Love May Fail (34 page)

Ken smiles sadly at me. “Personal transformation takes patience and work. And a little help from the right woman. From what Portia said about you on the phone and from what I’ve gathered today, I can tell that the three of you are good for each other. But Portia can be a little, well,
stubborn
. I won’t provide you with an owner’s manual—and please don’t tell her I used that term, or her feminism will have her foaming at the mouth. But it’s time for all of us to move on.”

I look into Ken’s eyes and find no lies, which is tough, because I want to hate this guy.

I nod once, take the envelope, and then Tommy and I join Portia outside.

The car takes us to a gulf-front hotel in Clearwater. We eat dinner and walk the beach. We hang Tommy’s Quiet Riot mask over one of the headboards, get him to sleep, and then talk on the
balcony with a partial view of the water, as the waves roll in endlessly through moonlight.

Portia’s on her fourth glass of wine when she says, “Why did you take the papers from Ken?”

“He handed them to me,” I say.

“Why didn’t you leave when I did?”

“I tried, but he kept talking.”

“You didn’t have to be polite to him.”

“What was it you said to me earlier—you didn’t have much practice with divorce? Well, I don’t have much practice helping the woman I love through one either.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not fair. His getting away so squeaky clean like this—buying his absolution from that priest.”

“Would you rather he continue to be an asshole for the rest of his life?” I say. “Keep underpaying and exploiting young women? Because building a school for poor kids sure seems like what I’d vote for.”

“It’s just that—” She doesn’t finish.

“What?”

She downs her wine, and then with a shaky voice she says, “Why did he change for her and not me? I would have loved to do all that charity work. How is it that she got him to—”

“Maybe you’re supposed to do cool stuff with
me
instead. If you haven’t noticed, I’m sitting right across from you. I’m here. I want to be with you. And I’m sorry I don’t have a lot of money—”

“It was never about the money. Jesus.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. There was Mr. Vernon and then Ken. Both of them—I couldn’t save them. I failed.”

“Do you want me to go swimming in the gulf after a big breakfast tomorrow morning? I can cramp up and you can swim out and
save me. We could call the local news crews and have them cover it on TV. I’d do that for you. No sweat.”

She laughs.

Thank god she laughs!

“I’m being stupid, right?” she says.

“It’s a lot to take in.”

“Did you think she looked like his daughter?”

“First thing I thought when they opened the door.”

“It’s creepy, right?”

“Yep. But it’s also none of our business. And we can be free and clear of them easily enough. Don’t you think that it’s all a nice twist of fate, Portia? I mean, if Ken was half as bad as you made him sound—and I absolutely believe he was all you said he was—his lawyers could have made things awful for you. Maybe the guy really just wants to do the right thing here and move on. And maybe that means we get to move on too. Get busy living the rest of our lives together.”

Portia’s silent for a long time. “I think I just need some time, Chuck, out here. I just want to think. Would I be a complete bitch if I asked you to leave me alone for a few hours?”

“Like go inside?”

“Yeah,” she says in this quivery voice that suggests tears are coming.

So I go inside, brush my teeth, plop down onto the queen-size mattress, and listen to Tommy breathing in the next bed. I wonder if Portia is crying outside, and what that would mean. Does part of her still love Ken? It’s got to be normal to mourn a failed marriage, especially since they were together for years. There would probably be something wrong with Portia if she weren’t a little upset tonight, I tell myself, but it’s hard to swallow.

Around three in the morning I hear the sliding door open and listen to Portia make her way through the dark to the bathroom.

She’s in there a while, but she finally comes to bed and pulls my arm over her so that we are spooning.

“I love you,” I whisper into her ear.

“Love you too,” she says.

In the morning Tommy wakes me up, and we find Portia on the balcony reading over the divorce papers.

She signs later that day at Ken’s lawyers’ office in downtown Tampa Bay.

Tommy and I go along for moral support, and so does Julie, who—in another white sundress—looks even younger than she did when we all first met.

When everything is inked and legal, Julie squeezes Ken’s arm, and he immediately asks if he can take us all out for a big meal, just to clear the air, so to speak.

Without missing a beat, Portia says, “No thanks, Ken. We’re going to Disney World tonight.”

“Seriously?” Tommy says.

“Seriously,” Portia answers.

