Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part Three)

Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part Three)
Merla completed The Rollins Chronicles on her twenty-first birthday. This was not her most amazing feat. That honor goes to her securing a mega-advance within three days of her sixteenth birthday. 
She was able to skip the agent part. She sent her work directly to a young editor who completely understood. 
At sixteen, Merla left her Tea, South Dakota, home for good.
She rode a bus all the way through Chicago to Boston, found Beacon Hill, visited her editor and settled in a small apartment on Mt. Vernon Street. 
None of this came to light until the launch of her 1500 page novel on September 22. 2013. It's history is being made as we speak. 
On the day the book appeared, Merla ceased being Merla.  She became Pearl again. 
No one could find her. She had a a shell that would do any oyster proud. 
Her legend grew. She was a next thing, Gertrude Stein, Danielle Steele, and John Grisham, rolled into one. She  rivaled the rise of gadgets, the collapse of the GOP  and every disaster on the horizon.   
There was only one fly in the ointment. 
The Rollins Chronicles broke all records and penetrated every market. A copy of the first paperback edition thus found its way to the top of  a pile of romance novels back in Tea. Pearl's mother put things to together quickly. She correctly surmised that Merla T. Morrow, invisible author, was indeed the plain, stand-offish child who had walked out the door five years before.
It took only days for messages like Merla's Mom Calls Daughter a Bitch and  Dad Suffers while Merla Rakes in Big $$$ to circle the globe. Recondite Mt. Vernon Street was inundated by film trucks, TV rigs, eager citizen-journalists, and writers still on salary. 
There was only one problem. 
The world failed to credit Pearl with the intelligence it took to get her this far. Unbeknownst even to her one confidant, that editor up the hill, she had already disappeared. 
This did not stop conjectures. Powered by a complete lack of information, the Merla craze produced endless tweets, Facebook pages and videos detailing real and true encounters with the mysterious author.

The truth is less garish.
Merla AKA Pearl was last seen engaging in energetic contra dancing on the second floor of the Brattleboro, Vermont, Town Hall. Vermont remains an excellent place to disappear from the face of the earth,
Apparently, whatever her present name, hair length, weight or daily routine is, she's hard at work on a sequel. It is said to deal with the life of Sarah Rollins, heiress-entrepreneur, following her kidnapping  and subsequent escape from prison.  
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Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part Two)

Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part Two)
Pearl was only eight as the century turned but she had spent four years thinking deeply about her future. Things became remarkably simple. Since there was no money in her future, not even a nest egg, she realized she would need to begin her intended success immediately. She was as motivated as ever. Her father was more and more absent. And her mother was increasingly immobile.  Pearl did as other similarly-alienated children do  She planned an escape that would take her a long way from home and solve all her problems.
Her planning involved deciding on a career. She learned on TV that obscure women, many from places like Tea, had become best-selling novelists. There were other avenues. But one look in the mirror told her that she would never be an actress. And one auto-probe of her modest musculature convinced her she was no athlete.  If she excelled, it would be with her fertile mind and the best possible agent she could find, at least until she could manage her own affairs. 
Her mother's romance hinted at what she was looking for. But they seemed to her insipid, not deep enough to be templates for the sort of saga sold millions and became a blockbuster. She dreamed of some new Elizabeth Taylor-James Dean combo on the big screen, bringing her widely-known words to life.
Pearl planned escape from Tea by the year 2008, when she would be sixteen. She meant by then to have a draft of her first best-seller. She would set it in the future. It would trace a family through many generations. It would grab readers multiple times as they resonated to the lives, loves, crimes and deaths of the Rollins family. That was the name she chose for for the multiple protagonists of her first saga.
Pearl became a regular at the Tea Community Library after school and on weekends. She learned how to use Word and store her work on floppys. Her writing was economical and careful. She never threw anything away. She went forward always. As she wrote, she created an outline that was her bible. Every day she spent time thinking about each person in each strand of her story. By 2004, she completed the first of sixteen intended books. She wanted the book to be heavy.
Pearl could not imagine her name on the jacket of her best-seller. Pearls were the end, not the beginning. She changed it from Pearl to the name millions around the world know, Merla. Pearl from Tea, South Dakota, became Merla T. Morrow of Mt. Vernon Streat, Beacon Hill, Boston, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Merla's hero was J. D. Salinger, not because of his writing which she did not like, save for its apparent commercial appeal. Salinger had become as aloof as she intended to continue being. He transcended the ordinary fate of authors. He was not eaten up and trampled by the demands of the herd. Merla wanted to stay free, think her own thoughts and act according to what she willed.
One might say Merla was the product of a self-made childhood.  
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Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part One)

Triadic Tales - Pearl - Short Story (Part One)
Pearl was born in Tea, South Dakota,  in 1992 and by 1996 had a growing desire to leave. 
Pearl's mother Ann and Father George were recondite Methodists. They followed their Pastor, Solomon Jones. His taste ran in the direction of a namesake in Florida. Suffice to say there was nothing on the Right Wing circuit that did not get "positive treatment". 
Hatred of the President, allegiance to guns, discipline and the Founders, never named, made up the core of the good Reverend's preaching.
Pearl's rejection of  home and state was both definite and unemotional. As an only child a mile from anyone but her parents in the flatness of that land, she kept to herself. 
George was gone a lot repairimg power lines. Ann busied herself with romance novels which she read and then reread in exact order. While reading, she ate pop tarts. By the year 2000, Ann attained a bulk that, TV would come to say, would multiply into losses of many billions in productivity and health costs. 
Pearl did her school work and watched TV. She bided her time. She watched everything about New York. Mad Men  was big.  There was a plethora of sharp women on that show. Pearl practiced their moves. She was a good imitator. The men on the show did not appeal to her, including the head man Don Draper. She found his hair too shiny. She venerated the girl who came from nothing and surmounted various obstacles to get ahead.
Pearl's parents did not burden her with right wing bile.  Nor was she abused. Nor did she run with bad kids. Kids in school seemed just as as spectral to her as George and Ann were.
Perfunctory seemed mutual all around.
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