Emma Jean’s Bad Behavior Charlotte Rains Dixon Best-selling novelist Emma Jean Sullivan longed for a baby for years. But when she was unable to conceive with her husband, Peter, she staunchly vowed to become the standard bearer for all childless couples. And she succeeds spectacularly. At age 48 (43 according to her blog, "Life, Full Tilt") Emma Jean enjoys a rabid anti-baby fan base, and her novels have sold millions. But now, she confronts a dilemma larger than any her heroines have faced: She’s pregnant. And the baby’s father is not her husband. Terrified of losing both her fan base and her identity, she struggles to maintain her brand and her marriage, but Peter is too busy embezzling Emma Jean’s money and completely uninterested in fatherhood. Not only that, her latest novel is a miserable failure, and a Vanity Fair reporter, who plans to out Emma Jean’s pregnancy to her fans, is stalking her. What’s a suddenly broke, failing, middle-aged, pregnant novelist to do? Why, flee to a glamorous resort town, of course.
Chapter One The Second-Best Moment of Her Life Emma Jean Sullivan hated babies. She hated cute, fat, little girl babies with long eyelashes and dimpled cheeks, and she hated sturdy boy babies with button noses and comical serious expressions on their faces. She especially hated the baby whose wails were, at that precise moment, filling every cubic centimeter of air in the Woodland Hills Barnes & Noble, ruining her book signing. Pen poised above an open novel, Emma Jean paused, cocked her head, and grimaced at the sound of the screeching tot. The screams were momentarily obscured by the hiss of the espresso machine in the store’s coffee shop, but once the whine of the steam stopped, the infant’s howling filled the space once again. Emma Jean set her purple fountain pen down beside the book, on the title page of which she was carefully inscribing, To Darlene, Here’s to finding your passion! (the your thickly underlined to underscore the fact that Emma Jean, of course, had already found hers) and looked up at Darlene. “Babies are like cats,” Emma Jean said. “They know I hate them, so they follow me everywhere.” Darlene gazed back at Emma Jean blankly. Perhaps the young woman had not heard her over the howls of the baby, whose screams now grew louder. How could Emma Jean be expected to converse charmingly with her fans when they couldn’t hear a damn word she said? And tonight, thank you writing gods, she had a sizable number of fans waiting to hear her delicate comments and get books autographed. Emma Jean angled her neck to check the length of the line. It snaked through Biography, around New Mysteries, and back beyond Art. The crowd would be more satisfying if most of its members weren’t toting worn, personal copies of her four previous books. So far that evening,
she’d signed dozens of her older novels, even the out-of-print ones, but very few of her latest, The Winemaker’s Wife. No matter how hard she had worked over the last month—readings by the bushel, signings by the gallon—she couldn’t nudge Wife onto the bestseller list. She so desperately needed the novel to sell in the manner of her previous books, what with a huge mortgage to pay, a husband with expensive tastes to support, a life to finance. Which was why she needed that howling baby to shut up. As long as it yowled, her fans would not be able to hear a single one of her delightful, felicitous words—words that might entice them to buy Wife. The damned book reviewers certainly hadn’t helped her move copies. With this release, for reasons she could not fathom, her usually rabid fans—helped along by the sweet treats she personally baked and sent them—turned savage on her. Absolutely savage. Emma Jean sneaked a peak at the latest review, in the Oxford American, which her literary escort had brought to her, although why anyone, ever in the history of the world, would think that Emma Jean would want to read such crap was beyond her. She shoved the offending magazine away. But then she peeked at it again. Bestselling author Emma Jean Sullivan can usually be counted on to write novels that entertain all the way to the bestselling list. Not this time. With her latest release, the author’s bitchy, snarky and vastly judgmental persona has finally gotten the best of her. In her most recent novel, she lends these characteristics to a horribly unappealing protagonist, making this book a thoroughly awful read. Thumbs down on this nasty mess of a novel. The baby’s howls now formed a constant staccato wall of sound, distracting Emma Jean even from the murderous rage she felt at the stinging words of the book reviewer. She turned to the two women who stood next to the table, the bookstore manager and the escort. Was the escort’s name Mary or Marcy? How was she supposed to remember such things with the current cacophony in the store? “Can’t we get that baby to be quiet?” The bookstore manager, a woman with dull, thin, brown hair and thick glasses, shrugged. “It’s a free country. I can’t kick someone out
