The Last Chairlift

36. BOOK SIGNINGS

A book signing is a public event; you don’t know who might show up. My favorite publicist, Mary Marinelli, was returning to work after what she called a “record-setting short maternity leave.” Mary only meant she’d come back to work too soon. “I’m breastfeeding—pumping my breasts is a messy business, and not the best use of my time on an author’s book tour,” she said. She was a marvelous publicist, and I’m confident that Mary was also a marvel as a breastfeeding and breast-pumping mom. I don’t remember how many children Mary had, but she was on maternity leave a lot—always for a record-setting short time. My impression of Mary is that she never stopped breastfeeding, although I didn’t see her breastfeed anyone, and I never met Mr. Marinelli or any of their kids. I was, however, a witness to what a marvel Mary was at finding opportune moments to pump her breasts, considering the multiple obstacles that an author’s book tour presented.

Mary was a compact person, small and well-proportioned, notwithstanding the size of her breasts. What was also overlarge about Mary was her shoulder bag. The other things in the shoulder bag, besides copies of my novel, had a breastfeeding and breast-pumping connection. There was more than one kind of breast pump in the big bag. There were ice packs to keep the mother’s milk cold. Mary had a low opinion of nursing moms who let their breast milk spoil.

Backstage, in the greenroom at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Mary Marinelli had taken charge of the audience Q and A in what was then a new way—at least to me. I was going to give a reading from my novel, followed by the Q and A; then there would be a book signing. But Mary had insisted that the audience be given notecards, where they could write their questions; then the cards were collected and brought to the greenroom before I went onstage.

“This eliminates the idiots who have no questions—they just want to tell you what they think,” Mary now said. She was reading through the questions on the notecards and sorting them. “This also identifies the dolts who always ask, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ They get their own pile, too—the never-to-be-answered pile,” Mary said. Before I went onstage, Mary told me, I would get to pick the questions I liked, and I could put them in the order I wanted to answer them. “I’m weeding out the whack jobs,” Mary Marinelli said.

The idea of weeding out the whack jobs interested Em; she and Nora were just hanging out in the greenroom with me before I went onstage. Em was reading through the questions on the notecards with Mary. I’d had to explain to Mary that Em was a pantomimist who actually didn’t talk. Mary had seen Nora and Em onstage at the Gallows; she’d wrongly assumed that Em’s nonspeaking role was just part of the act. Mary Marinelli had listened closely to what I told her about Em’s conscientious objection to speaking.

“Since you’re a full-time pantomimist—I mean, someone who has chosen a nonspeaking life—I’m wondering if you were a breastfed baby, or not,” Mary asked Em. It was hard to tell if this was a first-time breastfeeding question for Em, who took a moment to compose the requisite pantomime.

We all knew that Mary had been to the washroom several times. “Excuse me—I have to milk myself,” Mary had made a point of announcing each time, and she was forthcoming in telling us how the milking went when she came back from the washroom. “My left boob is outperforming the right one,” she would tell us with a heartfelt sigh. I couldn’t help sneaking a look at her underperforming right boob, and we could all imagine for ourselves—even in the greenroom—Mary’s misgivings about the electric breast pump. “One day they’ll make them more portable—the ones they make now are too big and bulky,” she complained. Mary was candid in confiding her fear of the electric pump to us. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to shut it off—it’ll just drain me to death,” Mary informed us.

The drained-to-death theme appeared to influence Em’s answer to the breastfeeding question. Until Em got to the gagging part, it was difficult to discern if she was the one doing the breastfeeding or the one who was being breastfed.

“If I had to guess, I would say that breastfeeding was a conflicted experience for Em,” Mary ventured to say. More like an entirely negative experience, I was thinking.

“Em says it’s a toss-up whether she or her mother would have been more grossed out by breastfeeding,” Nora told us. Em nodded; she went back to reading the notecards.

“I see,” Mary said; she was always saying this.

One of the young men on the staff at the Y brought more notecards to us in the greenroom. He’d been opposed to the notecards; he was bitter about the very idea of written questions. His name was Fred. He had a bug up his ass about spontaneity at public events. Fred had told Mary that the Q and A was more of a “spontaneous thing” if you just handed a microphone to anyone in the audience who wanted to ask a question.

