It was a raw, rainy night, Monday, April 15, 1991, about eight forty-five p.m. Mike Wilson, the literary agent from New York, was less than a block from where he had parked the rented car when disaster struck. A furtive figure under the flickering streetlight, he was carrying two corrugated manuscript boxes and an umbrella.
He was almost across the little stone pedestrian bridge when he slipped on some wet leaves. He slid against the stone parapet on his right, banged his elbow, howled with pain, dropped the umbrella and the manuscript box under his left arm, and grabbed his right elbow.
That dislodged the box under his right arm. It landed atop the parapet, teetered tantalizingly, and fell into the rain-swollen creek.
“Oh my God,” Mike squealed as he steadied himself, looked over the balustrade. He was in time to see the box hit a jagged rock and split open, the contents pulled under by the swiftly flowing stream.
He couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. A manuscript worth at least six million dollars — the original, the hard copies, the computer disk, everything — was already a sodden mess on its way to the Gulf of Mexico through a network of creeks and rivers.
A bolt of lightning rent the sky, thunder crashed, a sheet of rain hit him. He picked up the umbrella and the other box and ran for the car. He had a terrible time getting the key in the door lock.
Finally inside, the door closed, he switched on the dashboard light and made a silent prayer.
“Please, Lord, please, please,” he begged, “let this be the Ebb and Flow box.”
He should have known better; the Lord frowns on thievery.
“I knew it, I knew it,” he wailed, “God help me. I’m done, finished, on my way to jail. And what about her? Oh my God, this is a catastrophe.”
It was pretty bad.
Two weeks before the manuscript went over the bridge, Cathy and Linda, two hairstylists at Lillian’s New York Style Hair Salon, finished the four dollar and twenty-five cent special at the fast food restaurant. After which they solemnly shook hands and pledged to do what they had been talking of doing for weeks: contact the supermarket tabloid.
“I still think they’ll pay at least fifty thousand,” said Cathy. “This is the kind of sensational story they love.”
“Wow,” exclaimed Linda. “Think what I can do with my share. Now, you’re not going to back out are you? You’re really going to phone tomorrow?”
“I said I was, didn’t I? You tell Lil I’ll be in around ten thirty. Tell her the high school principal called me again about Wendy. That kid, someday I’ll choke her. Now, let’s go over it again.”
They went over it again.
That same night, on the Upper West Side of New York, a tall, distinguished-looking man finished his evening’s allotment, his second beer, and got up to leave.
“Goodnight, Danny,” he said to the bartender.
“Goodnight, Mr. Reardon, have a pleasant evening,” Danny said.
Mr. Reardon was Thomas W. Reardon, a sixty-five-year-old widower, head of The Media’s Conscience, a very worthy, very underfunded foundation devoted to battling untruths, half-truths, and outright slander and libel in all forms of the media. Mr. Reardon was being overwhelmed by what Freud gloomily labeled “the vile realities of life.”
His dear wife of forty years had died the year before; it still hurt. And unless a philanthropist appeared with several million dollars in the next few months, the foundation would be bankrupt. That would be a disaster, for without her father’s monthly check, his daughter and her two small children in Ohio would be homeless, her rotten husband having absconded to Brazil with his employer’s young wife and most of the firm’s capital.
Walking to his lonely apartment on a lovely spring evening throbbing with rebirth, Reardon began to sob. Life had become almost unbearable.
Thereby — from all the above — hangs a tale, a tale inspired by the adage Dead men tell no tales. Other adages — axioms, wise sayings — appear in this story. They include Charity begins at home and Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
And as Bobbie Burns has told us,
The best laid schemes o’ mice
and men
Gang aft a-gley.
And how often have we heard that The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on? Which is a shameful way to describe tall, sweet, skinny, slouchy, mousy-haired Martha Ainsley.
Best laid schemes constantly come a cropper, go awry, foul up. That’s what happened when two decent people — Martha Ainsley and Mike Wilson — were confronted with their vile realities.
Mike Wilson was no saint, but he had never broken any laws. In April 1991, he had only one vile reality. But it was a vile one, a forty-five hundred dollar alimony due on the first Monday of every month.
Martha Ainsley was a faultless person. Shy, meek, irreproachable, she was the most unlikely person ever to become a participant in a shaky scheme which, if it failed, could result in imprisonment. For a straitlaced goody two-shoes to abandon the straight and narrow for the slippery slope, there had to be an enormous vile reality.
There was. She was almost forty. She was madly in love with Walter Foster, the wonderful mailman. She was close to losing him to a henna-haired hussy. With fate about to close the book on her last chance for happiness, she flung righteousness aside, spurred on by the terrifying realization that there would be no more chances.
All tales have a beginning. An arbitrary beginning for this tale would be December 1975, with most of the drama taking place in Hillsdale, the county seat of Ashford County in the worked-out bituminous coalfields of southwestern Pennsylvania. That was almost sixteen years before Martha became involved in the six million dollar scheme from which thirty-five thousand dollars would be hers. That, together with her savings, would be enough to buy her mother the Florida condo, plus leaving additional money to augment her mother’s Social Security.
With her mother no longer the obstacle in the battle for the divine letter carrier, Martha’s chances would be greatly improved. There had been frenzied competition for Walter Foster. No wonder. In a pathetic town like Hillsdale, mired in a permanent depression, a stalwart, handsome bachelor like Walter with a steady job, a fine pension someday, and a widowed mother with failing eyesight and a bad heart naturally attracted a lot of attention.
But by the spring of 1991 (Walter’s mother died in September 1989) there were only two candidates left. All the others — mainly motherly types, great cooks, super seamstresses, spick and span housekeepers — had bowed to bitter reality. Walter Foster (no mother ever had a more devoted son) did not want another mother. He was forty-seven, had led a monastic life. Who could blame him for wanting to make up for lost time?
Martha Ainsley and Ginny Barnes were the surviving candidates. By the crucial month of April 1991, the once shy, skinny, slouchy, mousy-haired Martha had undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis. She now had a lot to offer. But she still had her mother, a sixty-four-year-old millstone.
Ginny Barnes had a mother, but she lived in Florida with her third husband. Ginny had other things going for her. She was divorced, childless, a green-eyed, henna-haired vamp with outstanding physical attributes. In Walter Foster she saw everything that a twice-divorced, late thirty-something girl could hope for. She was determined to beat out Martha Ainsley.
The first step in Martha’s eventual transformation had been taken simply to earn some extra money. Just before Christmas 1975 (bleak as usual), her hand shaking, the dear girl wrote a check for a hundred and fifty dollars for a three-month ad — the minimum accepted — in the Manuscripts Typed section of a national writers’ magazine. A shrinking violet (“Just like your father,” her mother nagged, “afraid to toot your own horn.”) she squirmed and blushed before coming up with:
“Bus schl grad/yrs sect exp/prompt service/spl/punct/gram. 75¢ ds pg. All states welc/all types mss include handwrt/rough type. Free copies/free post.”
By charging only “75¢ ds pg,” promising “gram,” offering “free post” she hoped to gain an advantage over the other typists, all of whom advertised 85¢ ds pg plus post and only “some gram.”
That was the beginning of a long, tortuous metamorphosis, a metamorphosis involving her mother, Uncle Sam, Lady Luck.
Her mother began it. Forever bemoaning her late husband’s failure, endlessly predicting that the welfare office loomed ever closer, Helen Ainsley finally drove her fainthearted daughter to do something unheard of: spend a small fortune, a hundred and fifty dollars, without consulting her.
Uncle Sam contributed the most vital ingredient, the quiet, handsome, bachelor mailman. Lady Luck’s contribution to the brew was to nudge Walter into calling tails when the postmaster threw the coin to determine which of the two eligible carriers would win the coveted transfer from a steep, hilly route to the very desirable West End route after grumpy Herman Means retired in June 1990.
It had come up tails. That brought two literature lovers, two devoted bibliophiles, into precious propinquity, even if for only a few moments a week. Walter’s father had died when the boy was only five, and his mother, a high school English teacher, had raised her son and had inspired him to read from an early age. By the time Walter took over the new route he had read hundreds of books, and during the last three years of his mother’s life, as her accelerating blindness made it impossible for her to read even the large print books, he had been reading to her night after night.
And Martha loved books. For many joyous years she and her beloved father, hand in hand, giggling and laughing, jumped over the cracks in the sidewalk on their way to the library on Saturday mornings.
There had been precious propinquity between Walter and Martha prior to June 1990, but it had lapsed when evening hours at the library were eliminated in 1975. Before that Martha was an eager volunteer three nights a week and had often checked out Walter’s books. They’d exchanged a few memorable words about the books and the authors, he had smiled that dear, boyish smile and thanked her. Those moments at the library were precious memories. Of course, since Hillsdale was a small town, she had seen Walter once in a while in the years between 1975 and 1990; in the supermarket, the drugstore, walking his mother in the park. Her heart would pound. He would smile. His mother would say a few words. It was wonderful, but it happened much too infrequently.
Helen Walowsky was a beauty, a ravishing blonde. She came from a family of hardworking coal miners, and by the time she was a junior in high school, she had vowed she would have a better life than her mother and her married sisters.
After graduation she got a job in the Register of Wills office in the County Building. By then the college boys — scions of the rich coal and coke barons from the mansions of LaFayette Terrace — had discovered her. She was the belle of the ball at the country club dances and she selected the boy most likely to inherit a huge fortune.
Tall, blond, blue-eyed David Ainsley had graduated from Yale with a Ph.D. in English literature. He lived with his widowed father on one of the more imposing estates. It had been built by his grandfather, who had grown rich in the coke industry (coke, a vital ingredient in steel manufacturing, is coal with the impurities burnt off).
Helen snared David in June 1949. He was twenty-seven, she was twenty-three. The wedding was held in St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church. Later, at the country club, quite a number of the guests thought that while the bride was gorgeous and the groom handsome, the little tears that suddenly appeared when the bride murmured, “I do,” appeared to be sad tears, not happy tears.
They were sad tears, for Helen was thinking of the boy next door, her high school sweetheart Steve Zablonsky. Sobbing her heart out in early September following high school graduation, she had told Steve it could never be. She would never marry a coal miner. The work was too uncertain, the danger constant.
He took it hard, called her a damned gold-digger, and vowed to make her eat her words. He became a miner, determined to save his money, go to college.
David and Helen honeymooned in New York. As they were flying back to the Pittsburgh airport, David’s father, his vast fortune gone from bad investments, committed suicide. Unknown to David, the LaFayette mansion had two mortgages. After the bank foreclosed and the estate was probated, all that was left was four thousand dollars.
Helen was devastated. David, mourning his father, tried to convince her they still had much to be thankful for. A new community college was opening in the next county, and he thought there’d be a fine opportunity for him there. Which there was; he was hired as an assistant professor in the Eng-fish department.
They bought a pretty Cape Cod on a tree-lined street near the city park. David loved his work, his students loved him. He volunteered at the library and the humane society, became a good Samaritan for old people too feeble to rake their autumn leaves or shovel the winter snows. And when their daughter was born in 1951, he devoted as many hours as possible to her. He began to think of writing a novel. Life was pleasant.
