why we start these discussions so early defies logic.” She poured a cup of coffee and put it on the table near me. “Henry likes to see the guests arrive so he can be the first to try to figure out who they are.”

“Why wouldn’t you know the guests? Aren’t they all friends coming to celebrate a book launch?”

“It’s not a book party, it’s the book party,” Tillie said.

“I’m sorry. I’m not following you.”

Tillie explained: every Labor Day weekend, to mark their wedding anniversary, she and Henry threw a big costume party at which everyone dressed as a character from a book. Over the years, Henry turned the costumes into a competition, insisting that a prize be given to the first person to identify all the characters at the party. The method of determining the winner was never clarified, but Henry spent the evening perusing, interrogating, and recording his findings in a small notebook until at some point—usually when everyone was too soused to argue—he would declare himself the victor.

“The only time he was stumped,” Tillie said, “was when his brother’s second wife dressed as the so-called heroine of that Judith Krantz novel, Scruples. It’s hardly a secret that going with popular fiction is the best way to confuse Henry, but our crowd rarely turns to the best-seller list for inspiration.”

“The costumes are generally quite clever,” Tillie continued. “Ours are among the best. When Franny was a toddler, we put him in blue Dr. Denton pajamas and had him carry around a purple crayon.”

“How adorable,” I said. “Harold and the Purple Crayon was one of my favorite children’s books.”

“Yes, it was adorable—until he drew on the walls. A rascal even then—but that wouldn’t surprise you.”

The comment caught me off guard. How much did she know about what had transpired between Franny and me? Before I could respond, Tillie opened the door to her office and said, “You’ll come to the party, of course.” And then she went into her office and closed the door.

Henry didn’t mention the party again that morning, most of which he spent at his typewriter working on what he told me was a “burgeoning blemish of an idea,” while I continued reading about August Belmont’s quest to get the Cape Cod Canal completed before the Panama Canal. The party, which would be on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, was still more than a month away, which meant there was time for me to come up with a good costume.