The Three Miss Margarets (28 page)

A Conversation with Louise Shaffer

Laurel Selene leads the author Louise Shaffer into the office of the
Charles Valley Gazetteer
for an interview that will run in the paper sometime in 2004. As they make their way to the back where Laurel’s desk is, Shaffer looks around in awe.

Louise Shaffer:
Wow! This place looks exactly the way I pictured it.

Laurel Selene:
I imagine that’ll be true for just about anyplace you go in Charles Valley.

Louise:
You mean because I—well, “created it” sounds kind of grand. You know, like singers calling themselves artists, which always makes me antsy, because I think you should wait for someone else to say it. I mean, maybe you aren’t really. Maybe you’re just someone who’ll be forgotten in ten years. Mozart was an artist, but I’m not sure the boy group du jour is. (
pause
) What were we talking about?

Laurel:
You have a tendency to wander, don’t you?

Louise:
Usually. But before we start, there is something I want to ask you.

Laurel:
Shoot.

Louise:
How weird is it for you to be interviewing me when I’m the one who, you know . . .

Laurel:
Created me? (
Shaffer nods.
) Probably about as weird as it is for you to be interviewed by me.

Louise:
Okay. Glad we got that out of the way. We can start now.

Laurel:
Thanks. I did some research on you, and I found out that writing wasn’t your first career. You started out as an actress, and—

Louise:
(
breaking in
) Anyone who read my book jacket knows that.

Laurel:
Maybe we need to set some ground rules here. You may be the creator, but I’m the interviewer, okay?

Louise:
Sorry. Yeah, I was an actress. I did Broadway, repertory theater, prime-time TV, commercials. I toured the country in a rock musical which, for a woman who thought vocal music ended with Puccini and had no sense of rhythm, was kind of a stretch.

Laurel:
And you acted in the soaps. Or do you prefer to call it “daytime drama”?

Louise:
Not really. That dates back to a time when we were trying to be Serious Culture, but it never really stuck. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have total respect for the soaps, because I do. We did the same amount of work in one day that nighttime television did in a week or ten days and we . . . I’m wandering again, right?

Laurel:
All over hell and creation. So you won an Emmy and three nominations for acting on a soap opera called
Ryan’s Hope
. Then you were nominated for the writing Emmy six times for your work on
As the World Turns
and
Ryan’s Hope
—have I got that right?

Louise:
Actually one of the nominations was for
All My Children
, but I like the way you managed to slip that in. Very slick.

Laurel:
I try. So with all that why did you decide to start writing novels?

Louise:
I’m not sure I actually did decide to do any of it. For one thing, I’d always written. When I was a kid I wrote plays, short stories, even some really bad poetry. But then I discovered acting and it was so much easier, and there was applause as soon as you finished, which was really nice for someone who, as you pointed out, has a short attention span. Because you have to wait a couple of years to find out if people like a book you’ve written.

Laurel:
Sounds like approval is important to you.

Louise:
Are you kidding? I’m an approval junkie.

Laurel:
And you really think acting is easier than writing?

Louise:
Maybe it isn’t easier, but writing means more responsibility. It’s your ideas and your story on those pages. But I think they’re different sides of the same kind of work. It’s about the characters, after all. I use all my acting techniques to write my characters. For instance, I tell each piece of the story from one character’s point of view. So it always has a personal component and bias.

Laurel:
Could you explain that, please?

Louise:
Let me relate it to acting. If you’re playing Lady Macbeth, you don’t see yourself as a shrew who married a man with the IQ of an artichoke and drove him to commit murder; you see yourself as a loving wife trying to help your husband reach his full potential. That’s your point of view.

Laurel:
Okay. Any other—um, techniques?

Louise:
Keep it motivated. When I was acting I never did anything unless I understood why I was doing it and could justify it in terms of my character’s past and what she wants in the present. As a writer I make sure that happens with all of my characters. Except, sometimes I need a character to do something for the sake of the plot that isn’t right for her. When I was acting, I’d just say, “I’m sorry, this isn’t something my character would do.” And then it was up to the writer to fix the problem. Now I’m the writer and the “problem-fixer.” I spend a lot of time talking to myself. Well, yelling at myself really.

