The Celebrity (6 page)

Even here in the bosom of the family Gregory was already “different” in everybody’s eyes. He was an important author; soon he would be A Name. Ever since the first hubbub had died away, they had all been pumping him about
The Good World,
asking its plot, begging to be allowed to read it at once, even in manuscript form, since Digby and Brown had sent him only one set of galleys, which he had had to correct and return. The whole family was still in the process of getting used to having such a novelist in their midst. Already Gregory had displaced him as the most successful member of the family, but he was only too happy to relinquish his title. This was a success story surpassing anybody’s rosiest and wildest dreams; it would be ignoble to begrudge him any part of it, and certainly nobody did.

Thorn looked around the room. It was true that a more sober mood could be detected, a kind of settling down. That was only natural. Gloria was beginning to talk of leaving before too long—“When you can’t afford a real nurse,” she said, with a toss of her head in her husband’s direction, “you’re the slave of a baby-sitter.” Her sisters nodded knowingly, and all three of their husbands, in a mass reaction of their collective muscles, moved off to the tray of decanters at the other end of the room.

Even Dad and Mother, Thorn noticed, were beginning to show signs of strain, but they made no move to end the party. Their glance had scarcely wavered from the face of their younger son and even now, as Gregory left the room to call Ed Barnard, their dazed eyes clung with inexpressible pride to the chair where he had been sitting. It was touching, Thorn thought, and started toward them, but at that moment Cindy turned away from Abby and drifted aimlessly over to the fireplace. He forgot about his parents and joined her.

She was looking into the mirror over the mantel and, as he approached her, he saw that she too had come down from the first pinnacle of happiness over Gregory. She said softly, “I suppose Gregory will take Abby to Florida or some place to celebrate,” and before he could reply, she pushed her face close to the glass and added, “I look half dead and awful.”

In this she was wrong. Lucinda Johns never looked half dead and rarely looked awful. She was a woman of energy, just as she had been a girl of energy, with the kind of energy which comes from health, vitality, and inner dissatisfaction. She had an energetic voice, free, it is true, of the two attributes which make an excellent thing in woman, but with other, and compensating, characteristics. These included a certain brash charm, a ring of humor, and an expensive Brearley-Vassar way of speaking which she had somehow picked up on her road through New York’s free public schools and colleges.

Cindy was tall and redheaded, with a complexion so good that its occasional periods of floridity could be forgiven. She was a trifle large, but she carried herself perfectly and never, even in the country, wore slacks. Recently she had taken to having “rinses” for her hair, but henna is, of course, a vegetable product and not a true metallic dye. She was Thornton’s age, looked it, never bewailed it publicly, and believed that a good wife was one who subtly pushed her husband to greater business effort than he would put out by himself. In this Thornton concurred, and in affectionate moments told her that half his. success was due to her, and that he was lucky she wasn’t devoid of normal ambition like some wives.

In this,
she
concurred. She had long held it a family misfortune that Gregory had not married a girl who could have made something, of him, who could have persuaded him to give, up writing esoteric stuff nobody wanted to read in favor of sensible writing like, romantic stories, radio serial, or popular novels. Appealing to a large public, was, a trick of the trade you could pull off, at will—how often had she read that in hook reviews! And how often spoken of it to Thorn!

Tonight’s, news about more “esoteric, stuff,” he suddenly realized as he met her glance in the mirror, must have thrown his wife a bit off keel. It was never pleasant to have one’s theories assassinated by facts, and for anybody like Cindy, it would be very nearly infuriating. A rush of sympathy warmed him and he said, “You’ve never looked awful in your whole life and right now you look wonderful.”

Cindy’s eyes cleared and he was reassured. How natural had been her comment about Florida, and how disloyal of him to find it troubling, even momentarily. Cindy had faults, many faults, but she was as incapable as he of being jealous of Gregory. Consolingly he said, “Gregory won’t be taking a vacation just yet—he’ll be too busy and so will I.”

“You?”

“Who’s going to be handling all his business detail?”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that at all.”

