A Bigamist's Daughter Read online

  Tupper Daniels, then, or someone just like him, was, of course, inevitable.

  Chapter 8

  Ann leans into the office, her pocketbook over her shoulder, her raincoat on, the tight belt making her waist seem false and arbitrary, as if a waist would appear wherever the belt were tied.

  “Toodle-oo,” she mouths, and Elizabeth waves.

  “It was not mere coincidence, Elizabeth,” the man on the phone is saying, his Southern accent thick and slick. “When I came down from the mountain and, as soon as I arrived, saw the newspaper on our coffee table opened to your ad, I knew I should call.”

  “Well, we’re glad you did,” she says, drawing daisies on her notepad. The typewriters outside are still. She can hear the front door opening and closing, people calling “Good night.”

  “And that’s why I told your girl, ‘I want the head man, the editor-in-chief, because I have good news that shall not be delayed by lesser employees.’ ”

  She draws a smiling face and smiles into the phone. “I understand.” Fifteen minutes ago, Ann had called her on the intercom and said, “There’s a messenger of God on the phone and he wants to speak to you. It’s also time to go home.”

  “And do you know, Elizabeth,” he goes on, “When I heard your voice, something stirred within me. Something said, ‘Ewell, this woman is a child of the Lord and she will serve you well.’ Do you believe that, Elizabeth?”

  “Certainly,” she tells him, circling his name on her notepad. Reverend Ewell Datz. She wonders if it ever occurs to him that he sounds like a disc jockey imitating a preacher, a comedian doing Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry. A Billy Graham cliché. She wonders if he finds it reassuring—to be repeated and reproduced on all the major networks. “And we’ll look forward to receiving your manuscript, Reverend Datz, if you’ll just send it to my attention.”

  “I will do that, Elizabeth,” he says softly, slowly. “But you are mistaken when you say my manuscript. It isn’t my manuscript and let me tell you why.”

  She writes mah ms. across her pad. He seems to have moved away from the phone. She hears a chair scrape and pictures him getting down on his knees or clearing the floor for a song. Then his breath comes back.

  “While I was on the mountain,” he says in a new, low voice. “In that little cabin my daddy built, the one I was telling you about, I was filled one night with a terrible joy, like a great white light in my soul. And in this joy, I took up pen and paper and began to write. I wrote for seven days and seven nights and when I was finished, I had this book. Not my book, Elizabeth, but a book written by the Holy Spirit, through me.”

  Say Alleluia, she writes on the pad, surprised that she still remembers where all the l’s go. “I see,” she says.

  “That’s why the cover of the book must say, ‘How To Win With Jesus During the Coming Holocaust, by the Holy Spirit.’ ” He pauses, as if to visualize it, and then adds, an aside, “I figure your people can do a nice representative drawing for the back, where they usually put the author’s picture. You know, a sketch with a dove and light and all. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, we can,” she says slowly. Last month, she’d had a book by the prophet Elijah, and just a few weeks ago, one by Sange 6-94, an extraterrestial being. Both times Ned had sarcastically asked her where they should send the royalty checks. “But, of course, the copyright will be in your name.”

  “In the name of the Holy Spirit,” he says, as if repeating after her. “For He is the true author.” He pauses. “As I mentioned, my congregation and I will defray the costs of publishing. I’m sure we’ll be more than compensated by hardcover—and paperback—sales.”

  She sighs, deciding to argue about it when the contract has been signed. “Fine,” she tells him, giving her voice that push-them-off-the-line tone. “Why don’t you just send us your manuscript, His manuscript, and we’ll work out the details then.”

  “I’ll do that,” he says. And then, whispering like a lover: “Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, Reverend?”

  “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal friend and saviour?”

  She blushes—the comedian doing Elmer Gantry has suddenly called her up on stage. “Certainly,” she says, in the same tone she uses when people ask if Vista is endorsed by the Better Business Bureau. “And thank you so much for calling, Reverend Datz.” He starts to say something else but she coos, “ ’Bye,” and hangs up the phone.

