A story from Too Much, Too Soon
She came to me. What can I tell you? She came to me and I told her what was going to happen. She didn’t believe me. She told me I was making it up. I had a hard time making her pay. In the end I said: ‘What did you expect? Magic? You got what you asked for. I told you a story. You don’t have to believe it is the story of your life. Or you can believe it. That’s your choice. You took an hour of my time. Now for that you must pay me what you owe!’
She paid and she went. I didn’t expect to see her again. But only last week she came to see me a second time. Of course, I already knew what had happened because I get all the magazines. Sometimes my clients arrive early and I like them to have something to read.
This lady lives in a peach-coloured house with a terracotta roof facing north-west over the water. How do I know? Everyone knows! She has a polished floor, a view of the city and a dining table she never uses. How do I know? You know the answer to that. She has a telephone answering service. She never picks up the phone unless she first knows who it is. And she never personally answers her front door.
You will know her name because it is in every newspaper and magazine you can think of. So her story is no secret. Let me go over it again for you.
She is called Galina, Galina Gardner. Everyone knows her by that name. Of course, she was born with a completely different name. Her mother wanted to call her Heliotrope but her father insisted on Jane, in memory of his mother.
Perhaps you think I made that up, but I assure you it is quite true.
Jane, or rather Galina, was not a young woman when she came to me. She was thirty-two. This is not too old for romance, but when a woman has never known love, thirty-two might as well be sixty-four.
As I was saying, Galina Gardner lived in a peach-coloured house surrounded by Sienna tiles and potted citrus trees. At night she watched the city lights swimming over the water towards her bedroom window. Somehow the lights never touched the shore.
Galina bought this house with the money she earned by writing romance novels. It took her exactly two months to write each one. She averaged five romance novels every year. This she told me herself. What do you think I am?
She worked for six hours a day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. In the middle she would go for long walks beside the water. In the evenings, at sunset, she would drink exactly one glass of champagne.
All right, I admit it, that last bit is untrue. I made it up because it sounded more romantic. Galina never drank champagne, except at publisher’s parties. She spent her evenings in front of her video machine watching old romantic movies. Her favourite actor was Cary Grant.
She wrote the kind of stories that young girls read hoping that such things will happen to them when they are women. When they grow to become women, they are glad that such things do not happen to them.
Galina was not quite a Danielle Steel or a Judith Krantz. Her novels did not sell as well as theirs. They sold well enough, though, for Galina to have a ten-year contract with her publisher. She could afford to live in a house with the best view in the city and with the most expensive burglar alarm system money could buy.
I never read romance novels. I have always disliked them. I read magazines, however, for the gossip, which I love. Gossip is a rich source of information. Gossip is quite different from romance novels.
To me, the kind of novel written by Galina Gardner is not really romantic. In such novels the heroine must wait for love and is always too ready to sacrifice herself when it finally arrives. In my opinion, a true heroine will discover love for herself. As for the heroine’s lover, it seems to me that a man who is tall, dark and handsome can never be a great lover. He is too concerned with his own good looks to be erotic, too preoccupied with being dashing to be simpatico. To me, such novels are not erotic. All those women with their dripping lips and throats exposed like sheep about to be slaughtered. Pah!
But what did little Galina know? She had only ever observed love’s outward manifestations.
Though she had never experienced it herself, Galina knew what romance was. She knew that it was like a cloud: that it would enwrap you, moisten your lips and soften your skin; that it would lift you up, up, up over the city; and that you would forget everything around you in a soft white blanket of sadness and joy.
There were other things, Galina knew: that romance is always tidy and glamorous, for example. She was careful about practical matters. The heroine was always intelligent as well as pretty. She was never so beautiful that she would intimidate her readers, but her dress sense was always just a little better than theirs. Galina herself would like to have only worn black, like Edith Piaf, or else white like Katherine Hepburn as a southern belle. But when it came to her own life, she could never be bothered.