And the next thing I know, we’re on a first-class flight to Orlando.

We spend our last day in the Magic Kingdom. Even though Tommy doesn’t bring up the fact that his mother once promised him a trip here, I think about that a lot, but still mostly manage to relish the smile plastered on the little guy’s face as he enjoys the various rides and shows and gets his picture taken with all of the characters.

Danielle would have loved this day, I keep thinking.

The week after I complete my first year of teaching first grade, with Tommy and Portia’s mom acting as our only witnesses, Portia and I are married by a justice of the peace.

We tell Tommy he can pick the honeymoon destination, since he’s going with us, and when he says he wants to go back to Disney
World so he can see the other parks and spend more than a day down there, we laugh and book it, because why the hell not.

Maybe you think a Disney vacation isn’t as romantic as going to Hawaii or Paris or somewhere in Greece or Italy or Fiji or the Caribbean, but Portia and I never got to go to Disney World when we were kids, and so we do it up for a week in Orlando with Tommy, who doesn’t have a single bad dream in the Magic Kingdom.

It’s a blistering hot July, and we’ve got our air conditioning on full blast as Tommy, Portia, and I eat corn on the cob and salted tomato slices at the kitchen table. We’re talking about maybe driving south for a mini-vacation somewhere when Portia’s phone buzzes.

“Who’s that?” Tommy asks.

“It’s an e-mail from a literary agent I queried,” Portia says, and goes into her office.

A few seconds later she starts screaming like she just accidentally cut off a finger.

Tommy and I run to her. She hugs us both, and we all start jumping up and down.

The huge smile on her face is so beautiful.

“What the hell is going on?” I say.

She seems incapable of speech, so she points to her computer screen.

Tommy and I read the e-mail from some agent at an agency I’ve never heard of before, but then again, I haven’t heard of
any
literary agencies. There’s a lot of praise for Portia’s novel—“an aching tale of loss and redemption” sticks out in my memory—and then the man says he’d like to represent Portia.

“So this means he’s going to publish your book?” Tommy says.

“I think it means he wants to be her agent,” I say.

Portia says, “Hell yes, it does!”

“It means he’ll try to sell Portia’s book to a publishing house.”

“So people can read it?” Tommy says. “I want to read it.”

To Portia, I say, “Congratulations. Seriously.”

Portia puts her arms around Tommy and me, and we do another family hug, during which Portia breaks down crying, but it’s a happy cry, which makes Tommy and me laugh.

“What the hell, Portia?” I say. “You okay?”

“I am,” she says and then adds, “I just never thought I’d actually find representation in New York City. Me.
Portia Kane
.”

She’s been submitting her manuscript for a few weeks now and hadn’t heard anything before today. I don’t know if this is a quick response or not, and I’m not really sure if Portia knows either. She’s sort of doing this blindly, with no advice from anyone really, because she doesn’t know any other published authors personally. She purchased a few how-to books off the Internet and just jumped in. Even though I believe in Portia, it’s a little hard for me to accept it can happen this fast—that you just get an e-mail one day, and then you have a literary agent representing your book.

“Maybe you should call this guy?” I say, doing my best to be supportive. “It says he’d like to speak as soon as possible, right?”

“It’s Saturday night, though.”

“It does say
as soon as possible
.”

“So you think I should call right now? Do you think that would make me look too eager? Or lame for being home on a Saturday night?”

“He’s e-mailing you on a Saturday night,” I say.

“Yeah,” Tommy says.

“Okay, I’ll call him. But you have to leave the room.”

I kiss Portia once on the lips and say, “I’m proud of you,” before Tommy and I load the dishwasher.

Ten or so minutes later we hear Portia screaming in her room again.

“What did he say?” Tommy asks, once we’re back in Portia’s office.

“He loves it,” Portia says, pushing the palms of her hands against her heart. “And he wants to start submitting on Monday, first thing in the morning.”

“Submitting?” Tommy says.

“My book to
real
publishing houses in New York City,” Portia says. “My book!”

Then she starts screaming again, pushes past us, throws Mötley Crüe’s
Shout at the Devil
album on the turntable, and cues up “Looks That Kill.”

We’re all jumping on and off the couch, playing air guitars and drums, making guitar solo faces, and screaming the lyrics.

