The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (22 page)

Eric:

Here it is - the first out of the bottle. And I want you to be dead honest with me about its lack of literary merit.

Expect me in Manhattan in around ten days. Dinner on me at Luchows the night I’m back.

Love,

S

I cycled to the local post office the next morning, and paid an extra dollar to have this envelope sent Express to Eric’s apartment. Then I used the post office phone for a trunk call to Boston. I spoke with a college friend - Marge Kennicott - who was working as a junior book editor at Houghton Mifflin, and living on Commonwealth Avenue. She seemed delighted by the idea of putting me up for a week or so (‘… if you don’t mind sleeping on the world’s lumpiest sofa’). I told her to expect me in forty-eight hours. As soon as I hung up, I called the railway station in Brunswick, and reserved a seat on the train to Boston for Wednesday morning. Then I cycled over to Ruth’s house and told her I was leaving in two days’ time.

‘I’m going to miss you,’ she said. ‘But you look ready to go back.’

‘Do I really look cured?’ I said with a laugh.

‘Like I’ve told you before, you’ll never be cured of him. But I bet you now see it for what it was.’

‘Put it this way,’ I said. ‘I’ll never let myself fall so hard again.’

‘Someone will come along and change your mind about that.’

‘I won’t let them. Romance is a game for saps.’

I truly meant that. Because what so unnerved me about this entire episode was how it undermined all sense of control - to the point where I could think of little else but the object of my infatuation. In my short story, Hannah comes away from her night of accidental passion feeling bereft - but also with the realization that she can fall in love. I knew that now too … and it bothered me. Because what I now realized was that I hadn’t really been in love with Jack Malone. I had been in love with the
idea
of Jack. I had been in love with love. And I vowed never to make such a misjudgment again.

I packed up my trunk and typewriter, and had them shipped on ahead of me to New York. I took a final walk on Popham Beach. Ruth insisted on driving me to the train station in Brunswick. We embraced on the platform.

‘I’m going to expect a copy of whatever you’ve been writing when it gets published.’

‘It’ll never get published,’ I said.

‘Sara - one of these days you’re going to actually start liking yourself.’

I spent a perfectly pleasant week in Boston. Marge Kennicott lived in a perfectly pleasant apartment in Back Bay. She had perfectly pleasant friends. She had a perfectly pleasant fiance named George Stafford, Jr - who was the heir apparent in his family’s stockbroking firm. As always, Boston was a perfectly pleasant city - pretty, snobbish, dull. I resisted all of Marge’s attempts to fix me up with perfectly pleasant eligible bachelors. I said nothing about the events that had driven me to Maine for seven weeks. After seven days of austere Brahman gentility, I was longing for the jangled disorder and chaotic exuberance of Manhattan. So I was relieved when I finally boarded the train back to Penn Station.

The day before I left Boston, I’d phoned Eric at home. He said he was going to be at work when my train arrived, but would meet me at Luchows for dinner that night.

‘Did you get the envelope I sent you?’ I asked nervously.

‘Oh yes,’ he said.

‘And?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

There was a huge pile of mail on the doormat outside my apartment. I sorted through it, expecting nothing from Jack. My expectations were met. But there was a letter from the Department of the Army/Office of Enlisted Personnel, informing me that Lieutenant John Joseph Malone was now stationed at Allied HQ in England. They also enclosed a postal address at which he could be reached.

I only read through the letter once. Then I dropped it in the trash basket by my desk, thinking: misjudgments are best tossed out of your life.

There was another letter in that pile of mail which caught my immediate attention - because the return address on the envelope said
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning:
a well-known magazine with which I had never corresponded, nor knew anyone who worked there. I tore back the flap. I pulled out the letter.

April 28th, 1946
Dear Miss Smythe,

I am pleased to inform you that your short story, ‘Shore Leave’, has been accepted for publication by
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.
I have tentatively scheduled it for our first September ‘46 issue, and will pay you a fee of $125 for first publication rights.

Though I would like to run the story largely uncut, I have one or two editorial suggestions that you might be willing to consider. Please call my secretary at your convenience to set up a meeting.

I look forward to meeting you, and am delighted your fiction will be appearing in our magazine.

Sincerely yours,

Nathaniel Hunter

Fiction Editor

Three hours later - as I sat nursing a glass of champagne with Eric in Luchows - I was still in shock.

‘Try to look pleased, for God’s sakes,’ Eric said.

‘I
am
pleased. But I’m also a little stunned that you engineered all this.’

