He opened the pantry door and there, instead of the teetery plywood shelves her husband had nailed in, instead of the thin boxes of rice and couscous, instead of the baby’s mixed grain cereal and jars of sweet potatoes, instead of the pasta and beans and cans of soup and the precious bottle of sun-dried tomatoes from Liguria she had splurged on but never wanted to use, was a long, glass-covered counter stocked with two chrome shakers, a strainer, a jar of onions, a jar of pimiento olives, a box of toothpicks, five glass swizzle sticks, and the ice bucket with the silver pine cone sticking up on top. She didn’t have to look any farther to know that below, behind the white cabinet doors, were bottles of vodka, gin, bourbon, and vermouth or that above, upside down on paper towel lining, were her father’s Class of ’62 highballs, the muscular bull fading with all the trips through the dishwasher of her youth.
“I’m glad you’ve got Beefeater,” the man said over his shoulder. “No need to get any fancier than that.”
She watched the sureness of his hands, the love that went into the preparation. She had forgotten, long forgotten, the ritual of it all. She had carefully married a man who, like her, did not drink a drop.
He made his martini. She’d never noticed, as a child, the tenderness between a drinker and his drink. He didn’t grab the bottle by the neck as she remembered, but lifted it with two gentle hands, one at the base and one at the belly. His hands moved delicately from ice to glass, bottle to glass, each gesture a signal of love. As a result, the liquor seemed to shine with a thousand glints and glimmers of gratitude as he carried it, close to his breast, back to his spot on the diaper on the couch. She sat down in the chair opposite him. She didn’t realize until she released the weight onto the armrest what a strain the baby had been on her arms and neck. With her free hand, she reached for the book, saying, only when she had firmly secured it, “May I have a look now?”
“Of course. It’s your book.”
“It’s not mine,” she laughed. “Mine’s not finished. Someone else beat me to the punch.” But there was her name below the title, in a sort of swirly script she didn’t like. The words ADVANCED READER’S COPY ran diagonally across the upper left corner. Was it the first of April? She was conscious of how long it took her sloggy mind to find the month. January. Even if it were April Fools’， this was not in the realm of the sense of humor of anyone she knew. And no one knew about this novel.
She opened the book. On the left-hand side, opposite the title page, which again declared this to be hers, was the copyright date. She gasped.
“What is it?” the man asked between two loving, shut-eyed sips. “Two more years?”
He took in the gestalt of her life—the robe, the boob, the primary-colored plastic items on the floor, the cardboard books with corners chewed off, the bouquet of half-deflated balloons hovering in the corner—and shrugged.
She turned the page. It was dedicated to her mother. Of all people. “The jig’s up now, mister.” It was an odd choice of words for her, and she was reminded of walking with her mother through a parking lot, though she couldn’t say why.
“I suppose you had a reconciliation.”
“No chance of that. She’s dead.”
“But not beyond the reach of forgiveness.”
She slammed the book shut, though its flimsy galley covers did not give her the effect she wanted. “Who sent you? What is this about?” She wondered if he was, after all, a religious fanatic, one of those Mormons wanting to do a little hocus-pocus on all of her ancestors.
“As I said, if you have the time, I’d like to discuss your work.”
“Why should I discuss my work with you? You’ve never read it. No one’s ever read it.”
“No one?” he asked, doctorly, humoring her delusion.
“No. I keep it locked up.” She’d read a part of her first novel to her husband soon after they’d met, when she could have read him cereal boxes and he’d have thought she was a genius. After all his praise, she hadn’t been able to write another word of it. She was careful not to read him any of the second one, but he’d stolen glances and eventually a turn of phrase had leaked out of him, something about nests of snow in the trees. He tried to placate her with compliments, threatened to publish both books himself if she wouldn’t try, but she hid them in the basement, bought a box with a key, and never told him she’d begun a third.
“It would have been a waste of time for me to come here without having read your work.”