The Sins of the Mother

Chapter 19


Two days after Liz went to see her new agent in New York, Andrew Shippers, she had started working on a new outline, for another book. She wasn’t sure where it was going, but she had been working on it for three weeks, when he called her back, and asked if she would come to the city to see him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him, sounding nervous. Maybe he had decided not to represent her book, and like Sarah, the publishers thought it was no good, and he didn’t want to tell her that on the phone.

“Why do you assume something’s wrong?” he asked, curious about her. She seemed to be an extremely nervous person. She had been so unnerved when she met him, he thought she was going to collapse in his office.

“I always expect bad things to happen,” she said simply, and she was so honest about it that he couldn’t help chuckling.

“Well, why not try expecting good news instead of bad? Maybe I have something wonderful to tell you,” he said, sounding very British. She still remembered how handsome he had been when she went to his office. She hadn’t been prepared for that either.

“Do you have something wonderful to tell me?”

“Come in and see me,” he said firmly.

“When?”

“Does tomorrow work for you?”

“No, I’ll be a wreck by then. What about today? I’ll drive in.” He smiled when she said it.

“Elizabeth, you’re incredibly talented. But you’re also incredibly neurotic. Have you tried acupuncture or yoga?”

“Both. I hate needles, and I sprained my neck and a muscle in my groin when I tried yoga.”

“Valium, then. Thorazine. Laughing gas. Something. Fine, come in and see me at five. Can you wait till then?”

“I’ll have to. I think I can make it till five.” She didn’t press him to tell her on the phone, because it was obvious he wasn’t going to. He was a very stubborn man.

She decided to dress up for the occasion. She wanted to look nice. She wore a short black skirt she borrowed from Sophie’s closet, and a sexy black sweater from Carole’s, and her own high heels. She had a triple wardrobe at all times, thanks to the clothes the girls left with her at home. She put long sexy earrings on, and at four o’clock she headed out the door for the drive to the city. She remembered to put gas in the car, which was rare for her, and an hour later, she was parking outside his office. She was right on time, and wondering what the good news was, if there was any. Maybe he was just kidding, and didn’t want to fire her as a client over the phone, or tell her that every publisher in the city had turned her book down. But three weeks wasn’t enough time for them to do that. She had no idea what he was going to say.

His secretary led her into his office, and Andrew was waiting for her. He was reading contracts at his desk and put them down when she walked in.

“You look lovely,” he said as she sat down. “And calm. Did you take a Valium?”

“No, half a bottle of vodka while I was driving.” He looked concerned and she laughed. “Just kidding.” She seemed considerably calmer than she had the first time he saw her, and on the phone that morning. She was just a worried person, but not a total neurotic. He was relieved to see it. And whatever else she was, she was an incredibly talented woman. That he was sure of.

“So what’s the good news?” she asked as she looked straight at him, and he tried to forget she was an attractive woman. This was business. She was telling herself the same thing about him. He was so handsome, she had to pretend to herself that he wasn’t.

He got right to the point. “Two publishers want your book. They had a bidding war. And I like one house better for you. They’ve offered you an advance of five hundred thousand dollars, just for rights for North America. You keep the foreign rights, which means we can sell them separately. They want your book desperately. Hardcover, massive first printing, softcover. And I took the liberty of showing it to a film agent I work with in L.A. He thinks he can sell it for a movie. He’s showing it right now, to two producers. One already loves it. And I’m expecting to hear from him tomorrow. There’s the good news,” he said in his clipped British way, as Liz stared at him from across the desk. Her mouth nearly fell open at what he told her.

“Five hundred thousand dollars? Are they crazy?”

“I assume that means yes. And you can tell your academic sister-in-law that that’s what really bad books sell for these days. Commercial ones, that is, that a publisher is dead sure will be best sellers. They’re hoping you’re going to sell a million copies.”

“I think I’m going to faint,” she said, and almost meant it.

“Don’t. I hate women with the vapors. My grandmother was always fainting when I was a child. It traumatized me deeply.”

“Then I do need Valium or vodka.”

“Fine. Then let’s go up to the Carlyle and have a drink.” He stood up and picked up a linen jacket he had tossed over a chair with a silk pocket scarf in the breast pocket. It was Hermès. He was beautifully dressed. “I think we have good reason to celebrate. This is why I didn’t want to tell you on the phone. I didn’t want you fainting all alone in your kitchen. You might’ve hit your head. Very dangerous. Head injury. All that.”

“Wait a minute. Tell me again. You’re serious, right? You’re not kidding.”

