Florence Gordon (7 page)

One kiss marred by bad beer and bad breath, and two dropped boxes of cookies, over twenty-three years. It didn’t add up to much in the scale of marital divagations. But this felt different.

She found Daniel at the kitchen table, reading a book about the robber barons.

“How’s it going?” he said, barely looking up. “How’s the motivation biz?”

She leaned over and kissed him.

“It’s all very exciting,” she said.

“My God, you smell of cigarettes. Have you been smoking?”

“Of course I haven’t been smoking,” she said, feeling as if she were lying, although she wasn’t.

“Then you’ve been kissing somebody who has.”

They rarely talked about anything serious, with the exception of their children, and yet he was completely tuned in to her. He didn’t really think that she’d been kissing anyone, and yet . . .

“Yes, I have. I’ve been making out with Humphrey Bogart.”

“Well, that’s not so bad. I was afraid you’d been kissing Christopher Hitchens.”

“Christopher Hitchens doesn’t like girls.”

“He likes girls. He just doesn’t think girls have a sense of humor.”

“If you don’t think girls have a sense of humor, you don’t like girls.”

“So that’s why you didn’t kiss him?”

“That was one of the reasons.”

“What were the others?”

“Well, his views.”

“His views on what? Surely it wasn’t his atheism.”

“I don’t mind his atheism.”

“Is it the things he said about Mother Teresa?”

“Only partly. I agree with a lot of what he said about her, actually.”

“So what was it?”

“It isn’t his views I don’t like. It’s his contempt for anyone who doesn’t share them.”

“So you would have kissed Christopher Hitchens if he weren’t so snarky to believers?”

“Yes. In a word, yes.”

“So who did you kiss?”

“Mother Teresa.”

“And she was smoking?”

“I wouldn’t say she was smoking. She had a few puffs on a cigar.”

“Mother Teresa. Who would have guessed she was a smoker?”

“Well, that’s the thing. She considers herself a statistical nonsmoker.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you have just a few puffs.”

“I get it.”

“She smokes pot like a hound, though.”

“Like a hound.”

“Yes. Like a hound.”

“Are you too hot?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re fanning yourself.”

“I just fan myself sometimes. It’s something I do.”

“I’ve never noticed that before.”

“I’ve been fanning myself forever. I was fanning myself the night we met.”

“I do remember, now that you mention it. I found it very appealing.”

“I thought you found it appealing. I noticed.”

“Break it up, you two,” Emily called from the next room.

Florence’s new editor wanted to meet her. He volunteered to come to her, on the Upper West Side, which was a display of deference that she appreciated.

But the reason he wanted to meet her, obviously, was to tell her that her literary services would no longer be required. She was fully aware that her books, with an impressive consistency, had lost money; she was fully aware that Edward had kept publishing her work out of personal loyalty, not because it made any business sense. With Edward gone, she knew she was gone as well.

She had tried hard to avoid the dreadful Kevin Cleaver. What was the point of meeting him in order to learn she was being dropped? He probably thought that telling her to her face was the humane thing to do. She didn’t want any part of it—send me an email, was her feeling—but he was intent on meeting her, and after three voice mails she’d decided that it wouldn’t be so bad. She would get to observe a human type that was unfamiliar to her, an experience that was always of interest; and she’d get a free lunch.

They met, at his suggestion, at Gabriel’s, a restaurant she liked but rarely went to, a friendly and relaxed and expensive place on West Sixtieth Street.

“So this is the great Florence Gordon,” he said.

“Florence Gordon,” she said.

She was thinking: Don’t mock me. If you’re going to drop me, just drop me. Don’t humiliate me too.

He was so hip that she didn’t have words to describe him. She couldn’t even describe what he was wearing. He was wearing jeans, of course, but she couldn’t have given a good account of his shirt, or his earring, or his shoes. Especially his shoes. They were hipster shoes, shoes that proved that he was in the know, shoes you could probably purchase only in Williamsburg.