just because their kid is screaming. I’d have the ACLU over me like flies on poop.” Mary/Marcy leaned forward. “It’s shit. The expression is flies on shit.” “I was trying to be polite,” the manager said. “To hell with polite,” Emma Jean said. The baby’s screams tore through her. She placed her hands on the table and rose. “If you won’t deal with that baby, I’ll go talk to the parent myself.” The bookstore manager scrambled to her feet. “No, no, you stay here. I’ll go see what I can do.” Emma Jean sat back down. And then she had a horrible thought. The kind of behavior she had just exhibited was precisely what the reviewer had written about. Was she, perhaps, a wee bit too snarky in her daily life? Too quick to rush to judgment? But upholding the mantel of a bestselling author was a thoroughly exhausting endeavor with many busy and important details to it, so she should be granted a bit of leeway. Emma Jean took a deep, cleansing breath to compose herself. And then a lovely idea popped into her head: perhaps she could learn to be nice. Emma Jean nodded her head decisively. Yes, indeedy, she would take non-snarkiness to a whole new level, much as she had elevated being childless to a desirable lifestyle. She would even name it: the Campaign to be Kind. She tilted her head to the exact angle she had practiced in the mirror for when meeting her public, smiled up at the next fan, and pushed the oversized plate of cookies toward her. Emma Jean always brought cookies to her book signings. That made her kind, didn’t it? If she were home in Portland, she’d whip out a batch of her special peanut butter cookie recipe herself, but here in L.A., she’d had to rely on a bakery that Mary/Marcy found for her. Most of the cookies remained on the plate, seeing as how everyone in L.A. was on a diet. Still, Emma Jean felt it vital to make the effort for the things that were important to her, and her fans definitely counted in that elite group. The others who made the cut were her students and her husband, Peter. They were the three things in life, besides writing, that Emma Jean cared about most—the holy triumvirate, her sacred cows. And, she noted to herself, she was plenty kind to the sacred cows, maybe even overly so.
Her fans, after all, adored her. She turned her attention back to the ones in line. “Society favors parents and disregards those of us who choose not to bring children into this crazy, overpopulated world,” she said, dredging up a hint of a southern accent left over from her Georgia upbringing and raising her voice so it could be heard over the baby’s screeches. Wait, was that being snarky or just honest? Where did one draw the line between fact and judgment? The next three women in line nodded their heads in unison. Emma Jean watched, fascinated, as their chins bobbed up and down at precisely the same time. They were clones, arrayed in the style that, in the day and half she’d been here, Emma Jean had learned was currently ubiquitous in Los Angeles. A tan, wrinkle-free face and shoulder-length hair that fell just so were required accoutrements, with an iPhone or other smart phone and fat-free latte also requisite accessories. Tight jeans were de rigueur, as was a cute butt to put into them. And a camisole with at least a hint of cleavage was also mandatory. Emma Jean looked down at her own V-necked tank top and yanked at the bottom of the V. She was showing more cleavage than usual, and it was all Mary/Marcy’s fault, as the escort had come to pick her up early and ended up advising her on her wardrobe. “C’mon. Wear the sexy one and show some skin. Everyone in L.A. does. You’ll look stodgy otherwise,” Mary/Marcy had said, and Emma Jean had grudgingly agreed the top looked better on her than any other choices. Her breasts were, she was inordinately proud to admit, still quite shapely and full for her age, no doubt because she had never nursed a baby. The infant’s crying now reached a new pitch of keening desperation. Apparently the bookstore manager was not having any luck dealing with it. “Oh Lord, I do wonder how the human race survives, don’t y’all?” Emma Jean said. The three clones smiled hesitantly. One was blonde, one brunette, and one a brassy redhead that came from a bottle if Emma Jean was a day over forty. And in truth, she was eight years over forty, though her website listed her as forty-three, which was a necessary lie (so why hadn’t she made herself younger still?) but a damned
