Chapter 24
Pam sat back in the soft chocolate-brown leather chair at her desk and stared into space, flipping a pen dexterously between the long tapered fingers of one manicured hand like a magician getting ready to do a trick. She had written three versions of the press release for Expressia this morning. They were all pitiful. And it wasn’t her fault.
The problem was that Expressia was trying to be Google. And Wikipedia. And both were already providing all the things that Mark Cooper talked about when he talked about his new search engine-slash-encyclopedia. The two services provided targeted searches, ads, and information so well, there was no need for Expressia. Pam had known this the first time she’d met Mark and heard his spin, which was so weak it was laughable. But the pay he was offering was extraordinary. Mark was loaded and free with it, having made a killing in the bull market of the early 2000s before jumping ship right before everything tanked. Unlike Warren Buffett, Mark had just been lucky – simply wanting to pull his money out of the market before going on a month-long vacation to New Zealand. He’d come back tan and fit from his trek on the Milford Track to find the U.S. swiftly slipping into the second greatest economic depression in its history.
She kept trying to figure out a fresh angle, a way of making Mark’s product sound brand new, but the words just kept falling dead and lying there on the page. Blah, blah, blah. There had always been hopeless jobs, but somehow she’d been able to wave her fingers over the keyboard and pull the words from somewhere, like a rabbit popping out of a hat. Not lately. Was she losing it?
The phone rang and she put down the pen and pounced on it gratefully. “Hello, this is Pam McGregor?”
“Pam, it’s Dean.”
Dean from Little Brown. It had to be Tobias Locke and another of his endless demands. What now?
“Yes?”
“We’re going to need your shepherdess skills after all. Tobias is insisting on your traveling with him personally for the tour.”
Pam groaned, and said, “Oh, he doesn’t need me! He’s being ridiculous. Why not someone from your end? Isn’t there some starry eyed little intern over there that would love to follow him all around the country and watch him sign his book?”
“He’s insisting.”
Just then, her assistant, Ashley, cracked open the door to her office and waved at her, ducking her head a little. Pam shook her head at Ashley and frowned. She was getting tired of training these twenty-year-olds. This one had seemed smarter than the rest. Though maybe all it boiled down to is she knew not to expose too much skin at work. That and Ashley wore her long dark hair in a ponytail instead of having it hanging in her eyes, flipping it back constantly in a distracting manner like the last girl.
Ashley stage-whispered, “It’s your friend? Amy? She said it’s important?”
Pam spoke into the phone, “Hold on a sec.” And then she covered the mouthpiece and said, “Unless someone’s dying? Remember? Take a message. I’ll call her back.”
Ashley’s eyes grew wide and she nodded quickly and shut the door.
Good, maybe she had finally gotten it. Or maybe she was about to go IM her friends about her bitch of a boss. Funny how time changed things. Once, Pam was well known for being the “nice” one, the one you could go to for a hug or a shoulder to cry on. Good old teddy-bear Pam.
Pam removed her hand from the phone’s mouthpiece and resumed her defense, which went nowhere as Pam had already helped many of Little Brown’s more famous authors through their book tours with great success, and Tobias Locke was not only a difficult man in general, he was unreliable. Without someone with experience on the job, he’d probably flake on the whole tour the second day in. She remembered all too well his meltdown in Seattle two years before.
At last, Pam agreed, and was annoyed at how smug Dean sounded when he said, “Of course you will.” When they finally hung up, she couldn’t help but slam down the receiver.
“Shit!”
Now not only was she saddled with Tobias, which meant too much time away from the office, but her ex, Edward, would have even more guilt-ammo to use regarding Jacob. She could hear him now: that her lack of time at home was depriving their child of the parenting he desperately needed, that Jacob should “just” come live with him and his wife, Anna, that then he’d have the stability and order he needed to thrive. Full time with mealy-mouthed goody-two-shoes Anna? All the way out in California? Over her dead body! Besides, Jacob was just fine, wasn’t he? Or was he okay? Was Edward right?
That was the thing about having married a psychologist - he of the Inner-Workings and Correct-Thing. At first it had thrilled her, how observant he was. Then it drove her crazy: the monitoring and the analyzing and the obsessing. She had gone from being a fairly confident person to, before the divorce, a neurotic mess. No, Anna and he were perfect for each other and far too perfect for this world. Jacob spent enough time already with them. He needed some real-life normalcy and, besides, most mothers worked these days. How many of his classmates had stay-at-home mothers or even the glorified and over-reported stay-at-home dad? She didn’t know of any. Her childhood must have been the last of its kind: mother always there, father almost never.