And it feels so good to be rocking out to Mötley Crüe in celebration of Portia’s accomplishment. I watch Tommy spazzing with us, and it’s the happiest I’ve seen him since his mother died. He didn’t even look this happy at Disney World. And I can tell that he’s feeding off Portia’s good energy.

There are more calls from the agent on Monday morning after the manuscript has been pitched and sent to several houses, and then a few days after that, there is a small bidding war for Portia’s novel, during which she has to talk to real editors on the phone and decide which one is right for her. “How do you choose?” she keeps asking me. “Besides going with the top bidder?”

The bidding gets up into the six-figure range, and I tell her that she should pick the editor she feels most comfortable with, because she will already be pulling in more than four times my yearly teaching salary with the sale.

It all seems too good to be true, but maybe it really is this simple. After all, what the hell do I know about the publishing world? Still, part of me is waiting for the catch, although I don’t say that to
Portia. She’s just so damn thrilled, and I don’t want to do anything to ruin this moment for her.

She actually goes with the second highest offer because that editor seemed to “get the book more,” which I’m not really sure
I
get, but we hire Lisa (Jon the cop’s there too, because they’re living together now) to babysit Tommy and go out to dinner in Philadelphia to celebrate regardless. Portia keeps saying, “I know Mr. Vernon will read this book. I just know it,” which makes me nervous, because who knows if Mr. Vernon is still alive? And the last time we saw him, he made it pretty damn clear that he never wanted to interact with us again, let alone read a book written by a former student.

I wonder if Portia will be on TV talk shows and radio programs and if someone will make a movie out of her book. A part of me deep down worries she might lose interest in me once she becomes famous, but I try my best to kill that part and just be happy for my wife.

Over the next six months Portia takes trips to New York City, each one requiring her to buy a new designer outfit, heels, and a handbag, plus get her hair and nails done. While I love seeing her doing what she wants—not to mention that she looks amazingly hot when done up—I also worry about the fact that I can’t provide her with any of these things, like her first husband did. I start to feel a little irrelevant.

Portia does lunches with her agent and editor and many people from her publishing house, which they pay for, and a few times they even pay for her to stay overnight in a hotel, which sort of blows this Catholic elementary school teacher’s mind.

Each time, Portia returns home glowing and raving about how smart and classy her editor Nancy is, and how her agent gets her work and wants the next book as soon as she can write it. She once again starts spending all of her time alone in her office, and I begin to see what our life is going to look like over the next decade or so.

I eat most of my dinners alone with Tommy while Portia works, sometimes twelve hours a day, writing the new book, editing
Love May Fail
, working on her new website, endlessly chitchatting with other writers and readers on social media sites. And when we do spend time together, she asks me over and over again if I think Mr. Vernon will read her novel, to the point where I actually tell her she can’t ask me that anymore.

But I have to admit that I have never seen anyone more full of joy and hope than Portia as she awaits the publication of her book. Her ecstasy rivals the memory of my first heroin hit, which worries me more than I let on. Such highs always come with even worse lows, in my experience. The ex-junkie in me waits for the yang to follow the yin, so to speak, as the dutiful husband in me tries his best to wear a smile and be supportive.

Mr. Yang sends his first calling card when Portia’s book is slapped with a dreadful neon-green cover that I pretend to love, because her publisher doesn’t offer to change it. Her agent says the bright color will “pop on the shelf,” but Portia hates it and insists it’s going to hurt her sales, although she does her best to feign enthusiasm in her e-mails to her editor and manages to maintain a positive attitude. But then the authors to whom Portia’s publisher mails advance review copies, hoping to get supportive quotes for the cover, fail to respond. Even though Portia’s agent tells her that it’s hard for first-time authors to get what he calls “blurbs,” it doesn’t help—especially since Portia easily finds hundreds of first-time novels covered in the flattering words of more established authors.

Mr. Yang officially shows up about six weeks before the publication of Portia’s novel in the form of something called a
Kirkus
review. Even though her agent calls her and says that
Kirkus
is notoriously snarky—that one negative review means nothing in the grand scheme of a publication—Portia cries when she reads it,
which makes me want to find the anonymous author of the review and beat the snot out of him. It’s not so much what the reviewer writes that pisses me off, but the high and mighty tone in which he trashes Portia’s first book as “a painfully sentimental look at a more than slightly nauseating (and highly improbable) friendship between a wooden cliché of a teacher and the most annoying student you are likely to encounter on the printed page.” The on-the-printed-page part really annoys me—where the fuck
else
would you encounter the main character of a novel? You’d think a reviewer of books would be able to write better. And I wonder why no one reviews the reviews. A reviewer who carelessly belittles the best effort of an artist—talk about cliché.

