Dead Little Dolly (11 page)

EIGHTEEN

I spent the rest of the day cleaning. Alone, I never saw the stuff I left laying around, the piles of accumulated laundry on the floor of the washer and dryer closet, the newspapers that grew to teetering stacks. When I looked at my cabin through Jackson’s eyes—a very particular man except when it came to bimbos—it looked messy and unloved; the refrigerator was growing odd experiments in little plastic containers; the bed in the spare bedroom was piled with winter clothes; and boxes with unknown content filled what would be Jackson’s closet. Laundry had to be done, newspapers put in my car trunk to recycle in Mancelona, and basic things like coffee and milk were needed, which required a trip into Leetsville, to the Save-A-Lot.

When Dolly called late that afternoon, after I made a trip to the market and spent hours scrubbing things, I fell on the couch, rubber gloves on my hands, happy to take her call.

“Can’t find that woman anywhere in Elk Rapids. Nobody seems to know her.”

“You check the market?”

“Never heard of her.”

“You mention the black jellybeans?”

“Huh?”

“The black jellybeans. Seems a cashier would remember selling three bags of black jellybeans. Or maybe a cashier there just loves jellybeans.”

There was a pause. “Didn’t think about that.”

“Can you go back?”

I could almost hear her nodding at the other end of the phone.

“Darn it,” she said, upset with herself. “Should have thought of those jellybeans. Could be a gas station or a convenience store. I’ll get to all of them.”

“Bags of black jellybeans? I doubt it. I don’t remember ever seeing just black jellybeans. Seems like it would be a special place. Almost like a candy store.”

“Then I’m going back to the market. I’ll talk to every one of those cashiers.” There was a pause. “Anything else I missed?”

I thought a minute.

“Be honest, Emily. You think I’m too close to this to do a good job?”

“Because of the jellybeans?”

“Yeah.”

“You would have thought about it sooner or later. It’s just that so much is happening so fast.”

Again there was a pause. “I’m glad you’re working with me,” she said, the nicest, most accepting thing she’d ever said to me. I figured I had Baby Jane to thank for this softer Dolly.

“You know what?” I said after my surprised silence. “I am, too.”

“I’ll let you know what I find. You got enough to do another story?”

I said I had and hung up, then pulled off my gloves and wrote the new story, focusing on the stolen car. I called Bill and told him I was emailing a follow-up and he told me again to stay with it.

It was good to talk to him, a pragmatic, kind editor who always seemed to wish me well. I told him about the sale of my novel. He congratulated me and said when I next came to Traverse City he wanted to take me out for a drink at Red Ginger. At that—what sounded like it could be a real date—I giggled like a sixteen-year-old and gushed that I’d certainly take him up on it.

His voice went just a little lower, down into what I thought might be the “I’m really interested in getting to know you better” register, when he said, “I mean it, Emily,” and I hung up, happier than I had any right to be.

When the house was clean and I was thinking about making a mushroom pasta for dinner, the phone rang again and a languid female voice said, “Emily Kincaid?”

My new editor. Faith Cardoni. So happy to finally talk to me. She was going over the book at that moment and would get notes to me as soon as possible. “Nothing big, you understand,” she said and gave me one of those light, trembling laughs. “Just a few minor suggestions.”

And then she went on, asking about another book with my same women. “They are so very, very droll, Emily. I’m sure women around the globe will simply fall in love with them.”

To which I outlined, as best I could, the book I’d just begun—the human skull found at the edge of a shrinking lake—and promised to get her chapters as soon as I had anything.

And that was that. I had joined the inner fold of writers—one with an agent and an editor and wide possibilities ahead of me.

I got out a large pot for the pasta water and banged it happily on the stovetop, making Sorrow leap up and bark before settling back into a deep, paw-peddling sleep.

I chopped mushrooms, unscrewed a jar of spaghetti sauce, and poured it into another pan, then diced up some garlic and some onions and cooked them in olive oil until they were soft. I finished the dish as I merrily skipped around my kitchen, setting the table with two place mats and my two best dishes. I dug out knives and forks and spoons, which didn’t match but had to do, I told myself, with my “eclectic” decorating skills.

The table looked nice. Yellow daffodils from the garden stood in a green glass pot at the center. My yellow tablecloth was short at one end but the yellows and greens were pretty and my two blue dishes clashed enough to make the table interesting, and, anyway, that’s all I had so who cared?

