Once in a Lifetime (14 page)

"I'm going out of town. ..." She didn't want to have lunch, but she also knew that she would be back on Sunday. "All right. Where?" Allison had warned Iris that Daphne wasn't easy, that she had been traumatized by her husband's and daughter's deaths years before, and she had a son who was in an "institution" and she had never really recovered. Allison had always assumed that Andrew's being deaf meant he wasn't mentally quite "normal."

"Le Cygne at one o'clock?"

"I'll be there."

"Good. And Daphne?"

"Yes?"

"Congratulations."

She sat down on the bed after the call, her knees weak, her heart pounding. They liked her book ... the book she had written for John ... it was an amazing thought. More amazing yet if a publisher bought it.

Thanksgiving dinner with Andrew was its own special kind of joy, but that night, in her bed at the Austrian Inn, she lay awake and her mind roamed nervously from place to place. It was difficult to forget that a year before, John had picked her up on a dark country road, and their life had begun, and now, only one year later, it was over. She had another holiday to hate now. Thanksgiving as well as Christmas. And she knew that this year Andrew had felt it too. Often she saw him looking dreamy, and once or twice with a wistful look in his eyes, he signed to her about John. They both had a lot of memories to live with. Too many, she thought to herself as she carefully avoided walking past their cabin. But she couldn't allow herself to think of John now, she had Andrew to think of, and his progress at the school.

When she left Andrew, this time it wasn't particularly traumatic. She was coming again during Christmas vacation.

She took a solitary walk in the hills where she had scattered John's ashes before she drove home. And she found herself speaking aloud to him, knowing that no one would hear her. She told him about the book and about Andrew, and then looking deep into the woods and up into the winter sky, she whispered, "I sure miss you." She could feel the echo of his thoughts and knew that he missed her, too. Perhaps, in a way, she was lucky to have loved him. Maybe that was all there was to know when it was over.

She got back in her car and drove to New York, and that night she fell into bed, exhausted. And the next day she got up and dressed in a white wool dress and heavy black coat and boots. It was freezing cold, and it seemed a thousand years since she had gone to one of those lunches. Now it seemed very strange to her to be meeting some woman to discuss her book. She remembered authors' lunches from Collins, but the funny thing now was that she was the author.

"Daphne? I'm Iris McCarthy." The agent was redheaded and sleek, and a collection of elegant rings glittered on her well-manicured hands as they moved toward their table.

They spent the entire luncheon discussing her book, and over coffee and chocolate mousse Daphne began to talk about an idea she had for a second one. It was an idea she had discussed with John, and he had loved it. Iris did too, and Daphne smiled with pleasure. It was almost as though she could hear John whisper in her ear, "That's it, little one ... you can do it." By the end of lunch they had settled on titles for both books, and Daphne was delighted. The first was Autumn Years, the one she had written in New Hampshire, about a woman who loses her husband at forty-five, and how she survives it. It was a subject she knew well, and Iris assured her that there would be a "tremendous market for it." The second was to be called simply Agatha, a story of a young woman in Paris after the war. It was a story she had written originally as a short story, but it had wanted to grow and now she would let it. She promised to get to work on an outline right away, and then to discuss it with Iris. And by that afternoon she was sitting at her desk staring at a blank sheet of paper. And when the ideas for the book began to come, she let them. By midnight that night she had the beginnings of a very solid outline and by the time she returned from her Christmas holiday with Andrew, it was not only finished but well polished. The outline was delivered to Iris in her office, and she gave Daphne the green light. For the next three months Daphne hid out in her apartment and worked night and day. It was not an easy book to write but she loved it. She was often so engrossed that she didn't even bother to answer the phone, but when it rang one day in April, she stood up and stretched with a groan and went to the kitchen to answer it.

"Daphne?"

"Yes." No, Dracula, she was always tempted to answer. Who else would answer the phone? The upstairs maid in a two-room apartment? It was Iris.

"I have some news for you." But Daphne was too tired to pay much attention. She had worked on the book until 4 A.M. the night before and she was exhausted. "We just had a call from Harbor and Jones."

"And?" Suddenly Daphne's heart began to race. In the past four months it had all begun to matter. For her sake, for John's, for Andrew's. She wanted it to happen, and it seemed as though it was taking a very long time. But Iris assured her that four months was nothing. "Did they like it?"

