I Can't Complain Read Online Free PDF Page A

related realm of bookshop readings, declining an invitation has its penalties and its rewards. I don’t want to be seen as a diva, and certainly want to be a trouper on behalf of my publisher and our mutual wares. More social algebra: Will I flop, or will I draw a crowd? What if I say no and I’m wrong? What if one hundred hardcover-buying readers attend, including reporters and movie producers? On the same book tour, May 2004, I was up against the final episode of
Friends
and the final episode of
Frasier,
the latter in Florida. Attendance: one fan, one cousin, and her date.
    Can I ever really be sure what to accept and what to decline? Yes, if I’ve done the event in the past and know it’s a dog. Take the pre-Christmas sale-a-thon where at least ten authors sit at tables with their old and new books, thereby encouraging customers to confuse the day with a crafts fair. They browse; they turn your book over, read the flap, compare the photo to the live person in front of them, smile weakly, then move on to the best-selling author two chairs down. The first time I attended, I consoled myself that there was a payoff, that the deli downstairs had corned beef and chopped liver and really good pickles. Second year, I brought my knitting, the same year I noticed that the paperbacks piled at my station had been signed by me at the previous year’s author-a-thon. Third year, I declined, and I told the truth: too many authors, snow predicted, not enough customers.
    I have a companion quirk to the saying of no: I must explain why I’m turning down an invitation, lest the potential host guess the truth, that I simply don’t want to go. I always RSVP with an excellent reason and ask the same in return, a little emoting and a lot of regret.
    It’s just that I expect a little effort, a convincing so-sorry-but-no along with the offer of future social intercourse. Such is a footnote in my self-styled book of etiquette—that one can infer from the turndown that it is a regrettable and unavoidable scheduling conflict and not a divorce. (This, I believe, is a vestige of my long-ago dating life, when there were
no
’s that meant never, and
no
’s that said, “It truly
is
father-daughter weekend, otherwise I’d love to, and after that I’m free for the rest of my life.”)
    What I’ve learned since 1990, the year of my first novel and coincidentally the year I turned forty, is that almost everyone accepts
no
with grace as if it’s what he or she expected all along. The committee that recruits the talent for the conference moves down the list to the next author’s name. The parents of the bride cheer when my turndown arrives, reducing their bottom line by one expensive rack of lamb and my share of champagne, wine, and fashion-forward canapés.
    Further reinforcing my ducking of invitations is a response I often hear: “We didn’t really think you could make it (across the country/on such short notice/on the day after Thanksgiving/since you don’t know the bride or groom), but we thought we’d try just the same.”
    Off the hook, I send my present, regrets reiterated convincingly on the card. Later I hear about the deeply disappointed dentist couple slated for my table, whose teenage daughter is a writer, too!
    I am tempted to say, “Whew. That was close. Nothing worse than a stage mother with a writing sample in her purse.”
    But I don’t. A fiction writer’s job, after all, is to spin tales and sound convincing.
    “Greatly looking forward to next time,” I reply.

Sex Ed
    W HEN MY SON WAS nine years old, a family friend gave him
Why Do Our Bodies Stop Growing? Questions About Human Anatomy Answered by the Natural History Museum.
The illustrated book was a big hit, filled with the occasional half-goofy question like “Is it true that you can eat an apple standing on your head?” or “Is the skull one big bone?” On page 88, Ben found Question 132, the loaded one, which asked, “When do I stop being a child?”