It’s Mother who should marry Alan, not me. They think exactly alike.
As Mother’s birthday approached, I tried to concentrate on my upcoming weekend in the Hamptons. I knew what I had to guard against was the last-minute temptation to fly home.
When I called Janet later in the week from a lawyer’s office—they never watch their phone bills—she said, “Do you know the movie Bright Lights Big City?”
“Michael J. Fox has moved to Owensboro,” I said, astonished in spite of myself.
“Not him, the other one, the author. I forget his name.”
“McInerney,” I said. “Jay McInerney. Are you sure?” I didn’t want to say it because it sounded so snobbish, but Jay McInerney didn’t exactly seem Owensboro caliber.
“Of course I’m sure. He looks just like Michael J. Fox. I saw him walking down at that little park by the river.
You know, the one where Norman Mailer hangs out.”
“Norman Mailer. I didn’t even know he lived in Owensboro,” I said.
“Why not?” Janet said. “A lot of famous writers make Owensboro their home.”
Make Owensboro Their Home. That was the first time I’d heard it said like that. It seemed to make it official.
Janet’s call made me think, and for the first time since I broke up with him, I called Alan. At least he knew who Jay McInerney was, although he had never read the book. “The other Janet said she saw McInerney and Mailer down there at the park,” I said. “Does that mean the famous writers are starting to meet one another and hang out together?”
“You always want to jump to conclusions,” Alan said. “They might have been in the same park at totally different times of the day. Even when they do meet, they don’t talk. The other day at the K Mart, Joe Billy Survant saw E. L. Doctorow and John Irving both in Housewares, and they sort of nodded, but that was all.”
John Irving? But I let it go. “Housewares,” I said instead. “Sounds like folks are really settling in.”
“We’re taking your mother to dinner at the Executive Inn for her fifty-first birthday Friday night,” Alan said.
“I’ve been invited for a weekend in the Hamptons,” I said. “Well, almost the Hamptons.”
“Oh, I understand,” he said. Alan likes to imagine he understands me. “But if you change your mind I’ll pick you up at the airport in Evansville.”
Evansville, Indiana, is thirty miles from Owensboro. It used to seem like a big city to me, but after eighteen months in New York, it seemed pathetic and insignificant: all trees from the air, and hardly any traffic. The one-story terminal looks like a shopping-center bank branch. You climb down out of the plane on a ladder.
There was Alan in his sensible-with-a-flair Olds Cutlass Supreme. I felt the usual mixture of warmth and dismay on seeing him. I guess you might call it warm dismay.
“Who’s that?” I asked, gesturing toward a bearlike figure at the USAir ticket counter.
Alan whispered, “That’s Thomas M. Disch. Science fiction. But quality stuff.”
“Science fiction?” But the name was familiar, at least sort of. Although Disch isn’t exactly famous, he seemed more the Owensboro type than McInerney. “He’s moving to Owensboro, too?”
“How should I know? He may have just been here in Evansville for the speedboat races. Anyway, he’s leaving. Let’s talk about you.”
We drove back home on the Kentucky side of the river, through Henderson.
That whole weekend in Owensboro, I only saw three famous writers, not counting Disch, who is not really famous and who was in Evansville, not Owensboro, anyway. Tom Pynchon was at the take-out counter at the Moonlight, buying barbecued mutton. He bought three liters of Diet Coke, so it looked like he might be having a party, but on the way home from the Executive Inn we drove past his house on Littlewood Drive and it was dark.
For dinner, we had steak and salad. Mother was a hoot. Alan insisted on paying as usual. We were home by ten, and by ten-thirty Mother was asleep in front of the TV. I got two cans of Falls City out of the refrigerator and sneaked her Buick out of the garage. I picked up the other Janet, just like in the old days, by scratching on her screen. “The Two Janets,” she whispered melodramatically. She said the cops were rough on DWI (Driving While under the Influence) these days, but I wasn’t worried. This was still the South; we were still girls. We cruised down Griffith, out Frederica, down Fourth, down by the river. There was hardly any traffic.
“Has Alan asked you to marry him again?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Well, if he does, I think you should.”
“You mean you wish I would.”