St. Martin's First: Winter 2015 Sampler

St. Martin’s First Debut Fiction from St. Martin’s Press

Winter 2015 Sampler

A SAMPLER OF DEBUT FICTION FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS WINTER 2015 TO SIGN UP FOR MORE VISIT STMARTINSFIRST.COM A June of Ordinary Murders

3 - 26

Her Name is Rose

27 - 58

The Perfume Garden

59 - 68

Conor Brady

Christine Breen

Kate Lord Brown

Pretty Ugly 69 - 93 Kirker Butler

Meeting the English

94 - 114

The Thunder of Giants

115 - 142

A Murder of Magpies

143 - 162

The Friendship of Criminals

163 - 177

The Secrets of Midwives

178 - 198

The Figaro Murders

199 - 222

Kate Clanchy

Joel Fishbane

Judith Flanders Robert Glinski

Sally Hepworth Laura Lebow

The Tragic Age 223 - 234 Stephen Metcalfe

A Fireproof Home for the Bride

235 - 262

The Last Flight of Poxl West

263 - 285

Amy Scheibe

Daniel Torday

Duplicity 286 - 304 N.K. Traver

The Wednesday Group 305 - 317 Sylvia True

on-sale 4/21/15 A thrilling, beautifully written mystery debut that brings Victorian Dublin vividly, passionately to life, drawing readers on a gripping journey of murder and intrigue.

In the 1880s the Dublin Metropolitan Police classified crime in two distinct categories. Political crimes were classed as “special,” whereas theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were known as “ordinary.”

Dublin, June 1887: The city swelters in a long summer heat wave, the criminal underworld simmers, and with it, the threat of nationalist violence is growing. Meanwhile, the Castle administration hopes the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee will pass peacefully. Then, the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps up to investigate.

Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past successes in need of a win. With the Land War at its height, the priority is to contain special crime, and these murders appear to be ordinary—and thus of lesser priority. But when the evidence suggests high-level involvement, and the body count increases, Swallow must navigate the treacherous waters of foolish superiors, political directives, and frayed tempers to solve the case, find the true murderer, and deliver justice.

Written by Conor Brady, the former editor of The Irish Times, A June of Ordinary Murders is an accomplished, atmospheric debut that captures the life and essence of Dublin in the 1880s and introduces an unforgettable new sleuth.

CONOR BRADY is the former editor of The Irish Times. A June of Ordinary Murders is his first novel. He lives in Dublin.

Friday June 17th, 1887

ONE

T

he place where the bodies of the adult and the child were found was cool and shadowed before the sun burned off the morning mist.

It was on wooded ground that sloped down towards the river with a view across the city towards the mountains. Swallow knew it well.

When the muttering constable with sleep in his eyes and clutching the crime report dragged himself up to the detective office from the Lower Yard of Dublin Castle, he could see it in his mind’s eye.

This was where the boundary wall of the Phoenix Park met the granite pillars of the Chapelizod Gate, and where beech and pine trees formed a small, dense copse close by.

At this point, the trees are trained by the wind that funnels along the valley of the River Liffey towards Dublin Bay, inclining them eastward as if permanently pointing the way to the city. Outside the wall the ground falls away towards the river with the open fields and the village of Chapelizod beyond.

It was here, just inside the boundary wall of the park, that a keeper found the two bodies on the third morning of the extraordinary heatwave that settled on the island of Ireland in the third week of June, 1887.

In a few days’ time the country, along with Great Britain’s other territories and possessions across the globe, would mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s ascent to the throne. It was as if the blue skies and sunlit days had been specially arranged to honour the Queen and Empress of half a century.

Though it was scarcely 7 o’clock, Swallow could feel the warmth of the coming day on the nape of his neck as the police side-car bucked and swayed along Chesterfield Avenue across the park to 3

Conor Brady where the bodies had been found. The city temperature had touched 86 degrees yesterday. Now the strengthening morning sun presaged more of the same.

Dublin always took a more leisurely start to its morning, later than other cities in the industrious reign of Queen Victoria. At this early hour, the police vehicle was the only traffic on the broad, two-mile carriageway that bisects the Phoenix Park.

Swallow had put in a fetid night as duty sergeant at the G-Division detective office at Exchange Court. There were few places more cheerless in which to spend any night. Huddled in against the northern flank of Dublin Castle, chilled in winter and airless in summer, Exchange Court had the reputation of being the unhealthiest building in the maze of blocks and alleyways that had spread out around King John’s original castle to house the administration of Ireland.

Dublin’s police districts were denominated alphabetically. They went from the A, covering the crowded Liberties with its hungry alleys and courts and its primitive sanitation, to the F, serving the genteel coast from Blackrock to Dalkey with its spacious villas and elegant terraces.

The plain-clothes G Division based at Exchange Court was supposedly the elite of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Its members often grumbled over the paradox of its having probably the least salubrious accommodation of all the force.

The report of the discovery of the bodies – a man and a boy, it was said – had come in a few minutes before Swallow was due to finish his shift at 6 a.m. Now the sun’s faint warmth hinted of the denied pleasure of sleep. Behind the police vehicle, the day was forming over Dublin.

Here the city seemed far behind. The spreading acres of the great municipal park – the largest in the Empire, it was said – were a pattern of greens. Beech, oak, chestnut and maple rose over a mantle of meadow-grass.

At the base of the soaring Wellington Monument, erected through public subscription to commemorate the Dublin-born victor of Waterloo, a herd of the park deer grazed the soft morning grass. Picking up the sound of the police carriage, the timid animals started to move away from the open space to the cover of the nearby trees.

Swallow turned to gaze back across the park towards the bay and the mountains. Harriet would be going to her examination desk at the teacher training college soon. The first of her summer tests would start at 9 o’clock. It would be a trying day for his young sister, cooped 4

A June of Ordinary Murders up in a stuffy hall with the sun beating down outside. He smiled inwardly imagining her impatience as she would fill foolscap pages through the morning with commentaries on Shakespeare and the English Romantic Poets.

As they came abreast of the Viceregal Lodge, the residence of the Queen’s deputy in Ireland, the police driver hauled the car sharply to the left, veering away from the avenue onto a narrow lane known as Acres Road. The centrifugal force of the turn obliged Swallow to clutch the brass centre-rail of the vehicle, just above the embossed harp-and-crown emblem of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

The two Bridewell constables he had collected from their beats planted booted feet against the car’s duckboard to hold their balance.

The younger nudged his companion and grinned.

‘Jesus, it’s as well we didn’t get any breakfast, what?’

By rights, Swallow reckoned, he should be at Maria Walsh’s going through a plate of something substantial himself by now, and maybe addressing himself to a pint of Guinness’s porter or a mellow Tullamore whiskey. For a moment he visualised himself in her parlour above the public house on Thomas Street, his current ‘domicile’, as police terminology referred to such arrangements.

Now the side-car was on a narrow, grassy track, leading across the open parkland.

There was a cluster of uniforms by the copse within sight of the Chapelizod Gate. A full-bearded sergeant and two constables from the A-Division station at Kilmainham stood beside a white-haired friar. In spite of the sunshine and the incipient heat of the morning, the priest looked pale and cold.

A few yards away, a park-keeper with a shotgun broken open across his arm was in conversation with some civilians. His gun dog sat obediently on the grass beside him, its nose twitching at the interesting scents of the morning air. From somewhere beyond the boundary wall, Swallow heard the morning squawks and clucks of barnyard fowl.

He had been to this place before. Five years earlier the copse was one of dozens of locations in the park he had searched with colleagues investigating the murders of Ireland’s two most senior government officials, Chief Secretary Lord Cavendish and Under-Secretary Burke, by members of the extremist group, the ‘Invincibles.’

The driver dragged on the reins and slowed the vehicle to a halt 20 yards from the group. Swallow and the two constables dismounted and 5

Conor Brady strode across the grass. He recognised the bearded sergeant as Stephen Doolan, with whom he had worked before. He introduced himself for the benefit of the others.

‘Detective Sergeant Swallow, G Division. Where are they?’

‘In the trees,’ Doolan nodded towards the copse. ‘The park-keeper found them around an hour and a half ago, a man and a child – a boy.’

The copse had been planted a century previously by the park architects so that it formed a bower or primitive pergola. From where he stood, Swallow could see a contoured shape under a grey blanket between the trunks of two giant beeches.

‘I’ve kept everyone a way back from the scene since we got here, including the priest,’ Doolan said, gesturing towards the civilians. ‘What might have happened before that, I don’t know.’

Swallow grunted in approval. Not every uniformed DMP sergeant knew or cared enough about crime investigation to preserve a scene properly, but the veteran Doolan knew his business. Swallow and he went back a long way.

They walked the few yards to the copse. The sun had started to filter through the branches of the high beech, dappling the ground underfoot. Swallow saw that there was not just one, but two blankets.

He dropped to his haunches by the trunk of one of the trees. Doolan brought his bulk down on one knee and grasped the nearer blanket.

‘D’you want to see the man or the child first?’

‘Let’s see the man.’

Swallow was unsure why he felt it might be easier that way. Perhaps he wanted to put off what he knew would be the more unpalatable sight. He indicated the covered shape on the ground, and Doolan lifted the grey blanket.

The body appeared to be that of a slightly built man, clothed in a dark jacket and trousers with an off-white shirt. It lay on its back, what remained of the face turned to the morning sky.

Swallow instinctively removed his hat as a gesture of respect.

The features had been terribly mutilated. The eyes were sockets of red turning to black. The skin, from the jawline to the forehead and from one ear to the other, was marked with a series of gashes. Only bloodied gristle remained of the nose. There was a full head of dark brown hair, cut short. Swallow reckoned him to be young, maybe in his twenties.

Doolan folded the blanket and dropped to one knee. ‘You wouldn’t see many as bad as that,’ he said softly.

6

A June of Ordinary Murders Swallow concurred silently. More than 20 years as a city policeman had inured him to sights of death and injury. Momentarily, he was reminded of a scene from his days in uniform where a young inmate had put her face in a mincing machine at the kitchens of the Richmond Asylum.

He had taught himself to isolate his emotions at times like this. His technique involved not thinking of what lay before him as an individual human being who had been breathing, eating, drinking or perhaps making love just a few hours previously. That would come later when they would have a name and an identity, humanising this broken thing on the ground.

What was important for now was detail. He drew out his notebook and pencil and started to record what he saw.

The left arm was flung out to the side at an angle of 45 degrees, the right arm folded across the chest.

The clothing was not noticeably disturbed. The jacket and trousers were clean and seemed in good repair. An off-white cotton shirt, buttoned to the neck but collarless, was spattered with blood. Seven or eight feet from the head a black, soft-brimmed hat lay upturned on the ground.

On the left side of the forehead, just below the hairline, there was a clear, circular hole, the size of a small coin. It formed the apex of an acute triangle with its base at the two craters where the eyes had once been. Swallow drew an oval to represent the face on the open page of the notebook and marked the location of the wound in relation to the eye cavities.

He moved close to the corpse and squatted so that he could examine the clothing by touch. He felt the fabric of the jacket between his thumb and forefinger. It was relatively new, but of indifferent quality.

When he touched his fingers against the corpse’s right hand it was cold and solid.

He moved to the feet of the corpse and squatted again. The boots showed wear, but they had been neatly patched in two places on the uppers. He drew two outlines in the notebook and marked the location of the patches on each one.

Doolan rose to his full height and moved to where the other blanket was draped across a smaller form a couple of feet away.

‘This won’t be easy either,’ Doolan said. He lifted the second blanket to reveal a small, huddled form, lying in the foetal position on its right 7

Conor Brady side with bare legs drawn up towards the stomach. The boy was perhaps 8 or 9 years old. His hands were clasped together in front of him with the fingers interlocked. The head was turned upward across the left shoulder, so Swallow could see the same destruction of the face, just as with the adult lying nearby.

The eyes were all but gone under the open lids. In their place were two small caverns of bloodied space. On the pale forehead, above where the left eye should have been, the same circular wound penetrated through flesh and bone to reveal brain matter within the skull.

The dark hair, cut short, looked healthy and glossy. The child’s mouth was open with the gums visible as if he were still screaming in the shock tremor that marked the end of his life.

A scene from his childhood years in the County Kildare countryside swam into his mind.

A man ploughing the land near Swallow’s home at Newcroft had uncovered what appeared to be human bones. At first, he thought they were the remains of famine victims, perhaps a family that had starved or died of exposure or disease. When the priest was called he told the farmer that he had stumbled on a prehistoric burial chamber. People travelled long distances to see it as the news spread.

Swallow’s father had taken him by the hand across the fields to gaze down at the yellow-grey bones in the pit. One of the smaller skeletons was crouched in the same foetal position as the dead child he was now looking at.

A few days later, men came from the new museum in Dublin and took the bones away in a wooden box. They stopped at the Swallow family pub, Newcroft House, before taking the open car that brought them to the train at the town of Kildare. While they were drinking, one of the men from the museum told his father that the skeletons were 4,000 years old.

He got to his feet. ‘Have we any identification at all, Stephen?’

‘Nothing. I went through the pockets. There’s no wallet, no watch, no rings on any of the fingers, no letters. Not even a tram ticket. Nothing in the lad’s pockets either.’

Swallow pointed to the circular wound on the forehead. ‘What do you make of that? And the same mark on the child?’

Doolan scratched his chin through his dark beard as if seeking inspiration. ‘They’re surely bullet wounds. But there should be exit wounds too. And I can’t see any.’

8

A June of Ordinary Murders Swallow moved back to squat beside the body again. He went through the pockets of the trousers and jacket. Doolan was right.

There was nothing.

‘Do you think the park-keeper might have lifted a wallet or a watch?

Or anyone else?’

Doolan shook his head. ‘I can’t say it didn’t happen. The parkkeeper’s fairly shaken himself, though. He lives down in the village in Chapelizod. He says it was the dog that brought him over here, barking and yelping.’

Swallow reached to the adult corpse’s left arm from where it lay across the grass. The hand was surprisingly small. There were no signs of physical labour.

Swallow concentrated on the two bodies, trying to study the features. Father and son, perhaps? The destruction of the faces made it difficult to measure likeness.

‘What time were they found?’

‘The park-keeper turned up at the police station in Chapelizod about 5.30 or so. They sent for the priest and they telegraphed to the Commissioner’s office at Dublin Castle. The message was relayed on to me at Kilmainham. I sent one of my lads to notify the G Division.’

The police chain of communication was slow and cumbersome. The Dublin Metropolitan Police area stretched well beyond the city proper, encompassing the great space of the Phoenix Park and many of the villages and hamlets on its periphery. Nearly all of the big DMP stations were linked by a communications system known as the ABC Telegraph.

Only a few of the larger stations were connected to the new telephone system that was in the early stages of installation across the city.

Outside of the Metropolitan District, policing was the responsibility of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Arguably the most effective communications link between the two forces was the fact that their respective headquarters’ offices were located in proximity to each other in the Lower Yard at Dublin Castle.

‘Do we know any reason why the park-keeper was out so early?’

Doolan shrugged. ‘He says he was watching for a couple of stray dogs that’ve been giving trouble. We haven’t any report of that but we can check it. He might have been planning on bringing home a few rabbits or even a deer. He wouldn’t usually start work until 8 o’clock.’

Swallow cursed silently. Close on two hours had been lost, part of which he had spent in the detective office at Exchange Court, shuffling 9

Conor Brady useless paperwork to bring him to the end of his night shift. It was time that might have seen the disappearance of valuable clues, or enabled a perpetrator to get far away from the scene of the crime.

With more than 20 years in plain clothes, Swallow was one of the G Division’s most experienced serious crime investigators. There had scarcely been a murder or suspicious death in the city during the past decade to which he had not been assigned. That the Dublin Metropolitan Police had been able to claim the highest rate of crime detection of any urban area in Britain and Ireland was in some considerable part attributable to the skills of Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow.

When three of the ‘Invincibles’ went to the gallows for the murders of Lord Cavendish and Mr Burke, Swallow got a commendation. His boss, the legendary Detective Superintendent John Mallon, had been promoted. Some of Swallow’s colleagues told him that he should have done better out of the case himself, maybe with promotion to inspector. Swallow thought so too. In fact he was bloody sure of it. He had seen others promoted having achieved much less. It was not easy to avoid feeling bitter.

And he could have done without this situation, he told himself. He had got through his week of night duty without a major crime being reported. A couple of years ago that would have been a disappointment. He would have relished the thrill of a new case, the challenge of the unknown, the satisfaction of putting the pieces of a puzzle together to see it emerge finally as a coherent picture.

This time he had been looking forward to his two leave-days. He would have slept late in the mornings and then maybe spent the warm June afternoons with his board and colours, painting at Sandycove Harbour or by the rocks at Scotsman’s Bay, behind Kingstown. He liked seascapes for the way they constantly changed, even as he worked. It meant that nobody could say he had got the wrong colour in the sky or that he had exaggerated the height of the waves.

For as long as he could remember he had been a sketcher, scratching away with a pencil stump as a boy, drawing dogs or birds or the outline of a hill or the detail of a building. In the budding stages of his romantic involvement with Maria Walsh, she had introduced him to her younger sister, Lily Grant, who was a teacher of art at Alexandra College. She encouraged him to experiment with watercolours and offered to guide him in his early efforts. He still liked to sketch, but there was something especially pleasurable in working the colour washes in and around the pencil outlines.

10

A June of Ordinary Murders Even his immediate plan for the day was forfeit now. He had arranged to collect his sister at the college in Blackrock in the afternoon, when her examination would be finished. They would walk the length of the sea road to Kingstown and she would tell him about the examination paper in the morning and how she had got on.

Then he would take her to afternoon tea at Mr Gresham’s Marine Hotel, looking down over the harbour, busy with yachts and ships and with passengers getting on and off the mail packets.

Swallow took his role as an older brother seriously. Harriet had hardly known her father. After he died, her brother had filled much of the void in her childhood world. He was her security, her counsellor and her confidant.

When she had been offered a place at teacher training college a year ago it had signalled a problem. It meant she would leave her mother to operate the public house and grocery store at Newcroft. Running the business was a hard task for a widow, dependent on hired help.

An obvious solution might be for Swallow to go home to run the place. After more than 20 years’ service with the police he was eligible for a decent pension. A detective sergeant’s pay was more than adequate for a single man. He had made some modest investments and savings too: a few shares in the tram companies and the new Dublin gas company, and a small accumulation of cash in a savings account in a Dame Street bank.

There was the complication of his relationship with Maria Walsh.

He was a single man. She was an attractive widow with her well-established public house that she had inherited from her family in Thomas Street, just 15 minutes’ walk from the Castle. There was the age gap between them. He was fit and strong for his 42 years. She was looking at 30. Without planning it, their lives had become enmeshed.

But Swallow was not of a mind to abandon the life to which he had become accustomed in order to return to rural Kildare or even to become Maria Walsh’s partner in running her business. At least it was not what he wanted to do just yet.

It was important to be in Dublin while Harriet was in training college. She needed his guidance as she came to know the world.

Increasingly, he worried about what was in her head concerning politics. She had begun to mention too often, he thought, what she referred to as ‘Ireland’s distress.’

When he encountered his sister recently in a café in Westmoreland Street with a young man, Harriet introduced her brother using an Irish language form of his name – Seosamh.

11

Conor Brady Swallow did not conceal his irritation. ‘You’re going to confuse people,’ he told her sharply. ‘If I change the name I was given at birth I’ll let you know.’

Harriet introduced the young man as Mr O’Donnell. He was ‘Seamus’ but if Swallow preferred he could call him ‘James,’ she added.

Within a few minutes of opening the conversation, O’Donnell had used the same phrase that she had used about Ireland’s distress, but it was with an undertone of aggression that rang a warning bell in Swallow’s policeman’s head. When they parted, he scribbled the name ‘James O’Donnell’ in his notebook.

In Swallow’s experience, Ireland’s distress was too often invoked as a cover for what was simply crime. Violence, misappropriation of funds, even murder could be presented under the guise of patriotism.

It was not that he doubted the sincerity of some of the politicals, as they were referred to in police parlance. Many of them were honourable people, he acknowledged. But good causes could also be exploited.

His boss, John Mallon, had a saying: ‘you can buy a lot of patriotism in Dublin for a fiver.’ The veteran detective had made quite a few such purchases in building up his intelligence network over the years.

Lately, Swallow noticed, Harriet had begun to disparage the various celebrations that were being planned to take place around the city to mark the Golden Jubilee of Victoria’s ascent to the throne.

1887 was to be a year of self-congratulation for the Empire upon which it was proclaimed the sun would never set. But conditions in Ireland were not conducive to celebration.

The ‘land war’ continued to rage across the country as smallholders fought to free themselves from crippling rents. The Dublin Castle authorities, under the direction of a new and tough Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, responded with draconian crime legislation, additional powers for the police and additional prison spaces for those who demanded reform. Irish nationalists argued that there was nothing for their country to celebrate. There were urgings to boycott or disrupt public events.

But there would be no visit to Kingstown and no afternoon tea with his sister at Mr Gresham’s Marine Hotel today. The bodies of the man and child on the ground between the beech trees had put paid to that.

Doolan removed his helmet and wiped his forehead with his uniform sleeve.

‘How long do you think they’re dead?’

12

A June of Ordinary Murders ‘Just a few hours, I’d say. The man’s still in rigor mortis. That usually begins after about three hours. He died sometime last night, maybe in the early hours of this morning.’

‘Christ, I’ve seen a lot over the years – as you have. But a father and child butchered like that…’ Doolan said.

‘You’d say they’re father and son?’ Swallow asked.

‘Well, it’s a guess. But they could be. I don’t see anything indicating a struggle,’ Doolan said hurriedly, moving from speculation to more certain ground. ‘But nobody here would have seen anything in the night or even heard shots. The lodge at the gate isn’t occupied any longer.

Maybe they were killed somewhere else?’

Swallow shook his head.

‘I think they died here. You can see the lividity there in the hands and the arms where the blood gathers. The bodies weren’t moved after death.’

He pointed to the ground. ‘If you look on the moss and grass around the two of them there, you’ll see that there are small bloodstains. They’re in a pattern around the head and shoulders on the ground as well as on his clothes. They bled here. They died here.’

Doolan shrugged. ‘I suppose you’re paid more than I am to know about these things. What do you want done now?’

‘We need to get a message down to Doctor Lafeyre at Harcourt Street. Tell him he’s needed up here. We need to get the photographic technician too. You’ll have to clear that with the Commissioner’s office.

I want photographs here before the bodies are moved.’

Swallow stepped back from the bodies to the edge of the copse. It was still cool and dark in the trees, and he winced slightly as the strengthening morning sun hit his eyes.

Everything he had seen so far boded badly.

This was not going to be a routine inquiry. It was not the result of a drunken brawl or a random criminal encounter. The remote location meant it was unlikely there were any witnesses. The extent of the damage inflicted on the corpses confirmed the application of singular brutality in the execution of the crime. The absence of any identifying clues especially worried him. Not knowing the identity of a crime victim multiplied the police task of investigation many times over.

The only positive he could see was that there was nothing to suggest any political dimension to this case.

G Division divided all crime into two categories: ‘special’ or ‘ordinary.’ The absolute priority was ‘special crime’ – anything with an 13

Conor Brady element of politics or subversion. ‘Ordinary crime’ might be serious, but it took second place to security or politically related issues. Swallow’s instinct told him that these were ‘ordinary murders.’

He stepped back out of the copse and into the full light, allowing his gaze to travel across the scene through a full 360 degrees.

He tried to imagine the final moments of what had been acted out here. Was the boy shot first? Did the man witness the terrible sight of his young son – assuming that they were parent and child – being killed before his eyes? Or was the parent shot first? Did he see the child’s terror in the last fraction of time that he was given, knowing too with certainty that the boy would follow into the darkness?

It was incongruous, he thought, that such brutalities were often uncovered in beautiful places.

So it was here. The green park rippled away towards the city, punctuated with breaks of trees. Although he could not see the river from where he stood, a faint morning mist rising from beyond the Chapelizod Gate marked its route down the valley to the city and the bay. In the distance, over the city, he could see the rising plume of steam from Guinness’s brewery at St James’s Gate. He got the faint, sweet aroma of roasting barley and hops on the air.

There was no way of knowing how the man and the boy had come to this place. Had they walked or ridden? Had they been driven? Had they come from the city during the night, along the wide expanse of Chesterfield Avenue, or had they entered the park through the gate nearby? If they had come through the village of Chapelizod there was a better probability of witnesses. Perhaps even of identification.

Swallow glumly told himself the chances were slim. The dead man and child were no villagers. The light clothing and the soft hands suggested a city type. Other questions followed. What time had they come? Were they alone? Why had they come to this remote, out-ofthe-way corner of the great park? And what motive could there be for such brutal killings? Robbery might be a possibility, given the absence of any money, a watch or a wallet. Could there be some motive of revenge? Or some set of relationships gone violently wrong? Until he had identification the lives of the man and boy would be unknowable.

He gave instructions to Doolan.

‘Get every man you can collect, Stephen. Have them search the ground thoroughly from here to the road beyond. Collect anything they 14

A June of Ordinary Murders find, buttons, coins, clay pipes, cigarette ends. I want anything that looks like a good footprint or a wheel-track to be marked out for plaster-casting. How many men can you raise?’

‘We’ll pull them off the regular beats on the A Division. I can get a dozen.’

Swallow nodded. ‘You’ll need more. You’ll have to preserve the scene until Dr Lafeyre is done and the photographer too. Contact D Division too. Get them to send everyone they have as well.’

He pointed towards the end of the track where it exited the park at the Chapelizod Gate.

‘Get a party to follow the road right down to the gate. You’ll need a line of men across the grass, three feet apart, six men each side. Then go the other direction and follow the road up to Chesterfield Avenue.

If there’s a gun or cartridges or anything discarded they’ll probably be somewhere along the track.’

Doolan hurriedly noted the instructions in his pocketbook.

‘That’s all understood. I’ll send down to the city for more men, but it’ll take a while to cover all the ground. I’ll have both ends of the road closed and we’ll the seal off the extended scene.’

He gestured to where the white-haired friar was standing patiently beside the road, clutching his box of holy oils.

‘We asked Father Laurence from the Merchants’ Quay friary to come out with us earlier. God bless him, he’s been standing there for more than an hour. Are you happy to let him up there to give them their last rites?’

Swallow glanced over at the priest in his brown habit. He had forgotten about him and felt momentarily guilty. ‘That’s fine as long as he doesn’t interfere with anything. Send a constable up with him to make sure.’

Doolan went to deploy his men and Swallow walked over to where the park-keeper stood with his gun and dog.

The man was perhaps 40 years of age, thin and wiry. He was agitated, his eyes darting around as if expecting some new catastrophe to descend, but he offered a consistent account of what he had seen and found.

Swallow thought he might have been mildly hysterical. That would not rule him out as a suspect. He had experienced cases of violence where the criminal, confronted with a full realisation of what he had done, had gone into shock.

15

Conor Brady ‘I want to see your hands and to examine your clothes,’ Swallow told him. ‘Have you any objection?’

The man seemed startled. He shrugged and stammered, ‘No… no.’

‘Take off your jacket,’ Swallow commanded, ‘and put your hands out in front of you with the palms up.’

He gave Swallow the blue official jacket. It was worn and it smelled of woodsmoke and sweat. Inside, the lining was holed and torn. But there were no stains or damp spots that might indicate hurried washing.

The pockets contained a few pennies, a pipe and a tobacco pouch, a dirty handkerchief and rosary beads.

He scrutinised the man’s extended hands and turned them over.

They were calloused and ingrained. Rims of black dirt lay under the fingernails, but there was no blood. These were not the hands or the clothing of a man who had committed the butchery in the copse of pine and beech.

‘All right,’ Swallow conceded. ‘Go along with the constables. Make your statement and then go home. You’ve had a bad morning.’

Swallow estimated that even if the man was a poacher on the side, he was in this instance at least an honest witness.

Doolan came across the grass, having briefed his men. He drew his half-hunter watch from his pocket and read the hour. It was coming up to 9 o’clock.

‘Do you want some breakfast? They’ll still be serving in the canteen at Kilmainham. You’ll want to make a report to the Castle – to get some of your own fellows up here from Exchange Court.’

Swallow had eaten nothing since midnight in Exchange Court when he had taken his sandwiches, prepared for him earlier by Maria’s housekeeper. He was thirsty too. In earlier years, he might have finished his night-duty tour with a couple of pints of stout and perhaps a Tullamore or two in one of the early-morning houses licensed to serve drink to drovers, dealers and others whose livelihood would have them on the streets before the city was properly awake.

The normal arrangements for refreshment and sustenance would not apply for the foreseeable future. He had a full agenda. He had to advise his superiors at Exchange Court of the details of the crime. He needed experienced detectives on the ground.

Standard procedure would oblige him to open a ‘murder book.’ An investigation into a crime like this could take weeks or months. Police practice required that every jot of information, every witness 16

A June of Ordinary Murders interviewed and every statement taken be meticulously recorded in the murder book, checked and then cross-checked.

Swallow reckoned that he had an hour before Dr Harry Lafeyre, the city medical examiner, would get to the scene along with the police photographic technician.

He would have to eat at some point, and it was going to be a long day ahead. He knew too that at this stage of his investigation even the sight of mutilated bodies would not interfere with his appetite. That would come later, perhaps, when names had been put on them, when the lifeless corpses were no longer just nameless flesh and bone.

He climbed aboard the Kilmainham side-car. ‘Breakfast it will be then, Stephen,’ he answered Doolan. ‘They say an army marches on its stomach, but I can tell you that in my experience so does a murder investigation.’

The driver snapped the reins, drawing the horse from its feast of meadow-grass, and turned the car back towards the city.

17

TWO

P

‘

isspot’ Ces Downes died in the front bedroom of her house overlooking Francis Street, in Dublin’s Liberties, four days before the Queen’s Jubilee, on the third day of the heatwave. She breathed her last just after 8 o’clock in the evening, about the same time that Joe Swallow completed his initial report on the Chapelizod Gate murders and signed himself out of the detective office at Exchange Court.

The news had spread during the week that the woman with a killer’s reputation who had spun a spider’s web of crime across the city for more than 20 years was on her deathbed. As quickly as the news percolated through the streets and the public houses and even the police stations, the question was being asked: What would happen when she was gone?

There were differing versions of how ‘Pisspot’ Ces – Cecilia Downes – had got her nickname. One was that she kept a porcelain pot brimming with sovereigns hidden in a secret room at the top of the three-storey house in Francis Street. Another was that when she drank porter she did so from a circular, two-handled vessel that looked as if it had been designed for sanitary purposes.

Many years before, Joe Swallow had heard what he believed to be the more accurate account of it. His source was Stephen Doolan who was then working in plain clothes from the DMP station at College Street.

Swallow and Doolan had spent a fruitless week trying to recover a haul of silver plate taken in broad daylight from a judge’s house on St Stephen’s Green. The word around the city was that ‘Pisspot’ Ces had already found a buyer for it in Manchester. Now they had taken two 18

A June of Ordinary Murders high stools in front of a pair of pints in Mulligan’s public house, behind the DMP station.

The two policemen were in gloomy mood, anticipating the censure that would descend upon them from on high for their failure to restore His Lordship’s plate.

‘She’s as hardened and vicious a criminal as you’ll meet, that one,’ Doolan said, as he squared up to his pint of Guinness’s porter. ‘And she has an eye for good silver.’

He raised the tumbler to his lips and downed a third of his pint.

‘That’s what she started with – silver. Did you know that?’

He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, drawing the frothy trace of the porter off the bristles of his moustache. ‘As I heard it from one of the old-timers in College Street, she was only a young one at the time. She went to service in a big house in Merrion Square, I think it was. The housekeeper found a clutch of silver spoons hidden away under a petticoat. When she saw the set of spoons neatly wrapped away she told her she was calling the police.’

He shook his head gravely.

‘That was where she made the mistake – the housekeeper, that is.

Ces Downes drew up a cast-iron chamber-pot from under the bed and battered her with it across the skull a dozen times. That woman never walked or talked properly afterwards.’

Doolan raised his glass again.

‘I heard that from one of the men that took Ces Downes to the Bridwell, still shouting that if she had a chance, she’d finish the ould bitch off. But you know, the extraordinary thing is that she was never charged for it. She could have been done at the very least for assault and battery, maybe even attempted murder. You won’t find any of it in the records at the Dublin Criminal Registry.’

Whether the tale was true or not, it had gained acceptance in the world of Dublin crime. It became another thread in the mystery that was ‘Pisspot’ Ces Downes.

Even in the closing days of her life, nobody in authority could have put their hands on any documentation to confirm where Ces was born or what her name had been before she married her late husband, Tommy ‘The Cutter’ Byrne.

Searches by successive investigators over the years in the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages had yielded nothing. Trawls through the post office and the savings banks, facilitated by co-operative 19

Conor Brady officials, found no trace of her supposed crime-funded fortune. There was nothing of use in her file in the Dublin Criminal Registry, the DMP’s vast repository of information held at Dublin Castle on those who came to their notice during the investigation of crime.

A decade previously, after her husband had died of consumption, she paid cash down for what had once been the home of a prosperous wool-merchant on Francis Street.

The once-elegant town house was within the hearing of the bells of the city’s two cathedrals: Christ Church and St Patrick’s. It became the headquarters of Ces Downes’s criminal operations. The fine reception rooms became dormitories for travelling criminals. The spacious kitchens and pantries became storehouses for junk and stolen property.

The Italianate plasterwork on the ceilings crumbled. What had once been a showpiece of Georgian architecture and workmanship degenerated into a squalid doss-house.

A wisecracking G-man remarked perceptively that Pisspot Ces and her house on Francis Street deteriorated together. Never abstemious, she drank heavily and steadily after Tommy’s death. The sharp, strong features turned to sagging flesh. The once-glossy hair that she wore curling to her shoulders gradually turned from black to a yellow-grey.

Ces Downes kept the top floor of the mansion as her citadel, sharing it with two Staffordshire fighting dogs that reputedly slept one at each side of her bed at night. Few of her criminal foot-soldiers had access to the top floor. Only her most trusted lieutenants ever got beyond the landing. When she saw visitors on business it was in a dilapidated, dirty room at street level that had once been the wool-merchant’s counting office.

As Ces Downes’s criminal enterprises consolidated, upwards of half a dozen young men – her ‘lads,’ as she referred to them – operated as her muscle.

Two of them in particular, Vinny Cussen and Charlie Vanucchi, were toughened criminals. Cussen was squat and red-haired with a physique like a small horse. Vanucchi’s tall frame and sallow, dark looks betokened his Neapolitan forebears, who had come to Dublin as street pedlars three generations previously.

There were rumours that Ces had children. Some of the G-Division detectives had picked up a whisper that she had a son who was one of the top criminals in Liverpool. A young woman who came to visit her once at Francis Street was spoken of as being her daughter.

20

A June of Ordinary Murders Somebody else said she was Ces’s fence – a receiver of stolen goods – in London. But she would neither deny nor confirm any of it on the many occasions when she was interviewed in connection with one crime or another.

Nor was it easy to say how or why Pisspot Ces Downes had emerged as one of the acknowledged principals of Dublin’s criminal underworld during the 1870s and 1880s. Some policemen believed there was a clue in the bail records of the Dublin Magistrates Courts.

While it was impossible to find any trace of her in any other official register, the books there showed that she had begun to offer herself as a bail-bondsman at some time at the beginning of that period.

Bail was difficult in the Dublin courts for a suspected criminal accused of housebreaking or robbery or picking pockets. Victorian Dublin, in common with every other major city of the United Kingdom, placed a premium on the protection of property. The city’s policing and courts system reflected that. But bail in some circumstances might be a possibility if someone was willing to put up a heavy bond. Ces Downes seemed to have the funds to do so.

She had no convictions for violence, but it was generally believed that a Belfast criminal who was found with his throat cut on Usher’s Island had died at Ces Downes’s own hand. His error, it seems, was thinking that he could undercut Downes and supply cheap, bootleg whiskey to certain public houses on the Dublin quays.

And it was known that when a small-time fence across the river in Mary Street refused to pay Vinny Cussen the agreed value of a collection of stolen watches, Ces Downes ordered that he be brought over to Francis Street for some persuasion. He was never seen alive again.

Tentative identification of a battered corpse taken from the river at Islandbridge a month later indicated his likely violent end.

She seemed to have influence in unlikely places. It was known that when a drunken doctor had refused treatment to a sick woman at the Long Lane Dispensary, Ces Downes somehow arranged it so that she was admitted as a patient at Dr Steevens’ Hospital. The woman even got a sulky apology from the dispensary.

She had the reputation of being able to persuade certain landlords to hold off from raising rents or evicting certain tenants who were in her favour and who were having difficulty meeting their bills. It was said, although never proven, that she had influence with lawyers and even with some judges.

21

Conor Brady Over the years she built a network of operators from the povertystricken classes that inhabited the courts and alleyways and tenements of Dublin city. Ces Downes was a protector, a fixer, a money lender and a counsellor as well as being a woman who was personally capable of extreme violence.

G Division knew that her criminal interests ran virtually the entire gamut of the underside of Dublin life. She received stolen property.

She operated rings of ‘dippers’ – young girls who picked pockets in the streets or at race meetings. She funded pitch and toss schools. She staked cash for the illicit distilling of alcohol. Although it could never be established that she was directly involved in prostitution, she readily went bail for girls from the red-light districts around Montgomery Street or in the courts and alleys off Grafton Street whenever the DMP felt it was necessary, for appearances’ sake, to make some arrests.

If Ces Downes had connections to any of the ‘politicals,’ the Land Leaguers, the Fenians, the Invincibles or any of the splinter groups, G Division rarely found any traces of them. She stayed clear of the wellknown figures who claimed to be pursuing the interests of the worker or the small farmer or advancing the cause of patriotic nationalism.

But the G-men often found that there was cross-membership down the ranks between the ordinary criminal and the politicals. Housebreakers, robbers, prostitutes, receivers, pickpockets and miscreants of various types would frequently invoke political motivation when arrested or charged. Sometimes, in Swallow’s experience, the claims were genuine. Often they were expedient, or a desperate attempt when caught red-handed to do a deal as an informant with a G-man.

Estimates of Ces’s age put her somewhere in her forties. But the heart disease that slowly drained the strength from her body had turned her yellow and gaunt and seemed to shrink her frame. Since the early springtime she had grown visibly more frail each week, and from the early summer she had not been able to spend more than an hour or two of any day on her feet.

In more recent years, as she had gradually succumbed to the illness that finally ended her life, she had devolved much of the running of her organisation to her two lieutenants – Vinny Cussen and Charlie Vanucchi.

The question now was which of these two potential heirs would take her place. Both were brutal men. Their victims included people who could not pay their debts to Ces Downes’s criminal empire, 22

A June of Ordinary Murders troublesome publicans and potential witnesses in court cases. Some of those who crossed Cussen and Vanucchi disappeared, like the fence from Mary Street who refused to pay for the stolen watches, and were never seen again. Others ended up in hospital or badly mutilated.

Charlie Vanucchi ran as many as a dozen burglary and housebreaking teams simultaneously. It was said that Charlie could accurately describe the interior and layout of every fine house and business premises between the two canals that circle Dublin city centre.

Vinny Cussen’s reputation was largely built on poteen. He bought, transported, and when necessary manufactured the cheap, potent whiskey that his gangs supplied to public houses at a fraction of the cost of regular, bonded alcohol that was subject to excise tax.

Each of them regarded the other with the deepest hatred and suspicion.

As long as Ces Downes was in charge, they suffered each other in the confined world of Dublin criminality. But with her dead, would that uneasy co-existence be sustained? Most observers felt not. One man or the other would surely emerge as top dog, and it was unlikely that it would happen without a struggle.

Other questions followed. Would her successor operate according to the rules that she had dictated during her lifetime, or would the criminal network which she led try to extend beyond its traditional businesses and into new districts? Would the transition to a new leadership be peaceful, or would there be a bloodletting as a new order was established?

Pisspot Ces Downes had entered the last days of her life as the calendar turned to June. May had been seasonably warm, but June was to prove memorable for the extraordinarily high temperatures of its days and for the cloying humidity of its nights. Over the days and nights that she lay in her sick-room, at the front of her house in Francis Street, the more the conversations in the streets and courts and alleyways seemed to bespeak the uncertainties in what lay ahead.

Unidentified visitors sometimes came at night to Francis Street and were admitted on her instruction to her third-floor citadel. Invariably the visitors’ features were hidden by unseasonal scarves and headgear.

None took more than a few minutes with her. The exceptions were a friar from the Franciscan Church at Merchants’ Quay and two blackrobed nuns who spent an hour by her bedside one afternoon and then slipped out into the street.

23

Conor Brady The gathering heat and the bad air of the June days hurried her end.

She would have no doctors. She dulled the pain with laudanum in brandy until she was no longer able to swallow. The ‘lads’ were by her bedside as she breathed her last.

On the evening that Ces Downes died, Charlie Vanucchi and Vinny Cussen came together to the front door of the house in Francis Street.

Together, in a rare show of unity, they pinned the black crepe and the notice on the door, announcing her passing, shortly after 8 o’clock.

24

on-sale 4/14/15 People used to say Iris Bowen was beautiful, what with the wild weave of her red hair, the high cheekbones, and the way she carried herself like a barefoot dancer through the streets of Ranelagh on the outskirts of Dublin city. But that was a lifetime ago.

In a cottage in the west of Ireland, Iris--gardener and mother to an adopted daughter, Rose--is doing her best to carry on after the death of her husband two years before. At the back of her mind is a promise she never intended to keep, until the day she gets a phone call from her doctor.

Meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Rose is a brilliant violinist at the Royal Academy in London, still grieving for her father but relishing her music and life in the city. Excited but nervous, she hums on the way to an important master class, and then suddenly finds herself missing both of her parents when the class ends in disaster.

After the doctor’s call, Iris is haunted by the promise she made to her husband--to find Rose’s birth mother, so that their daughter might still have family if anything happened to Iris. Armed only with a twenty-year-old envelope, Iris impulsively begins a journey into the past that takes her to Boston and back, with unexpected results for herself and for Rose and for both friends and strangers.

Intimate, moving, and witty, Christine Breen’s Her Name is Rose is a gorgeous novel about what can happen when life does not play out the way you expect.

CHRISTINE BREEN was born in New York and educated in Boston and Dublin, where she received an MA in Irish Literature. She is an artist, homeopath, and garden designer whose columns on travel, gardening and health have appeared in newspapers and magazines in Ireland and America. She currently lives in Kiltumper, Ireland with her husband, the novelist Niall Williams, in the cottage that her grandfather was born in. Her Name is Rose is her first novel.

Plants are always from some sort of family.

