Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls (11 page)

P
eter kissed me goodbye and dropped us off at Thirtieth Street Station on his way to work Thursday morning. Inside the cavernous, echoing, high-ceilinged chamber, I slid my credit card into the automatic ticket machine. Once it spat out three tickets, I bought a large iced coffee, two muffins (one blueberry, one corn), and the latest
Us
and
InStyle
and
People.
At ten-fifteen Joy and Elle and I boarded the Acela, which would get me to New York City in plenty of time for my one o'clock lunch with my agent and publisher, and for Joy (currently on spring break) and Elle (currently on a hiatus of unspecified duration) to spend the afternoon shopping.

The two of them took seats side by side, turned down my muffins, and spent the hour and fifteen minutes of the trip with their heads bent over
Women's Wear Daily
and
Vogue,
whispering to each other, marking the pages with Post-it notes and occasionally looking sideways at me and giggling. I was too preoccupied to care.

Normally when I went to my publisher's, my editor, Peyson Horowitz, called in for sandwiches, and we bought sodas from the vending machine down the hall. Today, though, I'd be dining with my agent at Michael's, unofficial cafeteria of the media world. It would be the two of us, she'd told me, plus Patsy Philippi, the publisher of Valor Press, which had published all the sci fi I'd written for the last ten years, along with
Big Girls Don't Cry.

I said goodbye to my sister and daughter at Penn Station, and I walked slowly to the restaurant, knowing that even if I dawdled, I'd be embarrassingly early. I browsed at a newsstand, had another iced coffee, and marveled at the women passing by, all gym-tight bodies and perfect hair. In the coffee shop bathroom, I washed my hands and studied myself in the mirror, wishing that I'd swiped Joy's straightening iron, the one I'm not supposed to know about, or that I'd borrowed her lipstick (not supposed to know about that, either), or that I'd accepted Elle's offer of some help with my makeup and outfit selection, because the clothes that had looked perfectly acceptable that morning in Philadelphia--the straight black skirt and low black heels, the gray cotton shirt and the necklace of faceted jet-black beads--now seemed dowdy and dull.

My agent, Larissa, waved to me from beside the maitre d's stand and kissed me on both cheeks, a recent affectation, I assumed. I air-kissed back, trying not to stare at the elderly lady broadcaster ensconced at a table for four by the window, whose famous face had been lifted so many times that her eyebrows and her hairline were more or less in the same place. "And you remember Patsy, of course," Larissa said.

I nodded and submitted to Patsy's double kiss. I'd met Patsy only once, when Valor had held a champagne-and-cake reception to celebrate
Big Girls
's sixth month on the best-seller list. Patsy was short and plump and looked vaguely like Mrs. Claus, with her white curls and twinkling gold-rimmed glasses. Looking at her, you'd never guess that she'd earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature by twenty-three, or that beneath her sugar-cookie exterior she was scary-smart (and sometimes, I'd read, just plain scary).

Larissa removed her coat, revealing one of what I'd once joked were her two hundred identical black pantsuits. Over her arm, she carried what looked like a bowling-ball bag made of green leather, ornamented with all manner of fringes and tassels plus a heavy brass padlock--the kind of thing my sister would have been able to identify by name, designer, and price tag on sight.

Finding Larissa had been a happy accident. After I'd written my book, I'd gotten in touch with Violet, the agent who'd sold my screenplay.

"A novel?" she'd repeated dubiously.

"You know," I'd said. "The things that screenplays are sometimes based on?"

"Can't help you, lovey. I--
Hey, fuck you, asshat!
"

I'd grinned. Violet looked like a Girl Scout and cursed like Chris Rock. "You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. Some douche-sip took my parking spot. Listen, I'll shoot you the names of some book agents. How's New York?"

"Philadelphia," I'd reminded her. She'd apologized and sent me ten names within the hour. Larissa had been the first one on the list to request the entire manuscript, and she'd called me on a Saturday to tell me, in her tiny, squeaky voice, how much she'd loved the book, how it had spoken to her (at the time, I distinctly remember thinking,
How?
).