Ashley cracked open the door to Pam’s office, her round face impassive now. “Um, here’s your message,” she said, and crossed the room with two long strides to put a scribbled-on Post-it note down on the desk quickly, snapping her hand back as if Pam would potentially bite.
“Thanks,” Pam said, picking up the Post-it. “I’ve got to remember to say voicemail. You didn’t have to bother with taking a message. Sorry. Old habits die hard.”
“Oh, no problem,” Ashley said, backing out of the room. “My pleasure.”
Pam watched the girl shut the door behind her. Yeah, right. Her pleasure. Where did she learn that one? She looked at the loopy writing on the yellow sticky note.
“Amy wants to talk to you about Hannah. Please call back.”
Hannah? What about her? Was she okay? Pam picked up the phone again and hit the speed dial button for Amy’s house. It rang three times and went to the family’s old-school answering machine. Like Zooey, Amy refused to keep up with technology. Pam patiently waited through Amy’s youngest son’s greeting and the bark of one of their adopted dogs-in-training. Finally she got the beep.
“Amy? Are you there? It’s Pam. Hello?” Pam called, imagining the echo of her voice in that big rambling house of theirs. “Amy? Amy! Damn it! Oh…, whoops. Sorry! Forgot about the little pitchers. I just got your message. How can you be gone already? Why won’t you get a cell phone? This is ridiculous!”
She hung up the phone and stood up, bolts of pain going through her knees. “Ow!” she said and bent over to put her hands on them. When did everything start hurting? When did she get so old? And fat?
She hobbled over to the mini-fridge she kept stocked with Diet Coke, cut-up veggies and fruit and grabbed a cold can, popped it open, and took a long drink. She was hungry. She eyed the colorful plastic containers of grapes and carrots and celery. It wasn’t true, what the nutritionist had said. They still didn’t appeal to her, even in ready-to-eat condition. Her eyes fell on the big bright red box of Mrs. Field’s cookies on top of the fridge that had been sent to her yesterday as a gift from her newest client, Fabulous.com, a website aimed at hip older women. The big bump in traffic they’d gotten recently had been attributed to her press releases and link-building campaign, and Julia Luske, Fabulous’s founder, knew Pam adored cookies, particularly Mrs. Field’s.
Pam stared at the box, imagining the soft moist cookies inside, the oozing chocolate. No, she shouldn’t. She forced her eyes away and took another sip of her soda. Oh, just one. She opened the box and grabbed a chocolate chip cookie, biting into it quickly before she could change her mind. Oh, yes! Heaven! Chocolatey-chewy-melty!
Pam swallowed the last bite and wiped the crumbs off of her ledge of a bosom and bulging stomach. Damn. She just couldn’t stop herself. She would have to get rid of that box before she decimated the rest of its contents. She looked around and spied the door to the small reception area. That was it; put it out in reception with her twig-thin assistant. That girl could use a little beefing up. Pam picked up the box and went out to the reception area, seeing Ashley startle and hurriedly slap her iPhone down on the desk, covering it with both hands.
“Here, let’s have these cookies out in reception for guests, okay? Oh, and help yourself!” Pam said, putting the box on the corner of Ashley’s desk.
“Oh…, thanks,” Ashley said, glancing at the box, “but I’m on a whole-foods diet. No white flour or sugar. But thanks for offering!” She smiled brightly at Pam, her teeth perfectly white straight Chiclets.
What was wrong with this kid? No white flour and sugar? “Wow! Good for you!” Pam said, her hand still lingering on the box. She wanted another cookie badly. “Uh, about the call. Did Amy say anything else? About Hannah? I couldn’t get her on the phone.”
“Oh, no, she didn’t. Sorry!”
Then Pam remembered Hannah’s novel. “By the way, did you get a chance to send out that book to Keeley Cohen?”
“Oh, yes, sent it right away. Two days ago.”
Pam nodded and said, “Thank you. That was important.” She almost started to brag about Hannah and stopped herself. She had tried to be friends with her assistant in the past. She would not continue to make that mistake. It made things too nebulous between them, unhinging any power she had and introducing a hyper-emotional element to their work together. Just being boss and employee was so much easier.