“I’m not kidding. You’re about to become a very wealthy woman.” He didn’t know that she already was anyway. He didn’t know the connection to Olivia Grayson, and wouldn’t have cared if he did. His own family had a great deal of money in England. He was the black sheep who had escaped and was enjoying being an agent in New York, particularly doing deals like this. It had been the easiest sale he ever made.

She followed him out of the office and down the stairs, and she offered to drive them to the Carlyle. He looked hesitant for a moment.

“Do I trust your driving? You can’t have the vapors if you drive me.”

“I won’t. I promise. I’m a very good driver.”

“Fine,” he said, and he got in when she unlocked her car. And he told her some more details about the deal on the way. It all sounded fabulous to her.

“We should have the contracts in about a week,” he said as she found a parking space on Madison Avenue, and they got out at the Carlyle, and walked into the Bemelmans Bar. She hadn’t been there in years, and it was a nice civilized place for a drink.

He ordered scotch and soda, and she ordered a glass of champagne.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “Thank you for getting me this wonderful deal. I really didn’t think you could sell it. I thought you were firing me as a client, and didn’t want to do it over the phone.”

“That’s what I like,” he said, raising his glass to her. He was pleased with the deal too, and he loved the book. “A cheerful, optimistic woman. Tell me, how did you become so unsure of yourself? Kidnapped by gypsies as a child and soundly beaten?” She laughed at the idea.

“No, just naturally insecure. I come from a family of very successful overachievers, and I’ve been terrified of failure all my life. I’ve actually never succeeded at much of anything until this.”

“That’s not true,” he reminded her. “Your short stories are excellent. I read all of them last week.”

“Thank you for doing that. I wrote two terrible novels, though, that Charlie couldn’t sell.”

“Thank you for reminding me. And your poems are also very good.” He had actually read her work. She was amazed. “So tell me about your overachieving family. Mine makes me feel insecure too, by the way. So I escaped to America and became an agent. It annoyed them completely.”

“Well, let’s see, my mother is very successful in business. Brilliant actually.”

“In what field?”

“She turned a hardware store that my grandmother inherited from her boyfriend into a very successful business. My older brother is a Harvard MBA and works for her. My other brother is a very talented artist and also works for her. His wife is the one who teaches at Princeton and hates my book. My baby sister is a very successful music producer in London. Both my marriages failed, and I have two wonderful daughters. That’s the whole story. It’s hard to compete with all that.”

“You just did,” he reminded her. “That’s the biggest advance I’ve ever gotten for a first novel. And I’m sure the book is going to be a great success. That ought to put them all in their place. Why did your marriages fail? In ten words or less?”

“I married a French race car driver when I was twenty-one. He got killed in a race before our daughter was born. That’s my daughter Sophie. Then I married a moderately famous actor, Jasper Jones, and we got divorced in less than a year. He had an affair with one of his leading ladies. We had my youngest daughter, Carole. That’s it.”

“At least you married interesting people. I married a very dull woman I met at school. She ran off with my best friend. She’s gotten fat, and now he’s bald, and unfortunately they’re very happy, which proves that bad-looking people deserve each other. And I’ve never married again. I was cured. I lived with a woman for about six years, but we never married. She then became a nun, so I can say that I’ve driven at least one woman into the convent. I thought it was a bit rude, but she was a nice girl. I’ve sought out atheists ever since. Are you religious?”

“Sometimes.” Something occurred to her then. “Is this a date? Or are you taking me out as my agent?”

“I’m not sure. What do you think? Which would you prefer? You’re a very beautiful woman, even if you are a bit neurotic and very insecure, so either one would work for me.”

“Are you married?”

“No. Never again.”

“Living with anyone?”

“Unfortunately not. I’m very messy so no one wants to live with me, and I have a dog that snores.”

“Dating anyone?”

“Not lately. Dry spell actually.”

“Okay, then maybe it’s a date.”

“I agree. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can get off on the right foot. Would you like to have dinner?”

“Tonight?” Liz looked startled.

“Or another time, if you have other plans.”

“I don’t. I just wasn’t expecting to have dinner.” Nor a date. But she liked him. A lot. And he was gorgeous.

“Sometimes the element of surprise is good. Sushi?”

“That sounds good. What kind of dog?”

“English bulldog. His name is Rupert. After my uncle. He looks like him.”

“And let me guess.” She had picked up on the fact that he was more than likely an aristocrat, and she had noticed he was wearing a crest on a ring. “Eton and Cambridge.”

“Eton, Oxford, Cambridge. Right, you’ve got that down. And I hated Eton. Very un-English of me. I got beaten up all the time. I was small as a child, only got tall later. They sent me when I was seven.”

“How awful. I hate the English system.”

“So do I. That’s why I never had children. One of many reasons. Why have them if you’re going to send them away when they’re practically in diapers?”

“I agree.”