Not for Helen. Although she loved her little daughter and made determined efforts to be a happy housewife, she couldn’t keep from feeling that David had let her down.
As the years went by, father and daughter became dear friends. Helen went through the motions but couldn’t get over her bitterness. Then, on a hot sunny morning in August 1964 when Helen and Martha were at the supermarket, the phone rang. Mrs. Newcomer, an octogenarian widow who lived up the street, was distraught. Nameless, her cat, had once more climbed the big oak in her back yard and, as usual, was afraid to come down.
“He’s up there wailing pathetically, David,” Mrs. Newcomer said. “And I hesitate to call the police, they’re so shorthanded. Do you think...”
“I’ll be right up, Mrs. Newcomer,” David assured her, confident that, like the other times, he’d have no trouble getting Nameless down. But this time Nameless had gone higher. Meowing forlornly, he cowered at the end of a large limb. It looked strong. It wasn’t. With a crack like a bolt of lightning, it broke. Nameless landed safely. David wasn’t as lucky. He landed headfirst in the widow’s rock garden.
The whole town took it hard. Helen and Martha were grief-stricken, especially Martha. She cried for days. The poor girl — she’d lost the greatest father a girl ever had. She was thirteen, tall, shy, gangly, a bright girl with a high forehead, brown eyes, dull brown hair. There’d be many, many sad days ahead.
Helen’s grief soon turned to anger. David Ainsley, the brilliant catch, had proved a dismal failure. Not only was there no fortune, but he had been content to be an underpaid assistant professor at a backwater college while being a good Samaritan to every Tom, Dick, and Harry instead of writing the novel he had planned.
His death meant she had to go back to work. She became a lowly file clerk in the County Building, and was lucky to get even that. It was bad, but it could have been worse. David had mortgage insurance. That paid off the pretty Cape Cod on Chestnut Street. He also had a small life insurance policy with the college. When the funeral expenses were paid, there was twenty-two hundred dollars left. That didn’t make Helen any less bitter.
The years passed, bringing little joy to Hillsdale, to the whole county. The coal had all been worked out, the coke ovens shut down, and by December 1975, layoffs in all departments had reduced services to a dismal level. Even the library, a combination county-city facility, had suffered. It no longer opened at night, was down to three paid employees from a high of ten in the good old days, and was kept operating through the efforts of volunteers. It couldn’t afford to be computerized. If there had been any money, it would have gone to a new bookmobile (the current one was long overdue at the scrap yard). And year by year new leaks appeared in the roof; more and more buckets were required to catch the dripping drops.
Helen Ainsley hadn’t escaped downsizing. By the winter of 1975 she had reached the lowest point of her life. She was a part-time employee of the credit bureau, paid the minimum wage. She was tough to live with.
She was forty-nine, still a damn goodlooking woman, still had her hair done every ten days at Lil-Han’s New York Style Hair Salon (Martha went every two months). And though the pickings were pitiful in Ashford County, Helen had been wooed by two suitors. Neither had met her requirements: plenty of money, reasonable age and looks, and a desire to move to Florida. Besides, there was always that aching feeling for her first love, the boy she let get away; wonderful, wonderful Steve.
Martha was twenty-four in December 1975, a little taller, a little thinner, a little shyer, a little sadder. Only one boy had wooed her, a tall, shy assistant librarian at the community college. He had faded away, unable to cope with Helen, who regarded him as another dreamer, a duplicate of her failed husband.
With her father’s death Martha’s dreams of college vanished. She did well in high school, then took the year’s course at Miss Mason’s Business School, and in December 1975 was employed as the office manager and general factotum, which involved chores usually delegated to a cleaning woman — the sole employee at J. L. Henderson Real Estate and Insurance on Main Street.
It had been a bad year. In addition to Helen’s having sunk to the lowest rung on the ladder, the pretty Cape Cod had suffered some major blows. The furnace had expired in March and the washer in June, and an October storm had tom half the shingles off the roof. Then the ten-year-old car began making funny noises.
Helen was beside herself. They were doomed, they would be on food stamps by summer. Martha, cowering under the gloomy onslaught, nevertheless tried to put a better fight on the situation. In addition to a fine new furnace, the latest in washers, a lovely roof with a fifteen year guarantee, the car was sounding better than ever (it was the fan belt), and they still had over eight hundred fifty dollars in the bank.
No good.
“There you go again,” her mother snapped. “You’re your father all over, every cloud has a silver lining. But why do I waste my voice? I can’t even get you to stand up to that skinflint J. L. and demand he pay you what you’re worth. When are you ever going to realize that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, Martha, and if you don’t stand up for yourself, no one else will?”
So it went. Still, there was some justification for Helen’s complaints. Had Martha been employed in Pittsburgh, charged with the same duties, she would indeed have commanded a much higher salary. And J. L. could well afford to pay her more, for though the area’s boom days were long gone people still needed insurance, and affluent Pittsburghers were now buying second homes in the mountains east of town.
But it was not all woe and rue. The Cape Cod was only six blocks from the downtown office. Martha walked to work in all kinds of weather, the route taking her through the city park over the stone pedestrian bridge above the little creek.
In spring and summer birds sang, little animals scurried about, wildflowers bloomed. But when autumn came and the leaves began to fall, Martha often cried on her way to work. Another summer gone, I am a year older (her birthday was in June), just as miserable. Is this how I’m to spend the rest of my life? The poor dear girl.
Winter seemed to invigorate her. She began thinking about beginning a novel. And all during December 1975, goaded by her mother’s nightly jeremiad, she kept thinking of how she could earn extra money.
Then one cold morning it came to her. All bundled up, her step brisk, she suddenly thought of the Manuscripts Typed ads in the writers’ magazine to which she had subscribed to for years, just as her father had.
“That’s it,” she said, all excited. “I am an experienced typist, I’ve always been good in grammar. And think how exciting it would be, getting paid for typing manuscripts, mostly novels probably. Why, it might force me to finally begin my own novel. I’m going to do it. I am.”
She did. Now, the desperate deed done, came the dreaded moment when she had to tell her mother.
Helen was thunderstruck, absolutely thunderstruck.
“What? You mean to tell me that you, without consulting me, squandered a hundred and fifty dollars for an ad in that stupid writers’ magazine you and your father have wasted money on for years? I’m thunderstruck, absolutely thunderstruck.”
Poor Martha, wringing her hands, tried not to cry.
“Please, Mother,” she begged, “don’t you understand why I did it? It seems a wonderful way to earn extra money. And it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. I thought about it for a long time. Why can’t we give it a chance? And just for once, Mother, can’t you compliment me for doing something that shows I do have some of the spunk you keep telling me I lack? Please, Mother, don’t be so terribly critical.”
Her daughter’s imploring tone caused Helen to ease up.
“Well, what’s done is done. I’m not saying another word except to predict that it will turn out to be a hundred and fifty dollars thrown away.”
“I hope not, Mother, I hope not,” poor Martha managed.
The ad appeared in the March 1976 issue. Martha cringed as she read it. How did I ever have the courage to take such a gamble? What if it turns out to be a failure? Will I ever have enough confidence to do anything out of the ordinary? Oh, dear Lord, please, please, please tell someone to send me a manuscript.
The poor Lord; he had his hands full elsewhere, everywhere. No manuscript appeared at 146 Chestnut Street. March sped by, April came, the little creek rose higher with the spring rains.
“Nope, nothing but junk mail,” was her mother’s curt greeting when Martha arrived home at five fifteen every evening.
“Maybe tomorrow will bring good news,” Martha would say.
“That’ll be the day,” her mother usually snapped.
By the middle of April it looked hopeless. The time was approaching for renewing the ad, giving it another three months. That was out of the question; the wonderful idea had turned into a pipe-dream. Never again would she have enough courage to take a chance.
Then, thank God, exactly a week before the deadline for renewal, Martha came home to stunning news. A manuscript had arrived.
“And Herman wasn’t too happy about it,” her mother said. “He’s already got enough packages.”
Herman was Herman Means, the grouchy mailman. The hell with Herman, a normal person would have exclaimed. Not Martha.
“Oh, poor Herman, it must be his bunions again. But, Mother, where is the package? And can it really be a manuscript?”
“There it is, on the table. It looks like a manuscript. Ten to one it’s from some deadbeat expecting you to type the thing for nothing.”
Helen was dead wrong. The beautifully scripted “handwrt ms” was from an eighty-eight-year-old widow of a West Virginia coal operator. It was entitled Grandma’s Wildcat Hollow Years.
In a witty, chatty letter Grandma explained that “my twenty-nine grandchildren have been after me for years to write down what it was like back in ‘the good old days’ when we were dirt poor but lived so far off the beaten path we didn’t realize how hard up we were.”
A check for five hundred dollars was enclosed. Martha let out a choked whoop.
“What’s wrong?” her mother demanded.
“Nothing, Mother. But look, the dear woman sent a check for five hundred dollars. I’m sure she overpaid. But isn’t it wonderful?”
Her mother saw it differently.
“Ha. That check will probably bounce.”
It didn’t bounce, thank goodness, for Martha had taken another gamble. Using her first earnings — Grandma’s payment — she sent another hundred and fifty dollars to the magazine.
It took Martha longer than it should have to type Grandma’s eighty thousand word manuscript. A less sentimental typist would have knocked off three or four hours. Soft-hearted Martha had to stop to wipe away the tears at such passages as:
“The rattlesnake bite proved fatal, and we buried the dear little four-year-old tomboy in a field of waving dandelions as a chorus of black crows cawed a requiem from a dying chestnut tree. We hollow dwellers would have starved without dandelions, but I never picked another one from that field.”
There were dozens of such stories. Grandma had a wonderful memory, a lively, uninhibited writing style. Deliriously happy, Martha mailed the completed manuscript — 320 ds pg — plus a check for two hundred sixty dollars, explaining that the bill came to only two forty. She thanked Grandma “from the bottom of my heart for trusting a total stranger with your beautiful reminiscences.”
Grandma wrote back. She praised Martha for a superb job, promised to send her a copy when the book came from the printer. And she returned Martha’s check, writing that “you deserve it for having far exceeded my expectations. And I can afford it. We had many tough years, but my dear, stubborn husband wouldn’t quit. I’m ashamed to say, Miss Ainsley, that I’m filthy rich.”
Martha cried for a long time after receiving Grandma’s letter. Maybe I’ve found my niche; maybe I can still amount to something. And wouldn’t Daddy be proud of his little girl?
In due time Grandma’s book arrived. It was a gorgeous book, with wonderful illustrations by Grandma. Martha clutched it to her small bosom as tears coursed down her cheeks. Thank you, dear Grandma, thank you. And thank you, dear Lord, thank you.
By the time Grandma’s book arrived, Martha had received and typed four more manuscripts. She was ecstatic. Her mother, doing her best to conceal her amazement at how well the mad idea seemed to be working out, reminded Martha that it was too early to call the venture a success.
“And I hope you’re not getting so carried away as to think about leaving your steady job. Remember, Martha, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
Martha, happy as a lark, knew that.