The first time we met she sat in front of me in a stretch cotton cardigan and jeans, with her hands pushed tightly together. She turned her face and spoke to my asparagus fern. I like having living plants in my consultation room. They add to the atmosphere. But in this case I was beginning to regret it.
‘I should explain that I’m writing a novel,’ she said, still speaking to the asparagus fern instead of to me. ‘In it the main character goes to a fortune-teller. Since I have never been to a fortune-teller, I thought I would find out what happens.’
‘So you are doing research?’ I remarked.
‘In a way,’ Galina replied. I remained silent for a moment, during which she began biting her nails. I observed that this was not normally one of her habits. In fact, she was beautifully manicured. Her slender nails clashed with her scarred running shoes.
‘First of all I must tell you,’ I told her, ‘that I cannot predict the future. I can only interpret what is possible. You yourself have to make it happen.’
She had a look on her face that showed me this was only what she had expected. She had expected to be taken in. So I did what I always do with the sceptical. I said: ‘Let me show you my fortune-telling machine.’
This machine is a rectangular silver box. It came to me from my mother and from her mother to her, and so on. The box is covered with intricate carvings. It is very beautiful. But it has another function. Inside the silver box are the secrets of all who come to me. I need only to open it to know what they are.
I placed my fortune-telling machine on the table between us. Then I opened the box with it facing towards me, in a way that meant Galina could not see inside. Under the lid of the box is a mirror, and the base is lined with red velvet. Otherwise, there is nothing inside the fortune-telling machine at all.
I peered into the empty silver box. I said: ‘You did not come to see me because of your novel. You came here to ask me something about yourself.’
Galina said nothing. She folded her grey cotton arms. I said, rather slowly, as I prefer to make an impression on my clients: ‘Your question is about love.’
It was obvious really. Love was Galina’s subject. Love was her profession. Love was the one thing missing from her life.
We spent an hour together. I told her the story of her life. To be frank with you, I thought she would be pleased. If you were lonely and someone told you that one day you will find your true love, wouldn’t you be happy?
I told her: ‘You will find love if that is what you want, but there is something you must do first.’
Galina Gardner was not happy. She was angry. In fact, she was furious with me. Of course, no woman likes to think she is not perfect as she is. What I mean is: without a man. She complained that what I suggested was dangerous. All I could say was: life cannot be lived in a cocoon.
She must have taken my advice, however. For where else could you meet a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, except at your front door?
What can I tell you? You know what happened. It was headlines everywhere. Galina Gardner the famous romance novelist married an African-American Mormon missionary from Hawaii.
I have only ever seen a photograph of Francis Newman, in a magazine of course, standing with Galina after their wedding. Their arms are linked. He appears very handsome. They both look very happy.
You may say, as some have, that Francis Newman was a predator. But even if he is, why shouldn’t he also make a good husband? He doesn’t smoke or drink. He is against adultery. He is attentive– of that I am sure. And he lives on a beautiful island. If he is a man with a mission, isn’t that better than the other kind?
As I was saying, Galina Gardner came to see me again the other day. She had changed. She wore a flowered dress and looked straight at me. Her eyes were like night lights dancing on water.
‘It’s all going very well,’ she said to me. ‘I did as you suggested. I turned off my burglar alarm. I cancelled the answering service and I fired the butler. I guess it worked. But it isn’t what I expected at all.’
‘Aren’t you happy?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, yes. I am. Very. Except for one thing.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I can’t write. All the stories seem to have disappeared out of my head.’
‘Maybe you can only have one or the other. The real thing or the fantasy.’
‘I expected to have both.’
She sighed and looked wistfully around for the fortune-telling machine. But I had hidden it behind the asparagus fern.
What could I tell Galina? That she would be happy forever with her preacher, but that true love had silenced her writer’s dreams? Or that love would pass? That in her hardened fifties she would again be the queen of impossible romance?No, of course not! What do you think I am? I told her to be happy. There was nothing else to say.