Chapter 14 $ #3
“I know that, and you know that,” Jeff said. “Next, she wants to know, why is it so harsh?”
“Because they were living in the shtetl in poverty.”
“Yeah, but she says she wants the tone to be more cozy.”
“Cozy?” Steve glanced at Andrea in the kitchen. “This is supposed to be nonfiction.”
“I’m just talking about tone. She wants it sweet and cozy.”
“Like sepia-toned, rose-colored glasses?”
“Exactly.”
“Nonfiction, but not real either?”
“Bingo.”
“Who is this person?”
“She’s the author,” Jeff said, “and this is what she wants.”
How incredibly simple, Steve thought. How straightforward. No need for criticism. No need for theory. The author has knowable intentions in case you’re wondering. But then he thought, What about me? “I gave it my best shot,” he told Jeff.
“Hey, this isn’t the end!” Jeff said. “This is just the beginning!”
“You want me to rework this?”
“It’s just tone,” said Jeff. “It’s rounding a few edges.”
“What I did was good,” Steve declared.
“No question,” Jeff said. “But I don’t have to tell you—there are a million ways to write a story.”
—
Steve lay on the living room rug for his gentle back exercises. He lifted one leg just a few inches. Then the other.
“What did you decide?” Andrea was gazing down at him.
“You heard what I told him.”
“You’ll think about it?” Her eyes looked bigger from this perspective.
“I’ll find something else. I’ll contact Charlotte and ask how to make it in photography.”
“Don’t be that way,” said Andrea.
“Don’t look down on me.”
“Fine!” She backed off, hurt.
Immediately, he sat up. “It was a joke!”
“You know what?” she said.
“Yes,” he told her. “I know. I know. I know.” Because he was not funny.
He was not positive. His jokes sucked, as the kids would say.
And in fact, he missed the kids, his sons so big and loud with muddy cleats.
Unlike his mother, Steve liked boys—okay, he liked his own.
Without them his house was deathly quiet.
He could hear his line of credit dwindling.
“There are lots of things you can do,” said Andrea.
“I know.” Steve stood up gingerly.
—
He drove to Joe’s, which was an excellent bar, and he found a nice table and set up his laptop and ordered a Rob Roy. “L’chaim.” He toasted Sir Walter, drank up, and ordered another as he started typing.
“Mama, mama,” cried little Feygeleh, “I see horses.”
“What horses? Let me see!” Mama held Feygeleh tight and together they looked out the small window of their little house.
The horses were black. The men were tall and grim. The Tsar’s Cossacks! They were riding through the village!
“Oy veyismere, what will we do?” Mama whispered. “Here we are all alone while Papa and your brothers are at shul.”
The horses passed the house and swept through the village like the wind. Suddenly they were gone. “Thank God,” Mama said, but Feygeleh was still frightened. “Don’t cry, little one,” Mama said. “We will clean the house and make our Shabbos meal and tonight we will have white bread!”
Now Mama took out her big broom and Feygeleh took out her little broom and together they swept the floor.
Then Mama took out her big bowl and Feygeleh took out her little bowl and together they kneaded challah.
They braided a big loaf for Mama and a little loaf for Feygeleh.
Soon the house was filled with the scent of baking bread.
“Can I get you something else?” asked Steve’s server, Jayden.
“Absolutely,” Steve said.
“You’re workin’ it,” Jayden observed.
“I’m in a state of flow.”
Steve wrote until the bar closed, and then he drove carefully to his own cozy house.
The lights were off. Andrea had gone to sleep, but she had cleaned the kitchen.
He sat at the table and reread his work and wrote even more.
He wrote about a big pot of cabbage soup.
He wrote about the Shabbos candles shining.
They were shining on all the faces of the family.
Papa and Mama and all the brothers and little Feygeleh.
They shone in the window, and they shone on falling snow.
Toward dawn, the kitchen light flicked on, and he saw Andrea standing in the doorway. “Steve?” She was wearing her pajamas and her thick robe covered with stars.
“I’m a genius,” he told her. “I am Laura Ingalls Wilder and Fiddler on the Roof and Dubliners and Joan Nathan rolled into one.” He held up a cookbook Andrea’s mom had given them years ago. It was called The Children’s Jewish Holiday Kitchen.
“Listen.” Andrea sat next to him. “This isn’t worth it. This is not the job for you.”
“I was born for this job.” Steve pushed his laptop toward her.
She sat huddled in her robe, and she began to read. “Oh gosh,” she said.