The whole cooking experience was one of the happiest I remembered and I knew the pasta would be perfect, my salad a miracle, and my dessert, of dollar-fifty sponge cake and the first fresh strawberries of the season, a sight to behold.

Except that Jackson was late and the pasta was gummy. The mushrooms shrunk down to nothing.

He drove down my drive in a swirl of dust and gravel, pulling his Porsche to a stop beside my arbor already covered with green leaves and leaping out to wave at me as I stood on my side porch, holding Sorrow back while trying not to frown at the thought of my shriveling pasta. I wanted to remain upbeat, happy to see him . . .
and aren’t we off to a wonderful start of a marvelous weekend . . .

We hugged. He was his usual delicious self in open-necked sport shirt and beautifully ironed pants. He gave me a peck on the cheek and I pulled away only slightly because I knew that snare too well. Jackson was a charmer—maybe a little too much like a snake charmer: beguiling with words and smiles and eyes that crinkled when he leaned close. A tall man, Jackson had a languid way about him that tall men effect: ambling walk, loose-jointed arms and legs, long hands reaching out easily to cup my chin and stare deeply into my eyes.

“Ah,” he said. “You look happy. Exactly what I need right now, after that devastating review.”

He brought his leather bag into the house and set it on the neatly made bed in the spare room. He hung enough pants and shirts for at least a week in the closet then set toiletries on top of the small dresser.

He was back outside, pulling a flat of purple and yellow pansies from his trunk, where he’d spread sheets of plastic to protect the carpeting. He set the pansies on the brick walk in the garden then was back to his car for a bag of groceries. He unloaded white wine and containers of food into my nicely emptied and cleaned refrigerator.

All that activity made me tired so I produced a bottle of Pinot Noir (one of his favorite wines, along with Moet & Chandon—which I couldn’t afford), then hurried to serve the pasta and salad, but he said not to worry about dinner because he’d stopped in West Branch to eat.

I served myself and murmured what good food he was missing as he leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “Got to watch the waistline.” The smirk that followed suggested maybe I should think about doing the same.

I ate and put the rest of my dinner away. We settled on the living room sofa to catch up with each other’s lives, except I had that one thing on my mind: my good news, and it was eating at me.

Jackson had one thing eating at him, too, so we talked about the bad review the
New York Times
gave him. I read it three times before he would discuss it or let me be consoling.

“Would you call that a fair assessment of my work?” he demanded when I set the article down on the coffee table. “You, of all people, know my book inside out.”

Of course I said “No,” emphatically. Though I’d typed the entire book at least twice, I’d forgotten it as soon as it popped out of my printer so my “No” was made louder due to guilt.

I said “No” again and meant it because this was a different Jackson, a chastened man, and I wasn’t taking any pleasure in seeing him diminished in his own eyes.

“I knew you would understand the unfairness of this. I can only surmise that it’s jealousy. The man thinks he is the greatest Chaucer scholar in the world and is afraid of having to share that distinction. Do you think a letter of rebuttal to the
Times
is in order?”

His good-looking face wrinkled with the question. His dark eyes were intent, staring into mine. I knew he didn’t really want an answer, only a nod, but I couldn’t do that to him.

“I don’t think so. Writers make fools of themselves when they charge back at a reviewer. Remember Joyce Carol Oates’s unfortunate replies to bad reviews in the
Times
?”

“Ah, but wasn’t she right? That woman never gave Oates a single good review. She should never have been handed another of her books. I think I’m facing exactly what Oates faced.”

“But no one wins, Jackson. You could jeopardize future reviews.”

“Future reviews!” he huffed at me. “If this—my book to end all books—is relegated to the trash heap, how can I ever write another?”

One of those unanswerable questions.

“Do what you feel you have to do,” I said and poured myself more wine. It was going to be a long weekend. I’d spent time with academic egos in the past. The narrowness of that kind of conversation would make the hours stretch into weeks.

Jackson set his glass down carefully, looking for a napkin to put it on rather than chance a moisture ring on my table of patterned moisture rings. He sat back, keeping the glass in his hand. He sighed. “I suppose you’re right. What good would it do me? My editor said we’d get around it by a few well-placed ads in journals. I suppose I’ll have to settle for that. But, oh, Emily, how I hope that someday I’ll be given a book by that man to review.”

