Lady Oracle (31 page)

I called up Mr. Sturgess, of Morton and Sturgess. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I don’t want the book published.”

“What?” said Sturgess. “Why not?”

“I can’t explain,” I said. “It’s personal.”

“Look,” Sturgess said, “you’ve signed a contract, remember?”

But not in blood, I thought. “Couldn’t we just sort of call the whole thing off?”

“We’re in production,” Sturgess said. “Why don’t you meet me for a drink and we’ll discuss it.”

He patted me on the back, figuratively, and told me it would be all right. I allowed myself to believe him. After that he began making special phone calls, to keep my morale bolstered.

“We’re revving up the engines,” he would say one day. Then, “We’ve got you on a couple of key spots.” Or, “We’re sending you on-tour, trans-Canada.” This last made me think of the Queen, standing on the back platform of a train, waving. Would I have to do that? It also made me think of Mr. Peanut, who would come to the Loblaws parking lot on special Saturdays. He had ordinary legs and arms, with spats and white gloves, but his body was a huge peanut; he would dance in a blind, shambling way while girl attendants sold coloring books and packages of peanuts. As a child I’d loved him, but suddenly I saw what it was like to be the peanut: clumsy, visible and suffocating. Maybe I shouldn’t have signed the contract, so carelessly, so recklessly, after my fifth grasshopper. As the publication date approached, I would wake every morning with a sense of unspecified foreboding, before I remembered.

I was reassured by the advance copies of the book, though. It looked like a real book, and there was my picture on the back, like a real author’s. Louisa K. Delacourt never got her picture on the back. I was a little alarmed by the jacket blurb: “Modern love and the sexual battle, dissected with a cutting edge and shocking honesty.” I didn’t think the book was about that, exactly; but Sturgess assured me he knew what he was doing. “You write it, you leave it to us to sell it,” he said. He also told me jubilantly that he’d “placed” the most important review.

“What does that mean?” I said.

“We made sure the book went to someone who’d like it.”

“But isn’t that cheating?” I asked, and Sturgess laughed.

“You’re incredible,” he said. “Just stay that way.”

UNKNOWN BURSTS ON LITERARY SCENE LIKE COMET
, Said the first review, in the
Toronto Star.
I cut it out with the kitchen scissors and pasted it into the new scrapbook I’d bought from Kresge’s. I was beginning to feel better. The
Globe
review called it “gnomic” and “chthonic,” right in the same paragraph. I looked these words up in the dictionary. Maybe it wasn’t too bad, after all.

(But I didn’t stop to reflect on the nature of comets. Lumps of cosmic debris with long red hair and spectacular tails, discovered by astronomers, who named them after themselves. Harbingers of disaster. Portents of war.)

I
gave Arthur a copy of
Lady Oracle
, inscribed in the front,
For Arthur, With All My Love, XXXX
,
Joan.
. But he didn’t say one word about it, and I was afraid to ask him what he thought. His manner became distant, and he began to spend a lot of time at the university, or so he said. I would catch him giving me hurt looks when he thought I wasn’t watching. I couldn’t figure it out. I’d been expecting him to tell me the book was bourgeois or tasteless or obscure or a piece of mystification, but instead he was acting as though I’d committed some unpardonable but unmentionable sin.

I complained to Sam, who was in the habit now of dropping over for a beer or two in the afternoons. He knew I knew about Marlene, so he could complain to me.

“I’m in deep shit,” he said. “Marlene’s got me by the balls, and she’s twisting. She wants to tell Don. She thinks we should be open and honest. That’s okay in theory, but … she wants to move in with me, kids and all. It’d drive me crazy. Also,” he said, with a return to sanctimoniousness, “think what it would do to
Resurgence
, it’d fall apart.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I have a problem.”

“You
have a problem?” Sam said. “But you never have problems.”

“This time I do,” I said. “It’s about Arthur and my book. I mean, he hasn’t even told me it’s bad,” I said. “It’s not like him at all. He’s acting as though it just doesn’t exist, but at the same time he’s hurt by it. Is it really that terrible?”

“I’m not a metaphor man, myself,” Sam said, “but I thought it was a pretty good book. I thought there was a lot of truth in it. You got the whole marriage thing, right on. It isn’t how Arthur would’ve struck me, but another guy can never see that side, right?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “You think that book is about Arthur?”