‘As I told you before, I engineered nothing. I read the story. I liked the story. I called my old Columbia friend, Nat Hunter, at
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
and told him I’d just read a story which struck me as perfect
Saturday/Sunday
material … and which just happened to have been written by my sister. He asked me to send it over. He liked it. He’s publishing it. Had I not liked it, I wouldn’t have sent it to Nat. Had Nat not liked it, he wouldn’t be publishing it. So your story’s acceptance was completely free of nepotism. I engineered nothing.’

‘Without you, however, I wouldn’t have had direct access to the fiction editor.’

‘Welcome to the way the world works.’

I reached over and clasped his hand.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Much obliged. But, hey, it’s a good story. You can write.’

‘Well, dinner’s on me tonight.’

‘Damn right it is.’

‘I missed you, Eric’

‘Ditto, S. And you’re looking so much better.’

‘I am better.’

‘As good as new?’

I clinked my glass against his. ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

The next morning, I called
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.
Nathaniel Hunter’s secretary was exceedingly friendly, and said that Mr Hunter would be delighted to take me out to lunch in two days’ time, my schedule permitting.

‘My schedule permits,’ I said, trying to sound blase.

I also checked in with Leland McGuire at
Life.
His assistant answered the phone, then put me on hold after I asked to speak directly with my erstwhile boss. After a moment she came back on the line.

‘Leland asked me to welcome you back to New York, and to say he’ll be in touch as soon as he has an assignment for you.’

It was the reply I expected. I now knew for certain that, a few months from now, the dismissal notice from
Life
would land on my doormat. But with that $125 in my pocket from
Saturday Night/ Sunday Morning,
I’d be able to survive for a month or so beyond that time. And maybe I could convince this Nat Hunter to give me a journalistic assignment or two.

Naturally, I was nervous on the morning of my lunch with Mr Hunter. By eleven I was tired of pacing my little apartment - so I decided to kill the remaining hour and a half before our meeting by walking all the way uptown to
Saturday/Sunday’
s offices on Madison and 47th Street. As I was locking my apartment door behind me, Mr Kocsis walked up the stair, a stack of letters in his hand.

‘Mail early today,’ he said, handing me a single postcard, then heading down the corridor, depositing letters on my neighbors’ mats. I stared down at the card. Though the stamp was American, it was franked ‘US Army/American Occupation Zone, Berlin’. My stomach was suddenly in knots. Quickly I turned the card over. Three words were scrawled on the reverse side.

I’m sorry.

Jack

I stared at this message for a very long time. Then I forced myself to head downstairs and out into the bright spring sunshine. I turned left outside my front door, and started heading north. The card was still clutched in my hand. Crossing Greenwich Avenue, I walked by a garbage can. Without a moment’s thought, I tossed the card away. I didn’t look back to see if it landed in the can. I just kept walking.

T
HE LUNCH WITH
Nathaniel Hunter went well. So well that he offered me a job: assistant fiction editor of
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I accepted on the spot. Mr Hunter seemed surprised by my immediate answer.

‘You can think about it for a day or two, if you want,’ he said, lighting up one of the endless chain of Camels he smoked.

‘My mind’s made up. When do I start?’

‘Monday, if you like. But Sara - do realize that, by accepting this job, you’re not going to have much time for your own writing.’

‘I’ll find the time.’

‘I’ve heard that before from many a promising writer. They get a story accepted by a magazine. But instead of trying to write fiction full time, they take on a position in advertising or public relations. Which inevitably means that they are too exhausted by the end of the day to do any writing whatsoever. As you well know, a nine-to-five job takes its toll.’

‘I need to pay the rent.’

‘You’re young, you’re single, you have no responsibilities. This is the time you should take a shot at a novel …’

‘If you’re so certain I should be at home writing, then why are you offering me this job?’

‘Because, (a) you strike me as smart - and I need a smart assistant; and (b) as someone who gave up a promising literary career to be a wage-slave and edit other people’s work, I consider it my duty to corrupt another promising young writer with a Faustian Bargain they really should refuse …’

I laughed.

‘Well, you’re certainly direct, Mr Hunter.’

‘Make you no promises, tell you no lies - that’s my credo. But do yourself a favor, Sara:
don’t
take this job.’

But I wouldn’t listen to his advice. Because I didn’t have enough faith in my own talent to set up as a full-time writer. Because I was scared of failing. Because everything in my background told me to grab the secure job option. And because I also knew that Nathaniel Hunter was good news.

