Neither one of them seemed to know what to do next; they were in the middle of the gallery, where, under normal circumstances, they would have continued a leisurely perusal of the paintings; before he could decide what to do, she waved, smiling ruefully, and bolted from the room, leaving him with a feeling that he’d failed to be as gracious as he might have been, a sense that would nag at him in the years to come when he thought about Corrine.
That night, at dinner, he was short-tempered with his girlfriend, bringing tears to her eyes; he broke up with her a few days later.
48
HER LOVER, ULTIMATELY, dies in a fiery crash, his beloved Austin-Healey wrapped around a tree in East Hampton, just a few miles from the spot where Jackson Pollock, whose grave they once visited together, met his own death in a car crash many years before. And her husband, who asked her to leave their home after he discovered their affair, is about to take her back, after a long separation, in which they both seemed to be in mourning, walking the gloomy canyons of Manhattan separately, against the backdrop of indifferent skyscrapers. On their anniversary, she calls to hear his voice, and when he tells her he misses her, she admits that she’s out on the sidewalk, just outside his art gallery. He is, for all his faults, a good man and she realizes that they are meant to be together. Though easily entranced and distracted by shiny surfaces, by glamour and fleeting pleasures, he loves art and artists; he loves his friends and his wife. When he steps out of the gallery to meet her on the sidewalk, he’s holding a painting of her, done the year before, by her deceased lover—his best friend.
In Corrine’s first five drafts, this penultimate scene was more subtle, becoming increasingly rom-com and clichéd after every meeting with the studio, but now, seeing it on the screen, she feels it has a certain power and it draws tears from her eyes, which, she supposes, is good, though, of course, she is hardly an objective viewer. The final scene undercuts the easy resolution of the sidewalk reunion. Short as it is, it wasn’t easy to write, but she knows from bitter experience that trust, once breached, can never be fully restored. The reunited couple is at a gallery opening, one of those big ratfucks in West Chelsea, the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” blaring away, the film’s music director having intuitively chosen Jeff’s second-favorite band. She asked Jeff once, “The cure for what?” and he looked at her as if to say, You really need to ask?
The camera pans the room, gradually picking out the wife, who’s chatting up a handsome young artist, and then pans farther to pick up her husband, who’s watching her; his expression not exactly suspicious, but wary, perhaps—cautious, wistful and sad, as if he were yearning for the time when his trust in her was absolute. That’s Corrine’s written stage direction. She has to admit, Jess Colter, the actor, really nailed it, and even though she wrote the scene, she knew it would all come down to whether the actor could translate her intentions, and now it’s all she can do to keep herself from sobbing.
The expression on Colter’s face is not so different from the one that Russell turns on her when the houselights go up.
“Well?” she says hopefully.
“It’s good,” he says, having already seen a rough cut without the final, gallery-opening scene. “The last scene was…powerful.” It can’t have been easy for him to watch this, and she admires his stoicism; more than that, his active support over the years, his encouraging her to persevere on a project that would inevitably revive painful memories, and at this moment she feels a great upwelling of affection for her husband.
The well-wishers approach shyly, obliquely, uncertain of the etiquette of congratulating a couple on the movie adaptation of a novel based on their marriage, written by their dead friend, who possibly—definitely in this version—slept with the wife. The fact that the wife wrote the screenplay makes it an even more complicated equation.
The screening room is womblike, as are the dark, pillowy seats, which seem to soak up the light and swallow the sitter, sucking her down into the imaginary realm, making it hard for her to stand up and regain her sense of place. It’s a chapel of make-believe, an intermediate space between the dream world of the screen and the chaotic quotidian tumult of the world, which serves as an endless source of raw material, to be reshaped and interpreted and improved upon. As long as you’re here, daily life can seem subsidiary to its transubstantiated representation. In the immediate afterglow, the images on the screen are more real than whatever’s waiting for her outside. They linger. For this instant, she’s free, suspended between her own life and the lives that might have been. In her imagination, writing the screenplay and now watching the film, the two men had become one, Luke becoming Jeff, or perhaps Jeff had become Luke, and the years separating them had fallen away and she was forever twenty-two and forever in love.
But the other life, her actual life, is coming at her like a wave, coming to reclaim her and obliterate the imagined one, washing over her and pulling her back to solid but shifting ground—friends, colleagues, a producer and two of the actors, even a sister she’s been trying to discard.
Here’s Casey, her oldest friend, looking a little tight around the eyes from her face-lift, dry-eyed, taut cheeks, coming over, arms open wide to sweep her in. “Oh my God, I was sobbing, it was so beautiful.”