Pam removed her hand from the box of cookies, taking one last covetous glance at it, and went into her office. Half of her office was taken up by her desk and chair and the other half by a polished wooden conference table with six chairs pulled up to it, three on each side. On the table, a pile of Hannah’s novels still sat neatly stacked, and next to them, the print-outs from the bestseller list. Pam walked over to the table and picked up a copy of the list, gazing again at Hannah’s name and the title of her book.
The thrill of it, when she saw their Barefoot Baby’s name on it. Sure, Hannah’s book was at the bottom – 148 on USA Today’s list - but it was there. Pam had to keep herself abreast of the lists; publishers were her bread and butter. Two days ago when checking the lists in the morning, she thought her eyes were deceiving her when she saw Hannah’s name. She had blinked, stared, and then whooped. Immediately, she’d printed out twenty copies of the page. At lunchtime, she ran out to the closest Barnes and Noble and bought all six copies of the book that the store had on its shelves. Once back in her office she asked Ashley to send a copy of the novel to Keeley with a note as well as a copy of the bestseller list. The note had read:
Keeley,
Our Barefoot Baby has a bestselling book! It’s a proud day.
I know neither of us has read it, but isn’t it about time? Here’s an extra copy to “get sloppy” with, as Zo says. You know, read it while you eat and get crumbs and smears all over it. That way your original one with Hannah’s John Hancock will stay pristine. That’s what I’m doing. Starting tomorrow, a little bite of Hannah’s book with breakfast every day.
Okay, time to break out the ‘pagne! Give me a call when you get this-
Love you,
Pam
Pam deliberately didn’t mention the review. The whole thing was stupid. Some idiot who didn’t even know them had jumped to foolish conclusions due to the pure genius of their Barefoot Baby’s writing. To Pam, that was the mark of great fiction – you thought it was true. So, Hannah was a great writer! She should be lauded, not accused. It was always that way with genius, though, wasn’t it?
Amy was all for pressing charges, but Pam thought it was better to just ignore it. All a lawsuit would do was give credence to the whole thing. Keeley, though, had reacted as if Hannah had written that poison herself. Wouldn’t even talk to the poor girl. Pam loved Keeley with all her heart – Keeley was their sunny cheerful Pollyanna - but Keeley’s tendency to overreact was legend. There was a thin line in Keeley’s heart. If she loved you and felt loved by you, you were the center of the universe, but if she felt betrayed by you, she could cut you out of her life so completely, you disappeared. Pam hoped and prayed, on her knees twice, that this time would be different. This was, after all, their baby.
She turned her head to look at the framed collage of photos that hung on the wall nearby. Juxtaposed against the many elegant silver-framed photos clustered on surfaces around her office, mostly showing Jacob at various ages, this homemade collage was sloppy and childish looking, the fading photos curling against the glass. But to Pam, it couldn’t be more beautiful. Made by Hannah as a gift to each of her Barefoot godmothers on Mother’s Day when she was ten, it featured photos of them over the years. In the center of Pam’s collage was a photo of Pam holding Hannah when she was a newborn, Pam’s face cuddled up to Hannah’s little red one, Pam’s eyes glistening with the combined tears of joy and grief that had been a constant in those early days. As always, Pam’s eyes tracked over to the other photos, lingering on the one that she loved of Zo and five-year-old Hannah cuddled up in the hammock in their little house and reading a big storybook.
Pam put down the list on the table and straightened the pile. She had to get back to that press release for Expressia. She went to her desk, sat down, and made a to-do list. One, call Keeley. Why hadn’t Keeley called when she got the book and Pam’s note? That was weird. Two, read Hannah’s book already. Actually, she would have to read at least a little of it before calling Keeley. She hadn’t kept her promise about reading the book with breakfast every morning. She wasn’t used to reading books. What Pam loved were newspapers, magazines, and the internet. A book always looked so dense, so intimidating. She wanted her reading bite-size and preferably decorated with colorful photographs.
Pam scribbled out the first list and rewrote it on the lower half of the page with the book at the top. Read a chapter, and then call Keeley. If Keeley didn’t call her first, that is. Pam put down the pen on the notepad and turned back to her keyboard, wiggling her fingers a little and hoping for some magic.