Chapter 6 Mute Swan #8
I took a few steps before I turned back briskly and said, “So okay! Back to business! Can you persuade Felicity to see me?”
But he was already gone.
Distracted, I nearly got lost driving back to my sister’s.
Not even bothering to change or shower, I stuffed some clothing into the first thing I found, a reusable grocery bag.
I got into my car. I got lost finding the entrance to the highway and found myself near Sam’s house again.
Should I go back? No, I couldn’t go back.
I turned around near the gates of the zoo, where those well-housed but unhomed lions longed for the veldt they’d never seen.
I wanted out of this story. Once I honestly believed that Felicity’s connection with me would be my best advantage. Now I
was part not only of Felicity’s life but also of Sam’s life, which made me part of this case, and it wasn’t better—it was
awful. Never had I doubted my ability to drive my way to the beating heart of a tale. Now I longed to consider the kind of
weighty questions I used to consider, like were sunglasses a fashion statement or a quasi-medical device? Were garter belts
sexy or slavish? Why did I cast myself into a stew of sex and strippers, plots and poisons? I was worn-out by the prospect
of trying to pull all of it together and the trial hadn’t even started.
In that moment, then, as if I’d opened a box like Pandora, all my wishes came true. And just as in that myth, they were all
bad. The phone went. My editor. I put her on speaker.
“So are you close to finishing your story?” she asked, adding then, “It’s Ivy.”
“I somehow guessed that.”
“So have you finished it? Can I have a look?”
“Ivy, the trial hasn’t even started. It’ll be weeks. You knew this.”
“So much for swift justice.”
“It’s not as though I’ve been eating bonbons. I’ve had to do a ton of background research and I still have more to . . .”
“Well, I need you to take a break and go do this little thing about a vintage Kate Spade event, sort of a handbag swap meet, collectors, nostalgia, all that. You know, the rise and fall and rise of a brand.” Ivy chatted on, about how the cool purse right now was SeeSawSo.
I hated SeeSawSo clothing, with its stingy little shapes and models who looked like heroin addicts.
But Selena Gomez had gone boldly against trend, spotted just recently carrying a Kate Spade bag.
“This is the sort of thing that’s right in your wheelhouse.
I want you to write about how the sales and prices spiked after Kate Spade’s suicide. ”
“That’s hideous,” I told Ivy. “No.”
She didn’t even acknowledge that. Tears welled up in my eyes. How long would the trial be postponed? A week? More? I had no
right to refuse. I asked Ivy, “When is this?”
“Tomorrow,” Ivy said, “near Milwaukee.” I thought, Milwaukee? “Just nose around for a little featurette, not about this event per se but about these kinds of fashion swap meets.” Ivy
pleaded to my better nature. “Nobody writes about this stuff like you do,” she said, meaning this as a compliment. Instead,
Ivy transformed the handbag swap meet into an objective correlative for my career. My greatest contribution to arts and letters
would be my paeans to purses, my deft analysis of how the new geometrics and the influence of the young royals were pushing
boho bags off the shelf in favor of sharply structured pocketbooks.
For you will surely get it, I thought.
“I can’t,” I told Ivy. “What I’m writing about here is life or death and the trial starts . . . tomorrow.” This was a big
gamble. Felicity’s strange case had spread all over the place; Ivy was so delighted by that it bordered on cold-blooded. She
could easily turn on her TV and spot the lie. As insurance, I added, “Unless it’s delayed.” Ivy did not reply, an ominous
sign.
“Reenie,” she said. Using my name was another ominous sign. “I want you to just pop in at this swap meet. It’ll take you a
couple of hours at most. See what people are saying about the brand. Then fill in a little history. Five hundred words.” She
added, “I’m not pulling you off your magnum opus.”
I knew when I was beat.
Later that day, back at my parents’ house, I observed that my mother had made herself hours late for work to give me breakfast, as if I were a child.
Well, I was her child. She asked me if she should work from home.
I said not to bother, as all she would be doing was watching me alternate between sleeping and crying.
“This friend?” she said. “Is he or she making you happy? Because you don’t look happy.”
“I think I’m in love.”
“That would explain not looking happy.”
“I think it’s already over.”
“Even more so. Don’t you have too many irons in the fire to start up a love affair?”
“You don’t get to pick the time that’s convenient, Mom.”
“Probably best, though, given the circumstances and suitability of the person.”
“I didn’t fall in love with an unsuitable person.”
“Felicity’s defense lawyer?” my mother said, adding, “Hmm.”
How did she know that? How on earth did she know that, then? I didn’t know then and I still don’t know. But what I said was
nothing. Fully Mirandized, I struggled upward to my childhood room, where, yet once more, I started to cry.