Authors: Tom Winton
Chapter 28
"Maddy, it's me!” I said into the phone, the words dancing from my lips like lyrics in a song. "How are you, honey?"
Hearing my voice, hers burst with relief, Oh, Dean! Thank God! I couldn't wait to hear from you." Then, in her next breath, her tone shrunk from relieved to tentative. "How did it go, honey?"
"Wellll … OKKKK," I teased.
"C'mon! Please, Dean! Stop! Tell me!" she coaxed, beginning to sense the news might be good for a change.
"You wouldn't believe it, Maddy. It was fantastic. People actually came to see me … to buy my book … lots of `em. I talked and signed books for an hour-and-a-half straight. There were customers waiting in line to see me the whole time."
"Oh Dean," she said, her voice spilling with relief, "that's fantastic … I told you everything would work out. Tell me all about it."
"It was unbelievable! I must've signed a hundred copies."
Hearing myself say these positive things seemed to substantiate the plausibility of the book's potential success.
"Jesus, Maddy, this thing could be big. I mean BIG! We stand to make some serious money." Then I got kind of choked up and my voice slowed. I said, "Maddy … you know I don't care about having a lot of money or any of that. We both know that's not where it's at. But we've struggled for so long, honey. God knows we could use a break. Even if it just means not having to sweat the bills for awhile. You know … kind of a reprieve. But Maddy, listen … I think it's going to be better than that. I've got a feeling we're gonna kick some ass now!"
And we did.
The readers kept coming. As I pushed north in the Caravan, more and more of them turned out at each signing. My belief in the book strengthened a little more with each session. I was so UP that when the van's A/C crapped out again just north of Tallahassee, I simply blew it off and cranked down the window. For the first time in my life, repairing a vehicle would not be a major dilemma.
People everywhere were talking it up. 'Look What They've Done to Our Dream' was gaining momentum. Word of mouth was my biggest promoter. The first readers had loved it. They told their friends about it and interest in the book networked. Customers everywhere were beginning to put very serious dents in bookstore inventories. Things kept progressing better and better.
Then, on the last day of the tour, in the early afternoon, Fran Danforth phoned me at my motel room in “Hotlanta”. She told me the first sales reports were coming in and already the Olympus brass was talking a second printing. She said they'd never had a first time novelist draw so much attention so quickly. And that was saying something because Olympus is a very old, highly-respected house that had signed many outstanding writers over the years.
As soon as I hung up with Fran, I dialed Maddy's work number with a quivering finger. There was no way I could wait until evening like I usually did. I had to share this phenomenal news with her now. I also figured, if I called her right then, I could crash immediately after returning from the evening signing (I had two appearances scheduled that day, the first at a Barnes and Noble in the afternoon, and the other later on at a Border's). I wanted to hit the rack early so I'd be fresh the next morning for the day-long drive home.
When I connected with Maddy, her first words were, “Happy birthday!” Then she told me she couldn't stand missing me, and she never wanted us to be apart again.
I promised we wouldn't be. I told her about Olympus' decision to run a second printing. Overwhelmed by this news and thoughts of my returning home the next day, she broke into happy tears. Almost overnight our lives were changing for the better. All the struggling just to get by, all the hard times, all those times I'd been out of work, and finally now we would actually have some (and I hate to use the term) disposable income. I also told her Fran had asked me to step up production on my other book when I got home, another novel I'd started eight months earlier, shortly after I signed the contract for 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream'.
After we hung up, I showered a second time and put on the same clothes I'd worn for the book jacket picture.
The rest of the day flew by. The afternoon signing went as smoothly as all the rest, and my final appearance that evening was going along just as well. Twelve days of motels, characterless chain restaurants and unfamiliar faces were coming to an end. Just thirty minutes remained at the final signing. The line of people in front of me was waning, maybe a dozen folks still waited to meet me as I autographed a book for a heavy-set older women. Somewhere in her sixties, she spoke the way stroke survivors do, her slurred words struggling to escape the left side of her mouth. "Ank you, Mithda Cathidy. Dith copy ith for my thithter, she'th thick in da hothpital. I jutht hope she'll enjoy it ath much ath I `id."
My heart went out to this woman. Her voice was so damaged, so ruined, just like my mother's was after her second almost successful suicide attempt in 1991. From the way this lady dressed, it was obvious she didn't have much. A twenty-two-dollar book purchase had to be an against-her-better-judgment decision. She was who my book was about and I connected with her instantly as if she were my aunt. It was easy to tell that she, like I myself, had gone to the University of Hard Knocks. I saw it in her weary, distorted face, in her small, unremarkable eyes. Her sad, arched brows, frozen in defeat, told her life's story, memoirs of constant pain that only years of unrelenting hardship can inflict. And that cockeyed half-smile, man, that just ripped at my heart. I talked to her for a minute or so, then we thanked each other and she left.
I watched as she lumbered toward the cashier under the heavy weight of her body and disability and all the rest. She laid the book on the counter and I saw the clerk read the note I'd written alongside the bar-code. When the clerk told her that the book "was on Mister Cassidy", she turned around slowly and glanced back at me, bashfully. I could tell she felt kind of funny, but nevertheless happy. She gave me a little wave and smiled a shy, appreciative smile. I smiled back warmly and nodded. She was me and I was her, and we both knew it. I knew this just by looking at her, and she knew it by what she had read in my book. We both had been living in the same cruel world. I hoped that my small gesture would, even if only for a few minutes, make this cold place seem a little warmer for her.