"You could say that." At her end, Iris was smiling. "I'd say that an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars means they like it." Daphne stood in her kitchen with her mouth open, staring at the phone.

"Do you mean it?"

"Of course I mean it."

"Oh, my God ... oh, my God! Iris!" Her face broke into a grin and she stared into the spring sunshine outside her kitchen window. "Iris! Iris! Iris!" It had happened after all, John had been right. She could do it! "Now what do I do?"

"You have lunch with your editor on Tuesday. At the Four Seasons. You've moved up in the world, Mrs. Fields."

"I sure as hell have." She was almost thirty-one years old and she was about to publish her first book, and have lunch with an editor at the Four Seasons. Now that was a lunch she wouldn't miss for the world. And she didn't. She arrived on schedule at noon on Tuesday, in a new pink Chanel suit she had bought for the occasion. The editor was a dragonlike woman with a carnivorous smile, but by the end of the lunch Daphne knew they would work well together, and that she would learn a great deal from her. She began discussing her second book, as they sat at a table next to the pool in the center of the white marble room with waiters scurrying around them. The editor from Harbor and Jones asked If she could see what Daphne had of the new book. A month later there was a second offer, and when she finished the book in late July, she went up to New Hampshire to spend a month with Andrew.

Her first book came out that Christmas, dedicated to John, and it enjoyed a modest success, but it was the second one that made her. It came out the following spring, and it hit The New York Times list almost at once. And the paperback rights sold for one hundred thousand dollars.

"How does it feel to be a success, Daff?" Allie took a maternal pride in her progress, and had invited her to lunch for her thirty-second birthday. "Hell, I should make you pay for lunch." But it was obvious that she didn't begrudge her what had happened. It had brought her back to the land of the living in a way Allison had never dreamed, and all of those who knew what she had been through in her life were thrilled for her. "What are you working on now?" Her third book was well under way, already bought by Harbor and Jones before it was even finished, and scheduled for the following summer.

"Something called Heartbeat."

"I like the title."

"I hope you like the book."

"I will, and so will all your readers." Allie never doubted her for a moment.

"I'm a little nervous about this one. They're going to make me go on the road to promote it."

"It's about time."

"I'm glad you think so. What in hell do I talk about on talk shows in Cleveland?" Daphne still looked terribly young, and a little bit shy, and the prospect of television made her very nervous.

"Tell them about you. That's what people want to know. They always ask me."

"And what do you say?" Allison stalled just long enough for Daphne to know the truth. "That I've had a tragic life? That's exactly what I don't want to tell them."

"So tell them how you write your books, all that kind of stuff." She giggled then. "Tell them who you're dating." Daphne had looked so well for the past two years that she assumed there were a host of escorts. What she didn't know was that there had been no one in Daphne's life for two years, not since John died. And she was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she was going to keep it that way, for good. She couldn't have faced another loss, and she didn't plan to. "Who is the man in your life, by the way?"

Daphne smiled. "Andrew."

"How is he?" But Allie was never really very interested. She liked grown-ups and careers and successful people. She had never married, and she didn't particularly like children.

"He's fine. Enormous and beautiful, and very, very busy."

"He's still at the school?"

"He will be for a while." Something sad came into Daphne's eyes, and Allison was sorry she had asked. "I'm hoping that in a couple of years I can bring him home."

"Is that a good idea?" Allison looked shocked. She still thought he was crazy. But Daphne knew that about her friend and didn't hold it against her.

"We'll see. There are conflicting theories on the subject. I'd like to put him in a regular school here at home, whenever he's ready."

"Won't that interfere with your work?" Allison would never understand and Daphne knew it. How could a child she loved interfere with her work? Daphne knew that it could only enhance it. And it might complicate things a little, but it was a complication she longed for. "Well, tell me about the tour. Where are you going?"

"I don't know yet. The Midwest, California, Boston, Washington, D.C. The usual insanity from what everyone tells me. Twenty cities in as many days, no sleep, no meals, and the terror that you won't remember where you are when you wake up in the morning."

"Sounds great to me."

"It would. To me, it sounds like a nightmare." She still longed for the life she had once had in the cabin in New Hampshire, but that was long gone now, and it would never come again. She was thinking of buying an apartment in the East Sixties.