“It’s bullshit,” I tell Portia. “Your book is beautiful.”

“I don’t know if I can handle this,” she says. “How public this is. I didn’t realize how awful it is to be reviewed like this. I spent so much time on this book. It’s the best thing that ever came out of me.”

“And this reviewer is an asshole. Probably someone who wants to publish a book and can’t. I’m sure there will be better reviews.”

But there aren’t.

In fact, the reviews get worse.

It seems like every week some publication reviews Portia’s book with enough venom to kill twenty men.

Publishers Weekly
calls
Love May Fail
“ridiculous,” and then ends by writing, “Just cut the first two words from the title and you will have your review.”

And then all of the advance-copy reader reviews begin popping up on the Internet via various websites and blogs, and those are even uglier. I keep telling Portia not to read them. She’s losing weight, not sleeping, drinking too much, and seems to be suffering more pain than I thought a book publication was capable of inflicting.

She gets a few nice blog reviews, which I find by googling. I print those out, highlight the most positive parts—“This book gave me so much hope,” and “I can’t wait for a sequel!!!” and “A read that made me want to be a better person,” and even “This novel saved my life”—and hang them up on the refrigerator, but she doesn’t seem to care, even as the collection grows.

The
Philadelphia Inquirer
gives her a little hometown love the week before the official publication date, calling
Love May Fail
“a charming look at love and faith . . . not to be missed,” but it feels a little after the fact, maybe even unconvincing, like praise from one’s own mother.

On the day of her publication we go to three local bookstores so that we can see her book on the shelves.

Two don’t have it in stock.

The third has a single copy on a back shelf, far away from the displays and the large stacks by the registers of the books that the store is pushing hardest.

It’s easy to see that
Love May Fail
doesn’t even have a chance.

We throw a small launch party for Portia at the Manor, and I make sure we have books there for her to sign. All of our friends are incredibly enthusiastic and supportive, but Portia just doesn’t seem into it. The light in her eyes is pretty much gone.

Only a few weeks after
Love May Fail
hits bookstore shelves, Portia’s editor calls, saying she is leaving publishing for personal reasons, but that her colleagues will make sure
Love May Fail
gets a fair shake. Portia’s convinced that the poor early response after the six-figure advance is why her editor is leaving, even though her agent assures her that these things happen all the time in New York—both editors leaving houses and highly sought-after books failing to live up to the hype.

“So are we
failing
?” Portia asks.

“It’s a strange game,” her agent responds, which sends Portia even further south.

The publishing house stops communicating with her.

There are no TV or radio appearances.

Her agent’s e-mails become few and far between.

And I want to ask Portia how a business like this can work. How can you pay so much money for something and then not promote it?

About a month or so after Portia’s small launch party, once we have Tommy in bed, Portia pours herself a rather enormous glass of wine and sits down on the couch next to me.

“You can stop pretending,” she says.

“What?” I say, looking up from reading her novel for the third time.

“That you enjoy it.”

“But I do,” I say, and it’s not a lie. I still find it thrilling to hold a Portia Kane novel in my hand. Even a
neon-green
Portia Kane novel.

“I’m letting go of the whole writing thing,” she says. “It was a mistake.”

“You’re a good writer, Portia. With a different publisher, better marketing—”

“Everyone hated it. And then they cut their losses. I’ve researched it. Other writers have had the same experience. And now they say it will be infinitely harder to get another publishing deal because my first book lost them so much money. Every publishing house in the world will have access to my sales numbers, which are and will remain shitty. Couple that with my reviews, and there’s no point.”

I don’t know what else I can do to save my wife, so—even though I don’t believe it’s true—I say, “Well, at least you got a few thousand copies out there into the world. So that gives you a chance.”

“No one in publishing cares about a few thousand copies,” she says. “That’s
nothing
to them.”

“No,” I say, trying to be the man I admire. “But it’s a chance for Mr. Vernon to find your book and read it.”