Sometimes You Have to Lie by Leslie Brody

Author:Leslie Brody [Brody, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Immediately after the exhibit, Louise basked in what seemed to have been a success. The reviews were good and she’d sold eighteen pieces. But a few weeks later, she was declaring the episode a catastrophe. She felt the gallery owners had cheated her, withholding money owed for the sale of her work. A solo show in a gallery was an experiment Louise told Jimmy she wished never to repeat. All of this was happening at the same time that her relationship with Alixe was continuing to crumble. Their breakup unexpectedly returned Louise to her autobiographical fiction. She wrote a draft of a novel she called Crazybaby, using the same foundational material she had relied on for her play Mother Sweet, Father Sweet.

In this more comic iteration, an eponymous eight-year-old orphan has been rescued by Teacake, a proto–Ole Golly figure. Teacake is housekeeper and factotum to Mrs. Birdsong (the Grandmother Fitzhugh character), and her son, Byron, is a poet who speaks in rhyme. Mrs. Birdsong, an eccentric, throws money out the window to the birds and dresses bizarrely. In the style of magical realism, the little girl heroine believes she can cause a person’s death by completing their portrait. At one point, she tests her theory, finishing her picture of a cruel, duplicitous white man who then dies at the final stroke of her pen.17

Louise put the unfinished novel aside temporarily as other projects took precedence. Frustrated by the lack of movement in her career, she fired her agent, Gloria Safire, and hired Patricia Schartle, whom M.J. had recommended. In June, Louise wrote to tell Jimmy that she still hadn’t received any payment from the Banfer Gallery show. She had returned to writing and had been trying various freelance strategies to earn some money. She had also started a new children’s book, which her agent had been showing to publishers. Harper had indicated some interest. Louise wrote to Jimmy, “It is called Harriet the Spy and is about a nasty little girl who keeps a notebook on all her friends.”18

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