And after lunch she went home to work on the new book, as she did every day, every night, every hour that she wasn't visiting Andrew. She had found something to fill the void. A fantasy life conducted on paper, filled with people who lived and died in her head, and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers, and millions in paperback. There was nothing in her life except her work, but it paid off. Just before her thirty-third birthday, Daphne Fields's book Apache made it to the number one spot on The New York Times Best Seller List. She had made it.

"How is she?" Barbara's eyes looked wearily at the nurse as she checked all the monitors again, but it was useless asking. There was obviously no change. It was incredible to think of her lying here, so still, so lifeless, so devoid of the energy she had so richly shared with those who needed her. Barbara knew better than anyone what mountains she was capable of moving. She had moved them for Andrew, and for herself, and for Barbara, over the years.

As the nurse left the room again Barbara closed her eyes for a minute, thinking back to the beginning, and the first time she had seen her, when Barbara was still living with her mother in those long-gone nightmare days. She had gone out to buy groceries, and had returned, exhausted and breathless after the long hike up the stairs to their dismal, dingy West Side apartment where Barbara had been trapped with her invalid mother for years.

Daphne had found her through her agent, who knew that Barbara took in typing at home, to supplement her meager secretarial income, and also secretly to give herself an escape from the life she hated so desperately and the realities she almost couldn't bear. But the manuscripts added a touch of whimsy, a glimpse into other worlds, even if they were a lot of work.

Barbara had staggered through the door with groceries in both arms, assaulted as always by the smell of cabbage and decaying flesh. And there sat Daphne, serious, quiet, nicely dressed, and something about her so fresh. Looking at her was, for Barbara, like opening a window and taking gulps of clean air. The women's eyes met almost instantly, and Barbara blushed. No one ever came here, she always went to the literary agency herself to pick up the work.

Barbara had been about to speak to Daphne as she heard the familiar plaintive wail. "Did you buy me rice?" Barbara felt a sudden urge to scream as Daphne watched her, taking it all in. "You always get the wrong kind." Her mother's voice was, as usual, hideous and whiny, always angry and shrill.

"Yes, I got rice. Now, Mother, why don't you go inside and lie down while I--"

"What about coffee?"

"I got it." The old woman began to dig through the two bags, making small clucking sounds, and Barbara's hands shook as she took off her jacket. "Mother, please...." She looked apologetically at Daphne, who smiled, trying not to let the scene unnerve her. But there was something claustrophobic about just being there. She felt trapped just watching Barbara and her mother. Eventually the old woman had gone to a back room, and Daphne had been able to explain what she wanted. The manuscript had come back to her in two weeks, perfectly typed, without a single error. And Daphne said that she thought it remarkable that she had gotten it done at all with the old woman undoubtedly driving her crazy. It seemed like a ghastly life to her, and she wondered why Barbara had chosen to live with her mother.

She had brought her more work to do after that, typing rewrites and rough drafts and an occasional outline, and in time she had asked Barbara to come to her apartment and work with her there. And it was then that Barbara finally poured out her story. Her father had died when she was nine, and her mother had struggled to support her, put her through the best possible schools, and eventually helped put her through college. Barbara had gone to Smith, and had graduated with honors, but by then her mother had had a stroke and could no longer help her. Now it was Barbara's turn to struggle to support her, for two years the woman had been destitute. Barbara took a job as a secretary to two attorneys, and at night she nursed her mother. There wasn't time for much else, and she told Daphne that she had been perennially exhausted. The romance that she'd had in college fell away, the young man couldn't stand the demands of her life, and when he proposed she tearfully refused to leave her mother. They couldn't afford to put her in a home, and her mother begged her not to. She just couldn't leave her, not after the years Eleanor Jarvis had spent standing on her feet night and day, working two jobs to put Barbara through school. The debt had to be repaid, and her mother constantly reminded her of it. "After all I did, you would leave me...." She accused and she whined and she laid all the guilt at Barbara's feet. Barbara had no intention of leaving her. She simply couldn't. She spent two years nursing her mother back to health and working in the law firm. It was at the end of those two years that her boss left his wife and began to court Barbara. He knew about the life she led, and he felt very sorry for her. She was a bright girl with a good mind, and it irked him to see her waste her life. At twenty-five she was beginning to look and act and sound like an old woman.