“My brothers all loved it.”

“What are the other reasons why you never had children?”

“They remember everything you do wrong, blame you forever for all your mistakes, and hate you for everything you do.”

“Sounds like my older brother,” Liz said, laughing. “He’s still mad at my mother for not being around enough when he was a child, and she was always working.”

“And do you hate her too?”

“No, I love her. She did her best, and my grandmother took care of us, and she was terrific.”

“Women are much more forgiving. One must always have daughters if one has children. I come from a family of five boys. What do your daughters do?”

“One is finishing a master’s in computer science at MIT, and then she’s going to work for my mother. And my youngest daughter just moved to L.A. to work for her father and stepmother, who produce movies.”

“The actor is now producing?” He remembered, he was paying attention.

“Yes, he is. Or his wife is. He works for her.”

“And your mother seems to be employing the entire family. Good thing she didn’t give you a job, or you wouldn’t have had time to write the book.”

“I’m working on another one now, but it’s just in the early stages.” He looked pleased to hear it, paid for their drinks then, and took her to a small sushi restaurant where the meal was delicious. And they talked for several hours about the book business, how he’d gotten into it, and his boyhood in England. He told her about his allegedly very eccentric family and made her laugh. They had a very good time together, and she dropped him off at his apartment after dinner. He lived at the Dakota, on Central Park West, which was a famous old building, full of well-known people and beautiful apartments. And she knew he wasn’t relying on his work as an agent to buy something there.

“I had a very good time,” he said to her before he left. “I’m glad we decided it was a date. It would be a shame to waste an evening like that on just an agent.”

She smiled at him. She really liked him. “Thank you for selling my book.”

“Happy to do it. Any time. Keep working on the new one. I’ll sell that one too. I’ll do anything for a commission.”

He walked into the building then with a wave, looking very elegant and very British. She’d had a wonderful time.

She turned on the radio then and drove home in a great mood.

And first thing the next morning, she called her mother and told her about the book.

“Ohmygod, Mom, he sold it for five hundred thousand dollars! They loved it! And he’s trying to sell it as a movie.”

“I told you it was good. I loved it too. Let Sarah put that in her pipe and smoke it.”

“I thought she knew.”

“She only knows academic books. I’m very, very proud of you.”

“Thank you, Mom. I have to tell Granibelle. She loved it too. I had dinner with my agent last night, by the way.”

“The new one?”

“Yes. He’s British, and very nice. He took me for a drink at the Carlyle, and out for sushi.”

“As a date?”

“We decided it was. We took a vote on it.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“And I’m working on a new book.”

“You’re full of good news,” her mother said, pleased for her. “Do you think you’ll go out with him again?”

“I hope so. Maybe he won’t ask me.”

“I’ll bet he will.”

“He lives at the Dakota.”

“He must be very successful, or have money.”

“I think it’s the latter. He’s very aristocratic, and very British. He went to Eton, Cambridge, and Oxford.”

“Well, see what happens. And congratulations about the book.”

“Thank you, Mom, for your faith in me.”

“You deserve it. You’re just a late bloomer.” Liz liked that. She was a late bloomer, not a failure. It put a whole different spin on things and her view of herself.

Andrew called her himself later that morning and told her what a good time he’d had with her. He told her to call him the next time she came to the city, and he’d take her to dinner again.

“Why don’t you come out here? It’s only forty-five minutes on the train. Or you can drive, if you prefer.”

“I’d like that. What are you doing this weekend?”

“Nothing,” she said honestly.

“What about Saturday?”

“Why don’t you come out in the afternoon? We can sit in the sun, and then go out to dinner.”

“Sounds great. E-mail me the directions, and I’ll drive.”

“You can bring Rupert if you like.”

“He doesn’t like the heat, and he gets carsick. I’ll introduce you next time.”

She was looking forward to seeing him again. Her book had sold for an exorbitant amount of money. She was working on another one. And she had a date with a very handsome man. Things were definitely looking up in her life.



Their date on Saturday went well too. He arrived at three o’clock and they sat on her patio drinking iced tea and talking. There was no news about the movie deal, but he said it was really too soon. Those things usually took longer than books to materialize. She told him about her new book idea, and he said he liked it very much. And they went to a small cozy Italian restaurant for dinner. He told her funny stories and had her laughing all night. He didn’t head back to the city until nearly midnight, and when he walked her to her door, he kissed her. She hadn’t expected it, and he was handsome and sexy, and it was a memorable kiss.

“I’m glad we decided these were dates,” he said afterward, and kissed her again. “This could be habit forming,” he warned her, and he finally got in his car, and she waved as he left. It had been a very, very nice evening. Andrew Shippers was definitely a wonderful addition to her life.