Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton Read Free Book Online

radiant head, but why turn down
     a secret? Months away, she would ask herself what exactly propelled her to write him the first e-mail. The memoir about the
     spaniels and the frontal-lobe injury was, if nothing else, a testament to the human spirit, but lately Jenna was having trouble
     working up enthusiasm for that type of grit and endurance and good cheer; humans, she sometimes thought, had too much spirit.
     One of her producers, Suzie Raditz, liked to yoke together disparate subjects—in this case dogs and brains—but perhaps Suzie
     was having a dry spell. Perhaps Suzie needed a vacation.
    Out the long windows of Jenna’s study, out in the darkness, there was not a light from human or sprite or alien. There were
     only the sounds of the tree frogs, their strange, mournful Gregorian tones. She loved her room, the high ceiling, the curlicues
     in the original molding, the built-in shelves, and the comfort of her books, which had been alphabetized in the move, Achebe
     to Zuravleff. In her aloneness there was the draw of that most private-seeming space, the small, bright, beckoning rectangle
     of a blank e-mail page. It was a page that would yield company, that would people her own little world. She wondered what
     Charlie was telling Mrs. Rider over their dinner, wondered what they usually talked about. She would write to him because
     she wasn’t severe and aloof, but someone who was interested in a small town personality, a woman who was investing in her
     new community.
    It crossed her mind that by writing to him she was thumbing her nose at the likes of Janey Slauson and also Suzie Raditz.
     It was possible, too, that she was escaping, for just a moment, from Shakespeare; she was electronically fleeing from her
     husband’s dishwashing down the stairs, from the noise of his recitation of
Richard II
.

Chapter 4
    THERE WERE RULES ABOUT WRITING ROMANCE NOVELS , Laura discovered. Directly after the garden-club meeting, she had gone upstairs to the stacks in the library, and checked
     out four how-to books. Because the rules were strict, at first the enterprise didn’t sound that hard to her. If, say, your
     book was a Christian romance, there was to be no alcohol consumption, no magic, and the heroine and hero could not, under
     any circumstances, remain overnight together alone. The confusing thing was all the categories in addition to Christian: there
     was historical romance, futuristic, time-travel, paranormal, contemporary-comedy, chick-lit, suspense, and African American.
     Also gay and lesbian. What Laura wished to accomplish was more …
global
, maybe, was the word. She wanted to tell a story that would appeal to any woman, Every Woman. She understood that you were
     supposed to come up with archetypes such as Wild Woman, or Earth Mother, or Passionate Artist. She thought she could do that.
     Everyone was, after all, something.
    There had to be an intriguing plot and an emotionally intense core conflict, and then what was called the Black Moment, when
     there seems to be no solution for the couple in love. The Black Moment had to be one of real terror—emotional terror, that
     is. The manual said that creativity played a huge role. Well, obviously. If she took an honest look at herself, she would
     say that, on a scale from one to ten in the creativity department, she was about a seven and a half. She was creative enough
     to give life sparkly moments, talented enough to make pretty, theme-based tables for her nieces’ birthday parties, but that
     sort of care and invention of course wasn’t what the manual meant. She was capable of vision, certainly; the gardens and the
     farm itself were testaments to her taste, and her dream life, and her ability to work past the point of exhaustion. But pulling
     a tale of two lovers out of thin air was altogether different—not that she and Charlie didn’t make up stories every day, about
     all kinds of things, including their four cats. The beasts had jobs and