First Mariner Books edition 2021
Copyright 2020 by Anonymous
A conversation with the author copyright Amazon Book Review
Discussion questions copyright Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Title: Becoming Duchess Goldblatt / Anonymous.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027260 (print) | LCCN 2019027261 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358216773 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780358216797 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358309376 | ISBN 9780358309451 | ISBN 9780358569831 (trade paper)
Subjects: LCSH: American wit and humor. | Conduct of lifeHumor.
Classification: LCC PN 6165 . D 83 2020 (print) | LCC PN 6165 (ebook) | DDC 818/.602 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027260
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027261
Wallace Stevenss definition of poetry is from Of Modern Poetry, in Collected Poems. Used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Cover design by Allison Chi
Cover art: Portrait of an Elderly Lady by Frans Hals, 1633, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Online Editions.
v3.0821
1
I must have slept weird, folks. My backstory is killing me.
When the house burns down, so to speak, theres no guarantee that anybody will stick around to help sweep up. This is not the dominant narrative Id been raised to believe in. Sure, Lucy and Ricky could end up divorcedthe twin beds were a clue, in hindsight, and he was such a fascist about kicking her out of his stupid nightclub actbut you figure Lucy would always have Ethel Mertz. In my moment of sudden destruction, I learned the very hard way that reinforcements would not be coming. When I lost everythingmy Ricky, my Fred and Ethel, the nightclub and band, even the gig on the chocolate-factory assembly lineI found out the sheltering trees above me were gone, and I was on my own.
Its Opening Day in Crooked Path! Looks like another beautiful season of head games, everybody.
I almost drove the car off the road when I saw the callers name appear on my phone: Frank Delaney. Id met the Irish writer maybe a year or two earlier, through work, and wed hit it off, but I never would have expected him to call me up again out of the blue. Frank was a novelist and BBC journalist, and smoothindeed, hed been called the most eloquent man in the world by NPRbut I was struck again by how kind he was, how genuine, how compassionate. After wed met just that one time, hed sent along a gift for my little boy: a copy of Kaufmans Field Guide to Butterflies of North America.
Frank had a sharp eye and a storytellers ear. He had interviewed thousands of people in his decades in broadcasting, everyone from Prince Charles to Alan Greenspan, and that expertise revealed itself: somehow in our short time together, over a day or two, hed gotten my whole story out of me. I still dont know how he did it, how he ever perceived so much, so fast.
How are you? he asked me. Are you all right? I hope by now youve stopped pushing people away.
I pulled the car off the road into an empty church parking lot. Im trying, Frank, I said. Thanks for asking.
What days are the hardest for you? he asked.
Sundays.
So Ill tell you what you do on Sundays: French lessons. Dance lessons. Piano lessons. Immerse yourself in the deep pleasures of Latin and Greek. Sign yourself up for something every hour. Fill your days.
Okay, I said. Thank you.
It will get easier with time, Frank said.
All right.
Hows your son now? he asked.
Youre so kind to ask. Hes eight already, if you can believe it. I could hear my voice was shaky. Were trying. Well be okay.
When you have no one to put their arms around you, you must put your arms around yourself, Frank Delaney said. Will you do that?
Ill try, Frank, I said.
But I didnt know how.
Im looking for something shiny to show you in this garbage pile, loons. Maybe a bit of sea glass. Im trying.
I can remember one day, during this period, hanging around at my job with nothing in particular to do. I worked as a writer and editor for a publishing house that had been started decades earlier by academics, and our beloved locally owned firm had recently been bought by a foreign company to be stripped down for parts. Four hundred or so of my colleagues had been let go. The handful of us who were allowed to stay on a little longer had a few projects to finish up here and there, if we cared to, and we did. We wanted to at least complete the work wed started. Our lease wasnt quite up yet, so we stuck around, a few loose marbles rattling in an otherwise empty building. Desks and chairs were stacked floor to ceiling, and boxes of unwanted papers had been dumped in darkened conference rooms.
I went wandering the halls looking for coffee in the break room one day and ran into one of the guys from the new parent company. We both stood there silently waiting for the coffee to finish brewing until, finally, he cleared his throat.
You know, usually when we go into an organization like this to clean it out, we start looking into the business and find out the place was a disaster, bleeding money, he said. Mismanaged, driven into the ground. But this placehe shook his headthis was an American tragedy. It was a beautiful organization. Very, very well run. Solid margins. People cared. I mean, they really cared. He sounded surprised. I didnt give him the satisfaction of telling him he was right. It had been a beautiful organization. Of course we had cared. I held his gaze in silence until he turned and left the room.
The few of us whod been lucky enough to have been kept around for a bit knew it wouldnt last. We all had to find new jobs. Most of our clients had split as soon as they saw the ship taking on water, and the little bit of work that was left for us didnt fill the whole day. In the meantime, we kept turning up every morning, mostly to have someplace to go.
Show me how to set up an account on social media, I said to my work pal Naomi one day, in boredom. I was lying down on the desk in her office, staring at the ceiling. Ive never been on there. I feel like Im missing out.
Youre not missing anything, she said. Its all the people you havent seen since high school posting pictures of their kids. Lot of libertarians with government jobs complaining about paying their taxes, for some reason.
I wouldnt mind seeing what people are up to, I said. As long as they cant see me.
If youre out there, they can see you, she said. Its reciprocal. Thats the whole point. Its why they call it social media.
And yet somehow Im feeling like this is not the time for me to establish a public presence out amongst the people, I said, waving my hand in the direction of the hallway, by which I meant the street outside, our town, the world. She nodded.