  It’s nearly five-thirty and the office outside is in shadow. Only Mr. Owens is left and she can barely hear the quiet drone of his voice as he talks a letter into his dictaphone. She knows he is waiting for her to leave so he can make his daily inspection of everyone’s desk and then go home himself.

  She quickly types a memo to Production. Re: How to Win With Jesus During the Coming Holocaust by the Holy Spirit, Reverend Ewell Datz, editor. (Soon to be signed.) Author wants sketch of Holy Spirit on back jacket, i.e., dove and light, etc.

  She recalls a time when she couldn’t say Jesus without lowering her voice and bowing her head; when it was a word she said mostly to herself and only in prayer. Now it’s on the lips of every TV preacher and country-and-western singer and leftover hippie—on bumper stickers and billboards. Like having the Coca-Cola Corporation for your personal friend and saviour.

  Although she knows she shouldn’t knock it; would-be gospel writers make Vista a lot of money.

  She looks over the memo and then adds: Tell Kevin doves look just like pigeons.

  She pulls the paper from her typewriter, puts it in the OUT box for Ann, straightens her desk. She’s in no hurry to get home. Nearly two weeks and not a word from him. Joanne has stopped asking her to bring him over for dinner some Saturday night, Ann has stopped asking if he’s called, the two of them, like sideline medics, ready to rush to her aid, to tell her he was a jerk anyway, as soon as she shows signs of giving up, being hurt.

  They mean well, but she knows if she hadn’t told them about him, the insult would now be hers alone, easier to ignore.

  She wonders if she should send him one of her encouragement letters (Dear Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms. ______, We thought we’d take this opportunity to write to remind you how anxious we are to place your book, ______, on our Fall/Spring/Summer/Christmas list. Your book, it seems to us, is a timely/tasteful/touching account …), if, receiving it, he would remember that he’d slept with her, that she’d thrown him out. That she’d called her father a bigamist.

  She picks up her pocketbook, looks at the phone. She could also call him at his hotel, pretending it was business, but Mr. Owens is waiting and he doesn’t approve of after-hour calls. “Darling, you start treating them like gold, they get suspicious. Treat them like shit and they’re impressed.”

  She’s had enough of Southerners today anyway.

  She turns off her light. Mr. Owens is standing in his doorway, his wide, compact body pressed nicely into his three-piece suit, his hairy fingers twirling a rubber band.

  “Late,” he says. The smile seems to drip from his long nose. It spreads across his face reluctantly, a thick fluid filling a narrow crevice.

  “A call from Alabama. You know how slowly they speak.”

  He closes his eyes, raises his eyebrows, shrugs. “How’d you like to travel?” he asks, looking at the rubber band.

  “For Vista?”

  He doesn’t raise his eyes. “Ellis is getting tired of the road. He wants to spend more time in the office.” Ellis is the other editor-in-chief, the one who travels from city to city, preceded by large newspaper ads that herald the arrival of a major New York publisher and invite authors to stop by his temporary office at the Holiday Inn for a free reading. “You make a good appearance and Ellis is starting to get a fat ass. You might do better.” He looks at her, or, like a blind person, at somewhere around her throat. “Not long trips, maybe a week or two—Boston, Washington, Miami. The old ones like you.”

  “Sounds find to me,” she says. She realizes he’s not asking.

  “
All right. We’ll talk more later.” He finally looks her in the eye, making it clear he wants her to leave. “ ’Night,” he says.

  “Good night.”

  As she walks down the corridor, she feels a quick pinch at the back of her heel. Startled, she turns. The rubber band is on the floor behind her. Mr. Owens is standing in front of her office, smiling.

  She smiles back at him as if he has blown her a kiss and says, “Good night.”

  On the elevator, she thinks of traveling. Spending a few days at a Holiday Inn, eating breakfast in the restaurant, having a maid make her bed, going to the lounge to hear live, somewhat moth-eaten music, to drink gin and tonics. Moving on in the morning.

