The Egg Code (29 page)

XVIII

When Good Things Happen to Bad People

The Thickness of the Plot
Attains Critical Mass

No one noticed her outfit. Not the promoters, not the people from the publishing house. Not that the outfit was the most important thing. The outfit was definitely not the most important thing. The most important thing was the book, the concept. She would have to speak about the book now, as if having to write it wasn’t bad enough. Reggie Bergman had warned her the next few months would be awful. Awful in what way? Reading the reviews was awful. Reggie screened out the worst ones. The one that called her an empty-headed twat, she didn’t get to read. The one that panned
Many Voices, One Vision
as “the latest example of a wealthy, well-heeled white woman attempting to alleviate her own feelings of guilt by paying lip service to a quaintly impoverished third world” likewise escaped the highlight reel. “Well-heeled” was not a compliment. Unbeknownst to herself, Donna Skye had become the reigning queen of the decadent upper class. The rich bitch of the year.

Donna sat near the edge of the main stage at the Channel 5 news station in downtown North Crane City, sipping tea and crossing and recrossing her legs behind a thick wooden counter. A high turban hid her hair under a wrap of brightly colored folds, peach and grape soda and nectarine. The woman at the store had showed her how to tie it in the traditional manner, used for hundreds of years by the ladies of the Niger River valley. Donna had never worn a turban before. She found it disconcerting, the sensation of her hair twirling high above her head. She tried to picture her silhouette, the outline of a woman wearing a turban. She couldn’t do it; all that came to mind were bizarre geometrics, abstract ice cream cones, birds with odd beaks. Nothing remotely resembling a human being.

Not that anyone noticed the turban anyway. No one paid attention to the small things anymore.
Donna, you got your bangs cut. Donna, you
look
so
nice in taffeta.
Wherever she went, people only wanted to talk about politics, the social agenda of mainstream conservatives, the changing dynamics of African and Eurasian cultures in a global society. And their questions were so angry! Sitting in this television studio, she could sense the contempt of the other panelists, the way they fiddled with their clip-on microphones, then took notes and passed them back and forth (but never to her). One man—a black professor from Midwestern University—leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and whenever Donna said a few words, he would sit forward and make a face, as if condescending to listen. Hurt, she wiped her nose and looked toward the side of the stage. They all hated her.

“Well, Mrs. Skye’s doing her best. And I suppose, in a way, she should be commended for reaching out . . . as it were.”

“But ultimately you feel . . . what?”

The professor shrugged—a blasé whatever. “I just feel it’s silly. I mean, here you have a woman—in all respect, a white woman, I’m sure she’s a very nice person—but unless you’ve been in a certain
situation
, then there’s no way you can . . . reconcile the . . . various ramifications . . . So that’s my problem.”

The host looked at the camera. “We’re talking with Professor Jakob Objobway, Dr. Leon Felt from the Mrs. John W. Woodbridge Center for Cultural Research, and best-selling author Donna Hasse Skye, thank you all for being here, I’m Diane Montgomery and this is
Shockpoint
. Ms. Skye, Professor Objobway has just called you a silly woman . . . uhh . . .”

“Well . . .”

“Them’s fighting words, ain’t they?”

Donna squinted into the hot beams of the overhead spots. This seemed like an unnatural way to have a conversation, with everyone generally facing the same direction. She wanted to look at the woman head-on, wanted to say
no no, this is all wrong, who cares why I did it or
what I did, someone else wrote most of it anyway
—but instead she stared up at the production booth and said, “I just think that the book speaks for itself.”

“But the book does
not
speak for itself, ma’am. No, see . . . what we’ve got here—”

“Professor Objobway, you disagree.”

The professor’s eyes became heavy and indulgent, a fat little look. “I’m not saying I disagree, I’m just saying that when you’ve got a person who . . . may be of one type or another—and I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here—but if you take a look at it, what you’re seeing is a selective series of . . . inadvertent . . . parallels, that may or may not contradict . . . the corresponding sequence.”

“Leon Felt, get in here.”

