Mandana lay on her back, her face tipped up to the ceiling. She would have hated that, Elle knew. Her mother slept with three pillows, practically upright, always had done. She loved sitting up in bed, reading, listening to the radio, chatting to herself, to whoever was there. Not lying flat, as though she were already a corpse on a trolley. Elle had asked a nurse if they could put some pillows under her head, but they’d said no. Mandana’s face was yellow, her hair stuck to her forehead and neck, greasy and limp. Her hands were always in the same position, the left one clutched into a fist except for the index finger pointing, her right arm splayed out on the edge of the clean white sheets. It was virtually useless, the right arm; they
told her the drink had cut off most of the circulation to it, over the years. She’d hidden that, too, using the left arm, asking other people to unscrew a jar, always keeping her right hand in her pocket, on her hip. Elle could see it, now it was too late.
One day Elle came in and the index finger had curled up, like the others. “She moved,” Elle told the doctor. “Her hand wasn’t like that before, it was like this,” and she’d shown them.
But they hadn’t listened, because it didn’t matter, and they were trying to get her to see that; none of it mattered.
On the twelfth day, her breathing grew more ragged and her pulse got weaker. Rhodes had been in again to see her, and he was with Elle in the café, just inside the marble portico, when they called Elle back up again, but it was too late, and she’d gone.
Elle was glad Rhodes was there. Then he went home, back to Melissa and Lauren, and Elle went back to the barn. It was still light, though it was after nine. She called some people, her father, Bryan, Mandana’s boss at the library, her best friend from school, but actually, there weren’t that many people to contact. She spoke to Caryn, and told her what had happened. Caryn asked when she’d be coming back. Elle never forgot that, even though she loved Caryn and owed her so much. She would always remember that, on the evening she rang to tell her that her mother had just died, Caryn said, “When do you think you might be back in the office? Only because I spoke to Elizabeth Forsyte today and she was wondering.”
When Elle got off the phone, she’d looked round the big, lonely barn, at the blue-gray twilight outside, then she went to the kitchen, got some bin bags, and went upstairs to start clearing up. What else was she going to do? Sit there and cry? She’d tried to, and no tears would come. Better to be doing something, she had to do something. She couldn’t just stay still. She’d start to think about it then and she couldn’t. So she went
through the house swiftly and methodically, sorting everything into piles—keep, charity, rubbish—and then went through the “keep” pile and divided it into three more piles—solicitor, Rhodes, me, sell. Two days later, she’d finished, and there was nothing left for her to do. By mid-June she was back in New York. Nearly a month to the day since she’d left. The BEA (BookExpo America) was just starting, and for three days she made the trip to the huge, faceless Jacob Javits Center on the edge of the city, walking past the stalls filled with publishers gossiping, greeting each other.
Sorry Ellie Sorry Ellie Sorry Ellie.
Three days there, and that, too, started to feel like a routine after a while, so she told herself, in the long, hot, sweaty nights in her tiny apartment, that she’d just replaced one routine with another, and that was the best way to function.
Only later did she discover that grief doesn’t look like anything resembling sanity.
On the last stroke of midnight, the carriage and horses, the coachman and footmen vanished. Cinderella found herself, in her old gray dress and wooden shoes, in the middle of a dark, lonely road.
Vera Southgate,
Well-Loved Tales: Cinderella
“
OH, BY THE
way.” Elle poured herself some more coffee. “I have to go to London next month. For one of those Building Bridges conferences. I thought I’d see Rhodes and Melissa and Lauren, spend some time in the office.”
Gray lowered the news section of
The Times
and looked at her. “When?”
“Not sure.” Elle pulled her iPhone towards her. “It’s here—yeah. It’s Monday 20th to the Wednesday and I’m flying out on the Sunday, coming back Wednesday p.m., I think.”
“So your flights are booked already?”