—from Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

—-1 —0 —+1

053-59788_ch00_1P.indd ix

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Part I Papaver Rupifragum “Flore Pleno”

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 1

—-1 —0 —+1

9/24/14 7:12 PM

One

The nurse who performed the X-ray had a magenta streak in her short dark hair. She had a Dublin city accent and her name began with “L.” Maybe it was Letitia? Loretta? Latara, maybe? Iris had been too apprehensive to listen. In the center of the windowless room stood an old diagnostic thing, a white metal machine. By the door was a black plastic chair with chrome legs and in the corner, a half-wall-half-glassed-in partition, inside of which L stood. Half-hidden.

It had been one of those days for Iris. That morning her editor had asked her to call into the offices of the Banner County News and she’d arrived thinking he was going to offer her a permanent spot. He’d sat her down. What he offered was coffee. He’d never done that before. Then he propped his short legs in their beige cords against the desk (a somewhat Scandinavian-looking piece, very minimalist) and explained the newspaper was taking

—-1 —0 —+1

3

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 3

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

a new direction. They didn’t see gardening articles as appealing to the newspaper’s current market.

“Of course, I love your pieces. Even read them. But, that’s progress isn’t it?” He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry. I have to tell all the freelancers today. Not just you. There’s Crosswords.

He has to go, too. And the books guy.”

Iris had looked out through his wooden blinds onto the street.

“I know, Iris. Rotten luck. But it’s coming down from the board. Things are tight and we have to cut. Cut, cut. You know how it is these days.” Arthur Simmons was the son of the owner of the paper and ten years her junior, and for a moment she had thought how stupid his hair looked, sticking up like a modern mohawk. He hadn’t even got it right. And he was too old for it.

And he certainly didn’t know how it was these days.

She felt he was expecting her to say something but as she hadn’t, he straightened away from the desk and looked down on her. She was looking at the fine wool floor covering.

“Are you all right?”

She had forced herself to turn her upset face to him.

“If not coffee, tea maybe?”

“No.” She ran her hands through her hair, then smoothed it.

“I’ve got to be somewhere.” She stood up. “As of when?”

“Sorry?”

“When do I finish?”

“Well. Actually . . .” His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his heels. He had an apologetic look on his face.

“As of today . . . so sorry.”

She had looked at him for one long moment. His face had reddened. Was he sorry?

“I just thought . . . it was going well,” she said. “I’ve been get-

4

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 4

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose ting questions from readers, you know. ‘What’s the best time to prune an apple tree?’ ” “Iris, please.” “ ‘When can I move my peonies?’ ‘When’s the best time to transplant carrots?’ ” He tightened his lips together, raised his eyebrows, and slowly he shook his head. Apparently, there was nothing more to say.

She walked toward the door, had her hand on the handle and was about to open it.

“Listen. Wait,” he said. “Wait . . . I’ll tell you what. We’re starting an online version of the paper. A blog might be perfect for you.” He paused. “I mean, if you don’t mind doing it for free. . . .”

A pair of secateurs had just sliced through her little moment of hope. “. . . just until we see what traffic it generates.” She turned back to the door. “Iris?”

“I’ll think about it.” She was about to step out into the corridor when she swung around, looked directly at him, and in a voice solid and unwavering she said, “You never transplant carrots.” And then she was gone. Out through the maze of other Scandinavian desks and past the Banner County News staff with their averted eyes. Did they all know she had been let go? Keeping pace with a thrumming in her chest, she had gone down the stairs and out into the street.

“Are you still having periods?”

She was jerked back by L’s question.

“Yes.”

—-1 —0 —+1

5

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 5

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen “When was your last?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Stripped to her waist, Iris was directed to the machine and positioned, or rather her breast positioned, in place. First the right.

“Turn this way. Put your arm here. Like you’re hugging it.”

“Hugging it?”

“I know. It’s only for a bit. And I’m sorry, it’s cold.”

With Iris’s cheek turned sideways and one arm stretched around the contraption in the opposing direction, L lowered the plate. The radiographer was so close that Iris saw the butterfly tattooed behind her right ear. And she breathed in the scent of the sea off her hair.

Then the left.

It had hurt, the squeezing, but not as badly as Iris expected.

L said, “It’ll just take a few minutes to scan these.” Iris went back and waited, half-naked, on a small bench, in a blue cape of crepe paper in an airless cubicle with the door closed. Her hair clashed with washed-out blue she was sure. She reached into the rattan basket she used as a handbag and found an old lipstick and steadied her hand to put it on. “There,” she said to the back of the door.

-1— 0— +1—

People used to say Iris Bowen was beautiful, what with the wild weave of her red hair, the high cheekbones, and the way she carried herself like a barefoot dancer through the streets of Ranelagh on the outskirts of Dublin city. But that was a lifetime ago. That woman, the woman Luke had said was the most beautiful he’d known, was now wearing a blue paper cape and her best summer shoes, a pair of thinly strapped black sandals. How vulnerable she felt, half-dressed.

6

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 6

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose The old linoleum was so polished that with every move, as she crossed and uncrossed her legs, it squeaked. The chill in the air made her shiver. She clutched her breasts. Nobody had touched them since Luke. She held her breath and counted. Exhaled long.

Breathed again. One, two, three— “Mrs. Bowen?” L knocked on the door and opened it a crack.

“We need to retake one. Left side. The X-ray hasn’t turned out good enough to my eye. Sorry, but it has to be clear for the radiologist.” L was used to anxiety, but her chosen professional manner came in short sentences. “Don’t worry. Happens all the time.

Doesn’t mean anything. These old machines.” She guided Iris back to the mammography unit. “We’re due for a digital machine next month. They get much better results.” L laid bare Iris’s left breast on the cold, black square. She sandwiched it with her clean hands and lowered the machine. As she squeezed down Iris thought of the word “mamma.” And with that came sudden fear.

Nothing but cold white fear.

She waited again for L to view the result. Panic rising, she forced herself to picture her garden—her poppies, the ones she’d grown from seed that were looking gorgeous. Yes. Gorgeous.

They absolutely were. And she thought, It takes many people to make a garden: those who dream it and those who create it. Without gardeners, flowers are like orphans . . .

“Mrs. Bowen, it’s all right now. You can get dressed.”

Iris let out a slow exhale and in her shiny black sandals and paper cape went down the corridor to get dressed.

When she reappeared in the X-ray room, L said, “The results will go to Dr. O’Reilly as soon as the radiologist has read them.

Probably early next week. Sometimes . . . just sometimes . . . the radiologist will send them on to the consultant in the Breast Clinic in Limerick. But only if there is the slightest doubt.”

—-1 —0 —+1

7

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 7

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen L looked up from her clipboard long enough to break into her version of a reassuring smile.

In the long corridor with its tea-colored walls and handsanitizer dispensers, Iris passed a woman she recognized from the village where she lived but she cast her eyes down. She sensed the woman pause and lift a hand but Iris kept walking.

The day was warming up, with patches of blue appearing here and there, clearing from the west. Iris decided not to stop in town and instead head for home but first she texted Arthur: Ok. I’ll do it. She left out: And BTW fix your hair. You look ridiculous.

Because Iris was the kind of person who sometimes lacked patience, the minute she got home, without stopping to make herself a cup of tea, or check her post, or listen to phone messages, or feed her cat, she started on her first blog post.

A red-orange poppy, bright as an African sora, opens above a sea of green in the flower bed, shocking everything else in sight like some electrifying force. It clashes with the pink French rose.

A minor collision of color. Cerise digitalis towers beside delphiniums and red phormiums.

Butterflies hop from dying tulips to the fired-up flowers.

A lonesome dragonfly whirrs.

Iris stopped. It was awful. She needed to find a better voice. This one was pink, sickly pink, pink like a marshmallow sweet. She needed bloodred.

-1— 0— +1—

Poppies—they explode and crack open like popped champagne corks and spill out those red silky yolks, taking the gardener’s 8

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 8

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose breath away. Watch, and within the hour they will unfurl into big fat cups and hold the twilight until morning. They can be sloppy though, those capricious ladies of the garden. After their garden appearance, they get, well . . . blowsy. Like women who have stayed out too late, they need to be escorted home.

Okay, better, she thought.

From the table where she sat she looked up and out across her garden—the wild garden she’d been cultivating under the inconstant sun of the west of Ireland for twenty-five years in Ashwood, the middle of the Clare countryside.

Cultivating wilderness, that’s what she’d been doing. And she’d given part of her soul to it. Beyond the high fuchsia hedges bordering the garden, the land was boggy and rush-laden—rushes tall as hazel rods and the earth full of clay, but inside, the sticky soil had become a rich loam. Seaweed, gathered off the rocks at Doughmore, and leaf mold, gathered from the ash and sycamore trees, and her own kitchen waste and garden clippings had turned the blue gley soil a healthy black, and yielded exotics like the rare lady slipper orchid. Three perennial borders sloped southward toward the unseen River Shannon.

A rose bed lined the eastern edge.

It was Luke who’d insisted on the rose bed because roses had meanings in his family. The Bowens, from Dublin, had their customs. You gave a rose when a child was born. You gave one on a significant anniversary: a fortieth birthday—a Just Joey, a fi ftieth—a Gertrude Jekyll. You planted a rose in the name of someone who had died. Luke had taught her that.

Between the living and the dead, a rose, he’d said.

From that April day in 1987 when she and Luke first arrived— when initially it seemed only the brambles thrived—the wilderness

—-1 —0 —+1

9

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 9

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

had been tamed, season after season, into a garden that shone at night when the moon was out. The white anemones in late summer were like fallen stars.

Now in the last week of May when the garden would have been at its peak in earlier years, the wilderness, always at the perimeter, was inching forward like some monster mollusk. Even the slugs brazenly slithered on the path in the middle of the day, not waiting for the cover of nightfall. A battle that Iris was losing.

She moved from her writing table in the sitting room to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. Waiting for it to boil, she inspected her hands and their unpainted nails half-lined with black earth. Her hands felt like claws, stiff and fi xed. On the granite worktop she pushed them down hard, as if she could press them into a different shape, perhaps the hands of a long-fingered musician.

Her claw hands planted on the counter, she flattened them as best she could, bearing down upon them, pressing the hollow of her palms, and stretching and spreading her fingers. Supporting herself like this on the cold counter, she looked out through the near window. The blue clematis, Alice Fisk, flaunted herself proudly across the wooden door of the stone cabin, her tangle of twisting vine holding it in place. (If Iris had clipped Alice back like she was supposed to the door would have fallen into the drive.) How she loved that clematis. Gutsy, tenacious. A real beauty.

A breeze blew the starlike petals and scattered them across the drive. And behind the vine, through the now blistered black paint, the cabin door revealed sploshes of crimson. Ten years earlier Luke had painted it. It was spring. Their daughter was about eight or nine at the time and she’d pleaded with him to make it look just like the one in a photograph from one of her mother’s 10

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 10

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose gardening magazines. She’d said, “Can’t we paint it red? Dadda?

Look. Look, Dadda, how pretty it will look.” And she’d shown the photograph.

Luke agreed, as he always did, and together they’d painted it.

He’d been pleased such a small thing could make her happy.

The phone rang. She let it, for a moment. Then, she released her hands from the counter and answered.

“How are you?”

“Tess . . .” Iris let out a sigh. “It’s you.”

“Yes, pet. It’s me. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“How did it go?”

“Not toooo bad.”

Neither of them spoke for a second. Then Tess continued, “Will I ring you back? You’re in the middle of something?”

“Sort of. Do you mind? It’s been a full-on day and—” “Not at all.” Tess paused. “Iris?”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”

Tess was Iris’s best friend. They’d known each other ever since they’d struck up a conversation in a queue at the supermarket.

That was ten years ago. In Tess’s shopping cart that day were several liters of low-fat organic milk and potatoes and cabbage and organic apples and flour and butter. “Dinner,” she’d said and smiled at Iris, who was holding three bars of baking chocolate and butter.

“Me too,” Iris said and smiled back.

—-1 —0 —+1

11

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 11

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

Tess was a social worker in town and worked with disadvantaged teenagers, and although into things like organics and yoga, she wasn’t one of those New Age yogi types and didn’t plague Iris with alternative health aphorisms. She’d tried more than once to cajole Iris into joining her at a yoga class but Iris said it hurt her back. “Exactly the reason you should be going! You’re only ever using the same old muscle groups. You’ll end up like an upside-down U if you don’t watch it. Too much of anything isn’t good for you.” Iris was about to say something but Tess had already read her and cut her short. “Not even gardening.” She smiled. “Gardening is not the new yoga.”

Her friend understood why Iris now shied away from doctors, medicine, and hospitals and one day a few weeks after Luke’s death, she’d arrived with a basket full of vitamins and herbal teas.

There was St. John’s wort and omega 3s and magnesium and melatonin. Something called gamma-aminobutyric acid, tablets of which she still had in the cabinet above the sink. And chamomile and passionflower and valerian tisanes. Iris took the bath salts and a lavender herb bundle and the plastic bottles of supplements and lined them in a row on the counter under the cabinet where she kept tea and coffee.

“Thanks, Dr. Tess, Medicine Woman.” At the bottom of the basket was a bottle of wine. The Malbec Iris liked.

“That’s if none of the others work.” They’d laughed then and it had felt okay to laugh and Tess took Iris’s hands and folded her own over them. “It’s over now and you’re going to be able to move on. And if you don’t, don’t worry, I’ll be here to push you! And while we’re on the subject—” “What subject?”

“Taking care of yourself.”

“Ri-ight.”

12

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 12

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose “You need a mammogram.”

“Do I now?”

“You do. You’re in the high-risk category for breast cancer.

Come on, Iris, you know that.” It was a touchy subject but Tess was not put off by touchy subjects, she’d continued. “For starters, you didn’t breast-feed.”

“No medals for stating the obvious. And?” “I hate to remind you—” “Then don’t.”

Tess smiled. It seemed there was almost nothing Iris could say that would offend her friend. She was permanently in good form even though there was plenty she could complain about. She lived her life half-full, not half-empty.

“Iris?”

“I know.”

“In America they start you at forty, and you’re—” “Thank you.” Iris had glanced at her friend with a look that said, Please don’t say any more.

“Go for one, will you? So I can stop pestering. And don’t get worked up about it . . . until you have to. Nothing to worry about.

Just arrange it, okay?”

It had taken her almost two years to make that appointment.

The thing about poppies, which one is inclined to forget when one is standing in the garden admiring their pomposity, is that they make frightful cut flowers. Most unsatisfying if not downright depressing.

If you are to have any success with bringing your poppies indoors, you must take a flame to their bottoms.

Until blackened.

With fire.

—-1 —0 —+1

13

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 13

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen A well-known British gardener suggests dipping them for thirty seconds in boiling hot water after collecting the flowers in the morning when the stems are fully turgid.

Long live those turgid stems.

-1— 0— +1—

Two days after the mammography, on the first of June, Iris had passed L at the entrance of the supermarket in Ennis. The nurseout-of-uniform was wearing combats and a black T-shirt and if it hadn’t been for the purple-streaked hair, Iris mightn’t have recognized her. The combats must be some sort of defense strategy for nurses who perform breast scans, she thought. As the two women passed, the nurse averted her eyes and declined an invitation to be recognized. Iris was sure of it. She quickened her step and by the time she returned to her car, breathless, she felt exposed, like a dug-up plant whose knobby roots were shriveling in the cold.

Iris spent the next few agonizing days waiting for Dr. O’Reilly to ring. She busied herself in the garden: mowing the lawn, pruning the spirea that had finished flowering, and spraying the rose bed with a Bordeaux mixture recommended by her friend at the Ennis farmers’ market. (She left the fi xing of the cabin door for another day.) When she’d finished all her jobs she retrieved her sketchbook from her bedside table where she’d locked it away in a drawer after Luke had died. Making pretty pictures then hadn’t felt right. But now the Icelandic poppies in the front border inspired her to try, to just try. She was attempting to sketch one when the doctor’s office finally telephoned at the end of the week.

“Mrs. Bowen? Will you hold for Dr. O’Reilly?”

Iris paced with the phone from room to room. Her cat was asleep in a square of sun on the sitting room floor, just under the pine table. She left him sleeping and made her way to her daughter’s room where light slanted through the open curtains.

14

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 14

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose “Iris, how are you?”

“Fine. I’m fine. Well . . . not really, but—” “I know. I know. I have the results of the X-ray now. And I want to tell you first of all that I don’t think there is anything for you to be concerned about.”

“O . . . kaaay . . . ?”

“One of the X-rays was sent down from the Ennis Hospital to the Breast Clinic at the Limerick Regional. Just for confirmation. It appears there’s a disturbance, what the radiologist calls an ‘architectural distortion.’ ” Iris took a sudden in-breath, and held it.

“This is really important to hear . . .” The doctor softened her voice like she was sitting beside Iris holding her hand. “The radiologist phoned me this morning to say it’s nothing for you to worry about, but they do want to see you next week.”

There was silence from Iris’s end. Architectural distortion?

“Iris?”

“Yes.” Iris replied finally. “Sounds iff y all the same, but you say I shouldn’t be worried?”

“I can guess what you must be thinking, after Luke and everything, but it’s not bad news, Iris. Really. The radiologist just wants to make sure. Nine of out ten callbacks are what we call false-positives. The Breast Clinic has already sent you an appointment by post. You should get the letter on Monday.”

“All right.”

“Do you have someone to go with you?”

Iris hesitated. “I do.”

“Okay, then. Cheer up, please, and try to have a good day.” She paused. “I’ll be in touch after you’ve seen the consultant. And Iris?”

“Yes?”

—-1 —0 —+1

15

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 15

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

“Call me if you need to.”

Iris didn’t know what she was feeling. It was like nothing. Just a void. Or an empty air pocket. Or that moment when you’ve been asked a question and you don’t know the answer but you know you should. And you panic and suddenly you feel paralyzed. Why hadn’t she asked more questions. Architectural distortion? What the hell? Iris replaced the telephone and hauled herself outside with a crippling sort of feeling, as if her legs had lost their power.

The sun was shining and she noted how odd that felt. The lawn was dappled in patches of different hues of green. If she could have drunk it in, like some green elixir, it might have calmed her. But as it was she stood a few moments, a frenzy building, then she grabbed her secateurs from the wooden table under the porch and scanned the freshly opened poppies. Crimson goblets with beads of light shining through them.

She ordered herself to get a grip. It was a thing of nothing, the doctor implied.

Iris sliced one stem, two stems, then three stems, clear down to the base of the plant.

The cuts were swift and clean. The poppy stems a foot long.

She brought the flowers inside and laid the stems on the counter, balancing them without bruising their petals, their faces clear. She would put these poppies to the test to see if they’d really hold their shape until morning. She’d photograph the sequence of singeing their cut-off ends and arranging them in a vase, and she’d photograph them again in the morning and upload them to her blog.

The flower heads floated above the sink. Striking a match with her right hand, she took up the first long hairy stem and held the flame under the cut end—just like the blonde on Gardener’s World demonstrated. (“Until blackened,” she’d said.) It sizzled and oozed 16

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 16

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose a greeny liquid. She laid each down and photographed their burnt ends. Then, with three poppies scorched, she placed them in a tall glass vase and centered them on the counter. She stepped back and for a few moments stood staring at them, half expecting the petals to separate and fall. She challenged them. Go on! I dare you. But in a kind of numbed stillness their open faces and dark centers held their pose and stared back.

She took a few deep breaths. Tess had taught her: In with positive energy, out with the negative. In with white light, out with gray.

In the empty house in Ashwood, the phrases “architectural distortion,” and “nine out of ten callbacks,” and “false-positives” boomeranged about her.

White in, gray out.

Water up, fire down.

—-1 —0 —+1 17

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 17

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Two

-1— 0— +1—

Sunshine pouring through the window of her Camden Lock flat in North West London reminds Rose of the song about a Chelsea morning. The one with the milk and toast and the oranges and butterscotch. It reminds her of her mother singing when the spring sunlight returns to the kitchen in Ashwood—sometime in the middle of March—before the cuckoo comes, before the swallows return, and the tulips fade. For six months of the year no sun shines in the north-facing kitchen until that first ray of spring light squeezes in from the east. Her mad, loveable mother would start singing, nearly as good as Joni Mitchell.

Rose sings it now to herself as she stretches in the bed. She kicks off the duvet and slides to the edge, looking out her window on the canal below. Early-morning kayakers paddle. Seagulls squawk above the lock, noisy and loud. She loves the noise here compared to the utter quiet of the west of Ireland. She observes her room a moment before standing to dress, and counts, “One, 18

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 18

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose two, three!” Three tea mugs. Not a record. She smiles, remembering the sort of Mexican stand-off she would sometimes have with her mother.

“So here’s where all the mugs have got to, Rosie!” her mother would say, stepping into Rose’s bedroom to retrieve them, sidestepping music sheets and books and clothes. “How you manage to emerge from this . . .” she would say, somewhat exasperated, looking about and holding out her hands as if to receive piles of dirty laundry in her arms, “. . . is beyond me.”

“Don’t know, Mum . . . just do.”

“You’re like a butterfly coming from a cocoon.”

“Yup.” “Mother find mugs?” Her father would ask when she hopped into the car later, not a minute too soon. He’d be sitting, waiting patiently to drive them: she to school and him to work.

“Three.”

“Not a record so. You could make her happy, if you wanted,” he said her father, looking at Rose seriously for a moment, “by giving your room a little tidy.”

“I know, Dadda. I’m sorry.”

“Was she cross?”

“No. Not really.”

Back then, Rose was at secondary school, and Luke’s law office was in the town near the old limestone courthouse. It was a daily ritual. Rose was always only just on time. Her father was the kind of man who felt being exactly on time was already being late. So in order to avoid the kind of confrontations Rose and Iris sometimes had—it being only natural with two females in the house—he allowed her to think he needed to be at work twenty minutes before he did. It was easy for him to make allowances for his daughter.

—-1 —0 —+1

19

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 19

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen A breeze stirs, the curtains move a wind chime. She plans to phone her mother later to say her room was flooded with light when she awoke. That’s what she will tell her—there was a song outside my window, Mum. Grabbing a pair of jeans, Rose lifts a gray cotton string top from among small piles scattered across the floor. She grabs a black cardigan and turns to her image in the mirror. She decides not to braid her long hair but tucks loose ends behind her ears. “Rosie dear, please tidy your room, soon. Now there’s a good girl.” She carefully folds a black jersey dress and slips it into her rucksack.

The sitting room is strewn with her roommate’s tissue-paper patterns and toiles. In the corner a tailor’s dummy is half-dressed with a print chiffon. “Hello, Dummy.” She writes a note and pins it to the dummy’s breast.

Isobel, gone to master class. Wish me luck! Talk later. x Ro

-1— 0— +1—

The Pirate Castle at Oval Road on the edge of the canal is below her fl at. The stairs alongside it are iron-rusted and gumstained. A paper cup sails a floating boat, on the gathered green algae. Rose now walks along the narrow sidewalk, dodges cyclists coming toward her, and hurries under the dark part of railway bridge. She passes the floating Chinese restaurant at the canal’s turn at Regent’s Park, where she joins the stream of morning commuters and dog walkers.

This morning, Tuesday, the grass verges of the Broad Walk in Regent’s Park are flaked with pink droppings from the horse chestnut trees. Blossoms pirouette in the wind. It’s snowing petals. For a moment she stands closing her eyes, waiting for one to hit her face. She’s a girl standing still in the green heart of the 20

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 20

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose moving city. She opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue to catch a petal and taste its pinkness, but without luck.

The petals toss about in whirlwinds while she continues along at the edge, where the grass meets the pavement. Two petals land on the back of her head, wed themselves to her dark hair. There’s a man in a smart suit walking beside her, and he looks as if he wants to say something. She’s seen him before, on the daily commute through the park, one of those familiar strangers in our lives. But he doesn’t speak. Rose hoists the weight of her case on her back from one shoulder to other. The businessman follows a few paces behind.

Rose is humming as they cross Chester Road, and she turns slightly right to walk along the western side of the Avenue Gardens, passing the colorful parrot tulips. At Park Square she turns right again in the direction of Baker Street and the Royal Academy of Music on Marylebone. The man pauses. He stops to watch her. She is like a picture of a girl in painting. The petals adorn her hair like gemstones as she heads up the steps of the academy.

On the top step she turns, pauses momentarily. The young businessman crosses the road and walks east toward Portland Street. Another time, she thinks. Today is not the day. No. Today’s agenda is already full. No room for flirtations. She’s having a master class with Roger—Mr. Kiwi Dude, as some of the other students call him—in the afternoon but has one last practice with him this morning. She passes the porter. His crooked lips ignite into a smile.

“Miss, you forgot to sign in.”

She spins around and returns to his desk. “Sorry, George.”

She signs. She senses his glance at the birthmark on her cheek.

He can’t help himself. Rose knows; she’s used to it. She’d decided at the end of her teens not to keep trying to cover up the small,

—-1 —0 —+1

21

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 21

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

darkened stain and so, as she signs her name she smiles, hands the pen back to George.

“There you go.”

When George returns his eyes to the desk a pink fragment has appeared, like a thumb-size piece of silk, on his record book. As Rose moves off down the hallway the old porter shifts the petal to beside the girl’s name.

Mr. Kiwi Dude is a handsome New Zealander and a virtuoso violinist. In addition to giving master classes, Roger Ballantyne is Rose’s tutor at the academy. She’s lucky. He used to play with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra before moving to London to take up the professorship in strings for second-year students.

He isn’t one of the stuff y types they have there. He’s cool, the type of not-quite-fifty-year-old who looks not-quite-forty because his skin is permanently tanned and his curly hair is hardly gray. It has sun-bleached highlights. Does he dye it? Now that would be cool. Rose heard a segment on BBC radio about men wearing makeup. And why not? That would have made her father laugh. Too bad Dadda would never know things like that, like how she feels about men wearing makeup, or how she loves to take the tube around London, finding her way to places like Columbia Road Flower Market in Shoreditch, or discovering random hidden gems like the Fan Museum in Greenwich. Sometimes she visits the British Library just to see what’s on in case it’d be something her father would have liked. She knocks on Roger’s door.

He opens and holds it. He’s wearing Hip-flops and jeans and a brown T-shirt with the logo of a white wineglass. “Hey, Rose.

Come in.” He steps aside. “Excited?”

“Hi. Yeh . . . I am. Ner vous, though.”

“No worries . . . you’ll be fine.”

22

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 22

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose Rose senses something about him is off but she continues, “I’m scared, actually, and feeling kinda hyper.”

“Your final master class can do that, but it’s the end of a great year, Rose. You’ve done well so far. Don’t be worried.” He looks at his cell phone. “Anyone in your family coming to hear you today?”

“No. There’s only my mother and she’s in Ireland. I told her it was next week. She gets too anxious for me. I’d be more worried for her being worried for me than I’d be ner vous to play.”

As if he really wasn’t listening, he says, “Maybe next year.”

On the wall of his small office there is a poster of a surfer on a wave. Rose lays her case on a chair below it, unzips the cover, and undoes the clasps. Her violin lies open with a mottled layer of white just under the bridge. Crap. Light from the window overlooking Marylebone shines on the varnish as she takes her instrument up by the neck. Tiny specks of rosin run off the surface. As she bends slightly to position herself, the second pink petal falls from her hair onto the floor. Rose only notices the shower of rosin.

“That dust I’m seeing, Rose . . .” He pauses. His fingers are tented under his chin. He taps them lightly. He looks at her like she’s a child. And the look makes her feel like one. “Rosin won’t make you play better, you know. Here, give it to me.” He takes her instrument and wipes the excess with the cloth he keeps on his music stand.

Rose gets her sheet music and sets it up. The excitement of the morning is gone. Her head is a jumble. The sheet music trembles as she adjusts it on the stand.

“I was practicing last night. It was late.” She feels chastened, embarrassed. Her fingers have a clammy mind of their own as she takes up her bow and tightens it.

—-1 —0 —+1

23

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 23

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

When Roger hands back her instrument he is not pleased. “Begin with a G-minor scale, please. Three octaves.”

Roger “the master” is preparing Rose for her first solo performance of Bach’s Sonata in G Minor. Serious stuff, she gets it, but this coolness increases her anxiety. What the hell? The student recital and master class is scheduled for the afternoon. Roger’s other students will be there. Some performing. Some not. Maybe he’s anxious, too. She lifts her violin with her left hand and brings it to her shoulder. Is he angry with her? It wasn’t that much rosin.

Her chin senses for the familiar place on the rest and nestles into position like a cat finding a place in the sun. She bends her fingers and squares them, placing them in position for the scale.

With her bow raised she takes a moment, counts to three, scans the room: the poster, the warm light that angles in from the window, Roger standing beside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. She begins. G A B flat, C D E flat, F G . . .

“Good,” he says. “Again.”

Again Rose plays. She relaxes and thinks, Okay, I’m feeling more confident now. Her old teacher, Andreas, appears for a moment in her mind.

“Ready?”

“Yes.” “Begin.”

With the top of the bow hovering just a whisper above the strings, she nods imperceptibly to the surfer and begins the adagio, the first movement of the sonata, with a sweeping run into an arpeggio starting with a slow bow.

Everything is good, Rose believes. She’s relaxed. She’s playing really well. Somewhere near the end of the second movement, the fugue, Roger’s cell phone rings.

It rings once.

24

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 24

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose She plays on. He’ll silence it in a second. She’s into the challenging ascent, and is careful not to lose the singing line, the melody line, but the damn phone is still ringing.

A fifth ring. A sixth. And then he answers it.

He opens the door and he goes out into the hall. He actually walks out. Worse, he gives a slight wave of his hand in her direction indicating she should continue playing. The door doesn’t quite shut. It hangs ajar and she can hear him in the hall.

“Ah. No. Don’t do that. We can meet later. I know. I know.

Hey, why don’t you come, it’ll be fun. What? No? We can go for a . . . no. Please . . . Victoria?”

Silence.

Then, “Fuck!”

A sharp thud thunks against the door.

Rose plays on, by now just beginning the third movement, the Siciliana. She plays it slow, emphasizing the dotted rhythms like Roger has shown her. After a few minutes he opens the door and walks behind her to the window without a beat of acknowledgment. She keeps playing. This movement is melodic and Rose is swaying. But suddenly he stops her, puts up his hand, and says, “You’re not moving slowly enough into the strings. Approach it from underneath. And . . . re-lax . . . the tension in your left hand.” He checks his watch. “I’ve told you that before.”

Rose lowers her violin and bow. Her head is turned slightly, her small birthmark fully visible. She’s uncomfortable with him, with the way he’s looking at her. She’s suddenly very self-conscious.

They stand facing each other but saying nothing. He turns back to the window. Sounds of buses rise into the stillness of the room.

“I can’t do this now,” he says, and walks past her. Out it happens in a second. She hears his footsteps flipping and disappearing down the hall and down the stairs.

—-1 —0 —+1

25

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 25

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen Rose stands, holding her violin and bow at her sides, closing in on herself like she’s a deflated party balloon. She stops breathing and listens. She expects he’ll be turning around, turning around any minute and coming back. Coming back to apologize, or something—to hear her finish the Siciliana at least.

She waits, waiting to be revived, but he doesn’t return. She stands at the window, bow in one hand, violin in the other. Roger has left the building. She sees him crossing the street and heading down Thayer.

“Feck!” she says. “Crap!” A wave of bewilderment quickly turns to something else. Part of her feels frozen, part of her feels fuming; her movement is jerky as she starts to pack up her bow and violin. She’s shaking between anger and humiliation.

Before closing her case she eyes the slip of paper taped to the inside velvet covering, the one Roger had given her the first day she started practicing the sonata with him.

Rose, Practicing Bach for me is like a meditation, even a daily prayer. It connects me with a higher power. May it be the same for you.

As ever, Roger

-1— 0— +1—

She pulls it off the velvet, crumples the note, and throws it down.

Still shaking, she stands in the corridor outside his office.

With a little over an hour to pass before the master class, she hopes she’ll run into someone, anyone she can vent to, but the hallway is empty. She thinks about finding the two friends she’s 26

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 26

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose made at the RAM. Leonard and Freya. They’re studying musical theater, but they have their final projects this week, too. There are only the muted notes of string-playing instrumentalists she can hear behind the closed doors of the small practice rooms.

Ysaÿe. Kreisler. More Bach. Rose slumps down against the wall.

She feels like vomiting. Do they all play better than she does?

Today was meant to be a celebration. She was looking forward to performing, to staking out her territory, to claiming her place alongside the other brilliant students in her class, and to ringing her mother with triumphant news. Now she feels cast out, inadequate. An amateur. A craftsperson at best. Not an artist.

She makes no sound in the hallway although tears shine in her eyes.

A door opens and closes somewhere down the hall. What is she going to do now? Hang out here until Roger returns?

What the hell?

And who is Victoria?

In the ladies’, she sees her red face in the mirror. She stares while trying to control her breathing. She’s gulping for air.

Finally, she takes out her makeup bag. The birthmark is flushed with feeling. She looks closely at it, as if in seeing it, it somehow pulls her back into herself and she begins to calm down.

“It’s shaped like a rose,” her father said.

“A tiny tea rose,” her mother said.

When she was old enough to understand such things, they had told her: “That’s why you were named Rose.”

She’d thought about that for a moment and then asked: “What if it looked like an elephant? What would I have been called then?”

“Ellie, of course!”

They went on like this, making a game of it. The story of the rose always preceded the story of how she arrived in Ashwood

—-1 —0 —+1

27

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 27

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen

-1— 0— +1—

on August 23, 1990, when she was eight weeks old. She wasn’t an orphan, but “placed” for adoption following her birth in the month of June. Both stories always worked to make Rose claim her identity. Her father was right, the edges of the birthmark on her right cheek do look like the curved petals of a rose tattoo.

But that’s not why they named her Rose. She knows that. But the story always comforts her. She’s grown used to it, just as she’d grown up with the idea of being adopted. Just another way of being in the world. Most of the time she doesn’t even notice. It doesn’t really matter, most of the time.

When she was sixteen her parents decided to give her the letter from her birth mother. She had cried when she read it. Rose keeps the letter tucked inside a music book that is on the shelf in her bedroom back in Ashwood. Her birth mother hadn’t written much. It was a short, handwritten letter. She wanted Rose to know she was very much loved and it was because of that love she’d been “placed” with a wonderful couple who would give her all the things she couldn’t—a house and home and, most important, two parents who really loved each other. Always remember you are doubly loved. By me, forever, and by your parents.

She touches her cheek and thinks of her father. What would he do now? She knows her mother would be raging mad at Roger.

In fact, now that she thinks about it, she’s sorry she didn’t tell her mother the master class was this week, because if she had, her mother would be on her way to the academy, bursting in without stopping for George, marching right up the stairs to the office of Mr. Roger Ballantyne and waiting for him to come back, to ask him what the hell was he doing walking out on her daughter at a critical moment when she was trying so hard to be perfect.

She would be a storm coming at him. And for a moment Rose lightens up just thinking about her impassioned mother.

28

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 28

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose But her father, now what would he do?

Leaving the makeup bag on the edge of the sink, Rose takes out her ensemble for the concert, strips off, and steps quickly into her sleeveless black dress and ballet fl ats. She returns to her makeup and underlines and overlines her eyes in black. Sultry.

Feck ’em. Get your Irish up! her father would have said.

Yes. Feck them.

She picks up where she left off with the Siciliana. The acoustics in the ladies’ room are amplifying. Her Siciliana is a long, anguished sigh. She leans into the phrases like Roger taught her, goddamn him, giving them room to breathe without letting them fade like petals withering on a stem. The heartbeat in her chest is a metronome, silent to the outside world, but keeping time with the music.

An hour later, she gets her Irish up and goes to the recital hall.

Roger returns five minutes before the master class and just nods to her as if nothing has happened. He doesn’t offer any explanation or apology. She opens her case and gets ready. She’s up fi rst. Bowen before Ferguson and Kowowski. She steps to the stage in a sort of half dream. Dust motes swirl in the glare of the stage lights. She doesn’t look out at the audience of fifty or so. She doesn’t want to see the gathered students and their parents and the other professors come to assess the best of the academy’s talent. She settles her chin and begins. She plays her heart out. She keeps the melodic contours without losing the balance.

Her phrasing is intense but elegant. She is playing it beautifully.

But she is wrong.

“Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,” Roger Ballantyne says, taking center stage. “Stop moving, Rose. You look like you’re trying to draw

—-1 —0 —+1

29

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 29

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Christine Breen pictures with your scroll.” He looks to the audience, as if he’s said something clever. “You are playing too fast between the sections.

Wait . . . until . . . the sound . . . comes out and we can hear the change of colors.”

She continues. Louder. But over her playing, he is calling, “Don’t be so polite. It’s Gypsy music! Play it like it was written.”

She plays. He is strutting on the stage. “Your vibrato is exaggerated.”

She tries to exaggerate less.

“It sounds like you are ironing the strings. Rose!” There’s an actual murmur from the audience. Stifled laughter? “Make them sing like a song. Let them breaaaaathe.”

Roger crosses the stage and picks up his violin. “How you manage to make Bach sound sterile, I don’t know.” Rose stops as Roger starts into the fugue, to demonstrate. He’s superb, of course, and when his attention is focused on the audience, lost in his own magnificence, Rose grabs her case, violin, and bow and walks out.

She doesn’t look back and she squeezes her tears. She hopes for one moment Roger will call after her, she hopes he will stop performing and call her back, that he will feel her humiliation. But he doesn’t. Murmuring from the audience doesn’t stop him. It’s all about him. He has his audience, and plays on.

The next moment Rose is into the cool corridor. She kneels down and puts her violin in the case, then gets up and keeps walking, pushing out the front doors until she is out onto the rainy, steamy street. Too wet to walk back to Camden.

-1— 0— +1—

Five o’clock and the mood of the crowds on the busy night on Baker Street is a clash-and-bang cacophony. Rose jostles her way to the tube platform, barely conscious of where she is. She stands, 30

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 30

9/24/14 7:12 PM

Her Name is Rose hollow and waiting. When her train comes she steps inside just as the doors close. They catch her violin case. She tugs it free and loses her balance. A man beside steadies her. Collapsing into a seat, she hoists the case onto her lap and stares at the black mirror of reflected faces and lights as the train whirs through the tunnel. At King’s Cross she gets out to change to the Northern Line. Up the escalator, a hundred bodies judder as one, except for Rose Bowen, who stands immobilized, apart, void of thought or emotion. Euston. Mornington Crescent. Rose gets out at Camden.

As the train pulls away, she stands on the platform and looks back into the carriage. The doors close and when the train shudders into motion, she watches her violin topple from where she has left it leaning against the window. It slides down onto the seat.

Then off it heads. Chalk Farm, Belsize Park, Hamstead, Golders Green, Brent Cross, Hendon, Colindale, Burnt Oak, Edgware.

Gone.

—-1 —0 —+1 31

053-59788_ch01_1P.indd 31

9/24/14 7:12 PM

on-sale 4/7/15 An acclaimed international bestseller, The Perfume Garden is a sensuously written story of lost love, family secrets—and the art of creating a perfect scent.

High in the hills of Valencia, a forgotten house guards its secrets. Untouched since Franco’s forces tore through Spain in 1936, the whitewashed walls have crumbled, and the garden, laden with orange blossom, grows wild. Emma Temple is the first to unlock its doors in seventy years. Emma is London’s leading perfumier, but her blessed life has taken a difficult turn. Her free-spirited mother, Liberty, who taught her the art of fragrance making, has just passed away. At the same time, she broke up with her long-time lover and business partner, Joe, whose baby she happens to be carrying.

While Joe is in New York trying to sell his majority share in their company, Emma, guided by a series of letters and a key bequeathed to her in Liberty’s will, decides to leave her job and travel to Valencia, where she will give birth in the house her mother mysteriously purchased just before her death. The villa is a perfect retreat: redolent with the exotic scents of orange blossom and neroli, dappled with light and with the rich colors of a forgotten time. Emma makes it her mission to restore the place to its former glory. But for her aging grandmother, Freya, a British nurse who stayed in Valencia during Spain’s devastating civil war, Emma’s new home evokes memories of a terrible secret, a part of her family’s past that until now has managed to stay hidden. With two beautifully interwoven narratives and a lush, atmospheric setting, Kate Lord Brown’s The Perfume Garden is a dramatic, emotional debut that readers won’t soon forget.

KATE LORD BROWN grew up in a wild and beautiful part of Devon, England, and was first published while at school. After studying philosophy at Durham University and art history at the Courtauld Institute, she worked as an art consultant, curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East. Kate won the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition, Middle East region, in 2014; was a finalist in ITV’s The People’s Author competition 2009; and has an MA in creative writing. The Perfume Garden was shortlisted for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year 2014. She lives in the Middle East with her family, and is working on her next novel.

one

london, september 11, 2001 You see, Em, the trouble is they—the doctors that is—said it will give me “closure” (what a ghastly word), to leave a letter for you. I said “do you really think I can distill a lifetime’s worth of experience into a single letter? Can I say everything I want to my daughter on a few sheets of paper?”

I cannot. You know me, I never did stop rabbiting on, did I, darling?

A

n image of Liberty came to Emma then—her mother sitting on the kitchen table in her grandmother Freya’s house. It must have been the late 1970s, because, against the morning sun, Liberty’s hair was a chestnut halo of Kate Bush crimping, and Blondie was on the radio. She was flapping her arms as she talked, and Freya was doubled over laughing. Emma was curled up in the dog basket by the stove, eating toast as she cuddled Charles’s new pug puppy. That’s what she remembered—the certain smell of home, of coffee percolating, fresh toast, the dry biscuit smell of the dog as he pawed at the green enamel “Head Girl” badge pinned to her woolen sweater. Some people’s memories lie in images or songs, but for Emma it was always fragrance. Liberty had taught her well, and even as a child she instinctively detected the harmonious notes of the scent accord that to her conjured “home.”

“Emma, do get up, darling,” Freya had said. “Look at you, your school

2

K ate lor d brow n

uniform is covered with hair.” Emma remembered the warmth of the dog, the delicious fawn belly wriggling in her small hands. She remembered how Liberty had tickled her until they were both on the floor giggling, the puppy leaping around them. As her mother hugged her, Emma breathed in the scent of her perfume. Roses—Liberty always smelled like a rose garden in full bloom to her; warm, sunlit, a pure soliflore.

As you’ll see, I got a bit carried away. I’ve left you a whole box of letters, one for every occasion I can think of. And I’ve enclosed my last notebook.

I like to think of you picking up where I left off, Em. Promise me you’ll carry on. Use it. Fill it with wonderful things

Emma leaned her elbow on the suitcase at her side. She had been traveling for months, but as the number 22 Routemaster bus lurched through the lunchtime traffic along the King’s Road, she felt the days fall away. It was a typical cool, gray London morning, a light autumn breeze scurrying leaves along the pavements. Nothing had changed, except her. The nausea that had dogged her for months welled up again, and she rummaged through her pocket for a mint. The lining had torn, and as she read Liberty’s note, she wriggled her index finger down to the hem, searching in vain.