“So does Arthur,” Sam said. “That’s why he’s hurt. Isn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Who’s the other fellow then?” Sam wanted to know. “If he finds out it’s someone else, he’s going to be even more pissed off, you know.”

“Sam, it isn’t about anyone. I don’t have any secret lover, I really don’t. It’s all sort of, well, imaginary.”

“You’re in deep shit,” Sam said. “He’s never going to believe that.”

This was what I feared. “Maybe you could have a talk with him.”

“I’ll try,” said Sam, “but I don’t think it’ll work. What am I supposed to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Sam must have said something though, because Arthur’s attitude modified a little. He continued to look at me as though I’d betrayed him to the Nazis, but he was going to be a good sport and not mention it. The only thing he said was, “When you write your next book, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me see it first.”

“I’m not going to write any more books,” I said. I was hard at work on
Love, My Ransom
, but he didn’t have to know about that.

I had other things to worry about. Sturgess’ battle plan was now in full swing, and my first television show was coming up. After that,
Morton and Sturgess were throwing a party for me. I was very nervous. I put on a lot of Arrid Extra-Dry and a long red gown, and tried to remember what Aunt Lou’s etiquette booklet had said about sweaty palms. Talcum powder, I thought. I sprinkled some on my hands and set off in a taxi for the television station. Just be yourself, Sturgess had told me.

The interviewer was a man, a young man, very intense. He joked with the technicians while they put the noose around my neck; a microphone, they said. I swallowed several times. I felt like Mr. Peanut, big and cumbersome. The strong lights went on and the intense young man turned towards me.

“Welcome to
Afternoon Hot Spot.
Today we have with us Joan Foster, author, I guess that’s authorm, of the runaway bestseller
Lady Oracle.
Tell me, Mrs. Foster – or do you prefer to be called
Ms.
Foster?”

I was taking a drink of water, and I set it down so quickly I spilled it. We both pretended the water was not running across the table and into the interviewer’s shoes. “Whichever you like,” I said.

“Oh, then you’re not in Women’s Lib.”

“Well, no,” I said. “I mean, I agree with some of their ideas, but.…”

“Mrs. Foster, would you say you are a happily married woman?”

“Oh. yes”
I said. “I’ve been married for years.”

“Well, that’s strange. Because I’ve read your book, and to me it seemed very angry. It seemed like a very angry book. If I were your husband, I’m not sure I’d like it. What do you think about that?”

“It’s not about my
marriage
,” I said earnestly. The young man smirked.

“Oh, it’s not,” he said. “Then perhaps you’ll tell us what inspired you to write it.”

At this point I told the truth. I shouldn’t have done it, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop. “Well, I was trying some experiments with
Automatic Writing,” I said. “You know, you sit in front of a mirror, with a paper and pencil and a lighted candle, and then.… Well, these words would sort of be given to me. I mean, I’d find them written down, without having done it myself, if you know what I mean. So after that … well, that’s how it happened.” I felt like a total idiot. I wanted another drink of water, but there wasn’t any, I’d spilled it all.

The interviewer was at a loss. He gave me a look that clearly said, You’re putting me on. “You mean these poems were dictated to you by a spirit hand,” he said jocularly.

“Yes,” I said. “Something like that. You might try it yourself, when you get home.”

“Well,” said the interviewer. “Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. That was the lovely Joan Foster, or should I say Mrs. Foster – oh, she’ll get me for that one! –
Ms.
Joan Foster, authoress of
Lady Oracle.
And this is Barry Finkle, signing off for
Afternoon Hot Spot.”

At the party, Sturgess took my elbow and steered me around the room as if I were a supermarket pushcart.

“I’m sorry about the interview,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“What do you mean?” he crowed. “It was sensational! How’d you think it up? You sure put him in his place!”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. No use to tell him that what I’d said was true.

There were a lot of people at the party, and I was bad at remembering names. I made a mental note not to drink too much. I’d made a fool of myself once that day, I felt. I had to keep calm.