The hostess led us across the sunny restaurant, through the maze of tightly packed tables set along white walls filled with bright modern art, past editors and agents lunching on salads and grilled fish, to a prime table for four. A waiter passed out oversize menus and offered sparkling, tap, or still water. We made small talk about my train trip, the renovations of Patsy's flat in London, and Larissa's new assistant, who'd put herself through college working weekends in her family's nail salon and insisted, each week, on giving her boss a pedicure. Patsy's dress was navy, and when I looked more closely, I saw that Larissa's black suit was actually a very dark blue.
Navy,
I thought regretfully. Navy was the new black. How had I missed that? Why couldn't I have been a tenth as obsessed with high heels and high fashion as the
Big Girls Don't Cry
critics had once claimed? Ah, well.
Content of my character,
I thought, and
Seven pounds thinner.

After a few more minutes of small talk, the waiter returned. "Ready to order?" he asked.

I requested a Cobb salad. "Dressing on the side?" he asked.

"Oh. Sure." Silly me. I hadn't realized that the object of the game was to order a Cobb salad with so many things omitted that you'd be left with basically a twenty-four-dollar pile of lettuce leaves and tomatoes. Larissa asked for a Cobb salad without bacon, dressing on the side. Patsy ordered hers without bacon or avocado, or any dressing at all.

Yummy,
I thought. I slipped my feet out of my shoes and set them on the carpet, which I could feel literally buzzing beneath me.
The electric energy of New York,
I thought a little romantically. Then I realized that what I was feeling was the reverb from a dozen cell phones and handhelds and BlackBerries set on vibrate and humming away from a dozen different expensive purses on the floor.

I smiled at Patsy as she sat back and said, "So!" Then I reached into my own pedigree-free bag. I'd brought the latest Lyla Dare manuscript, completed just the night before. I slid the pages across the table.

Patsy shook her head. "Actually, we didn't ask you here to talk Lyla. Although you've been doing an excellent job," she added.

I slipped the manuscript back into my purse. "Okay." I was starting, very belatedly, to get an idea about why they'd asked me to New York instead of sending me the usual edit memo by e-mail; about why I was nibbling lettuce in the plush front room of Michael's, sitting on bentwood chairs at a linen-draped table within earshot of an executive editor at
Allure,
seeing and being seen, instead of in Peyson's tiny windowless office, eating corned beef off of wax paper.

Patsy steepled her chubby fingers underneath her chin and leaned forward, blue eyes saucer-wide. "As you know," she began, "the tenth anniversary of
Big Girls Don't Cry
is coming up this fall."

I nodded. My knees were already starting to shake, and my hands, when I wiped them on my napkin, were slimy.

"We'd like to do a special rerelease," said Patsy. "New cover, new packaging, a beautiful new author photo, a whole new publicity campaign."

"That sounds amazing," said Larissa. I nodded numbly. Well, they owned the rights to the thing. It wasn't as if I could stop them.

"We were hoping," Patsy continued, "that you'd be available to help us promote it. We were thinking about a sixteen-city tour."

"Oh, I can't." I tried to sound apologetic rather than insane. Judging from the looks I was getting, I didn't think I'd been entirely successful. I lifted my water glass with a trembling hand and took a sip. "I'm sorry," I said. "But I just don't think I can leave home anytime soon. Joy's bat mitzvah's this fall, too, and there's a lot of planning to do."

"Of course," said Patsy. Perhaps sensing my discomfort, she reached across the table and patted my icy hand with her warm one. "Maybe just a satellite-radio tour, some TV bookings. And a reading here in New York, of course. It could be fantastic."

I nodded, thinking I'd get out of that when the time came. There were excuses I could make, illnesses I could feign. Actually, I probably wouldn't even need to fake it. Just the thought of having to sit on a couch with some newscaster and relive that part of my past made me want to heave.

