Jane Bites Back_ A Novel - Michael Thomas Ford [54]
All of my love,
Byron’s signature was scrawled across the bottom of the page. Jane read through the note one more time, then crumpled it up and threw it into the trash. Only one battle, she thought. Who does he think he is, Charles de Gaulle?
Chapter 19
What kind of writer did she want to be? She had never considered the question. Now that it had been asked, she found that what she wanted was to tell the stories of women. Not women whose primary interest in life was marriage, but women like herself who wanted more than just a husband.
—Jane Austen, Constance, manuscript
WINTER GAVE WAY TO SPRING, AND EVENTUALLY JANE STOPPED looking for Byron everywhere she went. She still did not tell Walter about herself, and after nagging her for weeks about it Lucy stopped, but mostly because she had something else to torment Jane about. The announcement of the publication of Constance appeared in Publishers Weekly the first week of March, with a full-page ad trumpeting it as “the must-read book of summer.” The cover was featured prominently, along with a photograph of Jane, which against her objections Nick Trilling had insisted they use. There were several flattering blurbs, and a box at the bottom announced a fifty-thousand-copy first printing.
“When were you going to mention this?” Lucy asked Jane the day the magazine arrived. “When I opened the box of books?”
Since then life had been a whirlwind. First the galleys arrived and Jane spent two weeks going over them. Several times she’d called Kelly in tears because she was convinced the novel was dreadful and should never be published. Each time he’d talked her down, assuring her that it was a very good book. After that had been the unpleasantness of the author photo, which Walter had taken with his digital camera and which Jane thought made her look like a woman who spent all her time knitting scarves and doing acrostics. Nick had proclaimed it just the thing, which did nothing to allay her fears.
There was a lull from March until the middle of April, when the first reviews began to appear. That was when people other than Lucy and Walter began to realize that there was an author in their midst. Soon Jane was something of a minor celebrity in town and could walk no more than a few blocks without someone stopping her to congratulate her on her first book. She quickly adopted a standard response (“That’s so kind of you”) and perfected the art of appearing thankful yet busy (“I’d love to chat, but I must get to the bank before it closes. Yes, we’ll probably have a party when it comes out”).
“If I’d known how exhausting this would be, I never would have sent the manuscript in,” Jane complained to Walter one evening after dinner at her house. “Having to be relentlessly cheerful is making my face cramp.” She massaged her cheeks and sighed.
“It’s the price you have to pay for literary stardom,” Walter joked.
Jane began to say something about how things had been easier when her books were published anonymously, but caught herself in time. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember what she could and could not say, and to whom. She had begun to cherish the freedom she felt when she was talking to Lucy. Having to watch herself around Walter always put her on edge.
“Kelly sent me an early review,” she told Walter. “From a newspaper in Chicago, I think. It’s quite nice.” She handed Walter the clipping, which he read silently.
“Nice?” he said when he was finished. “Jane, they compared you to Inez Gossford. That’s not just nice, it’s fantastic.”
“I suppose it is,” Jane admitted. “She’s rather popular, isn’t she?”
Walter wagged a finger at her. “Don’t you start that,” he said.
Jane looked at him. “Start what?” she said.
“The whole popular-versus-literary thing,” Walter said. “I hate it when people try to say one is better than the other. Like books people enjoy reading are somehow beneath books that literary snobs approve of.”
“Where is this coming from?” Jane asked. “I’ve never seen