She had turned to the last page in her mother’s notebook a hundred times, pen poised, and frozen, unable to pick up where Liberty had left off. Nothing seemed wonderful enough. Emma scanned the note one last time. It was the only one she had taken with her on her travels, and she had read it so many times the paper was falling apart along the folds. The letters were waiting for her, unopened, in a black lacquer box in Liberty’s studio.

After her mother’s will had been read, and Joe had left , Emma had sat looking at the box for hours as dawn light filtered through the sloping glass roof. She had placed it in the middle of Liberty’s desk—a specially built perfumer’s “organ” surrounded by tiered shelves of bottles, each one containing a note of fragrance. That was how Liberty had taught her their craft—to think of each essence as a musical note, each bottle on the organ as a key.

This was where Liberty had composed all of her masterpieces, where Emma had played as a child. It was the place she still felt her mother’s presence most.

The sound of milk bottles being delivered on the street below had roused her finally, and she had lifted off the lid of the box. She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting from Liberty—an explosion of confetti, a coiled paper snake to leap out. She laughed with relief when she saw her mother had

THE PERFUME GARDEN

3

simply painted the interior bright orange—her favorite color. Her hand trembled as she lifted the loose sheet of paper on top. Beneath was a parcel of letters tied with cerise velvet ribbon, and the small black notebook. The first envelope was marked “On Family.” As Emma read her mother’s accompanying note, tears filled her eyes.

I love you, Em. I am so terribly proud of the woman you have become. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you, but know my love goes with you, will always be with you. I know that love lives on.

Mum x

She had been tempted to rip open all the envelopes that morning, to gorge hungrily on Liberty’s words. Just reading the note over and over brought her closer. But she waited. When she told Freya she had decided to leave the letters in London while she traveled, Freya had laughed.

“It’s up to you, Em,” she said. “You always did save your treats, even as a child. I’ve never known anyone who could make a bar of chocolate last so long.”

Emma took a deep breath, and gazed out of the bus window. It was almost her stop. Perhaps it’s time to stop saving the best till last, she thought. She folded the note and slipped it into her mother’s Moleskine notebook on her lap, flicking on through the pages illuminated with Liberty’s flamboyant handwriting. Words leaped out at her—”neroli,” “duende,” “passion.” Her mother had pasted in cuttings alongside the notes and formulas for the new perfume she had been working on—pictures of orange groves, searing blue skies, a yellowed newspaper advert for a Robert Capa exhibition. It was the famous “falling soldier” picture. Emma traced her finger over the soldier’s face, wondered what he was thinking at the moment when death caught him running down that hill. She wondered what he saw as he fell. As she touched the paper, she felt the contours of something beneath. She flipped to the next page and laid her hand on the smallest envelope Liberty had left in the box with the letters. On it, her mother had written an address: Villa del Valle, La Pobla, Valencia, Spain. Inside, there was just an old key.

I must ask Freya if she knows anything about it, she thought. Emma had lain awake the night she opened that envelope, turning the key over in her hand, her mind full of possibilities. Typical Mum, she thought, remembering all

4

K ate lor d brow n

the magical mystery tours Liberty had taken her on as a child, the trails of clues she had laid for Emma to follow to hidden presents. The chase, the anticipation, was always more fun than the present itself.

Emma turned the pages, glimpsed the melancholy, serene face of a Madonna, a photo of a whitewashed wall with flaming bougainvillea spilling over it. The notes became sparser, the hand less sure toward the end. She sensed Liberty had been looking back, as well as forward. Next to a pasted label from Chérie Farouche, the perfume Liberty had created for Emma on her eighteenth birthday, she had written: “Some perfumes are, like children, innocent, as sweet as oboes, green as meadow sward—Baudelaire.” It was still Emma’s signature scent. On her it smelled like rain in a garden at first, fresh and intoxicating; then as the green top notes evaporated Emma always thought of the earth, of picking flowers in a forest with her mother.

The heart note of lily of the valley and jasmine melded perfectly with the base of sandalwood and musk. Liberty always said the scent was like her— shy but surprisingly fierce. A photograph of Liberty with Emma as a baby was tucked into that page. She flicked on, unbearable longing piercing her as she looked at her mother’s beautiful, open smile. Emma paused at her mother’s final sketch of a new Liberty Temple perfume bottle, her hurried scrawl: “Jasmine? Orange blossom, yes!”

Then came the poignant empty spaces. The blank pages her mother had left her to fill. Emma blinked quickly as she touched the gold filigree locket around her neck. She hadn’t expected to feel so upset returning home. For months, she had convinced herself that she was coping as she sleepwalked through endless meetings. Countries and hotel rooms kaleidoscoped in her mind. Her hand instinctively fell to the gentle swell of her stomach. Something wonderful, she thought. She pulled a pen from her bag, smoothed her hand over the first clean page, then wrote: “Spain.”

two

spain, september 1936

F

reya huddled in the back of the truck as it bumped along the road toward Madrid, a purple dressing gown tied over her head against the wind.

“Damn,” she said under her breath as they hit another pothole and her pen skittered across the page. She hunched over her dog-eared copy of Gone with the Wind, the pages flapping in the breeze.

Spain is quite beautiful as you know, Charles, she wrote to her brother on the blank back page.

You simply must come. Thank you for the fruitcake by the way. It is a boost to get your letters. It seems like a lifetime since people showered us with flowers at Victoria Station as we left—was it only last month? The drive down from the Spanish border was exhilarating. We had the truck loaded up with toffees and liquorice for the children. At every village we passed, they would come running to us. Women pressed oranges and melons on us—Charles you would not believe the bliss of cold melon when your throat is tight and dry from hours on the road.

We are desperately short of everything in the hospitals. The nurses are exhausted and hungry all the time, and the winter will be worse, but we mustn’t grumble. You would not believe how brave and marvelous the

6

K ate lor d brow n people I am working with are. This poor country. I cannot bear it that this civil war is tearing it in two.

Come, as soon as you can. For the first time, there is only one choice for us. We cannot let the fascists crush democracy here. This is our war too, dear brother—every freedom we hold dear is in peril, and we cannot look away for today the fight is in Spain, but tomorrow it could be on our own doorstep.

The truck shuddered to a halt at the first checkpoint outside the city, and Freya looked up. Vehicles streamed past, and she heard a babble of voices, a phone ringing nonstop in the guardhouse. Freya signed the note quickly and tore out the page, stuffing it in an envelope she had ready to send. She untied the arms of the dressing gown from under her chin, and shook out her bobbed blond hair.

‘Salud, compañero!” she called to one of the guards. “The post?”

“He comes soon.” The soldier motioned for her to pass him the letter.

As the truck pulled away, she thrust it into his outstretched hand.

“Gracias!”

“De nada. No problem.”

Freya sat back among the other nurses, and looked toward Madrid as they drove on toward the city. She had heard that fift y churches had been set ablaze, and acrid smoke still hung in the sky, dark and sulphurous. This is it, she thought, suddenly aware that they were driving right into the heart of the battle. Freya glanced at the pale faces of the nurses around her and saw her fear reflected there. Pull yourself together, she told herself. Her eyes smarted with the dusty wind buffeting her face. Freya’s guts coiled with adrenaline as beyond the crashing noise of the trucks she heard in the distance the first thunderous boom and explosion of war.

In Cambridge, the last punts of the year drifted along the Backs on the River Cam, autumn leaves swirling in their wake. Charles tucked the letter from his sister Freya into the breast pocket of his tweed jacket, and settled back, his hands laced behind his head.

“How is she?” the fair-haired boy at the stern asked, heaving down on the pole.

“Freya? It sounds ghastly in Spain, to be honest.”

“Shall we go or not?”

THE PERFUME GARDEN

7

Charles thought of the copy of Vu he had seen the night before, of Robert Capa’s photographs of the war. One of the students from King’s had stood on a chair in the pub, thrust the magazine into the air, shouting above the noise of the bar that anyone in their right mind had to join the International Brigades and fight fascism in Spain. Charles was haunted by the photograph of the falling soldier he had seen, could almost feel the impact of the bullet, the thud of the body as it hit the ground.

“Charles!”

“Sorry, Hugo. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking?” Hugo laughed. “A student of lepidoptery thinking instead of wasting time chasing butterflies, whatever next?”

Charles dipped his hand into the river and splashed water at him.

“Hugo, you are my dearest friend, but I’d rather spend my days hunting butterflies than mucking around with those modernist daubs you call paintings—” “Come on, Charles!” Hugo interrupted. “This matters—we can make a real difference in Spain. I heard there’s a chap in Paris sneaking people down on the railway, or over the Pyrenees. I have an address on the Rue Lafayette that we can go to. There’s a train of volunteers leaving in a couple of days from the Gare d’Austerlitz. Your friend Cornford said we could be at the training camp in Albacete in a few days.”

Charles thought of the Movietone News headline he had seen the night before as the fug of cigarette smoke in the cinema joined the leaping blackand-white flames on the screen: “Civil War follows fascist revolt in unhappy country. All is turmoil.” Ever since General Franco’s rebel Nationalist forces had staged a coup against the democratically elected Republican government in Spain in July, the students had talked of little else but joining the International Brigades to fight the rebels. This is just the beginning, he had thought, watching the scenes of carnage in the cinema. If they take Spain, fascism will spread across Europe, perhaps the world.

“Charles, let’s go tomorrow—” “I haven’t squared everything with Crozier at the Manchester Guardian yet. If there’s no job for us . . .”

“Then we shall just be common soldiers like the rest of them,” Hugo said, laughing. “It would serve you right for spending your savings on that ridiculously expensive camera. You could have bought a car, Charles. Personally I shall just be taking a pencil and notebook.”

“Photography is the future, Hugo. If people see a photo, or a film, they

8

K ate lor d brow n

believe it, mark my words.” He paused. “Still, perhaps it was a bit rash. If we don’t get this job I can’t afford my ticket down.”

“You could always take wedding portraits if you don’t make it as a photojournalist.”

Charles scowled at him as he stood and took the pole. “Shut up, Hugo.

For goodness sake, sit down. You’ll tip the ruddy thing over.” Clouds scudded across the sky, reflected in the windows of King’s Chapel like a bridal train sweeping by. Rain began to pepper the smooth surface of the river.

“At least in Spain we might make a difference. Look at what is going on in my country, what Hitler is doing.” Hugo’s face fell for a moment. “I can’t just hide away here in an ivory tower, much as it would please my parents.

It’s the first chance we’ve had to fight back. If we don’t, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco . . . well, they’ll take the whole of Europe.” He lit a cigarette, flicked the match into the river. “Besides, it’s a beautiful country. I can’t bear to think of it being torn to pieces.”

“I told you we came back too soon,” Charles said. As the rain pattered down on his face, Charles remembered the shimmering June heat of the southern Spanish hillsides near his friend’s old house in Yegen, the swish of the dry long grass against his legs, the scent of rosemary and lavender crushed underfoot as he hunted down butterflies. He thought of the snow on the Sierra Nevada, the stars that seemed to glow with unusual brilliance there. “Do you remember how beautiful it is? I can’t believe the country is eating itself alive.”

“Well, that’s civil war.” Hugo exhaled a plume of smoke. “The Spanish are a bloodthirsty lot. Bullfights and flamenco, peasants on mules—it’s like the Middle Ages still.”

“Perhaps it’s better than all this,” Charles said, idly watching a woman in a beige gabardine mackintosh who was walking a wheezing Labrador along the bank. “There’s still passion. They look death square in the eye, see it as the ultimate, culminating moment of existence.” He leaned toward Hugo. “The cemetery is the tierra de la verdad, their moment of truth. To the Spanish, all life is an illusion.”

“I still say they are backward.”

“No, they are in touch with the earth. They still believe in hechiceras, white witches, you know. They think they fly in the moonlight and meet on the threshing room floors. You have to watch out for the brujas, though, the black witches . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hugo said, laughing. “You are a romantic,

THE PERFUME GARDEN

9

Charles—perhaps the last of a dying breed.” He held out his hand to his friend. “So, we shall go. Agreed? The world hardly needs another secondrate German artist, and for you there will always be butterflies if we return.”

“When. When we return.” Charles shook Hugo’s hand, then settled back and laid his fingertips against the rough wool of his jacket, felt Freya’s letter crinkle in his pocket. “It’s our chance to stop this. Freya’s right. If we don’t fight the fascists on the roads to Madrid, we’ll be fighting them on the King’s Road next thing you know.”

on-sale 3/31/15

From a writer/producer of Family Guy, a satirical look at a dysfunctional southern family complete with an overbearing stage mom, a 9 year-old pageant queen, a cheating husband, his teenage girlfriend, a crazy grandmother, and Jesus.

After eight-and-a-half years and three hundred twenty-three pageants, Miranda Miller has become the ultimate stage mother. Her mission in life is to see that her nine-year-old daughter, Bailey, continues to be one of the most successful child pageant contestants in the southern United States. But lately, that mission has become increasingly difficult. Bailey wants to retire and has been secretly binge eating to make herself “unpageantable;” and the reality show Miranda has spent years trying to set up just went to their biggest rival.

But Miranda has a plan. She’s seven months pregnant with her fourth child, a girl (thank God), and she is going to make damn sure this one is even more successful than Bailey, even if the new girl is a little different.

Miranda’s husband, Ray, however, doesn’t have time for pageants. A full-time nurse, Ray spends his days at the hospital where he has developed a habit of taking whatever pills happen to be lying around. His nights are spent working hospice and dealing with Courtney, the seventeen-year-old orphan granddaughter of one of his hospice patients who he has, regrettably, knocked up. With a pregnant wife, a pregnant teenage mistress, two jobs, a drug hobby, and a mountain of debt, Ray is starting to take desperate measures to find some peace. Meanwhile, the Millers’ two sons are being homeschooled by Miranda’s mother, Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann), a God-fearing widow who spends her free time playing cards and planning a murder with Jesus. Yes, Jesus.

A bright new voice in satirical literature, Kirker Butler pulls no punches as he dissects our culture’s current state of affairs. It’s really funny, but it’s also pretty ugly.

KIRKER BUTLER is an Emmy nominated writer and producer. His TV credits include Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and The Neighbors among others. He is also the writer of the graphic novel, Blue Agave and Worm. Kirker grew up in Kentucky, and now lives in Los Angeles with his family.

chapter one Miranda Ford never expected a simple trip to the drugstore to change the course of her entire life. She’d really just popped in to pick up her mother’s Klonopin refill, but when she saw that stack of applications on the counter next to the fishbowl of complementary cigarette lighters, something deep inside her shifted. Urgent letters streaked across the page: “The 18th Annual Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant Is Looking for Contestants!” Until that moment, beauty pageants had seemed as foreign and exotic as Mexican food, but this felt different.

At fourteen, Miranda was too much of a teenager to want to appear genuinely interested in anything, so she skimmed the application while projecting an aura of boredom and indifference, the same look she’d perfected while staring at Mike Greevy in algebra class and Kandy Cotton’s boobs in gym.

The headline was followed by the alluring question: “Are you the next Loni King?” Miranda raised an eyebrow.

Loni King, a superfriendly strawberry blonde, had been crowned Miss Daviess County Fair a few years earlier and then

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 1

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

2

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

became a star. Soon after graduating salutatorian from Apollo High School’s Class of ’89, Loni left her hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, and moved to Nashville, where she quickly landed a recording contract with Ichthus Records, an independent label specializing in praise and worship music and Bibles on tape read by celebrities. KING, her debut album of contemporary Christian music, sold more than two million copies and won two Dove Awards. Hoping to expand her music and message to a wider audience, she recorded a love ballad with Daryl Hall from the secular rock band Hall & Oates: a man who was not her husband. The song reached number eight on Billboard’s Hot 100 and completely alienated Loni’s Christian fan base. In June 1991 she married a bank executive who, threatened by her celebrity, encouraged her to quit music and start a family, which she did, for six months. After the couple’s “scandalous” divorce, Loni quickly released an ill-conceived comeback album of honky-tonk-flavored country songs that sold a disappointing fifteen thousand copies and further turned off her godly fans. One of Loni’s cousins had recently told Miranda that the singer had rededicated her life to Jesus and was in Atlanta recording an album of traditional Christmas hymns. Maybe Miranda wasn’t supposed to be the next Loni King, but she was pretty sure she was supposed to be the next something.

The application continued: “Make New Friends While Competing Against Them for Cash and Prizes!” Miranda did like cash and prizes. She read on: “Learn poise, confidence, and public-speaking skills you may use for the rest of your life!”

Miranda’s guidance counselor had told her that without good public-speaking skills one had zero chance of becoming successful in any career. Her interest fully piqued, she read the rules:

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 2

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

3

1. Contestants must be at least 14 years old and no older than 19 years old by July 1 of this year.

2. Contestants must be a resident of Daviess County, Kentucky. (U.S. citizens only, please.)

3. Contestants must not currently be married, or have ever been married.

4. Contestants under the age of 16 must have written consent from parent or guardian to compete.

5. All races, creeds, and ethnicities are encouraged to participate. (Again, U.S. citizens only, please.)

6. A $25 registration fee is required of all contestants.

Corporate and/or business sponsorship is accepted/ encouraged.

7. Contestants must not currently be pregnant. (Girls with children are eligible to compete if they are single—see rule #3.)

8. Contestants will be judged in three categories: sportswear, prom/evening wear, and bathing suit.

(Tasteful one-piece suits only! Two-piece suits will NOT be allowed! This is a family event!)

9. All decisions made by the judges are final and cannot be challenged in any court of law.

10. Failure to comply with any of these rules will result in immediate disqualification and banishment from the Daviess County Fairgrounds for 1 calendar year.

But it was a simple line at the bottom of the page that really hooked her: “All body types welcome!” As a proud member of the Interfaith Christian Alliance— an after-school fellowship group tasked with the seemingly impossible goal of bringing together Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 3

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

4

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

even Catholics—the statement appealed to Miranda’s egalitarianism. Miranda had learned “egalitarianism” as a vocabulary word the previous semester, and liking both its meaning and sophisticated sound applied it to herself whenever possible.

Miranda took an application from the stack and slipped it into her backpack. Years later, while writing her memoirs, she tried to explain why she felt compelled to enter that pageant.

“Maybe it was fate. I don’t know. Maybe it was a desire to try something that scared me. Maybe it was God opening the door to the next part of my life. Either way, it just felt like something I needed to do. And why not? It was right there in my hometown, and the local girls weren’t that much prettier than me. Besides, maybe I’d been wrong about the kind of girls who did pageants. Maybe they weren’t all dingbat, stuck-up phonies. Maybe they were smart, and humble, and down-toearth like me.”

As soon as Miranda decided to enter, she began plotting how she could win. Sportswear wouldn’t be a problem. She’d always been active and owned many casual shoes. For evening wear she could reborrow her cousin Denise’s prom dress she had worn to the previous year’s eighth-grade dance. But the bathing suit, Miranda thought, looking down at her figure, the bathing suit is going to be a problem. Flat chested and hipless, the girl’s fourteen-year- old body looked more like an eleven-year-old boy’s. The A-cup bra she insisted on wearing gave her more of a psychological lift than a physical one. She knew she had a cute face, and she’d even been called “attractive” by some of her dad’s friends, but if she was going to compete against girls as old as eighteen, she’d need to figure out a

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 4

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

5

way to augment what little she had. All body types may have been welcome, but not all body types could win.

She collected her mother’s pills and crossed to a shelf stocked with vitamins and dietary supplements, scanning it for anything labeled “female” and “enhancement.” The bottles promised stronger bones, shinier hair, and healthier skin, but Miranda didn’t need that. She needed boobs. Pendulous, award-winning boobs. And she needed them right now.

A product called Nu Woman, a homeopathic hormone supplement for postmenopausal women, looked promising, so she dropped it in her basket and continued browsing. X-trogen promised to “promote and enhance all aspects of the female anatomy,” but the woman on the package, an obviously naked Asian with the contorted face of an orgasm, totally freaked her out. She looked away, embarrassed, and that’s when she saw it: a long-forgotten tube sitting alone on the bottom shelf.

Peering coyly from the dusty, time-faded label, a buxom Tinker bell–ish wood nymph waved her magic wand over the tempting words, “Her Curves All-Natural Breast Enhancement Cream.” Miranda looked around, then leaned over pretending to study a bottle of children’s multivitamins.

“Noticeable results in as little as 30 days! Guaranteed!”

Perfect. That gave her a month to grow them and a month to get used to them before she debuted them at the pageant.

The line at the pharmacy counter was now six deep, and Miranda felt a rush of panic. Mr. Wiggins, the pharmacist, was a family friend. He’d had coffee with her father every morning back when her father was still alive. He would know the cream wasn’t for Miranda’s mother, whose breasts were years past the point of concern. There was another register in the front of the store being manned by Mr. Wiggins’s son, Jed, a

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 5

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

6

kirker butler

good-looking basketball star at Miranda’s school, but she’d sooner have Jed ring up a hundred boxes of ultraabsorbent maxipads than a single tube of magic breast-growing cream.

But she could not leave the store without it. It had suddenly become the single most important thing in her life. Looking again at the sexy sprite’s heaving bosom, Miranda felt a singular focus overtake her, and with a flush of guilty adrenaline she slipped the tube into her backpack. And to make sure she was completely covered, she took the Nu Woman pills as well.

It was her first crime, and Miranda could feel her heart pounding through her soon-to-be enormous chest. Hoping to mask her guilt, she casually meandered through the aisles, stopping to admire a new arthritis cream, a porcelain figurine of former University of Kentucky basketball coach Joe B. Hall, and a Fangoria magazine before making her way to the exit.

“Bye, Jed,” she said a bit too loudly to the disinterested boy behind the register, and slipped out the door.

Miranda sprinted the half mile to her house, then raced to her room, tearing off her shirt and bra as she went. Standing topless in front of her full-length mirror, she studied her prepubescent form and tried to create a mental “before” picture. She then smeared a generous dollop of Her Curves All-Natural Breast Enhancement Cream all over her chest.

Instantly, her skin began to tingle, and she couldn’t help but smile. Buzzing with expectation, Miranda lay back on her pink canopy bed and waited for a visit from the boob fairy.

-1— 0— +1—

Six weeks later, a few red streaks were all that remained of the second-degree chemical burns caused by the unholy Her Curves All-Natural Breast Enhancement Cream. The tingling

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 6

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

7

that had so excited Miranda quickly evolved into a searing pain that felt like a fire-breathing cat clawing its way out of her chest. She spent the rest of the afternoon under a cold shower, praying for forgiveness and an end to the torrent of angry blisters erupting on her skin. Only after covering her entire torso with plastic bags of frozen deer meat did she finally get any relief.

Miranda knew it was God’s punishment for her shoplifting and vanity, but the truth was much less supernatural: Her Curves had been recalled by the FDA nine months earlier for being “deceptive and dangerous.” After losing a class-action lawsuit—which revealed, among other things, that the cream had no set formula and was manufactured in an unsanitary former munitions factory in Vietnam—the now bankrupt parent company of Her Curves had been mandated by a federal judge to immediately recall all of its North American products. But Mr. Wiggins, who spent most afternoons drinking whiskey and shooting guns in the alley behind the drugstore, ignored the notice. To the product’s credit, the girl’s chest did noticeably swell up, if only for a few agonizing weeks.

Because Miranda had stolen the cream, she was forced to hide her shame with high-neck sweaters and scarves: a peculiar look for an oppressively humid Kentucky June, but she really had no other choice. If her parents had found out, they would have insisted on taking her to the doctor, and that nightmare was not going to happen. Despite being a teenager, Miranda still went to her pediatrician, a kindly old man who had also been her Sunday school teacher since second grade.

Odds are he would want to know how she’d acquired the burns, and how was she supposed to explain that?

“Well, Dr. Johnson, I wanted to enter a beauty pageant,

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 7

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

8

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

because I think I’m so beautiful, but there’s no way I could win with my tiny little mosquito bites so I shoplifted some cream from Mr. Wiggins’s drugstore that was supposed to give me enormous boobs, but it was defective and burned my little-girl chest and now I have scabs on my nipples. Would you please look at them? Thanks!”

The thought of that conversation was worse than nipple scabs, so Miranda chose to suffer in silence.

With the pageant now just weeks away, Miranda found herself right back where she’d started: flat chested and desperate. Undeterred, she charged ahead with her backup plan and took two Nu Woman pills. After an abrupt and painful period that felt like a gallon of spicy salsa fell out of her, she decided just to go with what the good Lord gave her—toilet paper, to stuff her top. It wasn’t very original, but she was pretty sure it also wouldn’t burn the lining of her uterus, either.

Two weeks later, Miranda sat backstage at the Miss Daviess County Fair Pageant nervously curling her hair. In the off months, the unairconditioned barn wood building served as storage for the fairgrounds’ numerous maintenance vehicles as well as home to an ever-growing family of rats. The sweet smell of gasoline mixed with the oppressive humidity made the air feel thick and flammable. A slight breeze would have made a world of difference, but in 1991 a local judge fell out of a nearby tree while taking pictures of the contestants changing clothes, and since then the doors were ordered to remain closed during pageants. Putting on makeup was like trying to paint a waterfall. Thankfully, the pageant itself took place outdoors with the closest audience member a good fifteen yards away.

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 8

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

9

Halfway through the pageant, Miranda was feeling like a contender. Her sportswear outfit looked great, much better than what the other girls, even the rich ones, wore, and her interview question was practically gift wrapped: “Who in your life do you look up to the most?”

Smiling confidently, she answered, “I would have to say my grandmother, because she’s the one who took me to church for the first time and introduced me to Jesus Christ, my personal Lord and Savior.”

The crowd ate it up like deep-fried pickles. The only acceptable role models for young girls in a Kentucky pageant were their grandmothers and Jesus, and Miranda had name-checked them both without sounding like she was pandering. The audience was on her side, and based on the judges’ approving nods she’d obviously impressed them, too. But none of that mattered. The bathing suit competition was next.

At her dressing station—a three-Quarter-inch slab of plywood resting on a couple of sawhorses—Miranda nearly shit a Chevy when she reached into her bag and found an unfamiliar bathing suit.

“Who stole my suit?” she yelled.

Most questions shouted backstage began with “Who stole my . . .” and were usually ignored save for the random “not me” barked from a bucktoothed, spaghetti-thin redhead hoping, at the very least, to come out of the experience with an attractive friend or two. When no one responded, Miranda scanned the room and mentally accused, tried, and convicted several girls she didn’t like.

A note was pinned to the suit, and she quickly snatched it off. It read: “Thought you might could use a little lift! You are a beautiful champion. Have fun and good luck. Love, Mom.”

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 9

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

10

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

Padding had been lovingly sewn into the bust, filling it out to a generous and tasteful B-cup. Miranda swallowed the sour knot growing in her throat. What a reasonable solution, she thought, shoving the Her Curves incident to the back of her mind, on a very high shelf, where it would be ignored and then forgotten about forever. Slipping into the modest turquoise one-piece, she checked herself in the communal full-length mirror and was charmed by the tastefully bosomed young woman smiling back at her. As a finishing touch, Miranda rubbed two arcing streaks of dark foundation onto her chest, hoping that from a distance it would create the illusion of cleavage.

Perfect, she thought. Now . . . let’s go show ’em what you’ve got.

With a chestful of confidence, Miranda strutted across the asphalt stage and relished the audience’s polite applause, exuberant cheers, and wildly inappropriate catcalls. Miranda’s smile, like her breasts, had never been bigger.

When the time came, all nineteen contestants lined up across the stage and waited for special guest judge Kentucky State Representative Donnie Lane Mather (D-Beaver Dam) to announce the winners.

“Look at these girls up here,” Representative Mather said.

“Don’t they just look good enough to eat?”

Marlene Martin, the pageant host and county’s best church singer, smiled through her glistening teeth. “Delicious, Donnie.

Just delicious.”

“And now the winners,” Representative Mather continued. “Miss Congeniality and Fourth Runner-up goes to . . .

Rose Maddox!”

The audience clapped as Rose, an inexplicably popular

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 10

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

11

gossip who’d gone to college the year before and had apparently traded her virginity for sixteen pounds of leg fat, fake-cried as the reigning queen, Kitty Price, handed Rose her trophy and fifth-place sash.

“Third Runner-up is . . . April Morgan.”

An audible gasp rose from the crowd. April was a popular cheerleader who was dating the son of the pageant director, and she’d been expected to finish much higher.

“Our Second Runner-up is . . . Miranda Ford!”

When Miranda heard her name, she accepted her thirdplace sash from Kitty with a warm smile and sincere hug.

However, she wasn’t quite sure that any smile would be able to hide her disappointment. After everything she had been through, Miranda had convinced herself that not only could she win but that she deserved to win. Her disappointment, however, would not last long. The Daviess County Fair Pageant wasn’t quite done with Miranda Ford.

Three months later, the winner of the pageant, Missy Hale, was forced to relinquish her crown after informing the pageant committee she had married her boyfriend, who she was “pretty sure” was the same guy who got her pregnant. Promoted to First Runner-up, Miranda was told she should be ready to take the crown in the unlikely event that the new queen, former First Runner-up Alexandra Black, was not able to fulfill her duties. And then, just as if God Himself had ordained it, six days before Christmas, Alexandra—along with her uncle, sister, mother, and mother’s boyfriend—were arrested for felony production of crystal meth with intent to distribute.

Miranda’s reign lasted only seven months, but it was one of the most exciting periods of her life. Her picture was in the

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 11

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

12

kirker butler

paper almost every other week, and everywhere she went little kids asked for her autograph. At school, she immediately skipped several rungs of the social ladder and soon went from being a dedicated yet anonymous 4-H member to being recruited for Drama Club vice president. Her prefame friends accused her of becoming “two-faced” and “conceited.” Miranda just shrugged it off as jealousy, but they weren’t wrong.

She was acting different, because she was different. Miranda was a local celebrity now—and she liked it. A lot.

“Look,” she told Lori Caldwell, a close friend since kindergarten, “I have responsibilities now. People count on me.

And that means I’m going to have less time for my friends.

And if you can’t accept that, then maybe it’s not me who’s being conceited. Maybe it’s you for not understanding what I’m going through.”

It’s like she said in that interview with the school paper, “Being me can be overwhelming sometimes. I mean, I can totally relate to the pressures of someone like Princess Diana.”

She paused to let the scrawny sophomore reporter, who had once tried to kiss her on a church hayride, really hear her. “It just never ends, you know? Someone’s always wanting a picture or a hug or just a kind word. But that’s my job now, I guess, touching people’s lives and stuff. And I’m just grateful to have it.”

For seven glorious months, Miranda got to breathe the rarified air of royalty. It’s like she said in her memoir: “I was famous, which meant I was special. And in a world that reveres such things, why wouldn’t I want the same for my daughter?”

-1— 0— +1—

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 12

9/23/14 12:11 AM

chapter two “Of course your children are beautiful. But are they sexy enough?” Miranda Ford Miller repeated the words out loud to make sure she’d read the ad correctly. What an appalling question, she thought. “As if I don’t already have enough to think about.”

After eight and a half years and three hundred sixty-three pageants, Miranda was pretty sure she’d thought of everything, but this had never even occurred to her. What kind of pageant mother was she, anyway?

“Dammit,” she whispered, drumming her fingers on the faded yellow Formica of her kitchen table. If she’d overlooked something as fundamental as her nine-year-old daughter’s sex appeal, what else had she missed?

To be sure, Miranda had done a lot right. Her daughter, Bailey, was a legend on the Southern United States pageant circuit, having racked up one hundred twenty-eight wins and ninety-six runner-up titles in her career, placing her fifth on the all-time winners’ list according to the Southern Pageant

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 13

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

14

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

Association’s Web site. A born competitor and naturally (for the most part) beautiful, Bailey had a commanding stage presence and carried herself with the grace and elegance of a high-heeled gazelle. Her talent, a grueling tribute to Cirque du Soleil’s KÀ set to Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” was provocative and perfectly executed, and no child flirted with the judges as intuitively as Bailey Miranda Miller. She was the total package. But according to Glamour Time Photography Studio, that wasn’t enough. Apparently, she also had to be sexy.

Are your children sexy enough?

The words stuck in her head like a bad song.

“I can’t deal with this right now,” she said, and tossed the ad aside like everything else that bothered her. Adjusting the pumpkin and turkey table runner, which was only a few months from turning a corner and being appropriately seasonal again, Miranda pretended to ignore the three days’ worth of dirty dishes snaking out of the sink and across the cracked tile of the counter to focus on what was important: the weekend and the 29th Annual Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant. Bailey would be relinquishing her crown as Junior Miss Beautiful, and not a moment too soon. What with her pushing seventy-five pounds and all.

Miranda was not proud of how she judged her daughter’s appearance, but the harsh reality was that the average nine-year- old girl weighed sixty-three point eight pounds.

Bailey was in the eighty-fourth percentile for weight, and that made her vulnerable. No doubt the other mothers had noticed Bailey’s extra bulk just like Miranda noticed the numerous flaws in their girls. Melody Norton’s hair extensions looked (and smelled) like the horsehair they were; Karliegh Sandefur’s flipper (the dental prosthetic that filled in the gaps of her

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 14

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

15

missing baby teeth) only highlighted the fact that her new adult teeth were stained and crooked; and all the makeup in the world couldn’t hide the fact that JoBeth Kanton was just plain ugly. But all of that was better than fat. Fat was unforgivable.

Fat was fatal.

Parents who entered their overweight children in beauty pageants were worse than parents who encouraged their handicapped children to play sports. They think they’re doing the right thing, showing the kids that they’re “just like everyone else,” but everyone else, including the handicapped kids, knows they’re not. It just slows everything down and makes people uncomfortable. “Some parents,” Miranda liked to say, “shouldn’t be.”

Most overweight girls who participated in pageants did so because their parents thought it would be good for then, which was akin to saying, “Hey, honey, you know how everyone at school makes fun of your weight? Well, I think you’d feel much better about yourself if you put on a bathing suit and stood next to a cheerleader on a stage under a spotlight in a room full of strangers.” Miranda called them charity girls.

Parents of the serious competitors were usually pretty tolerant of charity girls because they never won anything except maybe Congeniality, and there wasn’t a cash prize for that. And that was the problem. Pageants were expensive, and if Bailey didn’t remain diligent, and count every calorie, she would balloon right out of a career.

Miranda had started to suspect Bailey was eating an extra lunch at school. At the very least she was consuming more than the four-hundred-calorie meals Miranda had paid a nutritionist to prepare and deliver every morning. And she was very close to proving it before being asked to leave the school

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 15

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

16

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

grounds for loitering. Miranda had tried everything to help her daughter lose weight: a gym membership that came with ten private pole-dancing lessons; a consultation with an overly puritanical plastic surgeon who refused to even discuss performing liposuction on a child, even when Miranda offered to pay double; and the “health clinic” in Puerto Rico where Tina Murray had taken her seven-year-old daughter Sephora to get excess fat removed from her love handles and injected into her lips. Miranda decided to put a pin in Puerto Rico when Sephora contracted a still unidentified infection that left her seventy percent deaf in one ear and half of her bottom lip permanently blue.

She then tried a fourteen-hundred- dollar custom-made neoprene sleep suit that was promised to sweat out excess water weight. But after a series of night terrors where Bailey dreamed she’d been thrown in the trash, followed by a two a.m. trip to the emergency room for dehydration, the suit was put on eBay. Despite her best efforts, the sad fact remained that Bailey was getting fat, and Miranda would just have to add that to the growing list of disappointments in her life.

She glanced again at the Glamour Time Photography ad sitting like a cherry atop a shit sundae of past-due bills. Again, Miranda tried to ignore it and looked around her kitchen wishing it were bigger. And newer. And part of a larger house. In Thoroughbred Acres. If Bailey hadn’t won that new dishwasher at the Gorgeous Belles and Beaus Pageant (Augusta, Georgia), the room would be downright shameful. Miranda briefly considered washing a few dishes, just to take her mind off her failure as a mother, but the ad wouldn’t leave her alone.

Needing a distraction, Miranda decided she should start pack-

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 16

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

17

ing for the weekend, but a sharp kick in her stomach nearly took her breath away. Rubbing her belly, she realized she hadn’t eaten in nearly four hours.

“Brixton,” she said quietly, feeling her baby move inside her, “you’ve got to calm down, sweetheart. Lunch isn’t for another”—she looked at the clock—“half hour.”

Aggressively nontraditional baby names had become a trend at pageants all across the South, each one desperately transparent in an attempt to be quirky and memorable: Maelynn, Shelsea, Brinquley, LaDoris, Braethern, Gradaphene, Hendrix, Stylus, Dorsalynn, Orabelle, Gunilla, Kindle, Haylorn, JubiLeigh, Harlee, Davidson, etc. Ridiculous all, but Brixton was different. Brixton was divinely inspired on a road trip to the Prettiest Girl in the World Pageant (Valdosta, Georgia).

Trailing a battered yellow dump truck filled with charred bricks from a razed crematorium, Miranda thought, There must a ton of bricks in that truck. The words “bricks” and “ton” tumbled around in her head, and when she put them together it sounded a lot like poetry. A bumper sticker on the back of the truck asked where is your destiny? and listed the Web site for one of those Six Flags Over Jesus megachurches Miranda disliked so much. Seeing the word “destiny” as the name “Brixton” formed itself in her brain was such an obvious and powerful sign from God that even an atheist would be compelled to rethink some things. Miranda decided right then and there that if she ever had another girl, she would name her Brixton Destiny Miller.

Her husband, Ray, wasn’t so sure. “Don’t you think it sounds a little . . . porny?”

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 17

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

18

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

Miranda did not.

When Bailey won her first pageant, Baby Princess BarB-Q Fest (Owensboro, Kentucky), at the age of seven months, Miranda told Ray she was ready to have another girl.

“All I want to do is make princesses, Ray! I want a houseful of princesses!”

Within two months she was pregnant, but when the child was born, a healthy and happy little boy they eventually named J.J. (which didn’t stand for anything), Miranda fell into a bout of postpartum depression so deep she could barely see the sun.

For the first four weeks, Miranda could not bring herself to hold her baby boy for longer than a few minutes at a time.

Six years later she still found it difficult to speak to him in anything longer than curt, declarative sentences. When their second son, Junior Miller, was born fourteen months later, her despair multiplied exponentially Spending quality time with her sons became a never-ending struggle. Little girls liked shoes, playing dress-up, having their hair and makeup done, things Miranda was good at and understood. Little boys liked frogs and dirt and farting. How could she possibly be expected to relate to that?

Every now and then, Miranda’s pastor would drop by to check in on her. They’d sit on the screened-in back porch and chat. She’d offer him a piece of pie and a glass of sweet tea, and he’d attempt to explain how the mother/son relationship is one of the most sacred in all humankind, using Jesus and Mary as his primary example.

“First of all,” she said, laughing good-naturedly, “I dare you to spend ten minutes with these boys and then compare them to Jesus. I’m kidding, of course. They’re good boys, and their father looks out for them. Not unlike Jesus. And my

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 18

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

19

mother watches them a lot, too. So they’re fine. I’m not worried.”

The young pastor smiled and sipped his tea, and tried to explain that Miranda was neglecting sixty-six percent of her children.

“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t say I’m neglecting them,” she said. “I love them. I love them more than anything. They’re my children, for heaven’s sake. I just don’t have anything in common with them.” And besides, she thought, when Brixton is born, that number will drop to fifty percent, which is probably pretty close to the national average.

When the ultrasound technician pointed out Brixton’s blurry gray fetal vagina, Miranda practically leapt from the table. She rushed home, dragged Bailey’s old baby pageant outfits from the attic, and meticulously laid them out on every available surface of the living room. Most of the outfits, like the furniture they sat on, were shamefully outdated and needed to be replaced, but just seeing the tiny dresses with their starched crinolines and ruffled bloomers, or the hand-stitched beadwork on the Indian headpiece and matching sequined leggings, made Miranda giddy for the first time in years.

Mistakes had been made with Bailey, obviously, but Miranda was determined not to repeat them with Brixton.

And if that meant starting in utero with a strict meal schedule, then so be it.

“If Brixton learns in the womb that meals are to be eaten at specific times,” she explained to Ray, “then maybe she’ll be born with the nutritional discipline that Bailey obviously lacks.”

Ray just nodded. He’d learned to not question Miranda’s plans for the girls.

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 19

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

20

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

“Mom, what are you doing?”

Miranda jumped and grabbed her tummy.

“Oh, my God, Bailey!” Miranda said, catching her breath.

“Don’t sneak up like that, sweetheart. You’re going to give Mommy a miscarriage.”

The nine-year-old stood in the doorway and shrugged.

“Sorry.”

Her strawberry blond hair hung in front of her face like a veil (or a mask), and she made no effort to move it. The pink Juicy sweat suit she’d won at last year’s Pride of Paducah Pageant (Paducah, Kentucky) had become a bit snug, but it perfectly matched the running shoes Miranda got free with Bailey’s gym membership. “I’m hungry.”

Miranda took a deep breath and tried to be encouraging.

“I’m sure you are, sweetie, but you’re competing this weekend, and we talked about this. You’re up to seventy-five pounds. Which is a lot more than those other girls.”

“Yeah, but most of those girls have been bulimic since birth. They’ll probably never be seventy-five pounds.”

“Well, honey, not everyone can be blessed with an eating disorder,” Miranda said. “Some of us have to work to stay thin.”

Bailey pushed the hair from her face so her mother could see how genuinely appalled she was. “Mom, that’s not funny.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just a little hormonal.” Miranda sighed. “Okay. Go do your workout, twenty minutes on the elliptical, and I’ll steam you some carrots.”

The girl stared at her mother before letting her hair fall back into her face and trudged across the kitchen to a door on the far end of the utility room.

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 20

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

21

“I love you, sweetie!” Miranda called after her. “You’re a beautiful champion!”

“Yep!” Bailey called back, her fist raised in mock triumph.

“I’m a winner!”

“See if you can push yourself and do twenty-five minutes,” Miranda yelled, but her daughter slammed the door, cutting her off.

Bailey took a deep breath and locked the door behind her.

Kicking off her shoes, she dug her toes deep into the thick white shag carpeting and looked out into a sea of rhinestones.

Every surface was covered with trophies, sashes, plaques, and crowns. In one corner, an old toy chest was filled with smaller, lesser trophies that didn’t warrant prime visibility: Best Hair (First Runner-up), Best Smile, Daviess County Second-Grade Spelling Bee Champion. Framed photographs of Bailey being crowned, holding fans of cash, and posing with “celebrity” judges (regional TV news anchors) covered the walls. The ceiling was a rainbow of contestant ribbons. It looked like the rec room of an elegant hoarder. The only nonpageant items were an old futon and a SOLE E35 elliptical trainer Miranda got from a neighbor who’d caught her husband cheating and gave all his stuff away.

The asymmetrical room was an obvious add- on, made with cheaper materials and less skill than the rest of the house.

