Patty Friedmann as author redux

Just when I thought nobody was looking

Wednesday I took my final bow, Thursday I went to Jackson to confirm I was right to quit, and Friday I primped to go to my family reunion.

My plan was to go tabula rasa.  A cousin in Connecticut had hunted down 600 relatives all over the country who went back four generations and forward three--all with New Orleans origins. That makes us pretty fancy around here, tracking to before the Civil War. We weren't going to put on matching T-shirts and picnic in the park. We were going to eat an elegant buffet at the Wyndham Hotel, overlooking the river and listening to a jazz quartet. No one would know anything about me except for what my dress looked like.

I walked in and a third cousin a few times removed walked straight up to me and said, "I was going to get Newman to select you as Distinguished Alum of the Year, but you blew it!" Newman.  Newman School. Where I suffered the agonies of adolescence more painfully than most by being in an exclusive private school the year that the class coming through was filled with unusually pathologically bitchy girls. One in particular was so disturbed she eventually was hospitalized, but not before destroying at least one very sweet sixth-grade classmate.

After almost 45 years, I had written a very fine--if I must say so myself--short story about that experience, and it was included in New Orleans Noir. (The collection I've been out hawking alongside my novel A Little Bit Ruined.) It was a dead-on, powerful story, but it didn't make the experience of going to Newman in the '60s look good. It had a universal quality to it, so it didn't make going to Newman at any time look good. (Or, really, going to high school anywhere, ever, look good.)

What could I say to my cousin? I saw a nearby wall. I banged my head against it. A chance to go back to my high school, recognized, "distinguished," and I had blown it. My cousin will vouch for me. I really banged my head against the wall. "Has anyone really read that story?" I said. "Everybody," she said.

And so it comes to this, now that it's all over with. What did I want all along? As a writer, I mean. I've often been honest enough to try to sort out vindictiveness and vindication in the motives behind some of my stories.  But what about my general posture as a writer? Here I have two works out there before the public, and the one getting the screaming attention in New Orleans is the short piece. Yet it's terribly misunderstood. If read correctly, it's sensitive and honest and doesn't malign Newman at all. Instead, everyone's buzzing that I've pilloried the institution and in turn wants to pillory me.  "Go for negative publicity: any publicity is good publicity" is what I've heard. But who wants this?

I know why I'm bothered. Because I was a cut-up in school. I was one of two people in the history of the school voted down by the faculty for the National Honor Society. (The other served as Chief of Protocol in the Bush White House; talk about ignominy.) I've already been badly behaved. I might not be the most distinguished alumna, but they might give me a shot at Most Improved.

The fat-in-her-mind lady sings

There wasn’t a dry eye in my head. On Wednesday night I launched my novel A Little Bit Ruined, and before I read told the gathering of people I loved deeply, without benefit of alcohol, that I was calling it quits.

My ten-month-old granddaughter was there, and I held her before the audience like Kunta Kinte before the moon and recited the book’s dedication. “For Summer Amalia Roberson, the love of my life, with apologies for calling you Katrina Fema while you were in utero.” I didn’t go into my usual apology for her having that silly first name, which I’d lobbied against with literary offerings like Flannery most of the time she was gestating. I just stood up there and announced that she was good enough reason to quit writing. She would fill my days.Though I added, even in the deeply kind presence of Susan Larson, my friend and everyone’s best book editor, that I couldn’t stand the having-written part of writing.

I couldn’t stand what was, in effect, that part of being a writer. Of counting the house. Of being reviewed and feted, in some measure or other. The party was pretty wonderful, with a gathering of some of the greatest people who still live in New Orleans, writers and artists and every other kind of fine mind. Much better than a funeral. Altogether a group of great laughers who I think listened to me while Summer mugged in the front row.

The next day Julie Smith and I drove three hours up—and three hours back—to Jackson, Mississippi, to do a signing with Ace Atkins at Lemuria Bookstore for our anthology, New Orleans Noir. Ace is a hot commodity in Mississippi, and he’d done a noonTV show in Jackson. We drew six people. It was a perfect final lesson in book marketing. A perfect capstone to a writing career.

Why, you'll ask, do I call myself the fat-in-her-mind lady? I answer this only because I don't want any "you're so thin!" comments. I was a fat, miserable kid. Once fat, always fat. It made for a rotten childhood--with a lot of help from external circumstances--so I had the requisite baggage to grow up to write. And now I have those requisite insecurities that eventually take their toll of having to walk out of the marketplace. The fat girl takes her leave. Except to tell the truth.