“Of course I have no intention of leaving the agency,” she said. “But you must admit that if I only type one or two manuscripts a month, the extra money will be a big help.”
“You’re forgetting the expense. There are the ribbons, the typing paper, the postage. It’s not all gravy.”
Martha shook her head. Will she ever change? she thought. She would.
In March 1977, a year after the ad first appeared, a jubilant Martha balanced the books. She had typed, corrected the “spl/punt/gram” of sixteen manuscripts. Eleven were novels, one a biography (Chester A. Arthur, Maverick Republican), two treatises by professors at Penn State, and of course Grandma’s delightful reminiscences of the good old days. The sixteenth was a rambling, amateurish tirade by a retired U.S. Congressman entitled The Decline of Integrity.
She had grossed two thousand nine hundred sixty-four dollars, been stuck for two hundred eighteen dollars by the congressman. Five letters to him — polite letters, the metamorphosis was still in the embryonic stage — had gone unanswered. Total costs, with six hundred dollars for the ads the largest expense, came to seven hundred twenty-one. Add in the uncollected two eighteen, the debits came to nine hundred thirty-nine dollars, leaving a profit of two thousand twenty-five.
The rash adventure had succeeded beyond Martha’s wildest dreams. And other benefits had accrued. Her mother had begun boasting about Martha at Lillian’s. And manuscript by manuscript, Martha was becoming more self-confident, and more amenable to Charity begins at home, a baleful refrain of her mother’s.
Having been cheated by the congressman, she now required payment before she mailed the completed work. And she had been inspired to finally start her novel.
Good heavens, she thought time after time as she labored through another pathetic manuscript, I can do better than that. In fact one of the novels — one hundred thousand dismal words — was so hopeless, so inept (Oh you poor, poor deluded person, she’d thought) that she came within an eyelash of returning it posthaste with the excuse that she was too busy.
But if I do that, it’ll simply be sent to another typist, and I’ll lose over three hundred dollars. She typed it. Slowly, ever so slowly, the metamorphosing stew was beginning to gurgle and simmer.
The temperature went up one Saturday morning in June. Her mother at the supermarket, Martha had tuned into the public TV station in Pittsburgh for the Books & Authors program.
There he was, the fat, pompous fraud, the ex-congressman.
“The old values — honesty, integrity, truthfulness — are all under attack,” he pontificated. “We who hold sacred our forefathers’ values must continue to fight the cynical forces... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
Well. A violent emotion smote Martha. She leaped from her chair, brandished a clenched fist at the TV, and shouted, “Why, you unmitigated knave, you charlatan, you hypocrite. No wonder our beloved country is...” She suddenly stopped. Oh my goodness, listen to me. She fell back into the chair, listened to the remainder of the interview with her heart beating faster than normal. When it was over, she rushed upstairs and wrote a scathing letter to the congressman, telling him that unless he sent a check in full within ten days, she would not only write to his publisher but would find out in what city he would next appear and write to the editor of the paper there. “You can bet,” she told him, “I’ll have some harsh words to say about you.”
The check arrived six days later, the congressman “regretting that my secretary, who has been seriously ill, did not take care of this long before.”
“Horsefeathers,” Martha exclaimed, jubilantly, enormously proud of herself, all aglow. She was still aglow the next day, and when J. L. — a large, hail-fellow-well-met type — remarked that she hadn’t mopped the outer office floor lately, Martha, without even thinking, responded rather forcefully.
“I don’t think mopping the floors should be one of my duties, Mr. Henderson.”
At which J. L.’s chubby face turned red. He gulped three or four times, finally said, “I agree, Martha. Ah, I’ll arrange for a cleaning woman to handle all the... the extraneous duties from now on.”
With that he fled, mumbling that he had an appointment to show a large tract in the mountains. My goodness, thought Martha, I’m becoming a regular shrew. Martha Ainsley, everyone’s doormat, according to mother, beginning to assert herself. And it’s all due to that desperate venture, the manuscript typing. I’ve become proud of myself.
She had reason to be proud. Nearly every author on receiving the completed manuscript wrote back, praising her work. That’s how things stood in July 1977 prior to the arrival of Harpoons and Whalebones. Herman Means, her mother reported, had grumbled about the heavy manuscript box. Martha just smiled.
But when she examined the huge handwritten manuscript, she too reacted grumpily.
“For heaven’s sake, look at this mess,” she groaned. “Words are crossed out, others scribbled in, the margins overrun with corrections. And the penmanship, the misspelling, the hideous punctuation, and it’s at least a hundred and twenty-five thousand words. Well, I’m simply not going to waste my time on this mess. Back it goes tomorrow.”
It didn’t go back. She made the mistake of reading the cover letter. Harpoons and Whalebones was the first work of what the author, Harry Baxter, intended to be “a four-book saga of a hideously rich Boston family, the personification of Brahmin ruthlessness and fakery.”
Baxter said that he had grown up the poorest of the poor in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Since New Bedford was once a thriving whaling town, “I heard amazing stories of the incredible riches gained from the slaughter of those defenseless creatures.”
He had gone to college on a football scholarship, had watched “arrogant Back Bay families, whose obscene fortunes were rooted in killing whales, outdo one another in dismantling the Ten Commandments.” He was twenty-nine, barely surviving in Greenwich Village, waiting on tables and all too often “despairing that I would ever finish this manuscript, for which I have endured the agonies of the damned. I too often succumb to the intoxicating lure of that devilish fiend Bacchus. And I plan to write three more. I must be crazy.”
A check for two hundred dollars was enclosed. He said he had recently made friends with a literary agent who was opening his own office. The completed manuscript was to be sent to the agent, and he would pay the balance. He’ll pay before I send it, Martha said to herself.
Baxter apologized for his handwriting, “the general messiness. I simply couldn’t rewrite it. I wouldn’t blame you for sending it back. I await your decision.”
Intrigued by the author’s confession that he had “endured the agonies of the damned,” Martha began to read the messy manuscript, for she was experiencing her own agonies in trying to get past the first chapter of her novel.
And she had another reason for reading the manuscript, for her own novel was about Boston Brahmins rich from textile manufacture, sending their smooth-talking representatives to West Virginia in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s to talk the poverty-stricken hillbillies into leasing their coal lands for as little as a dollar an acre, their timber for a stumpage of fifteen cents a tree. Ashford County bordered West Virginia, and Martha had heard many stories of the rape of the beautiful state’s natural resources by rich Bostonians.
Harpoons and Whalebones was the story of the Easterfields of Boston, an arrogant tribe whose wealth began with Caleb Easterfield who sailed from New Bedford in 1820, returned two years later with his ship loaded with blubber and whale oil.
The manuscript was tough going; the handwriting would have shamed a fourth grader. But Martha kept reading. She was hooked — fascinated by the unique way Baxter built up tension. And there were wonderful characters. Sally Boggs became one of Martha’s favorites.
An illegitimate, illiterate, six-teen-year-old spittoon cleaner in a vile waterfront saloon, with nothing going for her but her “unbathed nubile carnality,” Sally ended up the owner of the most luxurious brothel in Boston, became a patron of the arts, and was highly esteemed by the gentry.
Ethan Easterfield was another favorite. Ethan, the youngest of the four boys (the other three were ship captains like their hard-driving father) was an idealistic person. He graduated from Harvard Divinity at nineteen and sailed with a group of fellow missionaries for the South Seas, eager to bring Christianity to the benighted heathens.
Alas, somewhere south of the Sandwich Islands on a gorgeous morning the dear boy, rushing to the rail to look at a huge whale, tripped over the box of Bibles on deck and went flying into the ocean, where he was immediately swallowed by the mammoth whale, an ironic twist of fate since poor Ethan had surreptitiously joined the Save the Whales fanatics at Harvard. “Oh poor Ethan, how awful,” Martha murmured.
She spent three long evenings reading the manuscript. When she came to The End, she let loose with the highest of encomiums: “Wow, what a writer, what a writer.” In spite of the sloppiness, the inconsistencies, the overall messiness, the rough draft possessed a vital spark, a unique, indefinable something that had held her spellbound. And this from someone who had read hundreds of books.
I’ve learned a lot from Harry Baxter, she told herself. I had to keep turning the pages no matter how tired my eyes were, had to see what happened next. That’s what I’m going to try to do with my novel if I ever get past Chapter One.
But now, woe is me, I have to begin to put this brilliant, chaotic mess into readable shape. But it really is a masterpiece. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it became a bestseller?
It became a bestseller, an enormous bestseller. Book critics were almost unanimous in praising it, one eminent critic calling it “a tour de force, a Moby-Dickian masterpiece. Let us hope we hear more from Harry Baxter.”
Martha had mixed emotions on reading the reviews. She was elated that “one of my authors” was such a spectacular success. But she would have loved to have her contribution recognized.
For not only had she spent many extra hours deciphering the scrawling handwriting and correcting the spelling, grammar, punctuation, she’d done an extraordinary amount of editing, something she had done very little of previously.
Writing in a white heat, Baxter frequently lost track of his dozens of characters. Ethan had departed in Chapter Three, permanently whalebound. Forty pages later, the dear innocent was duped by Sally Boggs. She whimpered that she was “with child.” Bewildered but gullible, poor Ethan married Sally, the nuptials performed by a ship captain, the waterfront evangelist responsible nowhere to be found.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Martha had moaned, another flagrant mistake. She phoned Baxter. Let her marry one of the cousins, he told her (there were dozens of Easterfields). But major problems occurred again and again. Martha phoned, usually found Baxter with a chip on his shoulder. Finally he ordered her to type the manuscript just as it was.
“It’s not going to sell anyway,” he told her. “And if by some crazy chance it does, the editor will straighten it out. That’s what they get paid for.”
But conscientious Martha (“I’d be ashamed to send it to a literary agent like it is.”) kept bringing order out of chaos, which cost her many, many exasperating hours.
In 1991, before the fateful night when six million dollars went over the bridge, Lillian’s New York Style Hair Salon was going great.
Not only was it revered for excellence in hairdressing, it was held in high esteem for its preeminence in the field of scandal and gossip. Lil — a big, buxom, boisterous divorcee with a heart as big as her bosom — had a horde of relatives in city and county offices. They kept her up to date on the latest shenanigans in government. And her devoted patrons contributed their share. Very little happened in the whole county that escaped Lil’s network.
That took care of the local stuff. National and international high-jinks were covered by the four weekly tabloids to which Lil subscribed. Royals Cavort Topless or Batty Billionaire Marries Great-grandson’s Babysitter — Lil’s enthralled patrons got the news hot off the press. No wonder it was called Gossip Heaven.
Martha:
The metamorphosis was nearly complete. She was no longer the shy, skinny, slouchy, mousy-haired mollycoddle of December 1975. But while Virtue is its own reward had finally been overtaken by Charity begins at home, she still retained a steadfast belief in the fundamental virtues. Those virtues were about to be severely tested.