I smiled at him. “I know you, you’d be honest.”

Jackson frowned. “No, I wouldn’t. That’s the nature of the game—we tear down others to build our own reputation. You play the game to win or sit on the sidelines.”

Ah, I told myself, now we were into sports metaphors. He’d be okay, having given himself a sense of grievance repaid. I threw one of my favorite female ploys into the pause in our conversation, asking if he might be tired, could I get him anything, and telling him where his one towel and washcloth hung in the bathroom.

He didn’t take the hint. Too revved up for sleep. I was in for a long night. I figured, since I had my good news to deliver, I might as well skew the conversation my way, which would probably drive him to bed anyway.

I settled back on the sofa, downed the last of the Pinot, and took a deep breath.

My brief silence gave Jack time to make his next move. He leaned over, leaning in to kiss me. I almost let him because my skin was aching to be touched and my brain was telling me that it was okay, that nobody but me cared what I did anymore. But I pushed him away, picked up our glasses, rinsed them in the sink, and set them upside down to dry on a towel. I didn’t tell him my good news. It seemed somehow smaller than I’d thought it was. Quickly, I wished him a good night and went to my room, closing the door behind me and climbing into my own, lonely bed.

Well, lonely except for Sorrow.

NINETEEN

I took my child-care book down to the lake while Jackson slept in the next morning. Most of what I read wasn’t aimed at me—the know-nothing caretaker—but more for anxious mothers. All I needed to know was how to feed and burp the kid and when to recognize that something was really wrong or if she was just being a pain.

It didn’t take long to get bored and set the book facedown on the folding chair beside me.

A beautiful May morning. The kind of morning I dream about all year but couldn’t slow up and hold on to, no matter how I tried.

The loons were out there. Nineteen of them. I counted once and then again. Nineteen. Nine pairs and one extra. I couldn’t tell which was the odd man or woman out, but it was obvious one had lost her mate over the winter. Usually it was a lucky year when if I got a couple pairs. This was a bounty of loons, though I doubted they would stay. If it got hot they’d head further north, up into Canada and the lakes back in the bush. If not, I won all the way around: it didn’t get hot, the loons stayed and raised their babies here, and I’d hear their haunting calls all summer.

Morning on the lake was a sleepy and quiet time. The beaver didn’t stir. The birds swam noiselessly, diving to come up far out in the water.

I picked up the book again, since I might be called upon to know this stuff, and read about a child’s expected development. So many ways to judge a baby’s progress.

I was into “Neurological Development” when I heard steps on the dock behind me.

“Didn’t mean to sleep so late,” Jackson said and straightened his open-neck shirt. He was dressed neatly, well pressed, a bright white, cashmere sweater tied around his neck. “How about I take you out for breakfast?”

As the alternative to cooking eggs and ham and stuff, I agreed it might be fun. I picked up my book, followed him back through my rushes and blueberry bushes, changed into a cleaner T-shirt, and we were off.

The rest of Saturday was actually fun. After breakfast at the Manistee Lake Inn, where I got the best omelet I could ever remember, we drove to Traverse City. We walked Front Street, stopping to see my friend Peter at Brilliant Books, then down to Horizon Books to visit Amy and check out the new Patricia Cornwell. Then it was to the Brew, for a latte. Fustini’s for local oils and vinegars. Murdick’s for fudge. We checked out the Opera House for upcoming writers in Doug Stanton’s National Writers Series.

I had hours of fun. Jackson spent his money—his credit card flashing at every store. I carried packages, deciding which I was going to lay claim to when we got back to my house, then deciding I wanted everything, for which I was already practicing arguments in my mind about how I couldn’t part with even one of the books, nor one oil, not even the so very special box of fudge.

After the latte and a scone we drove along Lake Michigan, up to Charlevoix, stopping to walk along the beach. I was blissfully happy. The hordes of tourists weren’t due to arrive until Memorial Day. We had the beaches and the stores almost to ourselves.

It was late when we got back. Jackson offered to cook dinner. A couple of manly steaks with a tomato and fresh mozzarella and basil salad.

The day had been a day out of time. Maybe a day set aside from our own history. We’d been at ease—no tense moments when Jackson let something awful slip. No phone calls from Dolly, though I couldn’t help thinking about babies and wrecked SUVs.

I pushed all of that to the back of my mind and told Jackson what a nice time I was having.