The sun was streaming in through the huge open windows, another perfect September day. She blinked, thinking it through. “Yeah—sorry, honey. We got told about it ages ago, I just kept thinking it might not happen. Seems ridiculous when the world’s in freefall financial chaos to be jetting over to the UK to sit in a dimly lit room and talk about improving margins, but there you go.”
“I’ll miss you,” Gray said. He took her hand and kissed it, his flat, nail-bitten thumb caressing the diamond that had only been on her finger for a couple of months; it still felt strange, too huge, to Elle. She kept catching it in things, her clothes, her hair. She had caught the side of Sidney’s cheek with it at his belated retirement party, and nearly taken his eye out.
“I’ll miss you too, honey,” she said, smiling at him.
“Are you used to it yet?” Gray said, reading her thoughts. “Being engaged? It suits you, you know.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be used to it,” Elle said. This was one of the things she loved about him, that he always wanted honesty before flattery. “It’s such an unnatural state to be in, neither one thing nor the other. And I just—well, I never thought it’d happen to me.”
Gray said drily, “Well, I’m glad to make all your dreams come true.”
They were holding hands across the breakfast table; she laughed, and pulled hers away, picking up the manuscript she’d been reading again. “Oh, definitely,” she said. “You have, promise.”
On Saturdays, Elle and Gray usually had a late brunch in the apartment, and while Gray caught up on
The Times
and the
New Yorker,
Elle skim-read manuscripts, and answered emails she hadn’t got to during the week. In the evening they often had dinner with friends—Gray’s friends, the academics, liberals and writers that made up his circle. Saturday morning was one of her favorite times of the week, sitting on the couch in the Soho loft, listening to the people below and the faint rumble of traffic on the cobbled streets, for though she was working, she was undisturbed by phone calls, office visits, her BlackBerry vibrating. She had time to herself, so she could start the following week ahead of the game. The Frankfurt Book Fair was a couple of weeks away, and though she wasn’t going, there was the usual rush of insanely hot scripts to read, the usual fevered brow to mop of the editor who wanted to bid millions of dollars, and the merry-go-round of dinners, drinks, and meetings to endure. When you ran a division and had a team of twenty-five, and when you were (relatively) young and successful and engaged to one of New York’s most respected authors, you rarely spent time at home, which was why these Saturday mornings were precious to her. Dinner with Gray’s friends meant old Italian restaurants, discussions about European cities
she’d never been to, and reminiscences of people she’d never met because they were dead. And, kind as they were to her face, she knew what they were thinking.
This Saturday, curled up on the couch in her pajamas with her laptop on her knees, Elle was typing so furiously she didn’t hear Gray come in again from his shower. “I’m heading out to pick up some supplies,” he said. “Do you need anything?”
She shook her head, blew him a kiss, and carried on typing. “I’m OK.”
Gray paused by the door, then came over. He sat down slowly next to her on the sofa. Elle moved her legs, so that his body rested against her limbs. The lines on his handsome face were more noticeable in the bright morning light.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began.
“Always a dangerous sign. Go on,” said Elle.
Gray’s eyes twinkled. His hand stole under the blanket and stroked her foot. “I might come with you, to London. My French publishers want me to go over to Paris before the election, in any case, to appear on a panel, and I’ve been putting them off. I could stay with you and then take the Eurostar. Would that be OK?”
“Oh—” said Elle. She closed her laptop, put her hands on top of it. “That’s great. It’s just I won’t have much time for you, you know.” She silenced him, as he howled in outrage. “I’m serious! Those conferences are eighteen-hours-a-day things, we’re in a hotel all the time, and I’ll be busy, seeing people…” She paused. “I do want to go to London with you, it’s just now’s not the best time. I’m literally flying in and out again, there’s a board meeting back here and a big presentation, I have to be back for Thursday anyway.” She was babbling.