Patsy tugged at one of her white corkscrew curls and resettled her napkin on her lap. At the table beside us, a young woman in navy (of course) was settling into the chair the waiter had pulled out. "My agent will be joining me," she said proudly. I turned away.

"And," Patsy continued, "with the tenth anniversary of publication this spring, everyone at this table, all of us at Valor"--she favored me with her warmest smile--"and the millions of
Big Girl
fans, of course..."

I smiled weakly, bracing myself.

Patsy went on. "...we're all wondering whether you've given any thought to another novel." She beamed at me as if she'd just set a beautifully wrapped gift on the table.

"It's very flattering. I'll, um, think about it," I stammered.

"We don't need a whole book right now," said Patsy in her softest and most soothing tone. "It doesn't have to be a sequel, either. If there's just an idea you've had kicking around..."

"Will you excuse me?" I pushed myself up and out of my chair. My water glass shivered as I turned around fast, almost crashing into the waiter, who was carrying our denuded salads to the table. "Excuse me," I said again, and hurried around the corner to the ladies' room, where I sat in the tiny marble stall with my head in my hands.

A dream come true.
Cliche city, right? Yet no fewer than twenty newspaper articles about the surprising success of
Big Girls Don't Cry
had quoted me saying exactly that.
It is a dream come true.
It certainly looked that way: unlucky-in-love, oppressed-at-the-office, unhappy-in-her-own-skin big girl from broken home gets love, and a man, and a beautiful baby, and a best-seller. Not necessarily in that order, but still, an undeniable happy ending.

Twelve years ago, I'd written
Big Girls
in my spare bedroom, banging out five hundred pages in six months of white-hot fury. The manuscript was a sprawling, profane picaresque about a fat, funny, furious girl, the father who'd abandoned her, the boyfriend who'd broken her heart, and the girl's fitful journey toward love and happiness, with many (entirely fictional) stops in many (equally fictional) boys' beds along the way. In a fit of literary pretension, I called the book
Nought.
Would I be open to a title change? Larissa had asked. I'd told her I would be open to a sex change if she thought she could sell the book and give me enough of a cushion to pay for health insurance and maybe put a down payment on a condo.

Three weeks later the book was revised, cut down from its original 500 pages to a much more manageable 370, and renamed
Big Girls Don't Cry.
A week after that, Larissa sold the book to Valor for an amount of money that alternately thrilled or terrified me, depending on my mood.

The first thing I did as soon as the check for the first chunk of the advance cleared was to make a down payment on a row house around the corner from my apartment, a redbrick building with four good-size bedrooms spread over the top two floors. The house had a postage-stamp garden in the backyard, with southern and eastern exposures, and a weeping cherry tree standing shoulder-high in one corner, along with wooden half-barrels where I could grow herbs and tomatoes. After I'd moved Nifkin and Joy and all of my earthly possessions into our new digs, I rented a house by the beach in Avalon for two weeks.

I drove Joy to the shore on a Friday afternoon in August. I'd treated us to fried clams and crabcakes for dinner, and made it to the rented house as the sun set. I gave Joy a bath in the deep claw-footed tub, tucked her in to the bedroom next to mine, and plugged her Cinderella night-light into the wall. "
Knuffle Bunny,
" she demanded. I read her the story of how Trixie's daddy loses her favorite toy at the Laundromat, until Joy yawned and popped her thumb into her mouth.

"Love you, boots," I said, cracking open her bedroom window. The house still smelled faintly musty, but mostly of the salty breeze. I could hear the waves from every room.

"You're my mommy," Joy said sleepily. Bundled under the covers, she still looked tiny, baby-size, even though she was two.
She'll grow out of it,
her pediatrician assured me, explaining that she was just the right size for her gestational age.
Eventually, she'll catch up to the rest of the kids. You'll look at her, and you won't even see a difference.
Except I knew I'd always see.