It would have made a decent walk-in closet if it had been connected to any of the bedrooms, but instead it grew off the utility room like an architectural tumor.

Bailey set the elliptical machine for a twenty-five-minute workout and sat on the floor next to the machine. A large dusty trophy from the Little Miss Sass and Sand Princess Pageant

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 21

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

22

-1— 0— +1—

kirker butler

(Gulf Shores, Alabama) sat in the back of the room: an anonymous peak in a mountain range of awards. Bailey carefully twisted off the bottom, and a Snickers bar fell into her lap. The elliptical machine beeped impatiently, and Bailey started pushing the foot pedal with her hand. The distance and calorie counter slowly began to rise as Bailey tore into the candy bar, jolting her body with the satisfying rush of sugar and defiance. From under the futon, she pulled a Kindle she’d won in an online photo contest and swiped to page seventy-eight of Looking for Alaska. A poster-sized glamour shot—Bailey’s most recent pageant photo—looked down at her from across the room, and Bailey stared back, mocking it as she finished the candy bar in an earnest attempt to destroy the girl in the photo from the inside out.

Meanwhile, Miranda took a worn overnight bag from the cabinet over the washing machine and caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Her highlights needed some serious attention. Her hairdresser, Garo (who also styled Channel 7’s popular new weather girl, Giselle Lopez-Beard), had overdone the blond streaks in Miranda’s mocha hair, making her look like a jaundiced zebra. Thank God her body still rocked. Despite having three kids, her boobs were holding up pretty well.

Having one small B-cup and one full C was a constant source of embarrassment, but pregnancy rounded them both out to a satisfying and nearly symmetrical D. At seven months, Miranda had barely gained twenty pounds. Although she was dangerously close to her lifetime high of one forty-seven, she was determined not to reach it.

“Not bad,” she said, rubbing her belly. She turned to the side and shot a quick, furtive look at her butt. Every pregnancy

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 22

9/23/14 12:11 AM

pretty ugly

23

had expanded her backside a little bit. She didn’t like to dwell on it, but she did want to stay aware of any changes. Miranda Ford wasn’t dumpy, but at five foot four, she certainly could not afford to get any wider. One more baby and she would likely have to permanently go up to a size six, and the thought of that was more depressing than having another boy.

Tossing the overnight bag (substandard swag from the even more substandard Little Miss Kentuckiana Sweetheart Pageant—Jeffersonville, Indiana) onto the kitchen table, Miranda shook her head in disgust. “Second Runner-up,” she muttered and shook her head, still not over it. “Never trust a judge from Indiana.”

Pulling Bailey’s socks and underwear from the dryer, Miranda shoved them unfolded into the bag, then stopped.

Even with something important to occupy her mind, she couldn’t stop thinking about that ludicrous photography ad.

“Are your children sexy enough?” she practically spat.

“How dare they?”

Storming to the freezer, she pulled out a three-pound block of ice that encased the family’s last usable credit card. A financial adviser had suggested she and Ray freeze their cards to help reduce impulse spending and rein in their mounting debt.

“When you want to use your card, just set the ice on the counter and let it thaw,” the man advised from behind his four-thousand-dollar oak desk. “It should take about ninety minutes. If after that time you still want to make your purchase, then go ahead. If not, it probably wasn’t that important.”

Miranda put the chunk of ice in the microwave and set it

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 23

—-1 —0 —+1

9/23/14 12:11 AM

24

kirker butler

on High for three minutes. Brixton kicked. “Ooh, sweetie, did you think Mommy was making your lunch?” She chuckled, patted her bump, and checked the clock by the fridge.

“Eighteen more minutes.”

Fishing her phone from her purse, Miranda called the number at the bottom of the ad and sighed, disappointed in herself and humanity. As the phone rang, she fiddled with the magnetic poetry on her fridge, picking through limitless combinations until she’d written: i hate stupid people “Glamour Time Photography Studio. How can I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Miranda Miller and I saw your ad in the pageant newsletter? I’d like to schedule a sitting for my daughter.”

Bailey may have been getting fat, but there was still a chance she could be sexy.

-1— 0— +1—

053-59798_ch01_1P.indd 24

9/23/14 12:11 AM

on-sale 4/14/15 “Exceptional . . . Clanchy has a wincingly accurate eye for social comedy, a vivid descriptive sense, and profound understanding of her characters. This is a delectable read.” - Daily Mail (UK) In response to an advertisement, Struan Robertson, orphan, genius, and just seventeen, leaves his dour native town in Scotland, and arrives at a creaky mansion in London in the freakishly hot summer of 1989. His job, he finds, is to care for playwright and one-time literary star Phillip Prys, dumbfounded and paralyzed by a massive stroke, because, though Phillip’s two teenage children, two wives, and a literary agent all rattle ‘round his large house, they are each too busy with their peculiar obsessions to do it themselves. As the city bakes, Struan finds himself tangled in a midsummer’s dream of mistaken identity, giddying property prices, wild swimming, and overwhelming passions. For everyone, it is to be a life-changing summer.

Kate Clanchy’s Meeting the English is a bright book about dark subjects--a tale about kindness and its limits, told with love. It is a coming of age story for anyone who has ever felt themselves to be an outsider; a love story for the awkward; and a comedy for anyone who has ever lived in a family. Written by an acclaimed writer of poetry, non-fiction, and short stories, this glorious debut novel is spiked with witty dialogue and jostling with gleeful, zesty characters.

KATE CLANCY was born and grew up in Scotland but now lives in England. Her poetry collections, Slattern, Samarkand, and Newborn, have brought her many literary awards and an unusually wide audience. She is the author of the much acclaimed Antigona and Me, and was the 2008 winner of the Writers Guild Best Book Award. She has also written extensively for Radio 4 and reviews and writes commentary for The Guardian. Meeting the English was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award.

It is easier for them; they are English.

Alasdair Gray, The Fall of Kelvin Walker

Bathgate no more Linwood no more Methil no more Lochaber no more.

The Proclaimers, Letter from America

1

It was March, 1989, and the weather was unseasonably warm; but no one worried about that, then.

Phillip Prys, playwright, novelist, was brushing his teeth in the en-suite bathroom of his large house in Hampstead. The incisors had yellowed over the years with nicotine – much like his study ceiling – and there was a brown crack in the left canine, but Phillip was pleased with the molars. Sound to a man. Every morning, he counted them in and rubbed them over with his noisy hard-bristle toothbrush; jaw wide as a crocodile’s as he shone up the back ones.

In the mirror his head, brown and speckled as a breakfast egg, dipped, spat, rinsed. On the windowsill, the padded Roberts radio belly-ached on about Salman Rushdie and failed to mention the letter to The Times Phillip had put his name to, just two days ago. Not that the letter was his idea: Giles had sprung it on him: and you could hardly say you were pro-fatwa, could you, these PC days? Not even to your agent in the privacy of Simpson’s.

1

Kate Clanchy Absurd. He’d married one now, hadn’t he? A foreigner.

An Iranian, no less. The ravishing, the twenty-six-yearold, the petite, the scented Shirin, slowly dressing at this very moment in the adjoining room. Some racist he was. No, what Phillip felt – and he’d said this to Giles, openly, after a few drinks, mind – was, when it came right down to it, Rushdie had stolen a bit of a march on the rest of them with the whole business. Because, look, Giles, Rushdie might be brown, but he was a posh boy at bottom, wasn’t he? Went to Eton, didn’t he? Oxford? And with fairy tales like Midnight’s Arses and One Hundred Years of Buggery hogging the book market, people were forgetting about the class system here in Britain, weren’t they? Pulling the splinter out of the brown chappie’s eye and forgetting the bloody pit-prop in bloody Wales, isn’t it? Phillip always became more Welsh when he drank.

Giles had said nothing. In fact, he’d had the cheek to start folding his napkin. So Phillip had asked him directly – of course Giles was a queer, that wasn’t the point – he must have noticed that the real stories, stories of the men of the valleys, rugby-playing men and their sons, those stories were going out and this posh namby-pamby gossamer was coming in instead, written by women half of it. Angela bloody Carter. And Giles had said, gesturing at Phillip’s latest royalties statement, open between them on the table, but Angela sells, old chap, so does Rushdie.

They sell. And then he’d told Phillip he was going to retire.

2

Meeting the English Retire. Giles! Giles gone grey all of a sudden, all his soft sideburns, grizzled. Shocking. As if they’d thrown a bucket of talc on him between the acts, while Phillip was in the circle bar, lining up the pink gins. Giles, in the name of Heaven! You could weep for him, so you could, like poor bloody Arthur Scargill and his men and all the other victims of Thatcher, no such thing as society and other bollocks. In the other room, Shirin yawned: small visceral noise from a strong pale throat.

Phillip wiped the last foam from his lips. He breathed in. Today was, after all, a beautiful day. The new leaves on the chestnut tree were unfurling, and Shirin was sitting on his bed, putting on her lipstick with an exact, exquisite hand. Listen! The tootle of birds, the tiny firecracker of Shirin’s dress being electrically tugged over Shirin’s tights. Phillip laid down the flannel and picked up the TCP. Thirty years he’d lived in the house in Yewtree Row. Twenty his MG had twinkled at him from its snug parking place across the street. Giles at the end of the phone for what – thirty-five? Longer than Shirin had been alive, clever little orchid in the greenhouse of Tehran.

But the MG would stay and Giles could be replaced. One of the smart young men in the office would be honoured, honoured. Of course he would. Phillip would ring him up and say: ‘Bird tootling in a tree, what’s the bugger called, for chapter 2?’ and get the answer, just as he always had. The thought was worth a song. Phillip liked 3

Kate Clanchy to carol through his TCP – ‘Bread of Heaven’, in Welsh, with his head thrown back – a special knack of his.

His jaw was at its very widest when the spasm hit. The TCP gurgled down his throat, and its precise burn, etching the tonsils, was Phillip’s last clear memory. He fell to the ground and jerked as if he were being shaken by an invisible policeman. He made a series of bad plumbing noises, rusty groans and burps. Spittle leaked from a corner of his mouth. His legs thrashed, then his head, and this all went on for a very long time, as if Phillip were being uncharacteristically brave, as if he were refusing to give up an answer.

All the while, and evenly as a flag in a steady breeze, the radio talked about the fatwa and moved on to the weather, and then to news just coming in about an oil spill, a very large one.

Of course, it was all a terrible shock for Shirin. They kept telling her so in Intensive Care, after she had revived Phillip, carried him downstairs in a fireman’s lift, and delivered him to Casualty at speed in the MG which she was not, in fact, licensed to drive. Phillip was stable now, and Shirin should have a cup of tea, one with sugar, said the handsome young consultant. She should place her narrow hips on a plastic chair and smooth back her 4

Meeting the English heavy shining bob of hair, and he would draw up his matching chair and explain everything in his best, grown-up, low voice.

You see, probably, the blood clot had been around for ages, bobbing around in Phillip’s bloodstream. Phillip was sixty-two? A vulnerable age. Did Phillip smoke?

Untipped? And drink? Pink gin was a strong choice. The young consultant looked like a jogger. His eyes were preternaturally bright, blue as glass. He explained that Phillip’s arteries might, because of the smoking, be furred and narrower than average. It must all be hard for Shirin to understand, especially just now, but— ‘He is suffering a revolution?’ asked Shirin, in her tremendously posh voice with its just perceptible Iranian ‘r’, fixing the consultant the while with her famously lucent amber eyes.

‘Well,’ said the consultant, ‘you could say that. Are you familiar with the circulatory system, Mrs Prys?’

‘Yes,’ said Shirin, looking at the ceiling, ‘terrifically.’

And so the consultant started on about Phillip’s clot, how it would have started as something barely tangible— ‘All revolutions start like that,’ said Shirin, ‘do they not? Just a few people? A few, did you call them, platelets? We need a strong tyrant, perhaps, to put them down?’ There was a pause.

‘Was Mr Prys recommended,’ asked the consultant, ‘aspirin? At any point?’

5

Kate Clanchy ‘Possibly. He would never take such a thing,’ said Shirin. The consultant shook his head.

‘It’s not always easy to make that generation see that drink is not a friend,’ he said.

‘His ally,’ said Shirin, brightly, ‘his comrade. From the days of the Long March!’

‘You know,’ said the consultant, ‘you should consider putting your feet up for a minute.’

‘I think,’ said Shirin, ‘that after all, this is not a revolution, so much as a coup? We have a roadblock, do we not? This clot it is blocking the circulation? And now . . .’

‘I think I’m losing your thread,’ said the glassy-eyed consultant, who had grown up in Harrogate. And so he went off to fill in forms, and Shirin, who was a painter, sat looking at Phillip’s liver-spotted hands with the tubes stuck in them, laid out by his sides, like a pietà.

She knew about all this.

After the roadblocks comes the random firing.

Rapidly, the streets fill with the injured and the lost, with backfiring ambulances, with gunfire and the reports of gunfire; in moments, the storm troopers arrive and the fires start. Then, the black government vehicles, the ones you’d hoped were rumours, cruise the streets in their sleek silence. Now, the city puts up its shutters, and gets behind them. Now, the new order, the months and years of damage. Last time, she had got away.

She picked up one of Phillip’s hands, carefully. It was 6

Meeting the English only slightly cooler than normal, but it felt hard, like the cast of a hand.

‘Darling,’ said Shirin, ‘you’ll be in for months.’ And, as if in reply, Phillip’s catheter bag filled with pee.

1989: at that time, hardly anyone carried phones, and the phones that were carried were ridiculous, and their bearers objects of fun. There were still messages, then: phone boxes, faxes, answer-machines, pagers, telegrams, Filofaxes, bike couriers, notes. There were pigeonholes in all sorts of places and out-of-the way organizations, and billets-doux and death threats were put in them.

Of course, things often went wrong. You could hang a movie or a novel on a missed message, then; Phillip in his weary later years had done so several times. Conversely, getting through to people was a full-time job for legions of loaf-haired ladies – women who should have been sent to university instead of typing school; who, if they had, would have been running the company instead of the sweaty oafs in pinstripe behind them. Shirin was particularly good at getting through, though she operated on an entirely autodidactic, freelance basis. If she hadn’t been, as she pointed out to Phillip the first time she opened her little green Filofax containing the home numbers of the American ambassador, Douglas Hogg, Salman Rushdie and Charles Saatchi, she would be dead by now, or barefoot and nameless in a prison in Tehran.

7

Kate Clanchy Getting through wasn’t just about contacts, you see, it was also about focus, delegation, and intuition. For instance, reaching Phillip’s children from his second marriage would have taken Shirin several hours from the call box at the Royal Free Hospital, so, despite the names that Myfanwy, Phillip’s second wife, had called her at their previous meeting, Shirin phoned her directly, and, when she found her not at home, succeeded, in a single brilliant swoop, in having her paged in Waitrose on the Finchley Road.

In fact, this was the kind of thing Waitrose liked to manage particularly well. Whisked to the Manager’s teak-lined office, Myfanwy was kindly sat down in the Manager’s own leather chair with lean-back feature.

She used this to the full as she listened to Shirin saying en suite and crisis. And when she replaced the receiver and murmured, ‘My husband. Stroke,’ and closed her eyes, the Manager did not hurry her, but slipped discreetly forward with a glass of water.

Myfanwy was in a reverie. She was seeing a tableau.

She would have said both these words with a pronounced French accent which would have enormously irritated her daughter, Juliet. She’d learned it at RADA, in the late fifties. There, she’d also learned to celebrate, even indulge, her visual imagination. ‘Picture it!’ said the curious Polish movement teacher, Myfanwy’s second or was it third lover, in his heavy accent. ‘Picture it, Myfanwy, and let your body act the picture!’

8

Meeting the English On her vast bosom, Myfanwy’s be-ringed hand executed a dying fall for the long-lost Zbigniew. Myfanwy’s mind was picturing Phillip dead in his study (though Shirin had said stable, and en suite, several times): dead, yes, quite dead. Yellow, slumped on his vast desk like Marat in his bath, his horn-rimmed specs in his outstretched hand, harmless at last.

And then, into the reverie, entering stage left, gently removing the specs, and folding their legs, came her very good friend and colleague, the young estate agent from Hamptons. He was talking about Yewtree Row; he was saying, ‘More than a million, Mrs Prys, with renovations.’ And with that, the agent opened his hands to show the details of a pair of railway cottages in Cricklewood, property of Myfanwy Prys, that were unaccountably failing to sell, and folded into the brochures, the interest statements from the bank. The agent threw them in the air, like doves, all the bothersome papers, and they flew— ‘Madam?’ said the Waitrose Manager, for Myfanwy had involuntarily described an arc in the air with both hands. Myfanwy kept her eyes shut, raised one hand flat in a Popish gesture.

Now in her vision she saw, under Phillip’s bent yellow fingers, her deed of the divorce, and beside it, the agreement she had providentially pushed through with her lawyer: that in the event of the death of Phillip Prys before the majority of both his children, the estate should pass 9

Kate Clanchy in trust to Myfanwy Shirley Davies Prys. Majority was twenty-five. Jake was twenty. Juliet was just sixteen.

Myfanwy opened her eyes and smiled dazzlingly at the Manager.

‘Not fatal, I trust?’ he said.

‘Stable,’ said Myfanwy, ‘but critical.’ She blew her nose. ‘So no change there,’ she added, shocking the poor man to the core.

Myfanwy’s eye fell on the Manager’s phone. State of the art, push-button, black, and not her bill. Myfanwy adored Directory Enquiries. ‘May I make a few calls?’ she said.

And so it was that shortly, in a girls’ private school in Baker Street, an excited sixth-former went in search of the form mistress of that hopeless skiver, Juliet Prys: and, in a college in Oxford, a porter in a bowler beckoned a random undergraduate across the quad. The form mistress consulted a timetable, and set off for the gym: the porter simply handed over a note, confident that such a conspicuous young man as Jake Prys, one equipped with the quiff of the year, the open shirt of the month, and, the porter strongly suspected, the lipstick of the day would be easily located.

Juliet was found in the gym changing room with her best friend, Celia. Celia was crouched on the slatted bench wearing two coats and clutching a book. Celia was 10

Meeting the English anorexic: her hand on the book was yellow and light as a leaf. Juliet was used to this. Juliet hardly cared. Juliet was standing in her knickers: Aertex on and school skirt off; a small, round, pink girl with a dark pony fringe, aggrieved, up-tilted eyebrows, a loose glossy lower lip and an out-thrust tummy like a toddler.

‘Kirwan,’ said Celia. ‘Heading for you.’

‘I’m in my pants,’ said Juliet, pouting.

‘It’s OK,’ hissed Celia, ‘she’s looking really sympathetic. Whatever it is, I’m coming with you, yeah? I’ll die if I have to pick up a hockey stick.’ Celia might, actually: you could see the double bones of her forearm, clear as a biology diagram. Juliet turned to her teacher, and held out the silly pie-frill skirt.

‘Miss Kirwan,’ she said, priggishly, ‘I’m changing.’

Unnecessary. A nearly dead father on its own, it soon transpired, was top dollar for skivers. Not only good enough to miss PE but also double French, and Celia was warmly urged to take Juliet all the way home. And within minutes the girls stood smoking in Baker Street, just outside the Tube. Though: ‘I should go to French, actually,’ said Celia. ‘I need to revise.’

‘Celia,’ said Juliet, inhaling importantly, ‘you’re a monomaniac. My dad’s had a stroke.’

‘I need all As,’ said Celia, ‘I need to go to Oxford. You know that. And besides, you haven’t even cried yet.’

‘I know,’ said Juliet, grinding her fag out beneath her 11

Kate Clanchy pixie boot, ‘mad, isn’t it?’ She wandered into the station, trying to remember what her father looked like. She had his yellowy eyes in mind, and his reddish shining head, and his wide cross mouth, and his knees in tweed beneath his keyhole desk, but she couldn’t picture his middle. ‘He must have a middle,’ she said, aloud. ‘What sort of jumpers does he wear?’

‘You’re in shock,’ said Celia, maternally. ‘Sugar. Shall I buy you some sweets?’ Every day, in this their sixteenth year, Celia had bought a family pack of Minstrels and fed them to Juliet: it was behaviour neither seemed able to stop. And now, she did it again.

‘Do you know what I thought when Mrs Kirwan said it?’ said Juliet, on the platform, munching. ‘About my dad? I mean, what I thought at that exact minute?’

‘No,’ said Celia, sourly.

‘Well,’ said Juliet, ‘first I thought, can I still go to Italy?’ (For Juliet was supposed to be going to Tuscany –then, a reasonably recherché destination – that summer with Celia and her family, and she was concerned that Celia was losing enthusiasm for the project. Or was getting too thin.) Celia raised a contemptuous eyebrow.

‘Then,’ said Juliet, ‘I wondered if it would make me thin. You know, grief.’

Celia’s dark pupils flickered in the stretched mask of her face, and her hand came up to cover her mouth, and then she howled with laughter, and Juliet saw in the harsh light of the platform that Celia was the wrong 12

Meeting the English colour, now, the waxy yellow of preserved flesh, and the possibility of death, both for her father and her friend, occupied her mind for its necessarily brief space, like the train for Swiss Cottage rattling just then into the station, so very aluminium, so utilitarian and so large.

In Oxford, the note from the porter travelled out of the quad to the King’s Arms, and thence to a room in Merton where a pretty, smudged girl was still in a rumpled bed, and thence again to the Playhouse where Jake was sitting on the edge of the stage, a script on his knee, his quiff in his hand. The messenger, a chemistry student in Jake’s year who had never previously spoken to him, waited respectfully by his side as he read it. Jake refolded the paper, and handed it back. He looked at the chemist for a moment, then pushed back his quiff and sighed. ‘Just gotta channel it,’ said Jake, looking at his handsome, ringed hands. ‘Death, life, it’s all the same, isn’t it?’ Then, seeing the young man was still there: ‘Hey, man. Thanks.’

And the chemistry student went out to study the buses in George Street and be thankful he had never been drawn to the Arts.

Later, though, Jake did ring Myfanwy’s flat, and got Celia. Myfanwy was up at Phillip’s house, tidying it or something. Fighting with Shirin, probably. Juliet was chain-smoking on the sofa, making ‘v’ signs at the phone.

Jake said: ‘Look, how is he?’

13

Kate Clanchy And Celia, modest and calm, said, ‘Critical but stable.’

Jake said: ‘See, I’m on stage tonight. You know. A new piece. I know Dad would want it this way.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Celia.

Jake said, ‘But I’ll ring, you see. I’ll need someone to be in, to tell me how it’s going, even if it’s late.’

‘Well,’ said Celia, ‘that could be me. I’m staying tonight.’

‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Juliet, in the background.

‘Might be midnight, might be two,’ said Jake. ‘You be there, Celia, hmm? And I’ll see you soon.’

Juliet looked up from her cigarette. ‘Has he fucked off?’ she said.

‘It’s terrible about the oil,’ said Celia, putting on the television. ‘Exxon Valdez.’

‘Seal,’ said Juliet, ‘Jake really is a shit, honestly, he is, he doesn’t care about anyone else. Don’t get a pash on him, Seal, honestly. Listen. I’m giving you advice.’

‘Look,’ said Celia, pointing at the telly, her fluffy head trembling like a dandelion on its stalk. ‘Gulls.’

‘Poor sods,’ said Juliet. ‘Turn it over, Seal. You know I can’t concentrate on the news. There’s too much of it.’

14

2

In 1989, there were just crazy amounts of news: news from all quarters of both hemispheres of the globe; news of the very meatiest, most ideological, melodramatic sort – the Exxon Valdez was a popped pimple to most of it.

Merely in the months Phillip lay in hospital, moving from Intensive to Critical, Critical to General, learning to slump in a wheelchair and sip from a spoon, Poland held democratic elections, the Ayatollah Khomeini died, the Americans went into Panama, there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square, and Mrs Thatcher introduced the poll tax in Scotland. So much news: so much of it, like the sunny weather, so unexpectedly gratifying to the English spectator, so fully supportive of the notion that he had been right all along, right since Hitler – you’d never have thought a playwright’s stroke would make the papers.

But there were also so very many papers, then; and the papers were so fat; and written almost entirely by people who had been obliged to read Phillip’s epochmaking play, The Pit and Its Men, at school, and to 15

Kate Clanchy include it in studies of Angry Young Men at university; that the stroke did feature in the news. And not just the Ham and High either (‘Local Author Phillip Prys “Stable but Critical” ’) but also a paragraph seven pages into the Independent, and a small article in the Los Angeles Times, which linked Phillip (incorrectly) with Richard Burton, and said that he was dead.

It took yards of Giles’ fax to sort out the LA Times.

Meantime, in Britain, English teachers weary of revision, sick of marking exam-practice essays with variations on Describe the dilemma Pip faces in The Pit and Its Men. Does he make the right choice? (GCSE) or In its original production, The P&IM was described as ‘amoral, communist and justifying matricide’. Do you agree? (A-Level), happened upon the Independent notice and told their pupils about it, even as far as Pontyprys, where Phillip grew up, and Cuik High School, Cuik, Scotland, where the young English teacher, Mr Fox, had unconventionally opted to teach The Pit for Higher. Mr Fox had thought, in this breezeblock lowland town crouched among orange bings, that the play would reflect the kids’ mining background and set something alight, but, as his colleagues had predicted, none of the kids doing Higher actually had mining backgrounds, those ones all left after Standard Grade, and several of the Higher students were insulted by the mere idea. Of the thirty pupils in the Higher English set, in fact, only Struan Robertson reacted to the news of the stroke.

16

Meeting the English ‘Would that be an embolism, sir, or a thrombosis?’

Struan worked part-time in an old people’s home and intended to be a dentist. He was also that exotic thing, an orphan, though his dad had died of MS, not a thrombosis.

‘I have no idea,’ said Mr Fox. ‘Well, I’m sure we all wish him well, sir,’ said Struan.

‘Either way. I’m sure we’ll be thinking of him, as we are writing about his play, sir, and wishing him the very best.’

And thus, tranquilly, in the mild early summer, Struan took his Higher English, and aced it. In England, meanwhile, Juliet made an utter arse of her GCSEs, and Celia was hospitalized with jaundice but came out in time to sit her Maths. Jake Prys phoned his mother and told her he was taking his Two Gentlemen to Edinburgh, the postmodern, Tiananmen one.

On the last day of June, Giles went to visit Phillip, and put Wimbledon on the radio: ‘There’s a terrific young chap playing,’ he said looking anxiously at his inert premier client. ‘German. Like a ploughman out of Breughel. Listen, off he goes, biff boff baff! Terrific. You should see him. Calves like hyacinths in sport socks.’

And then there wasn’t a lot else to say, really: it wasn’t as if Phil could talk. So Giles said, as everyone said, on their way to the door: ‘You’ll be out soon, old chap. Can’t quite believe it.’

Because there was another thing about 1989, in England. Hospitals had very surprisingly stopped being 17

Kate Clanchy places of recovery, where nourishing meals were served at regular intervals to persons on plump pillows and floors were scrubbed by junior nurses. Hospitals instead had become tense, dirty, over-crowded warehouses where anyone able to breathe independently, let alone sit with assistance and eat from a spoon, was sent home. It had taken ages for this change to occur, people had voted for it, and it was very well documented, but somehow, most people went on believing in the Former Hospital, in the matrons, pillows, and scrubbing, until the moment they actually found themselves genuinely on the pavement with a real, incontinent, elderly relative in a dressing gown, in the actual act of hailing a minicab. Even then, as they often said to anyone who would listen, they simply couldn’t believe it.

‘I simply can’t believe it,’ said Myfanwy to Shirin.

‘I can’t believe that they are going to send him home. In that state. With a nappy.’

‘There is a district nurse,’ said Shirin, ‘twice a day.

For the rest, I can buy private help.’

‘And what,’ asked Myfanwy, ‘is the hourly rate on that?’

But a lot of the time it wasn’t at all bad. For a start, the sleeping thing. How many hundred nights had Phillip spent stalking sleep across the dark moors of the small hours, or tracking it on the flickering dial of his Roberts 18

Meeting the English radio? How many bunches of hops had he shaken at it, how many cups of hot milk had he abjectly offered, shivering in the doorway in his dressing gown and slippers, only to have it shake its flanks and evade him at the last moment? It was a satisfaction, then, to have it curled up so, plumply on his plumped-up pillow. All Phillip needed to do was shut his eyes (he thought he was learning to move one eyelid. No one had noticed) and sleep would cover him with its scented mink, release him into spectacularly liberated, near-hallucinogenic dreams.

Even when he was awake, memories seemed near, and enormous: meringues from his fifth birthday party, warty with burnt sugar; his great-aunt’s fruit cage in supernatural 3D Kodachrome. And they weren’t static, these visions, they weren’t photographs, oh no. They moved, billiard balls on an infinity of baize. You could travel with the croquet ball, smack through the butterflied hoop, chase its textured scarlet roundness through the tunnel of long grass. A lot of the visions had to do with tunnelling, in fact, a side effect, surely, of the black cone which seemed permanently round his eyes (he did wish he could move his head), but a pleasant one. Like being a camera. You could home in on that greenfly on your great-aunt’s raspberry bush, on the very bulbous fruit. Spectacular. Smashing. Everything there but the smells.

19

on-sale 4/14/15 Mixing the eccentricity of the circus world and the heart of a love story, The Thunder of Giants is a warm and engaging debut about two exceptional women -- both almost 8-feet tall.

The year is 1937 and Andorra Kelsey – 7’11 and just over 320 pounds – is on her way to Hollywood to become a star. Hoping to escape both poverty and the ghost of her dead husband, she accepts an offer from the wily Rutherford Simone to star in a movie about the life of Anna Swan, the Nova Scotia giantess who toured the world in the 19th century.

Told in parallel, Anna Swan’s story unfurls. While Andorra is seen as a disgrace by an embarrassed family, Anna Swan is quickly celebrated for her unique size. Drawn to New York, Anna becomes a famed attraction at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum even as she falls in love with Gavin Clarke, a veteran of the Civil War. Quickly disenchanted with a life of fame, Anna struggles to prove to Gavin – and the world - that she is more than the sum of her measurements.

Both meticulously researched and resounding with the force of myth, Joel Fishbane’s The Thunder of Giants blends fact and fiction in a sweeping narrative that spans nearly a hundred years. Against the backdrop of epic events, two extraordinary women become reluctant celebrities in the hopes of surviving a world too small to contain them.

JOEL FISHBANE is a novelist, playwright, sous-chef, actor, trivia host, amateur boxer, occasional clarinet player and general man about town. His various plays, short stories, articles, critiques and literary musings have been published, performed, honored, and otherwise applauded in Canada, the United States and Europe. He lives in Toronto and almost always wears a hat. For more information, visit www.joelfishbane.com.

Prologue

The Real Thing

I

t was R u t h e r for d who discovered her, Rutherford the Thin, Rutherford the Sallow, Rutherford the man whose unhappy face bore the ravages of his life. He was forty-six, had wirerim glasses, and wore his great failures like a scar. Rutherford Simone, who had been too small to fight in the war. Who had lost the film rights to the Dionne quintuplets to Twentieth Century Fox. Who had never given his wife a child. Rutherford the Unfortunate.

He worked for his wife’s brother, a Hollywood producer who had exiled him to the rest of America until he could find the Next Great Thing. He found actors and made screen tests that he jettisoned back to the coast. In church, when he went to church, he prayed that one of these discoveries would be the next Barrymore or Garbo, a prayer that was never realized because Rutherford the Scout had a tremendous eye for opportunity but none for talent.

No man ever forgets a failure, and in the seventh year of the Great Depression this particular man came to Detroit with redemption on his mind. His newest plot was to write a stage play about the Dionne quints and then sell the movie rights to that, a clever strategy that would allow him to circumvent the exhaustive clauses in the children’s contract and wreck vengeance on his enemies at Fox. But he could not cross the Ambassador Bridge right away. Almost broke, he burrowed into a room at the Wolverine Hotel to await his

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 1

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

2

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

Hollywood stipend. By now, this salary was little more than a pension, and he always suffered a terrible agony waiting for it to arrive.

This was his condition when he saw her. Pacing outside Western Union, clenching his butt cheeks to keep the anxious farts at bay, he noticed the grand goliath towering high over the populace.

She’s at least eight feet tall, he thought. If not more!

He decided she was a mirage, produced by the same anxiety that had forced his stomach into knots. But the next day, while plugging the holes in his shoes with a clever combination of newspaper and gum, he saw her again. This time, Rutherford sprang to life. She should have been easy to follow, for her head and shoulders swam above the masses. But she was a glacier on the move, and he had to run to keep up. Eventually she came to rest outside a shop window, where she stooped to examine a display of men’s shoes. At the exact moment he caught up to her, someone in a nearby music shop played a fanfare on an old trombone, and so it was that Rutherford the Desperate managed to make a dramatic entrance. The temperature at that moment was forty-eight degrees yet he was drenched in sweat, his heart wild, his Clark Gable moustache throbbing from the chase.

“Tell me you’re an actress,” he panted.

“I’m definitely not an actress,” she said.

“Then tell me you’ve dreamed of being seen by the world.”

He knew by her face that he was not the first to ask this question.

“I won’t be a sideshow freak,” she said.

“Good. You’re far too unique for a sideshow. But you’re perfect for the movies. How would you like me to take you away from Detroit?”

He leapt around her and tried to block her path. This should have had the effect of a weasel trying to stop an elephant. But she paused

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 2

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

3

in midstep. He could not have known this, but inadvertently Rutherford the Lucky had said exactly what she had been waiting to hear.

She followed him into a small café, where he impressed her by paying for two coffees and a pair of doughnuts laced with powdered sugar. He watched her in wonder. Her size had made her ageless, in the way the subjects of great art are immune to the passage of time. Her accent was exotic—a smattering of Spanish blended with a twang of working-class Detroit. At the table, she fought to eat like a lady. She clearly wanted to devour her doughnut. When had her magnificent stomach last known a full meal?

He asked for her name.

“Andorra. Like the country.”

“There’s a country called Andorra?”

“It’s a principality. It’s where I was born.”

“What’s the difference between a principality and a country?”

She rattled off the answer, which she had clearly given many times before. “A principality is a sovereign state officially ruled by a monarch from somewhere else. Andorra sits on the border between Spain and France. My tata lived there, and my mama walked halfway across Spain to be with him. Andorra was her salvation.”

“I know the feeling.” Rutherford Simone drew a small notebook from his shirt pocket. It was as tattered as the rest of him, but the pages were covered with a neat, almost-feminine script.

“I’m really not a performer,” she said.

“At least let me tell you the idea.”

“I know the idea,” said Andorra. “I’ve spent my whole life listening to the sorts of ideas you people have.”

Rutherford realized she had seen it all before; men just like him had probably been mistaking her for their salvation for years.

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 3

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

4

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

Vaudev ille, burlesque, sideshows, carnival tours: the whole wide world of show business had almost certainly pursued this behemoth her entire life. He imagined the stream of men as a flood, her very existence unleashing every scout, agent, producer, huckster, con artist, and pitchman in the world. He held his breath. What was there to do but hope? Maybe, at the very least, his dramatic entrance would set him above the rest.

“I want you to star in a movie about Anna Swan,” he said.

“Who’s Anna Swan?” asked the Principality of Andorra. Having not even finished the first doughnut, she was already eyeing the second. Rutherford motioned toward it as he opened his notebook.

“Anna Bates, née Swan. Born 1846 in Nova Scotia. Height: somewhere around eight feet—it tends to vary depending on the source.

She was one of P. T. Barnum’s star attractions in the nineteenth century. Married another giant. Traveled across Europe. I think they even dined with royalty.”

“And you want to make a movie about her?”

“It isn’t me. It’s my wife and her brother. They knew her, you see.

Anna was very close with their father.”

Andorra stirred her coffee, rattling the spoon against the side, making the sound into a short tune. Dat. Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. Dat. Rutherford recognized the song: it was the first line in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

“So why haven’t they made their picture yet?” said Andorra. .

“They’ve never had anyone to play the lead. Until now.” He grinned, revealing two broken teeth and one missing one. “They’d bring you down to Hollywood. All expenses paid, of course.”

“It’s impossible,” she said. “I told you I’m not an actress.”

He waved his hand. “You’d be a giant playing a giant. You’re better than an actress; you’re the real thing.”

“I’d have to think about it.”

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 4

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

5

Rutherford did some calculations in his head. He totaled the amount of spare change and crumpled bills in his pocket and subtracted the cost of survival: hotel, food, a telegram to the West Coast.

There was barely enough to last the week.

“Think very fast,” he begged.

S h e stay e d to n u r s e her coffee. Nothing of the doughnuts remained: even the powdered sugar had been licked away. Rutherford Simone had been right about a great many things, including the fact that her eighteen-inch stomach had been empty for years.

The smells around her were the cheap ones of toast and coffee; they were intoxicating, as dangerous to her inhibitions as a snort of cocaine. She had to force herself to escape, hands trembling as she stole the shaker of salt to add to the stockpile at home.

She lumbered back into the street, absently massaging the pain in her lower back. Again she floated across the top of the crowd until she had returned to the shop where Rutherford the Dramatic had made his appearance. He had been right about that too: of all the men who had mistaken her for salvation, none—not even her husband—had ever arrived in such an incredible way. Rutherford had appeared like a hero thrust from a storm.

There was a glare on the shop window, and she had to lean in close to see the thing that had caught her eye. The boots were brown and lined with fur. Too expensive for a casual purchase, too expensive even as a gift. Too expensive for anything, really, except for catching the eye. They couldn’t possibly be the right size, she thought, only to realize that she didn’t remember what the right size was. And why would she? Her husband’s measurements had never been as memorable as her own. She continued to stare and soon became lost in the illusion: in the joy of buying shoes, in the fantasy of bringing them

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 5

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

6

Joel Fishbane

home, in the great yearning dream of sliding them onto her husband’s feet. Her beautiful husband. The husband she had lost. The husband she had killed.

A scream in her back brought her back to the world. Rising to her full, incredible height, the widowed principality made her way to the library so she could read everything she could about the life of Anna Swan.

-1— 0— +1—

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 6

8/7/14 3:34 PM

part one

Bir t h

—-1 —0 —+1

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 7

8/7/14 3:34 PM

one

The Stone That Swallowed a Stone Tatamagouche, 1846

o be g in w i t h , she was born in a log cabin in New Annan, Nova Scotia, on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. The region was once inhabited by the Micmac Nation, but by the day of her birth—August 6, 1846—the area’s name was the only part of the Micmacs to survive. Even this was a corruption. Those Native Canadians had called the region Takeumegooch, a word that means “at the place that lies across.” Unable to pronounce this word, the Scotch settlers revised it so it sat much easier on the tongue: Tatamagouche. This would be Anna Swan’s first encounter with revisionist history; much more would come.

Neither of her parents resembled the sort of people who could spawn a baby twenty-eight inches long. Alexander Swan was an average-sized émigré from Dumfries while his wife was a tiny thing whose largest attributes were the dimples on her knees. Their first child’s single peculiarity had been his complete disinterest in the world, as if he had known he was destined to live less than fifteen months. He died in the crib, and his grave was still soft when Alexander came to his wife in the middle of the night. “The best cure for grief is hope,” he whispered; ten months later, his wife was so swollen with his hope that she found herself restricted to bed.

Ann Swan was so large that Alexander believed they were having twins. Boys, he decided, as if his authority was all it took. Two

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 9

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

10

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

mighty oxen to help with the farm. The theory gained spiritual endorsement from the Reverend Blackwood, the white-haired clergyman who had recently taken residence at the Willow Church.

Educated in both medicine and vanity, it was assumed he would be called to oversee the birth—and until that moment, the arthritic reverend had only overseen the births of men. Anna’s mother did not believe she was having either boys or twins—but no one was listening to her. No one was watching her at all as she lolled in bed: it was expected that she suffer in silence.

“Pregnancy is a blessing,” said Alexander. “To complain is to be ungrateful in the eyes of God.” So even though Ann Swan knew something was very different about her second baby, she kept it to herself. By April she felt she had swallowed a stone; by May she imagined the stone had swallowed a stone. In June she wondered if the baby, like Athena, would spring from her fully grown. In July she became convinced she would never survive the ordeal. She should not have given birth until September, but by the middle of summer she knew she could no longer endure the weight of her husband’s hope. On the sixth day of August, while attempting to make herself porridge, her water broke and ran like a river down her leg. The subsequent cramps were so cruel that she fell against the rough timber walls of the cabin. Clawing at the logs for support, she drew jagged splinters that stuck into her palm. Yet even then she remained silent, gripping the pain between her teeth as a horse chews on a bit.

“I’ll get the Reverend!” said Alexander, and he raced from the cabin. Ann Swan didn’t object. She couldn’t. If she opened her mouth, she was certain to scream. On hands and knees, those hard splinters still in her fist, she crawled to the bed on her own even as she listened to the sounds of Alexander riding away. The cramps whipped her insides into a froth. Her jaw began to ache. Her poor teeth, weak from a bad diet, jiggled in her gums. As she wrapped herself in her quilt, her head knocked against the wall. Barely a tap really, but in

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 10

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

11

her torment it felt like a great crash. She lost her stamina. Having locked away her fury for seven months, three weeks, and five days, she finally released a howl that gave voice to the storm.

She was still screaming when the men returned. It curdled the blood. The Reverend hobbled inside, but Anna’s father remained with the horse. He would stay outside the rest of the night.

The moment he saw the pregnant woman, the Reverend understood he had come to the moment when God would test his skill.

Sprawled on her back, her great belly bubbled. With trembling hands, the Reverend boiled water, sterilized his tools, and poured warm whiskey down the mother’s throat. He tried to pray but suspected God wouldn’t hear him over the screams.

Ann Swan began to push. For a few moments, it seemed they were in crisis: the baby had crowned, but her shoulders were too wide for the narrow opening of the womb. Then the world fell silent as Ann Swan lost her scream.

She lay unconscious while Anna herself sat halfway into the world.

Forceps would be needed to yank the baby free, but the arthritic reverend could barely pick up the tool. With nothing but his bare hands, he grabbed Anna by the head and wrestling with Ann Swan’s stubborn womb until, at last, in a miraculous moment, the stone that had swallowed a stone finally shot free. The force knocked the Reverend onto the ground; he was so prepared for twins that he peered into the empty womb, convinced something vital had been lost.

Ann Swan remained in poor health for days. Afraid she might die, Alexander gave her name to their daughter and steeled himself for the widower’s life. But he had no talent for prophecy: he had been wrong about having twins, and he was wrong about this. Ann Swan was back on her feet by Thanksgiving; by the following fall , she was swollen with another stone. She would have ten more children, but none would ever make her cry with the same fury as her first daughter, eighteen pounds and twenty-eight inches in length. Ann Swan

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 11

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

12

Joel Fishbane

gave birth to the rest of her children in silence; it could be said she never found her scream.

