Page 19 of Seven Rules for a Perfect Marriage
I half laugh. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’
She looks suspicious as she puts down her giant glass water bottle. ‘Sure.’
I gesture to the kitchen stool, wanting her to sit down. ‘I need to ask you something.’
‘... Okay?’
‘And I don’t know how to put it in a way which won’t seem offensive.’
‘Are you hoping to revisit the topic of anal?’ She smirks. It’s sometimes annoying that I find Jessica so funny. On days like today, where I don’t want to be jolly, she still makes me laugh. It would be very tempting not to say what I’m about to say, to enjoy the lightness in her, let it be contagious. But I’ve got to tell her eventually; I’ve already let my writing become a weird sort of half secret between us and I don’t want it festering for any longer. Plus, she’s in a good mood, which might help.
‘Ha ha,’ I say, taking a run up at it. ‘No. I’ve actually been working on something.’
‘Something?’
‘A book. Well. Potentially a book. It’s only a first draft, it needs a lot of work still.’
She looks horrified, which was what I was really hoping wouldn’t happen. I’m aware that I’m butchering this.
‘What book?’
‘It’s a novel.’
‘You’ve written a novel? When?’
Mostly when I was supposed to be working on my chapters of Seven Rules and pretending to have writer’s block. ‘It’s not very long. I don’t know, between other stuff. That’s not really the point. The point is, I’ve been writing it. And I was thinking ...’ I decide that maybe it’s best to soft peddle this, that I’ll approach it in stages. ‘That I want to look into getting an agent, so I can publish it.’
‘We have an agent.’
‘We don’t have an agent, we have a manager. I want a proper agent.’
I’ve said the wrong thing. I look at the air, as if I can grab on to the words and shove them back in my body, undo the damage I’ve just done. She’s back on her feet and she’s angry. ‘Clay is “proper”.’
‘You know what I mean. A literary agent, someone who handles books—’
‘As opposed to what we wrote, which was what, a catalogue? A coaster?’
‘You know what I’m staying. Stop being deliberatively obtuse.’
‘That’s a big word for your dumb-dumb wife with her low-brow book.’
‘Why are you being like this? You know Clay isn’t an agent. He’s a manager. And you know Seven Rules wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to write.’
‘Yes, we’re all aware that you’d have preferred to write the kind of clever book which sells about seven copies.’
I don’t know what to say to that. I feel like she’s hit me. Jessica is kind. She tips like a Rockefeller, holds doors open for everyone, lets strangers pour their heart out to her. So when she says something cruel it burns. And she knows me inside out, every cell. So on the rare occasions she wants to hurt me, she’s really bloody good at it.
‘Maybe I would,’ I say, so pained that I’m actually enjoying the prospect of saying something nasty. ‘Is it so wrong that I’d like to write a book aimed at people who can actually read? Rather than peddling incredibly obvious advice to anyone stupid enough to buy it because you take nice pictures and put them on Instagram? Just because you’re happy to make money pretending that we’re endlessly happy doesn’t mean I am. Not everyone wants to sell snake oil.’
She looks horrified. ‘Fucking hell, Jack,’ she says, staring at me.
‘Sorry,’ I say quietly, looking at the floor.
We both stand there. I know I should say something conciliatory, but I don’t know what. I think maybe I want her to lose her temper, to throw the kind of Mediterranean tantrum she was so fond of in her early twenties. I know what to do with that. But I don’t know what to do with this miserable grey silence, and that’s why we keep getting stuck like this, not liking each other. Not able to be properly nice to each other. How long has it been like this, I wonder.
‘I should shower,’ she says, interrupting my spiral.
‘Right.’