  It appeals to her. She knows it’s naive, but business travel has always seemed to her the ultimate in sophistication. Packing, going to the airport, checking into a modern hotel. Seeing all those strange faces she will never in her life see again, maybe even getting to know some of them briefly. It reeks with adventure.

  And yet, as she steps outside, onto the wet and darkening street where a large green trailer truck and a startlingly yellow taxi squeeze beside each other, horns blowing, voices shouting in what seems a perfect, grating illustration of hate, her enthusiasm sags. She suddenly feels a little repelled by her imaginings, even a little frightened, as if she’d been unwinding a fresh bolt of satin and suddenly came across a ringed spot of dried blood.

  Perhaps it’s just that talking to Mr. Owens always makes her feel somewhat cautious.

  Or maybe because her father traveled. Died alone on the road.

  He’s at the corner, leaning against the building, hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers. When he sees her, sees that she sees him, he doesn’t straighten up, merely smiles a sly smile; even when she stops before him, he continues to lean, to look at her. She has a feeling he’s about to say, “The jig is up.”

  “You look like Eliot Ness,” she tells him, already adopting her on-the-road directness. “Smug.”

  His smile broadens and he pushes away from the building with his shoulders. “I was just thinking how great you look,” he tells her, taking her arm, continuing her walk.

  She wishes she were in love with him.

  “Have you got plans for tonight?” he asks.

  “No,” she says, trying not to smile. Tomorrow she will tell Ann, call Joanne.

  He pulls his head back, eyeing her. “What? No dinners with authors? No parties at Elaine’s? Not even a tête-à-tête with Capote or Mailer?”

  Her heart sinks into something hot, pebbly. So the jig is up. She stops. “Do you have something you want to say?” she asks, already rehearsing her reply, her defense: Vanity publishers perform a service and make no promises they don’t keep. It’s all in the contract. If they seem to promise more than they actually deliver, well, what company doesn’t? What beer brewer or car dealer or international designer of blue jeans doesn’t?

  But her tone has surprised him. His smile loosens, sags. “No,” he says, all innocence. “I just thought you’d probably be busy. I know your job must involve a lot of socializing.”

  She starts walking again, the way a dancer who has missed a step moves quickly on.

  “How’s the book coming?” she asks.

  He shrugs. “Well, we haven’t done much with it, have we?”

  She looks at him walking beside her, that little bounce in his step. She wishes he were taller. “No, we haven’t,” she says.

  A woman in a black coat and a matted orange wig approaches them, scraping along on clear plastic high heels. Except for her red eyes, shining like blood and rimmed in bright turquoise, her features are dark and indistinct, as if they’d been rubbed with a dirty eraser, smudged with a wet finger. “Have you got any money?” she asks, whining.

  Elizabeth walks by her, but Tupper pauses, digs into his pocket. As he runs to rejoin Elizabeth, the woman screams back that he’s a devil-fucker.

  Elizabeth laughs. “Your just reward.”

  “But I gave her nearly a dollar,” he says. “How much more should I have given her?”

  She looks at him. He is blushing, truly embarrassed, and she laughs again. They are close enough to midtown now to be joined by other late workers heading home. “So I said ‘Dammit,’ ” a young man in a shiny brown raincoat says to anther in gray. “ ‘Dammit to hell,’ I told him.” Two young women, skirts and sweaters tight, figures perfect, knees bent slightly as they move over the rough sidewalk in their high, ankle-strapped heels, laugh together, licking vanilla cones. She thinks of a song about how New York is a wonderful place to be in love and then, as she hums it, remembers it’s Paris.

  “I came to ask you out to dinner,” he says sorrowfully as they approach the subway. “I purposely came after work and waited for you outside. No business, all pleasure.” He puts his hands in his pockets, bows his head, as if this offer too will be cursed. “Does that sound at all appealing to you?”

  “Sure,” she says, shrugging. “Sounds fine.”

  “Really?” He laughs, puts his arm around her waist. “Great. Do you want to go home first and freshen up?”

  She pauses at the subway steps. “My home or yours?”

  He grins. “Yours, of course.”