“What? Doesn’t it scream rose-colored sepia glasses?”
She just shook her head at him. “I mean you can’t send it, but…”
“I already did.”
And the strange thing was he did not regret it, not even in the cold light of morning.
He felt creative. He felt free. He loved his shtetl family.
Their rosy cheeks, their flickering candles.
Their warmth and their dirt floors. He loved protecting them from the Tsar’s army.
He was the writer, after all. He could do that, even if history did not.
Was it art? Not at all. Was it satisfying?
Totally. It was like assembling an entire breakfront with an Allen wrench.
However, he did not hear from Jeff all day, or the next day either.
Two more days passed, and Steve began to understand something.
The author might not find his work so charming.
She might detect the tiniest bit of fakery and mania and drunkenness.
Mockery! Clearly, this was the one thing you could not do.
This was the unspoken rule. You had to take your author seriously.
He wrote to Jeff—just checking in! No answer. He wrote again. You know, Jeff, I don’t have time to write entire books on spec. If this is how you treat your so-called writers—but he did not send that one.
Five full days passed. Andrea said, “Look, it’s a blessing in disguise.”
Steve called Charlotte to explore new options. “I’m ready to think out of the box,” he said.
“Teaching?” she asked delicately.
“Bring it on.”
“Even though you hate kids?”
“I don’t hate them.”
A moment of surprised silence. “Really?”
“It’s adults I hate. It’s just humanity.”
“Okay cool!” said Charlotte. “I’ll set you up with Emily.”
“Another Bronte?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“She does the private high schools,” Charlotte said.
“Only private?”
“I mean you’d have to get certified to apply to public. It’s not too late to look into that!”
“Nah,” said Steve. “I want to start.” He would teach American literature.
He would take the veil, retreating to the classroom, which was practically the only place you could talk about poetry.
Did he really like kids apart from his own?
No. But maybe he would change a life or two.
Maybe he would be the one his students looked back upon.
Strict but fair. Tough but kind. Super smart (a little tragic).
Weren’t the best a little bit forbidding?
He remembered his own English teacher, Mr. Spector, who had written his master’s thesis on the works of Thomas Hardy. Maybe Steve would wear a tie.
“I’m doing it,” he told Andrea that night.
“You’d have to coach something,” she said doubtfully. “They always make you do an extracurricular at these prep schools.”
“Literary magazine.”
“And you’d have to be…”
“Sensitive? Politically correct? What are you talking about?” said Steve, who had edited the Hillier-Nelson anthology of essays by women of color. “Diversity’s my middle name.”
He slept well and woke refreshed. Even as his coffee brewed, he sat at the table to rework his resume—and that was when he saw Jeff’s message with two attachments.
One was a contract. The other was a 352-page document titled GRANDMA FEYGELEH A MEMOIR.
Steve! Sorry about the delay! Author had cataract surgery, but we are good to go!
“Jeff?” Steve said when he reached his old friend on the phone.
“Hey!”
“I assumed when I didn’t hear from you—”
“No, no, no. I’m sorry this took so long! I’m totally behind.”
“She liked it?”
“Loved. She is ecstatic. It’s exactly what she was dreaming of.”
“I’m not sure I can keep this shit up for three hundred pages.”
“You’re too modest,” Jeff said.
“Listen, I’m starting a full-time job soon,” Steve said.
“Not a problem! We are totally flexible. That’s the beauty of this line of work.”
Steve gazed at his computer with both memoir and contract on his screen. The book contract was for almost as much as his car repair. “I don’t think I can commit just now.”
“Take your time,” said Jeff. “Just take a day or two! Meanwhile, I’ll put you in touch with Ruth.”
“Who’s Ruth?”
“Your author. She’s delightful. She’s eighty-six and smart as hell.”
“I just don’t know if I can spread myself so thin,” said Steve. What he meant by that was, Oy vey, how are you suggesting such a paltry sum of money for this kind of aggravation?
But Jeff did not take the hint. “It doesn’t have to be either or.”
“Well,” Steve countered.
“It can be both and.”
“Never say die,” Steve said.
“Exactly. And here’s the thing to remember. There’s a lot more where this came from.”
The waves, Steve thought. The stories rolling endlessly.
He should be fixing Subarus. He should have gone into insurance like his brother—but no, he had become a poet, contemplating other kinds of loss. Was that a problem? No! he told himself. Come on! He could be a poet still. Nobody was stopping him. Nothing was getting in his way.