“I’m not looking for spontaneity in the audience,” Mary told him. “Show me spontaneous, and I’ll show you the whack jobs.”

Young Fred was an indignant type. “As a rule, there isn’t a surfeit of whack jobs in our audiences—this is the Upper East Side,” Fred reminded Mary.

“We should have hooked up Fred to the electric breast pump—you know where,” Nora would say, with Em pantomiming, The bigger and bulkier, the better.

All Mary Marinelli said, at the time, was: “It takes just one whack job, Fred, to ruin the night—I’m not looking for a surfeit.” Behind his back, Nora gave Fred the finger—Nora’s spontaneous thing.

“Here are more questions, and there’s no time to gather more notecards—when you do the Q and A in writing, not everyone in the audience gets to ask his or her question,” Fred said in his pissy way.

“Not everyone in the audience should get to ask his or her question, Fred—hence the weeding,” Mary told him.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll show us the whack job—when you find one,” Fred said, in a pique.

“Oh, fuck off, Fred,” Nora said. This enlivening dialogue no doubt distracted me from what Em was trying to say, in her original way. Em was often sudden in her movements—jumping to her feet and dancing around, with no apparent purpose. I’d noticed that Em was calling our attention to the notecards. I hadn’t understood why Em was showing us her ballroom-dance repertoire. As usual, Nora understood what Em was trying to tell us before I got it. “We should look for a question from Jasmine?” Nora asked Em, who nodded her head off. Nora explained to Mary. “About five years ago, Adam’s mother told Jasmine that Adam said Jasmine had a vagina as big as a ballroom.”

“I see,” Mary Marinelli said.

“About the same time, you told Jasmine that her pussy was a subway station,” I reminded Nora. Em just kept nodding.

“Jasmine had a bed-shitting episode when she was having sex with Adam—I don’t think she’ll ever get over it,” Nora further explained to Mary. Em vigorously shook her head while rereading the notecards; Em clearly didn’t think that Jasmine was likely to get over the bed-shitting episode.

“Just tell me what Jasmine might ask, please,” Mary said to Nora.

“Bed-shitters are usually spontaneous, Fred,” Nora began. “Here’s a whack job for you—a question Jasmine might ask Adam: ‘Am I the only woman who has been befouled by you—beshitted, in your bed?’ Now there’s a question! I’ll bet Em and Mary might have noticed that one,” Nora said.

“That one would have caught my eye,” Mary Marinelli said.

“Or Jasmine might ask: ‘What sort of grown man lives with his grandmother and his grandmother’s maid and his grandfather’s ghost?’ I think that’s actually a worse question, kiddo,” Nora told me, with Em nodding.

“Definitely worse,” Mary said.

“I don’t live with my grandmother or her maid or my grandfather’s ghost anymore,” I felt it was necessary to tell Mary.

I hadn’t heard about Dottie. We had been in the habit of keeping in touch with postcards. I had sent her a few unanswered postcards; someone in Dottie’s family would eventually write me back, but not for a year. There was a lighthouse on the postcard, as on other postcards from Maine. “Dottie is dead—don’t write her here no more,” the postcard said.

“Do you like older women, Fred?” Nora asked. “Jasmine is older than Adam’s mother. How old is Jasmine now?” Nora asked me.

“Jasmine is only one year older than my mom—Jasmine would be fifty-seven now,” I said.

“I see—too old for Fred, I think,” Mary said. Em was back to the ballroom dancing. She merely meant to remind Fred that Jasmine’s vagina was as big as a ballroom. I was relieved that Em would spare us (even Fred) her pantomime of Jasmine’s pussy as a subway station; Em was crawling around the greenroom on all fours, seizing hold of our ankles. Fred was the touchiest about having his ankles seized. Em’s narrative moved on; she was on her feet, shadowboxing, or perhaps she was shadow-wrestling.

“If we get through the reading and the Q and A without a deeply embarrassing disturbance, we need a plan about how to deal with Jasmine at the book signing,” Mary Marinelli was saying, not realizing that Em was pantomiming a plan.