inconvenient one as she always had to stop and think how old she was supposed to be when she wrote about birthday celebrations on her blog or Facebook, where her fan page had thousands of followers. “It just amazes me how we continue to procreate in the face of all evidence that it is a very bad idea,” Emma Jean continued. The blonde clone giggled. The other two nodded, their expressions very serious. Emma Jean shook her head. “I guess I just wasn’t meant to be a mama, and the good Lord knew that.” The redhead leaned toward Emma Jean, and her voluminous breasts threatened to elude the spandex of her tank. “That’s what I love best about your work,” she said. Emma Jean tried not to stare as a melon mound of flesh loomed dangerously above the rim of the woman’s top. “You’re so honest about how happy you and your husband are without children. I just read your blog post about you guys being in Paris, and it was so romantic. I love the part where he kissed you at the top of the Eiffel Tower.” “Thanks, doll,” Emma Jean said. She’d liked that post, too, even if the kiss had only been a chaste peck on the cheek. It had sounded vastly passionate when she’d written about it, which was, after all, the power of the pen. “Peter and I have all we need, just the two of us. Two against the world, y’all know what I mean? He says his wine is his baby, and I say my students are my kids.” Emma Jean had borne the tragic misfortune of her infertility bravely, and after it became apparent that she and Peter would never produce a baby, she had vowed to become the standard bearer for all childless women. And so she had, writing bestselling novels and enchanting blog posts on the joys of life without children. She’d been so successful that the internationally known non-profit organization, Choose Childlessness, had asked her to be their spokeswoman, a task she had assumed with gusto. It took a lot of energy to uphold the stanchion of childless living, particularly when that miserable baby’s screams continued to fill the air. Emma Jean, however, would persevere with the role she had been granted. She smiled up at her fan.
“I love reading about you and Peter on your blog,” the brunette said. “Sometimes I wish I’d thought things through a little better before I decided to have children myself.” Emma Jean nodded, attempting to look encouraging. This was the part she liked best about book signings, the moment when complete strangers confessed their unhappiness with their children, their pets, or, most often, their husbands. She loved hearing their stories. Plus she’d learned that the more she chatted and listened to them pour forth their lives, the more likely her fans were to buy books. The brunette leaned in closer. “How do you and Peter do it? How do you keep your marriage so vital and alive?” she asked. “Lots and lots of sex,” Emma Jean said. This was her standard response, though it hadn’t been true for months. How long had it been? Emma Jean couldn’t remember. She couldn’t even remember how long it had been since she’d even thought about having sex with Peter. Now the brunette’s lower lip quivered ominously, and she leaned in close to whisper, “Ever since I had my last baby, it seems like my husband isn’t interested in sex anymore.” “How old is your child?” Emma Jean asked. “Six months.” “Why, darling I think it’s just about the most natural thing in the world for a man and his wife to take a while to get reacquainted with each other after such a momentous occurrence. Something similar happens to one of the characters in my latest book.” “It does?” Emma Jean nodded. “And she comes up with some dang clever ways to solve the problem, too. You should buy a book and read it; maybe it will help.” Emma Jean plucked a copy of Wife from the towering pile on the table and opened it. “What’s your name?” “Amber.” To Amber, here’s to finding your passion! Emma scrawled. Her purple fountain pen was running low on ink, so she set it on the table and picked up another. She always traveled with five or six of her special pen, the Fountaineer.
