Читать книгу Bestseller - Olivia Goldsmith - Страница 30

20

That’s very nice if they want to publish you, but don’t pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.

—Natalie Goldberg

Judith lay on their bed. Her feet were cold, but it seemed too much trouble to untangle the blanket and cover herself. She had no energy. With great effort, she turned her head to the right so that she could see the electric clock on the night table. It was eleven twenty-five already. Time in the dusty little apartment had a very strange way of going unbearably slowly and then telescoping, so that now, somehow, it was almost time for Daniel’s return.

She had managed to lie here for almost five hours, disturbed only by her own thoughts. The phone hadn’t rung. Since the break with her family, she never heard from them—except for the letter that her mother sent her every month. And she had no real college friends. When she married Daniel, she had had to drop her two college roommates—they’d seemed so young, and Daniel hadn’t liked them. Since then Judith hadn’t replaced Stephanie and Jessica with any of the cold faculty wives or professors. They certainly disapproved of her. Anyway, she had to spend hours alone on the book, so it seemed as if the writing life didn’t make it easy to make friends or to keep them.

While she was writing, Judith had been holed up in her little office room all day without the time to think of herself as lonely. At night she’d been tired, and then she had Daniel’s company. Only now that the writing was finished had she realized how alone she was without the book to keep her company. The days stretched endless and empty before her, a burden rather than a gift. She imagined this was a little bit like postpartum depression. But then didn’t your obstetrician give you pills? Wasn’t there some young mother who told you she’d had this too and what to do about it? Judith felt as if she had given birth to Elthea and the other characters of In Full Knowledge, but there had been no celebration afterward. There was no pink little baby to delight in. Instead, all the labor and pain had yielded nothing but a dead manuscript that Daniel had taken away and that no one seemed to be celebrating.

Judith sighed and turned over. She had meant to get up early this morning and begin to clean the apartment. She had planned to start in the bathroom, but when she had awakened at half past six it was still dark out. Once she did force herself up and had walked across the cold, splintery wooden floor and smelled the mildew in the bathroom, Judith had felt so overwhelmed with despair that she had simply crawled back into bed. There was so much that needed to be cleaned—the windows were coated with dirt, the floors had dustballs and dog hair on them, the window-sills were gritty. Even the sheet she was lying on needed to be changed. Judith rolled over and opened her eyes. The pillowcase under her cheek had old mascara marks and an irregular stain the shape of Australia where she had drooled during the night.

Somehow it seemed the more she rested, the more tired she was, but Judith couldn’t manage to just tell herself to snap out of it. Anyway, what was the point? If she washed the windows, a cold and messy all-day job, they’d only be coated with grime in a day or two. And the bathroom! She could scrub the grout with a toothbrush, and the stains still would reappear. The worn linoleum of the floor didn’t get really clean no matter how much scrubbing she did, and anyway, once Daniel peed and missed the bowl it would just need scrubbing again.

Still, despite her overwhelming fatigue, Judith hadn’t meant to be lying in bed in a dirty nightgown until lunchtime. How had the morning gone by? What was wrong with her? She was frightened, but she didn’t know who to talk to. She felt too guilty to tell Daniel, and anyway he was so wrapped up with his classes and his workshop and his phone calls to agents that he seemed almost unaware of her. Perhaps if they marked the occasion or if he had seemed more excited about the completion of the book … perhaps if there had been some good news about it … But Daniel had told her it was far too early to hear anything. When she had handed In Full Knowledge over to him, Daniel had simply put it in his new briefcase and said that he would read it and think about “a submission plan.” And that had been that.

Judith looked over at the clock: 11:31. Daniel would be home in ten or fifteen minutes. She couldn’t let him see her like this. In a panic, she stood up, dizziness hitting her as she did so. She dragged herself into the bathroom, peed, and realized she didn’t have the time or the energy to shower. She couldn’t think about what to wear. She would pull on her jeans and her sweater from yesterday. She didn’t have the wherewithal to plan another outfit. She went to the sink and washed her face quickly, not bothering to use the facecloth but merely splashing the water on with her hands. She brushed her brown hair back and put an elastic band around it. It was too greasy to let it hang down any other way.

She walked back to the bedroom. She didn’t have time to make the bed now, not if she wanted to have some lunch waiting for Daniel. The apartment was very quiet. Where was Flaubert? Usually he slept with her at the foot of the bed. Now even her dog was avoiding her. Judith walked out of the bedroom and closed the door on the chaos. She would hope that Daniel didn’t open it and her sins could go undiscovered. She promised herself that she’d clean it up this afternoon, before he came back. In the kitchen, and another wave of despair hit her. The bread was out, and the skillet still bore the remains of eggs from Daniel’s breakfast. The sink was filled with the dishes and pots from the dinner of two nights ago, while the pizza box and the paper plates and forks from yesterday’s takeout meal still littered the small table.

Judith looked at the kitchen clock. Ten minutes! Quickly, she gathered up the garbage, but as she tried to fold the pizza box and throw the rest of the trash into the can under the sink, she realized it was already full to overflowing. And then she found there were no more garbage bags. She’d forgotten to get more.

Judith went into her office and found an empty carton under the card table. She hadn’t been in her office in over two weeks—not since she’d finished the book. She looked around for a moment. Though those days had been hard and isolated, they now seemed a golden time compared to this emptiness. She sighed and picked up the box. Then she noticed the dog. Flaubert was lying in the farthest corner, his soft brown eyes sadly watching her, his muzzle pressed into the floor beside his two front paws. “What are you doing here?” she asked. No wonder she had forgotten him. Did Flaubert hate her, too? He’d gone to the corner of the apartment farthest away from her and the bed.

My God, she thought, when was the last time he was walked? No wonder he hated her. Pity for the helpless dog overwhelmed Judith. Had Daniel walked him this morning? She didn’t think so. “Come on, Flo,” she coaxed. But the dog only looked away. What was wrong with him? Was he sick? She approached him and scratched behind his ears, right in the place he liked, but she didn’t get the usual responsive thump of his tail. Well, she didn’t have time to think about it now. She’d fill the carton with trash, put the dog on his leash, run him downstairs for a quick pit stop, and then rush back upstairs to make something for lunch. It would have to be grilled cheese on stale bread, but at least it was better than nothing. Daniel would know she’d tried.

She was dressed and the kitchen would be reasonably neat; these were improvements over Daniel’s return yesterday. She wondered why she could only mobilize herself to do things for the dog or her husband, not herself. But she didn’t have time to think about it now. She filled the carton with the kitchen garbage, called the reluctant Flaubert, and hooked the leash to his collar. Then, balancing the odorous carton in one hand and holding the leash in the other, she walked through the kitchen and into the dark hallway to the door. Her foot descended on something soft, and she nearly slipped. She had to put down the carton and fumble for the lightswitch. She looked down. “Oh, Flaubert!” The dog’s ears went down, and he turned away in shame and trotted back through the kitchen to the cold little office. Daniel hadn’t