“Em and I will pull Jasmine out of the signing line,” Nora started to explain. “Em can grab hold of Jasmine’s ankles, not letting her get away. I’ll beat the shit out of Jasmine—I’ll break her arms, or just one of her arms,” Nora was saying. “Then we can drag the old subway pussy out to the sidewalk, and dump her there,” Nora said. Em just nodded.

“Maybe not that plan,” Mary Marinelli said. “You must have some security personnel on hand, don’t you?” Mary asked Fred.

“We don’t usually need security personnel at a fiction reading or a book signing,” Fred said in his pissy way.

“I see,” Mary said again, before she shut herself in the washroom once more. Fred was reflected in the greenroom mirror; he was bent over the telephone on the makeup counter.

“I know he’s just a fiction writer, but I think security personnel at the book signing is merited,” Fred was saying into the phone.

I was looking over the questions on the notecards Mary had selected, but I was tempted to look at just one of the notecards in the pile of discarded questions. Although Fred was trying to conceal his telephone conversation, his pissiness was audible to us. When Mary came out of the washroom, she caught me sneaking a look at the topmost notecard among the whack jobs.

“Don’t read those questions, Adam—there are questions you’ll never get out of your head,” Mary told me. I instantly regretted reading the one question I took from the discards. It wasn’t a question I would have answered onstage; it definitely belonged among the whack jobs. When I went onstage, the question was resounding in my head. I saw Mary take a second look at the question I’d read before we left the greenroom. “Like that one,” Mary said to me.

“Like you, I’m a fiction writer. Are you depressed all the time, too?” That was the question. To distract myself from thinking about it, I read over the questions that were about my mother. Mary wanted me to pick the best question about my mother and answer that one. We left all the questions concerning “Where do you get your ideas?” in the greenroom, where we’d heard Fred yelling on the phone as we were leaving.

“I know the potential troublemaker is just a woman, but it’s not my job to be the security personnel, is it?” Fred was screaming at someone.

“When it comes to Jasmine, Fred, you better let Em and me deal with the subway-station pussy—we’re the best security personnel you can get,” Nora was telling Fred. I didn’t need to see Em to know she would be nodding her head.

“I don’t suppose your cousin Nora would harm Jasmine physically, would she?” Mary asked me.

“Not very much,” I answered, or I said something along those lines.

“I see,” Mary Marinelli said, leaving me in the wings. I’ve since grown to love that moment in the wings. You can find a strangely solitary peace in the sides of a theater stage, where you’re out of view of the audience. At least for me, in those few minutes before I’ve gone onstage, time stops. I’ve had lifelong reflections backstage—soon gone, of course, but I’ve had those moments nevertheless. Not that time—my first time at the 92nd Street Y. Jasmine’s unlikely but possible presence unnerved me; I wanted Nora to harm Jasmine, physically.

All the mother questions were unsettling. “The mother in your most recent novel is a radical feminist who is assassinated by a misogynist. Is she your mother? If not, what does your mother think of the mother in your novel?” Of the ten or twelve mother questions, this one didn’t have the most dulcet tone, but it was the most clear.

It was also disquieting that I could have answered the question by telling the audience what my mom had already said about the novel, but I didn’t want to—especially not with Nora in the audience. “I know this mother isn’t me, sweetie, but what does Nora think about it?” my mom had asked me.

“Nora is okay about it—Nora knows it’s fiction,” I told my mother.

“You know Nora would never choose to have a child, Nora would never be a mother, but someone might really kill Nora, sweetie,” my mom told me.

“I know—that may be why I wrote the novel,” I told my mother. But that wasn’t the audience’s business, I decided; I wouldn’t answer any of the mother questions onstage.

Everything went all right, considering. When I was reading, I could easily locate Nora and Em in the audience; they were sitting in the front row, next to Mary Marinelli and her breast-pumping paraphernalia.

I had fun with the Q and A. When there are written questions, you can think of an imaginary notecard—you can make up a question. No one will know, I thought. But back in the greenroom, where I was given a brief reprieve before the book signing, Mary not only knew the question I made up to ask myself; she chided me for ducking the mother questions. “It wouldn’t have killed you to answer one mother question—you can’t write a novel about such an inflammatory mother, and not expect readers to be curious about your mother, Adam,” Mary told me, before going to the washroom to milk herself.