When Sturgess finally let go of my elbow, I backed up against the wall. I was hiding from a newspaper columnist who’d seen the television program and wanted to have a conversation about psychic
phenomena. I felt like crying. What was the use of being Princess-for-a-day if you still felt like a toad? Acted like one, too. Arthur would be humiliated. What I’d said, coast to coast, was way off the party line. Not that he had a party. This was a party, some party. I finished my double Scotch and went for another.

When I was getting my drink at the bar, a man came up beside me.

“Are you Lady Oracle?” he said.

“It’s the name of my book,” I said.

“Terrific title,” he said. “Terrible book. It’s a leftover from the nineteenth century. I think it’s a combination of Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran.”

“That’s what my publisher thought, too,” I said.

“I guess you’re a publishing success,” he said. “What’s it like to be a successful bad writer?”

I was beginning to feel angry. “Why don’t you publish and find out?” I said.

“Hey,” he said, grinning, “temper. You’ve got fantastic hair, anyway. Don’t ever cut it off.”

This time I looked at him. He too had red hair, and he had an elegant moustache and beard, the moustache waxed and curled upward at the ends, the beard pointed. He was wearing a long black cloak and spats, and carrying a gold-headed cane, a pair of white gloves, and a top hat embroidered with porcupine quills.

“I like your hat,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I got a girl to do it for me. A girl I knew. She did some gloves to match, but I kept getting stuck on things – people in breadlines, dead dogs, nylon stockings, stuff like that. This is my dress uniform. Why don’t you come home with me?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” I said. “Thank you anyway.”

He didn’t seem disappointed. “Well, at least you can come to my show,” he said. He handed me an invitation, slightly smudged. “The
opening’s tonight. It’s just a couple of blocks from here; that’s how come I crashed this party, I got tired of my own.”

“All right,” I said. There didn’t seem any harm in it, I thought. Secretly I was flattered: it was a long time since anyone had propositioned me. Also I found him attractive. Him or the cape, I wasn’t sure which. And I wanted to get away from the columnist.

The opening was at a minor art gallery, The Takeoff, and the show itself was called SQUAWSHT. “It’s a pun, like,” he told me as we walked across to Yonge Street. “
Squaw
and
squashed
, get it?”

“I think so,” I said. I was studying the invitation, in the light from a store window. “The Royal Porcupine,” it said. “Master of the
CON-CREATE POEM.
” There was a picture of him in full dress, flanked by a shot of a dead porcupine, taken from underneath so its long front teeth were showing.

“What’s your real name?” I said.

“That is my real name,” he said, a little offended. “I’m having it changed legally.”

“Oh,” I said. “What made you happen to pick that particular one?”

“Well, I’m a Royalist,” he said. “I really dig the Queen. I felt I should have a name that would reflect that. It’s like the Royal Mail or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Also I thought it would be memorable.”

“What about the porcupine?”

“I’ve always figured the beaver was wrong, as a national symbol,” he said. “I mean, the beaver. A dull animal and too nineteenth-century; all that industry. And you know what they used to be hunted for? The skin was for hats, and then they cut the nuts off for perfume. I mean, what a fate. The porcupine though, it does what it likes, it’s covered with prickles so nobody messes with it. Also it has strange tastes, I mean beavers chew trees, porcupines chew toilet seats.”

“I thought they were easy to kill,” I said. “You hit them with a stick.”

“Propaganda,” he said.

As we arrived, a number of people were leaving; outside, the SPCA was picketing with signs that read
SAVE OUR ANIMALS.
The show itself consisted of several freezers with glass tops and fronts, like the display cases for ice cream and frozen juice in supermarkets. Inside these freezers there were a number of dead animals, all of which had apparently been run over by cars. They were quick-frozen in exactly the poses they’d been discovered in, and attached to the side of each one, in the position usually reserved for the name of the painting, the size and the materials – Composition #72, 5′ × 9′, acrylic and nylon tubing – there was a little card with the species of the animal, the location where it had been found, and a description of its injuries:
RACCOON AND YOUNG, DON MILLS AND
401,
BROKEN SPINE, INTERNAL HEMORRHAGE
, for instance;
OR DOMESTIC
PUSSYCAT, RUSSELL HILL ROAD, CRUSHED PELVIS.
There were a skunk, several dogs, a fawn and a porcupine, as well as the usual cats, groundhogs and squirrels. There was even a snake, mangled almost beyond recognition.