Proud of her accomplishments in the manuscript work and for having actually written a novel, she nevertheless still had feelings of insecurity, especially when thinking of Ginny Barnes. But she shouldn’t have felt insecure, for she was now an attractive woman. Lil had perfected a style that brought out the highlights in Martha’s brown hair but also pleasingly framed her high forehead, her brown eyes, her nice nose.
Lil had done more. She had nagged Martha into putting on weight, standing straight, and watching her carriage. Thus by early 1991 Martha had added eighteen pounds to her tall frame. Hardly voluptuous, she would still make some lucky man a well-rounded, cuddly, curvy armful. She hoped and prayed the man would be wonderful Walter.
There were other changes. The faithful Remington had been replaced by an “IBM Comp/HP Pmt.” Fees had gone to “$1.25 ds pg + P&H.” She was now “nationally known, accepts only novels,” but “handwrtn/rough type mss” were still accepted. One never knew what treasures lurked behind pathetic penmanship.
By the fateful night of April 15, 1991, Martha had twenty-five thousand six hundred seventy-five dollars in certificates of deposit in the bank. And if she hadn’t been forced to turn down manuscripts to work on her novel, she might have had the sixty thousand dollars for her mother’s condo.
Another change: since the whole town knew of Martha’s success, J. L., scared to death of losing his jewel, had raised her salary three times.
Martha had concentrated on her novel for the last four years, accepting only an occasional manuscript, one requiring a minimum of editing. She still couldn’t resign herself to being a mere typist. Every completed manuscript had to be one she could be proud of.
She had desperately hoped that the novel would sell; then there would be plenty of money for the condo. But it hadn’t sold. And she hadn’t hit the lottery (she played five dollars a week, the same numbers). But in the midst of all the gloom, there appeared the silver fining, Walter Foster taking over the West End route. His workweek was Tuesday through Saturday — a female substitute took over on Monday. And since Martha had the weekend off, she now had a heaven-sent opportunity to see him every week, even if for only a few moments. When word reached her that Walter would be taking over the route, she wrestled with her conscience. It lost. (“I’m losing all my principles,” she said sadly.) For though she received a lot of mail, it would be tragic if there was none on a particular Saturday.
She phoned the postmaster, said that she would always have stamped mail to be picked up on Saturday. Please have the mailman stop every Saturday.
Thus, beginning on the third Saturday of June 1990, her mother at the supermarket, Martha stood at the front window, peeping around the edge of the curtain, shivering all over in the pleasant summer heat. She was prepared. Lil had done her part, Martha having a nine A.M. appointment. She had bought a lovely blue blouse and a matching skirt but had reluctantly passed up Unbridled at the boutique in the mall in favor of a less potent perfume, Summertime.
The magic moment arrived, twelve fifteen. Her knight in postal armor opened the gate, came up the walk onto the porch, and rang the doorbell. Martha, smothering a little squeal, managed to open the door and come out on the porch, holding two letters in a shaky hand.
“My, Martha, how nice you look,” Walter exclaimed as he took the letters. “Well, I mean, that is... you do look nice.” Then he blushed. He was forty-six years old. He could still blush. No wonder all the women on his long route were crazy about him.
Martha giggled just like a teenager.
“Oh, how kind of you, Walter,” she said as she too blushed. “Isn’t it a gorgeous day?”
“Yes, it is,” agreed Walter.
Seventh heaven had come to 146 Chestnut Street. It was a brief seventh heaven. After all, there are regulations. But it was heavenly, out of this world. Walter always complimented Martha on how nice she looked. She glowed. Then they talked of the weather, then of books. What was he reading? And how was her novel coming?
Her novel, Appalachian Elegy, wasn’t doing well. It had undergone four rewrites; rewrite by rewrite, the writing became more and more akin to Harry Baxter’s style. It wasn’t intentional. It just began to come naturally.
Mr. Harry Baxter could almost accuse me of plagiarizing his style, she thought after the last rewrite. But it’s my plot. I’m proud of it. But I’m also getting pretty sick of it. I’m not going to change another word. Out it goes.
It went out five times, was rejected five times, each time with a short personal note, the gist being it didn’t meet “current needs.” She was wished well in “placing it elsewhere.”
Poor Martha, choking back her disappointment, always wrote a thank-you note. She sent it to a sixth publisher in the fall of 1990. It was gone for months, no word. In late February she wrote a pleading note, “Any news on my manuscript, Appalachian Elegy?” Yes there was news, bad. It came limping back in March, rejected once again. Another note: “We gave your manuscript a lot of thought. And though we regard it as a splendid effort, we just cannot take a chance on another first novel, since we already have an unusually large number on our schedule.”
She was thanked, wished well.
Again the poor girl thanked the publisher. And since Ebb and Flow, Baxter’s fourth manuscript — which he had said would be the last of the Easterfields — had arrived, Martha put Appalachian Elegy aside, determined to race through it.
Of course she didn’t. She was a perfectionist, especially where Baxter’s manuscripts were concerned. She agonized over it, correcting the grammar, the spelling, the punctuation, eliminating the many, many inconsistencies in names, dates, episodes. She couldn’t help herself. But she could swear now, damn Baxter for being such a sloppy writer.
But she also wanted to please Mike Wilson, Baxter’s literary agent. He had paid the balance due on Harpoons and Whalebones. After the initial two hundred dollar check, Baxter hadn’t paid a cent. And Mike had given her two hundred fifty more for Harpoons and Whalebones and had not only paid her regular fees for the next two books but had given her a bonus of five hundred dollars for each.
And she couldn’t forget Scott Henry. He had edited Baxter’s three books at Sterling & Meeks before he and the other editors were downsized, replaced with eight dollar an hour college temps when the old line publisher was bought by Sharpe & Slashwright, a conglomerate with no experience in book publishing.
Scott had written Martha, praising her for her fine work on Baxter’s manuscripts, “his roughest of rough drafts.” In his last letter he had written, “When I compare Harry’s manuscripts with yours, Miss Ainsley, I say once again that you have made my job enormously easier. Thank you.”
And having observed the horrible editing of recent Sharpe & Slashwright books, Martha could well imagine what would happen with Ebb and Flow if she raced through it, heedless of the chaos.
For it was like the three other Easterfields. Again, it held the readers’ interest page by page and was guaranteed to be another bestseller. But who deserves more than a little credit for Baxter’s books’ being bestsellers? Me, pipsqueak Martha Ainsley, she snarled. Old mealy-mouthed Martha, too timid, too cowardly to demand that Harry Baxter, filthy rich author, pay me ten dollars a page, twenty dollars a page.
The poor girl, she was falling apart. No wonder. Enter Ginny Barnes, exuding sexuality, not intellectuality. Not that Ginny was simply a henna-haired scatterbrain. She was good at her job in the classified ads section of the local paper, but she was no bibliophile. She wouldn’t have known Emma Bovary and Becky Sharp from the Bobbsey Twins.
Her divorce finalized in September 1990, she getting the little house on Elm Street on the West End route, Ginny made a spectacular appearance on her front porch on the second Saturday of September, the opening performance avidly witnessed by Thelma, a dear old nibnose widow across the street for whom a daily dose of gossip was as essential to her well-being as her three different prescription pills.
(“Yes, that’s right,” sly Ginny had said to the postmaster, “At 218 Elm Street I’ll always have a stamped letter. I write to dear Mother in Florida every single Saturday.”)
Perfumed (she’d gone with Unbridled) and pulchritudinous, posturing and prancing provocatively, she was a sight to behold. And when the breathtaking performance was over, Thelma grabbed the phone, called Emily.
“You shoulda seen her. It was just like one o’ them hootchy-kootchy numbers Theda Bara used to do in the silent movies at the Lyric. Huh? Whaddaya mean you don’t remember Theda Bara? Who you kidding? You’re as old as I am. Now, do you want to listen or not?”
Emily listened. Then she telephoned Olive, who couldn’t wait to call Alice. As the titillating tale wove through town, it eventually reached Martha, a well-meaning quidnunc phoning her on Sunday evening.
Poor Martha, she felt like crying. But she didn’t cry, she swore. Damn that creature, damn her. Not satisfied with having had two husbands, she’s trying to steal my dear Walter. Damn her, damn her.
Seventh heaven at 146 Chestnut Street became a little less ethereal after Ginny wriggled front and center. Oh, Walter still told Martha that she looked nice — and she did, she redoubled her efforts to make the best appearance — and they still talked of the weather, books, her novel. They managed to accomplish a lot in sixty or seventy seconds. But an uncertainty in Walter seemed to be developing.
Martha knew why (the gossip grapevine kept humming). Walter reached Ginny’s house on Elm Street at eleven forty-five, a half hour before he arrived at 146 Chestnut. And he was having a tough time. Before Ginny appeared, he had been dreaming of how wonderful it would be married to Martha. He would be doubly blessed, the rapture of the nuptial chamber and the intellectual stimulation before, after, and maybe even during.
They would have hundreds of books. They would help one another with their writing, for after the wedding he would have the courage to tell her about Murder on the Route, the mystery he was writing, and about his dream of a mailman protagonist who saw more of the swirling undercurrent of small towns than anyone. She would tell him it was a wonderful idea. They would be so happy.
Then he would remember her mother. Oh boy, it wouldn’t work. But there was still time. She could still marry, she was an attractive woman for her age.
Then Ginny Barnes appeared. Poor Walter, he began having nightmares, Ginny flaunting her copious bodily charms, then Martha taking the floor, discussing Hardy and Jane Austen, Helen hovering nearby, seemingly rooting for Ginny. No wonder an air of uncertainty engulfed Walter.
And Ginny kept applying the pressure. Late in November a library volunteer phoned Martha to tell her Ginny had checked out three books that evening.
“One Hardy, Jude the Obscure,” the volunteer reported, “two Jane Austens, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. It’s the first time she’s been in the library since high school. I had to make out a new card.”
Poor Martha, she thanked the volunteer, put down the phone, snarled, “That insidious creature, resorting to something that fraudulent, trying to impress Walter. Is there no end to her despicable tactics?”
Much later that night, tossing and turning in bed, she attempted to rationalize. Why, it could backfire, allow Walter to see what a sly, sneaky person she is. He’s simply too intelligent to fall for something so transparent. He’ll be able to see through that flimsy subterfuge.
The poor distraught girl, she wasn’t thinking straight. It would have taken a blind man not to see through Ginny’s flimsy subterfuges. The weather didn’t matter, frost on the pumpkins, thermometer plunging, wind howling, out she pranced, coat open, attired in another breathtaking flimsy subterfuge.
Walter was in such an emotional state that he had to stop work on Murder on the Route, words like “decolletage” and “diaphanous” being exchanged between the victim and the protagonist.
With dear nibnose Thelma’s eagle eye focused on the escalating drama at 218 Elm Street, keeping the pipeline humming, the betting at Lil’s by early April 1991 had Ginny a three-to-one favorite to capture the brass ring.
Helen:
In April 1991, Helen, approaching her sixty-fifth birthday but looking years younger, had been out of work for eight years, downsized at the credit bureau by a secondhand computer. She no longer said anything derogatory about David — Martha had put a stop to that. But she had plenty to say about Harry Baxter at Lil’s. He was rich, and Martha had helped him get rich. If she hadn’t made improvements in his first awful manuscript, Harpoons and Whalebones, it wouldn’t have sold. And though his next two books might have done well because of the enormous success of Harpoons and Whalebones, Martha had also spent many, many extra hours improving those manuscripts.