Like Eric, he was in his thirties: a tall, wiry fellow with thick graying hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a permanent self-deprecating scowl on his face. He was rather handsome in a tweedy academic sort of way - and endlessly amusing. He told me he’d been married for twelve years to a woman named Rose, who taught part-time in the Art History department at Barnard. They had two young boys, and lived on Riverside Drive and 108th Street. From everything he said, it was clear that he was devoted to his wife and children (even though, when discussing his family, he would always cloak his comments in cynicism … which, as I came to realize, was his tentative way of expressing affection). This made me instantly comfortable with him, as I sensed there would be none of the flirtatious pressure I experienced while working with Leland McGuire. I also liked the fact that, during this first meeting, he never once made any enquiries about my private life. He wanted to hear my views on writing, on writers, on working for magazines, on Harry S. Truman, and whether I supported the Dodgers or the Yankees (the Bronx Bombers, of course). He never even asked if ‘Shore Leave’ was, in any way, autobiographical. He simply told me it was a very good story - and was surprised to hear that it was my first stab at fiction.

‘Ten years ago, I was exactly where you are now,’ he said. ‘I’d just had a short story accepted by
The New Yorker,
and I was halfway through a novel I was certain would make me the John P. Marquand of my generation.’

‘Who ended up publishing the novel?’ I asked.

‘No one - because I never finished the damn thing. And why didn’t I finish it? Because I started doing foolish, time-consuming things like having children, and taking an editorial job at Harper and Brothers to meet the cost of having children, and then moving to the higher-paid echelons of
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
to pay for private schools, and a bigger apartment, and a summer rental on the Cape, and all those other necessities of family life. So look to this shining example of squandered promise … and turn me down. Don’t Take This Job.’

Eric concurred. ‘Nat is absolutely right,’ he said when I called him at
The Quiz Bang Show
to tell him about the job offer. ‘You’re commitment-free. This is the time to gamble a bit, and avoid all the usual bourgeois traps …’

‘Bourgeois traps?’
I said with a giggle. ‘You can take the boy out of the Party, but you can’t take the Party out of …’

He cut me off. ‘That’s not funny. Especially since you never know who’s listening in.’

I felt awful. ‘Eric, I’m sorry. That was dumb.’

‘We’ll continue this conversation later,’ he said.

We met up that evening at McSorley’s Ale House off the Bowery. Eric was seated at a booth in the rear of the bar, a stein of dark ale in front of him. I handed him a large square package.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘A
mea culpa
for speaking before thinking on the phone.’

He tore off the brown wrapping paper. His face immediately brightened as he looked down at a recording of the Beethoven
Missa Solemnis,
conducted by Toscanini.

‘I must encourage you to feel guilty more often,’ he said. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thanks.’

‘I was utterly indiscreet.’

‘And I was probably being a little too paranoid. But -‘ he lowered his voice ‘- some of my former, uh,
friends
from that era have been having difficulties recently.’

‘What kind of difficulties?’ I said, whispering back.

‘Questions from employers - especially those in the entertainment industries - about past political allegiances. And there are rumors that the Feds are starting to snoop around anyone who was once a member of that funny little party to which I used to belong.’

‘But you left in, what, nineteen forty?’

‘Forty-one.’

‘That’s five years ago. Ancient history. Surely, no one’s going to care that, once upon a time, you were a fellow traveler. I mean, look at John Dos Passos. Wasn’t he a big-deal Party member in the thirties?’

‘Yes, but now he’s righter than Right.’

‘My point exactly - Hoover and his guys wouldn’t now accuse Dos Passos of being a …’

‘Subversive,’
Eric said quickly, making certain I didn’t use the ‘C word.

‘Yes,
subversive.
My point is: it doesn’t matter if you were once a member of that
club,
as long as it’s clear you’re no longer affiliated to it. I mean, if an atheist becomes a Christian, is he always considered a “former atheist”, or someone who has finally seen the light?’

‘The latter, I guess.’

‘Exactly. So stop worrying. You’ve seen the light. You’re a “good American”. You’re in the clear.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘But I promise not to make jokes like that on your office phone again.’

‘Are you really going to take this job with Nat?’

‘I’m afraid so. And yes, I know all the logical reasons why I should dodge it. But I’m a coward. I need to know where the next paycheck is coming from. I also believe in the mysteries of timing …’

‘How do you mean?’

That’s when I told him about the postcard I’d received that morning from Jack.

‘All he said was,
I’m sorry?’
Eric said.

‘Yes - it was short and not so sweet.’

‘No wonder you’re taking the job.’

‘I would have accepted Nat’s offer, no matter what.’

‘But Lover Boy’s goodbye note clinched the matter?’

‘Please don’t call him Lover Boy.’

‘Sorry. I’m simply angry on your behalf.’

‘Like I told you weeks ago, I’m cured.’

‘So you said.’

‘Eric, I threw his card away.’

‘And accepted Nat’s job offer a couple of hours later.’

‘One door shuts, one door opens.’

‘Is that an original line?’

‘Go to hell,’ I said with a smile.

The beers arrived. Eric raised his stein. ‘To the new assistant fiction editor of
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.
Please keep writing.’