The R ev e r e n d Bl ac k wo od lost his unblemished record of male births, but he gained something of greater worth: the certainty that, in the course of drawing Anna into the world, God had guided his arthritic hands. Or rather his formerly arthritic hands: he swore that his arthritis had completely disappeared. It was this that convinced him of divine involvement, and when he spread the word of the birth, he went so far as to suggest that Anna might someday prove to be a saint.

The mere suggestion of this meant that as the months passed the Swans found themselves under attack. Everyone wanted to see the Future Saint, as she was known, and they bought their way inside with gifts of butter, preserves, and jugs of moonshine. People came to the farm and waylaid the family in the streets. Not one person who lived on the shores of the Northumberland Strait thought it strange to pay a visit to a family they had never met. This was a corner of the world where a barn raising was cause for delight; the appearance of a Future Saint inspired apoplectic joy.

Private by nature, Alexander Swan hated the attention, and at the start of Anna’s fourth summer, he went down to the gates of the farm with some lumber and paint. There, in the swelter of the June sun, he erected a sign whose message was as short as it was blunt: ALL PILGRI M S WILL BE SHOT

-1— 0— +1—

“Not very charitable,” remarked Ann Swan.

“I couldn’t agree more,” said a voice. While Alexander had been erecting his sign, a witness had appeared on a dappled horse. Elab-

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 12

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

13

orately bearded, he was nearly bald everywhere else. “Nope,” he decided. “Not very charitable at all.”

“I’m giving them fair warning,” said Alexander. “You ask me, that’s charity enough.”

“People are traveling a great distance to see her.”

“Only ’cause their heads are muddled. I don’t need them tramping through my house.”

The stranger leaned in closer. “Maybe you need to put her somewhere else. Give her a proper venue so your house can stay in peace.”

Ann Swan examined the man a little more closely. His beard wasn’t the only thing that was elaborate. His clothes, while dusty, were finer than any she had seen. Even the horse seemed to have a regal countenance, as if it were used to carrying kings. “You aren’t from around here,” she declared.

“H. P. Ingalls,” said the man. “I’m from New York.”

Alexander tapped the sign. “You obey signs in New York?”

“Nobody obeys anything in New York.” H. P. Ingalls grinned. “I represent a man who has interest in promoting human curiosities.

Word is, that’s a good way to describe your daughter.” He winked at Ann Swan. “Given that you survived her birth, I’d say it describes you, too.”

Ann Swan laughed.

“Get out of here,” said Alexander.

“There would be money involved, of course.”

Alexander swiped at the New Yorker with his hammer. “Get off my land.”

“You write if you ever change your mind,” said H. P. Ingalls. Two cards appeared as if by magic in his hand. He gave one to Alexander; perhaps knowing it would be destroyed, he slipped the second to Ann Swan.

Alexander indeed tore up the card. The next day, he changed the sign.

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 13

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

14

Joel Fishbane

ALL PILGRI M S AN D N EW YORKERS WILL BE SHOT

-1— 0— +1—

It was entirely true that the Swans were not rich. Alexander farmed in the warm weather and cut timber when it was cold. It was a humble life, and Anna’s appetite—for food, for clothes, for furniture—was growing all the time. Yet Alexander would never take money for something he believed to be a lie. To him, she was a girl, not a miracle. Anna’s mother wasn’t sure she agreed. She was already looking into the future, down the road toward all the days and years to come. Her daughter would always be the inadvertent flagship of an otherwise average armada. She’s a big boat in a small pond, thought Ann. Don’t we have a duty to let her set sail?

It’s possible that Ann Swan would have swallowed these thoughts just as she had swallowed the pain of pregnancy. But that Christmas, during a spirit of celebration, Alexander finally cracked open those jugs of moonshine that had been donated after Anna’s birth. They had turned to rotgut, and a terrible sickness seized him just as the new year began. Burnt by fever, he was suddenly confined to bed.

With him unable to work, the family found themselves spiraling closer to poverty. Now there was no choice; as the March frost clung to the fields, Ann Swan dabbed the sweat from her husband’s fevered brow with the complete understanding that the time had come. She may have lost her scream, but that didn’t mean she had lost her voice.

“I’m taking Annie to Halifax” she declared.

“Absolutely not!” her husband said.

“I’ll bring the Reverend. The pilgrims won’t have to come to us.

We can come to them.”

“I forbid it!” spat Alexander.

“Someone has to do something,” said his wife. “We’re all going to end up sleeping in the rain.”

The next morning, Alexander woke to find himself being nursed

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 14

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

15

by a neighbor; his newest daughter was asleep in the crib. As for Anna, Ann Swan, and the Reverend Blackwood, they had already left.

They traveled across the snowy province wrapped in furs and pulled by a team of industrious dogs. Upon arriving in Halifax, the Reverend presented the Future Saint to the press, but the newspapermen didn’t like the name’s Catholic connection—anti-Catholic sentiment was far too ripe. And so it was that Anna Swan entered the historical record as the Infant Giantess. They said she was ninetyfour pounds; they said she was four feet, seven inches tall. They assumed the Reverend Blackwood was Alexander Swan. They described Anna’s mother as a woman of small size and interesting appearance.

That weekend, Haligonians filled Temperance Hall, a great meeting place near the center of town. While Ann Swan fussed with her daughter, the Reverend stood onstage and embellished the story of Anna’s birth, adding such colorful details as a biblical storm, a broken carriage, and a crippled horse. Here was another one of Anna’s encounters with revisionist history—but this time she, unlike the audience at Halifax, had the benefit of knowing the facts had been rearranged.

“Why isn’t he telling the truth?” asked Anna.

“The truth,” said her mother, “is rarely entertaining.”

When she was at last brought to the stage, Anna clutched for the comfort of her mother’s hand. She was almost as tall as her mother, and a murmur shot through the crowd. Distracted by the true wonder of her size, people barely heard the formerly-arthritic reverend turn the topic toward his own hands and the possible miraculous properties of Anna’s touch. The price of admission, he announced, included an exhibit of Anna’s possessions: the swaddling clothes, the shoes, the crib that had buckled under her tremendous weight. But for an extra fee, they could also receive her healing touch.

A dozen people came forward, including a tiny girl with brittle

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 15

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

16

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

hair. Not yet twenty, she had a shoehorn face that was pinched tight, as if she held back some terrible pain. Anna wondered if she might collapse. But the girl with the brittle hair maintained her poise and paid her fee with the great dignity of one giving alms. She reached out and took Anna’s hand.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” said the brittle girl.

“Hello,” mumbled Anna.

There was an awkward pause as she continued to cling to Anna’s hand, as if hoping to draw as much of the giant’s strength as she could. “Is it working?” asked the girl. “Please: how do I know if it worked?”

She spoke with such earnest that Anna felt a duty to respond.

But while she was smart enough to know she needed to be comforting, she was ill equipped to think of a comforting thing to say. She looked to her mother, who sighed.

“You’ll know soon enough,” said Ann to the brittle girl.

It was as close to the truth as they could come. Ann didn’t know if her daughter had miraculous powers; Anna didn’t know either.

They would know soon enough, too.

The visit was a great success, and they left Halifax with their pockets full of coin. The Reverend offered to invest their share of the money, and Ann Swan agreed, allowing herself to become steeped in the fantasy of wealth.

They returned to Tatamagouche to find themselves faced with a furious storm. Incensed that his will had been defied, Alexander had whipped the people into a frenzy. In a rage, he had told his neighbors the Reverend had stolen his wife and child away. He told them the man was a fraud; he told them that, far from being guided by God, the formerly-arthritic reverend had nearly killed Ann Swan on the night of Anna’s birth.

If not exactly driven from the town, the Reverend found himself quietly pushed in the direction of anywhere else. He was gone by

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 16

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

17

the end of the summer. He left behind all of his sermons; he also took every dollar he had promised to invest on behalf of the Swans.

“Good riddance,” said Alexander. “Nothing but fruit of the poisoned tree.”

“Poison or not, we needed it,” Ann Swan moaned.

That night she conscripted her enormous daughter to help her tear down Alexander’s sign. If pilgrims returned, they would be more than welcome. And if that New Yorker returns, said Ann Swan, he will be welcome, too.

The New Yorker would return, but not for many years. In the meantime the pilgrims, fearing Alexander’s rage, stopped coming.

As life returned to some new brand of normal, Anna’s parents made an unspoken agreement to rewrite the story of her earliest days. It was another encounter with revisionist history; and since no one spoke of her past, Anna came of age remembering events that might have been part of a fevered dream.

—-1 —0 —+1

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 17

8/7/14 3:34 PM

t wo

A Shame Before God Sant Julià de Lòria, 1900

A

-1— 0— +1—

s for And orra, she was born in the afternoon less than two months after her pregnant mother stumbled into the parish of Sant Julià de Lòria, the southernmost settlement of that principality that so neatly divides France and Spain. Newly nineteen, she arrived on foot with her younger sister, a bottle-shaped girl who many mistook for a mule; she arrived bearing all their luggage on her back. This was typical of a girl who had decided that loyalty would be her eternal trait. It had been this loyal girl who had helped her beautiful sister hide her scandalous condition from their family.

Their various ruses had been truly clever, but no farce lasts forever; one morning their grandmother walked into the ornate bathroom just as Andorra’s mother was stepping from the bath. Only recently, a man in America had learned to weld porcelain to iron, and because of this genius, the girl’s olive body was a sharp contrast to the stark white of this imported claw-foot tub. With her grandmother at the door, nothing could save her. Elionor Noguerra did not even have a towel; there was nowhere for her protruding belly to hide.

Elionor made no attempt to hide the name of the father. Until recently, she and her loyal sister had been tutored by an intelligent youth who had been called home to attend to his father’s death.

Everyone had seen the attraction between the tutor and his eldest pupil. No one was surprised when, on the day he left, Elionor flooded

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 18

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

19

her pillow with tears. But now, just weeks later, that protruding belly had proved the tears had not been the sorrow of unrequited love.

Her father was a captain in the Spanish Armada. Obsessed with the new—that claw-foot tub was only one of many wondrous imports from around the world—he was still a man of certain traditions. As she prepared for dinner on the day of her discovery, Elionor trembled at the thought of her father’s wrath. Yet she was determined to endure it; the Captain had taught his daughters the value of sailing through storms. She went down to dinner with her chin held high.

But her father barely met her gaze. Dinner was held in an opulent dining room that boasted several tall windows overlooking the garden. Elionor had barely stepped into the room when her father pointed through the glass to where the dogs tore at their mutton by the base of some mint-colored shrubs.

“You have acted like a dog,” he said. “Now you can eat with them.”

You don’t sail through a storm by turning back at the first crack of thunder, thought Elionor. As calmly as she could, she claimed her usual seat and asked her father to pass the salt.

Captain Noguerra did, but not in the way she would have liked.

He flung salt in her eye and struck her across the face. “It will be a great miracle if I don’t strangle you in your sleep,” he said. “And it wouldn’t be a crime. You are a shame before God.” Elionor looked across the table, where her grandmother was slurping her soup. But the woman’s expression announced she was forever on the Captain’s side. She had exorcised all maternal instinct when it came to her granddaughters, for they both reminded her of their mother, who had abandoned the family shortly after giving birth to Elionor’s loyal sister. The story was that she had fallen in love with a famed aviator who had whisked her away in a hot-air balloon.

“The sins of the father pass to the son for three generations,” her grandmother said. “But the sins of the mother pass on as well.”

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 19

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

20

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

With four months left to her pregnancy, Andorra’s mother was locked inside the house, and everyone knew that if she survived the birth, she would be sent to a convent. Everyone also knew that if the baby survived the birth, it would certainly be drowned. The Captain suffered his little children. But he brooked no bastards.

Fortunately, the young tutor had not disappeared. He had continued to write to Elionor ever since he had returned to his home in the southernmost settlement of that principality that so neatly divides France and Spain. Each letter was poorly disguised as a lesson in literature; in fact, they were lessons on love. As an intellect, he had the poetry of Petrarch and Shakespeare on his side; he could also quote at length from the many novels and plays of Lope de Vega.

Using their words, he wove his heart into dozens of pages, each written in his scrawling script. He sent them to Madrid in the satchels of the smugglers who favored the principality’s roads. Exactly how he had access to these rough men was not something Andorra’s mother would learn for many months; Andorra herself would not learn it for years. At the time, it hardly mattered to Elionor, who found the letters as intoxicating as the wine, tobacco, and opium that had been in the smuggler’s bags.

For safety, the letters were written in code and sent to Manuela Sofia Noguerra, that loyal sister who fooled everyone into thinking the letters came from a female friend. This put the loyal girl at the center of the lover’s affair. It was Manuela who first dreamed of the marriage between Elionor and her tutor. At fifteen, Manuela Noguerra had the incurable optimism of youth and easily believed every pretty word the tutor had ever written.

Elionor was much more realistic. Men are very good at loving women, she said. But only until they have to marry them. “He may not accept me. What if I go all that way only to be exiled again?”

“He’ll marry you.” Manuela assured her. “He’ll give us both a home.”

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 20

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

21

“Men don’t like to be surprised,” said Elionor.

“He won’t be,” said Manuela. “I’ve already told him the two of you are on your way.”

“The two of us!” Elionor Noguerra flew into a rage. “He might not want to be a father! He might already be a father!”

“I wanted to give him time to prepare,” said Manuela.

“All you did was give him time to escape.”

But Elionor reluctantly packed a bag, on the sole condition that Manuela pack one as well. Though four years apart, the two sisters might as well have been Siamese twins. It was Manuela that gave Elionor the courage to leave. If I am exiled, she thought, at least I won’t endure it alone.

Their adventure was cursed from the moment it began. The roads were hardly safe for women, and they were forced to disguise themselves as men, just like the women in so many Shakespearian plays. But where Shakespeare might have given them comical circumstances, God authored much more serious events. Either their disguises were too convincing or not convincing enough; either they came up against thieves or ran the risk of blackmail and rape. Years later, Andorra would wish that she knew more of these adventures, but no one ever spoke of them; it became known in the family as the Most Interesting Story Never Told. What was known was that the women avoided public places, dealt with inclement weather, and were forced to kill their donkey after it became lame. They ate the carcass and continued on foot. They crossed into the Principality of Andorra on a blustery afternoon, completely unaware that during their travels the nineteenth century had ended and a new era had begun.

Their sluggish pace allowed them ample time to study the armies of sheep and the dominating outline of the Pyrenees before, at long last, they staggered into Sant Julià de Lòria. Spread through the trees, the parish was built entirely around sprawling farms of tobacco. There

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 21

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

22

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

was a small square used for festivals, and this was flanked by the church to the north and the general store to the south. The girls stopped at one to thank God for their safety before crossing to the other to obtain directions.

Here the tutor’s lessons came in handy. He had taught them Catalan, a subject in which both had excelled. Elionor Noguerra held her breath as Manuela spoke to the clerk. This was the moment. They would be told the tutor had mysteriously disappeared. They would not even be offered a place to spend the night.

The clerk checked his watch. “You might as well wait. He should be here any moment.”

“You know him?” said Manuela.

“Everyone knows him,” said the clerk. “He’s the richest man in town.”

“How do you know he’s coming by?” asked Manuela.

“He comes every day. He waits for the mail like a Jew waits for the Messiah.”

To Manuela, this proved that her faith in the tutor had not been misplaced. But Andorra’s mother would not be lifted from her dismay. “If he’s the richest man in town, he probably has an army of lovers,” she said. “If he’s the richest man in town, a different woman probably writes him every day.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” said Manuela.

They took a seat on a stone that rested outside the store. Ten minutes later, a dusty and familiar face appeared on the road. The richest man in town did not look like the richest man in town. Unshaven and shabbily dressed, he still looked like a tutor. He even had books under his arm.

He froze when he saw them.

“Now watch,” whispered Elionor. “He’ll turn like the fox and run.”

She held the air tight in her lungs, hoping it might protect her heart. There was no need. A moment later, Geoff rey del Alandra

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 22

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

23

sprang toward her. Manuela beamed with pride, and Elionor exhaled a long breath, perfumed with relief.

The wedding ha ppened with great speed, and though everyone in the parish attended, few knew it for what it really was. The town believed they were celebrating a marriage that had happened months before. This lie had been spread by Geoff rey’s twin sister, the hideously stunted Noria Blanco. The twins’ mother had died giving birth, and in her absence Noria had become the great matriarch of the house. On receiving Manuela’s letter, Geoffrey had warned his sister of Elionor’s approach—and her condition. Noria Blanco had no objections to the way the child had been conceived; like all great matriarchs, she had viewed the matter in purely practical terms.

“A baby is a legacy,” she said. “And all great legacies have to claw their way into the world.”

Noria Blanco immediately began to tell people that Geoffrey had married a girl in Madrid. Forced to abandon her after their father’s death, he had been in agony due to the conviction that he would never see his wife again. This was easily believed, for the richest man in town had kept to himself ever since his return. He had buried his father with great pomp and dutifully taken over the business of running the farms of tobacco. Throwing himself into his work, he had shunned all festivals and had not stepped within spitting distance of an eligible girl. The townspeople had believed him to be mourning his father; now they saw he had been mourning his absent wife, too. The tale made for a heartbreaking scenario. Thanks to Noria Blanco, the richest man in town was now applauded for his loyalty and lauded for his romantic disposition.

The cost of the priest’s silence was five gold coins, a pound of barley, and a case of imported wine. In exchange, he married Andorra’s parents in secret and casually forgot to include the incident in the

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 23

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

24

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

church’s registrar. The next day, the celebration was held. It came as a great relief to the other young lovers of the parish. As was tradition at the time, betrothed couples could only announce their engagement during another marriage feast. Until Elionor’s arrival, there had not been a wedding in Sant Julià de Lòria for several months, a circumstance that had caused more than a dozen romances to stop dead. It was with great joy that the bridal party marched to Geoffrey’s elegant manor, a cathedral of stone built on the crest of a hill. They adorned Andorra’s father with a wreath of Adonis vernalis, otherwise known as pheasant’s-eyes, otherwise known as the official flower of the principality. The flowers were poisonous, and their traditional presence was said to be a bittersweet reminder of all those who could not be there to join in the celebration. With this wreath of poisoned flowers around his neck, Geoff rey del Alandra was hoisted onto a donkey’s back and paraded through the streets.

The march ended at the church, where, in lieu of a religious ceremony, the couple was blessed by the same priest who had quietly taken their bribe the day before. His poker face was exquisite: no one ever suspected that he knew the baby about to burst from Elionor’s belly had been conceived in mortal sin.

The celebrations continued for several weeks. Now that other couples were free to marry, one marriage feast simply bled into the next. The chaos was still being enjoyed when the supreme moment came. Geoffrey was carousing with some of those rough smugglers, whose activities were never questioned and whose acquaintance he had still never explained. As for Elionor, she was at the stove attempting to fix an oversalted stew. Having added more water, she was tasting the concoction when the first great tremor seized her frame. She nearly choked; the tension caused her to snap the wooden ladle in two. As she fell to the floor, she glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after nine o’clock in the morning, forty-seven days into the dawn of the twentieth century.

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 24

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

25

At once, Manuela Noguerra took control. Before leaving Madrid, she had questioned several midwives on the proper procedure in case the stress of the journey caused a premature birth. Now she could finally use the knowledge she had learned. She exiled the men from the room and locked her and her sister away. For the next nine hours, Elionor and Manuela wrestled with a baby who did not want to be born. Andorra was happy in the womb; she resisted birth with every last ounce of strength.

Beyond the bedroom, in the main room of his father’s great stone house, Geoffrey paced by the hearth and took solace in the batches of wine supplied by his smuggler friends. Throughout those nine hours, Noria Blanco threatened to break into the birthing room, and each time Geoffrey held her at bay. “Manuela brought Elionor here,” he said. “She’ll get the baby here, too.” His confidence masked a terrible fear. His mother had died giving birth; so had the many women in his library of books and plays. His body was firm, but his blood secretly trembled, and by the start of the ninth hour, he was convinced Elionor would never make it out of this day alive.

But Captain Noguerra had taught his daughter well—she was still a girl who could sail through a storm. She was still alive when, just after six o’clock, Andorra finally shot free. At just over eight pounds, the baby was large but not extraordinary; there was no reason for anyone to guess what was to come.

Elionor fell into the deepest sleep of her life. Geoffrey, now drained of his fear, opened the doors of his house to yet another raucous celebration. As was custom, it was a purely masculine affair. They arrived with gifts while the women hid in the kitchen and prepared the food. Manuela Noguerra was the happiest she had ever been; Noria Blanco was the happiest she had ever been, too. Both had been in mourning for the lives they had known—Noria’s father was gone, and Manuela knew she would never see any of her family again. Each mourned the death of the comforts of the past. But the best cure for

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 25

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

26

-1— 0— +1—

Joel Fishbane

grief is hope: a baby brings with it unending optimism and great potential. Noria and Manuela would never get along so well again.

Working from the kitchen, the stepsisters merrily doled out ewe’smilk cheese, spiced salami, fresh bread, and bottles from Geoff rey’s secret supply of aguardiente.

By midnight the drunken men had taken to singing songs around the hearth while one of the smugglers strummed a broken guitar.

Everything about the music was out of tune, so no one noticed when a terrible cry filled the house: it was drowned by the cacophony of the men. But the sound woke the infant Andorra. She had slept through the music but could not bear this terrible cry: she knew before anyone that the sound had come from her mother. She released a tragic wail as Elionor clawed her way from the room. Holding her stomach, shrieking as she leaned against the wall for support, she made her way into the other room, where the men continued to roar out their song. Distracted by their celebration, the men didn’t notice her even as she flailed. At last, she did the only thing she could: she crashed into the table of food. Down she went, against the wooden table, cracking the legs and sending plates and goblets into the air. The men turned from the hearth to see Elionor collapsed on the floor, surrounded by salami and cheese in a gown stained brown with piss.

The music stopped. A pestilent stench filled the room. As Geoffrey helped his wife to stand, his great terror returned. There was excrement along her backside; a trail of dark blood leaked down the insides of her thighs.

Elionor remained weak and fevered for several days. Despite assurances that this was a common aftermath of birth, Geoffrey wandered from room to room in a state of horror that he no longer bothered to hide. At last a surgeon arrived from another parish and diagnosed the problem. A gaping hole had developed between the womb and the bowels. He guessed that Elionor’s birth canal must have been too narrow and had been torn open by Andorra’s arrival.

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 26

8/7/14 3:34 PM

Th e Th u n d e r O f G i a n t s

27

The surgeon called the hole a fistula and proclaimed it to be an ancient disease, one that had been sent to afflict women since the dawn of time.

In the hall outside the bedroom, the surgeon reproached them all. “If only I had been here,” he said. “There might have been something I could have done.”

Manuela Noguerra began to cry. “Then it was me. It’s all my fault.”

“Stop that,” said Geoffrey. “What could you have done?”

“She could have summoned a professional,” said the surgeon.

“It took you three days to get here,” snapped Geoffrey del Alandra.

“Were we all supposed to wait?” To the loyal Manuela he said, “This was no one’s fault. No one is to blame.”

“No one but your wife,” said Noria Blanco.

“What does that mean?” said Geoffrey.

“God only punishes those who deserve it.” His sister shrugged.

Already she was looking at Elionor as the people of Troy must have looked when the first soldier emerged from the Trojan horse.

The surgeon announced the fistula would remain with Elionor the rest of her days. Sex was impossible: her genitals began to erode and now leaked without warning. The condition also meant that her breasts were now merely aesthetic; her nipples turned inward, and baby Andorra could not find a way to drink. Her cries of hunger caused the house to tremble. Noria Blanco refused to turn herself into a wet nurse and directed all eyes to the loyal Manuela. Fed a special concoction of herbs, tea, and beer, Manuela was made to force Andorra into her chest, but the baby only wept; this was not her mother’s milk. It was days before the constant suckling finally produced a miraculous flow. The ruined Elionor could only watch from afar. As for the richest man in town, he became a melancholy wreck.

Publicly, Noria Blanco let it be known that Elionor had developed consumption, but the truth was an open secret and Noria began to plot to send Elionor away. Near the edge of the valley, by the banks

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 27

—-1 —0 —+1

8/7/14 3:34 PM

28

Joel Fishbane

of the Valira River, there stood an abandoned hut whose origins were largely unknown. It was Noria’s plan to use this house as Elionor’s refuge. She could survive on a small remittance, away from the eyes of the world.

“Send me away,” said Geoffrey. “The shame is mine/” “Have you thought what Elionor might do to her?” asked Noria.

“I’ve seen it happen. It’s like a madness in women. They start to think it’s all the baby’s fault. Then they do something without meaning to, because, deep inside, their souls want revenge.”

Meanwhile, Noria went to work on Elionor herself.

“One day Andorra will be the age where she remembers you. Do you really want her to remember you like this? Do you really want her to grow up cleaning away your shit and your piss?”

Beaten down by shame, Elionor agreed to the one thing she had feared ever since leaving Madrid: exile. Again, there was no question of Manuela’s staying behind; like all mules, she was hitched to something larger than herself. As soon as Andorra had been weaned, the sisters left the house behind. Each of them wept as they walked.

The richest man in town also cried, but it was a masculine weeping, done only where it could not be seen. As for Andorra, she did not cry at all. Her terrible wails stopped the same day her mother left.

Her only response was to grow: within a month of the exile, she was too large for her crib. Within a year, she was the size of a girl twice her age.

-1— 0— +1—

053-59093_ch01_1P.indd 28

8/7/14 3:34 PM

on-sale 2/24/15 A whip-smart, impeccably crafted debut mystery, A Murder of Magpies takes readers on a whirlwind tour of London and Paris with an unforgettably original new heroine.

It’s just another day at the office for London book editor Samantha “Sam” Clair. Checking jacket copy for howlers, wondering how to break it to her star novelist that her latest effort is utterly unpublishable, lunch scheduled with gossipy author Kit Lowell, whose new book will dish the juicy dirt on a recent fashion industry scandal. Little does she know the trouble Kit’s book will cause—before it even goes to print. When police Inspector Field turns up at the venerable offices of Timmins & Ross, asking questions about a package addressed to Sam, she knows something is wrong. Now Sam’s nine-to-five life is turned upside down as she finds herself propelled into a criminal investigation. Someone doesn’t want Kit’s manuscript published and unless Sam can put the pieces together in time, they’ll do anything to stop it.

With this deliciously funny debut novel, acclaimed author Judith Flanders introduces readers to an enormously enjoyable, too-clever-for-her-own-good new amateur sleuth, as well Sam’s Goth assistant, her effortlessly glamorous mother, and the handsome Inspector Field. A tremendously entertaining read, this page-turning novel from a bright new crime fiction talent is impossible to put down.

JUDITH FLANDERS is an international bestselling author. Her book Inside the Victorian Home was shortlisted for the British Book Awards History Book of the Year. Before turning her hand to writing, Judith worked as an editor for various publishing houses, including Penguin Books, Thames and Hudson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; she also ran the publications department of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Judith is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, TLS and theartsdeask.com. She lives in London.

1

O

h, just kill me now!” I didn’t shriek that out loud, just clenched my teeth more tightly. It was eight thirty, and already the day couldn’t get much worse. I’m always at my desk by eight, not because I’m so wonderful, although I am, but because it’s the only time of day when no one asks me anything, when I can actually get on with some work, instead of solving other people’s problems.

Being a middle-aged, middling-ly successful editor has a downside that no one tells you about when you’re starting off.

Publishing offices are run by middle-aged women like me. We will never be stars, but instead know dull things like how books are put together. We know how to find reliable proofreaders, what was done on that three-for-two promotion in 2010 and why it failed miserably, and even how to sweet-talk a recalcitrant designer into designing our book jackets instead of tweeting clips of his cat being adorable.

And so people ask you questions. They ask you all day. They 1

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 1

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

text in meetings. They grab you in the corridor. They stop you in the street on your way to lunch. I’m only surprised that no one has followed me into the loo. Yet. Luckily, most publishing people are not early risers, and from eight until at least nine thirty, often ten, the place looks like the Mary Celeste, and I get through all those jobs that need complete concentration and yet are completely boring—checking jackets (remember the time some squiffy copywriter thought that The Count of Monte Cristo was The Count of Monte Carlo?) or reading the stuff the marketing department wants to send out (I know they can’t spell. It’s just always a shock to find they can’t cut-and-paste, either). In fact, on a good morning, I should be deeply aggravated by the time my assistant of the week staggers in.

Miranda was the current one, and to be fair to her, she’s lasted three months. Before her was Amanda. Then Melanie. Then— well, lots more Amandas and Melanies. Publishing from the outside is so glamorous they arrive in droves. Then they discover that it’s just office work, and that I don’t spend my days swanning around the Wolseley taking TV presenters for three-hour lunches to discuss their autobiographies. Worse, they discover that I’m glad I’m not swanning around the Wolseley taking TV presenters for etc. etc. So they move on, either to the publicity department (more parties), or to the star editors (more everything).

Miranda is impressive. She has mastered such essential skills as getting the right address on the right mailing of proofs. (I know, but the last Amanda looked at me like I murdered kittens when I suggested she give it a try.) She likes reading, not something 2

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 2

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

that always happens. And, bless her tidy little heart, she’s a neatness freak, and files everything almost before I’ve put it down.

It’s true, she never shows up before ten, and her retro neo-Goth makeup makes some of my authors pause, but it’s a small price to pay for someone who not only knows that M comes before N, but actually does something about it.

She wouldn’t be in for another hour and a half, though, and my jaw was already clenched tight. My dentist tells me that I ought to have one of those contraptions that you wear to bed, to stop you grinding your teeth. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s the daytime that does it for me. Today’s gem was lurking for me first thing, a voice-mail message from Breda, left last night after I went home, saying in a faux cheerful voice that she hoped I liked the new book, and when was she going to hear from me?

Good question. Because I hated the new book. David, the editor-in-chief and my boss, hated the new book. The publicity department was frankly appalled by the new book. None of us, in fact, knew what to do about the new book, which was so embarrassing a hot wave of shame washed over me every time I thought about it, which I did as little as possible.

Breda McManus was one of our star authors, and my starriest author. Regular as clockwork, every other January for the last twelve years, she had delivered a nice fat slab of a manuscript, filled with middle-class girls growing into middle-class women, overcoming middle-class problems on the way. We published them in September, ready for the Christmas market, and they paid my salary, many times over.

They did well because Breda was exactly the kind of women she wrote about. She was a secretary in a solicitor’s office in 3

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 3

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

Galway and decided to write in her spare time. She now lived in a Georgian house with her husband, her children were grown, and she had decided that instead of redecorating the house she was going to redecorate her style. I felt exactly like one of those people on a makeover program where they walk in and have to pretend to adore the fact that the walls have been covered with aluminum foil.

Because Breda delivered a chick-lit novel.

Not only was chick lit well past its sell-by date, so was Breda’s connection to twenty-year-olds. Hell, her children were in their forties. The damn thing was supposedly set in a poly (she hadn’t noticed they were turned into universities decades ago), but it was more like a school story. The characters didn’t quite have crushes on their teachers, and get up to “japes” in “rec,” but it was awfully close.

Lots of readers (including most of my colleagues) despise Breda’s books at the best of times. They love the literary fiction that we publish, and think that my sort of book is beneath contempt.

I love literary fiction, too, but I also love what are called, usually dismissively, “women’s reads.” The fact that our literary fiction list has never paid its way, in the entire twenty-eight years of its life, is something we tactfully never mention. Instead the hip twenty-year-old du jour gets a huge publicity campaign, and once in forty or fifty writers we strike it lucky. In the meantime, Timmins & Ross makes its money every year on women like Breda.

Until now. So instead of reading proofs, checking marketing and publicity copy, and going through the schedules before our weekly progress meeting, I was on my fifth cup of coffee, which

4

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 4

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

was something of a miracle when you consider how tightly my teeth were clenched.

I smelled french fries, but it couldn’t, surely, be ten o’clock already. Then I heard Miranda’s computer hum in the space outside my office where all the assistants are shoved in like battery hens. It was ten o’clock, and Miranda had evidently been out late the night before—the french fries and a Coke are her hangover cure. I collected the minutes for the meeting and headed out, whispering a tiny hello to Miranda, whose eyes were closed against the glare of her computer screen.

I hadn’t gone ten feet when her phone rang, and, wincing, she called after me, “Sam, there’s a Jacob Field in reception for you.”

“Field? For me? Are you sure?” She stared at me. On hangover days she had the energy to say everything only once. I didn’t know anyone named Jacob Field, and I don’t make appointments on Tuesday mornings because we always have a meeting then, from ten o’clock until everyone is too bored to go on—usually lunchtime. “I’ll go past reception—will you call David and tell him I’ll be a few minutes late?” It was probably a friend of a friend, or someone who’d got my name somehow and was trying to flog a manuscript, no doubt about how his mother had abused him, or proving that his great-great-grandfather was Jack the Ripper. We don’t have to deal with real live members of the public often, but every now and again one sneaks under the radar. It wouldn’t take me long to get rid of him.

I walked briskly in to reception, smiling with my teeth bared.

“Mr. Field? How can I help you?”

He was a surprise. No scruffy manuscript, no lost-dog look.

5

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 5

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

Instead he was conservatively dressed, in student-y sort of way, a short, dark, stocky man in his early forties. He looked, in fact, like a publisher. I hesitated. Maybe he was an ex-colleague, and I was supposed to remember him? I looked again. Well-cut brown hair, nice brown eyes. In fact, generally just nice-looking, although it would have been difficult to put a finger on why.

“Inspector Field.”

I was confused. What did he inspect? Drains? Schools? Oh God, not a novel about a schools inspector.

He must have seen that I’d missed a few steps, so he spoke kindly and gently, as one does to the hard-of-thinking. “Inspector Field. CID.” Now I was totally lost.

He went on gamely, although he had realized he was going to get no help from me, as I was too dim-witted to know how to breathe without help. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

He was right. Whatever he wanted, our reception area was no place to talk. “Area” was really a polite fiction. It was a desk stuck in a niche carved out of the corridor, and as most of my colleagues were only now arriving, dozens of people were pushing past us, reaching over us to collect parcels left overnight, calling back and forth to one another.

I motioned him up the stairs, signaling confusion at Bernadette, the receptionist, whose raised eyebrows signaled in return that this was more interesting than usual.

Once back in my office I gestured to a chair and waited. He took his time, looking at the piles of manuscripts, the acres of files, the almost obsessively empty desk surface, and the absence of anything decorative at all: a blank white space.

6

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 6

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

He sighed, as though I’d requested the meeting, and this was the last place he wanted to be. When he finally spoke, his voice was as abrupt as his manner. “Ms. Clair, can you tell me if you were expecting any parcels that have failed to appear?”

I mulled this gently for a moment. “Can I tell you about something that hasn’t happened?” All right, I was being slow on the uptake. “I’m sorry,” I said insincerely, “but could you tell me what we’re talking about? And why?” I tried to find a way out. “I’m in the middle of a very busy morning. I should be in a meeting right now.” His eyes narrowed at my very overt desire to avoid the meeting I was in, with him, and I softened my slightly schoolteacherish tone. “I’m really not sure who you are or why you want to talk to me.”

He shrugged, but now he was apologetic, not dismissive. “I’m investigating a car accident.”

That was no help. “An accident? CID? I don’t know anything about the workings of the police, but it seems, well, an overreaction?”

He nodded. I wasn’t the first person to say that to him today, and his earlier snappish tone was explained: I wouldn’t be the last. I gave him that complicated shrug-hand-roll that says, Sorry your day is crap, but this is really nothing to do with me, now is it?

He seemed to translate it without difficulty. “It’s an unusual hitand-run.” He went on, as if slightly surprised himself that he was telling me this. “There was an accident on the Hammersmith flyover, early yesterday morning. A courier was hit by a van that didn’t stop. It was wet and it looks like a straightforward hit-andrun, except that there were no parcels on his bike, and his list of deliveries for the day had vanished, too. Maybe the material 7

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 7

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

vanished before the accident. Or maybe someone stole it afterward—no one saw it.”

“What does the courier say?”

“He doesn’t. He’s dead.”

I digested this in silence. Then, “How do I come into the picture?”

“The list and deliveries vanished, but his office had a copy of his schedule. You were on it.”

“Who was the parcel from?”

“A mail shop. Without a tracking number or an order reference, they can’t tell us who sent it. They have a few thousand items going through every day.” He clicked his pen. To business.

“I realize this is a nuisance, but we’ll have to ask you to list everything that you are expecting.”

I gave a snort. “Expecting? Lists? Inspector, this is publishing.

Schedules are—” I searched for the word. “They’re what we would like to believe might happen.” I could see he wasn’t following.

“I have, I don’t know, a hundred, a hundred and fifty authors with contracts that I look after. Some are due to deliver now, but in my business ‘now’ means . . .” I tried to think how to explain it. “Have you ever watched when parents call their children in a playground? And the children shout ‘Coming!’ and keep on doing whatever they were doing before?” I widened my eyes and whispered, “Authors in the making!” He smiled, which was an improvement, but I could see he didn’t think I was making a serious point. “Really. Most authors think that if they’ve delivered a manuscript within their lifetime it meets the legal definition of ‘on schedule.’ ” His lips quirked, but what I was saying was also annoying him.

8

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 8

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

He wanted boxes to tick. Don’t we all, Sunshine, I told him. But only in my head. Outwardly I tried to look sympathetic and helpful, not merely curious and simultaneously wanting him to go away so I could get to my meeting. I made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know how to think about this—you’re asking me to tell you what hasn’t happened.”

He jotted something in his notebook. Thank God, one box ticked, at least. “If you think of anything, will you ring me, please?”

He gave me a card, I pointed him in the right direction down the rabbit warren of corridors and headed off to the meeting room.

As I slipped into my seat, murmuring an apology for my lateness, Ben was saying, “This is going to be really mega.”

If anything could have pushed a meeting with a detective out of my mind, it was Ben being mega. I hastily looked down at the minutes, because like Pavlov’s dog, all he had to do was say the word and I was ready. But the dogs only drooled when Pavlov rang his bell. I was worried that one more time and I’d roll up my minutes and assault him with them, all the while shrieking “The word is big, you little toad. Big!” As you may be able to tell, Ben and I already have problems. Ben is twenty-six, and this is his first job. He is small, weedy, and terribly, terribly serious about his work. His. Not anyone else’s. He despises everyone else’s. He has, however, produced our only literary fiction in the last two years that has sold over five thousand copies, so people listen to him. Which is a pity, since he doesn’t really have anything to say.

9

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 9

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

I’ve made an effort with him, truly I have. When he arrived, fresh-faced and eager-beaver-ish, straight down from Oxford, I took him out to lunch. I nearly drowned in my soup as I dozed off while he told me in detail about his life to that point. Even someone as self-absorbed as Ben noticed I was bored, although naturally he didn’t think it was anything to do with him. We didn’t repeat the lunch.

He is a good reader, and he spots trends, but everything for him is mega. Ben has never bought a book because he thought it would be a nice steady seller. His books either fail miserably (often), or they earn enough to be partly worth the ridiculous advances he pays (sometimes). Ben has major-league Big Dick Syndrome—if a book doesn’t cost several times the GDP of many third-world countries, then he doesn’t think it can be worth anything.

“Sam?” I looked fixedly at the minutes, as though still trying to find my place. “Yes, I see your point.” Translation: No, I don’t. “The proposal was quite interesting.” Translation: It was barely three pages long, one entire page of which was about the author. Who was still at school. “But shouldn’t we ask to see a sample chapter?”

Translation: We don’t know if the child can write.

An exasperated sound from Ben. “Look, Sam, there is major interest in this, and we’ve only got this far because his agent likes me.”

Of course the agent likes him. Ben pays top dollar for very little on paper. I’d like him, too, in those circumstances. I don’t know why I bother. We’re going to buy this book, and I’m going to have to be nice to the little shit, and pretend I like his novel 10

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 10

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

whether I do or not. Then it will fail and the next little shit will be along. Like buses. I stared at the wall behind Ben. I couldn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure I could look at the wall much longer, either. It was gray and dingy and peeling. Over the years people had pinned up notices and pulled them down again. Dozens of bits of Sellotape were all that remained, gradually yellowing and growing old. I felt the same. Our offices in general were not particularly attractive, but the meeting room was the worst. It was a small partitioned area of what had once been a bigger room.

The furniture was all 1960s style, and it must have been described as “fun” or “cheerful” in the furniture catalogue, but in reality orange-molded plastic is never a good look. Orangemolded plastic that had half a century of dirt covering it didn’t bear thinking about. I continued to stare at the wall, otherwise I’d have to look at Ben. A phone was nudged to where I could see the screen without moving my head, and a finger tapped at it to get my attention.

Sandra, the publicity director, and one of my closest friends inhouse. I let my eyes float down. Wnkr, said the text. It wasn’t going to change anything, but it made me feel better. I considered.

Probably about half the people around the table—maybe eight or ten—thought the same as I did, either about Ben himself, or this book in particular. Of those, possibly four or five had been paying attention, the others either openly doing e-mails or just reading on their iPads until the meeting got around to a book that directly concerned them. Three others were quietly chatting about a lunch they’d all been to, nothing to do with work, officially. But maybe it was—work in publishing is often indistinguishable from chat, and chat was what we did all day.

11

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 11

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

The two from production, who were there only to deal with schedules, weren’t even doing that—even from my end of the table I could see they were playing a rousing game of hangman.

And I’d lose a few more if I continued to argue, not because anyone disagreed, just because they were desperate for the meeting to end. I let my attention drift. If you can’t beat ’em . . .

“Well,” said David brightly. “If we’re all agreed.”

I woke out of my dream. “Please. We really do need to talk about Breda.” I knew I sounded sad and desperate, but that’s only because I was. We did need to talk about Breda, but there wasn’t anything to say. If we refused this book, she’d go to another publisher; if we published it and it got the reaction it deserved, she would take her next book elsewhere, too, despite the relationship I’d nurtured for over a decade.

Everyone looked embarrassed, and got up to go, as though I hadn’t said anything at all.

So we had to buy this book, and it was up to me to turn it into something that wouldn’t make her a laughingstock. A success would be beyond me, but maybe I could engineer a quiet, genteel sort of failure.

Miranda had turned up my heater before I came back, which meant she was beginning to recover. Timmins & Ross is in four Georgian houses, which have been knocked together into one highly confusing interior in a turning just off Great Russell Street, behind the British Museum. They are lovely houses from the outside, but the inside has not seen much work done to them in the last century. They do have plumbing, it’s true, but they don’t have 12

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 12

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

central heating, and the beautiful sash windows let in gales even in the summer. In winter it’s often warmer outside.

My office is a partitioned bit of what must have once been a drawing room, because it has a huge window, which is great unless you care about your extremities. If I keep an electric fan heater on full blast from eight, which officially we’re not allowed to do, by noon I can usually manage with just one sweater.

Before I’d even sat down, Miranda’s head was around the door.