“For a while, anyway, and there’ll be plenty of it.”

“There will?”

“Sure. A stream of phone calls about splitting up the payments, people to meet and discuss things with—”

“What people?”

“Oh, I don’t know. From Digby and Brown, I guess, maybe from Best Selling Books, Incorporated. I’ll find out tomorrow how these things are done.” Cindy was watching him with a strange look, almost a look of, well, whatever it was a look of, it flattered him. His mind raced; he felt himself reaching confidently into new areas of living. “There might even be a movie sale in this,” he heard himself saying with calm authority, though this was a notion which had just been born. “And
that
would mean people from Hollywood too. Producers and people.”

Cindy’s head lifted and
her
shoulders straightened. She turned and looked about the room expectantly, as if guests were due. “It’ll be fun, won’t it?” she said, and smiled at him.

If Gregory Johns had been as close and constant an observer of human nature as authors are popularly held to be, he would have noticed long before this that the happiness of some of his nearest and dearest relatives was no longer unmixed.

But Gregory Johns was not such an author. He always needed time to develop the impressions left upon his mind during moments of high import, and only in retrospect did the subtleties of behavior take on their true values for him.

Thus it was that the small signs of distress here and there seemed to escape his notice. He had heard his sisters grousing about baby-sitters, had seen Cindy’s scrutiny of her own face in the mirror, and had a fleeting impression that though Thorn had been pensive, even sad, until after the call to Chicago, he had swung into violent, almost manic, good humor before it was over.

But none of these notes jotted down upon the surface of Gregory Johns’ mind were, as yet, easily legible even to him. For some time, his most active preoccupation had been with the idea that it would be nice to go home, and now that he had escaped from the noise and hilarity in the living room, he found himself longing for the moment when he and Abby could be alone.

He looked about him vaguely. He was in Cindy’s and Thorn’s bedroom; it was cool and blessedly silent. He sat down near the telephone table but made no move to lift the receiver. Ed Barnard had driven down to Philadelphia to work with an invalid author and would get home at two or three in the morning. He wondered if Ed knew, and what he would feel about it when he did know. Apart from Abby, Ed was the one person in the world with whom he might be able to discuss this, turn of fortune and the unprecedented emotions crowding his breast because of it.

Never as long as he could remember anything would he forget that first moment when Jake Zatke’s slow-paced voice told him his book had been selected. There was one dazzling, blinding instant of joy, unequivocal and pure, at the vision of hundreds of thousands of people reading something he had written, something into which he had put his faith and his love. Never had he worn a face of scorn for the size of one’s audience; never had he pretended that it mattered not whether ten people or ten thousand saw one’s work. Now many times ten thousand people would see his—the knowledge was a huge burst within him, exalted and exulting.

Later, when Jake had reached the part about the money, there had been another kind of pleasure, of a different nature, less private, more gaudy. This second pleasure one could describe more easily; it dealt with bills and expenses and physical things for Hat and Abby—he thought fleetingly of a large and very white refrigerator. But that first, that inner delight—could he ever share that, even with Abby?

All evening, startling new emotions had been crowding his mind, jostling each other, trampling and shoving, fairly shouting for attention. Not all of them were wonderful.

Gregory Johns suddenly recalled snatches of anecdote he had heard from Ed Barnard about certain authors who had begun to regard themselves as virtually immortal the moment they had their first collision with a large success. The details had varied, but never the underlying pattern: a new air of importance, a shy inability to dissuade those who used the word “great” or even “genius,” a newly discovered passion for extra
Lebensraum
via duplex apartment or remodeled farmhouse in Bucks County or Westport, Connecticut. There was, too, a universal docility toward anyone who insisted on an interview, a photograph, a radio or television appearance, or a private talk at the Stork Club during the height of the rush.

“All he has to do,” Ed had once said about one such docile newcomer to the Halls of Fame, “is say, ‘No.’ Instead he swills it like a hog and then grieves constantly about how exhausted he is, how unable to work, how astonished at the penalties the world exacts from its authors. And on his desk, he has two framed pictures”—here Ed had begun to laugh—“one of Shakespeare and the other of Abraham Lincoln.”

