The Vanishing Point (22 page)

“The author's name is Jess Moran, but the photo on the back flap is of a young, blond hippie. It fits all the descriptions I've ever seen of Jennie Dell.”

“Did
you read it?”

“Yup. It's a coming-of-age novel set in southern California and Yosemite in the late fifties and early sixties.”

“Was it any good?”

“Let's talk about it after you've had a chance to read it.”

“How did you find it?”

“A dealer in California had a copy. I think the reason you and I never heard about it was that it was set mostly in Southern California. It was hard to consider Southern California as the Southwest even in 1963.”

“Southern California is Southern California.”

“Right,” John agreed. “Shall I bring the book over?”

“I'll pick it up,” Claire said, although she didn't feel like driving.

“I'll tell you what. Why don't we meet halfway, at Marie's for coffee?”

“It's a deal,” Claire said.

Before she left, she dressed in jeans, combed her hair, and put on some makeup. There were dark half circles, the flip side of crescent moons, beneath her eyes. Her neck had a crepey texture, making her think the effort Jennie put into looking young could be worth it.

John was sitting at a table at Marie's when Claire arrived. He stood up, kissed her cheek, and handed her the
Out of the Blue
by Jess Moran, which Claire immediately opened to the author's picture on the back flap. It was Jennie. The young Jennie. A thin Jennie whose face was defined not by the fullness of time but by its bone structure and expression. Her eyes were bold, and her expression was daring. Jennie's thick blond hair was parted in the middle, the same way she wore it today. She had a choker around her neck and wore long beaded earrings.

“That's her?” John asked.

“It is.” Claire had no doubt.

“She must have been writing under a pseudonym.”

“Or living under one. For all we know, Jess Moran is the real name and Jennie Dell the pseudonym.”

Continuing her examination of
Out of the Blue,
Claire checked the publisher's logo on the spine. It was a New York imprint that had long since been swallowed up, digested, and eliminated by the consolidation of a media empire. The copyright page said the book was published in 1963 and gave Jess Moran's birth date as 1943, which would make her the same age as Jonathan. It was obvious immediately to Claire that
Out of the Blue
was a book known in the business as a small book, not so much for its physical size as for the size of the print run. The fact that the author's name was below the title and both
were
in small letters, the subtle colors and indifferent artwork on the jacket, the lack of glitter and embossing all said this was a book with limited expectations and a small budget. In the nineties a book that a publisher had any intention of promoting weighed a couple of pounds and had silver or gold embossed letters on the jacket, and a red or black background. What would make a book stand out now, Claire thought, was quietness, smallness, subtlety. She didn't recall as much glitz in 1963, but even so,
Out of the Blue
was obviously a book the publisher hadn't spent any money on promoting, a book that had been left to sink or swim on its own.

Claire read the acknowledgments and the dedication. The book was dedicated to the author's mother, and she recognized none of the names in the acknowledgments. There was nothing left to do but to read it. She couldn't do that here in the restaurant in front of John Harlan, but she did skim the first paragraph. Claire could usually tell from the first paragraph whether or not an author could write. It was clear from the very first sentence that Jess Moran had style. It was a hook that pulled the reader in and made Claire forget just how tired she was. She wanted nothing more than to go home and finish
Out of the Blue,
but John Harlan was sitting across the table, laughing.

“Do you really want any coffee?” he asked.

“No,” Claire admitted.

“Take the book home. Read it. Promise you'll call me when you're done?”

“I promise,” Claire said.

******

It was a promise she didn't keep immediately. When she got home she took the book to her courtyard, grateful for the pleasant weather and the sunny seclusion. Warm days in November reminded Claire of a visit to an aging parent; you never knew if each one would be the last. One day you would look up, and all the leaves would be gone from the trees. It would be winter. The parent would be dead. Not that winter in New Mexico was severe, but she was a desert rat and not used to the cold.

She sat down on the banco and read
Out of the Blue
straight through. It was a short book—a novella, actually—and she was a fast reader. While she read, the shadows moved over the courtyard walls. A datura pod burst and spilled its seeds on the bricks without her noticing. When she finished, she felt she was coming up for air after a deep immersion. She put the book down, too stunned to move or speak. All she could do was sit on the banco soaking up the sun like a pool of still water.

Out of the Blue
was a lean book, a book in which silence and space were used nearly as effectively as words. The dialogue struck Claire as accurate, capturing both the emotion of the characters and the period in which it was set. In a sense it was a coming-of-age novel, but mostly it was the story of a daughter's rebellion against an overbearing mother. It was a corrosive relationship. The story was set in
the
sixties, and the rebellion took the form of sex and drugs. As the daughter became wilder, the mother became more entrenched. The book ended with no resolution, but with the sense that this battle would continue until both parties were in the grave. The portraits of the mother and the daughter were remarkable, the writing style terse and effective. The daughter liked to escape to Yosemite and the rougher shores of the California coast. The title came from the thoughts she had while watching the surf. Claire thought the nature passages were brilliant. Jess Moran had a strong sense of place and a flair for metaphor. In fact, at one point, while on an acid trip, she described a rock wall at Yosemite as slipping and sliding like the walls of La Sagrada Família.

Why, Claire wondered, had she never heard of a novel as good as this one? It should have become a
Catcher in the Rye
or
A Blue-Eyed Boy,
not a book that John Harlan had to spend days tracking down. She suspected that
Out of the Blue
had sold a couple of thousand copies, mostly to libraries, and had never come out in paperback, where it would have received a wider audience. The copies that remained in the publisher's warehouse most likely became pulp. With a sales history like that, it would be hard for the author to sell another book.

