Read Online Florence Gordon by Brian Morton - Free Book Online Page A

from
Time Out New York
had called to arrange an interview.
O
magazine had asked for an essay. Florence had been booked for something on NPR, and her literary agent had been in conversation with someone at
Charlie Rose.
    Emily, on the couch, was watching everyone, or trying to. It was like watching a game where the action is taking place on three parts of the field.
    Florence seemed different, but in a way Emily couldn’t define.
    Or maybe she wasn’t different at all. Maybe it was just that Emily was seeing her differently, now that she was a national treasure.
    Emily’s grandmother might or might not seem different, but her mother definitely did. She seemed kind of shellshocked. But why should she be shellshocked by Florence’s success?
    Her father seemed the way he always did.
    He was astonishingly statuelike. What the hell was he? She was convinced that nothing would really change him, ever. If you slipped E into his coffee, she believed, he wouldn’t act any differently. No matter what was going on inside his mind, he would remain unperturbed, unswayable, undiverted, doing his duty to the last.
    It was clear that he was happy for his mother, in his low-key way. Among the three grown-ups, he was the only one who did seem simply happy.
    “They want to send me on a book tour,” Florence said.
    “Do you like going on book tours?” Emily said.
    “I’ll let you know after I’ve been on one.”
    “You’ve never been on one before?”
    “When I did the history of struggle, they got a car and drove me around to different bookstores in the city. They took me all the way to Park Slope. That was my book tour.”
    “Where do they want to take you now?”
    “All the major markets.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Of course you know what it means,” Daniel said. “It means Los Angeles, San Francisco, maybe Boston, maybe Chicago. Where the hell else is there?”
    “Seattle, maybe, Dad?” Emily said. “Portland?”
    “New Yorkers don’t know Seattle and Portland exist,” Daniel said.
    “That’s not true,” Emily said. “They’re big book-buying markets.”
    “How do you know this?” Daniel said.
    “Your daughter knows a lot of things,” Janine said.
    “I do. Anyway, the point is that Grandma is a literary lion now. You know what this means, don’t you, Grandma? It means you’re going to have to start tweeting.”
    “My publisher has already broached the idea.”
    Because her mother seemed oddly immobile, Emily went to the kitchen and got some snacks and brought them back into the living room. Nobody seemed to have moved.
    “Will success change Florence Gordon?” Daniel said.
    Emily was surprised when it seemed that Florence was taking the question seriously.
    “If you make a big splash at
her
age,” Florence said, looking at Emily, “then it changes you. I’m too old to change.”
    “I don’t know, Grandma,” Emily said. “I don’t think it would have changed you even if you’d been my age.”
    “You don’t think so?”
    “I think you’re made of iron.”
    “I’m glad you think of me that way.”
    “Are you going to do anything differently now?” Emily said.
    “What should I do differently?”
    “My dad said you said the review got everything right. Right?”
    “I have nothing to complain about.”
    “So now you can rest assured that people understand you. So I was wondering if there were other things you might want to say, now that you know you’ve said your piece and people have understood you. Maybe it’s a chance to change your life.”
    “I never had any doubt that people understood me. And I didn’t need Martha Nussbaum to come along and help people understand my meaning. I think I’ve managed to make it plain enough myself.”
    “Okay.”
    “And I have no need of a chance to change my life. My life is just fine as it is.”
    “She wasn’t trying to offend you, Mom,” Daniel said. “Don’t jump down the girl’s throat, for God’s