Laurel:
So how did you start writing again?

Louise:
Actually it was the Emmy that did it. And an earthquake. Three months after I won the Emmy I was fired. And I couldn’t get any more work because I was over forty. As a producer friend of mine (who is no longer a friend) said to me, “Sweetie, you’re just not sexually viable anymore.”

Laurel:
Did you hit him?

Louise:
Nah. I was an actor, I was used to taking abuse. Besides, he was a producer, and as an actor you’re always thinking that maybe someday he’ll have a part for you and you’ll get to make a comeback. I mean, look at Gloria Stuart. (
pause
) I think we’re both wandering now.

Laurel:
It’s catching. So how did an earthquake make you start writing novels?

Louise:
First, I need to back up and tell you I married a southern boy, which was the smartest thing I ever did in my life.

Laurel:
If you say so.

Louise:
I know you’ve had a hard time finding what we used to call in the soaps a romantic interest here in Charles Valley. But trust me, this place is a walk in the park compared to the dating scene in Manhattan. Especially if you work in show business. The statistics alone are—

Laurel:
(
interrupting
) Okay, okay. I watch
Sex and the City
, too. About novel writing . . . ?

Louise:
Like I said, I married a southerner, which meant I had a wonderful southern mother-in-law. My husband and I and his two kids were out in Los Angeles trying to revive my dying acting career when this huge earthquake hit. A freeways-shifting-under-the-cars-and-whitecaps-on-the-swimming-

pool-size earthquake. Three people got through on the phone to L.A. that day, and one of them was my mother-in-law, Clara. She wanted to know when her son was going to stop dragging her grandbabies all over the place and come back home where he belonged.

Laurel:
Home being the South.

Louise:
Also known as God’s Country. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was living in an old farmhouse in this beautiful town in rural Georgia. At first I thought my life was over. I’m a big-city person and here I was surrounded by nature. But then everything started coming together. Like I said, I’d always played around with writing, but I never had a story to tell. Well, I started making friends, because in a small town in the South you just do. I know you can’t make generalizations about people, but it seems to me that there is a certain breed of woman in the South. They’re smart and strong and they accomplish the most incredible things, but they still remember last Thursday was your birthday and get you the card on time. And even if they haven’t seen you in months they ask how your mama is doing after that hip surgery. They just blow me away.

Laurel:
The
Steel Magnolias
thing.

Louise:
And it goes deeper than that. I met women who were so strong in their beliefs. We’re talking heavy-duty moral compass. I come from a mindset where you’d die before you’d make a value judgment. But these women were totally convinced they knew what was right and what was wrong. And in one case, I felt she’d take responsibility for that—even break the law if she thought it was necessary—to right a wrong or protect someone who was vulnerable. And she’d live with the consequences. That was what gave me the core idea for
The Three Miss Margarets
.

Laurel:
That kind of answers my next question, which was going to be, Why did a woman from Connecticut want to write about the South?

Louise:
I don’t know how you could not want to write about the South, or paint it, or something. It’s so full. The food is so rich and good, and the music, and the flowers. There’s nothing like the way Georgia explodes in the spring. And there’s a sense of history—more than that really, it’s a sense of legacy. That’s one of my favorite themes. I love any book that explores the impact of the past on the present. That said, one of the things I worried about was making sure I kept the book true to the South. So my husband read every page as I was writing it, and if he thought I’d slipped he’d say, “You’re talking Yankee-speak here.”

Laurel:
So it was the move to Georgia that started your career as a novelist.

Louise:
I was too scared to take it on right away, so I wrote for the soaps first. Writing is very lonely and acting is total collaboration, and I needed to ease into the isolation, I think. On the soaps, I was a staff writer, which kind of split the difference. But eventually I got to a place where I’d had the story for
The Three Miss Margarets
in my head for so long that I had to see if I could put it on paper.

Laurel:
And the title of your book? Did you know three women named Margaret who were good friends?