Dr. Felt’s white, furry eyebrows pressed together as he yanked on his corduroy sports jacket. An orange STOP CANCER button chinked on a loose pin. “Yeah, I think that what the man is saying is . . . historically, this is the pattern! Go back to the earliest American settlers, back to the time of the pilgrims, with the boats and the ships. Take a look at England in the nineteenth century at the start of the labor movement. You’ve got guys pushing carts up and down the hill saying, ‘Hey, buddy, help me out here!’ ”

“Right.”

“So this is how it is. And it’s inherently corrupt, and that’s how it’s always been and how it’ll always be until God do we come. But—”

“No, what I’m saying is—”

“Professor Objobway, and then I want to get back to Donna Skye.”

The professor crossed his legs, showing a pair of socks with strands of bright tinsel woven into the fabric. Something about the socks made Donna want to slip though the floorboards and hide between the insulation until the interview was over. They seemed so wild, so
other
. She should have known better. She should have put them in her book.

“Thank you. All I’m—you know, my point is very simple. This isn’t about . . . see, you all are trying to make this an issue of
this
versus
that
. . . and that’s all well and good, but what I’m saying is, if you’ve got one person, and he’s going around saying one thing, and then you’ve got another person who, for one reason or another—”

“Now wait a minute—”

“—when you—”

“Wait, now you just said something very significant there.”

“Professor Objobway, then Donna Skye, then I’m going back to Dr. Felt.”

Professor Objobway sighed; his wrinkled forehead swirled in tight convolutions of disapproval. Donna did not like this man. So arrogant. So quick to judge. If only they could all be like Julian, with his modest sense of humor and his old-world etiquette, his wavy gray hair that reminded her of those old movies from the fifties, with the black butler who always drank whiskey but never too much, and if it was a musical he usually sang a song about pretty young girls—never trust ’em, baby, cuz you’d best believe she’s gonna bust you up and break your heart. Best believe. Julian said things like “best believe.” When Donna thought about the man, some inner reserve spilled away, and she felt less built-up, less constructed from parts.

“Thank you,” the professor continued, pleased. “I think that what you have to look at is the fact that we’re all talking about
different
things.”

“Right.”

“And until we can get to the point where—see, I’ve known people who have
never
been economically independent.”

“Professor Objobway, you’re saying economics is the issue.”

“Not economics per se, but economics versus capital versus . . . unfair representation, or
unequal
representation, in a changing society.”

“Sure, sure, that’s the bottom line. Now: Donna Skye.” Diane Montgomery stared at Donna across the stage. “We’ve been hearing a lot of things today. We’ve been hearing Donna Skye is a sheltered, well-to-do white woman who has no business writing about non-European cultures. We’ve been hearing Donna Skye doesn’t know what she’s talking about. We’ve been hearing Donna Skye is a bad writer. So . . . how ’bout them apples?”

Donna tried to smile. “All I can say is, I’ve received a lot of mail from people all around the country—”

“See . . .”

“—and they’ve all been very nice.”

“Dr. Felt, then Professor Objobway, then I’m going back to Donna Skye. Leon?”

“Yeah.”

“Help me out here, pal.”

Dr. Felt mopped the sweat from his forehead. “Look, you can’t separate one thing from another. In all my years of private counseling, this is the thing I’ve learned. I mean, this is what’s going on right now with the Palestinians, which . . . we could talk about that but we won’t. All I’m saying is, when you take a position on a public issue, then you better damn well know how to get from first to second base, otherwise you’re gonna be left with a bunch of bombed-out buildings and everyone standing around, saying, ‘What happened?’ ”

“How does that affect—”

“Now, wait, look, there’s a corollary to this, because there’s a very real danger that creeps in whenever people start pointing fingers, saying you did it, no you did it, no you did it. I mean, that’s why in 1933 you’ve got the Marx Brothers having to beg up and down Broadway for union scale, while meanwhile crosstown you’ve got John Barrymore playing craps with the Italians and tossing twenty-dollar steaks into the ocean.”

Diane Montgomery leaned heavily on one hip, tucking her right leg between her skirt and the seat cushion. She flashed her note cards and shrugged, and suddenly this was all very, very funny to her. “The Marx Brothers, the PLO, and a bunch of twenty-dollar steaks . . . Donna Skye, what the heck is going on here?”