Fred had refrained from comment, but he was at his pissiest when he informed us that Nora and Em were “staking out” the area of the lobby where the book signing was—“in case the bed-shitter shows up.”

I was relieved to learn that, in Nora and Em’s estimation, Jasmine was nowhere in sight. I’d been imagining that Nora and Em had thrown Jasmine into the traffic on Lexington Avenue. At the book signing, I was further reassured by Em’s pantomimic gestures from the back of the signing line; it was easy to see, from the way Em was prancing around, that there was no sign of the subway-station pussy in the signing line. And Nora interrupted her stakeout of the lobby area to have a word with me at the signing table. “The bed-shitter isn’t coming tonight, kiddo,” Nora assured me.

Mary Marinelli was bossing around my readers in the signing line. “He’s not signing T-shirts, or bras, or anything like that,” I could hear her saying. People who wanted their books “personalized” were instructed to write out their names. “Don’t expect him to know how to spell your name,” I heard Mary say.

All the mother questioners seemed to be in the signing line. “What about your mom?” one asked me point-blank. She looked like a mom—a rather clingy one.

A young woman, who looked too independent and relaxed to be a mother, had written something on the same piece of paper where she’d spelled her name. “Matilda, like the stupid song,” she wrote. “You didn’t answer my question about your mother. I have issues with my mother,” Matilda also wrote.

I gave the mother questioners off-the-cuff answers. No one seemed satisfied with my answers, including Mary Marinelli. “I talk about my mom only when she’s in the audience, and she’s not here tonight”—that was one of my unsatisfying answers. “My mother knows she’s not the mother in my novels”—that was another one that got a lackluster reception, especially from Mary.

“Before we go to Boston, you have to come up with a credible answer to the mother question—it’s not going away,” Mary told me.

“Okay,” I said. I was distracted by someone who kept moving to the back of the line. I know this about book signings: it doesn’t bode well when someone wants to be last in line. She was a tall young woman—attractive, in a forlorn way. Even at a distance, she struck me as a woman who would never be entirely present; wherever she was, she wouldn’t be wholly there. I would look up from the signing table and see her at the end of the line, a head taller than anyone else. The next time I looked up, maybe four or five people were in line behind her, but not for long. When I looked again, she’d moved backward—reclaiming her hopeless but chosen place at the end of the line.

“Who wants to be last in line?” I asked Mary Marinelli.

“I’m keeping my eye on her—she’s the one to watch out for, probably the writer who’s depressed all the time,” Mary said. I hadn’t been married; I didn’t have children. Maybe you need those experiences to understand that a person who pumps her breasts with religious fervor could be the smartest person you know.

Of course that’s who the tall young woman was—a depressed fiction writer, like me. I was thirty-seven. As the signing line got shorter, I had a closer look at the tall young woman. She was taller than I thought, and not as young as she looked at a distance.

“She’s your age, if you ask me—not to mention the depressed part,” Mary said. Nora had circled back to the signing table, now that the end of the line was near.

“Em and I don’t like the looks of the tall one, kiddo,” Nora told me. I could see that Em had slipped into the hindmost spot in the signing line—purposely, to annoy the tall woman. Mary let Nora know that the tall woman was a depressed fiction writer, but Nora said Em had guessed the writer part. “Em knew something was wrong with her,” was the way Nora put it.

“No visible injuries, no casts or anything—she’s too thin to get stuck in a shower,” Nora pointed out. “She’s so tall, she could hurt herself washing her hair—her legs are so long, the penis-bending possibilities are innumerable, kiddo,” Nora told me. As the end of the signing line came closer, I watched Em and the other fiction writer trading places for the hindmost position. Em was as persistent as a terrier. The tall woman didn’t have a chance; she wasn’t going to outlast the pantomimist, physically. We could see her trying to talk to Em; we knew that wouldn’t work. Em would be last in line. Em stood so closely behind the depressed writer, Em’s forehead was almost touching the slight indentation between the taller woman’s shoulder blades. The woman was wearing a sheer white blouse. The fabric was so sheer, you could see her old-fashioned bra through her blouse. I didn’t want to think about the depressed writer’s breasts, but I found myself imagining she must have been wearing her mother’s bra.

Mary Marinelli hadn’t read my mind; her dedication as a nursing mom gave her empathy for other women’s breasts. “The poor thing—that old lady’s bra is all wrong for her,” Mary said to Nora.