“So what was that all about?”

“What was what all about?” She’s smart, but she can’t possibly have known I’d fantasized about assaulting Ben with the acquisition meeting minutes.

She thought I was stonewalling, and wasn’t going to have it.

“The police?” she nudged.

My eyes popped wide. “Good lord, I’d forgotten.” I gestured her in. I outlined the conversation and asked her to check delivery dates for both new manuscripts, even though most came electronically, and proofs, which didn’t. She nodded, but her mind wasn’t on it. “A hit-and-run? Really?”

“That’s what I said. But maybe that’s the way the police work.

God knows, he didn’t believe me when I told him how publishing worked.”

I shrugged and turned to my desk. And then swore comprehensively when I saw my e-mail was down. Already on her way back to her desk, Miranda called through the wall that it was the entire company, so it should be fixed relatively quickly. Meanwhile my voice mail was stuffed, in only an hour. Breda. Breda’s agent. Marketing, asking why I hadn’t approved copy they’d sent down a whole ten minutes earlier. Two copy editors who weren’t 13

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 13

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

going to make their deadlines. A proofreader touting for work.

My mother. And Kit, three times.

Kit Lovell is one of my favorite authors. He is a fashion journalist, he is efficient, he is professional, he meets his deadlines, and he is the best gossip on the planet. I don’t usually do his sort of book—quick-and-dirty low-downs on the rich and famous— but he came to me through a friend, and he’s been a constant delight. But it was unlike him to keep calling. If he had got some really hot gossip, he’d leave a message and then I wouldn’t be able reach him because he would be busy calling the immediate world while it was still fresh. Maybe that’s why we’d become friends so quickly—like publishers, Kit lived off chatter.

I had his latest manuscript, which his typist e-mailed to me two weeks earlier—Kit was above such mundanities as computers—and I’d already told him how much I loved it, so it couldn’t be that. Whatever it was, he took precedence over my mother, and he absolutely took precedence over Breda that week.

I put the phone on automatic redial, hoping his gossip wasn’t so hot that it took him the whole morning to work through his contacts list.

In the meantime, I had to start preparing his book. It didn’t need much editing from me—Kit’s work never did—but like all of his books it would have to go to a libel lawyer before we sent it out for copyediting. It was not that Kit was reckless, it was just a by-product of the kind of books he wrote. Most people in business have things that they don’t want the world to know, even if they’ve never so much as crossed the road against the lights.

People in the fashion business, which is built entirely on appear-

14

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 14

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

ances, really don’t want the world to know how they got to where they were. What Kit supplies is the true story, which as he says sweepingly, “everyone” knows. But the “everyone” of the fashion business, and the “everyone” who reads a Sunday newspaper, where Kit’s books usually get serialized, are not the same thing, and his subjects often objected. Strenuously. With lawyers.

The three rules of checking for libel are short and sweet. Is the reported incident true? Can we prove it? Then the most important one: Can the subject afford to sue, whether it’s true or not? With fashion houses owned by multinationals, the answer to the questions were yes, yes, and yes. So far as I could see, taking a dispassionate look at it, our troubles with this book began on the title page. Kit had called his biography The Gilded Life and Tarnished Death of Rodrigo Alemán. Alemán was Spain’s most prominent (only?) international star on the fashion scene. He had been brought in to put the ailing French couture house of Vernet back on its feet after Jules Vernet’s retirement. And he did, although in a way that probably hastened Vernet’s death—hip-hop and trance at the shows, ads featuring semi-naked models in softcore pornographic poses. He’d created a diffusion range, with lower-priced clothes than the standard prêt-à-porter, and then began opening boutiques across the world to sell them in.

Most of this was no different from any other fashion house, but everything Alemán did was brasher, brighter, bolder—and bigger. There were questions about how the gigantic warehouses he called boutiques managed to survive, given that most days you could shoot a cannon off in any one of them without risking harm to a paying customer. His lavish parties always got into the glossy

15

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 15

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

magazines, but the actress-model-whatevers all borrowed his dresses, they didn’t buy them. And short of hookers, who couldn’t afford them, it wasn’t clear to anyone who would want to.

All fashion stories are stories of money and excess. And money and fame. And money. And, in this case, violent death.

I tried Kit one last time. Still busy. Instead of gossiping I took the manuscript along the hall to David’s office. David Snaith is our editor-in-chief, so he has an office that isn’t a partitioned bit, but is what must have once been a morning room: a good-sized, east-facing room. Nothing could look less like a social environment than its present incarnation, however. David has kept every single piece of paper that has ever crossed his desk, and most of them are not filed, but thrown into trays, to be dealt with at some mystical “later” time. When the tray is filled, and starts to overflow, he just slings it onto a shelf where it molders gently for the next few years, with additional trays thrown on top as they fill up in turn. When they all fall over David nudges them back into a heap with his foot as he walks past, but that’s the only attention they ever get. The books and spilled papers lie in heaps, and you have to walk through the snowdrifts of memos. If you stick to the little cleared pathways, and the one empty chair, you’re fine. If more than one person comes in for a meeting, they are given a spare chair by David’s assistant. It is much easier to carry one in than to try and excavate the ones that are already there, buried.

I tried not to get depressed when I sat down. David and I are temperamentally opposed, and it is hard for us to communicate.

He has been at Timmins & Ross for nearly thirty years, ever since he left university, working his way up to editor-in-chief, which 16

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 16

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

he had achieved about a decade before. He is going to stay here for the rest of his life, and they will have to carry him out feet first, probably in the same bin liners the old papers are taken away in.

I shook myself. These kind of thoughts were not helpful in getting him onside. David is so cautious, anything out of the ordinary has to be approached full-frontally, otherwise he will duck and run, pretending it isn’t there.

“It’s about Kit’s book,” I said baldly. “We are going to have to give this more than our usual once-over.”

“Is it so bad?” David already looked hunted.

“It’s not bad. In fact, it’s terrific. It’s just that all the fun stuff, the stuff everyone will want to read—and the stuff newspapers will pay big money for—is exactly what everyone concerned wants to keep hidden.”

“But surely no one denies Alemán was murdered? Isn’t that why we bought the book?”

“No one denies it. Except his family. Vernet. Oh, and the police. Apart from them, everyone, as you say, knows it was murder.”

“Do they think it was an accident? How is that possible?”

“It isn’t. They don’t. They just want it to be one. And they think if they say so loud enough, and often enough, gradually we’ll forget what really did happen.”

“So what did really happen? I’m not much for fashion news. I read the proposal, but that was last year. I can’t remember them all.”

I tried not to look impatient. “David, this was all over the front pages for weeks. Cut down to the basics, Alemán was coming 17

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 17

12/16/14 7:26 AM

J U DI T H F L A N D E R S

home from a club in a Paris suburb at five o’clock one morning when a car screeched out of a turning, drove up onto the pavement, hit him hard enough that his body flew over the top and bounced off the windscreen, at which point the driver backed up and ran over it again. Apparently a belt-and-braces type of killer.”

“There were witnesses?”

“Five. And two were bodyguards, so they were sober. But somehow their first statements vanished, and once the Vernet lawyers got there, they saw, I believe, a little old lady who was confused about which was the brake pedal and which the accelerator. Although she was clever enough to drive a car with fake license plates, and then vanish.”

“How can anyone believe that?”

“No one does. But as far as Vernet and Alemán’s family is concerned, that was the inquest verdict, and the papers are too scared of being sued to print anything else.”

“Why aren’t we too scared, then?” David was looking at me like a puppy that’s just made a mess in the house, but hopes that if he looks cute enough, it could be overlooked. David wasn’t cute enough.

“Kit has done some extraordinary research: early police reports, witness statements that were suppressed, witnesses who were mysteriously never contacted by the police.”

“Bottom line, what’s he saying?”

“Organized crime. It’s not phrased that way, naturally. He says there is a dodgy bank and companies laundering money through Vernet. Not that anyone at Vernet knew about it. Maybe Alemán didn’t, either. Or didn’t want to. But it’s what kept the company 18

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 18

12/16/14 7:26 AM

A M U R D E R O F M AG P I E S

afloat. That’s how the boutiques survived without customers.

Everyone knew. Only no one did.”

“Does Kit have enough for us to publish safely?”

“More than enough. Names, dates, copies of invoices for goods never supplied—never even manufactured—with corresponding bank statements for cash received. Lots of cash received. Millions every month.”

“How did Kit get it all?”

“I haven’t asked and I don’t intend to. He assures me he has broken no laws, and I believe him. Everything else is for him and the lawyers to sort out.”

David looked pained. “Is there something about you that just magnetically attracts trouble?”

I bristled. “This isn’t trouble. It just needs a legal read.”

If I could go back now and erase the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my whole life, it would be those two sentences.

19

053-59108_ch01_4P.indd 19

12/16/14 7:26 AM

on-sale 2/24/15 Criminal defense attorney R.K. Glinski’s debut novel The Friendship of Criminals, a crime thriller in the vein of The Departed and The Town, explores the various criminal factions of Philadelphia when a new head of the Italian mob threatens Port Richmond’s long entrenched Polish crime boss Anton Bielakowski.

Former criminal defense attorney Robert Glinski’s The Friendship of Criminals explodes off the page with the crackling intensity of Scorsese’s The Departed. When a new head of the Italian mob threatens Port Richmond’s long entrenched Polish crime boss Anton Bielakowski the various criminal factions of Philadelphia don’t know who to trust and the promise of war simmers in the underworld. With the help of the FBI monitoring Anton’s every move, it’s all just a question of who’s going to go to jail first... or die. This is a sensational debut that cannot be missed by a rare talent with promise.

R.K. GLINSKI is a former Philadelphia criminal defense attorney who now writes strategy papers for hedge funds and asset management firms. The Friendship of Criminals is his first novel.

1.

CORRAL A HUNDRED LITTLE KIDS and announce Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy do not exist. Not dead, not gone. Just not real.

Of the hundred, fifteen never believed. They’re above the fray, like birds watching a car crash from some distant tree. Three dozen go Code Red, their bodies overwhelmed by the desire to fight, run, or both. Twenty obsess over missed clues. Another twenty-five reject the new reality.

They cry.

The remaining four are the cynics. Their zombie eyes hold fast as the conspiracy confirms what they’ve suspected all along—lies trump truth when people want to believe. Bow-tied rabbits hiding chocolate? Fairies trading cash for human teeth? What a bunch of suckers, ripe for the picking and deserving, too. A cold-blooded takeaway, sure, but it’s how these future grifters and televangelists filter the world.

Now take these same one hundred kids and gift them a gun. Pistol, rifle, or shotgun—doesn’t matter as long as it’s designed to stop a human heart. Unlike in the Santa/Bunny/Fairy experiment, the shorties cluster.

Is that a real gun? Yeah, I’ll hold it. No crossroads here.

Little Bernie Jaracz of Port Richmond wasn’t any different. Since watching a teenager hypnotize a pubescent cabal with a chrome revolver, he’d wanted a gun. Not to hurt a rival or pursue revenge—he wasn’t that

2

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

kind of kid. Holding a piece just seemed natural, like jumping puddles or peeing in the grass. Gun. Hand. Gun. Hand. A pairing meant to be. Look, right there, a special grip for my fingers. Awesome.

The boy’s wish came true in his grandfather’s basement a few weeks shy of his seventh birthday. Without introduction or warning, Big Bern Jaracz withdrew a .38 caliber pistol from his workbench and handed it over. Given the similarity in personalities, the old man would have been surprised if the kid flinched. He didn’t. Just something in the blood, Big Bern figured. Stiff as a glass rod.

Left eye squinting, Little Bernie aimed at a spiderweb pulled taut between the overhead joists. Half a dozen hammer falls against an empty chamber had him clearing imaginary barrel smoke and asking if they could go outside. “I want to shoot bullets. Like, for real.”

His grandfather shook off the query and snatched the gun, restocking it behind a small wall of coffee cans filled with washers, bolts, and nails.

The spot hid another six handguns of various specialties. Two were part of his personal collection; the rest circulated based on market demand.

“Stay out of there,” warned the old man, his fist shoulder high. “Your future doesn’t happen today. We’re in for the long play.”

“What?”

“Steer wide of my workbench, boy.”

Retired with a city pension, Big Bern Jaracz spent the summer of ’97 babysitting Little Bernie because the kid’s dad violated probation and his mom was back at the wire factory. “Family takes care of family. He’s with me.” Truth was, there wasn’t anyone else.

So each morning since school let out, Little Bernie washed his face, kissed his mom good-bye, ran past a dozen stoops, and burst through his grandfather’s front door without ringing the bell. Never occurred to him why the door was unlocked. Security in the boy’s home was a different matter. His mom slapped his cheek if he forgot the dead bolt. After suffering his third red face in as many weeks, he argued Big Bern left his door open, so what’s the big deal?

“Because,” she said, “no one’s stupid enough to wander in with that bear.”

THE FRIENDSHIP OF CRIMINALS

|

3

When Little Bernie pushed the point, she balanced the coloring in his face. Welcome to Port Richmond.

Inside his grandfather’s house, the two bachelors had a routine. The kid made buttered toast while the old man read The Philadelphia Inquirer and sipped Sanka. After two cups, Big Bern cleared the dishes, glanced at the phone as though he needed a reminder of its location, and told his grandson they should go downstairs. Time to work.

In the basement—surrounded by the heavy-handed tools of a previous generation—Little Bernie watched Big Bern do his magic. On any given morning, his grandfather might fix a wristwatch dropped off by a neighbor, a shorted-out hair dryer, or a fan with a frayed electrical cord.

After puttering a few hours, they returned upstairs for bologna and pickles on Wonder Bread. The meat wasn’t the pink loaf the rest of America ate. Big Bern sneered at that mess, calling it dyed baby shit. He purchased handmade bologna from the neighborhood sausage maker, one pound a week since before Kennedy was elected.

Little Bernie made the sandwiches while his partner tuned the radio and boiled water for instant coffee. After each plate was topped with chips, they sat at a wooden table pressed against the back wall, listening to local news or a Phillies ball game. An oil painting of God floating atop gravy-brown clouds looked down in approval. Conversation might brush against a starting pitcher or the next day’s project, though more often they settled into the easy quiet reserved for old men and small boys.

During Little Bernie’s last week of summer vacation, a historic August heat wave dominated news radio. With the East Coast sitting on a hot plate, broadcasts flip-flopped between weather forecasts and strategies for keeping cool. The routine lasted until Friday, when news broke of an explosion in South Philadelphia. A breathless reporter said a bomb had detonated beneath a man’s front stoop, covering the street in brick and body parts. Several names were listed in quick order—too fast for Little Bernie to make sense of who did what—but Anticcio was repeated most often. The boy liked how the name’s first part was a bug. Made him wonder if the man was teased as a kid. He’d have teased him, that’s for sure.

Anticcio the Ant.

4

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

Event coverage lasted long enough for him to finish his sandwich and eyeball his grandfather’s untouched plate. Repeating the highlights a third time, the reporter promised updates as police released additional information. Little Bernie wasn’t swallowing the hook. He didn’t need to know any more about the blasted-to-bits insect guy on the other side of town.

The old man had a different take. As the newscast signed off, he rotated his chin toward the wall-mounted phone. A stranger might have interpreted the behavior as a prediction, like he was expecting a call.

Anyone familiar with Jaracz knew better. It was a show of will.

When the phone rang, Big Bern pounced before the caller could change his mind.

Staring at his grandfather’s back, Little Bernie strained to hear a few hushed words in Polish and a closing grunt.

Hanging the phone up, Big Bern crossed the room in three steps, the subfloor flexing beneath his boots. “Listen now,” he said, a hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “There’s work to do. A job that will push us.”

The boy raised his eyes. His grandfather’s head seemed to threaten the plaster ceiling.

“I’ve been given a few hours. What you see today—what we do—you must never speak of. Not to me, not to anyone. But never forget. Over your life, much will change. Remember the old ways. That’s how we’ve survived, how you’ll survive when I’m gone.” He motioned to the radio.

“The bombs in their own neighborhood, with children looking on, that’s the new way. Don’t yield to that.”

The boy’s stomach churned. He licked his lips.

“You and me are doing good. We’re protecting our family, our friends— shielding what we love.”

The boy was fine until the last word. Hearing love rattled him. He couldn’t recall his grandfather saying it before. Not one time. Emotional markers like hate, love, sad, and happy weren’t compatible with the old man’s vocabulary.

Big Bern turned for the sink. “We need to wash our hands before leaving. Use extra soap, scrub hard with the brush, and drink up. We must

THE FRIENDSHIP OF CRIMINALS

|

5

be careful of the heat. Can’t let it distract us.” He downed two glasses of water, picked up his car keys plus a second ring, and told the boy to hurry.

With the car radio tuned to news, Big Bern navigated the tight Port Richmond one-ways until they were driving north on I-95, away from the city. Despite the August heat, he kept the air off, thinking maybe he could prep the boy. Working a lifetime outdoors had conditioned him for extreme temperatures, but he worried his grandson would struggle with what was waiting. Not because he was soft. Just not enough time to cure. Yet. Twenty miles up the interstate, a mile off the exit, they stopped at a dated storage facility wrapped in chain link and razor wire. To one side was a boarded-up adult video store, to the other a stucco warehouse with a four-foot bluebird painted near the front entrance. Dead trees backdropped the buildings.

Big Bern parked a few spaces from the office and nodded to the halfstoned attendant seated behind bulletproof glass. The man stiffened before returning the courtesy. Wasn’t often the Polack visited, and any less was fine. Among men with poisonous looks, the one-eyed giant would have been a leader.

Bern kicked the storage door before unlocking it to scatter any mice, pulled it up hard, and waved for the boy to join him. Inside—with the door closed and Third World heat pressing down—he pointed out five black footlockers marked with the same slash of white chalk. Another dozen of different colors and markings were stacked against the wall. Big Bern ordered the black ones dragged beneath the overhead light. Using a second set of keys, he unlocked and flipped the lids in quick succession, telling his grandson to keep his mouth shut and pay attention. No time to baby-step. Be a man.

For the next hour, kneeling side by side with sweat raining off their heads, they unpacked, prepped, and loaded twenty-five pump-action Remington 12-gauge shotguns.

Setting the last firearm aside, Big Bern sent the boy to reopen the door while he reviewed the order and scanned the room. Did they have everything they needed? Think, think, think. He cursed his age and what

6

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

it’d done to his confidence, even wondering if it was God’s way of retiring him.

The building’s front side was now shaded from the afternoon sun, and a slight breeze danced the skinnier weeds. Stretching his arms and shoulders, Big Bern said to stay clear so he could back the car in tight. Six minutes later the shotguns were loaded in the trunk and tucked beneath a heavy wool blanket. Big Bern’s last to-do was circling the car, looking for any telltale indicators that might catch a trained eye. “The suspension is holding fine. That’s why I bought this car. Stiff Detroit steel,” he said, proving his point by pushing on the rear quarter-panel. “Low-riders make the highway cops suspicious.”

Exiting the fenced lot, every stitch of clothing soaked through, Little Bernie still couldn’t connect the dots. He had no clue where the guns came from, why they were fetching twenty-five, or who was receiving so much firepower. Truth was, that kind of question-and-answer didn’t much factor in his moment. All Little Bernie cared about—same as most boys— was holding the guns and impressing the man-in-charge. Did he seize the opportunity and step up in weight class? Be a man. By his appraisal, he’d succeeded.

Big Bern agreed, giving him his due before noticing smudges of gun oil on his own hands. How could I forget cleanup towels? Most important day in a decade and I forget towels? The details, he chided himself, pay attention to the details. Don’t trip up on the easy stuff. The kid needed an example, not some lesson in seat-of-your-pants planning. With the violence coming, and the number of men they’d face, strength wasn’t enough. To win, accountability was demanded from each component. Be a man.

“I’m taking you home,” he said, minding his speed on 95. “I can handle the rest alone. People are preparing to push us. And now we’ll be ready to push back. It’s the old way.”

2.

“THIS IS JU NIOR DAVIS.” One syllable was enough for Sonny to know. The investigator’s voice— choked off with a vocal tourniquet effect he claimed came from training amateur boxers—was a dead giveaway. Thing was, Sonny had met the man’s people, and they all sounded the same. “Hold on, let me get organized.”

“Call back. I don’t mind. Wife’s at choir.”

“No. Stay on the line.” Sonny had been rereading a postcard in his building’s lobby when Junior called. The postcard’s front side was a typical Florida beach scene—honeys in neon string bikinis strolling the white sands. The back side was handwriting small enough to pack four lies into three inches. Dad, still making my meetings. Thirty-six days and counting . . . all different this time . . . God bless sobriety! Love, Michael.

Pushing through the high-rise’s front door, Sonny spit gum onto the postcard, folded it in half, and tossed the mess into the trash. Wish you luck, son, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sonny’s destination was a shaded bench beneath a palm tree. A pinkiesized lizard posed strong before scrambling over the back support. “Okay, buddy, I’m alone. What’d you find?”

8

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

“Before I get started, they got Anticcio. Didn’t know if you’d heard.”

Sonny’s mileage with the man warranted a grimace. “I was rooting for him. Old age must have shortened his arms.”

Junior’s two cents was Anticcio got arrogant, an analysis supported by fifty years of watching Philadelphia hoods murder each other. “Rea taking shots at his car on the Schuylkill showed he was serious. I said at the time, Anticcio can’t play this too cute. The kid is going for it. Ask Cheeky, he heard me. Judge bangs the gavel on Monte’s twenty-year turn and boom, put two in Rea’s head that afternoon. Just like that. Don’t let the wiseass start hearing the cheers. Hindsight, now.”

Other than the personal loss, the change in South Philly leadership didn’t mean much for Sonny’s business interests. Since buying the sailboat and moving to Florida, he’d unwound, sold off, or walked away from most of his Northeast positions. The same couldn’t be said of Bielakowski.

“What about our thing?” asked Sonny. “Any progress?”

“I mailed a report. Invoice included.”

“Call to soften the blow? Nice of you.”

“Long shot all the way. We talked about this.”

Sitting alone didn’t stop Sonny from raising a dramatic hand. “There’s got to be some part of a story.”

“You want to wait for the report?”

“Baseline it.”

“Records are thin, lost, or locked up. Doesn’t help the orphanage burned before microfiche and computers. You think you left around 1940, so access is needed from ’25 through ’42. For those years, your name has no real file. We know you were there, can’t tell why.”

“Christ sake.”

“Not saying it’s not boxed up in City Hall, just couldn’t shake it loose.

Sure, you popped up on public registries and a census, but those are simple lists. Nothing attached to explain where you came from, parents, ethnic background, any of that. No names, dates, or details.”

“A dead end.”

Junior wasn’t surprised by the lack of a question mark. Sonny’s style never entailed getting dragged into the know, even after hearing he was

THE FRIENDSHIP OF CRIMINALS

|

9

all trunk, no roots. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Not uncommon, with the wars and the way they viewed young girls getting knocked up. A family with a little money, they’d stash a sixteen-year-old until the baby arrived, then do a drop-and-dash at a crosstown orphanage. Plenty of babies weren’t even born in hospitals.”

Sonny stayed silent. There was no percentage in old news. Looking back for a payoff was a fool’s errand.

“As I said, the full report will arrive in a couple days.” Junior had a protocol for handling these conversations. Give the information. Pause.

Give a little more. Pause. Remind them about the report, suggesting it might provide some measure of closure. Never did, though. Old demons weren’t spooked like park pigeons. “Some other stuff in there, too, kind of interesting.”

Sonny had also asked Junior to follow up on his memory of an older orphanage boy. No pictures or specifics, just a lingering, hopeful sense of brotherhood. Maybe this older boy cared for him. Maybe he didn’t. Sonny couldn’t quite pin it down, futile as netting cigarette smoke. Either way, Sonny’s only basis was his biased recollection and the drunk, passiveaggressive ramblings of the orphanage’s custodian. I ain’t supposed to say nothin’ but I heard a boy that used to be here—your brother, they say—got himself killed last week. You know anything about that? No? Oh, that’s sad all the way around— him dying and leaving you alone. First night the custodian teased him with the story, Sonny ran away, lasting a week before a beat cop scooped him up. He’d go on to set the orphanage record, freeing himself fourteen times before they gave up looking.

“Nothing certain there either,” said Junior Davis, “except I did find another kid with the same last name at the same orphanage. Pretty strong coincidence.” He was careful what he allowed to seep into his voice.

Before flunking out of the police academy, his instructor had schooled him on being clinical. “First name was Benjamin. Ring a bell?”

Sonny repeated the name, first out loud and then to himself. He had to admit, nothing.

“Long time ago,” said Junior. “Anyway, for two years he was included on the same lists and registries. Twelve years older—as you thought. And

10

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

passed away like the custodian said. Found the death certificate. Pulmonary failure was the official cause. Truth, the boy got shot.”

Sonny grunted, his mind rotating the possibility of an actual brother at the orphanage.

Junior didn’t want his client drifting too far. “Listen, I wasn’t going to tell you. Didn’t include it on the invoice, but I found his cemetery. This Benjamin fellow, I mean. Went out there thinking you’d like a picture of the headstone.”

“There’s a marker?”

“No. That’s what I’m saying. No grave site. Whole thing resited for a commercial development. They said the original spot was like a pauper’s cemetery. The new location—after they moved everybody—didn’t have any individual markings. More like general signage.”

“Shit.”

“I know, man.”

“So I might have had a brother but they planted and replanted him like a bush?”

“Sums it up. How much all that matters is your choice.”

And that was the point, thought Sonny. He’d hired the investigator to confirm the gaps, not rewrite two-thirds of his biography. “All questions don’t have an answer. Want has nothing to do with it.”

Even when appropriate, Junior Davis didn’t apologize for disappointing results. He’d learned his lesson. In a day or two—as clients replayed their conversation—they’d twist his compassion into incompetence.

Blame the messenger. All the more reason to keep it clinical. “You reaching out to Bielakowski on this Anticcio deal? Rea’s going to be a handful.”

Sonny didn’t resist the heavy-handed change of subject. He was ready to march. “Anymore he knows better. Would just be ego to suggest a strategy.”

Old-timers like Junior couldn’t accept that Sonny and Anton Bielakowski were no longer lockstep partners. A half century of anything was hard to shake, but Sonny moving south pared their business dealings to a once-a-year sit-down. No bad blood, just time, distance, and age playing their parts.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF CRIMINALS

|

11

Sonny’s cell phone buzzed with a second call. “You got anything else?”

“It’s all in the report. Ring me with questions. Oh, and I’ve got a fighter you should check out. Kid’s got a chance. Throws a liver punch like you’ve never seen.”

“Anton bankrolling him?”

“No. Wanted to ask you first.”

“Next time I’m up, I’ll take a look. Always had a soft spot for body punchers. Gotta run. I’ll wire the payment. Say hello to the wife.”

Clicking over, Sonny heard an unfamiliar voice. “Mr. Bonhardt? This is Debbie Shenkman from Shenkman’s Funeral Home in Fort Lauderdale.

Do you have a moment?”

Funding three cremations in six months had moved Sonny up the local parlor call sheet. As his South Florida circle aged, he’d become the go-to financier for any pals dying without money and prepaid arrangements. While people wondered about the reasons, Sonny saw it as simple decency—he hated anyone going out on a losing streak. “Ironic timing, Ms. Shenkman.”

Like airline pilots during in-flight updates, the funeral director spoke with a slow, syrupy drawl and a touch of hush. “I’m calling on behalf of the estate of Mr. Charles Duebel.”

“Who?” “Perhaps that name is unfamiliar. I believe his friends—and I apologize if this sounds insensitive—called him Duebber.”

Sonny loved the move. The fat bastard—already owing him three grand—was getting the last laugh. “Natural causes?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m asking what killed him. Bullet or cancer?”

“I’m sure you understand, I’m uncomfortable disclosing those types of details.”

“You will if you expect me to foot the bill.”

“A stroke is what took Mr. Duebel’s last breath. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Smoked unfiltered cigarettes and ate at gas stations for as long as I knew him. He’s probably taking up half your back room.”

12

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

The funeral director paused a moment, unsure what was expected. “It’s true that Mr. Duebel is a large man. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you. We have lovely alternatives for the heavyset.”

“Listen,” said Sonny, “this is Duebber’s idea of a joke, so let’s not get carried away. Bill me for the cremation, and I’ll get his kids’ addresses for the urn. Even if they don’t want to pony up, maybe they can spread his ashes somewhere nice.”

“Yes, a cremation,” said Shenkman, with an angel’s kiss of condescension. “Certainly it’s an option. But many individuals believe a casket and headstone are necessary to memorialize a loved one.”

“Tap the brakes.”

She steadied herself for the upsell. A slow month had Dad pounding the table for more revenue, to hell with limited supply. “A headstone provides a sense of permanence, eroding just one inch every ten thousand years. Each person—no matter their status—deserves a respectable physical testament to their earthly existence.”

Sonny’s mind flipped back to what Junior Davis had said about his dream brother. Dead, buried, moved, and gone. Family pets deposited in the backyard got more pomp and circumstance. “Ms. Shenkman, let me ask you a question. What do they call those large tombs with steps and columns?”

“The industry term is private family mausoleum,” she said, her tone betraying a sliver of enthusiasm. “Yes, very distinguished. A noble and lasting way to be remembered. We’d, of course, have to coordinate with the cemetery. Lauderdale Memorial Park has plots with wonderful views.”

“Those are granite, like the headstones?”

“Yes. Sometimes we do see marble, though it doesn’t wear like granite.

And while bronze has its admirers, the green patina can be a turnoff.”

Sun splicing through the overhead palm fronds heated Sonny’s legs in thin strips. He shifted over a few inches to keep pace with the shade. The lizard poked its head out, anxious to reclaim the prime real estate. “Once the vault’s in place, can it be moved somewhere I don’t want? Taken somewhere else?”

THE FRIENDSHIP OF CRIMINALS

|

13

“Oh, no,” she said, straightening her back. Chasing money was Debbie Shenkman’s least favorite part of the job. Fancying herself the new generation of parlor management, she preferred collaborating. The keynote speaker at last year’s industry conference called it Partnering with the Bereaved. “I assume we’re talking about you, rather than Mr. Deubel?”

“Yeah,” answered Sonny. “Duebber gets the cremation-and-urn special.

The mausoleum is for me.”

“Then to answer your question, we at Shenkman’s Funeral Home believe a mausoleum is a moral and contractual obligation. For purposes of this conversation, a private family mausoleum is permanent.”

“What happens if I don’t die first?” Sonny was thinking of his son.

Personalities like Michael’s didn’t have the usual life expectancy. The boy would be lucky to see fifty candles on a cake.

“It’s for the family, so yes, others can be interred first. The name—your last name—is above the door, and appropriate markers are mounted to recognize others.”

“And cost—a premium lot plus the best granite mausoleum to fit six.

What’s that run?”

“Instead of talking numbers, let’s set an appointment and—” “I don’t want a date. Give me the number.”

“Four hundred thousand.”

Sonny didn’t know if the number was high or low. Didn’t really care.

“Four hundred thousand for a place that can’t be bulldozed for a strip mall?”

“Yes, Mr. Bonhardt. I guarantee it.”

That was enough for Sonny. “Send the invoice for Duebber. For the four hundred thousand, is a ten percent cash discount a problem?”

“No. Certainly not.”

Sonny’s mind was already pressing forward on acquiring the proceeds, an addiction of pursuit that defined his life. “Pull together a couple designs, and I’ll call you back in six months to sign the paperwork and drop off payment.”

Sonny had a gift for earning. Over a lifetime, he’d made millions—maybe

14

|

ROBERT GLINSKI

a hundred or more. He also had a counterbalancing gift for blowing it, never saving a damn dime. Every year, to keep the wolves at bay, he needed a minimum of six hundred grand. This year, the bar was even higher. He’d sell his ideas for the majority, plus an extra side con. Hell, maybe just swing for the fences. Get motivated and go big. Time to get working, he thought. Permanence isn’t for the poor.

on-sale 2/10/15 Three generations of women Secrets in the present and from the past A captivating tale of life, loss, and love...

Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy-including the identity of the baby’s father- hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible. Her mother, Grace, finds it impossible to let this secret rest. The more Grace prods, the tighter Neva holds to her story, and the more the lifelong differences between private, quiet Neva and open, gregarious Grace strain their relationship. For Floss, Neva’s grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva’s situation thrusts her back sixty years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter’s-one which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all. As Neva’s pregnancy progresses and speculation makes it harder and harder to conceal the truth, Floss wonders if hiding her own truth is ultimately more harmful than telling it. Will these women reveal their secrets and deal with the inevitable consequences? Or are some secrets best kept hidden?

“With empathy and keen insight, Sally Hepworth delivers a page-turning novel about the complex, lovely, and even heartbreaking relationships between mothers and daughters.”

- Emily Giffin

SALLY HEPWORTH lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two children. She is currently working on her next novel.

1

Neva

I suppose you could say I was born to be a midwife. Three generations of women in my family had devoted their lives to bringing babies into the world; the work was in my blood. But my path wasn’t as obvious as that. I wasn’t my mother—a basket-weaving hippie who rejoiced in the magic of new, precious life. I wasn’t my grandmother—wise, nononsense, with a strong belief in the power of natural birth. I didn’t even particularly like babies. No, for me, the decision to become a midwife had nothing to do with babies. And everything to do with mothers.

On the queen-sized bed, Eleanor’s body curved itself into a perfect C. I crept up farther between her legs and pressed my palm against her baby’s head. Labor had been fast and furious and I wasn’t taking any chances. Eleanor’s babies liked to catch us off guard. I’d almost dropped her first son, Arthur, when he decided to make a sudden entrance as Eleanor rocked over a birthing ball. She barely had time to gasp before

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 1

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

2

he began to crown and we all had to rush into position. Her second son, Felix, was born in the birthing pool, five minutes after I’d sent Susan, my birth assistant, on break. This time, I was going to be ready.

“You’re nearly there.” I pushed a sweaty strand of hair off Eleanor’s temple. “Your baby will be born with the next contraction.”

Eleanor squeezed her husband’s hand. As usual, Frank had been silent, reverent even. Dads varied enormously on their level of involvement. Some adopted the poses of their wives and girlfriends, panting and pushing along with them; others became so fixated on whatever small task they had been assigned—be it working the iPod or keeping the cup of ice chips full—they nearly missed the birth entirely. I had a soft spot for the reverent ones. They knew they were in the presence of something special.

The baby’s head turned to the right and Eleanor began to moan.

The room fired with energy. “Okay,” I said. “You ready?”

Eleanor dropped her chin to her chest. Susan stood at my side as I eased the shoulders out—first one, then the other—until only the baby’s legs remained inside. “Would you like to reach down and pull your baby out, Eleanor?”

Eleanor’s sons had come too quickly to do this, but I was glad she’d get the chance now. Of all the ways a baby could be delivered, this was my favorite. It seemed only right that after all the work a mother did during labor, her hands should bring her baby into the world.

A ghost of a smile appeared on Eleanor’s face. “Really?”

“Really,” I said. “We’re ready when you are.”

I nodded at Susan, who stood ready to catch the baby if it fell. But it wouldn’t. In the ten years I’d been delivering babies, I’d never seen a child slip from its mother’s grip. I watched as Eleanor pulled the black-

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 2

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

3

haired baby from her body and lay it against her heart—pink, slippery, and perfect. The cry was good and strong. Music to a midwife’s ears.

“Ah, how about that?” I said. “It’s a girl.”

Eleanor cried and laughed at once. “A girl. It’s a girl, Frank.”

She was a good size. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Eleanor cradled her baby, still attached via cord, with the perfect balance of tenderness and protection. Frank stood beside them, awe lining his features. I’d seen that look before, but it never got old. His wife had just become more amazing. More miraculous.

Susan beckoned Frank for cord cutting and began giving instructions. Seeing Frank’s expression, I couldn’t help but laugh. Susan had lived in Rhode Island since her nineteenth birthday, but forty years later, her thick Scottish accent meant she was largely incomprehensible to the American ear. On the upside, this made her the ideal person to share confidences with; even if she did disclose your secret, no one would understand. On the downside, I spent a lot of time translating.

“Just cut between the clamps,” I theater-whispered. Susan turned away, but her gray, tight-bound curls bounced on her head, so I was fairly sure she was chuckling.

Once the placenta had been delivered and the baby had breast-fed, I tended to Eleanor, settled the baby, and debriefed with the night nurse. When everything was done, I stood at the door. The room was calm and peaceful. The baby was on Eleanor’s bare chest getting some skin-on-skin time. Frank was beside them, already asleep. I smiled. The scene before me was the reason I’d become a midwife and, in my opinion, the real magic of childbirth. No matter how arduous the labor, no matter how complete the mother’s exhaustion, the men always fell asleep first.

“I’ll see you all tomorrow,” I said, even though I wanted to stay.

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 3

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

4

Eleanor waved at me, and Frank continued to snore. I peeled off my gloves and was barely into the corridor when fingers clamped around my elbow and I started to fall. I thrust out a hand to catch myself, but instead of hitting the ground, I remained suspended in midair.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

Across the hall two young midwives giggled. I blinked up at Patrick, who held me in a theatrical dip. “Very cute. Let me up.”

Patrick, our consulting pediatrician from St. Mary’s Hospital upstairs, was forever coming down to our birthing center, getting the nurses all excited with his ridiculous gestures. But I didn’t bother being flattered. Yes, he was young and charming—and good-looking in a disheveled, just-rolled-out-of-bed kind of way—but I knew for a fact that he dropped the word “gorgeous” with more regularity than I used the word “contraction.”

“Your wish, my command.” In a heartbeat I was back on two feet.

“I’m glad I ran into you, actually,” he said. “I have a joke.”

“Go on.”

“How many midwives does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Patrick didn’t wait for an answer. “Six. One to screw in the lightbulb and five to stop the ob-gyn from interfering.” He grinned. “Good one, right?”

I couldn’t help a smile. “Not bad.”

I started walking and he fell into step beside me. “Oh . . . Sean and I are heading to The Hip for a drink tonight,” he said. “You in?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Hot date.”

Patrick stopped walking and stared at me. That’s how unlikely it was that I would have a date.

“I’m kidding, obviously. I’m going to Conanicut Island to have dinner with Gran and Grace.”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 4

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

5

“Oh.” His face returned to normal. “I take it you’re not getting along any better with your mom, then?”

“Why do you ‘take’ that?”

“You still call her Grace.”

“It is her name,” I said.

I’d started calling her Grace when I was fourteen—the day I delivered my first baby. It had seemed strange, unprofessional, to call her Mom. Saying Grace felt so natural, I’d stuck with it.

“You sure you can’t come for one drink? You haven’t come for a drink for months.” He adopted a pouty expression. “We’re too boring for you, aren’t we?”

I pushed through the door to the break room. “Something like that.”

“Next time, then?” he called after me. “Promise?”

“Promise,” I called back. “As long as you promise to learn some better jokes.”

I was confident it was a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep.

I arrived in Conanicut Island at ten to eight. Gran’s house, a shinglestyle beach cottage, was perched on a grassy hill that rolled down to a rocky beach. She lived on the southern tip of the island, accessible only by one road across a thin strip of land from Jamestown. When I was little, my parents and I used to rent a shack like Gran’s every summer, and spend a few weeks in bare feet—swimming at Mackerel Cove, flying kites, hiking in Beavertail State Park. Gran was the first to go on “permanent vacation” there. Grace and Dad followed a few years ago and now lived within walking distance. Grace had made a big deal about “leaving me” in Providence, but I was fine with it. Apart from

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 5

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

6

the obvious fact that it meant Grace would be a little farther away from me and my business, I also quite liked the idea of having an excuse to visit Conanicut Island. Something happened to me when I drove over the Jamestown Verrazzano Bridge. I became a little floppier. A little more relaxed.

I stepped out of the car and scurried up the grassy path. I let myself in through the back door and was immediately hit by the scent of lemon and garlic.

Grace and Gran sat at the table in the wood-paneled dining room, heads bobbing with polite conversation. They didn’t even look up when I entered, which showed how deaf they were both getting. I wasn’t exactly light on my feet lately.

“I made it.”

They swiveled, then beamed in unison. Grace, in particular, lit up.

Or maybe it was her orange lipstick and psychedelic dress that gave the effect. Something green—a bean, maybe?—was lodged between her front teeth, and the wind had done a number on her hair. Her bangs hung low over her eyes, reminding me of a fluffy red sheepdog.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said.

“Babies don’t care if you have dinner plans, Neva,” Gran said. A smile still pressed into her unvarnished face. “No one knows that better than us.”

I kissed them both, then dropped into the end chair. Half a chicken remained, as well as a few potatoes and carrots and a dish of green beans. A pitcher of ice water sat in the center with a little mint floating in it, probably from Gran’s garden. Gran reached for the serving spoons and began loading up my plate. “Lil hiding?”

Lil, Gran’s painfully shy partner of nearly eight years, was always

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 6

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

7

curiously absent for our monthly dinners. When Gran had announced their relationship and, as such, her orientation, Grace was thrilled.

She’d yearned her whole life for a family scandal to prove how perfectly tolerant she was. Still, I had a bad feeling her avid displays of broadmindedness (one time she referred to Gran and Lil as her “two mommies”) were the reason Lil made herself scarce when we were around.

Gran sighed. “You know Lil.” “Mom’s not the only one who can bring a partner along, Neva,” Grace said. “If you’d like to bring a guy alo—” “Good idea.” I stabbed some chicken with my fork. “I’ll bring Dad next time.”

Grace scowled, but one of my favorite things about her was that her attention span was short. “Anyway, birthday girl. How does it feel?

The last year of your twenties?”

I speared a potato. “I don’t know.” How did I feel? “I guess I’m—” “I’ll tell you how I feel,” Grace said. “Old. Feels like yesterday I was in labor with you.” Grace’s voice was soft, wistful. “Remember looking down at her for the first time, Mom? All that red hair and porcelain skin. We thought you’d be an actress or a model for sure.”

I swallowed my mouthful with a little difficulty. “You’re not happy I followed you into midwifery, Grace?”

“Happy? Why, I’m only the proudest mom in world! Of course, I still wish you’d come and work with me, doing home births. No doctors hovering about with their forceps, no sick people ready to cough all over the precious new babies—” “There are no doctors or sick people at the birthing center, Grace.”

“Delivering in the comfort of one’s own home, it’s just . . .”

Magical.

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 7

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

8

“Magical,” she said, with a smile. “Oh! I nearly forgot.” She reached for her purse and plucked out a flat, hand-wrapped gift. “This is from your father and me.”

“Wow . . . You shouldn’t have.”

“Nonsense. It’s your birthday.”

Gran and I exchanged a look. Of course Grace had ignored the no-gifts directive—the one thing I’d wanted for my birthday. I hated gifts: the embarrassment of receiving them, the awkwardness of opening them in public, and, if it was from Grace, the pressure of ensuring my face was adequately arranged to demonstrate sheer delight, a wonder that I’d ever been able to get through life before this particular ornament or treasure.