“Now, Martha’s never come right out and said as much,” said Helen, “but it’s plain to me that she feels Baxter hasn’t treated her fairly. I’m not talking about a huge sum of money, just a fair amount.”
Of course not everyone at Lil’s believed all that. It was well known that for years Helen had been yearning to move to Florida. Still, once or twice under questioning from Lil, Martha admitted that she’d always had to spend much more time on Harry Baxter’s manuscripts than any others.
“Making improvements, Martha?” Lil asked.
“Well, I guess you could call it that.”
All the while Cathy and Linda, the two hairstylists, paid close attention. While Helen harped on the injustice of it all, they would look at one another as if to say, “What more do we need?”
Lil’s wasn’t the only place where Harry Baxter was a frequent topic. The whole country knew all about him, the supermarket tabloids having made him a favorite whipping boy. Success and money had led to a turbulent life, and three marriages to the kind of peroxided Loreleis who in pre-harassment days would have been described as “dumb blondes” had resulted in bitter divorce trials, the proceedings enthusiastically covered by the tabloids.
AUTHOR’S WIFE ENDURED CRUEL AND BARBAROUS TREATMENT, screamed the headline about the first divorce. The testimony from Wife Number One was heartrending.
“That’s right,” she sobbed on the stand. “He made me read a book every single week... imagine. And I had to write a book report... and I never got nothin’ but F’s.” Divorce granted; two million dollars awarded.
Wife Number Two was Turned into an Ice Cube. Baxter refused to let her wear a fur coat, claiming animals were better creatures than humans. Whales were especially to be protected.
“Well,” Blondie Number Two whimpered, “when I couldn’t take no more, I said that as far as I was concerned whales were nothin’ but a bunch of blubber.” Baxter flew into a rage, called her a numbskull, a nitwit, “an’ lotsa other horrible names.” Divorce granted; two and a half million awarded.
AUTHOR BEATS WIFE WITH LETHAL WEAPON, screamed the tabloids. That was laying it on pretty thick, for the lethal weapon was a box of Yummy Oats. Baxter got up early, made his breakfast, went into the den to write, his third wife well aware that he was not to be disturbed. One morning the poor girl couldn’t find her favorite cereal.
“All I did,” she testified tearfully, looking about as yummy as they come, “was to open the door to his den, and real polite I said, ‘What happened to the Yummy Oats?’ ”
All hell broke loose. Baxter leaped from his chair, raced into the kitchen, “throwin’ things helter-skelter all over the place” before he found the Yummy Oats box hidden behind the other cereals.
“He beat me over the head with the Yummy Oats,” the poor girl whimpered and sobbed. “An’ the box broke and the stuff spilled all over the floor, an’ he made me sweep it up. It was awful.” No question here; a two million seven hundred thousand dollar verdict.
But the divorce trials were only part of the tabloids’ fascination with Baxter. And he gave them plenty of ammunition. A troubled soul who frequently looked for solace in the bottle, he all too often convinced himself that the next one would do the trick and then the next, the result welcome fodder for the tabloid mills.
AUTHOR SLUGS EX-WIFE’S LAWYER WITH LIVE LOBSTER, POLICE CALLED TO RITZY RESTAURANT went one headline. Months later came Crazed Author Rampaged in Bar. At issue was Baxter’s suspicion — unfounded — that the bartender had watered his drink.
Mike Wilson, Baxter’s literary agent, not only had to bail him out, he had also tried to get Baxter to undergo treatment for alcoholism. Baxter refused, claiming the media were out to get him. In one instance he was right.
He lived in Connecticut, went to New York on weekends to unwind from his writing. Just before Christmas 1988, he emerged from an Upper East Side bar holding three fifty dollar bills, having promised the Salvation Army lass manning the sidewalk kettle that he would have a contribution on his way out. Unsteady to begin with, he slipped on a patch of ice. Baxter, lass, and kettle ended up in the gutter.
SCROOGE LIVES; AUTHOR ATTACKS SALVATION ARMY LASS, shrieked his most persistent adversary, The National Beacon. Baxter sued. The head of The Media’s Conscience, Thomas W. Reardon, appeared as an amicus curiae — a friend of the court. Baxter won a settlement of a hundred thousand dollars, the Salvation Army lass testifying that he was an unavoidable accident.
Agent Mike Wilson — early fifties, stocky, balding — entered his midtown Manhattan office on Friday, April twelfth, at about nine thirty. His secretary, a temp — his longtime one had married and moved to California — handed him a registered letter.
“It came as I was opening up,” she explained, “and there’s been a phone call from a Martha Ainsley. She sounded very upset, wants you to call her as soon as possible. Here’s her number at work.”
Mike thanked her, noted that the envelope had Hairy Baxter’s return address. He went into his office, closed the door, and sat down at his desk.
I know what this is, he said to himself as he opened the envelope. Friend Harry is telling me I’m out.
Mike had been hearing the rumors: Baxter was planning to auction Ebb and Flow himself.
Mike was right: “This is official notification that you are no longer my agent. Thanks for everything, Mike, but you have made enough off me. As for Sharpe & Slashwright, I’m going to auction Ebb and Flow, head for the Caribbean, and the hell with the IRS, the rotten tabloids, thieving publishers. Good luck.”
“Damn him, damn him,” Mike snarled as he crushed the letter, threw it into the wastebasket. “After all I’ve done for him. Now what do I do? I can’t let him get away with it. Hell, I can’t afford to lose my ten percent — Ebb and Flow could easily go for six million dollars. The reading public knows this is the last of the Easterfields. Losing my six hundred thousand would ruin me. Now to see what Ainsley has to say. I can guess.”
He phoned Hillsdale. He had guessed correctly. Martha — very upset — said that Baxter had telephoned her from Connecticut as she was leaving for work. He demanded to know when she would be finished with Ebb and Flow.
“I told him that I’d be finished by Monday evening,” she went on, “and he told me to send everything to him — his manuscript, my copies, the computer disk. Nothing was to be sent to you, Mr. Wilson. He was... well, emphatic on that point. And he even ordered me to delete the computer file. Doesn’t this mean that he intends to bypass you, his agent? Can he legally do that? Don’t you have a contract?”
“We had a contract, Martha,” said Mike, trying to sound calm, “but it expired after the third book. I couldn’t get him to renew it. Since then we’ve operated on mutual trust, like many writers and agents. But can he legally do this? Can he, at the last minute, just before Ebb and Flow goes to the publishers, cheat me of my legitimate commission while he auctions the book himself? I don’t think so, Martha. But to prevent that, I’m going to need your help.”
“My help? I... oh, Mr. Henderson is coming. I’ll have to phone back when I can.”
Okay, thought Mike, I’ve laid the groundwork. But can I really expect our Martha, irreproachable smalltown spinster whom I have come to know from many phone conversations as an upright, highly principled person, to disobey Harry? Wait a minute, haven’t Scott Henry — the poor bastard, still out of work — and I talked about how Martha Ainsley has changed over the years? Haven’t we noticed that she’s become more confident, less diffident? And hasn’t she hinted that Baxter has never appreciated the enormous amount of work she’s done on his manuscripts?
But what does that mean? Do I have the guts to offer that upstanding woman a bribe to disobey Baxter? Hell, I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ll steal Ebb and Flow if I have to.
An hour later, Martha called back.
“You said you would need my help, Mr. Wilson.”
Yes, he told her, he would. If she disobeyed Baxter and sent everything to Mike, Baxter would have to sue, Mike said. That could take months. And Baxter needed money.
“He’s about broke from his divorces, and he’s been losing pretty heavily in Atlantic City, but that’s beside the point. What he’s attempting is simply rotten. He owes me a lot. And I’m not talking about money.”
“I know what you mean, Mr. Wilson,” Martha said, still very upset. “I know all about it from the tabloids. You’ve always been a staunch friend. But, well, I have a confession to make.”
“Oh?”
In a halting voice Martha confessed that she had bed to Baxter.
“I’ll actually be finished with the manuscript on Sunday, not Monday.” She stopped. Silence.
Mike waited.
“Go on, Martha,” he said finally. “I’m sure you had a good reason for doing what you did.”
“Oh, this is terrible, just terrible,” she said. “I lied because... because I wanted time to think. I am... am... undergoing a crisis, and I immediately knew Mr. Baxter was doing this to deprive you of your commission. And you have always been very generous and supportive. I’m so ashamed.”
“Don’t be; hell, we all have crises. I have one every month — forty-five hundred dollars in alimony. Come on, tell me, maybe I can help.”
More silence. Mike kept quiet, wondering what kind of a crisis she was undergoing. Still silence. Mike had to say something.
“Damn it, Martha, almost any crisis can be overcome. Come on, what is it?”
“You... you remember my telling you that Mother lives with me. I mean we five together. She’s always wanted to five in Florida, and I’ve been trying for years to accumulate enough money to buy her a condo there. But that’s not the real reason. Anyway, I very nearly committed blackmail. I nearly told Mr. Baxter that unless he paid me a certain sum I would mail Ebb and Flow to you. Then I thought that would be unfair to you, to say nothing of committing a crime. You... you must think I’m an awful person.”
“No, no, I do not, Martha,” exclaimed Mike. He was momentarily stunned but recovered quickly. “Listen. Forget about Baxter. I’ll be happy to give you whatever you need to buy the condo for your mother. But we have to talk. I’ll come to Hillsdale tomorrow night, and we’ll get this settled.”
“No, no, you can’t come tomorrow. Mother mustn’t know about this. She’s been talking at the local beauty parlor — it’s been my fault for having complained to her about the extra work I’ve always done on Mr. Baxter’s manuscripts — and she’s been exaggerating. Oh, I don’t know what to do. Maybe... well, could you come on Monday evening? That’s her bin-go night at the Knights of Columbus. She never misses.”
Wow, thought Mike, breathing a huge sigh of relief. Maybe it’ll work out.
“Monday’s fine,” he hastened to say. After he had taken down the directions, he read them back to her.
“Yes, that’s right. It’s a little less than an hour from the Pittsburgh airport. And please don’t come to the house before seven thirty.”
Mike promised. And yes, he understood her wanting him to park four blocks down the street, near the little park (“The neighbors are nice, but this is a gossipy little town.”).
Mike was about to say goodbye when Martha hurriedly said, “But, Mr. Wilson, my not giving Ebb and Flow to Mr. Baxter — he is the rightful owner, isn’t he? Couldn’t that be construed as... well, larceny, I guess?”
Oh boy, Mike thought. And just when the worst seemed over.
“It might,” he said cautiously, “but honestly, Martha, Baxter isn’t going to press charges. As I said, he’s in real financial trouble. He even has two mortgages on his Connecticut house, the poor bastard. Once I tell him that I have Ebb and Flow and that I’m going to auction it and collect my legitimate commission he’ll rant and rave but he’ll give in. He can’t afford not to.”
