The party is at a little indie bookstore near their apartment, bursting with people and exposed brick and staff recommend-ations of obscure poetry I’ve never heard of. Jazz plays quietly in the background, like something out of a Woody Allen movie, and by the time we get there, an absurdly long and twisty line has formed around the bookshelves for the free wine a cute twentysomething girl dumps unceremoniously into Solo cups.
The minute we walk in, people are hugging my dad and coming up and congratulating him, air-kissing Kira and crooning over Matilda’s pretty dress and matching bow. I am wearing the red dress I wore to the Halloween dance, and I’m getting looks that are very different from the looks Kira, Dad, and Matilda are getting. It is the difference between looking at an expensive and coveted objet d’art and looking at a slab of meat on a grill. I think I recognize some of these writers, like I’ve read or at least skimmed books they’ve written.
After I wander around the bookstore and flip through other new releases, sipping on my wine, I join the small group that has formed around Dad and Kira, where some balding guy is talking.
“. . . it’s almost like if you’re a straight white man, you’re not allowed to have an opinion anymore. When you think about it, we’re the most oppressed group in America.”
I make a face at Kira. She gives me the tiniest, imperceptible shake of her head: Not worth it.
I go back for a second glass of wine. Ahead of me on line, a guy with a flannel shirt solemnly tells another guy with a flannel shirt, “I’ve decided I’m going to try to take myself more seriously.”
When I return, some older man in a suit with purple wine lips is talking my dad’s ear off, and I tune in and out.
“. . . wanted to talk to you about the Observer review because I immediately thought he didn’t get the point about the epigraph. That Tolstoy quote is overused for a reason, you know? In any case, that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and I heard that your editor at Random House gave his novel a pass, so of course he’s not going to . . .”
I get on the wine line and wait for somebody to stop me. Nobody does. He must be talking about that Tolstoy quote about families, I guess: They’re all fucked up in their own way, or whatever it is. Meanwhile, that guy is still braying drunkenly from across the bookstore.
“. . . and you know how it is. They really rolled a lot of PR out for this title, and whenever anything is presented as the Next Great American Novel, the critics are going to want to be contrarian. So you got panned in a few major outlets! Who cares? Nobody reads the Washington Post anyway!”
“Sure,” Dad says mildly.
“And yes, naturally some of their thoughts are valid, you know that. It’s a debut. I mean, the daughter character is an issue. . . .”
Dad nods politely.
“But stay strong, buddy! I remember what this is like, and I was a kid when my first novel came out, so at least you’re not a twenty-nine-year-old ‘literary genius,’ you know?”
Jesus, this guy.
“Hey, you want a drink? Let me get you a drink; everything’s gonna be okay. Don’t take it so personally.”
Then he starts talking about Paramount unfairly low-balling Dad on the movie rights—which I had absolutely zero knowledge of, incidentally—and he should really switch agents. Wine in hand, I walk over to them.
“There’s gonna be a movie?” I’m incredulous. “What? That’s insane! How could you not tell me that?”
Dad rolls his eyes. “It’s a circus.”
He doesn’t elaborate.
I hit up the ladies’ room. When I come out of the stall to wash my hands, I find Kira trying to juggle a sleeping Matilda and simultaneously reapply her eyeliner; for once, she’s not effortlessly succeeding. I walk over to her and take Matilda, a soft, warm weight in my arms. Kira looks in the mirror and says nothing, just smiles tersely at me. She places her eyeliner back into the zip pocket of her purse, I hand Matilda back to her, and she walks out of the bathroom.
At this point, maybe from the wine, I start to feel a little nauseous.
But after I leave the bathroom, I go back on the wine line again, and then again, and finally wander over to the display of signed copies of my dad’s book. The daughter character is an issue, I think, fairly tipsy now. I pick one up, running my finger over his signature, a burst of pride washing over me.
I read the blurbs, from writers famous enough that even Dawn has probably heard of them.
A tragicomic roman à clef that may well be the modern answer to Updike’s Rabbit, Run . . . A male protagonist in the vein of Roth and Bellow . . . One man’s emotionally fraught journey from an unhappy marriage and frustrated life to salvation . . .
I turn to the epigraph:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
I feel a spike of annoyance as I begin flipping through. He couldn’t have picked a more original epigraph?
John had long ago tired of being the only adult in the house, remembering to pick up Sara from school while Kelly forgetfully guzzled a bottle of white wine and sang along to Avril Lavigne.
John watches as Kelly flirtatiously asks the twenty-two-year-old waiter his zodiac sign, then checks out his ass as he walks away.