We spent the late evening with a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape Clos St. Jean, 2009, which Jackson found at the Blue Goat in Traverse for an amazing forty dollars, outstripping my screw-top Pinot by a few thousand miles. Later, we went to sleep—separately, because I passed out in my lounge chair on the deck from too much food and too much expensive wine and he left me there.

Early Sunday morning as Jackson prepared to leave, bringing his suitcase to the door, I poured us a last cup of coffee.

He stood at the kitchen counter, mellowed, I thought. Maybe ready to go back to town and get over the tongue-lashing that critic had given him.

I lifted my cup to him. He saluted me in return.

“I have something more to tell you,” I said hesitantly, knowing I wasn’t going to let him go without my news. Not and keep my self-respect.

He smiled slowly. “I thought there was something,” he said and then, out of character for Jackson, he moved over to put his arm around me, hugging tightly.

When he pulled back, he looked down into my eyes. “I want to support you in this,” he said.

“Well . . . Really?”

“I’m not a bastard,” he said. “Just not an easily married man.”

“And?” I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”

“That means I can understand when a woman . . . well . . . things happen.”

“This didn’t just happen.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I understand perfectly. I hope you’ll be happy and whoever the father is will be the right person . . .”

“Father?” I asked. “Father of what?”

“Your child, Emily.”

“What child?”

He pointed to my child-care book on the coffee table.

“You think I’m pregnant?” I didn’t laugh. Odd, it was almost as if my real news would be a disappointment after this.

“You said you had something to tell me. I assumed, by your reading material, it was a pregnancy. Your age and all. That ticking clock.”

I put my hands up between us. “No. No child, Jackson.”

“Then? What’s the news? Couldn’t be half as astounding as what I was thinking.” He laughed, stood back, and gave me one of his superior smiles.

“My agent called. My book sold. It’ll be out next summer. My agent is very excited about its prospects. She says it should do well. Then the editor called and is asking for more books. A series.”

For maybe the first time in my life I saw the real Jackson Rinaldi—a series of odd expressions crossing his face, smug to sorry to sentimental to falsely happy and all the way back through, ending in a confused frown and a shake of his head.

“You don’t say. Well, how nice for you. Hope you got a good advance. You know these publishers don’t put advertising dollars into a book they aren’t heavily invested in already.”

I smiled my own happy smile. “A very good advance,” I lied.

At this, his face paled beneath his tan. “Then,” he said, still thinking hard for a way to mitigate my news. “I suppose congratulations are in order. That’s very good news.”

I told him who the publisher was, which caused more consternation.

He shook his head a few times. “They aren’t exactly known for fostering best sellers. You really shouldn’t expect too much, especially from popular fiction. So much of it out there, don’t you think? I mean with this populist Internet publishing going on. But still, I’m happy for you. I hope I’m not in it. The novel, I mean.” Here he gave a short, nervous laugh. “No male characters based on me, I trust.”

I assured him he wasn’t in the book though I was, of course, lying and should have simply told him he was a part of my life and my life was mine, every bit of it, and that a writer only had her life to use for material. But I didn’t.

“And,” he said, leaning back to give me a royal sniff, which usually predicted good news. “I’m a bit of a fraud here. I said I wanted to see you because of that singularly unfair review. And you’ve helped me so much, as usual, Emily. But I, too, have news. At least a mitigation of that awful man’s opinion.”

With my shoulders back and a phony smile stuck in place I waited for Jackson’s “news.”

“As it turns out, Emily, I’m not a completely lost cause. Though you may deny it, I know your hopes for my Chaucer work were always high. My editor, too, stands behind my scholarship and has asked me to take on a new project. Now, this is a secret. A very deep secret at the moment. Word, down through the ages, has it that Geoffrey Chaucer was murdered on the order of Henry IV. Can you imagine a book investigating such allegations? There’s one out, but I’m hoping now to add my expertise to what has always been mere gossip. I’ll be going to London soon. Me, a veritable Sherlock Holmes.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Perhaps a Meerschaum pipe will be in order.”

With that he was out the door and to his car, all the packages from our shopping trip firmly in hand—except the fudge. He offered that as congratulations on my good news then left with a wave of his hand. All the books I’d coveted, and all the local oils went with him

My grudging mumbling followed him up the hill and lasted long after the sound of his car faded.