Please welcome Maile Meloy.
I was in the 5th grade in Montana in the final round of the Lewis and Clark
County Spelling Bee and I just spelled the word meemees as in Screaming Meemees and I
was waiting for the bell to ding that tells you that you've spelled the word
wrong and releases the flood of adrenaline and makes your legs shake and
your stomach drop and a photographer took my picture and the bell didn't
thing so I won. And the local newspaper ran a story describing me as extremely
shy, peering out from behind red hair. And I had this double response. I was
indignant because I wasn't shy and I was also horrified that entering a spelling
bee meant that people could publish opinions about your personality in the
newspaper. So maybe I was shy. The picture they had of me standing at the
microphone looks like I was facing the firing squad. I grew up in a small town
where it really felt like you knew everyone and the question of shyness had
just never come up. I went on to the state Spelling Bee and I got the word
indict and spelled it "i-n-d-i-t-e" and the bell dinged and people came up
asking reward and said "How could you get indict wrong? Everyone in your family is
a lawyer?" Which was true. My father and my stepmother and my grandfather and my
uncle were all lawyers. I grew up surrounded by them, which might have
added to my reserve because lawyers are trained to argue, so whatever you said
someone was going to take the other side, just out of force of habit. If you'd made
the opposite statement they would have argued with that. So when I started
writing fiction it was a revelation. It was the perfect job. No one argues with
short stories and you can do it alone in a room and some days the only person I
spoke to was the guy at the gym who says "Have a nice workout." And then right about
the time my first book was coming out, it was collection of short stories, I got a
call saying that Martha Stewart had chosen it for her book club on her
television show. This is a big deal. Martha was at the height of her career,
she was really everywhere, it was Oprah and her, and I had never done any kind of
interview before. I don't mean I had never done a local television interview
or a cable book TV interview, I mean I have never done the kind of interview
where someone emails you five questions for their blog and you email them back
the answers. I had done nothing. So now from my room where I sit alone typing
I'm supposed to go on national TV and my first interview ever is going to be with
the not unterrifying Martha Stewart.
Erin, the book's publicist was thrilled and it didn't occur to her that I didn't
know how to do a TV interview and it didn't occur to me to tell her because
honestly I didn't know. Just as I didn't know I was shy until the reporter
covering the spelling bee told me, I was I didn't know how utterly unprepared I
was. I had no nice clothes because I've been a student forever and because I
live in Los Angeles where you can really wear jeans to anything, and I think I was
thinking of Thoreau "Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes" or
something. So I'm on the phone with Erin who's in New York and I say "So I guess
I'll just wear what I usually wear," and she says "Um, what do you usually wear?" and
I said" I don't know, jeans and t-shirts." I said "Also I just cut off all my hair" and
she said "Oh no, why?" I've been playing this sport called kayak polo
in an attempt to get out of the other humans and in kayak polo there are a lot
of paddles flying around and so you are a helmet with a metal facemask and my
ponytails got in the way of the helmet and it was annoying so I cut it off. So
I'd always had long hair and now I have none and off I go across the country and
I meet Erin for the first time and we go together to Martha's television
studio in Westport, Connecticut, which is in an old stone office building from the
20s. And we're on the way down the long driveway and Erin says "So did you read
the news this morning?" And I hadn't and she said "All of Martha's emails were
just subpoenaed because there was this insider trading case, see and there was
talk of an indictment."