Had
Out of the Blue
disappeared because the publisher abandoned it or because the subject was a mother/daughter relationship? Or was the fact that the subject was a mother/daughter relationship the reason the publisher abandoned the book? If publishers believed books about mothers and daughters wouldn't sell, the belief became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But times had changed.
Thelma and Louise
had popularized the chick-flick genre. Publishers knew now that women bought most of the books, and they geared their marketing efforts accordingly. Claire was hard-pressed to recall exactly when the change took place, but she knew it was after 1963. In 1963 male taste defined what got read.

Claire absorbed these thoughts until the sun had moved over to the West Mesa and the entire courtyard was in shadow. She realized it was dinnertime and remembered she had promised to call John Harlan. There were few objective standards for judging a work of fiction; reading it was a subjective experience. She wanted to know if John, whose taste she respected, agreed with her. It might be a good time to invite him to dinner, since the need to talk about
Out of the Blue
would overshadow any thoughts of romance.

Claire went to her kitchen to see if she had anything to offer him for dinner. As a single woman who watched her weight, most of the food she kept in the house had to be cooked. There were no snacks, no chips, no ice cream, no candy. The shelves of the refrigerator were empty ribs. The bagels and tortillas were frozen. The only food that could be eaten raw were the carrots and the pears in the vegetable bin. Claire poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and considered her options. She had frozen pasta and frozen chicken. John wasn't much of a gourmet pasta eater, so she decided to try the chicken.

He was still at the store when she called. “What did you think of the book?” he asked her.

“I
thought it was wonderful,” she admitted. “Beautifully written.”

“Me, too,” John agreed. “Whether she's telling the truth or not, our Jennie can write.”

Someone could write, thought Claire. Although truth was important in life, it had little relevance in fiction. “It's hard to believe such a good book could just disappear.”

“It happens all the time, books slipping into the river like fish that get away.”

“That's depressing, especially when you consider all the terrible books that survive.” It seemed as good a time as any to invite him. “Would you like to come over for dinner and talk about it some more?” Claire asked.

“When?”

“As soon as you're finished at the store.”

“Give me half an hour,” John said.

Claire turned on the oven and put the chicken in a pot with curry powder, onion, sliced yams, almonds, and raisins. She had a well-loved clay pot that could start the chicken frozen and keep it tender. She poured herself another glass of wine, lit a fire in the fireplace, and was straightening up the living room when John rang the doorbell. It was his first visit to her house.

“This is a nice place,” he said.

“I like it,” Claire replied.

“It looks like you.”

“Oh?”

“It's calm and peaceful.”

“And gray,” Claire added.

“How about subdued?” John said.

Although Claire always felt subdued, she didn't feel very calm or peaceful at the moment. She poured John a glass of wine, and while they waited for the chicken to cook, they sat in the living room and resumed their book talk.

John leaned back into the sofa, sipped his wine, and asked, “Would you say
Out of the Blue
is as good as
A Blue-Eyed Boy
?”

“Almost,” Claire replied.

“Did you see any similarity?”

“Both are about rebellion. In terms of style, both are rather spare, but the authors have a feeling for nature and a flair for metaphor.” In fact, there was an instance where the authors had used the same metaphor, but John hadn't read the journal yet and Claire wasn't at liberty to show it to him, so she kept the reference to La Sagrada Família to herself.

“But one was written by a man…” John began.

“And
the other by a woman.” It rattled Claire that she was finishing John's sentences for him, so she went to the kitchen to check on the chicken.

When she came back she had the sense that their conversation was a ball of yarn John balanced between his fingers waiting for her to pick up the thread. She didn't, so he did it for her. “An interesting puzzle, isn't it? Two books, similar stories, one written by a man and one by a woman. The one written by the man becomes a classic, the one written by the woman disappears. Why do you think?”

“Timing. Luck. The one written by the man got more promotion from the publisher. It stayed in print long enough to find its audience. The author was a prominent figure who vanished.
Out of the Blue
was a very personal book. The background of protest in
A Blue-Eyed Boy
may have given it a more universal appeal.”

John watched her over the rim of his wineglass. “Just for the heck of it, let's suppose they were written by the same person. Would you say the author was a man or a woman?”

Claire phrased her answer carefully. “I think it would have been easier for a woman to write like a man in the early sixties than for a man to write like a woman. People with less power study the people with more power, and they understand them better. On the other hand, August Stevenson authenticated the journal by comparing it to the handwriting of Jonathan in the center's archives, including letters, a previous journal, and the manuscript of
A Blue-Eyed Boy.
There was a difference in style between the journal and
A Blue-Eyed Boy,
but the handwriting was definitely Jonathan's.”

“A
Blue-Eyed Boy
was handwritten?”

“It was typed, but there were extensive handwritten corrections.”

“Which could prove that Jonathan edited it, not necessarily that he wrote it.”

“Maybe the novels were written jointly,” Claire suggested, although she didn't believe it. “There are couples who are capable of writing books together.”

“It might also be possible for two people to know each other's thoughts so well that they write in the same style.” John stared into the fire, and Claire knew he was remembering his deceased wife, with whom he'd had a deep and lasting rapport.

Since the idea of trying to write a book or even share a metaphor with her ex-husband, Evan, was enough to put out her own fire, Claire turned her thoughts to her investigation while John reminisced. For her, it had always been a given that Jonathan wrote
A Blue-Eyed Boy
and that, if he were still alive, he would have come back and claimed the attention and recognition due him. But if Jennie had written the book and Jonathan were still alive, it would be hard to predict the actions of both of them.

John shrugged off his melancholy and said, “You've noticed, of course, that both books used ‘blue' in the title?”