“But that’s just what I had thought of doing,” said Martha. “I mean, isn’t that blackmail? Oh, Mr. Wilson, as much as I want to... to buy Mother the condo, I don’t think I can disobey Mr. Baxter. It’s not only... well, wrong, but it’s too risky. I... oh, someone’s coming.”
“I’ll see you Monday evening,” Mike managed before she hung up. Damn it, he thought, for a while it looked good. Somehow, though, I have to convince her to give me Ebb and Flow. I have to.
Which she did. She also gave him Appalachian Elegy to try to sell. An incident on Saturday, April thirteenth, had tilted the scale.
It was a dreary, dank, dismal, drizzly day with a cold wind howling and black clouds darkening the sky. Seventh heaven at 146 Chestnut Street seemed an unlikely place for a burst of poetry. Yet Walter, hunched against the wind, rain dripping from his slicker, took the letter from Martha, smiled that dear, shy, boyish smile, and said, “It must have been this kind of day in England, Martha, when Eliot wrote that ‘April is the cruelest month.’ ”
Poor Martha, she barely restrained herself from leaping at him and clutching him, the mailbag, and the dripping slicker in a passionate embrace. But she didn’t leap, she suddenly remembered an April poem and burst out passionately, “Oh, but remember Browning, Walter...
“ ‘Oh, to be in England now that
April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
sees, some morning, unaware...’ ”
She stopped, blushed.
Oh, what a wonderful girl, thought Walter as he finished the verse:
“ ‘That the lowest boughs and
the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree bole are in
tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the
orchard bough...’ ”
He stopped suddenly, looked embarrassed.
“ ‘In England — now!’ ” finished Martha.
She almost was in tears when Walter turned to go, stopped, turned toward her, and blurted out, “Oh, Martha, you’re wonderful.”
Then he fled, and neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, nor the constant, agonizing knowledge that he would have to make a decision very soon, stayed the faithful carrier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.
Martha stood transfixed, unable to move, as the tears came. Then she ran from the porch, down the walk, stopped at the gate, coat flapping in the wind, rain pelting her, shouted as loud as she could as the faithful carrier opened the gate two houses down, “You are too, Walter, you are wonderful too.”
Naturally the neighbors on either side — both retired couples — witnessed this strange, un-Martha-like behavior and telephoned one another. How exciting, they agreed.
Inside again, Martha, throbbing and glowing and crying at being called wonderful, took off her coat, sobbed that we are made for each other, I will not lose him to that crude, vulgar, shameless creature, I won’t. Come what may, I’ll give Ebb and Flow to Mr. Wilson and ask him to lend me thirty-five thousand dollars, which I’ll promise to pay back from my manuscript typing. Then with Mother gone I’ll tell Walter I love him. I will, I will. And I’ll give Mr. Wilson my manuscript to sell. After all, that’s his business. And why didn’t I do it long ago? Because I’m a mealy-mouthed mollycoddle who didn’t want to impose on our relationship. Mother’s been right; it’s a dog-eat-dog world. If you don’t look out for yourself, you don’t deserve any reward.
Monday produced a raw, rotten, rainy night, which made no difference to the faithful bingo players at the K of C. Martha had insisted that Mike take an umbrella away with him. And at the very last minute she’d asked again if he shouldn’t leave a copy with her.
Mike, afraid that she would change her mind and mail a copy to Baxter, said that wasn’t necessary. He had everything in the manuscript box, had watched her, fingers trembling, delete the computer file, obliterate Ebb and Flow.
“I am now a full-fledged criminal,” she said almost tearfully.
Mike quickly changed the subject.
“About your manuscript, Martha. You said you’ve had six rejections. Do you have the names of those publishers handy?”
She did, and she also had the last rejection slip wherein the editor praised her manuscript as “a splendid effort.”
“Hey,” said Mike, “I know this editor. He doesn’t pass out that kind of praise unless he means it. You might have something, Martha. I’ll start reading it on the plane.”
“Oh, would you? That would be wonderful. But you may be disappointed. It might appear that I was deliberately attempting to imitate Mr. Baxter’s style. I wasn’t. Or at least I didn’t intend to.”
“Don’t let that bother you. In fact, it could be a plus. Now I have to go if I want to catch the last plane to LaGuardia.”
“But what if Mr. Baxter kept a copy?” Martha asked. “All this would be in vain, wouldn’t it?”
Boy oh boy, thought Mike, this is a battle.
“I doubt he did. I’ve needled him in the past, but he always claimed it was too much work getting those legal pads reproduced. And between us, I believe the poor man was always so plain sick of each manuscript that he could hardly wait to send it to you. I’ll still sue him, tie things up for months. One more thing, Martha, you’re sure you won’t let me give you the thirty-five thousand? I brought a blank check.”
“No, no, I’ll wait until the auction. I hope it’ll be soon. Besides, I might win the lottery. After all, the odds are only twelve million to one.”
“Now, don’t be so gloomy. This is going to work out. And nobody will be hurt, least of all Harry Baxter.”
“I don’t know. But it’s too late to back out. Please be careful, it’s a terrible night. I’ll hold the door open. And... thank you.”
“Thank you, Martha,” Mike replied, a manuscript box under each arm, the umbrella in his left hand. He went out into the dark and stormy night, and as the door closed behind him, he said reverently, “Holy smoke, I made it. I made it. The worst is over. It’s smooth sailing from here on.”
Walking swiftly to where he’d left the car, fighting the umbrella, he thought about how different Martha Ainsley was from the smalltown spinster type he and Scott Henry had originally envisioned. At a guess, she must be close to forty, but she wasn’t a bad looking woman. Then he remembered something she’d said in the phone conversation on Friday. She needed the money for the condo for her mother and for “another reason.”
Ten to one, thought Mike, bracing himself against the rain, it’s the old affaire d’amour, with her mother representing an obstacle to the happy ending. It has to be something like that, a real crisis for her... then he slipped.
He didn’t read any of Martha’s manuscript on the plane. He sat stunned, sunk in a terrible daze, unable to believe what had happened. He spent an awful night, got about two hours’ sleep. But he awoke as usual at six forty-five. He staggered out to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice, went back to the front room, drank the orange juice while wondering if Socrates had sipped the hemlock or gulped it down.
“God help me,” he moaned. “Unless the world has come to an end, and even more unlikely, unless Harry Baxter kept a copy, I am on my way to jail. And what about that poor, fine, innocent woman. This is a calamity of... of...”
He searched for the remote control to turn on the TV. Maybe the world had indeed come to an end.
The world hadn’t come to an end, but Harry Baxter had.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Mike yelled at the announcer. “Repeat that... go on...”
“To repeat,” said the announcer in an end-of-the-world voice, “Harry Baxter, the famous novelist, died in an early morning fire at his Connecticut home. It’s suspected that the fire began with a cigarette. Mr. Baxter was known to be a heavy smoker. We expect more details on the noon news. Now to international news. Reports from the Ethiopian capital of...”
Mike hit the remote control.
“Oh my God,” he yelled as he leaped from the couch, “maybe I’m being saved by the bell. Maybe he did keep a copy.”
He phoned for a limousine and left a message on the office answering machine saying he’d be in the office early that afternoon and if anyone called he would call back.
If Baxter had kept a copy of Ebb and Flow, it wouldn’t have made any difference. The house was a mere shell, the interior totally destroyed.
“And the pathetic thing is,” a fireman told Mike, “if the sprinkler system had been working, there’d have only been a little water damage. Some people spend thousands on the system and then forget to have regular inspections.”
“The remains?” said Mike with a lump in his throat, thinking of poor, tortured Harry, nothing now but “remains.”
“At the morgue,” said the fireman and gave Mike directions.
“You don’t want to see him,” the medical examiner said. “Not much left. You couldn’t identify him. We’re checking dental records. But it’s cut and dried. It has to be Baxter.”
The limousine was approaching Norwalk on the way back before Mike could wrench his mind from the horror of Harry’s death. What now, he thought hopelessly. Sure, I can clear Martha and myself of any illegality by simply saying that Ebb and Flow was destroyed in the fire, Baxter was still working on it. But that doesn’t pay the piper.
And how about Martha and her need for money? Hell, that’s simple. I fouled up, botched a foolproof scheme. God, how could it have happened? But it did. I’ll have to tell her. And then when she recovers from her hysteria — justifiable hysteria — I’ll hand her a check, make her take it. Then I’ll slink away like the miserable bungler I am, close the agency, head for California, and get a job in a pizza shop.
Such thoughts weren’t helping. He tried another tack. Think, man, think. There must be some way out of this mess. Then... wait a minute. What was that Martha said about her manuscript? That it might appear she was deliberately imitating Harry’s writing style?
He didn’t go to the office. He had the driver drop him off at the apartment. He phoned the office. Were there any messages? Yes, Martha Ainsley had telephoned twice. A reporter from the Times had called and a Mr. Yardley, who said he was Mr. Baxter’s attorney, also phoned. They all wanted him to call as soon as he returned. Mike thanked her and instructed her to tell anyone else who called that he would phone in the morning.
He took Appalachian Elegy from his desk, sat down, raced through forty pages, more than enough to almost convince himself that he was reading a Harry Baxter manuscript. A kinder, less rancorous, less explicit Baxter.
“Good Lord,” he exclaimed as he put the manuscript down. “This is unbelievable. Hell, it could easily be passed off as a Baxter manuscript. And think of it! It’s the only remaining Harry Baxter — famous author — manuscript on the face of the earth. It’s worth millions. Oh my God, think what this could mean. But am I such a rotten, unprincipled bastard as to beg that poor woman — who must have labored over it for months, maybe years — to sacrifice her manuscript so I can pretend it’s an early Harry Baxter, the last of the great writer’s work? And since that would constitute fraud — naturally I’d have to conceal the truth from the publisher — that means I would have lured that fine, decent woman deeper into crime.
Meantime, Martha had had a terrible day. She learned of Baxter’s death via the seven o’clock morning news. She phoned Mike twice; no word from him. Then around two thirty in the afternoon another blow: Ginny raised the ante.
“I heard it at Lil’s,” a well-meaning quidnunc phoned her at work. “I thought you ought to know. You know the Herald has a new publisher—” Martha knew “—a widower in his forties. Well, Ginny’s wheedled him into letting her take her lunch hour from eleven to twelve instead of twelve to one as she used to. As I said, I thought you ought to know.”
Fuming inside but ever polite, Martha thanked the caller, slammed down the phone. “What next?” she snarled. “Mr. Baxter dead, no word from Mr. Wilson, and now this... this... lewd, lecherous creature flaunting herself before poor, sweet, innocent Walter five days a week. If she were here now, I’d kill her, I would.”
She didn’t really mean that. Things were falling apart. How long could Walter resist that wriggling, slithering, half-naked creature now that she would be able to wriggle and slither five days a week in comparison to poor Martha’s one day?
“And... I don’t wriggle... or slither,” the poor girl whimpered. “Maybe I should have. Why doesn’t Mr. Wilson call me... why?”
Mike called around three thirty. Naturally, Martha was taking care of a customer.
