How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely Page B

was putting The Tornado Ashes Club on the market. I’d need the publishing assistants to say to their bosses “you’ve got to sign this guy—he’s a completely pure voice, he holed up in a cabin in like New Hampshire or someplace and wrote this fucking amazing book that’s so lyrical you’re gonna shit.”
    Plus I knew Hobart would almost immediately regret his decision, and I didn’t want to be around to deal with it.
    So I’d called up my Aunt Evelyn.
    THE STORY OF AUNT EVELYN
Once Evelyn was a famously fierce lawyer. She wore pantsuits. She was in the papers and on TV a few years back when her firm had defended the city of Boston against some kids who claimed they’d been injured riding the subway. She was the one who tricked the main guy into admitting in court that their injuries were actually from filming a homemade break-dancing video. That was the same year she announced she was a lesbian. This didn’t bother anyone in our family, a fact which I think disappointed her because she was fired up to smoke any opposition. After that she mellowed out. She got a girlfriend, Margaret, who was only a few years older than me. Margaret had captained the Smith College rugby team to the national championship. She’s great. I did a bunch of shots with her at the commitment ceremony. A year or two later, Evelyn announced that she was quitting the law. She and Margaret were going to move up to Vermont to open a maple sugar distillery. That was the kind of thing you could do if you didn’t have kids, my mom had commented ruefully.
    At about six I turned down the gravel road in Tracton toward their house, a solid rectangle of local stone set back among desapped trees.
    Margaret came out, the Joan of Arc dome of her hair bouncing as she ran up to me for the first round of hugs. Then into the kitchen for round two with Aunt Evelyn, who was ferociously eviscerating a cantaloupe.
    I was treated to a magnificent welcome dinner: organic spinach salad, mixed fruit puree, locally raised Connecticut River salmon with apple-maple chutney, homemade seven-grain bread, followed by traditional Native American corn pudding. This wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d imagined my stay in Vermont would be a hard literary asceticism, like a boxer in training camp. But I’d now been unemployed for almost two months so I ate like a grateful urchin.
    “Try the wine,” Aunt Evelyn said, “our friends Crispin and Lawrence sent it to us from Sorrento. It’s made by Trappist monks.”
    “Those monks know how to stomp a grape,” Margaret said.
    “So Pete, I think it’s wonderful that you’re working on a book. We’re so honored to have a young novelist for a guest. What inspired you to turn to matters literary?”
    “Mostly to humiliate Polly, and impress people at her wedding.”
    Margaret laughed. “Right on.” Margaret totally gets it.
    “Plus I wanted to get enough money so I don’t have to work anymore.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound especially noble,” my aunt said, though she appeared at least slightly amused. “I’m considering embarking on a writing project of my own. A children’s book. I really think it’s a story that could be empowering to young girls. It’s about a girl who isn’t content to just become a wife and a mother. She wants to learn the trade of coopering. Barrel making.”
    “Huh.”
    “The best part is that it’s a true story. Her name was Prudence Whiddiecomb, and she lived over in Spayboro in the late eighteenth century. And while her father was off fighting in the Revolution, she took over his business. She became quite a successful cooper and also did some light smithing.” Evelyn told me about her explorations in the historical societies of local towns, in speech peppered with phrases like “the interesting thing about staves is . . .” and “now, in those days, Spayboro wasn’t the county seat, which complicates things.”
    After the corn pudding, Margaret showed me an illustration