“Why?” she said.

“Why what?”

“Why are we getting together?”

He laughed at this.

“I’ve heard about how direct you are,” he said. “I would have been disappointed if you weren’t.”

“Thank you. So. Why?”

“Sorry if I’ve been badgering you. But I’ve been badgering you for two reasons. First, I wanted to meet you. Second, I read the beginning of your memoir the weekend before last, and I wanted to tell you how beautiful it is.”

Edward must have passed it on before he left.

She waited for the next sentence, which would inevitably start with “But . . .” But it isn’t really marketable. But we’re looking for a different kind of thing right now. But we’re not the best publisher to do justice to your work.

“It’s just wonderful. It’s everything I hoped it would be and more.”

It took a while for his words to reach her. He seemed to be speaking with a five-second delay.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said.

She was still waiting for the “But.”

“Those were my two reasons, as of last week. But as of yesterday, there’s a third reason.”

He produced two pieces of paper and slid them across the table. A blurry fax. A blurry faxed copy of the front page of the
New York Times Book Review.
With a review of
How to Look at a Woman.

“Is this a prank?”

“If it is, it’s a prank that’s about to be perpetrated on a few million people.”

It was real. It was a copy of the book review section that would come out two Sundays from now.

“Read it.”

She read it. She was having trouble focusing—maybe I’m having a stroke, she thought—but it contained phrases like “a national treasure” and “an unsung heroine of American intellectual life.”

The review was by Martha Nussbaum, the University of Chicago philosopher, an author of books on every subject from Greek tragedy to disability theory to educational reform to the idea of religious tolerance in American life to—well, to everything else. Nothing human was alien to her.

She seemed to have read everything Florence had ever written. From the review you might have thought she’d spent her life doing nothing but meditating on Florence’s work.

“Jesus,” she said. “When did you get this?”

“Got it yesterday. I’m sorry I waited, but I got greedy. I wanted to show you in person. I wanted to see your face.”

“Did you get your money’s worth?”

“You seem remarkably calm, actually.”

“Well. Maybe not.”

“Maybe this is the way you look when you’re elated.”

She thought of Edward, poor dear Edward. He had been so loyal to her for so long. It was unfair that it wasn’t he who was giving her this news. She’d called him twice since their breakfast, but he hadn’t felt well enough to come to the phone.

She looked at the review again. It went on and on and on and on. Martha Nussbaum had always been a woman with a lot to say, and now she had a lot to say about Florence.

“It’s going to take some time to sink in. I can’t really understand it. I mean, why?”

“Depends on how you want to look at it. You could say it was long overdue. Or you could say you got lucky. Sometimes the
Times
likes to throw everybody a curve. Whatever the reason, it’s going to change your life. You’ve been declared a national treasure.”

He took out his iPhone or whatever the hell it was and read a few messages, and then wrote a few messages. It was remarkable, the way people interrupted their conversations with you to do this sort of thing, without a word of apology. It had become as natural as taking a sip of water.

“So now can we talk about your memoir?”

“Sure. Of course.”

She made an effort to get the review out of her mind. Wasn’t sure she was going to be able to do it.

“The main thing I have to say is that it’s brilliant. I think this could turn out to be the best thing you’ve ever done.”

She reached for a poppy-seed roll. The floor was tilting. They were onboard a ship, and the ship was listing. The national treasure reached for a poppy-seed roll.

“Why?” she said. “Why do you like it?”

“You’re not hearing me. I don’t like it. I love it. I’m sure you’ve needed to write it for your own personal reasons. You’re writing it for yourself, and you have no idea what it will mean to other people. You’ve been thinking you’re writing a memoir, but what you’re writing is the story of your generation.”

The story of her generation. Of course she’d been telling herself much the same thing, hoping other people would see it that way, but now that he was saying it, it sounded glib and superficial.

