The Body Of Jonah Boyd - By David Leavitt Page 0,49

I wrote most of Ernest’ books), praised—when she is praised—only for such stalwart attributes as efficiency, reliability, and maternal understanding, she goes through her career generally unthanked except in a photocopying crisis, very occasionally mentioned in the fourth paragraph of a long acknowledgments page, never the object of a book dedication, never named in the memoirs, never left anything in the will. Do not assume, though, that just because she is invisible, she is anyone’ fool. On the contrary, either because her employer confides in her, or because she is his mistress, or because, as part of her daily routine, she books his plane tickets and files his credit card bills and takes his messages, she often ends up knowing more about him than anyone else does, even his wife. Even the word secretary contains a secret. Trustworthiness is her watchword. Still, there is in her one allegiance that supersedes even that which she pledges, implicitly, to her boss, and for the sake of which, if necessary, she would betray him. And that is her allegiance to other secretaries.

After I read The Sky, I didn’t know what to do. My first thought was that Ben must have stolen Jonah Boyd’ notebooks, finished the novel they contained, and published it as his own. Yet how could I be sure of this? Three decades had passed since that Thanksgiving, and my memory of Boyd’ reading was hazy. It was equally possible that Ben had stolen only the first chapter of the novel—the only part with which I was familiar—or that he had stolen just the idea, the germ of Gonesse, and the first line. But if that were the case, wouldn’t someone have noticed? Boyd must have read aloud from the manuscript to others besides us. And Anne certainly would have seen—assuming Anne was still alive. A quick call to directory assistance in Bradford yielded no listing under her name. What was her maiden name, then? Or had she remarried?

We secretaries can always recognize each other, even over the phone. Something in the lilt of the “hello,” a certain crispness of tone when picking up . . . I heard it immediately in the voice of Marjorie Armstrong, Clifford Armstrong’ second wife, when I called to ask if he might have any information as to his first wife’ whereabouts. “Armstrong residence,” she said, and somehow at that moment I knew not only that she had once been a secretary, but that she had been his secretary, and that he had married her after Anne had left him.

That morning Marjorie and I talked for more than an hour. As soon as she realized that I, too, was a secretary, she dropped her veneer of implacability and became intimate, confiding. She told me that Clifford had Parkinson’ disease, and could no longer speak. She told me that of course she remembered Anne, and had even liked her, sort of—Anne, whose tie-dyed skirts and hennaed hair had implied possibilities of liberation never before considered by the women of Bradford. She told me that the coffin factory had of late been made over into a sort of arts and crafts mall with a cafe where you could get the best pecan chicken salad. In fact, the only thing she didn’t tell me—because she couldn’t—was what had become of Anne. Although she recalled that after Boyd’ death, Anne had remarried—an engineering professor, Marjorie thought—beyond that, the trail went cold. She’d stopped seeing Anne in the supermarket. She’d stopped thinking about Anne, who was, after all, not a secretary.

It didn’t matter. I was on the scent. Marjorie gave me the number of her friend Pat, who, like me, was retired, but had for many years been secretary to the chair of Bradford’ engineering department. I called Pat, and she told me that she, too, remembered Anne, who had married Bruce Ridge, an expert in highway cloverleaf design. A few years after the marriage, Bruce had been wooed away from Bradford with an offer to be chair of the engineering department at the University of Kansas. At Kansas, I spoke to Loretta, who said that yes, the Ridges had lived in Lawrence in the mid-eighties, but that after a few years the midwestern winters had gotten to be too much for them. So Bruce had taken early retirement, and they’d moved to Florida. Tarpon Springs. This was in 1989. Loretta gave me a number in Tarpon Springs, which I called. A woman answered.

“May I speak to Anne Ridge?” I