The next person in line had waited patiently during the thirty or so seconds this encounter took. She now took a book from a stack and laid it gently on the table before me. It took this small activity to bring me back to where I was, what I was supposed to be doing. When I looked up to greet this customer, my heart stalled, halting mid-beat as if a cold steel weight had been dropped on it.
I was looking at Theresa Wayman!
Chapter 29
Good God, her beauty stunned me. She was still more attractive than should be legal. Professional looking now, yet at the same time very sensual, if you can imagine that. Her hair was shorter but, other than a few random gray strands here and there, it was still the blackest black you've ever seen. Cut diagonally on the sides, it angled down her face sharply just below her high smooth cheeks, and it was lustrous as a wet seal's coat. I could see the overhead fluorescent lights reflecting in it and could tell it was freshly brushed. The small lobes of her ears peeked out and (although I don't like gold for what it's perceived as) the quarter sized hoops that hung from them added to her elegance. Even in the store's unforgiving lights, she was all but flawless. The only discernible lines on her breathtaking, heart-shaped face were thin as delicate hairs, barely noticeable alongside the most provocative eyes anyone had ever seen. Eyes that spoke. Eyes that now said happy things and sorrowful things at the same time. Eyes that seemed relieved, immensely relieved, to be resting on mine.
My brain traumatized, nearly paralyzed, the only words I could muster came out barely louder than a whisper. "Myyy Goddd … Theresa!"
My condition just short of shock now, I raised a nervous palm to my chin. Twenty-four years had passed since she'd last graced my eyes, thousands of dawns and just as many sunsets, countless roads, a million miles and more than a few dark alleys. And now here she was, my Theresa, standing before me at a bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia.
Like a mother speaking to a small child, her lovely smile widened and she said, "Still the softie, aren't you, Dean Cassidy?" But despite her inborn, smooth confidence, I detected a deep hurt and even a hint of awkwardness in her voice. She was as moved as I was.
"Well … I … what do you mean?" I asked.
Trying to come across as nonchalant, not doing a very good job of it, she said, "I saw what you did for that lady just now. You know what I mean." Then her eyes narrowed and her face became very serious. "How have you been, Dean?" she asked, the cracks in her voice so big you could fall into them.
There it was. She HAD cared! Just like I had all this time. What we shared as teenagers had been much more than just some fleeting crush to her also.
"Theresa, I don't … I don't know what to say." I glanced at my Casio, then the small line of people standing behind her. "Look," I said, "I'll be done here in about twenty minutes. What do you say … "
"Sure … I'll wait."
She was visibly relieved that the ice had been broken. Her tone lightened some when she said, "I didn't come here to buy a book, Dee Cee. I have one. I've already read it." She put a manicured finger on the copy in front of me, gently caressed my name on the cover, and said, "It moved me like nothing I've ever read. And, I'm not saying that because I once dated the author."
I smiled from a soft spot deep within my heart, the same spot Theresa had occupied since the night I met her. Then I murmured so nobody could hear. The words spilled out before I could stop them. They also hung in the air. I said, "My heart was in it, Theresa … and … and so were you."
"I know that, Dean." Our eyes embraced for a second or two. Then, suddenly, like she had snapped out of a deep trance, she straightened her jacket, looked this way and that, and said, "I'd better get out of the way here. My car's parked on the … the north side of the building. I'll wait there for you." Her smile was so warm I could feel my temperature rising. "And oh, yeah," she added, "I almost forgot, I'll be in a dark green Mercedes." Then she turned and walked away.
As the next customer in line stepped forward, a twenty-something John Lennon look-alike (the hair, granny glasses and all), I accessed Theresa from behind. Her dove-gray jacket and matching skirt fit like it was tailor made and probably was. Damn, she looked fantastic! Better than in any of my thousands of memories. And she still walked with that innate queenly gait. Man, was she still a sight!
The young long-hair before me watched her too, then looked back at me and just said, "Wowwww!"
I wanted to sprint after her. What if she changed her mind, just drove off into the Georgia night? I'd noticed a ring, she was married. What if she had guilt-filled second thoughts about coming to see me?
But it wasn't that way. After I finished up, thanked the store manager and squared away for the book I'd given to that lady, I found Theresa still waiting in the parking lot. Sitting in her big Benz, parked in the glow of a towering mercury vapor light, she pensively watched the passing night-time traffic. As I approached, I couldn't help but to check out her expensive new car. She'd either married into money or had done alright for herself. Whichever, I knew that unless she had changed drastically, there was still a lot more to Theresa Wayman than her pricey car, jewelry and clothes.
Still dazed by her presence, I bent to her open window. a loss for anything else to say, what with the awkward circumstances and all, I said, "Nice car." Boy was that an out-of-character comment.
"Yeah … " she said, looking up at me now, "thanks. Can we go somewhere and talk, Dean?" She'd glanced at my left hand where it rested on the door. She'd seen my plain wedding band. Even if she hadn't seen it, she'd read my book. She already knew from the jacket bio that I was married. Her voice shrunk when she asked, "Would that be OK … if we went somewhere?"