“You thought you were someone who’d made a home for herself in the cozy little ghetto of feminist literature. But it turned out that wasn’t your destiny. It turned out that your destiny was to write the inner history of your age.”

She had always found it curious, the way that even sophisticated younger people liked to speak of “destiny,” liked to tell themselves that “there’s a reason for everything.” The way they married a quirky individuality with a passive acceptance of things as they are.

Why am I so hostile to this man? He’s bringing nothing but good tidings, and he’s saying nothing but nice things.

Am I, she thought, one of those dreary people who won’t join any club that will have them for a member? She hoped she wasn’t.

“This has been quite a meal,” she said. “I walked in here thinking I was going to have to find a new publisher, and I walk out of here . . .”

“You walk out of here an American classic.”

She made a face.

“That’s what you are,” he said. “Get used to it.”

After she said goodbye to Kevin Cleaver, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She wanted to tell her friends, of course, but not yet.

She wandered over to West End Avenue and walked north. At first she thought she wasn’t headed anywhere in particular, but by the time she passed Seventy-ninth Street she realized that she’d walked this way for a reason. Soon she was standing outside the building of a woman whom she’d known a long time ago.

Her name was Simone. She had been Florence’s French teacher at the Bronx High School of Science. She was the first woman who’d taken a special interest in her. Florence remembered Simone once telling her that she thought she was going to have an interesting life.

Florence and Simone had stayed in touch after Florence went to college, but Florence had withdrawn from her sometime after that. During the decade in which Florence had been little more than her husband’s helpmate, she’d been too embarrassed to stay in contact with Simone. She felt too much as if she’d let her down.

Simone had died before Florence started on her writing career; she’d never had the opportunity to be proud of her student’s successes.

Florence stood outside Simone’s building for another minute or two, looking up at what used to be her window.

Thank you.

Then she started back home.

“This is a little different,” Janine said.

“All of a sudden my mother is a legend,” Daniel said.

“It’s damned strange,” Florence said. “I’m not really sure I like it.”

“Trust me,” Daniel said. “You like it.”

Florence had come to their apartment. It was Sunday afternoon. The review was still a week away, but word had begun to trickle out. A woman from
Time Out New York
had called to arrange an interview.
O
magazine had asked for an essay. Florence had been booked for something on NPR, and her literary agent had been in conversation with someone at
Charlie Rose.

Emily, on the couch, was watching everyone, or trying to. It was like watching a game where the action is taking place on three parts of the field.

Florence seemed different, but in a way Emily couldn’t define.

Or maybe she wasn’t different at all. Maybe it was just that Emily was seeing her differently, now that she was a national treasure.

Emily’s grandmother might or might not seem different, but her mother definitely did. She seemed kind of shellshocked. But why should she be shellshocked by Florence’s success?

Her father seemed the way he always did.

He was astonishingly statuelike. What the hell was he? She was convinced that nothing would really change him, ever. If you slipped E into his coffee, she believed, he wouldn’t act any differently. No matter what was going on inside his mind, he would remain unperturbed, unswayable, undiverted, doing his duty to the last.

It was clear that he was happy for his mother, in his low-key way. Among the three grown-ups, he was the only one who did seem simply happy.

“They want to send me on a book tour,” Florence said.

“Do you like going on book tours?” Emily said.

“I’ll let you know after I’ve been on one.”

“You’ve never been on one before?”

“When I did the history of struggle, they got a car and drove me around to different bookstores in the city. They took me all the way to Park Slope. That was my book tour.”

“Where do they want to take you now?”

“All the major markets.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“Of course you know what it means,” Daniel said. “It means Los Angeles, San Francisco, maybe Boston, maybe Chicago. Where the hell else is there?”

“Seattle, maybe, Dad?” Emily said. “Portland?”

“New Yorkers don’t know Seattle and Portland exist,” Daniel said.

“That’s not true,” Emily said. “They’re big book-buying markets.”

“How do you know this?” Daniel said.