Remembering, Gregory wished this unfortunate train of thought could be broken at once. Outside in the hall, Thornton called, “Hey, where are you?” and he answered eagerly, “Right in here.”

Thorn opened the door carefully as if fearing to disturb a conversation. “Did you get Barnard?”

“No.”

“What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“Just thinking.”

“I’ve been thinking, too. What do you suppose Digby wanted to know all about your other rights for, in the middle of the night?”

“Why, because—” It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why. “I don’t know.”

“I bet he thinks there’s a big chance for a movie sale.”

“He couldn’t. It’s not that sort of—”

“Is it the sort for a book club?”

“I’m positive there’s no movie in it.”

“Don’t be positive about anything, not now.” They stared at each other. “Listen, I’m going to send a messenger out for the manuscript first, thing tomorrow. Or maybe Digby and Brown would let go of another set of galleys now. I’ve got to read it right away. O.K.?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you the minute—no, you’ll have to call me.”

“All right. When?”

“Early. Right after I’ve talked to—hell, let me think.” He scratched his right nostril thoughtfully. “You’ll be going in to the office tomorrow, won’t you?”

“Your office?”

“Digby and Brown. You’ll
have
to go see them about all this, won’t you?”

“I—” An odd reluctance began to form in his heart, vague and directionless. “Yes, sure,” he said heartily. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but sure, I guess I’ll be seeing them pretty soon. I want to call Ed Barnard anyway.”

“You’ll have to go there, too. Look, I’ll find out everything by phone first, and you call me before you go over.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Good. And, Gregory—”

“Yes?”

“You’d better get your phone back in as fast as you can.”

“My phone?” Suddenly he was uneasy, even apprehensive; there was no sense to it, but there it was. His vague reluctance had become a nipping, tugging pull of unwillingness.

“This changes things,” Thorn said earnestly. “Not only will
I
need to call you about things, but Digby and Brown will, and maybe B.S.B. The news is going to break and then a lot of people will want to talk to you about this or that, and it would drive everybody nuts to wait on the mails.”

“I suppose it would.” He hesitated. Of course he would have the phone again. A telephone was essential to modern life necessity alone had made him do without one. “I’ll do it the minute I can,” he said, and for no reason at all found himself remembering the awful, the angry helplessness he had felt as a child whenever is parents made him leave an engrossing story and go do his homework.

O
N THE MORNING FOLLOWING
these events, along the Eastern seaboard of the Continental United States, sunrise was scheduled for 7:25 o’clock, but the only members of the Johns family who could have attested that it occurred even approximately on time were Gerald and Geraldine.

“There’s the sun,” Gerald said, gazing beyond his wife’s shoulder as they sat at breakfast together in their night-chilled kitchen. “Imagine having breakfast at”—he consulted the electric clock beside the breadbox, but Geraldine, as she did every morning despite the fact that it unnerved him, had disconnected it a few minutes before for the toaster—“at sunup,” he concluded lamely.

“It’s better than lie there tossing for another two hours.”

“Maybe for you,” he said. “But I can’t get a nap later.” He remembered how often he had promised himself that he would install a cot or day-bed at the rear of the store, and foolishly given up the plan each time because the delivery men from the pharmaceutical companies’ trucks would think the proprietor of the Johns Pharmacy was getting to be an old man. What vanity; what self-delusion. They could look at him, couldn’t they?

“Nobody needs to nap when they’re this excited,” Geraldine said comfortably, “but it’s too bad you’re going downtown today. It would be nice to talk out everything a little more.”

He laughed. “We didn’t skip much last night.”

“No. Except one thing. One thing we didn’t think of at all.” She sounded serious.

“What one thing?”

“The one thing we mustn’t do. I thought of it after you were asleep.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell people about Gregory. Go around just telling everybody in town. No matter which way we told it, it would sound like bragging.”