they sat on the lounge chairs on the deck, and she looked serious when she did.
“I read your manuscript,” she said, and then fell silent for a minute. It sounded like a drum roll to Liz. She dreaded what was coming next.
“And? What did you think?”
“Honestly?” Sarah hesitated for only a fraction of a second. “I hate to say it, but I don’t get it. It’s a children’s book, a fantasy. But kids don’t read books like that. There’s nothing real or allegorical about it. I don’t think there is anything to it that anyone will want to read.” She looked apologetic as she said it, but she was very clear.
Liz nodded, trying to fight back tears. She didn’t want Sarah to see how hurt she was. “It came straight from my heart. I was hoping it was good. It just went in a whole different direction than I usually go, and I couldn’t tell.” Now she knew. She had struck out again.
“You need to go back to what you did before,” Sarah said in her professor’s voice. It had the sound of total authority. It was the same voice that now and then reduced a student to rubble. What she said sounded written in stone. “Some of your early short stories are really good. This just isn’t. I’d like to tell you that it is, but I really can’t. You’ll embarrass yourself if you try to sell it. Your agent will throw it back at you. The concept is interesting, but the story doesn’t work. It’s like a parody of Alice in Wonderland, and the reader can’t tell if you’re kidding or nuts.”
“Nuts, I guess,” Liz said in a flat voice as Sarah handed it back to her, and at that exact moment Olivia looked up from her computer and saw her daughter’s face, and knew what had happened. She couldn’t hear what Sarah had said, but Liz looked devastated as she shoved the manuscript to the bottom of her bag as though it were a garbage can, where her manuscript belonged. It made Olivia’s heart ache seeing Liz’s face. She wanted to take her in her arms and kiss it better. Instead, she bided her time, finished her e-mails, and waited until Liz walked past her on the way to her cabin. She was going to hide the manuscript in a drawer, and destroy it when she got home. Olivia stopped her as she walked by, and patted the seat beside her.
“Can we talk for a minute?” Olivia asked her gently, and Liz smiled, with her mouth, not her eyes. Her eyes said she was devastated, and she tried to look cheerful for her mother. She didn’t want her to know how upset she was. Olivia knew her better, she was her child after all, whether she’d been an absentee mom or not. She wasn’t blind to who they were or what mattered to them.
“Sure, Mom. What about? Something wrong? Granibelle okay?”
“She’s fine. I talked to her last night. Some ninety-year-old guy moved into the apartment next to hers and she thinks he’s cute. You never know.” They both laughed at the report. But she was still beautiful and full of life, even at ninety-five. “I’m not sure exactly what Sarah said to you, but I can guess. I just saw her hand your manuscript back to you, and I want you to remember something. Sarah is a major, major intellectual snob. She’s steeped in academia, and whatever she’s published probably sold six copies to her friends. She has absolutely no idea what would sell commercially. I don’t want you to take whatever she said to heart. Show it to someone else, like your agent.”
“She said it wasn’t good enough to even show him and I would embarrass myself if I did. It’s just another one of my endless flops. Don’t worry about it, Mom.”
“I do worry about it. This is about you. I love you, but I just have an instinct here that she’s wrong. I love Louis XV furniture, and no one loves antiques more than I do. I don’t sell antiques, I sell the most commercial low-priced stuff there is, and it sells like hotcakes and has for fifty years. I’m not telling you that what you wrote is Louis XV, but that’s all Sarah knows. You may have written a terrific piece of commercial art that could be a major best seller. Sarah wouldn’t recognize that if it bit her on the ass.” Liz