“Go on.” She pressed her hands together and wriggled her fingers.

“Open it.”

An image of my thirteenth birthday flashed into my mind—the first time since elementary school that I had agreed to a party. Maybe the fact that I was in the middle of my second-ever period and was cramping, bleeding, and wearing a surfboard-sized maxi pad in my underwear skewed my judgment. Grace wasn’t happy when I insisted we keep it small (just four girls from school) and she was positively brokenhearted when I refused party games of any sort, but she didn’t push her luck. With hindsight, that should have been my first clue. My friends and I had just gotten settled in the front room when Grace burst in.

“Can I have your attention, please?” she said. “As you know, today is Neva’s thirteenth birthday. We are celebrating her becoming a teenager.”

She looked like a children’s stage performer, smiling so brightly that I thought her face might crack into three clean pieces. I willed her to vanish in a cloud of smoke, taking with her the previous thirty sec-

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 8

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

9

onds and the crimson crushed-velvet dress she had changed into. But any notion that this might happen faded along with my friends’ smiles.

“My baby is no longer a baby. Her body is changing and growing.

She’s experiencing the awakening of a vital force that brings woman the ability to create life. You may not know this, but the traditional name for first menstruation is ‘menarche.’ ” Panic broke out; a swarm of moths over my heart. I no longer wanted Grace to disappear and take the last thirty seconds—I wanted her to take my future. To take Monday, when I would have to go to school and face the fact that I was a social outcast, now and forever. To take the coming few weeks, when I would have to go about my life, pretending I didn’t hear the whispers and snickers.

“In some cultures,” she continued, oblivious, “menarche inspires song, dance, and celebration. In Morocco, girls receive clothes, money, and gifts. Japanese families celebrate a daughter’s menarche by eating red rice and beans. In some parts of India, girls are given a ceremony and are dressed in the finest clothes and jewelry the family can buy. I know for you young ones it can seem embarrassing or, heaven forbid, dirty. But it’s not. It is one of the most sacred things in the world, and not to be hidden away, but celebrated. So, in honor of Neva’s menarche, and probably some of yours too—” She smiled encouragingly at my friends. “—I thought it might be fun to do like the Apache Indians here in North America, and—” She paused for effect. “—dance. I’ve learned a chant and we can—” I can’t believe I let it go on for as long as I did. “Mom.” Grace’s smile remained in place as she met my eye. “What is it, darling?”

“Just . . . stop.”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 9

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

10

I barely breathed the words, but I know she heard them, because her smile fell like a kite from the sky on a windless day. A steely barrier formed around my heart. Yes, she’d gone to a lot of trouble, but she’d also left me no choice. “Dad!” Our house was small; I knew he would hear me. And when he appeared, his frantic expression confirmed he’d heard the urgency in my voice. He surveyed the room. The horrified faces of my friends. The abundance of red everywhere— Grace’s dress, the balloons, the new cushions, which amazingly, I had only just noticed. He clasped Grace’s shoulders and guided her out, despite her determined protest and genuine puzzlement.

But now, as Grace hovered over me, I didn’t have Dad to help me.

I turned the gift over and began to open it tentatively, starting with the tape at one end.

“It’s not a puzzle, darling. You’re not meant to unpeel every little bit of tape, you’re meant to do this!”

Grace lunged at the gift with such vigor, she rammed the table with her hip. Ice cubes tinkled. The water pitcher did a precarious dance, teetering back and forth before deciding to go down. Glass cracked; water gushed. A burst of mint filled the air. I shot to my feet as the water drenched me from the chest down.

Usually after a commotion such as this, it is loud. People assigned blame, gave instructions, located brooms and towels. This time it was eerily quiet. Gran and Grace stared at the mound that was impossible to hide under my now-clinging shirt. And for maybe the first time in her life, my mother couldn’t seem to find any words.

“Yes,” I said. I cupped my belly, protecting it from what I knew was about to be let loose. “I’m pregnant.”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 10

12/16/14 6:03 AM

2

Grace

“You can’t be pregnant,” I said. But as I reached out to touch Neva’s round wet belly, I could see that she was. And reasonably far along.

Her navel was flush with the rest of her stomach. Her breasts were full, and I was certain if I looked under her hospital top, I’d find them covered in bluish purple veins. “How . . . far along?

A touch of pink appeared in Neva’s cheeks. “Thirty weeks.”

“Thirty—” I pressed my eyelids together, then opened them again, as if doing so would render the news less shocking. “Thirty weeks?”

It wasn’t possible. Her face was fresh and clear of spots and she didn’t appear to be retaining water. Her wrists were tiny. She didn’t have any additional chins. In fact, apart from the now-obvious bump, I couldn’t see a single sign of pregnancy, let alone a third-trimester pregnancy. The whole thing was very hard to believe. “But . . . your polycystic ovaries!”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 11

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

12

“Doesn’t mean I can’t get pregnant,” Neva said. “Just that it’s a little less likely.”

I knew that, of course, but it was too much to comprehend. My daughter was pregnant. I was a midwife. How was it possible that I hadn’t known?

A steady stream of ice water dripped off the table’s edge, landing at Neva’s feet. The way she stared at it, you’d think she’d never seen water before. “Your table’s going to stain, Gran,” she said slowly. “Have you got any paper towels?”

I stared at Neva. “Paper towels?”

“I’ll get the paper towels,” Mom said. “Grace, take Neva into the front room. I’ll make tea.”

I followed Neva to the front room, observing her closely. Her waddle now was so apparent, I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. As she lowered herself onto the sofa I noticed she looked pale. Her skin was translucent— so fair. I could practically see the blood moving about underneath.

When she was little, that skin had been a liability. In the summers, I’d had to keep every inch of her covered up, which was against my instincts to let her run naked and free. But to see her now, so perfectly alabaster, without so much as a freckle—it was worth it. She ran a hand through her auburn ponytail, which was thick and glossy and another pointer to her pregnancy I hadn’t noticed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to tell you earlier, it’s just taken me some time to get used to the idea. I haven’t told anyone apart from Susan, and that’s only because she’s doing my prenatal care.”

I nodded as though it were perfectly reasonable to hide a pregnancy for thirty weeks. Though, in some ways, it was classic Neva. Once, when she was in elementary school, I was greeted at the school gates by

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 12

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

13

her teacher, asking why we hadn’t attended the school’s performance of Goldilocks. It turned out Neva had been cast as one of the three bears.

When I asked her why she didn’t say anything, Neva had simply said, “I was going to.”

“So . . . I’m sure you have questions,” Neva said. “Fire away.”

My mind began spewing out possibilities. Why hadn’t she told us earlier? Had she had proper prenatal care? Would she consider a home birth? Was I the last to know? But one question was more pressing than the rest, and I had to ask it first.

“Who’s the father?”

Something in Neva’s face captured my attention. It was as though she had closed up. It was strange. It wasn’t a difficult question. And she had asked what I wanted to know. She hesitated, then looked at her lap. “There is no father.”

I blinked. “You mean . . . you don’t know who the father is?”

“No,” Neva said carefully. “I mean . . . I’ll be raising this baby alone. For all intents and purposes, there’s no father. Just me.”

A tray clattered against the coffee table and I glanced at Mom. If she’d heard, she wasn’t giving it away.

“I know this is a shock,” Neva said. “It was a shock to me too. Especially given that—” “—the baby has no father?” I didn’t mean to sound judgmental, but I think I did. I couldn’t help it. It was an even more unsatisfactory answer than her not knowing who the father was. How could the baby not have a father? Unless . . . “You mean a sperm donor?”

“No,” she said. “Not a sperm donor. Though you can think of him that way if you like. Because he’s not going to be involved.”

“But—”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 13

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

14

“Well, this is big news,” Mom said, pouring the tea. “How do you feel about it, dear?”

A touch of color returned to Neva’s face. “I guess . . . excited. A little sad I’ll be doing it on my own.”

“But you won’t be on your own, dear,” Mom said. She handed me a cup of tea.

“Of course you won’t,” I echoed. “The father might want to be involved, once you tell him. Stranger things have happened. And if he doesn’t, good riddance! Your father and I will do anything we can to support you.”

“Thanks, Grace. But like I said—” I banged my cup onto the table, spilling a little into the saucer.

“Neva. You don’t have to be cryptic, darling. Honestly, I don’t care who the father is. This is my grandchild. This baby will know nothing but love, even if its father isn’t part of its life. But at least tell us who he is.”

Neva’s jaw clamped shut. She met my eye, almost defiantly. And I knew the subject had been closed. Despite my shock and frustration, a pleasant surge of adrenaline rushed through me. It started in the sternum, then spread pleasantly through my center, like ice cream into hot pudding. Neva didn’t do things like this. She never got into any trouble, not interesting trouble. She’d always been so bookish that I’d actually looked forward to her teenage years, when I was sure she’d come into her own and make her mark on the world. But her teenage years had come and gone and her twenties were worse. She’d studied hard, then loyally followed Mom and me into our profession, where she’d quickly eclipsed us both in skill and success. Now, at twenty-nine, Neva was rebelling. And despite my desperation to know the parentage of my grandchild-to-be, I was excited.

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 14

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

15

“I’m tired,” she said. “Can we talk more tomorrow?” Neva stood with some difficulty and peeled the damp shirt away from her skin. Immediately, it stuck again. “Dinner was great. I’ll call you both tomorrow.”

“Wait!” I sprang to my feet. I didn’t know what I’d say, but I knew I couldn’t let her leave. “Aren’t you . . . going to open your present?”

She paused in the archway leading to the hall. “Oh. Uh . . . yes.

Sorry.”

I darted past her into the dining room and returned with the box, which I thrust at Neva. “You open it this time.” I held my hands up and away from the gift. “No interference from me. Promise.”

Cautiously she opened the box and tipped it up. The silver frame slid into her waiting hand.

The photo was an old one, taken when pictures were smaller and browner and rounder at the edges. Mom sat in her wicker garden chair on the piazza, her salt-and-pepper hair collected in a coil at her nape. In the foreground, I knelt with a four- or five-year old Neva in front of me.

The hem of my skirt was pulled up and I was hiding behind it, while Neva—serious even as a child—gave her Gran an exasperated look. I’d stumbled over the picture in an album, and even though Neva said no presents, I thought she might make an exception.

A smile inched its way onto Neva’s face. “Who took this?” she asked, staring at the picture.

“Probably your father. Do you like it?”

I watched her closely. Her eyes, I noticed, were dry but filled with emotion. Perhaps for once I’d gotten it right with my daughter?

“I love it, Grace,” she said, looking up. “And I’m sorry. I know this is a shock. I just need some time. Is that okay?”

What could I say? If she meant accepting that her baby didn’t have

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 15

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

16

a father, then, no, it wasn’t okay. I’d never heard anything less okay in my whole life.

“Of course, darling,” I heard myself saying. “Whatever you need.”

I was pleased to see the bedroom light on when I turned into the driveway. I knew I’d never sleep if I couldn’t debrief the night’s events. I locked the front door behind me, slipped out of my shoes, and hurried to the bedroom. Just as I turned the door knob, the night-light went out.

“Honey?” I scurried into the dark room and turned on the lamp.

“Wake up. You won’t believe what has happened.”

Robert made a noise that sounded like “hmmm” but his eyes remained closed.

I jostled him. “Rob. I need to talk to you.”

He muttered something, which sounded like “talk in the morning,” and rolled over.

“Neva’s pregnant,” I said finally.

There was a pause, then he rolled back, opened his eyes.

“Six months along,” I continued. “Mom and I only found out because she spilled water down the front of her blouse and there was no hiding it.”

I waited for Robert to snap to attention and beg for more information. Or at least display some overt signs of surprise. But in true Robert style, his movements were slow. Measured. Once, I had loved this about him. Now it made me want to punch him in the face.

“Who’s the father?” he asked.

“There isn’t one, she says.”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 16

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

17

Despite my frustration, it gave me a certain satisfaction saying that.

And even more when Robert sat up and reached for his glasses from the side table. Now I had his attention.

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know what it means. But that’s what Neva says. That there’s no father.”

“As in, the virgin birth?”

“Who knows? Whatever it is, she’s not talking. And the more I pressed her—” “The more she clammed up, yes.” He sighed and thought. “Well, there’s no point in speculating. I’ll call her in the morning to get to the bottom of it.” He took off his glasses and returned them to the table.

“Why don’t you go to sleep, love?”

He shut off the light, leaving me in darkness. I resented his insinuation that one phone call from him would get all the answers we needed, even though a small part of me believed it was true. Neva often confided in her father, possibly just to irritate me. But whatever the reason, I hoped she did tell Robert. I needed to know who the father of that baby was. And the sooner, the better.

With nothing left to do, I stood, slipping out of my clothes and underwear. I was too pumped up to sleep. And experience told me that only one thing helped with pent-up energy at this time of night. I peeled back the covers and slipped into my husband’s side of the bed.

His skin was rough and warm and I shimmied against it.

“Grace,” he protested, but I silenced him with a kiss and rolled him onto his back.

“Just lie back.”

I followed the trail of salt-and-pepper hair south. He’d had a shower

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 17

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

18

before bed, I could smell—and taste—the soap on his skin. It made me want him more. I needed intimacy. Needed someone to want me. It would be a tall order from my sleepy husband, but I had my ways of convincing him. I’d gotten as far as his navel when his hands curled over my shoulders.

“I have to work in the morning, Grace. And honestly, after the news you’ve given me, I’m a little distracted.” He tugged me upward and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?

It’s a full moon tonight—someone is bound to go into labor. You’ll want to have had some rest before you get the call.”

His voice was controlled, completely uninfluenced by desire. The tone of a master to its dog. No more catch tonight, Fido. These dismissals had been happening more often lately. A sudden headache, an immediate steadying of his breathing when I came to bed. But this rejection was the most overt. How many times had I sat around at book club, listening to my friends complain that all their husbands thought about was sex, sex, sex? And, if they did submit, it was for three minutes of missionary, no foreplay, no fellatio. I was ready to give my husband the whole shebang and . . . was I that repulsive? Once, Robert had found me irresistible. We’d prided ourselves on being part of a couple who maintained their “spark.” What had happened to us?

I lay in his arms for as long as I could, probably no more than a minute, and then whispered, “I think I’ll get some water.”

Robert didn’t protest, nor did I expect him to. By the time I had slipped into my dressing gown he was snoring. In the kitchen, the reeds lashed against the house so loudly it sounded like the wind might lift our cottage right off the ground and toss it into Mackerel Cove. I sat in the blue chair with my sketchbook on my lap and face-planted into it.

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 18

12/16/14 6:03 AM

The Secrets of Midwives

19

What was going on with Neva? When it was all boiled down, there were only two possibilities: Neva didn’t know who the father was, or she didn’t want me to know. Whichever it was, there wasn’t going to be a father in the picture for this baby. It was something my grandchild and I would have in common.

A tractor rolled onto my father while my mother was pregnant. I’d always thought that was a tragic, freak thing to happen, but Mom was pretty matter-of-fact about it. “It was the country,” she’d say. “Stuff like that happened.” Mom had done a good job of picking up the slack my father left behind—an exemplary job—but I always knew something was missing. I saw other children being carried by their fathers long after their mothers had lost the strength. Girls giving perfunctory, embarrassed pecks to their fathers’ cheeks at the school gates. Kids asking for—and receiving—wads of notes from their father’s wallets, together with a promise not to tell your mother. Endearments like “princess” and “honey.” Gestures and generosities somehow more special from a father than from a mother.

When I was eight I spent a week with my friend Phyllis at her grandmother’s summer home. On the Saturday night, Phyllis’s dad was instructed by her mother to “wear us out.” He bustled us onto the huge green lawn and asked us to line up. From the way Phyllis’s sister and brother started to giggle, they’d clearly played this game before. I couldn’t see a ball or a Frisbee, so when he said “Go!” I remained where I was, even after the others scampered off in different directions. A split second later, I was flying.

“Gotcha!” Phyllis’s dad said, tossing me high into the air. His voice was animated. “That was too easy. What am I going to do with her, kids?”

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 19

12/16/14 6:03 AM

Sally Hepworth

20

Phyllis shouted out from the tree branch on which she sat with her sister. “Tickle her, Dad.” She laughed hysterically. “You have to tickle her.”

“Death by tickling, eh?” He pinned me to the grass and observed me with mock seriousness. “I’m not sure Grace is ticklish. Are you, Grace?”

“Yes,” I said, already feeling giddy. “I am.”

He waggled his fingers in the air, then brought them down on my stomach, my sides, my neck. Giggles rippled through me until my stomach ached and I thought I’d explode. I rolled around until my pajamas were covered in grass stains. I’d never experienced a greater feeling of content, not before or after.

Eventually he let me go and went after the others. They sprinted away squealing, climbing trees and tucking themselves into small cavities under the house. I didn’t understand. Were they trying to avoid the tickling and the throwing? If it were my Dad, I would have just lain there, a sitting duck to his tickling hands.

No, Neva didn’t realize what she was doing by keeping her baby’s father a secret. She had a doting father. She’d had shoulder rides and tickling and nicknames. She would have a Papa for her children one day and, if she chose it, she would be walked down the aisle.

I knew what her baby would be missing out on. And I wasn’t going to let it happen.

053-58529_ch01_5P.indd 20

12/16/14 6:03 AM

on-sale 3/31/15 In 1786 Vienna, Lorenzo Da Ponte is the court librettist for the Italian Theatre during the height of the enlightened reign of Emperor Joseph II. This exalted position doesn’t mean he’s particularly well paid, or even out of reach of the endless intrigues of the opera world. In fact, far from it.

One morning, Da Ponte stops off at his barber, only to find the man being taken away to debtor’s prison. Da Ponte impetuously agrees to carry a message to his barber’s fiancée and try to help her set him free, even though he’s facing pressures of his own. He’s got one week to finish the libretto for The Marriage of Figaro for Mozart before the opera is premiered for the Emperor himself.

Da Ponte visits the house where the barber’s fiancée works—the home of a nobleman, high in the Vienna’s diplomatic circles—and then returns to his own apartments, only to be dragged from his rooms in the middle of the night. It seems the young protégé of the diplomat was killed right about the time Da Ponte was visiting, and he happens to be their main suspect. Now he’s given a choice—go undercover into the household and uncover the murderer, or be hanged for the crime himself.

Brilliantly recreating the cultural world of late 18th century Vienna, the epicenter of the Enlightenment, Lebow brings to life some of the most famous figures of music, theatre, and politics.

LAURA LEBOW studied European history at Brandeis University and earned a Master in City Planning from MIT. After a career as an environmental policy analyst, she now writes historical mysteries full-time. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and an ever-expanding collection of opera CDs. The Figaro Murders is her first novel.

Prologue

The paper crackled as it hit the flames. From his place on the deep sill, the boy watched from behind the heavy golden drapes as it melted into the fire. He tried to keep perfectly still. They mustn’t find him here.

How he hated these people, this house! Why had Papa made him come? It wasn’t as if he really needed the position. His future had been decided at his birth. Why did he have to spend every day reading those dull books? It was no fun, none at all. Everything here was boring.

He stuck his finger in the collar of his shirt to loosen it.

Why did they make him wear this uncomfortable uniform?

He wasn’t a servant. The trousers were too tight. He wriggled quietly on the sill, pulling the crisp white shirt from his waistband. The shirt was wrinkled. He’d hear about that.

He was expected to take care of his own clothes here. But why should he have to? Why should he clean his room?

Didn’t these people know who he was?

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 1

02/04/15 11:56 am

2

the figaro murders

He missed home. Everyone there loved to take care of him, to treat him the way he should be treated. Heinz pressed his clothes and helped him dress, and Liesl made his bed and cleaned up any mess he chose to make. Renate, the fat cook, always had a sweet for him when he visited the kitchen.

He missed them all—but especially Mignon, the little chambermaid, who willingly put down her broom and let him undress her whenever he wanted.

“Promise me you won’t speak of this to anyone,” a voice said.

He heard a sharp laugh. “Don’t worry about that. I don’t want this getting out either. We’ll keep it to ourselves.” Two sets of footsteps sounded, and the door closed.

The boy drew back the drape. Now that was interesting.

Those two—one always telling him what to do, as if their stations were reversed; and the other, always looking at him as if he were some kind of worm. If he told Papa what he had just heard—Papa wouldn’t want him to stay here. He’d be able to go home.

As he glanced at the little notebook in his lap, he recalled his tenth birthday. Maman had hired a puppet company to come all the way from Venice to entertain him. What was the play they had put on? Something to do with two sets of lovers, a servant who causes all sorts of misunderstandings— it had been funny, he remembered that. Afterward, the master had let him climb up above the stage, to see how to work the puppets. The great lady in the play had worn a dress of red satin, just like Maman’s. But the puppet was made of wood. She was not soft to touch, and did not smell of French perfume like Maman.

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 2

02/04/15 11:56 am

Prologue

3

Now he could play the puppet master. He could pull a string here and make this one jump with joy, or slacken a string there and make that one collapse in sorrow. A snatch of music entered his head. It could be fun. And later, when it was finished—he would go home, to Maman and Papa.

The boy parted the drapes, climbed off the sill, and went over to the desk. He dipped a pen in the inkwell, and wrote a few notes in the little book. Yes. He would tell what he had just heard. It was the right thing to do. But not yet. No. Not quite yet.

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 3

02/04/15 11:56 am

PA RT I

The Amorous Butterfly

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 5

02/04/15 11:56 am

One

Tuesday, April 18, 1786

Four acts. Fourteen arias—twelve complete, two more to write.

I waited as a cart laden with firewood trundled by, then I crossed the busy square. All six duets are finished. I turned the corner and began to pick my way down the dung-strewn street. Three long ensemble pieces, one for each act except for— “Sir! Take care!”

I looked up. Two enormous black beasts hurtled toward me. My walking stick clattered to the ground as I threw myself against the wall of the nearest building. I clung to the cool, hard stone as the carriage raced by.

When the pounding of the horses’ hooves had receded, I reached down and retrieved my stick. My cloak was splashed with dark stains. I raised the right sleeve to my nose and sniffed. At least it was only mud. Sighing, I calculated how

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 7

02/04/15 11:56 am

8

the figaro murders

much it would cost to have my cloak cleaned. There are days when I hate this city.

I’ve lived in Vienna for almost five years, but I’ve yet to become accustomed to the traffic. There seems to be a horse for every person in the city, and a vehicle for every two. The narrow streets are filled to overflowing with the gilded carriages of wealthy noblemen, the sturdier coaches used by bureaucrats and merchants, and the rickety wagons driven by laborers and peddlers. As a foot traveler, I put my life in jeopardy every time I leave my lodging house.

Lately, I’ve found myself longing for Venice more and more—for its dense maze of alleys and passageways; its serpentine canals; its broad, light-filled piazzas, where people from all walks of life mingle. The pace of life there is more civilized. But I could not go back. Vienna was my home now, and I was obliged to make the best of the opportunities Fortune had presented me.

It was with great relief that I turned into the small street where Johann Vogel had his barber establishment. When I reached the shop at the end of the street, though, the door was closed, the shutters drawn over the windows. I frowned.

It was unlike Vogel to close on a weekday, especially when there was plenty of business to be had from the bureaucrats who toiled in the Hofburg offices a few blocks away. Vogel’s establishment was popular among the Viennese. He was one of the new breed of men in the city who had left positions with the court or with noble houses in order to offer their ser vices to the public in small shops and offices.

I knocked on the door with my walking stick. “Vogel!”

There was no response. “Vogel! Are you there? It’s Lorenzo

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 8

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

9

Da Ponte.” No response. Damn. I scratched my chin. I desperately needed a shave. The deathly quiet of the shop was unusual. On a normal day one could hear the barber singing in his loud bass all the way down the street. Vogel was a burly, jovial man who would do anything for his customers.

If you desired a new wig and did not want to pay the prices charged by the friseurs, he could find you a cheap one; if you were ill and needed to be bled, he could provide leeches at a low cost, sparing you the expense of calling on a surgeon.

I knocked and called one last time, and when there was no answer, turned to leave. I had not taken but two steps when a low moan came from inside the shop. I stopped. A moment later, another moan, followed by what sounded like a loud sob. I returned to the door and pressed my ear against it, but all was quiet once more.

“Vogel! Are you in there? What is wrong?”

A loud shuffl ing sound came from behind the door. A moment later, the bolt was drawn back and the door opened a crack. I could not see anything within, for the interior of the shop was pitch-black, and the sun in the street too bright.

I pushed the door open with my walking stick and entered.

The one-room shop was quiet and cool. A loud thump came from the edge of the room, followed by a thud. As my eyes adjusted from the sunshine outside, I made out the heavy form of my barber slumped in a chair in the back corner. I dropped my stick and soiled cloak on the floor and hurried toward him.

“Vogel? What is it? What is wrong?”

His head sagged as he clutched his arms together over

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 9

02/04/15 11:56 am

10

the figaro murders

his chest and rocked back and forth, moaning loudly. I leaned over him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you ill? Shall I send for a physician?” I asked.

He ceased his rocking and looked up at me. Fat tears coursed down his cheeks. He drew a large handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Oh, Signor Abbé. It is terrible.” He took a deep breath and began to weep again. “I have lost my shop, signore.”

“What do you mean?” I looked around me. The small room had been stripped almost bare. The shelves contained none of the customary gleaming bottles of tonics and lotions, and the barber’s chair in the center of the room—the latest model, Vogel’s pride and joy—sat lonely in the shop, draped with a large cloth.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought business was good.”

Vogel blew into the handkerchief again. “Yes, it is,” he said. “But I am only making enough money to cover the rent and my living expenses, and to put a little bit by toward my wedding day.”

“Then how have you lost the shop?” I asked.

He stretched his arms in front of him and looked down at his hands. Even in the dim light, I could see his face reddening. “I am going to prison, Signor Abbé,” he whispered.

“Prison! What have you done?”

“Debtor’s prison, signore.” He looked up at me. “I borrowed some money from a lady in order to start up the shop.

Now she wants full payment, and I cannot—” His voice broke. “I cannot pay her.” He began to weep again. The handkerchief dropped to the floor.

My heart swelled with compassion for him. “What do you

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 10

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

11

need?” I asked. “I have a bit of money set by. I could cover the loan for you and you could repay me at your leisure.”

“Oh, Signor Abbé, you are truly a man of God,” Vogel said, grasping my hands. “But it is too late. The lady has already received a judgment against me. I am to go to prison today.”

“Surely if I paid her, she would petition the court to reverse the judgment. How much do you owe her?”

He reached to the floor and picked up the handkerchief.

“Four hundred and ninety-two florins, signore,” he muttered.

I winced. That was nearly my annual salary as poet to the Court Theater. “I’m sorry, Vogel,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t handle that much. How long is your sentence?”

“One whole year,” he said, shuddering. “Now I will not be able to marry my Marianne. While I am locked away, she will find another man.” He buried his large face in his hands and sobbed.

I placed a hand on each of his wide shoulders. “Try to compose yourself. There must be something we can do to prevent this,” I said.

Vogel pulled away from me and rooted through his pockets, drawing out another handkerchief. “There is nothing to be done, signore,” he said, blowing his nose again. He sighed.

“I thought I had found a way to get the money, but if I am in prison—” “A business deal?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. You see, signore, my mother died last week.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, Signor Abbé. In a way, it was a blessing that

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 11

02/04/15 11:56 am

12

the figaro murders

God took her. She had been suffering for a very long time,” he said. He stood up and reached for a cloth that sat upon a nearby pile of boxes. “Oh, it is a long story, signore. I shouldn’t keep you from your business.”

“Do you have time to give me a shave?” I asked. “You could tell me about it while you worked.”

He nodded, crossed to the front of the shop, and opened the shutters. The afternoon sun flooded the forlorn room. He pulled the cloth off the barber’s chair and invited me to sit.

“Give me a moment, signore, to heat some water.”

As he headed out the back door of the shop, I moved my cloak and stick to the top of a pile of boxes and settled into the chair. “Who is the lady who lent you the money?” I asked as he returned with a bowl of water. He placed a cape around my neck and pushed the chair into a reclining position.

“She is called Rosa Hahn,” he said. He dipped a cloth in the water and placed it over my face. The warmth seeped into my skin. “She is the housekeeper where I used to work, the Palais Gabler.”

I nodded as he pressed the cloth around my face. After a few seconds, he removed it, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and covered my face with lather. “Hold still, signore.” I relaxed as the rhythmic scraping of the razor plied my skin. “You may remember, I used to work as valet to Baron Gabler. My fiancée, Marianne, is lady’s maid to the baroness. When I decided to open the shop, Miss Hahn was eager to lend me the money. She is an older woman, never married. I’ll admit, I flirted with her a little to get the loan.” He sighed. “I should never have taken the money from her, I know. But I told myself the loan would be a good investment for her.”

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 12

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

13

A warm tear hit my cheek as he began to weep again. He leaned his head down to wipe his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “I had no idea the cost of running a business would be so high.

I have not been able to pay Miss Hahn on schedule. Both Marianne and I pleaded for more time, but she refused.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “How does all this concern the death of your mother?”

“Turn your head a bit, signore.” He pressed my head against his burly bare arm. I studied a large purple birthmark just below his elbow. His forearm was covered with large freckles. Coarse hair tickled my nose, and I fought back the urge to sneeze.

“As my mother lay dying, she told me that I was not her natural son. She and my father had adopted me as a newborn, thirty years ago.”

“What? They had told you nothing about it all that time?”

I asked.

“Not a word. I was shocked, of course. I tried to ask about my real parents, but by then, she was too far gone to answer my questions. I doubt that she even heard me.” His deep voice broke. I reached over and patted his free hand. “She passed away the next morning. When I was cleaning out her things, I found something odd.” He replaced the damp cloth, now cool, on my face. I heard his heavy steps cross the room.

“You see, signore—this box.” I pulled the cloth off my face and sat upright. Vogel was holding a plain carton the size of a lady’s hat box. “I found this hidden deep in the cupboard where my mother kept her change of clothes.” He thrust the box toward me. “I believe this belonged to my birth mother. The contents look valuable.”

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 13

02/04/15 11:56 am

14

the figaro murders

I reached for the box. A loud knock sounded at the door.

Vogel started. The box fell onto my lap.

“Johann Vogel! Police! Open up!”

The barber began to tremble. “Oh no, Signor Abbé, they are here to take me to prison.” He had picked up the cloth I had removed from my face, and now began to wring it between his large hands. “Please, signore, please. Help me.”

I took the cloth from him and wiped the remaining lather off my face. “But what can I do?” I asked.

The pounding at the door resumed, this time much louder.

“You know so many important people, signore,” he said quickly. “You are educated, cultured. I am sure my real parents were rich, perhaps even of noble birth. Could you find them for me?”

My mouth dropped. Nobles? “But that seems like an impossible assignment,” I said. “Do you know anything at all about them?”

“No, signore. I just have the things in this box.”

“Vogel, open up! Now!” “Please, Signor Da Ponte, take it and see what you can find.” He hurried to the door and flung it open. Two constables entered.

“You are Johann Vogel?” one asked.

The barber stifled a sob. “Yes, I am.”

“Take your things and come with us.”

Vogel took a deep breath. “I am almost ready. Please, sirs, let me finish with my last customer.” He returned to the chair and leaned over me, wiping my face with a dry cloth. “Please, Signor Abbé.” He lowered his voice. “Please, you are a kind and generous man. Take the box. Go to the Palais Gabler

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 14

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

15

and speak to my fiancée, Marianne Haiml. She will tell you everything we know.”

“But I have no idea where to begin,” I protested. “And the odds of finding your parents after all these years are slim.”

“Please, signore. At least talk to Marianne. I feel in my heart that my parents are still alive, and that they are rich.”

One of the constables grabbed Vogel’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Wait, I need my bag,” Vogel cried, pointing to a large gripsack sitting in the corner. The other constable heaved a sigh and lifted the bag. As the three reached the door, Vogel turned and looked back at me. “Please, signore. I will give you ten percent of any money I get from my parents, if you find them for me.”

My heart surged with pity as I stared into his broad, decent face. Words came out of my mouth before my brain had a chance to advise caution. “All right, I will see what I can find. But do not get your hopes up too much. Your parents may both have died in the last thirty years.”

“I know, I know. But I must try to find them,” Vogel said.

The constables pulled him outside. I grabbed my cloak and stick, hefted the box, and followed them out, closing the door behind me. Vogel nodded down at the pocket of his coat. I pulled out the key to the shop.

“Keep it for me, Signor Abbé,” he said. “Please. Go tomorrow, talk to Marianne. Find out what you can. My life’s happiness depends on you!”

“Come on already!” The constables pulled Vogel down the street to a waiting carriage.

“Wait, Vogel!” I called. “I did not pay you for the shave!”

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 15

02/04/15 11:56 am

16

the figaro murders

He turned toward me. “It is an honor to shave you, signore,” he shouted. “You can pay me by finding my real parents.”

“But wait—are you sure your mother never told you anything—” The constables pushed him into the carriage, threw his bag after him, and jumped in. The door slammed, and a moment later the carriage rolled away. The street was silent again. I placed the box on the ground and locked the door to the shop. A pang of anxiety shot through me. What had I gotten myself into? I did not have time to investigate this fantastic notion of Vogel’s. I was up to my ears in work. I sighed. The poor man was desperate. I wanted to do anything I could to help him. I pocketed the key, picked up the box, and walked slowly down the street.

The Graben was busy as I headed toward my lodgings. Long and wide, lined with apartment buildings, the street was the gathering place for fashionable Vienna. I joined the throng, this time taking care to stay close to the buildings so as to avoid the fancy carriages taking the fine ladies out to the Prater, the popular park at the northeast edge of the city. The crowd was mixed: government workers heading back to their desks after dinner; lackeys in the liveries of the great houses running errands for their masters; and minor noblemen dressed à la mode, hoping to see and be seen by the rest of society. Around me I heard chattering not only in German and French, but also in Italian, Greek, Polish, and Magyar.

I passed the Trattnerhof, the most famous address in Vienna. It was a large apartment house, built by a wealthy

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 16

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

17

businessman who had come to the city as an inconsequential printer thirty years before, earned the favor of Empress Maria Theresa, and become the official publisher of all of the schoolbooks in the Holy Roman Empire. Trattner’s publishing empire now encompassed five printing plants, a paper factory, and eight bookshops. He entertained the cream of society in his personal apartment, which took up the entire second floor of the building. I gazed up at the façade, which was decorated with what to my eye seemed an excess of furbelows. Two huge telamones flanked the doorway, and high above the street, a row of tall statues on the balustrade watched to make certain that passersby bestowed upon the building the admiration to which it was entitled.

A few minutes later, I turned into the portal of my own, more modest building. After arranging with my landlord’s wife to have my cloak and handkerchief cleaned, I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. My salary at the Court Theater, where I was responsible for editing all the librettos— the texts— of the operas performed and for coordinating production details, was a decent amount, and I was able to embellish it by selling libretto booklets at performances and by taking on commissions to write operas myself. Nevertheless, Vienna was an expensive city—a pair of silk stockings cost five florins!—so I tried to cut my costs as much as possible. I would much have preferred to live on a more desirable floor lower in the building, but the rents were very high, so I did not allow myself to complain about the long climb of four flights of stairs I made several times a day.

I unlocked the door and crossed the small room to place Vogel’s box on my writing desk. The girl who cleaned for me

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 17

02/04/15 11:56 am

18

the figaro murders

had already been in to make up the bed, sweep, and refill the water jug on my basin cabinet. I selected a few pages of the libretto I was writing and stuffed them into my satchel, then pulled Vogel’s box toward me and took off the lid.

I gasped. Was this some sort of prank? Was my barber trying to make a fool of me, with his sad tale of missing parents? I stared into the box. A white, furry dead animal lay curled inside. I forced myself to lean down and sniff. There was no foul odor, so I took a deep breath and plunged my hands into the box, pulling out the unfortunate beast. To my surprise, it was very light. I quickly threw it onto my desk and examined it, then laughed in relief. It was not a dead animal at all, but a fancy lady’s muff. I picked it up and turned the silky fur around in my hands. The muff, colored a pristine white, looked expensive.

I reached into the box and pulled out a small book. Its leather cover was soft and worn, mottled with dark spots.

The book’s spine was engraved with tiny golden fleurs-delis, but displayed no title. As I opened it and gently turned the pages, the familiar musty aroma wafted toward my nose.

I sneezed. The book was a French grammar, of the type students use when learning the language at school. I had purchased one myself when I first came to Vienna, for everyone connected with the court and high society conversed in French instead of German. I turned to the frontispiece, then to the inside back cover, but could find no writing to indicate the owner of the book, nor even the date on which it had been published.

The remaining object in the box was a small ring, its band

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 18

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

19

dull and discolored, but possibly solid gold. A pronged setting held a small, rosy gem in the shape of a heart. A diamond? A betrothal ring, perhaps? I studied the inside of the band for engraving, but could see nothing because of the discoloration. I ran my finger lightly around the inside, but felt nothing but smooth metal. I laid the ring on my desk and considered the three objects. Perhaps Vogel’s idea about his parents was not as far-fetched as I had believed. A muff of fine fur, possibly white fox; a leather-bound book; and a gold and diamond ring: these had surely been the possessions of a wealthy lady, a countess perhaps, or even a princess.

Questions tumbled through my brain. What had led such a woman to give up her newborn son? Why had she chosen to give him to the Vogel couple, people of humble origins?

And why had she sent these valuable items along with the babe? Had she hoped that someday he might try to find her?

I returned the muff to the box and ran my fingers over the worn leather cover of the book. I did not remember much about my own mother, who had died giving birth to my youngest brother thirty-two years ago, when I was only five years old. Yet even today, when I hear a certain lilt in a woman’s voice or see her lips form a soft smile, I feel a stirring of recognition, an awakening of an inchoate, bittersweet emotion deep within me.

The bell in St. Peter’s Church next door chimed the hour.

I started. I had grown so intrigued by Vogel’s mystery that I had lost track of the time. I had work to do at the theater.

I laid the book and ring on top of the muff and replaced the lid on the box. I pulled my second cloak, a frayed one I

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 19

02/04/15 11:56 am

20

the figaro murders

usually saved for bad winter weather, from the cupboard, stuffed a clean handkerchief in its pocket, took up my satchel and stick, and descended to the street.

The street had quieted while I had been up in my room. The government workers had returned to their offices, the ladies had vacated the city for an afternoon of pastoral recreation, and the rest of Vienna was sleeping off their dinners. At four o’clock, the promenade would begin anew, but for now, I and a few stragglers were able to walk about in peace.

I quickly made my way down the Kohlmarkt to the Michaelerplatz, the heart of imperial Vienna. At this hour the large expanse was almost empty. To my left, the stately portico of St. Michael’s Church was deserted, its tall wooden doors closed. In front of me, the monumental dome of the Spanish Riding School marked the threshold to the great halls, apartments, courtyards, and gardens of the Hofburg, the emperor’s residence and home to the government of the empire. Nestled under the dome was my destination, my place of employment, the Court Theater.

Two men in their mid-sixties stood in front of the theater’s doorway, deep in discussion. They had not seen me. I lowered my head and took a sharp right, hoping to skirt the edge of the plaza and duck down a side street until they had left.

“Signor Da Ponte! Signor Poet!” a high, nasal voice called.

I groaned. Damn. There was nothing I could do but turn back. I approached the pair and bowed to the taller of the two. This was Count Franz Xavier Rosenberg, high chamberlain to the emperor and also, more important to me, the

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 20

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

21

director of the Court Theater, and thus my supervisor. His steely eyes took me in from head to toe. He grimaced slightly as his eyes alighted on my shabby cloak. He himself wore a deep purple court suit cut in the latest fashion, the coat made of fine satin. He graced me with a curt nod.

“Tell us, Signor Poet, how is your latest project proceeding?” the nasal voice asked. “The opera with Mozart?”

I struggled to keep dislike from showing on my face as I turned to the speaker, the Abbé Giambattista Casti, my most guileful enemy. Like me, Casti was a poet and a priest. Unlike me, he had enjoyed a celebrated career all over Europe.

Monarchs, aristocrats, and connoisseurs of modern poetry delighted in his satirical style and the lubricious subject matter of his rhymes. After many years at the courts of St. Petersburg and Tuscany, he had settled in Vienna a few years ago, hoping to use his friendship with Count Rosenberg to win a post with the emperor.

“It is going very well, signore,” I said. “We have dress rehearsal in two weeks.”

“Is Mozart pleased with your translation of the Beaumarchais play?” Casti asked.

As I took a moment to measure my response, I studied him. His wispy hair was uncombed, and as usual, he wore a rumpled satin cloak. A long, dark hair sprouted from a mole on his right cheek. “I am not translating the play, signore,” I said. “I am adapting it. You see the difference, I am sure?”

“Adapting it? Like you did for your last libretto, the one for Martín? What was it called, The Grumpy Curmudgeon?”

My cheeks grew hot. My opera with the Spanish composer Martín had been a hit just a few months ago. Casti

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 21

02/04/15 11:56 am

22

the figaro murders

knew the correct title perfectly well. “The Good-Hearted Grump,” I said.

“Ah, yes. A nice translation of the Goldoni play, but would you really call your work original?”

I glanced at Rosenberg as I fought to bite back a retort.

The theater director’s face was expressionless, but I saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “The public loved my libretto, signore. As you recall, that opera sold out every performance.”

Casti fi xed his beady eyes on me. “You are right, it did.

Martín is a very talented composer for one so young. His music was sublime.”

“I believe—” Rosenberg coughed. “I trust you and Mozart are taking care with the text,” he said. “The emperor was reluctant to allow you to use that play.”

“Yes, Figaro was a sensation in Paris,” Casti said. “I’ve read it. The emperor was wise to ban its performance here.”

Mozart and I had written an opera based on the most notorious play on the Continent—Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. In the play, a nobleman carries on affairs with his female servants while his wife fl irts with a teenage boy. A servant openly expresses his belief that he is the social equal of his master. The emperor had allowed the play to be printed in Vienna, but had banned its performance in any of the city’s theaters because of its vulgarity and impropriety.

“I’ve cut all the objectionable parts out,” I said to the count.

My voice grew tighter. “We are focusing on the human aspect of the material—the characters’ yearnings for love and

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 22

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

23

respect, for reconciliation and forgiveness.” Rosenberg just stared at me.

“Ah! The human aspect!” Casti said. “Yes, I see now.” He sighed. “I hope the emperor isn’t disappointed with the final product. You must admit, you and Mozart took a great risk deciding to write the opera without his prior approval.”

Mozart and I had been so sure we could make a successful, acceptable opera out of Beaumarchais’s play that we had written it without a commission. My enemies have big ears and mouths, however, and one went running to the emperor with the tale of our deed. I had been summoned to explain myself and I had described the libretto to him, and then had sent for Mozart, who had played some of the arias he had already completed. The emperor had been delighted with our work and had ordered Rosenberg to put the opera on the theater schedule. It had been a bad day for Casti and Rosenberg.

