sean conway
Just as Harriet was being introduced (“author of six novels, including the bestseller The Dandelion Fields and this, her new novel, The Frozen Sea”), I took a quiet seat in the far back. I didn’t know how this worked—that we needed to endure her reading. I’d figured it would be some kind of presentation, maybe an interview. The idea of listening to someone read aloud for any length of time seemed not only boring, but completely insane. Still, the few people in the audience—not a single one within a decade, maybe two, of me—sat politely enough, legs folded, hands on their knees or clasped on their laps, smiling, nodding in appreciation and understanding. I spent more time watching them than I did Harriet Plumb. It all felt a little, well, cultish. And then without really knowing it I was listening. And watching. She was a petite woman, even frail looking, sixties, overly made up and draped in a long silk scarf. I imagined that there was nothing inside those loose-fitting clothes, just her head jutting up from her scarf wrapping, like a puppet. But, still, I found myself paying attention. The new book, I learned, was about a mother raising a young daughter on her own after a plane crash tragically takes the father and son. The mother struggles, does everything wrong, and acts destructively, unable to fill her role as a mother even as she manages to put up a front and fake her way through it. The girl’s name is Thea. She’s ten, but the oldest ten year-old in the world. Studying for school. Washing dishes. Sewing the holes in her dungarees shut. Trying to cut her hair in the bathroom mirror. Writing emails to her brother’s defunct email address. I couldn’t help but notice how comfortable, how poised, Harriet Plumb was up there. I made a point to focus on her hands, look for any tell-tale shudder, any nervous jitter. But there was none. She held her book in one hand, steady, reading but looking at us as well, sometimes looking at us for unusually long stretches while she recited the text. I didn’t know how she did that—like a TV show in which the driver of a car looks at her passenger talking for too long. It’s been fifteen straight seconds! Look at the road! But Harriet Plumb didn’t need to. She knew this story and she knew these characters. They were her own. And for that they felt all
the more real, at least to me. After, a few asked questions. You could tell they loved the chance to talk to a real-live writer, and probably had scripted their questions well ahead of time. I wanted to ask a question myself, ask her something that she probably got a thousand times before—where did this idea come from? But I never did. Even with just the six or seven of us, I couldn’t raise my hand and call out a question. Instead, I quietly cracked my knuckles and pursed my lips. They felt chapped. When it was over, people formed an unorganized line to get their books signed. I didn’t have a book but I realized you could buy one at the adjacent table, where the librarian I usually saw here was sitting with a metal cash box. All Harriet Plumb’s books were here: The Dandelion Fields, Missing Angels, another one called The Myth of Distant Horizons, and of course The Sea Inside. I picked up a copy, smooth and shiny and not much like the piles of books I brought home to Mum. Harriet Plumb: in big plumb-colored letters across the top. The title was a deeper, bruised color, more ominous. The New York Times Bestselling Author, it said under the title. I looked at it closer—at the smudged-looking brushstrokes of breaking waves, the dark slate of rocks. It all looked so grim, and I couldn’t help but wonder—worry, really— what was going to happen to that eleven year-old. Thea. “I enjoyed the reading,” I said to Harriet Plumb when I’d reached her table. The others had dispersed by then, chatting to each other near the coffee or else zipping their fleece pullovers and heading for the door. “I’m glad.” The librarian delivered her a coffee even though I looked to be the last customer. Harriet Plumb smiled up at her, then moved her smile to me. “To whom shall I sign this?” It took me a half-second or so to translate that to, “Who should I sign this to?” I cleared my throat to buy time. “Um, my mother. M-A-V-I-E.” “Mavie? What a pretty name.” “I’m going to read it too,” I added, suddenly fearing I’d hurt her feelings by having her sign it to someone else. “I’m a big fan.” “Thank you, sweetie. Then I’m a big fan of yours, too.”
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