The bookstore manager had returned from her errand to quiet the baby, which had been unsuccessful, since the baby still screamed. Emma Jean reached out to the next clone in line and opened her novel to the title page, then set it up on the table, a not-so-subtle hint for Emma Jean to cut it short with Amber. “It’ll be okay, love,” Emma Jean said, patting her hand in an extremely kind way if she did say so herself. Then she handed her the book, and Amber smiled gratefully, if also a bit tearily. Usually Emma Jean would have asked Amber for more details of her life’s problems— after all, Emma Jean was a storyteller, and as she told her students, stories were everywhere; you just had to be open to receive them. But clearly the rabbity bookstore manager was getting nervous about the large numbers of people standing in line without buying her new book. Plus, she was unhappy about the cookies; Emma Jean could tell. She’d fussed earlier about how the crumbs might damage the towering stack of copies of Wife on the table. But she looked like she had never enjoyed a luscious, home-baked cookie, ever in her life. Emma Jean’s credo was that one must grasp life with both hands and shake the hell out of it. The concept was so important, she’d named her blog after it—Life, Full Tilt. The baby’s wails reached a new crescendo, and then a door slammed, and suddenly there was silence. Like a stop-action movie, all was quiet and still. As with the sudden absence of pain, the abrupt quiet was unsettling for a moment. And then the murmurs of shoppers and the chatter of her fans in line sprang up again. “Thank you, God,” Emma Jean said. She tilted her head and smiled up at the next person in line. Who was not a female. Who was a male. Who looked like Brad Pitt, especially his narrow blue eyes, friendly, but with that vague hint of fierceness behind them. There was also the short blond hair, the dark blond eyebrows, the devilish smile. Which he was currently using lavishly on her. “But you’re a man,” Emma Jean said. “I’m glad you noticed.”
How could she not? My God, he was handsome. Medium height, with big, broad shoulders and a muscular chest beneath his white Lake Tahoe t-shirt. He cradled a large stack of books in his arms. Had the universe seen fit to reward her Campaign to be Kind already? “It’s just that most of my fans are female. Who do I sign this to?” Emma asked. “It’s for Carolina. My wife,” the man answered. She pushed one of the yellow Post-it notes she kept on hand for difficult spellings toward him. “Write it out for me.” He reached into the pocket of his black chino pants, came up empty handed. “I’ll spell it.” “I’m not an auditory learner. I need to see it.” She rolled her fountain pen across the table toward him. “I don’t want to mess it up and make you buy a new copy.” “If that happened, I’d have to get in line all over again, and that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” He had uncapped the pen and bent to write the name on the sticky note, but he looked up at her and grinned. Her heart unwedged itself from its customary position and did a little conga line boogie around her chest before returning to normal. Emma Jean placed the flat of her hand covering the V of her tank top to force her heart to quit dancing. The man—Carolina’s husband, and no doubt she was a beauty with a name like that—bent to his task. Emma Jean stared at the crown of his head. His hair was thick and lustrous. When he was finished, he looked up and smiled at her again. “For me, it was the best moment of my life.” He pushed the pad toward her. “What was?” Emma Jean asked, pulling the Post-it off its pad and positioning it on the title page, so that she could copy the name. “The day my son was born. I was eavesdropping on your conversation about children, and I thought somebody should come to their defense.” Emma Jean stared into his eyes—robin’s egg blue but minus the inscrutable expression most blue-eyed people carried—and imagined him at play dates or soccer games. Or whatever it was people did with kids these days.
