Morris thought of writing Rothstein a letter, asking—no, demanding—that he explain himself, but he knew from the Time cover story that the sonofabitch didn’t even read his fan mail, let alone answer it.
As Ricky the Hippie would suggest to Pete Saubers years later, most young men and women who fall in love with the works of a particular writer—the Vonneguts, the Hesses, the Brautigans and Tolkiens—eventually find new idols. Disenchanted as he was with The Runner Slows Down, this might have happened to Morris. Before it could, there came the argument with the bitch who was determined to spoil his life since she could no longer get her hooks into the man who had spoiled hers. Anita Bellamy, with her framed near-miss Pulitzer and her sprayed dome of dyed blond hair and her sarcastic curl of a smile.
During her February vacation in 1973, she raced through all three Jimmy Gold novels in a single day. And they were his copies, his private copies, filched from his bedroom shelf. They littered the coffee table when he came in, The Runner Sees Action soaking up a condensation ring from her wineglass. For one of the few times in his adolescent life, Morris was speechless.
Anita wasn’t. “You’ve been talking about these for well over a year now, so I finally decided I had to see what all the excitement was about.” She sipped her wine. “And since I had the week off, I read them. I thought it would take longer than a day, but there’s really not much content here, is there?”
“You . . .” He choked for a moment. Then: “You went in my room!”
“You’ve never raised an objection when I go in to change your sheets, or when I return your clothes, all clean and folded. Perhaps you thought the Laundry Fairy did those little chores?”
“Those books are mine! They were on my special shelf! You had no right to take them!”
“I’ll be happy to put them back. And don’t worry, I didn’t disturb the magazines under your bed. I know boys need . . . amusement.”
He stepped forward on legs that felt like stilts and gathered up the paperbacks with hands that felt like hooks. The back cover of The Runner Sees Action was soaking from her goddam glass, and he thought, If one volume of the trilogy had to get wet, why couldn’t it have been The Runner Slows Down?
“I’ll admit they’re interesting artifacts.” She had begun speaking in her judicious lecture-hall voice. “If nothing else, they show the growth of a marginally talented writer. The first two are painfully jejune, of course, the way Tom Sawyer is jejune when compared to Huckleberry Finn, but the last one—although no Huck Finn—does show growth.”
“The last one sucks!” Morris shouted.
“You needn’t raise your voice, Morris. You needn’t roar. You can defend your position without doing that.” And here was that smile he hated, so thin and so sharp. “We’re having a discussion.”
“I don’t want to have a fucking discussion!”
“But we should have one!” Anita cried, smiling. “Since I’ve spent my day—I won’t say wasted my day—trying to understand my self-centered and rather pretentiously intellectual son, who is currently carrying a C average in his classes.”
She waited for him to respond. He didn’t. There were traps everywhere. She could run rings around him when she wanted to, and right now she wanted to.
“I notice that the first two volumes are tattered, almost falling out of their bindings, nearly read to death. There are copious underlinings and notes, some of which show the budding—I won’t say flowering, it can’t really be called that, can it, at least not yet—of an acute critical mind. But the third one looks almost new, and there are no underlinings at all. You don’t like what happened to him, do you? You don’t care for your Jimmy once he—and, by logical transference, the author—grew up.”
“He sold out!” Morris’s fists were clenched. His face was hot and throbbing, as it had been after Womack tuned up on him that day in the caff with everyone watching. But Morris had gotten in that one good punch, and he wanted to get one in now. He needed to. “Rothstein let him sell out! If you can’t see that, you’re stupid!”
“No,” she said. The smile was gone now. She leaned forward, set her glass on the coffee table, looking at him steadily all the while. “That’s the core of your misunderstanding. A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees. A good novelist realizes he is a secretary, not God.”
“That wasn’t Jimmy’s character! Fucking Rothstein changed him! He made Jimmy into a joke! He made him into . . . into everyone!”
Morris hated how weak that sounded, and he hated that his mother had baited him into defending a position that didn’t need defending, that was self-evident to anyone with half a brain and any feelings at all.
“Morris.” Very softly. “Once I wanted to be the female version of Jimmy, just as you want to be Jimmy now. Jimmy Gold, or someone like him, is the island of exile where most teenagers go to wait until childhood becomes adulthood. What you need to see—what Rothstein finally saw, although it took him three books to do it—is that most of us become everyone. I certainly did.” She looked around. “Why else would we be living here on Sycamore Street?”
“Because you were stupid and let my father rob us blind!”
She winced at that (a hit, a palpable hit, Morris exulted), but then the sarcastic curl resurfaced. Like a piece of paper charring in an ashtray. “I admit there’s an element of truth in what you say, although you’re unkind to task me with it. But have you asked yourself why he robbed us blind?”
Morris was silent.
“Because he refused to grow up. Your father is a potbellied Peter Pan who’s found some girl half his age to play Tinker Bell in bed.”
“Put my books back or throw them in the trash,” Morris said in a voice he barely recognized. To his horror, it sounded like his father’s voice. “I don’t care which. I’m getting out of here, and I’m not coming back.”
“Oh, I think you will,” she said, and she was right about that, but it was almost a year before he did, and by then she no longer knew him. If she ever had. “And you should read this third one a few more times, I think.”
She had to raise her voice to say the rest, because he was plunging down the hall, in the grip of emotions so strong he was almost blind. “Find some pity! Mr. Rothstein did, and it’s the last book’s saving grace!”