“I think if the woman—”

“We’re gonna take Ms. Skye, then Professor Objobway, then I’ll go to Leon Felt for the final word. Donna?”

“Yes.”

“This is the situation. The book stinks! A million and a half copies on the shelves and you’re looking at yourself like oh-my-god, what did I do wrong, and meanwhile half of America is out there waiting and wondering, what is she going to do next, and the
pressure
. . . the pressure has got to be unreal.”

“I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m not a professional writer.”

“And we’re not saying we don’t like the book.”

“Good point. Leon Felt.”

“I liked the book. I bought it for my niece, who’s in the hospital.”

The session finally ended at a quarter to three, and Donna left feeling grateful for the two-hour tape delay. The producers would edit it down, cut out the bad parts, insert some fancy-shmancy special effects. The words weren’t important—publicity mattered, nothing else. Even contempt was a strong sales tool. The more they hated you, the more likely they were to buy, and buy big. The exchange of funds for goods gave the consumer free license to hate the thing consumed. They owned her. One by one, unit by unit, they snatched up her soul. At last she knew what it felt like to be a kept woman. Twenty-five years with the great Derek Skye were not enough. Donna had to learn the lesson for herself. The pain of celebrity. Driving back to Big Dipper Township, she thought about those long years, how he’d seemed to age at an extraordinary rate. She remembered one day in the late seventies, watching the dawn play upon her husband’s naked back. Squinting in the early-morning haze, she noticed a splotch of yellow no bigger than a quarter nestled between two vertebrae. The color reminded her of chicken soup. She thought she knew Derek’s body so well, every speck, the subtle shades of cream and tan. The shock she felt was that of adultery, the hurt of the betrayed spouse. She touched his back and he woke up. “What are you doing?” he asked. “This stain . . .” she muttered, not completing the thought, and as the ball of her thumb rubbed against his spine, she could feel the friction, the heat between bodies, and eventually Derek grew annoyed, for this was not how he wished to start the day, and he barked in protest and jumped out of bed, his buns jiggling as he stormed into the bathroom, reemerging twenty minutes later all dressed and packed for a weekend conference in Phoenix. The theme of the conference was “I Can’t Believe I’m Real!!!” but for Donna it was a weekend of loneliness and worry. She paced the house for hours, clutching her elbows under the sleeves of her baggy sweater. She couldn’t sleep for fear that Derek might have cancer, and the thought scared her because this was the late seventies and she still loved him very much, and she even made love to him once near an open hotel window because he wanted to (even though she didn’t). Now, returning from the city, Donna knew what the yellow splotch was. It was not cancer; it was celebrity. This was what fame did to a person. Derek had learned that lesson, and now it was her turn. This was a setup, an intricate scenario contrived by the man who had loved her, who had tried so hard to give her a baby that he would come inside her, three, four times a night, his face stern with determination. He loved her, and now he wanted to destroy her. The very thought made Donna’s hands go tense on the steering wheel, and she pulled off to the side of the road and stopped for a while, watching the light snow flutter across the windshield, each flake melting in the heat of the defroster. Driving again, she passed the lake at a fast speed and turned north onto the main street, away from her house. Derek’s apartment looked cold on the inside; frosty spindles broke in the space between panes. She ditched the car and hurried up the steps of the complex, almost running into him outside his unit, his hands wrapped around a silver trash bag. Five months had passed since she’d last seen her husband. Derek’s sunken eyes scared her—they seemed like a skull’s eyes, and all she could think about was death and the horror of old age and bodies rotting in the tomb.

“I have to talk to you!”

“Donna, you—”

“Get out of my way!”

“Let me . . . Christ, let me put this down.” He set the trash beside the door and followed Donna into the apartment. “What now? For God’s sake—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Stop screaming.”

“I’ll scream if I want to and I don’t care!” Walking around to the back of the sofa, she picked up a pillow and threw it at him. “Come on . . . what is this? This stupid place, this is where you live—and you don’t even call me!”

“Oh, Donna, come on.” Annoyed, he lingered near the door. With Donna in the house, he could feel himself reverting to a kind of behavior he’d done his best to forget.