“I’ll call you back,” she hissed. Wow, thought Mike, she has a temper. He waited. Martha rang back in fifteen minutes.
“Why didn’t you phone me long ago?” she demanded. “I’ve been in a terrible state. Poor Mr. Baxter, how awful. But what does this do to... to... you know?”
Mike knew; it changes things, he said.
“But we can’t discuss it over the phone,” he went on. “I must come to Hillsdale this evening. Now, now, I know about your mother. You’ll have to get her out of the house. How about having her go — take a friend, too — to a nice restaurant and maybe a movie afterwards. I’ll reimburse you. No, I can’t answer any questions. I’ll see you around seven thirty.” He quickly hung up.
Getting Helen out of the house wasn’t really too hard.
“Mr. Baxter’s literary agent is coming from New York,” Martha explained. “Just a minute, Mother,” she said sternly as Helen was about to speak. “We have a lot to discuss,” she continued very emphatically, “and we can’t have any interruptions. Why don’t you call Alice and you and she go to the White Swan and a movie afterwards. Mr. Wilson will be happy to pay for it.”
By now Helen had learned not to argue with Martha when she used her “I-don’t-want-to-discuss-it-further” tone.
“Hmm,” she hmmed. “I can take a hint.” Still, the opportunity to dine at the White Swan, the one remaining symbol of the glory days, and go to a movie was something that didn’t happen very often. She phoned Alice, who was thrilled.
It was a lovely, warm, fragrant spring evening. A huge moon beamed down on the creek, bathing it in a luminous glow. The water had gone down a lot, and the creek babbled melodiously as it wove its way among the rocks.
It was a scene to inspire a poet. It didn’t inspire Mike.
“Ah, go to hell,” he snarled as he walked across the humpbacked bridge. He was tense. Try as he might, he couldn’t convince himself — as desperate as his plight was, he would be broke in three months — to propose to Martha that she allow him to auction Appalachian Elegy as an early work of Baxter’s.
For shame, his outraged conscience berated him. Think what an effort she put into that manuscript. And you want her to give it up, pretend it’s Baxter’s. Have you no standards? Unfortunately, he did have standards.
I just can’t do it, he finally said. But he was still desperate, and on the plane to Pittsburgh he suddenly thought of something. No one but he knew that Ebb and Flow was no more. He could put out the word that Baxter’s typist was still working on it. And since her writing style was akin to that of Baxter and she’d already read, reread, agonized over, corrected, and improved Ebb and Flow, the memory would still be vivid, she could write it. Sure, it would take several months; so what?
“Then I’ll auction it off,” Mike told himself jubilantly. “I’ll get my commission, Baxter’s estate gets the rest, Martha gets her thirty-five thousand. It all ends happily. One thing I swear, if I ever get out of this mess, I’m going to start going to church again. I mean it.”
He had a hell of a time telling Martha what happened to Ebb and Flow. “That’s it,” he finished, scrunching down in the chair in a pitiful effort to hide. “Go ahead, Martha, call me a stupid blunderhead. I botched what should have been a simple little deal. Well, go on, for God’s sake, Martha, say something.”
She couldn’t. All she could do was make funny little whimpering noises. Then she suddenly covered her face with her hands, began to sob. Mike jumped up, rushed over to her, and began patting her on the shoulder, telling her that all was not lost, that if she could redo Ebb and Flow everything would turn out fine.
She finally stopped, put her hands down, raised her tear-stained face.
“I apologize, Mr. Wilson,” the poor girl said. “I’m ashamed of myself for acting like this. And I know how you must feel.”
“For God’s sake, Martha,” said Mike as he went back to his chair, “Quit the Mr. Wilson, call me Mike. We’re on close enough terms for first names.”
“All right, Mike,” she said with a woebegone smile, “and yes, I’m pretty sure I could redo Ebb and Flow. But it would take at least two months. And... well, you remember my telling you on the phone Friday that I am... am undergoing a crisis?”
Mike said he remembered.
“Oh, this is so humiliating. I never thought I could bare my soul so. I can’t go on, I can’t.”
“Sure you can, Martha,” urged Mike. “Baring one’s soul is no crime. Come on now, maybe something can be worked out.”
She took a deep breath, sat up straight, squared her shoulders, stuck out her chin, told him of the battle between her and one Ginny Barnes for the mailman.
“As long as... as Mother fives with me,” she continued, her voice beginning to falter, “there is no chance of... of... and since Walter’s mother has been dead for nearly eighteen months, he can’t be expected to mourn much longer. I just couldn’t sit at the computer night after night for months knowing that Walter was being exposed to... oh, this is terrible, terrible.”
“Damn it, Martha, it isn’t terrible,” Mike insisted. “But I have to say that this Walter should have grabbed you a long time ago, mother or no mother. I would have.”
That brought a little smile, a wistfully woeful smile.
“Thanks, Mike, that helps. But you haven’t seen Ginny Barnes.”
“The hell with Ginny Barnes. Now, listen to me.” He reached into his pocket. “Here’s a check for what you need. Take it, damn it, take it, don’t shake your head. Buy your mother the condo. That will put you on equal terms with the femme fatale. Come on, take it.”
Martha shied away.
“I can’t. You told me about your huge alimony payment and indicated that losing the commission for Ebb and Flow would be a terrible blow. Besides, I feel responsible for what happened. I should have kept a copy in spite of what you said. Bad things happen. But — have you had time to read my manuscript?”
“I’ve read enough of it to know that it’s dam good,” said Mike, and he meant it. “I’m confident I’ll be able to sell it.”
Martha looked as if she were going to cry.
“What’s the matter, Martha?”
“Well, I’m... I’m elated that you think it’s... it’s publishable. But... oh I don’t believe I’m saying this. I’m almost forty, Mr. Wilson... I mean Mike. This is awful... I’m in love. I can’t let Walter... what I mean is, can we pretend that my manuscript is an earlier work of Mr. Baxter’s? Is it possible, you know?”
Mike knew. He could hardly believe. Wow, what we do for love.
Back in New York the next day, Mike telephoned five publishers, called the Times reporter, phoned Pete Yardley, Harry’s attorney.
“You’re telling me the Easterfield manuscript that Harry was working on was destroyed in the fire,” said Yardley. “Which I was afraid had happened. But what’s that about an earlier work you’ve had for several years?”
Mike explained that Appalachian Elegy was actually Baxter’s first work.
“He didn’t think it was good enough,” Mike explained, “but two or three years ago he sent it to me. And told me to hold it. Actually, I’d almost forgotten about it until the fire. And I’ll bet Harry had forgotten about it.”
“And you mean you can sell it? For how much?”
“Hell, yes, I can sell it. How much? Six million at least. I have five publishers eager to bid on it. After all, it’s Harry’s last work.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, poor old Harry. I was ready for the worst, figured that all he had was the insurance on the Connecticut place.”
“About the will, Pete. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who the heirs are?”
“Can’t do it, Mike. But there’ll be a few surprises. And there’s no use having the reading until you sell that manuscript. When do you think that’ll be?”
“Two weeks at the latest. I’ll be in touch.”
Baxter’s death galvanized The National Beacon. Cathy and Linda, their dreams of vast wealth shattered, had been paid a total of fifteen hundred dollars for their sensational scoop on the famous writer and the smalltown typist. Take it or leave it, they were told. They took it. Having already lost a hundred thousand to Baxter, the editor wasn’t about to attack him again on the dubious hearsay of a couple of hairstylists. But the information was worth keeping in case something came up.
Something did come up, Harry Baxter’s number. A reporter and photographer were rushed to Hillsdale.
Ten days later, in affluent Palm Beach, Florida, a well-preserved sixty-five-year-old widower, a retired president of an international construction company, picked up the latest copy of the The National Beacon while waiting his turn at Henry’s Barber Shop. There was a picture of two women on the front page. The headline screamed, HICK TOWN OLD MAID WROTE HARRY BAXTER’S BESTSELLERS: WRITER A FRAUD.
The man stared at the picture, stared, stared. He shook his head, looked again. He read the story, went back to the picture. My God, it’s her, she. And look at her, still a beauty. And she’s a widow now. Who said you don’t get a second chance?
Helen did look great. The photographer had snapped her surreptitiously as she emerged from Lil’s, having had the works. Poor Martha, bleak and bedraggled, had been snapped from behind a blooming forsythia bush on her way home from work. Her hair was mussed, her chin down, her countenance hopeless. She looked exactly like someone undergoing a horrible ordeal.
Which she was. She was now involved in one more crime — fraud. Mike had tried to talk her out of it, and he had been sincere, but she had insisted, had abandoned all claims to the novel that had taken her excruciating years to write.
Henry, the barber, had to call the next customer twice.
“Mr. Zablonsky,” he called louder, “you’re next.”
The customer leaped up and almost ran to the chair, holding the tabloid in his hand.
“I want a perfect cut, Henry, your best effort. I want to look my best, my best.”
“Hah hah,” said Henry grinning. “I knew it, I knew it. Haven’t I been telling you that one of those sexy widows would finally wear you down? Which one is it, 9-D or 12-C?”
“Neither. See this woman on the cover, the one on the left? That’s my old flame — wow, was she a beauty. And look at her. She still is. I’m phoning her today, heading north tomorrow.”
“Well, how about that? And to think I wasn’t going to renew my subscription to that scandal sheet when it came due a month ago. Boy, you never know, do you?”
Naturally, when that issue of The National Beacon hit Hillsdale, it created a ton of excitement, and four different women rang up Helen on Friday to tell her about it. Helen, scared to death of what Martha was going to say, couldn’t keep from hoping that she herself had taken a good picture. She hurried down to the supermarket and bought three copies. The checkout girl said they were going like hotcakes.
Helen managed a weak smile, hastened home. She studied the picture thinking, my, don’t I look nice, read the story, heart pounding.
The tabloid described Baxter as “a sly, swindling Svengali who used his well-honed sorcery to bewitch a naive smalltown spinster into allowing him to use his name on her brilliant novel with the promise of sharing the book’s royalties, the bulk of which he kept for himself.”
Poor Martha. She was “a pliant, plain-looking, gullible spinster victimized by the infamous writer, whose inept first novel had been rejected by numerous publishers before he somehow learned that she’d written a novel but was too timid to send it to a publisher. And after the incredible success of the first book, Baxter had no difficulty convincing the credulous spinster that his name could sell any manuscript, and she had written two more. Again he paid her a paltry sum.”
There was more, most of it preceded by “neighbors say,” “gossip at the local beauty parlor,” “rumor insists.” It was rough on Baxter and unflattering to Martha, and Helen didn’t escape entirely.
She was reputed to be “an autocratic, complaining, domineering mother who was the town heartbreaker in her youth and who now spent hours at the beauty parlor trying to disguise the ravages of time.”
Helen was outraged. I’ll sue them. How dare they. Then she thought of Martha. Oh my God, she must be horrified. What’s she going to say to me? Whatever it is, I deserve it. I’ve ruined that dear, dear girl.