Nora was forty-three; she didn’t wear bras. “Everything will always be all wrong for her—she’s a writer,” Nora said.

“The poor thing,” Mary repeated. I’m guessing the poor thing part was the only part of their conversation the tall woman and Em would have overheard, but Em and I had heard before what Nora thought of writers—not to mention the way Nora said the writer word. Em and I didn’t doubt that everything would always be all wrong for writers. As for the poor thing part, Em adamantly agreed. When Em nodded, her head bumped the long back of the tall woman with the small breasts and the sad bra. The depressed writer had painstakingly drawn an ornate-looking picture frame around her name, which she’d written on an otherwise blank notecard. (She had not included her name with the question I regretted reading on the notecard from the discard pile.) Her name was Wilson; there was what looked like a wedding ring on the ring finger of her left hand.

“Mrs. Wilson?” I asked her, just to be sure—before I inscribed her name on the title page of my novel.

“I’m not married. I thought, if I wore the ring, guys would stop hitting on me, but that was a bad idea—now only married men hit on me,” the tall woman said.

“I see—so what’s your first name?” Mary asked her, just to speed things up.

“Wilson is my first name—I’m one of the last girls to be named for that old president, I hope,” Wilson said. “I’m the fiction writer who asked you if you’re depressed all the time, like me,” she confessed.

“Yes, all the time,” I answered. I was signing her copy of my novel when Nora kicked my leg, under my chair. I’d been dotting the i in Wilson when Nora kicked me, and the dot ended up over the W.

“Maybe we could get together, just to talk about it,” Wilson suggested. Perhaps I was attracted to her because she had no guile concerning how to come on to someone. “You have my number,” Wilson added meekly, as she was leaving. Not only had I been slow to respond; I hadn’t noticed that what I’d mistaken for an ornate frame around her name on the notecard was actually a phone number. And now Nora was giving me an overly familiar shoulder massage; Nora never massaged me. Em, who’d come around to my side of the signing table, suddenly sat in my lap.

“Imagine being a woman named Wilson! At least she’s leaving,” Mary observed.

In a faraway part of the lobby, we could see that Wilson was about to cross paths with Fred. We knew what Fred had been up to. Fred was obsessed with Jasmine. He’d been outside, looking for a bed-shitter on Lexington Avenue and Ninety-second Street. “She’s gone—the bed-shitter is gone, or she never came!” Fred called to us, unmindful of Wilson, who was walking the other way.

Poor Wilson, I thought, putting the notecard with her name and number in my pocket. Pity was always my undoing. Nora had stopped massaging me, and Em got out of my lap, now that Wilson was gone. In addition to her constant depression, Wilson had wandered away on Lexington Avenue, knowing a bed-shitter was on the loose in the Upper East Side. If she’d known Jasmine was fifty-seven, Wilson might have been even more depressed.

All I was thinking was that I missed being with another fiction writer, and (at the same time) I didn’t. I’d not seen Sophie for more than a decade. We both loved Thomas Mann, but our mutual admiration for the writer wasn’t enough to keep us together; not even Death in Venice could overcome our disheartening conversation and disturbing sex. To be fair, there was the bleeding—the blood itself wasn’t as bad as Sophie’s need to dramatize the constancy of her uterine bleeding. We were together only a year, when we were in our early twenties. We were just kids. The bloody sheets and towels in the washing machine were disheartening and disturbing, too. Yet it was because of Sophie, and what I missed about being with another fiction writer, that I put the notecard with Wilson’s name and number in my pocket.

Now I know why Nora suspected I was “trying to start something with Em” when I wasn’t. (Nora knew Em was innocent of “trying to start” anything.) But when Em and I started writing each other, there was a newfound intimacy between us; as writers, Em and I were discontented in the same way. Discontent is one thing writers have in common. I was never a threat to the intimacy Nora and Em had as a couple. Nora knew that, too—she wasn’t jealous, not exactly. Yet Nora felt excluded from how alone Em felt, as a writer. When you write fiction, you go it alone. Quite correctly, Nora felt excluded from the aloneness Em and I had in common, too. And when Em and I started writing each other, this also made me miss being with another fiction writer. It wasn’t just meeting Wilson, or that I missed being with Sophie.