“Sure, sure,” said Gray. He didn’t move. She looked at him, at his craggy, clever face, the Adam’s apple above the check shirt, the baggy navy jumper. “I know how busy you are. But
Elle, I really do have to meet your family someday, you know. And I want to go to London with you. It’s a city I love. I want to explore it with you. Have you show me your old places and all of that.”
She hesitated, and he moved seamlessly into the silence. “I know you don’t like going back there. I understand why. I won’t make a big deal of coming over with you. But I love you, Elle, we’re going to be married. I want to know that part of your life.”
It was so comfortable underneath the blanket, nestling against the cushions, safe and cozy and fine. Gray was here, Dean & Deluca was one block away, and she had two old episodes of
30 Rock
TiVo’d to watch later. She looked at him, and clutched his hands. She knew him so well, and yet they were sometimes total strangers.
The truth was, she was terrified at taking this step. Much more than any other, in their relationship so far.
When Elle started editing Gray Logan, people were quick to sneer. Gray Logan! He’d been shortlisted for the Pulitzer, his last two books were
New York Times
Notable Books, he wrote for the
New Yorker,
Philip Roth himself was a fan. And he was going to be edited by the English girl who did Elizabeth Forsyte and romance novels? Ridiculous. She had one agent, Bunny Friedman, ask her pointedly at lunch if there’d be any jobs left for older editors if the younger ones were going to snap up all the good authors.
“What experience do you have, editing someone of Gray’s caliber?” Bunny had asked, in the icy cold of a steak place on 6th Avenue, surrounded by bloody meat and corpulent businessmen.
“None, none whatsoever,” Elle had said truthfully. “It could be a disaster, but we all feel he needs a fresh direction and I’m honored to be working with him.”
She’d learned this tack on a course she’d just taken, with the unintentionally hilarious title of “Understanding People: Ten Tools Every Manager Should Know.” The truth was, she was as scared as she’d ever been. This was uncharted territory for her: an author who won prizes and gave lectures and taught American History at Columbia. Who was she, to tell him what to do to make his books better? But the success of her taking over of Miles O’Shea and the follow-up to
Shaggy Dog Story
had convinced Caryn, Stuart, and Sidney, her bosses, that she would be the right person to look after him. Since she’d started publishing Miles, his sales had doubled. And
Diary by Design,
a self-published book she’d picked up in a tiny bookshop in the Village and had fallen in love with and bought for Jane Street, had sold over half a million copies and been nominated for the National Book Award.
So when Gray’s first book with her, a follow-up to the Pulitzer-shortlisted (but zero-copy selling)
Bethan and Judy,
the much more ambitious
Gold Standard,
about a Jewish Upper West Side family whose son marries out of the faith, had hit the
Times
bestseller list and had sold over 100,000 hardcovers, no one was more relieved than her. There was even a rumor—“It’s a rumor but oh my freakin’ God, what kinda rumor!” Caryn had shrieked—that Oprah had read it and was considering mentioning it…
When Sidney retired, and Stuart and Caryn were bumped upstairs, at the age of thirty-three Elle was asked to take over Jane Street Press, and sit on the executive board. She now had a team of twenty-five people, a turnover of 20 million dollars a year, and an assistant all to herself, someone who did stuff like pick up her dry-cleaning and book her lunch appointments. Elle couldn’t imagine life without her, though Courtney was as unlike Elle at her age as it was possible to be. Demure, whip thin, friendly, and efficient to within an inch of her life,
she was almost too good to promote. In her idler moments—which were rare—Elle compared herself aged twenty-two to Courtney. Courtney would never address authors as Shitley, or order cabs that took her boss to Harlow instead of Heathrow, or leave agents waiting in reception for thirty minutes. It was a far cry from Bluebird to her job at Jane Street, but Elle didn’t ever analyze what made a book work, what that magic formula was that ensured its success. She stuck to two principles: publish books you love, and treat the authors well. In fact, she’d treated one of her authors so well that now here she was, living in his loft apartment, in the heart of the preservation district, with his ring on her finger, and her future assured.