My mother once told me that I was too selfish to love. I was thirteen at the time, our argument held across a sticky tablecloth in a Red Lobster. She had planned a trip to my grandmother’s house, one that would correspond with her seventy-first birthday. The trip would have caused a complete disruption of my writing calendar, one I had reviewed with her and posted on the refrigerator door, five weeks earlier. This trip hadn’t been mentioned at that time, and I was convinced it was a spur-of-the-moment idea concocted purely because of a railways promotional flyer received in the mail. I had, up to that point, perfectly followed my writing calendar. I was on schedule to finish what would become my first novel, and a week of disruption would mean the inability to finish it before school started. So I did what any enterprising young Steinbeck would do. I snuck into my mother’s room, fished my train ticket out of her purse, and destroyed it.
She didn’t handle it well. She called me insolent. Spoiled. A brat. She tried to make me feel guilty for not wanting to see my grandmother, for not wanting to spend time with my family. I didn’t understand the obligation I had to a woman whom I’d only seen a handful of times. I didn’t understand the ridiculous expectation that I should love her simply because she birthed my mother. I wasn’t even sure, in that thirteen-year-old mindset, that I loved my own mother.
But I did love Bethany. Even when I screamed and ran away and ignored her—I loved her. I used to look at her and my heart would hurt. It would swell in my chest, and there would be a sudden flare of panic—a sharp prick of vulnerability. In that moment, I would fear losing her. Maybe it’s a normal fear, one that every parent has. Or maybe, it was God’s warning to me, the foreshadowing he was writing into my story.
I should have listened to it. I shouldn’t have swallowed that fear. I should have been the right kind of mother, suppressed my instincts and selfishness, and put her first. I should have kept her a million miles from my mother, held her against me, and never let her go anywhere, do anything.
Keeping her prisoner would have been better than losing her.
On his front porch, the rocker I sit in wobbles, each forward roll creaking over bumpy boards. The blanket around my shoulders is soft, and I relax against it, the mug of hot chocolate cooling in my hands. Before us, there is a stretch of darkness, no fireflies in this space, the moon behind a cloud, the occasional click of nails giving away the dog’s location.
“You tired?” Mark sits on the step, ignoring the other rocker, his shoulders hunched over as he lights a cigar. “It’s been a long day. Gotta be past midnight.”
I am tired. Too tired to even pull back the sleeve of my shirt and check the time. It doesn’t matter. Out here, the chorus of crickets humming—we seem a hundred miles from civilization, in a place where clocks don’t exist, deadlines don’t matter, and basic needs are the only concerns. I can’t imagine sitting on this porch and caring about bestseller ranks and end-cap placements. I’m shocked Mark even knows who I am, or has read my books. It had been easy to picture Marka in an expensive high rise, her fake nails tapping out nasty emails. But I can’t fit Mark into that mold. I can’t see those terrible words coming from this man.
“Your emails to me.” I eye him, watching the muscles of his back as he straightens, setting the lighter to the side and rolling the cigar between his fingers. He turns his head and wisps of smoke frame his profile. “Why did you start emailing me?”
He looks down, and I watch the flex of his jaw as he eyes his cigar. Bringing it to his mouth, he takes a long pull before turning to face me, his face a quiet mix of emotions. “Memphis Bride,” he finally says, one leg crossing over another.
“Excuse me?” My medication makes me loopy, but I am fairly certain a fully rational person wouldn’t be able to follow that answer.
“The name ring a bell?” He raises his eyebrows. “No?” There is a hint of accusation in his tone, and a pool of dread forms in my stomach. I should know this. For some reason, I am failing this test.
“No.”
“It was my first book. My first real book.” He waves a hand toward the house. “Not like all of the trashy crap that paid for this house, or for my wife’s chemo treatments. It was a good book, one that took me three years to write and eighteen rejection letters to recover from before I got a publishing deal. My first publishing deal. It’s a big deal, you know?” he shrugs, and brings the cigar to his lips. “No. You wouldn’t know. You got one right out of the gate, right? I read that article. You had agents and publishers tripping all over your first novel. But not me. It’s not easy to convince editors to read a male-written romance.”
I already regret asking the question. I can see this train wreck, and the place it is leading to. A blurb. Had he requested one?
“I got a twenty-thousand dollar advance on that book. Half at signing, same as our deal.” He smiles at me, but there is no warmth in the gesture. “I quit my job that day. Took Ellen and Maggie out, bought us all steak dinners. Life was good.” He blows out a stream of smoke and the smell of the cigar inches closer, the hint of it stronger in the air. “How’d you celebrate your first advance?”
I don’t answer. I only wait, for what is surely to come. He eyes me, and I don’t move, don’t look away, our dance finally interrupted by a shake of his head, his eyes moving past me and out into the darkness.
“The publisher wanted author blurbs. They reached out to authors with similar books, you had recently published Garden Room. It was a long shot, but you accepted the galley.”
“I’m guessing I didn’t like the book.”
He coughs out a hard laugh. “Oh no, Helena. It’s safe to say you didn’t like the book. I’m surprised you’ve forgotten it, actually.” He glances down, wiping a hand on his sweatpants before looking back out. “You wrote a four-page letter to my editor and were kind enough to CC me on it. You described every flaw in the novel, the root of your opinion being that my writing was flat and without talent. Childish, that was one word you used.” He tilts a head toward the house. “You can read the letter if you’d like. It’s framed in my office, right next to a New York Times list, the first one where I topped you.”
“It wasn’t malicious.” I straighten in my seat. “I was probably trying to help.”
“Help?” He snorts. “You scared my editor so badly she pulled the novel. It was never published, and I never got the rest of that advance. My writing career was done. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers and looks over at me. “That easily. All because Helena Ross didn’t like my book. You were hot shit and I was expendable.”
I should apologize. The path is clear and obvious. But I push my lips together. If I took the time to write a letter, it must have been bad.
“I couldn’t get my job back. Ellen… she worked at a farm up the road, and we limped along and I wrote anything and everything. Publishers weren’t interested in any of it. Then she got sick and I got desperate. I started self-publishing, in a bunch of different genres. Erotica is the one that took off.” He leans forward and spits out, into the darkness. “And Marka Vantly was born.”
I’ve read Marka Vantly’s bio fifty times. It’s all flowers and champagne, a California party girl who stumbled onto publishing success after writing down her steamy exploits on the Beverly Hills dating scene. It doesn’t say anything about a sick wife, or a grizzled cowboy, one who cooks a mean pot of chili but doesn’t clean his baseboards.
I tried to do the math in my head. “How long did your wife… when did she—?”
“It started out ovarian cancer. She fought it four years before it took her. She left us three years ago. Three years and two months.” He probably knows more. He probably knows the days and the hours, the timeframe clicking through his mind. In some ways, I recognize so much of his grief. In other ways, we are completely different.
I stand up. “I’d like to go to bed.”
I am opening the screen door when he speaks.
“You asked why I started to email you.”
I pause, not certain I still want the answer to that question.
“For a long time, I hated you. I emailed you out of that hatred. I wanted you to know who I was. But over the last seven years…” The dog approaches, and he puts out his hand, drawing the animal closer. “You made me a better writer. Knowing that you were reading my novels—that pushed me forward.” He looks over at me. “So, thank you. For responding. I’m sure that you get a lot of mail.”
I shift, and his forgiveness only makes me feel worse. “Okay.”
I nod to him, an attempt at a parting gesture, and then, swinging the door open, I escape inside.