It didn’t help that Sophie would show up at my reading and book signing in Boston. Mary Marinelli spotted “something funny” about Sophie’s handwritten question for the Q and A. It was a good question, the kind of question a fellow fiction writer would ask. Sophie had read all my novels. She’d noticed that I’d written two novels in the third-person omniscient voice, and there were a couple of novels with a first-person narrator. Her question was a writer’s question, about narrative point of view. Mary knew I would like Sophie’s question, but “something funny” caught Mary’s eye about Sophie’s handwritten notecard. Mary handed me the card.

Under her name, Sophie had written, “Still bleeding, after all these years.”

“Sophie has nonstop uterine bleeding—she has fibroids. And she’s a fiction writer,” I explained to Mary.

“I see,” Mary said.

I would spend a lot of time answering Sophie’s question in the Q and A. I made an effort to put the endless mother questions to rest, knowing I never would. I talked about my repeated interest in a mother’s influence; I said the part of a mother that remains a mystery to her children is the part that interests me as a writer. I could tell I didn’t go far enough. The audience was polite about it, but they didn’t really buy it. Mary simply told me I could do better.

I was happy to see Sophie in the signing line. We gave each other a hug, but I could sense that neither of us wanted to be together. I was relieved about that. Yet even Sophie, who was completely pleasant, had something to say about my mom and the various mothers in my fiction. “I think you can say more about that, Adam—I’ve met your mom, you know,” was how Sophie said it, however pleasantly.

When I got back from Boston, I already knew I would call Wilson. The snowshoer and I were still sharing the little Barlows’ pied-à-terre. It was too small for us, especially when the little Barlows visited—if they were in town, I stayed with Nora and Em. And now that I’d written my first bestseller, Nora and Em were wondering why I didn’t get my own apartment in New York. Of course my mother kept telling me what was for sale in Manchester, Vermont. “You should live here, sweetie,” my mom had said.

But there was no one place I wanted to live, and I would always be undecided about living in New York. At the time, Elliot Barlow and I liked living together—“again,” as we would say. I still imagined I could keep the little English teacher safe.

“There are writers who are regionalists, and then there are the homeless ones,” I’d heard the snowshoer say. The pretty Mr. Barlow had pegged me as a homeless type, but Em and I had written each other about Elliot’s two categories of writers. Em and I thought we were in a third category—the undecided ones.

Naturally, when I got back from Boston, a letter from Em was waiting for me, telling me what a bad idea Wilson was. I knew Em understood why I thought about being with another fiction writer; Em thought about it, too. Yet Wilson was all wrong for me, Em wrote. Em knew I hadn’t read Wilson’s writing, but Em had read a couple of things. “Wilson could be depressed all the time because she knows she can’t write,” Em wrote me.

This was followed by a long part about the way I’d looked at Wilson’s breasts. “You still look at my breasts, you know,” Em pointed out. She reminded me how we had danced together at my mom’s wedding; I was a very tentative dancer, Em wrote, but I was not at all tentative about staring at her breasts. Em had lifted my chin and pointed to her eyes, indicating where I should look. I’d been fourteen, at my mom’s wedding; my eyes had roamed back to Em’s breasts. Em had kept lifting my face to her eyes. I was relieved to learn, later in Em’s long letter, that I didn’t stare at Em’s breasts—“not as much, or in the same way”—anymore. My mom’s wedding had been more than twenty years ago. Not even Nora had complained about the way I still looked at Em’s breasts—“not for ten or twelve years, or so,” Em wrote.

My boy-girl etiquette had been lacking. I knew better than to stare at a woman’s breasts, but both Em and Nora had noticed the way I was looking at Wilson. (Mary Marinelli must have noticed, too.) Why would Wilson wear such a see-through blouse with such a sorrowful, older woman’s bra? Why would a preternaturally tall woman with noticeably small breasts want you to see exactly how small her breasts were? Wasn’t Wilson pathetic? I was thinking, even as I checked to be sure I hadn’t lost or misplaced the notecard with her phone number. I knew I was attracted to Wilson in the way I was attracted to pathos, as a writer.

Both the past and the future are a couple of things not to like about book signings.