Louise:
Not exactly. But I did know of three women who all had the same name and were behind-the-scenes powerhouses. They were older, they came from money (although that was never mentioned), they counted their kin by the dozens and the time their families had been in the town by generations. They weren’t friends who hung out on the porch together like my three Miss Margarets, but they did keep tabs on one another. Kind of like rival queens. And then there was a woman I adored who had a childhood nickname, and when she grew up everyone just attached Miss to it, like Miss Li’l Bit.

Laurel:
So what’s up for you next? Working on anything new?

Louise:
Right now I’m writing a sequel to
The Three Miss Margarets
.

Laurel:
Really? What’s it about?

Louise:
A character who only got mentioned in the first book, someone named Myrtis Garrison.

Laurel:
Grady’s mother.

Louise:
And you.

Laurel:
Oh.

Louise:
So I really can’t tell you anything more.

Laurel:
No, I can see how that would be—

Louise:
—too weird.

Laurel:
Yes. Well, I want to thank you for your time.

Louise:
Is that it? You don’t need anything more from me?

Laurel:
Not unless there’s something else you want to say. You are the creator.

Louise:
But you’re the interviewer.

Laurel:
Yeah. (
pause
) So, that’s it.

Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. When the three Miss Margarets took the law into their own hands, there were fatal consequences. Do you think they were justified in what they did?

2. As we discover early in the novel, Josh is not exactly who he appears to be. Do you think he is a trustworthy character? What exactly are his intentions, and how do they shift? How do your feelings for him change throughout the novel? Do you think he and Laurel are ultimately meant to be together?

3. For their era, the three Miss Margarets were unusual women in the sense that none of them had settled down into conventional families. Does a lack of that kind of responsibility or connection empower a woman to think outside the box? Do relationships and focusing on others hinder us in some ways? Do you think the unraveling of events would have occurred in the same way had all three Miss Margarets been wives and/or mothers?

4. Throughout the course of
The Three Miss Margarets,
the author often shifts the setting back in time. What effect do these flashbacks have on the reader? And why does Shaffer especially focus on the three Miss Margarets’ adolescences when she revisists their pasts?

5. The action the three Miss Margarets took thirty years ago continues to have repercussions for them and Laurel. Has any decision you’ve ever made affected you for many years? Do you think the three Miss Margarets have any ultimate regrets about what they did? How did other characters’ choices (particularly those of Vashti and Grady, for example) affect them emotionally?

6. Do you agree with Dr. Maggie that happiness usually comes to you when you aren’t necessarily looking for it, through unexpected ways—often through one’s line of work? Do you agree with her that the one great source of joy in life that you can control is the work you do? On another note, do you think Maggie would still have become a workaholic if she had been able to love freely?

7. Discuss the prominence of alcohol in
The Three Miss Margarets.
How does it affect the characters and how they interact with one another? Do you think its presence is unhealthy in every instance throughout the novel?

8. It seems that Li’l Bit’s relationship with Walter Bee was defined by limitations. Why do you think they didn’t move in together or get married? What was their ultimate downfall? Do you understand Li’l Bit’s rationale for lying to Walter? What do you think would have happened if she had told him the truth?

9. Is the southern locale of
The Three Miss Margarets
essential to the novel? Do you think events would have played out differently in a different location?

10. Louise Shaffer worked as an actress and a television writer for many years. Do you think that background is reflected in the way she writes novels? In her use of dialogue, her way of setting the scene for the reader, and her development of character? Do you think this book has a particularly theatrical feel to it? Would it make a good film or television movie?

11. If you answered yes to the last question and you think
The Three Miss Margarets
would make a good movie, for the fun of it discuss how you’d cast such a production.

12. To varying degrees all the women in
The Three Miss Margarets
had unhappy or difficult childhoods. So often we find that is the case with remarkable or especially accomplished people. Do you think early unhappiness or difficulty is a prerequisite for greatness later on? Or can happy children become extraordinary adults?

13. Do you wish Laurel had stayed in New York, either with Josh or on her own? Do you feel that her roots are in Charles Valley and that she needs to work out her life in this town? Or do you wish she had turned away from all the pain she suffered there and gotten a fresh start?

14. By coming back to join Li’l Bit, Maggie, and Peggy on the porch, Laurel forgives them for what they did to her and her mother. She also agrees to keep their secret. Should she have done that?