Veronica and Washington are holding back, keeping their distance while pretending not to be noticing Casey, waiting for her to disappear. Already it has been negotiated that Casey, in deference to Veronica’s feelings, will not be going to the after party, which is why she gets primacy here. Among the negotiating points was the promise that her ex wouldn’t be invited to either event. The present is littered with wreckage from their past.
“Well, it’s wonderful you came,” Corrine says, unfurling herself.
Nancy Tanner squirms through the scrum—easily done, since she is skinnier than ever—and materializes in front of Corrine. “For an amateur,” she says, “you’re not a bad screenwriter. Gotta say, you really captured those entitled, overeducated New Yorkers.”
“I’ll take that as a tribute to my vast imaginative powers. But seriously, Jeff and Cody deserve most of the credit.”
And indeed, Cody Erhardt is mobbed over in the other corner, the director accepting tribute from some of the more fashionable members of the audience.
“But seriously, can you please introduce me to Tug Barkley? He was amazing playing Jeff. Is he coming to the party? He’s so hot. Did you get to know him at all?”
“I can’t say that we’re close—I wasn’t on the set.”
“You absolutely must introduce me.”
“I’ll try to at the party.”
The fluid comportment of her sister, wobbling in place, artfully tilting her head as she rests an arm on Corrine’s shoulder, suggests that she didn’t stint on the cheap wine served before the screening.
“So proud of you, sis.”
“Thank you, Hilary.”
“I mean it. S’wonderful.”
“I’m paralyzed with happiness.”
“I know you don’t think I’m smart.”
“I don’t think any such thing.”
“Yes, you do. But I was smart enough to know what to say to make Russell forgive you.”
“You mean Russell, my husband, who’s standing right there, within earshot?”
Fortunately, he’s absorbed in conversation with Carlo Russi, the chef, who is hosting the after-party at his new restaurant.
“I know I shouldn’t say anything.”
“You’re quite right about that, so don’t. Have you met Michael, our exec producer? Michael, this is my sister, Hilary.”
Michael, a dark, chiseled prince with a fiercely intelligent gaze, tall and handsome enough that he might have made a career in front of the camera, succeeds in distracting Hilary from whatever revelation was quivering on her lips, taking her hand and ducking his head gallantly. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise. Are you going to the party? Maybe we could share a cab? I work at HBO, but I have a script I’d lov
e to tell you about.”
Michael’s visibly stricken by this revelation. But he’s a big boy who will have to take care of himself, and Corrine is grateful to be rid of her sister, who is towing him toward the exit.
“Corrine, this is Astrid Kladstrup,” Russell is saying, presenting this voluptuous Betty Boop babe with a bobbed do, cartoon lips and a vintage dress. “Astrid’s at least partly responsible for the whole Jeff Pierce revival—she curates that Web site.”
“It’s so amazing to meet you,” the girl says as Corrine looks her over, then glances back at Russell, suddenly wondering if it’s possible, and indeed he seems a little flustered. “I thought the movie was great,” she continues, “although I was sorry it wasn’t faithful to the drug overdose. But I suppose there was no way that was going to fly.”
The publicist has slipped behind them and is urging them forward toward the exit.
“You still weepy?” Russell asks, putting his arm around her.
“I’m fine,” she says, her voice catching in her throat.
“Well, let’s join Wash and Veronica, who’ve been waiting patiently to pay homage.”
She remembers then that they’re a couple; that she is, in addition to being a lover and a mother, half of this unit: Russell & Corrine.
She exchanges kisses with the Lees, and together they walk out into the anteroom, redolent of popcorn, which is glowing yellow in the glass case of the bright red machine.
They collect their coats, share the elevator down to the lobby and walk out into the cold.
“If we still lived here, we’d be home now,” Russell says, looking down West Broadway. They live a hundred and forty blocks north now, in Harlem.
“What was that expression of yours?” Corrine says. “ ‘If wishes were Porsches, beggars would drive’?”
“A clever refashioning of the old adage, I think.”
“I think we’ll all be a whole lot cleverer after a cocktail or two,” Washington says, flagging a cab.
“It’s only a few blocks,” Corrine tells him. “You guys go ahead. We’re going to walk.” Russell gives her a quizzical look before nodding—one of those tiny empathetic exchanges of which a marriage of long duration is compounded. Corrine was ready to jump in the cab, but she realizes now that she wants more than anything to walk, and she takes Russell’s hand. It’s an important night and she intends to savor it.
Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that’s lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won’t be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival.
Acknowledgments
I’m very grateful to Alexandra Pringle, Elizabeth Robinson and Donna Tartt for reading early drafts of the novel and making valuable suggestions. Binky Urban read every draft and was, as always, incredibly helpful and supportive. Gary Fisketjon read the book with his usual close, critical and sympathetic scrutiny and this novel is all the better for it. Ruthie Reisner made the system at Knopf work for us. Thanks to Chip Kidd for another killer book jacket design. I’d also like to thank Lydia Buechler for her sharp eye, Carol Edwards for her sensitive copyediting and Kathleen Fridella for turning the manuscript into a book. Beverly Burris, my much-missed assistant, performed dozens of research and fact-checking missions, great and small. I’d also like to thank Ben Frischer, who did the initial research for the novel. Special thanks to Morgan Entrekin, coach of the Art & Love team. And finally I want to thank my wife, Anne, for her encouragement and support.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jay McInerney is the author of seven previous novels, a collection of short stories, and three collections of essays on wine. He lives in New York City and Bridgehampton, New York.
An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide
Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s conversation about Bright, Precious Days, Jay McInerney’s vibrant and immersive novel about post-9/11 New York, and a circle of friends and acquaintances whose lives intersect at the crossroads of great social and political change.
Discussion Questions
1. Describe the early courtship of Russell and Corrine Calloway. How would you characterize their relationship? How do their personalities shift or change over the course of the novel? What aspect of their marriage is strongest?
2. Marital fidelity, or lack thereof, is central to the plotting in Bright, Precious Days. As the number of affairs mounted throughout the book, how did they shape or complicate your understanding of each character? Which liaison surprised you the most? Consider the letter that Jeff wrote to Corrine, in which courtly love is explored. What does McInerney seem to suggest about the functionality of monogamy?
3. Jeff is introduced to the reader, strikingly, in the present tense. How is his presence felt throughout the book? How would you describe him, based on Russell’s account? Corrine’s? What did his personal letters reveal?
4. Describe the editorial relationship that Russell has with his authors. What is his main objective as an editor? Discuss the idea of ownership in relation to literature that has been touched by an editor’s pen. What does Jack’s letter to Russell imply about Russell’s editorial style?
5. Discuss how New York City functions as a character in Bright, Precious Days. What assertions can be made about New York pre- and post-9/11? What is “authentic” New York? How do Russell’s ideas about what it means to be a New Yorker frustrate Corrine?
6. The scene in which Hilary reveals that she is the biological mother of Russell and Corrine’s children sends shock waves that emanate throughout the novel. What scares Corrine most about her children knowing this information? How would you describe her as a parent?
7. Discuss the role of food and consumption in Bright, Precious Days. How is Russell’s interest in food and culinary culture described over the course of the novel? Why does their daughter’s interest in cooking alarm Corrine? How does class factor into body image concerns in their social circle?
8. Compare the dinner party in chapter 31 with the dinner party where Jack first becomes acquainted with the Calloways. How has his perspective about the Calloway family changed during this time? How has his understanding of New York and its literary scene shifted?
9. Discuss Corrine and Russell’s TriBeCa living situation. Why is Russell so adamant about buying property? What appeals to Corrine about Harlem? How does their struggle to find an affordable neighborhood reflect the tides of gentrification inherent in the rise of urban populaces?
10. Issues of class consciousness run throughout Bright, Precious Days. How do anxieties about money and status plague Corrine and Russell’s relationship? With whom is Corrine most comfortable discussing money? How does the crash of 2008 affect the couple’s social circle?
11. Describe Corrine’s relationship with Luke. What attracted her to Luke initially? How does his personality differ from her husband’s? Were you surprised by her decision to remain with Russell?
12. How does the discovery of Corrine’s affair affect their children? When is Corrine’s guilt about it most apparent? How does her apology following the affair differ from Russell’s behavior after his dalliances?
13. Compare the lives of Je
ff and Jack. What parallels can you draw about their ascensions to literary stardom? Their tragic deaths? How did Russell’s editorial input shape their success?
14. As Bright, Precious Days unfolds, instances of deception are untangled and revealed. Who is the most honest character? Which character’s secret was most surprising to you?
15. How do Russell’s ideas about Art and Love versus Power and Money echo throughout Bright, Precious Days? What do they assert about the relationship between art and commerce? How do they reflect the changing nature of New York City? Of Russell’s own ambitions?
Further Reading
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman
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Jay McInerney, Bright, Precious Days
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