  She smiles coyly, settling in for another seduction. “Then this is my train.” But as she starts down the stairs, he backs away, grimacing as if the steps were littered with dead cats. “Some things I cannot do,” he calls to her, stepping into the street to hail a cab.

  She has to dodge bodies like a linebacker to rejoin him.

  Last Monday morning, over coffee and bagels in her office, Elizabeth had told Ann about Friday night. She’d said she hadn’t made up her mind about what to do with Tupper Daniels next, and Ann had offered three suggestions.

  First, she’d said, pulling her bagel apart with thumb and forefingers. “Keep seeing him until the contract is signed and the book goes into production. Then break up with him.”

  Elizabeth had smiled, taking her own bagel from the desk, tilting it to let the melted butter drip into the foil. For all her disillusionment and sophistication, Ann still uses terms like “break up” and “make out,” as if she has relearned everything about sex except that first, formulative vocabulary.

  “Breaking up is hard to do,” she said, watching her own bagel.

  “Just wait until he rolls over some night and says, ‘What’s this about my galleys being delayed by monsoons?’ ” They both laughed. One of Vista’s typesetters is in India, where the cost of labor and paper are low, but where monsoons occasionally delay the mails. “You could have some very tacky bedroom scenes,” Ann said.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Yes we could.”

  “So don’t see him again,” she went on. “He’s served his purpose.”

  “But he hasn’t signed a contract.”

  Ann looked at her through half-closed eyes, assessing, and then shrugging. “Okay,” leaning forward to dip the end of her bagel into a small container of purple jelly. “Here’s what you do: You tell him you were just swept off your feet Friday night but now that you’ve had time to think about it”—she licked her finger—“you’ve decided it would be better business if you didn’t sleep with him again. For his own good. Nothing personal.”

  “And then?”

  “And then,” she went on, chewing, “darling Tupperware will be so flattered that you succumbed to his charms in the first place, against your own better judgment, that he’ll sign the contract out of pure conceit and, to save you from yourself, never make a pass at you again.”

  Elizabeth chewed her own bagel, considering. She knew it was a role that would suit him, and her—forswearing sex for the sake of business, for the higher good of his manuscript. “That’s almost brilliant,” she said.

  Ann nodded. “It’s a variation on the line Brian used to use on all his little chickies in the typing pool. That’s why he always went for the ambitious ones, they’d rather lose him than their jobs.” She grinned. “Who sai
d my marriage didn’t teach me anything?”

  Elizabeth stared at her, deadpan. “You just talked me out of it,” she said. And Ann laughed. “I thought I would.”

  Just then the door slowly opened, and Bonnie slowly poked her head into the office, her eyes going immediately to the breakfast on the desk and then snapping away, as if she had looked down somebody’s dress. A toothpick pierced the corner of her mouth and a single pink barrette pulled her hair back from her pimply forehead. “Mr. Owens just came in,” she announced. “He’s in his office. You told me to tell you.”

  Elizabeth thanked her and began to clear the desk. Ann moved on to point number three.

  “You have to be careful you don’t make too much of him,” she said. “You might, after your long dry spell. I’ve seen the most sensible women fall madly in love, get married and everything, after a heavy dose of celibacy—as if marriage ever cured celibacy.” She crumpled a brown-paper bag with small punches. “You’d better be careful.”

  Elizabeth tossed her hair, blithely. “No problem,” she said.

  It’s the sexual part that’s always puzzled her about marriage. Regular pleasure seems somehow a contradiction in terms. Passing that same freckle, kissing that same thigh, the same fine hairs on the same legs, the same slow movements of the same mouths: Ah, there’s the way he blushes again, here’s the way I like to turn; there’s his cry, here’s mine. Just like yesterday, last week, last year.

  She’s been told it puts sex in the proper perspective: regularity, monogamy, marriage. But it seems to her that proper perspective often verges on boredom, indifference; a way of disassembling all those angled and sloping and sharp-edged spirals of feeling that get in the way, slow you down. A way of making everything equally smooth, equally flat, as colorless as a desert, so the same shrug, the same laughter, can roll easily over it all.