‘I promise I will.’

Six months later, I found myself replaying that conversation in my head on a snowy December afternoon, just before Christmas. I was in my cubbyhole office on the twenty-third floor of the
Saturday/Sunday
offices in Rockefeller Center. My small grimy window gave me a picturesque view of a back alleyway. There were a pile of unsolicited short stories on my desk. As usual, I had sifted through ten manuscripts that day - none of which were remotely publishable. As usual, I had written a report of varying length on each story. As usual, I had attached standard rejection letters to every story. As usual, I bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t getting any of my own writing done.

The job had proved far more laborious than expected. It also had virtually nothing to do with editing. Rather, I was employed (along with two of Nat’s other assistants) to work my way through the three hundred or so manuscripts that arrived at
Saturday/Sunday
each month by unknown writers. The editorial board of the magazine prided itself on the fact that every unsolicited manuscript was ‘given due consideration’ - but it was pretty clear to me after eight weeks there that, by and large, my job was to say no. Occasionally, I would bump into a story that showed promise - or even real talent. But I had no power to get it into print. Rather, all I could do was ‘send it upstairs’ to Nat Hunter with an enthusiastic recommendation - knowing full well that the chances of him running it were negligible. Because the magazine only reserved four of its fifty-two annual issues for stories by unknown writers. The remaining forty-eight weeks were given over to established names - and
Saturday/Sunday
prided itself on its weekly offering of fiction by the most prestigious writers of the day: Hemingway, O’Hara, Steinbeck, Somerset Maugham, Waugh, Pearl Buck. The list was formidable, and made me realize just how absurdly lucky I was to be one of the four unknown writers to be plucked out of obscurity during 1946 for publication in the magazine.

As scheduled, ‘Shore Leave’ did appear in the September 6th edition of
Saturday/Sunday.
Several of my colleagues in the office complimented me on the writing. An editor at Harper and Brothers dropped me a nice note, saying that if and/or when I had amassed a book-length collection of stories, he’d be interested in considering them for publication. Someone from RKO Pictures made a tentative telephone inquiry about the rights to the story, but then sent a letter, explaining that ‘wartime romances are now passe’. As promised, I did despatch a copy of the magazine to Ruth in Maine, and received a cheery card back in return (‘You really have it as a writer … and this reader wants to read more!’). Eric squandered a significant portion of his weekly salary on a celebratory dinner at 21. And Nat Hunter also marked the occasion by taking me to lunch at Longchamps.

‘So do you regret taking the job?’ he asked as our drinks arrived.

‘Hardly,’ I lied. ‘Do I seem like I regret it?’

‘You’re far too well-mannered and polite to ever openly express dissatisfaction. But - as I know you’ve discovered - yours is not the most fulfilling of jobs. Nor, for that matter, is mine - but at least I have the fringe benefit of an expense account, which allows me to lunch writers … like your good self. On which note: where’s the next story?’

‘I’m working on it,’ I said. ‘It’s taking a little longer than I expected.’

‘You are a terrible liar, Miss Smythe.’

He was right, of course. I was utterly transparent. And I was getting nowhere with my next story … even though I knew what I was going to write. It was a tale of an eight-year-old girl on summer vacation in Maine with her parents. She’s their only child: over-protected, over-pampered, over-indulged … but also deeply aware of the fact that her parents don’t like each other very much, and that she is the glue which is holding them together. One afternoon, her parents get into a horrendous argument, and she wanders off out of their rented beach house. She leaves the beach, takes a wrong turn and finds herself in a deep set of woods. She remains lost there overnight, and is found the next morning by the police. She’s in shock, but basically unscathed. She has a tearful reunion with her parents. For a day or so afterwards, harmony reigns within the family. But then the parental fights start again, and she runs off into the woods. Because now she realizes that, as long as she’s in jeopardy, her parents will cling to each other and get along.

I had a title for the story: ‘Getting Lost’. I had the basic narrative structure worked out in my mind. What I didn’t have was the will to sit down and write it. The
Saturday/Sunday
job was enervating. I’d arrive home at seven each night, sapped. After eight hours of reading other people’s stories I felt like doing anything else but tackling my own work. So I began to play the postponement game - as in,
I’m just too depleted to open my typewriter, so I’ll wake up at six a.m. tomorrow and crank out three hundred words before heading to the office.
But then, when the alarm went off the next morning, I’d roll over and sleep on until eight thirty. When I got back home that night, I’d be feeling as devitalized as ever, unable to think about my short story. On the nights when my energy level was high, I’d find other things to do. Like heading off to see a great Howard Hawks double bill at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Or I’d squander the evening with an enjoyably pulpy William Irish novel. Or I’d decide that this was the moment the bathroom needed cleaning …