Which is a word I can now spell. So we get to the studio and it's clear that
everyone there is really stressed out because they all might be out of a job
soon and Martha might be going to jail. And
someone gives us a tour. The studio has all these stages based on rooms in
Martha's houses and it has a giant warehouse sized room that's all crafting
materials on shelves to the ceiling. Bins and bins of yarn and fabric and buttons
and glue. I'm not a crafter, I'm not even an aspirational crafter, but I start
getting that intensely inadequate feeling that Martha gives people because
she could knit a cable knit sweater while putting on a dinner for sixteen
and I could not. And after the tour we wait and we wait and I imagine Martha in
her dressing room scrolling through her emails and I imagine having to turn over
all of my emails to a court for any reason and how embarrassing that would
be and I try doing a breathing exercise that's supposed to make your breath and
your voice come from your diaphragm down low and it's supposed to make you feel
more grounded and more powerful but it is not working. And someone gives us some
beautiful food and a cafeteria but I can't eat it and then someone whose
hands smell like lunch does my makeup
and she says "Your hair is long in your author photo. What happened?" And then I'm
send out to the set and someone sits in the seat where Martha will sit under the
light but Martha doesn't come out. She sends
word to ask what I'm wearing because she wants to match the beautiful colors on
the book jacket and coordinate with me.
You see, even with the subpoena she's thinking about nice clothes and I'm
wearing a t-shirt and I do someone say "Um, it's kind of a green t-shirt." And this
person who works for her is trying to put me at ease but I am not at ease. I am
vibrating with nervousness. And finally she comes out in a violet silk shirt, the
exact shade of the violet on the book, and her hair is perfect and she's very
beautiful and she has that kind of disorienting familiarity and glow of
celebrity. I mean, it's Martha. And she sits in the chair and we chat with the cameras
off and she says how much she loves the book and how much she loves Montana and
she's just been out to Ted Turner's ranch and "Have I been there?"
I haven't but we agree how gorgeous the state is so this is going well.
And at the table where we're sitting there are some old worn hardcover books
and some flowers and my book propped up. And Martha, you may know this, has a very
strong visual sense and not a great store of patience, and she's very direct.
That's how she got where she is. So she looks at these old books on the table
and she says "What are those doing there?" and everyone freezes and the fear in the
room is palpable and this tiny voice from behind the light says "They're, um, set
dressing." And she says "Do they have anything to do with her book?" and the
tiny voice says "No." And she's like "Well get rid of them." And someone scurries
forward and takes the books away and resets the table and there is so much
tension in the room, probably more than usual with the threat of the indictment,
and my shoulders are up around my ears and I look like the spelling bee photo
and I don't know if I can speak. And the cameras are rolling when Martha picks up
my book and says "I'm here with Maile Meloy to talk about her wonderful short
story collection Half in Love. So Maile, you're from Montana?" and I say "Yes."
And she gives me kind of a funny look and says "And you grew up there and went
to school there?" and I say "Yes." And she says "Okay wait stop the cameras.
Alright, listen Maile, you have to talk. People want to know these things about
you." And I say "Okay." But, I didn't say this to her,
these are questions with yes or no answers and I am answering them. I was
raised by lawyers.
I grew up with stories about depositions that had gone terribly wrong because
someone volunteered too much. I was taught from early childhood that you
only answer the question you are asked. You volunteer nothing. So we start again
and Martha says "I'm here with my Maile Meloy to talk about her wonderful short
story collection Half in Love. So Maile, you're from Montana?" and I say "Yes,
and I grew up there and went to school there."
And she gives me another look but we go on and we have a conversation and
Martha's incredibly nice about it all and I spent a week filled with dread
before the interview aired and I watched it alone in Los Angeles and on the
screen I seem to be trying to protect myself with my shoulders and look very
small. But I warmed up and they edited out the worst parts and they included
Martha saying that I would have to come back for my next book and me saying deal,
which was you know a fully executed verbal contract,
in front of witnesses. My segment was between one on how to make those cookies
that are frosted half-black and half-white and a guy who had a lemur for
a pet. And the lemur guy was brilliant. He was so relaxed and he totally knew how
to talk about lemurs without any prompting.
He just rattled away. And now twelve years and six books later
I am almost as good as the lemur guy. I get back from book tour and someone will
ask me a simple question and I have a whole anecdote ready. I'm practically
tap-dancing the answer before I catch myself and stop. And it's all thanks
to Martha. And I was ready to go back for my next book and do it better but by the
time the novel came out Martha was in prison. That's how it goes sometimes.
Thank you.
Maile Meloy