By noon three different women had come in to the agency with copies of the tabloid (it was amazing how many women in that little poverty-stricken town subscribed to tabloids). One kind soul left her copy with Martha, a dumbfounded, stricken Martha. Look at me, she wailed. I look like the mother instead of the daughter. She read the story, making pitiful little sounds.
It’s all Mother’s fault, all that irresponsible talk at Lil’s. But listen to me; poor Mother, she must be half crazy. And it isn’t her fault, it’s mine. All she did was repeat what I’ve been saying, about all the extra work I had to do on Mr. Baxter’s manuscripts. What will this do to Appalachian Elegy? If I had Ginny Barnes here, I’d... I’d... choke her to death.
Martha phoned Helen, told her that she had seen the story and that her mother was not to blame herself. It wasn’t her fault.
“Oh, Martha,” her mother sobbed, “I’m so glad you called. I feel awful, just awful, and... how kind of you not to blame me when it is all my fault. Me and my big mouth at Lil’s. You’re... you’re a wonderful, wonderful girl, Martha.”
If she only knew, thought Martha as she put down the phone.
Two lonely widows on Walter’s route subscribed to the tabloid, and he saw the story as he was arranging his mail before leaving the post office. His first thought was, poor Martha, she’ll be devastated. Then he got mad. How dare they call her a “plain-looking gullible spinster,” “a hick town old maid.” How dare they?
When Walter, grim and tight-lipped, arrived at Ginny’s house at eleven forty-five, Ginny was ready. She had on a flimsy, fetching thing (which Thelma described to Emily as “outrageous”). She overplayed her hand. She had a copy of the tabloid, and as she gave Walter her letter with her right hand, she held up the tabloid close to her face, to show Walter the contrast between exotic her and spinsterish Martha.
“They didn’t treat Martha very well, did they, Walter,” she cooed treacherously. Walter answered angrily.
“No, they didn’t. And I’m going to see that she does something about it.”
At which he turned quickly and almost ran down the walk, leaving Ginny open-mouthed, thinking, what the hell was that all about. (“I’m tellin’ you, Emily,” Thelma reported, “she’s still standing there with her mouth open. What happened? How do I know. But Theda Bara just lost round eleven.”)
What that was all about was that Walter was outraged that a dear, sweet, decent, attractive woman like his Martha could be subjected to such humiliation. Of course the story was false — who believes those scandal sheets — but such vicious stories shouldn’t be allowed.
Meantime, Martha had telephoned Mike. He had also read the story, the temp having seen it in the newsstand in the lobby, recognized the name.
It took a while for him to calm her down. He kept insisting that while she was certainly treated shamefully he was sure the story wouldn’t have an adverse effect on the auction.
“In fact, in some weird way, the publicity just might generate even more interest in the manuscript. Needless to say, I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine, and Mother’s. Oh my, I have to hang up. Please keep me informed.”
Mike then phoned Pete Yardley.
“They just won’t leave poor old Harry alone, will they,” Pete commented. “I hope you’re right that the story won’t hurt the auction.”
“I’m certain it won’t, Pete.”
Walter waited until he was sure Martha was home from work before calling her. Yes, the story was despicable, but he didn’t believe a word of it. And he wanted to talk to her. He would pick her up in half an hour. When she began to protest, he interrupted, “I have to talk to you, Martha. I’ve waited too long. I’ll be there soon.”
They drove up into the mountains, parked at the lookout, the town lights twinkling far below.
“But I can’t sue, Walter,” Martha said, trying not to cry, “because though the... the story isn’t true... I’ve only done some editing on Mr. Baxter’s manuscripts... oh, I can’t tell you, it’s too shameful.” She began to sob.
Walter reached over, pulled her close to him, hugged her tightly.
“Please don’t cry, Martha,” he begged. “I know the story isn’t true. Those vile tabloids shouldn’t be allowed to pillory someone as wonderful as you. Now, tell me, what can’t you tell me?”
Between muffled sobs she told him the whole sordid tale. Her agreeing to disobey Harry Baxter, give Mike Wilson Ebb and Flow, the manuscript box falling into the creek, everything lost. Then plunging deeper into crime — prevailing upon Mike Wilson to take her novel, pretend it was an early work of Harry Baxter’s.
“There,” she finished, “there’s the whole shameful, terrible tale. Now am I still wonderful?”
Walter, momentarily stunned, hugged her tighter, asked, “You gave up the novel on which you’ve worked for years? Why, why?”
“Can’t you guess?” the poor girl wailed. “I did it to get the money to buy Mother a condo in Florida. I... I didn’t want to lose you to... to that... that creature. Now, what do you think of me?”
“Oh, Martha, Martha,” he exclaimed, hugging her even tighter — she could barely breathe — “I’m not worthy of such an enormous sacrifice. Oh you poor dear girl. We’ll go right to my house and call this Mike Wilson, tell him it’s all off. Oh, Martha, I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh, Walter, oh, Walter,” she managed, “but what about Mother?”
“She can live with us. I’ll add a mother-in-law apartment to the house. I should have asked you to marry me long ago.”
That did it. Martha, squealing, whimpering, sobbing, even giggling part of the time, rained passionate kisses on her wonderful mailman. He did his part.
They didn’t call Mike Wilson. Martha explained that Mike couldn’t stay in business unless he got the commission on the sale of Appalachian Elegy. After all, she had given her word.
The story in the tabloid didn’t hurt Appalachian Elegy. It went for six and a half million dollars to an old-line publisher, Meadows & Berkshire. Scott Henry went with it, Mike having hinted before the auction that it would be to the publisher’s benefit to hire Scott, who was the editor of Baxter’s three bestsellers.
In early June the will was read. Those invited — each finding it hard to believe — were Mike Wilson, Scott Henry, Martha Ainsley, Thomas Reardon, and Harriet Sloan Larkin-Phillips, the eighty-three-year-old president of the Outlaw Whaling Society.
After taxes, lawyers’ fees, Mike Wilson’s commission, the estate was valued at four million eight hundred fifty thousand dollars, the sale of Appalachian Elegy augmented by a large insurance policy on the Connecticut house (the policy paid off the mortgages and left a substantial sum for the estate).
The money was divided as follows: fifty thousand to Mike Wilson; fifty thousand to Scott Henry; fifty thousand to Martha Ainsley; two million to The Media’s Conscience; the balance — two million seven hundred thousand — to the Outlaw Whaling Society.
After the reading of the will, the stunned beneficiaries went their separate ways while unanimously agreeing that poor Harry Baxter was a genuine enigma.
Walter didn’t have to add a mother-in-law apartment. Steve Zablonsky came flying up from the South and swooped up his ecstatic old flame. They were married in Las Vegas, honeymooned in Hawaii; old flames rekindling the fires of youth.
Martha, a lovely bride, and Walter, a handsome groom, were married in August in a quiet wedding at St. Mark’s. They raced off to Great Britain, honey-mooned in Literary Britain. They toured Hardy’s Wessex, visited his birthplace and grave, walked the very same footpaths (still existing) where Tess and Jude, and Bathsheba once walked.
They spent enchanting hours in Jane Austen’s house at Chawton — now a museum — still with the creaky door’s warning that someone was coming, giving her time to hide her papers. They were spellbound and teary-eyed at Haworth Parsonage where the poor bronchial Brontës, taking turns coughing, scribbled away while wrapped in shawls and robes as the wild winds howled across the moors and the ink froze in the inkwells.
They went to dozens of hallowed places where famous writers had agonized over just the right word, famous poets over just the right rhyme. And though it took awhile for the fumbling innocents to grope their way through the sexual labyrinth, they finally found earthshaking fulfillment on a starry night in a bed-and-breakfast in the little Cornish town where Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca met her doom.
It is now 1997. Helen and Steve are still on cloud nine, in the penthouse high above the blue Atlantic. Ginny Barnes bounced back, marrying the new editor. The library has a new roof, a fine new bookmobile, and an addition devoted to children’s books, all provided by Mrs. Walter Foster in memory of her beloved father. Martha used her inheritance plus the seventy-five thousand dollars Mike Wilson insisted she take for having given up Appalachian Elegy, which, by the way, zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists, stayed there for over two years, and made lots of money for Meadows & Berkshire.
Martha not only experiences conscience pangs every now and then, but she occasionally has a funny dream in which she contacts The National Beacon, offers proof that she wrote Appalachian Elegy. Nevertheless, she tells herself she would do it all over again. She is so, so happy.
Thomas W. Reardon retired to a little town in Vermont where he is a library volunteer, the town’s good Samaritan. Yes, he heard the rumors circulating when Appalachian Elegy came out. But he was in no position to ask Mike if they were true. His daughter still needed him. Now, his daughter happily married and the foundation on solid financial ground (the inheritance from Baxter helped bring in more money), it would serve no purpose to investigate, maybe ruin the good work being done by The Media’s Conscience. He also has conscience pangs; maybe that’s why he spends all his time doing good works.
Scott Henry is still at Meadows & Berkshire, the publisher proud of him. Back in the summer of 1991 Scott had hoped to confront Mike Wilson and demand to be told who really wrote Appalachian Elegy. It was a great book, but it wasn’t Harry Baxter’s. He had a good idea who the author was, but he too kept quiet. His wife, the sole breadwinner, had been downsized at the library on Long Island in late 1990, and they still have a daughter in college.
We all have our price, he told himself forlornly.
Mike Wilson is holding his own. He still has that vile reality, the alimony. But he’s acquired new writers, sales are going well, and the Murder on the Route series — the fourth book is due this month — is catching on. He kept his word about going back to church. That was a lucky move; he met Mary Anne there, an usher, a widow. She became his secretary. Although they are living in sin, they are in their own seventh heaven and plan to get married one of these days.
Thelma went into a decline after Ginny Barnes sold her house to a retired older couple whose most scandalous behavior was holding hands — to keep each other from falling — when they went for their morning walk.
But the poor dears are now in a nursing home. Thelma is therefore perking up and keeping an eye peeled across the street. The new owner, “one o’ them dyed-haired hussies, claims she’s a psychic. Funny thing, Emily, the only ones she psychics is men. There hain’t been a woman go in there yet.”
Martha sold the house on Chestnut Street, she and Helen sharing the money, and Martha moved into Walter’s house, gave up manuscript typing, and retired from the agency. J. L. barely held back the tears.
Walter will retire in two years. In the meantime he and Martha work together on Murder on the Route. When he retires, she’ll devote all her time to her own writing. They are still madly in love. They hug one another at every opportunity; they have hundreds of books; they write, read, talk, laugh, are — as Walter had so often visualized — “doubly blessed.”
Lil’s hasn’t changed, gossip still reigns. Cathy and Linda are still there, still irritated about the puny payment from The National Beacon. One of the publishers who lost out on Appalachian Elegy thought he smelled a rat and contacted the editor of the tabloid, claiming Baxter didn’t write the book.
“Forget it,” the editor said. “We used that story once. It’s stale news now.”
It seems appropriate to end this tale with a few more adages, to wit:
“Life ain’t all beer and skittles” (George du Maurier).
“Life is made up of marble and mud” (Nathaniel Hawthorne).
“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all” (Shakespeare).