Mary/Marcy nudged her, as if to tell her to hurry it up. But the man was still smiling down at her. Laconic. That’s what she would call his smile if she were writing about him in a novel. It was the only word for it. And his eyes, with that come hither look that made her want to follow wherever he led. Emma Jean forced her eyes away from his, and carefully inked his wife’s name onto the title page, along with the usual inscription. The espresso machine hissed and the sweet smell of steamed milk filled the air. She ripped off the Post-it note and stuck it to the table, then closed the book’s cover and held it out without looking at him. She’d be okay if she didn’t look at him. “Thank you, Ms. Sullivan.” She couldn’t help it; she looked at him. His eyes—those amazing blue eyes—riveted her. He took the book and added it to the top of the pile in his arms. “You’re a reader,” she said. He nodded. “It’s something to do when I have a spare moment at work. I usually go through a couple books a week.” “Wow,” Emma Jean said. “That’s even more than I read.” “I bet you’re buying this one for your wife.” Mary/Marcy chose this moment to insert herself into the conversation. Emma Jean glanced at the escort, annoyed. Mary/Marcy’s eyes shone as she looked at the man. “I am, but that doesn’t mean I won’t read it, too.” He turned the book over, glanced down at the blurbs on the back cover. “Mostly I read books about art, but I like wine, so I might dig into this one. It looks pretty good. “ Emma Jean thought about this for a moment. He read books. He was a man who read books. About art, no less. Better yet, he was a hunky man who looked just like Brad Pitt who read books. Best of all, a man who might even read her books. “Have a cookie,” she said. Lord, could she sound any more inane? But he took a cookie, and a napkin, and carefully placed both on top of his pile of books. “Thanks.” “What was the second-best moment of your life?” she blurted.
The timid bookstore manager chose that moment, no doubt the first ever in her life, to assert herself. “I’m sorry sir, but if Ms. Sullivan has signed your book, I must ask you to move along. We’ve got a long line of readers waiting.” Emma Jean shot her a dirty look, but the handsome one shrugged and smiled his laconic smile. He raised his hand in a boyish wave, turned and walked away, biting into the cookie as he left. Emma Jean watched him—he had an adorable butt—until Mary/Marcy nudged her with an elbow, and she took the book from the next person in line. “Could you write it to Maria?” the woman said. She was short and sported spiky hair. To Maria, Emma Jean wrote, though the words on the page blurred. All she could see was that man, his boyish blue eyes, his shock of blond hair. How long had it been since Peter looked at her with the frank appreciation that he had exhibited? The rest of the evening proceeded uneventfully, but her mind kept going back to him. To Alison, here’s to finding your passion! Oops, she was so distracted she forgot to underline the your. Oh well, Alison would just have to live without. To Deborah, To Susanna, To Christine…the names rolled off her pen, an endless stream. Emma Jean smiled and nodded and signed book after book, all the while acting wonderfully, endlessly kind. Or so she hoped. She wasn’t exactly sure how kind people acted. Perhaps she could ask one of her friends for advice. Who would be wisest and most helpful on this topic? She pondered this as she scribbled autographs, her hand growing more and more tired. She thought of family members, students, and her assistant, Trish, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of any friends. Then she realized that she couldn’t think of any friends because she didn’t have any. And that probably just proved the reviewer’s point, didn’t it? Because people who were not snarky, bitchy, and judgmental had friends. To Andrea, she wrote. To Nancy. Well, then, she would make some. Now that she was being kind, it would be good to have some friends, wouldn’t it? Finally, she inked the last inscription. The bookstore manager had her autograph the remaining books so that she could slap a signed by
the author sticker on them and hopefully move them faster. Was it her imagination or had the manager grown more peevish over the course of the evening, constantly harping on the disproportionate numbers of fans who brought in old copies of Emma Jean’s books to sign? It didn’t help that from where she sat, she could see a huge standalone corrugated display of Daughter of the Devil. The book’s author, Marielle Delany, had been a student of Emma Jean’s private writing group for five years. The display featured a large photo of Marielle: an adorable pixie of a woman with a stylish short haircut wearing a floral skirt over leggings. Bless her heart; Marielle was one of her most favorite students ever, even despite Marielle’s wee mean streak and tendency toward manipulation. And was the outfit she’d chosen for that photo just a bit too bohemian? No, wait. Thinking that was not nice, was it? Marielle was one of her most favorite students ever, period. And