The Last Book Party(31)
“Unsolvable problem: too long, yet impossible to cut.”
“Perhaps a fresh pair of eyes…?”
He frowned, and for a moment I thought I’d overstepped and that he was offended at the suggestion that I would be able to help him. But then he stood, gathered up the pages, and presented them to me with a little bow like a waiter offering a platter of food.
I took the papers to my table and settled in to read. Humming, Henry picked up the day’s crossword puzzle and went downstairs. I was happy to be alone. I became absorbed in the chapters, which chronicled a period of particular social prominence for Henry in the late 1970s.
Many of the anecdotes were funny, but more than a few seemed included only to puff up the persona of Henry Grey. The worst were the stories in which Henry quoted himself delivering what he obviously considered to be extremely clever quips. A case in point was his account of his response when Gay Talese canceled a lunch date because he had to do some additional reporting for his upcoming book on American sexuality, Thy Neighbor’s Wife. Without skipping a beat, Henry had retorted, “Too fucking busy and vice versa?” Which would have been very witty if Dorothy Parker hadn’t said it first.
After about an hour, Henry came back upstairs and asked me to show him what I had marked. I went over it slowly, easing into my criticisms, careful to tell him what I liked about the parts I was suggesting he shorten. He argued a bit, and then nodded and listened, at times looking a little pained. Gently, I tried to make him understand that by calling less obvious attention to his every witticism, his genuinely funny anecdotes would shine.
I watched, silently, as he paced the room with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor. I thought he might be angry, that I’d knocked him off his pedestal a bit too presumptuously. But then he stopped and, with a tired but open and accepting look on his face, said, “Thank you, Eve. As suspected, it was helpful to have another reader.”
As he picked up his manuscript, I asked, “Hasn’t anyone else read these chapters?” I instinctively didn’t mention Tillie by name.
“No,” he said, meeting my eyes. “It’s often not productive.”
25
Biking home, I was thrilled that I’d been able to help Henry. It was exciting to feel that I was on an equal intellectual footing with him, that he had valued my insights into his writing as he once had Tillie’s. Now that I knew that Henry’s shelf of favorite books did not include any poetry, I wondered what had changed since the years, described so lovingly in the beginning of Henry’s memoir, when they had helped each other with rough drafts. They may both still be writers, but the combination of serious, obscure poet and fact-heavy journalist with a taste for light satire was something of a literary mixed marriage.
It wasn’t until I saw the Volvo in our driveway that I remembered my father had returned, with houseguests, and that I’d promised to join them all for dinner in Provincetown. Still giddy from helping Henry, I didn’t even mind my mother’s up-and-down glance at my outfit, cutoff jean shorts and an old Grateful Dead T-shirt of Danny’s, and her barely whispered “Something nicer for tonight, please.” After a quick shower, I put on a gauzy halter dress and sandals with heels. I left my hair down and put on mascara and lip gloss. I glanced in the bathroom mirror. I liked the way I looked. I liked working for Henry. I had nothing to apologize for, and no need to offer an explanation for leaving my job at Hodder, Strike. If asked about it, I could honestly say it was a refreshing break from the city and that I valued the opportunity to work for Henry Grey.
No doubt pleased with my appearance and buoyant mood, my mother didn’t make any pointed comments about my current job or future prospects on the drive into Provincetown, although I saw her lips tighten when Barbara Rankin mentioned that her daughter Lisa had just been promoted at Young & Rubicam. The conversation stopped as we approached the stretch of Route 6 that opens up to an expansive view of the Provincetown shore and the tip of the Cape.
“Now that’s what we call Cape light,” my mother said.
The sun, glowing a brilliant orange, was sinking behind the Pilgrim Monument, flushing the underbelly of the vast clouds stretching across the sky with deep purples and pinks that looked almost too extreme to be real. The wind was brisk, and a light chop on the bay was flicking the water a dark silvery blue. It was true what Tillie had written: to see light, sea, and sky come together like this and bathe the whole landscape in warmth and color was both a comfort and an inspiration.
At Pucci’s, my mother had reserved a table by the window, and she ushered my father and me to the chairs facing the inside of the restaurant so that our guests could have a view of the harbor. I sipped a glass of white wine, only half-listening to the conversation about Ed Rankin’s recent trip bareboating in the British Virgin Islands.
As I handed the menu back to the waitress after ordering my meal, the hostess ushered another party to a table by the bar. I noticed Tillie first. She looked regal in a scarlet scarf wrapped around her head like a turban and a long green linen dress with a bronze pendant necklace nearly the size of a salad plate. Henry had on an uncharacteristically well-pressed shirt in bright cornflower blue that made him look tanned and young. They were with Mark Graft, Henry’s favorite backgammon partner, and a frighteningly thin woman I assumed was his wife.
Following my gaze, my mother turned toward the front of the restaurant. “Well, look at that,” she said. “It’s Eve’s illustrious employer.”