The Devil’s Daughter? Awesome book. Huge accomplishment. Seeing as it was a lurid memoir, it was probably the only one Marielle had in her, so Emma Jean was thrilled with how well it was doing. Ecstatic, even. Over the top delighted. Then Emma Jean had a thought. Perhaps Marielle was a good candidate to be a friend. Because the more she thought about it, the more Emma Jean thought it would be nice to have some girls to pal around with. She and Marielle could go to wine bars and bitch about their husbands, never mind that Marielle was single and gay. Well, they could go out and whine about the publishing world. Yes, that would be the ticket. Emma Jean pulled her organizer from her purse and made a note to call Marielle as soon as she returned home to Portland. She felt cheered. Perhaps having friends and her Campaign to be Kind would help her out of the dull malaise of staleness that had recently enveloped her. Emma Jean pushed back from the table and stretched her arms out straight in front of her, then moved her neck in the roll she’d learned in yoga class, before she became a yoga slacker. Then she decided to call her husband. She opened her phone and punched the Peter button, but as usual, he didn’t answer. Why did people carry cell phones if they weren’t going to answer them? Was he avoiding her or just busy? Emma
Jean hadn’t talked to him in the two days she’d been in L.A., and she had desperately needed his emotional support, what with Wife not selling as well as her other novels, and the constant pressure of performing at her readings. Emma Jean stood. The bookstore manager had wandered off and so had Mary/Marcy. She glanced around and saw them across the store, chatting by the main check out area. Emma Jean liked to keep her eye on her escort, as the thought of finding her way home alone through the canyons and freeways of L.A. terrified her. Mary/Marcy would drive her back to the motel and pick her up again the next evening for a reading in Orange County, which was apparently somewhat ominous. From the way Mary/Marcy spoke, they’d have to leave very early to get there on time. As far as Emma Jean could tell, one had to leave very early to get anywhere in L.A. She always resisted visiting L.A., number one because she had an irrational fear of earthquakes, but number two because she hated it. Hated the palm trees, the unforgiving sun, the mad rush of the freeways. Most of all, she hated the people, all of whom were way thinner and more beautiful than she could ever hope to be. Bunch of phonies. Allegiance to one’s true self was one of Emma Jean’s favorite themes. So L.A. stood thoroughly in opposition to all her deeply cherished beliefs, including even things like recycling and taking public transportation, which she admitted she had a tiny bit of a problem doing herself, but still. Soon, she consoled herself, she’d find herself back home in Portland—rainy, green, cloud-shrouded Portland—and all would be well again. Though Portland was now her home, her public persona required allegiance to her homeland in the Deep South, Alabama: the place of her birth, and Georgia: the place she was raised, and where her heart truly lay, at least as far as her fans were concerned. I’m just a southern girl, she sang to herself as she gathered up her fountain pens. It was a song she sang to the tune of the Queen song, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I’m just a southern girl, living in the Wild West. Because it’s so easy for me to go….Now wait, hadn’t she brought five fountain pens along? She only found four on the table.
And then suddenly, she heard a man’s voice belting out the rest of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” verse. Oh God, she’d been singing out loud. She looked up. It was the handsome man from the book signing. And he was holding out the missing fountain pen. “I pocketed it by accident.” “I…I just realized it was missing. Thank you.” “I like your words to the song better, by the way.” Emma Jean nodded. “Too bad I’m a lousy singer.” He laughed and stuck out his hand. “I’m Riley Atkinson.” “Emma Jean Sullivan.” Oh, Lord he was handsome. “I never got a chance to answer your question.” She cocked her head to one side, quizzically. “The second-best moment of my life.” “Oh, right.” She nodded her head vigorously, too vigorously. Her breath had got caught up in her throat and the air shimmered, forming a bubble around the two of them. The rest of the bookstore fell away, as if sheared off by an earthquake, and all she could see was Riley. “Don’t you want to hear the answer?” he asked. She nodded, not willing to trust the words that might spill from her mouth. “The second-best moment of my life will be when you say yes to dinner.”
About the Author
Charlotte Rains Dixon is a writer and writing teacher. She has published numerous articles and stories as well as three non-fiction books. Charlotte received her MFA in creative writing from Spalding University and teaches in the Loft certificate-writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Visit her blog at www.charlotterainsdixon.com.