“As I said, I’ve read the play,” Casti continued. “It seems to be challenging material from which to make a comic opera.”

As if Casti knew what made good theater! In my position as theater poet, I am the first to read librettos that are to be performed. I had read several of Casti’s. He had an elegant style, to be sure. His lyrics were beautifully worded and sparkled with wit. But his plots dragged, his dramatic structures were absurd, and his characters were clichéd. I strained to hold my temper, and bit off the snide retort that was forming on my lips.

“Thank you for your concern—”

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 23

02/04/15 11:56 am

24

the figaro murders

“Be careful, Da Ponte,” Rosenberg said. “Remember, you are on shaky ground with this opera. I worry that your career here won’t survive another debacle like the one with Salieri.”

I tightened my fingers around my stick. Antonio Salieri was the court composer. My fi rst assignment had been to write a libretto for an opera to be composed by Maestro Salieri. I had heard he was a gentleman of good taste and artistic discernment, so I had proposed a number of possible subjects and left him to choose. Unfortunately for the opera and for me, he had selected the work that was the least suitable for adaptation to opera—a play called Rich for a Day. Casti nodded. “Yes, Rich for a Day lasted only one poor night in the theater.” He tittered. A glob of spittle had formed at the corner of his mouth.

“That play was extremely difficult to adapt,” I snapped.

“There were not enough characters. The plot was much too slender to fill two hours of theater!” I had worked on the libretto for several excruciating weeks, only to have Salieri request “minor changes” that involved deleting most of the plot that I had created. The composer had then set what remained of my verses to that shrieky music he had admired on a recent trip to Paris. It was then that I had learned the most important truth about theater in Vienna: if an opera is a smash, the libretto is considered, at best, a frame surrounding a beautiful painting. The composer receives all the credit.

The words are unimportant. But if the opera is not well received, why, then the words become paramount—in fact, so very important that they can cause the failure of the work all by themselves!

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 24

02/04/15 11:56 am

The Amorous Butterfly

25

Casti looked at me with feigned sympathy. “How unfortunate for you, Signor Poet, that the court composer looks elsewhere for his librettos. How long has it been since you last worked together? Four years?”

I clenched my teeth. My hands began to shake. “It’s not my fault—” “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please,” Rosenberg said.

After Rich for a Day had quickly closed, Salieri had sworn that he would never work with me again. I had heard from friends that Rosenberg had advised the emperor to dismiss me and appoint Casti to my post. My beloved sovereign would not play the game, however. He encouraged me to try again, and since then, I’ve had a few successes, most notably my recent collaboration with Martín. I hoped that my opera with Mozart would erase Vienna’s long memory of my failure with Salieri.

“Thank you for your concern,” I said to Casti. “I’m sure my new opera will be a success.” I bowed to the count. “If you will excuse me, sir.” He nodded his dismissal, and the two started off toward the Hofburg next door.

As I opened the heavy door to the theater, Casti’s high voice rang out, mocking me. “I’m thure my new opera will be a thuccess.” Rosenberg laughed.

I stood in the empty foyer of the theater, trembling with anger. I took a deep breath to calm myself. I needed to get to work. Figaro must succeed. I couldn’t bear another failure.

053-59889_ch01_4P.indd 25

02/04/15 11:56 am

on-sale 3/3/15 This is the story of Billy Kinsey, heir to a lottery fortune, part genius, part philosopher and social critic, full time insomniac and closeted rock drummer. Billy has decided that the best way to deal with an absurd world is to stay away from it. Do not volunteer. Do not join in. Billy will be the first to tell you it doesn’t always work— not when your twin sister, Dorie, has died, not when your unhappy parents are at war with one another, not when frazzled soccer moms in two ton SUVs are more dangerous than atom bombs, and not when your guidance counselor keeps asking why you haven’t applied to college.

Billy’s life changes when two people enter his life. Twom Twomey is a charismatic renegade who believes that truly living means going a little outlaw. Twom and Billy become one another’s mutual benefactor and friend. At the same time, Billy is reintroduced to Gretchen Quinn, an old and adored friend of Dorie’s. It is Gretchen who suggests to Billy that the world can be transformed by creative acts of the soul.

With Twom, Billy visits the dark side. And with Gretchen, Billy experiences possibilities.

Billy knows that one path is leading him toward disaster and the other toward happiness. The problem is—Billy doesn’t trust happiness. It’s the age he’s at. The tragic age.

Stephen Metcalfe’s brilliant, debut coming-of-age novel, The Tragic Age, will teach you to learn to love, trust and truly be alive in an absurd world.

STEPHEN METCALFE’s stage plays include Love & Hours, Vikings, Strange Snow, Sorrow and Sons, Pilgrims, Half a Lifetime, Emily, White Linen, The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers, White Man Dancing, A World of Their Own, and The Gift Teller. He has been produced in New York and at regional theaters throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Japan.

Screen credits include Half a Lifetime, Cousins, Jacknife, Roommates, El Abuelo and Beautiful Joe. He also wrote the production drafts of Pretty Woman, Arachnophobia, It Could Happen to You, Dangerous Minds, The Marrying Man, and Mr. Holland’s Opus. Other original (and oft-optioned) screenplays include Time Flies, The Old Boy, Jonah, The Infield, The Harrower, Scylla, Passing Fancy, Rock, Paper, Bone and An Innocent Abroad.

He is an Associate Artist at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and has been an adjunct professor in dramatic writing at University of California at San Diego, University of San Diego and San Diego State University.

1 Pick a subject. Grab a word or headline or rumor. Read about it. Google it. Wiki it. Search and surf it. Stuff it.

One site leads to another and then another. A new subject or word or phrase grabs your attention. It takes the place of the first one and you follow that trail, moving on and on, subject to subject, site to site, skimming the surface, never really digging deep, adhesive picking up lint, on and on until you’ve forgotten what it is that got you started in the first place.

In real time. In real life.

In Antarctica, an iceberg larger than the entire city of Chicago breaks off a glacier and begins floating happily across the southern ocean toward Argentina. Unimpressed, suicide bombers in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and Mozambique blow themselves up, killing both neighbors and complete strangers.

Again.

The market crashes. Reforms. Crashes.

And so on.

An Indian billionaire builds a twenty-seven-story house

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 1

12/5/14 6:57 AM

2

Stephen Metca l fe

overlooking the slums of Mumbai and then abandons it because it has bad karma. A neuroscientist shoots seventy people in a Memphis auditorium. Another neuroscientist tells us you can’t blame him, it’s just the way his brain is wired.

There are Asian carp in the Great Lakes and walking snakes in Florida. In Australia they’re losing the Great Barrier Reef to horned starfish while in France bus drivers abandon their vehicles and go on strike, shutting down public roadways, because their uniform pants are too tight.

In Switzerland, they’re crashing subatomic particles into each other at the speed of light, searching for the glue of life. Why not? It’s better than predicting global disaster, designing new varieties of pink slime, and replicating human proteins in cloned goats.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Enough of real life. Take a break. Turn on the television. Television is pretend life. And with basic cable you can watch it all day long. Desperate Housewives. American Idol. An idol is a cult image, venerating the spirit it represents. The cult that is American venerates desperate singing morons. Shooting cops. Forensic cops. Female cops. Wisecracking cops. Singing cops. Cops wearing sunglasses. Emergency room doctors. Student doctors. Drugaddicted doctors. Plastic surgeons on Viagra and steroids.

Meth dealers. Zombies. Vampires.

Reality shows. What is reality? Is it tanned Italians in a Jersey beach house? Barbie dolls married to has-been rock stars? Housewives of Miami, New Jersey, Beverly

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 2

12/5/14 6:57 AM

t h e t r agic age

3

Hills, Greater Pomona, and Baton Rouge? Or is it Las Vegas pool parties, celebrities in rehab, and politicians on Meet the Press?

We are all avid spectators at a car crash.

I should know. My name is Billy Kinsey. I’m seventeen years old. I watch a lot of TV. Often all night long.

I live in a nice house. It has five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, and a four-car garage. More than enough room for three people. We have a nice view. When I come out to stand in our backyard in the morning, I can see the Pacific Ocean in the distance. The Coronado Islands are somewhere to the south. Hawaii is two thousand miles to the west. Hollywood is . . . we won’t mention that again.

Ours is the kind of neighborhood where men and women in expensive workout clothes walk expensive designer dogs that don’t shed. People know the dogs’ names but they don’t know each other’s. The dogs take dumps on random lawns and sniff each other’s assholes. This is a dog’s way of introducing himself to his friends. It’s how they tell each other how they’re feeling, what they’ve eaten lately, and whether they’re dangerous, pregnant, or just plain crazy. The nose does not lie, and when you get right down to it, maybe we should all be sniffing each other’s butts as well.

This is also the kind of neighborhood where on weekends a lot of people who should know better put on uncomfortable helmets, skintight Lycra emblazoned with European logos, and go riding around on titanium bicycles that cost as much as small cars. Sometimes they come to

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 3

12/5/14 6:57 AM

4

Stephen Metca l fe

a stop and can’t release their shoes from the pedals and fall over. They lie there groaning, still attached to their bikes.

For those who don’t bike, there’s a pleasant little Ferrari dealership in the village. There’s also a Maserati dealership, a Rolls-Bentley dealership, a Ferrari dealership, and a Lamborghini dealership. There’s a Tesla dealership. A Tesla is an energy-saving, ecofriendly, fully electric sports automobile. In this case, one that has a carbon-fiber body, goes from zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds, and costs over a hundred and ten thousand dollars. Talk about friendly.

We used to have a Segway dealership selling twowheeled, self-balancing, personal transports but then the British billionaire owner of the company inadvertently drove his off a cliff and died. Sales inexplicably declined.

It wasn’t always palm trees, luxury cars, and the blue Pacific. Till the age of four, I lived in Tulare, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. The crop of choice is hay. People enjoy beer, methamphetamine, and looking for bodies in irrigation canals. Tourists come for the retail outlets.

I’ve seen photos in old family photo albums. Our house was small. Dad—Gordon—worked construction. Mom— Linda—was a housewife. There’s one photo that shows me as a toddler playing in a pile of bagged mulch. In the foreground, Mom is planting nonindigenous flowers that will inevitably die. She looks happy doing it. Her hair is brown and messy. She’s on her knees and you can tell she’s having fun getting her hands dirty.

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 4

12/5/14 6:57 AM

t h e t r agic age

5

On March 18, 1999, Dad won 37 million dollars in the California lottery and everything changed.

Fate.

Seven months later, a stranger in a bowling alley told Dad that if he was smart, he’d invest in a company called Qualcomm. This was the equivalent of a guy in a bowling shirt giving Jack the magic beans to the golden goose for free. Qualcomm is now the biggest producer of semiconductors and cell phone technology in the world.

Inevitable events.

A year after that, worn out by friends with business ideas, acquaintances asking for loans, and complete strangers showing up on the doorstep begging for handouts, Mom and Dad moved south to the fourteenth-wealthiest community in the United States, a place where begging is discouraged, loans are kept private, and where, even though they shared similar physical characteristics with the residents, they were as different as Tagalog-speaking hermaphrodites from Mars.

Providence. Zahmahkibo from the Book of Vonnegut and Bokonon.

We’ve acclimated.

Mom’s name is still Linda but Linda is now a lean, tawny blonde with a tan and perfect nails. Mom is now part of this group of women who call each other all day long, making and breaking appointments and talking behind each other’s backs.

“Well, I think it’s silly,” Mom will say. “She’s spending

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 5

12/5/14 6:57 AM

6

Stephen Metca l fe

more on the invitations than she is on the— It’s supposed to be for charity, right?”

Stuff like that. They also play tennis, meet for lunch, do yoga, and shop.

“Hold on, Jen.” Mom always interrupts her phone call when she sees me, like she wants me to know that I’m every bit as important as whoever it is she’s talking to.

“Hey, honey,” she’ll say. “Sleep well?”

“Great,” I’ll say. “Like a baby.”

“I thought I heard you up.”

“Not me.”

“Where are you going?”

“Siberia by bus.”

“Take your cell phone!”

And then she’s back into her conversation, not even realizing that I wouldn’t own a cell phone if you paid me.

Fact.

Cell phones emit radiofrequency energy, a form of nonionizing electromagnetic radiation. Why take the risk?

Sidebar.

When you answer the phone there’s usually someone on the other end who wants to talk. Why take the risk?

She tries, Mom. She really does. It’s her nature to. But for Dad—Gordon—it’s officially too late. It’ll be a Sunday afternoon and we’ll be in the garage next to the Range Rover, the Jaguar XJ Supersport, and the customized Ford F-150 pickup that Dad likes to drive because it reminds him of his “roots.” Dad will have recently gotten

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 6

12/5/14 6:57 AM

t h e t r agic age

7

back from riding his titanium bike, and after complaining about all the cars that don’t stop for downed riders, he’ll have been going on about his impoverished youth for at least ten minutes now, all because, on some nostalgic whim, he’s bought a push lawn mower.

“Give me one good reason,” he’ll say, “why I should pay some Mexican twelve bucks an hour to mow the lawn when I have a kid who does nothing but sit around on his ass all day doing nothing!”

Actually I don’t just sit around on my ass all day doing nothing. I sit around on my ass and read. I like knowing things. Just don’t make me talk about them.

Dad doesn’t read or know anything and all he does is talk.

“When I was your age, I worked, kiddo. I didn’t have the advantages you have!”

On and on he’ll go. At some point along the line, Dad—Gordon—decided he’d earned everything we have, and after a successful career in the construction biz followed by a brilliant investment career, he decided it was time to smell the roses, watch the kids grow, and coach a little baseball.

Point of reference.

Baseball must be the most beef-witted game ever invented.

I’m, like, eight, and Dad has made me join Little League.

And they have me in this stupid uniform which comes complete with what Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel Brave New World referred to as a “prole hat.” Prole, short

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 7

12/5/14 6:57 AM

8

Stephen Metca l fe

for “proletariat.” Meaning moron. Anyway, because I’m such a reluctant ball player, they’ve stuck me in right field and I’m standing there with this big, stiff, brand-new, expensive glove that Dad has bought me and all I can think about is when I’ll finally get to go home. And then, wouldn’t you know it, some dumb, fat kid actually hits the ball and it bounces through the infield and comes right toward me. And I’m not remotely paying any kind of attention, and even if I were I wouldn’t be interested, and so it goes right past me. And all my so-called teammates are screaming and their parents are screaming and Dad, who, yes, is “coaching a little baseball” and who looks even more ridiculous in his baseball uniform than I do, is screaming too.

“Billy, what’s the matter with you! Goddammit, Billy!

Get the goddamn ball!”

The only sane thing to do is ignore them all and so that’s what I do. I just stand there, watching the dumb, fat kid run around the bases.

And now I’m seventeen and in the garage and nothing’s really changed. Dad’s still yelling.

“Good Christ Almighty, Billy, are you listening to me? Are you paying attention? Have you heard one goddamn word I’ve said?”

“Thirty,” I’ll say.

“What?”

“To mow the lawn. I want thirty dollars an hour. With a three-hour minimum.”

This is called capitalism.

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 8

12/5/14 6:57 AM

t h e t r agic age

9

Dad will snort and make a face that says “You’re so such an idiot, you’re almost funny.” He makes this face with Mom—Linda, his wife, my mother—a lot.

This is called derision.

“Anything else, your majesty?”

I stare at the lawn mower. The hand lawn mower that he—Gordon—wouldn’t cut his toenails with.

A couple of hours later, I’ll be in our backyard, which is lush and green and beautiful, and I’ll be riding around on a brand-new tractor mower, the one we’ve traded the hand mower in for. Dad’s the kind of guy who will upgrade anything mechanical at a moment’s notice and call it a good investment. And maybe it’s because the thought of this annoys me or maybe it’s because it really wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to push a mower, but I’ll begin driving in this random, haphazard path across the lawn, leaving crazed swathes of uncut grass behind me.

“Billy, what the hell’s the matter with you! Goddammit! Billy!”

I hate money. People who make nothing but money, make nothing.

Still.

It’s money that pays for the drum room.

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 9

12/5/14 6:57 AM

2 The drum room.

The drum room is on the lower level of the house. You might call this level the basement if a basement had inlaid wood floors, lath and plaster walls, and crown moldings. Dad had the drum room professionally soundproofed because not only was the noise driving him crazy, he was convinced it was stirring up the sediment in the cases of vintage Bordeaux that he had impulsively bought to put into the walk-in, climate-controlled wine cellar that came with the house.

My set is a Pearl Masterworks series. Black pearl. Double bass drums, a twelve-inch Tama Warlord Titan snare, four rack toms, and two floor toms, all tuned at two intervals apart. The set has six Zildjian cymbals; two rock rides, two custom crash, and a high hat.

My sound system is a Lyngdorf TDAI2200 Integrated Amp and Onkyo CS5VL SACD/CD player that plugs into a Pioneer S4EX speaker system.

Drum karaoke.

The very first concert was probably people beating logs

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 10

12/5/14 6:57 AM

t h e t r agic age

11

by the fire. The rhythms were the patterns that made up their natural world—wind, rain, stampeding hooves— and through these patterns, they experienced ecstasy.

What are my patterns?

Speed metal. Thrash. Ska punk. Progressive rock. Anything or anybody that makes me work. Neil Peart. Mike Portnoy. Shannon Leto of Thirty Seconds to Mars. Danny Carey of Tool. Stewart Copeland of The Police for simple precision. But my favorite drummer of all time is Avenged Sevenfold’s Jimmy Sullivan aka the Reverend Tholomew Plague aka the Rev. Dead of acute drug and alcohol intoxication at the age of twenty-eight.

Better to drum yourself to death.

The soundproof room is small and insular and hot and it doesn’t take long before I’ll be dripping with sweat.

A lot of times I strip down to my underwear or take my clothes off completely. My hands and bare feet blister and bleed and the blood and the sweat spot the drum heads.

Drumming is the closest thing I know to mindlessness.

I would never ever play for people.

053-58723_ch01_5P.indd 11

12/5/14 6:57 AM

on-sale 3/10/15 Emmaline Nelson and her sister Birdie grow up in the hard, cold rural Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times, and strict morals. Marriage is preordained, the groom practically predestined. Though it’s 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon.

Caught in a time bubble between a world war and the ferment of the 1960’s, Emmy doesn’t see that she has any say in her life, any choices at all. Only when Emmy’s fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to act—falling instead for a forbidden Catholic boy, a boy whose family seems warm and encouraging after the sere Nelson farm life. Not only moving to town and breaking free from her engagement but getting a job on the local newspaper begins to open Emmy’s eyes. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up under—and their effect—changes completely.

Amy Scheibe’s A Fireproof Home for the Bride has the charm of detail that will drop readers into its time and place: the home economics class lecture on cuts of meat, the group date to the diner, the small-town movie theater popcorn for a penny. It also has a love story— the wrong love giving way to the right—and most of all the pull of a great main character whose self-discovery sweeps the plot forward.

AMY SCHEIBE lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. Her first novel, What Do You Do All Day, was Amazon.com’s #1 Women’s Fiction Pick for 2005.

What shall I do, if all my love, My hopes, my toil, are cast away, And if there be no God above, To hear and bless me when I pray?

—Anne BrontË, “The Doubter’s Prayer”

Prologue

His Wonders to Perform October 1952

A

hazy dawn broke over a small lean-to of weathered gray planks and multicolored leafy branches that had been meticulously assembled the day before, the work completed mostly between the morning chores and those dispatched in the afternoon. Emmy looked up at the speckled yellow covering of boughs that she had carefully chosen from the row of shrubs and smaller trees that edged the barren late-autumn field of sheared cornstalks, their papery remains bent toward the earth, waiting for the punishment of the long Minnesota winter to grind them into dust.

Emmy exhaled into the frisky air of late autumn, gauging the temperature by how quickly the cloud of visible breath dissipated. She’d been quiet for the better part of an hour, too excited to long for the fitful sleep that had been disrupted by her mother’s insistent “get up and out, he’s here, go on,” as though the girl needed more encouragement. Her heart had felt as though a small, tremulous rabbit had somehow gotten down inside of her and wanted desperately to be out in the field, in the shelter, waiting. Emmy had been given a cup of black coffee from Ambrose’s thermos when they had first arrived, and the sweet, bitter taste of it now lingered in the pockets of her

2

•

A my S ch eibe

cheeks, where her tongue kept poking in an attempt to keep her voice still.

All summer, she’d waited for this day to arrive, for Ambrose to return from college in Michigan and make good on his promise to take her on her first deer hunt. When he’d gone off to school four years before, she’d been only eight— old enough to shoot a BB gun, but too small to keep a rifle from bruising her shoulder. Since then, determined not to fail when the time came, she’d carried endless pails of milk and loaded countless hay bales onto flatbeds until her shoulders were high and square like those of a young man.

It should have been her grandfather next to her in the blind. He’d always told her that when the time came, when he felt she was ready, he would take her out into the shelter belt of trees next to the strip of land they planted every year with feed corn in order to draw the big and small game for hunting. Instead she waited with the neighbor boy—now a man— who had served as the third point of their triangle: the replacement grandson, the respectful and diligent student of the outdoors. The three of them had trapped gophers and fox, caught walleyes and northerns, and on lazy afternoons sat in a row, whittling objects out of soft wood, the careless soapy shavings drifting across the porch at their feet. It didn’t seem right that the old man wasn’t present, but at least his gun was there, cradled in Emmy’s lap. The rifle was exactly like the one he had used in the army— not ideal for a young girl, but its familiar length of walnut wood and the satisfying throw of the cold metal bolt felt right to Emmy. When her grandfather died quick-slow from a thing gone wrong in his head, this rifle was promised to her, and she was promised to Ambrose. That had been when she was ten. Now Emmy was twelve, and with each passing year, her understanding of the world grew by inches to where she was almost a woman, certainly no longer content to be a child.

The first orange ray of sun split through the slot they’d carved in the screening plank, and a sharp stripe of light illuminated the skim of grassy green behind Ambrose’s blue eyes. He’d gone away to college a lanky, quiet boy and come back a sturdy but no more voluble man. Emmy looked at his nose in profile, surprised by how it had taken on the prominently pointed shape of an arrowhead, the kind chipped from opaque flint that her grandfather had taught her to find, brown against the windblown black soil of

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

3

spring. Once they had found bones as well, and not far from where she currently sat, a jawbone that retained long, sharp, glossy yellowed teeth.

At the crunch of rustled leaves in the distance, Ambrose moved from his squat into a creeping crawl, picking up his shotgun as he squinted into the piercing daylight. A slight nod of his head brought her gaze level alongside of his. The deer was small and tentative, its spindled legs lifting as though recoiling from the singe of a hot frying pan; the animal’s velvety nose lowering and stretching toward the mound of shucked corn Emmy had piled a respectable distance from the blind. From instinct, she bit off her right mitten—the rough red wool of it lingering on her bottom lip—and raised the smooth wooden flank of the gun to the point of her high cheekbone, letting the stock settle into its groove against her shoulder, just as she had done hundreds of times since her father had allowed her to take ownership of the gun in January, her twelfth birthday. Most girls would treat a baby doll as well as Emmy had polished and cleaned that Springfield, meticulously running the oiled rags over, around, and through the elegant length of it.

“Go,” Ambrose said so minutely above a whisper that she might have imagined the word. Emmy silently righted the tiny ladder sight atop the gun’s metal and lined it up with the notch at the end of the barrel. She recalled her grandfather’s scorn of men who had come back from the war and affixed fancy scopes to their hunting rifles, as though this gave them an advantage over the animal that they didn’t deserve. Emmy inhaled deeply and began counting as she waited for the deer to finish feeding. It raised its head in Emmy’s direction—a mistaken benediction—the tufted white ears pointing forward and then back, a hasty indication of something ill on the wind, which caused the deer to lift its nose higher. Emmy opened her left eye on the number sixty and then pinched it shut again. Though she had tossed on her pillow the night before, her nerves were now absent as she slipped her finger into the trigger guard on the next inhale and gently squeezed. The crack of the shot echoed beyond the small makeshift room and out into the field, where it ripped through the flurrying sound of many wings ascendant, and Emmy couldn’t help sitting back on her heels, defeated, knowing that this was the one shot of the day, certain that she’d acted in haste. His low, soft whistle told her otherwise.

4

•

A my S ch eibe

“Well, I never,” Ambrose said, lifting the earflap of his winter cap with a finger and scratching at his scalp before picking up a leather haversack that she knew had been given to Ambrose by her grandfather, who had used it during the First World War. “Let’s go dress her.”

“Is that all?” she asked, the gun only one bullet lighter in her hands but bearing the same weight as a length of folded cloth for all it meant to her in the order of the morning.

He took his hat off completely and struck his thigh with it. “All? You kill your first deer in the first hour of the first day with your first shot?” She fought down a prideful smile as she looked up into his reserved face, though she could sense a glint of ownership flicker deep in his eyes. He broke open his shotgun, slipping the unspent cartridge into his coat pocket before bending the gun in the crook of his arm and muttering, “Is that all.” He shook his head and walked away from the blind. She followed, her legs unsteady in the warmth of the sun. They’d had a good number of Indian summer days, and the heavy field coat she’d chosen in the cold kitchen was now smothering. She shrugged it off and let it drop to the inky dirt as she took two steps to each of his in order to reach the prostrate animal in stride. He lifted the doe’s head and turned the snout skyward. The eyes were wide open and seemed to Emmy as if they hinted at a more complicated purpose than simple life or death. As she leaned closer, Emmy’s tight white braids brushed the deer’s cheek, and Emmy caught her own beveled reflection in the glassy eye. Under the muzzle, at the base of the velvet tan neck, Ambrose pointed at a muddy- colored dot where the bullet had entered.

“I did that,” she said, reaching a bare finger to the hole.

“Heart shot,” he replied. “Cleanest I ever seen.” With a quick flick of his wrist, he shifted the deer onto its back. “Yearling. She’s small, but pretty fattened up.”

Emmy stayed in her crouch next to the doe’s head as Ambrose unrolled a length of leather he’d pulled from the haversack, revealing an assortment of knives and a small saw. He anchored his knees between the upended hind legs of the doe, then picked up the largest knife, slipped it from its leather sheath, and pointed the serrated tip into the lowest part of the doe’s belly. “Give me your hand,” he said, and Emmy complied, feeling the bumpy calluses that dotted his palm scrape across her knuckles as they grasped

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

5

the smooth white handle of the heavy knife. He drew her hand quickly and with precision up the tender front of the animal until the blade reached the rib cage, at which point Ambrose gripped her hand tightly enough to make her wince as he forced the knife through the hard sternum. The cracking sound their effort produced caused Emmy to shift her eyes elsewhere, taking in the rising steam from the gaping incision, the milky sack of oddshaped organs pressing out of the animal and jiggling with the pull of Ambrose’s intent. Where is all the blood? Emmy wondered. Where is proof that a living thing is now dead? She slouched back onto her heels as he released her and reached into the cavity, drawing into the daylight a bright red misshapen ball still connected to the interior of the animal by snarly cords. Emmy flinched slightly as she imagined the heart beating in his large bloodstained hand; saw the tear of metal into flesh where he pressed his thumb and glanced at her with more reserved approval. He handed it to her, richly warm with the last unpumped, unspilled fluid. Here was the evidence she had sought, the warrant for her crime. Ambrose cut free the veins and arteries, and her hand jolted away from the deer, sending the bloody orb into the air.

“Pay attention,” he said, sticking a curved knife into the cavity with a practiced twist.

This is not me, she told herself as the resolve to be like them abandoned her and she stood up. A dozen yards away in the trees something moved.

The girl stumbled blindly toward the sound, feeling a burning need to relieve herself of the coffee and all else it had washed down. So much of her life had been like this: slow until it was fast, right until it was wrong. She would cautiously pad forward on kitten feet only to find the milk pail overturned and empty. This is how it felt—the anticipation of joy shifted in a moment to regret. As she neared the edge of the field, a resettled brace of pheasants flushed at her feet and caught her up in their swirling ascent. She spun away from the towering line of elms and waved her hands above her head, shooing the lifted birds in an empathetic panic, tired of the world proving her place was not where she thought it to be.

“Stop playing,” he shouted, the deer now draped over his shoulders, the entrails mounded next to the darkened patch of ground where the animal had bled out. Ambrose held two twiggy legs in each hand, and his arms

6

•

A my S ch eibe

were speckled a rusty red up to the elbows, where he’d pushed his jacket sleeves out of the way. “We need to get her skinned before church.”

“Of course,” Emmy whispered, her voice an empty honeycomb, brittle in the cooling wind. She would be more cautious, she resolved as she watched his deer-slung figure move away, more patient and careful. She followed him slowly, gathering her coat, the guns, and the haversack as she went, hoping that this thing now done—this deer now dead—would be the last by her own hand.

Part I Disinheritance

January 1958

One

Faith Alone

T

he day after her eighteenth birthday, Emmaline Nelson sat with her spine hovering a good two inches away from the straight, cold back of an oaken pew, her feet planted next to each other on the pine floor, knees pressed together as she’d been taught. Her wool serge skirt should have been cozy, but the nylon slip her mother had insisted she wear crackled like electric ice against her dark stockings from its contact with the charged January air. Her coat hung cold and useless out in the makeshift foyer, where her mother had made her leave it, even though the inside of the church was not much warmer than the air outdoors.

Emmy worked hard at achieving what she hoped would look like a good Christian demeanor—eyes focused on the front of the church, Bible open to the day’s scripture reading on her lap, hands folded on the Good Book, mouth slightly open and whispering along with the Nicene Creed. She knew these words so well she no longer had to parse their meaning. She knew the service so well that she barely kept her thoughts on God. No, Emmy’s mind was quite understandably drawn over her right shoulder, pondering instead the man who would soon officially become her betrothed.

The prayer over, Emmy cocked her head to the left and turned it just

10

•

A my S ch eibe

enough to steal a glance of Ambrose Brann. She could feel his steady gaze warm on her neck, even as the congregation stood to sing another hymn. It seemed as though Ambrose had always been there, somewhere, in and out of her memories of youth. They had played together when she was small, endless indulgent games of hide-and-seek at one farm or the other on Sunday afternoons while the grown-ups visited over coffee and her sister toyed with dolls on a flannel blanket stretched out in the grassy sunshine. At times inseparable, Emmy and Ambrose had walked through muddy springdense fields of ankle-deep black soil in order to place a penny on the railroad track down at the end of the farm’s quarter section, returning later in the day to find the bright copper disc pressed flat and smooth. He had taught her how to hunt, to clean a gun, to shave a piece of soft wood into a palmsized cross, and after Grandfather Nelson died when she was ten, Ambrose’s economy of words had made her feel her loss less keenly, even though the few things he did share revealed little of his heart.

Ambrose was a good deal older—nearly ten years—and yet he never seemed to mind his young companion, always extending to Emmy a level of familial love that promised to keep her comfortable the rest of her life.

She tried to imagine what the weight of his silence might feel like in the stretch of time about to be set before them, and an unexpected feeling rose against it, a slight hiccup of concern.

The Brann family’s status was considered a significant step up from her family, with Delmar Brann’s vast acreage of sugar beet fields and hundred head of fine beef cattle comprising the largest farm in the township.

Unlike her Norwegian-born grandfather, Mr. Brann was second-generation American—a fact he frequently worked into conversation. Still, the two men had been the kind of friends who were more often seen together than apart, and it had been Grandfather Nelson’s dying wish for Emmy to marry Ambrose. She could learn to live in a quiet house, she supposed, or fill it with the noise of children by and by.

Emmy waited to join in the singing a moment too long and felt a quick, sharp pinch delivered with dogged expertise to her upper left arm by her mother. As Emmy slowly stood, she took quiet note of the increase of her stature, for she recently had cleared the brim of her mother’s hat by a solid three inches. Emmy’s life up to now had been constrained by her mother’s

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

11

views, her instructions, her limits. Yet somehow, a strange miracle had happened in September: Her father moved them from a shack on her grandmother’s farm near the sleepy town of Glyndon and into a small, tidy house in the much bigger city of Moorhead, Minnesota, across the Red River and in the shadow of Fargo, North Dakota. Emmy had entered her final year of high school surrounded by the kinds of ideas and knowledge that unfolded a crumpled sheet of possibility inside of her, and Karin’s influence had started to pull away from Emmy like warm taffy. The move had revealed tiny windows that were now opening onto new opportunities.

On Emmy’s right the bright singing of her sister, Birdie, cut through Emmy’s preoccupations. Birdie had burst into the Nelson household three years after Emmy, a gift of uncomplicated grace and laughter among a previously glum trio. Sometimes Emmy wondered what would have become of them if Birdie hadn’t been born. Emmy’s own arrival had been less auspicious, coming as it had three months after their brother, Daniel, had died.

With so much grief in such a small house how could anyone joyfully greet a red-faced, colicky girl? Instead, Emmy had slept in her grandmother’s bed, fed from a bottle and carried around on the older woman’s hip until Emmy was big enough to walk. When Karin had come home with Birdie, three-year-old Emmy eagerly accepted the role of mother’s helper, happy to be useful and wanted. She couldn’t remember much from those early years, and besides, she had quickly learned to appreciate the feeling of being needed more than loved. Now that she was eighteen, Emmy was ever more mindful of what kind of wife and mother she wanted to be, itching to cook meals the way she preferred, keep her own house, and create for her children a pocket of happiness that no one would fill with the pebbles of grim selfsacrifice. Marriage to Ambrose was not merely a promise to be fulfilled, it also seemed the only way forward, a destination she knew as well as any other, a place she could feel finally at home.

Once the blessing was given, Karin quickly slipped past Emmy’s father in order to join the women serving coffee in the basement, and gave him a look that suggested he keep a close eye on the girls. Christian frequently deferred to Karin, even after their own small farm had failed when Emmy was ten, and they’d had no choice but to move into a three-room shack on Grandfather Nelson’s farm. It had once been used by the betabeleros who

12

•

A my S ch eibe

took the trains north every spring to plant sugar beets and back down south to the Texas border once the harvest was completed late in the fall.

The interior walls of the outhouse ten feet behind the shack were still papered in Mexican movie magazines featuring Rita Hayworth’s toothy smile.

As much as she had wondered why they couldn’t just live in the farmhouse with her grandmother, Emmy knew that there was some strength behind Christian’s quiet pride. Rather than replace his newly dead father as head of the farm, Christian took a mechanic’s job at the sugar factory. It took seven long years of taxing work, but Emmy could tell that Christian was never happier than when he unloaded their possessions into the small house in Moorhead that fall. Even so, they all continued to help Grandmother Nelson maintain what little was left of her enterprise: a handful of milking cows, a half-blind hunting dog, a dozen laying hens, and an old inedible hog named Sausage. Lida wouldn’t hear of selling one feather of the place, and it had been made plain to Emmy that the farm would be given to her and Ambrose, finally joining the two families as Grandfather Nelson had desired.

Task-driven blood in her veins, Karin Nelson looped her arm through Grandmother Nelson’s, helping the much older woman out of the pew and down the short aisle toward the stairs. Lida Nelson was the center of the church’s universe. She had left her family early in order to create her own place in this loop of the river, and she took on the history of every parishioner as though it were her own. The Nelsons had all been baptized in this room, they would all be married here, and God willing at the end of their lives receive the blessing of rejoining their relatives in the attached graveyard of good Lutherans. Emmy touched the smooth pew, finding the slight dent where she’d cut her first tooth. She imagined what the low-shouldered country church must have looked like from the sky, set back from the meandering creek just far enough to stay high in flood years, close enough to hold picnic suppers in the late afternoon shade of early September harvests. Since she was very small, she’d been told stories about the great Norwegian settlers who had staked out this land and constructed a sod lean-to from the densely packed soil, slicked the sides with paint made from quicklime and chalk, and retained the services of a traveling preacher until

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

13

they could afford a full-time recruit. Soon after, a suitable wooden building was constructed.

All that hard work was swept up into the spinning maw of a tornado in 1929, leaving only the organ untouched. Twice more, twisters had descended on them, the most recent coming late on a cloudless day the past June, when the deadliest cluster ever seen had ripped its way through a speckled swath of the county. One tremendous funnel that looked like an upside-down birthday cake had flattened areas of Fargo, while a group of three smaller spirals barely missed the little church as the storm made its devastating way into their valley, leaving pieces of houses from as far away as North Fargo scattered about the farm. Emmy had found a dollar bill, the wheel from a child’s wagon, and the cracked head of a porcelain doll, among other displaced treasures. Even now, in the dead of winter, when the sky turned black, a shiver of trepidation would come over Emmy, reminding her of how scared she had been as they huddled in the disused coal bin, listening to the howling winds encompass her grandmother’s home.

Emmy rubbed the gooseflesh from her arms as she stood between her father and Birdie in the crowded aisle. She gazed up at the stained-glass depiction of Christ ascendant, wondering what He thought of the poor souls from the Golden Ridge area of Fargo who had been killed in the storm. Had He opened his arms to the five Acevedo children taken alongside their mother? Did it make sense that God chose to leave behind the father and one son? She’d read their stories in the local paper, and had wept over the picture of the baby of the family being carried away from the wreckage by a fireman who had either lost or discarded his hat—his limp slant of bangs obscured the horror he must have felt—until her heart couldn’t stand any more of it.

The feel of her father’s hand on the middle of her back brought Emmy’s thoughts around to the sturdy brick church, and she let her questioning melt away, as she often had when the wall of God’s reason seemed too high for her to scale. Christian roped his other arm around Birdie’s shoulders and engaged Ambrose’s father as he moved out of his own pew.

“Good morning, Del,” her father said, offering his hand to the dark-suited gentleman. Delmar Brann, reed thin and yet a good head taller than Christian, took the slighter man’s hand in both of his as he grunted a greeting.

14

•

A my S ch eibe

An older, squatter, and unfamiliar man moved out of the pew, nodding solicitously at them as he slid past and broke into the line waiting to greet the pastor at the door. Emmy noticed her father’s look of irritated surprise before she cast her eyes to the floor, while Birdie used the moment to sprint out from under her father’s arm and rush off to join her friends at the back of the church. There was something in Mr. Brann’s stature that always made Emmy feel small, insignificant: almost breakable. He was closer in age to her grandfather than to Christian, and had been married late, but widowed early, to a woman rumored to have come from a wealthy Chicago family.

“Good morning,” Mr. Brann said, and moved in a lanky shuffle along the aisle. “What are you hearing in town about Burdick’s attempts to get into Congress?”

“I prefer not to talk politics in church,” Christian said, forcing a friendly enough laugh, but Emmy sensed discomfort in her father as he tipped his head in her direction.

Mr. Brann turned brusquely to Emmy, sliding a rough knuckle under her chin. She resisted taking a step back. “How’s our girl?” He leaned closely enough for her to see a fleck of pepper between his top teeth. “The winter cold enough for you?”

“Oh, you bet,” Emmy replied, an embarrassed shade of red prickling her skin. Karin had told her that after Sunday dinner at the Branns’, matters would be discussed between the two families, and from Mr. Brann’s solicitous smile, Emmy could tell that her position in his favor had risen. The obvious downside of a marriage to Ambrose was the eventual, continual proximity to his father, though Emmy knew that there was no fairness in comparing Ambrose to Mr. Brann. She was nothing like her mother, and Emmy’s blush began to rise up to her ears with the notion of Ambrose setting them in the same frame. Her mother was cold and firm, hardworking and driven, serving Jesus with her every breath. Emmy loved Jesus but found less of her soul compelled to model his mission. She wanted to do good works in her life, but she also wanted to look up and out at the world, rather than stare deeply into a pair of prayer-folded hands, whispering words of devotion and salvation. What was the point of being saved if she never did anything that required the risk of being lost? Her mother lived within the

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

15

limits of this room, even when she was outside of it. Emmy’s view was drawn to the horizon, and whatever might lie beyond. How she would incorporate this yearning into a marriage to the farm boy next door she had no clue, but she hoped her brand of faith would lend more guidance than her mother’s had.

Emmy gave her head a little shake to clear the muddling thought and quickened her step to leave the older men behind. She slipped her hand into the crook of Ambrose’s arm. He smiled down at her.

“How’s the farm?” Emmy asked, feeling the heat of his body through the layers of clothing, hot like an ember in the grate. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow and Emmy had to quietly wonder whether he might be ill.

Clearly she wasn’t the only one nervous about what the day would hold for their future.

“A dozen hens are off their lay,” he said.

Emmy laughed, then darkened her tone. “That sounds serious.”

“You’ll see,” he said, a small smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.

“Yes, I suppose I will,” she said, her attempt at merriment waning as they approached Pastor Erickson where he stood in the entryway, shaking hands and listening to the needs of his flock with a look of either deep sympathy or abject senility. He was a perfectly square man with straight, feeble lines of white hair laced atop a face that was always bright pink, regardless of the weather or circumstance. Emmy had loved the pastor when she was a small girl, but as she’d filled out her Sunday dresses over time, his lingering eyes had made her increasingly uncomfortable to the point of slouching.

“Good morning, Emmaline,” he said as he took both hands and held them out to her sides. His touch was oddly damp and dry at the same time, like washing taken in from the line five minutes too early. “You’re looking especially pretty today.” Emmy broke her own sweat, which she could feel collect at her temples and underneath her gray wool hat, where her scalp began to itch.

“Thank you, Pastor. You’re very kind to say so,” she said as Ambrose stepped between them, saving her from further discomfort.

“Yes, she’s a pretty one, sir,” Ambrose said as he shook the pastor’s hand.

“Wonderful sermon, I especially enjoyed your thoughts on Nadab and Abihu. I had never considered how their punishment related to the great

16

•

A my S ch eibe

flood, or Gilgamesh.” Emmy looked at Ambrose, surprised by how much he had to say, as though the coal of Isaiah had touched his lips when she wasn’t looking.

Pastor Erickson narrowed one eye. “You’re a great study, Ambrose. You should consider taking the cloth yourself, you know. We could use more men like you.”

“So you always say.” Ambrose bowed his head. “But I serve the Lord through faith alone.”

“His Grace be with you,” Pastor Erickson replied, turning back to Emmy and casting a rheumy glance down the length of her frame.

“And with you,” Ambrose said, moving Emmy along toward the basement stairs. The smell of percolating coffee and the clattering of the church women setting out cups pointed up the silence that rested between the young couple. In the few moments it took them to descend, Emmy sought a topic of conversation to begin, but nothing came to mind. She certainly hadn’t listened closely enough to the sermon to engage him on the topic of divine retribution—or whatever it was the pastor had spent so much time talking about. If it wasn’t damnation, it was likely wrath or some other brimstone subject. The gamut Pastor Erickson ran was as small as that of a penned-up rooster, and nearly as nonsensical, but she knew better than to speak her mind on to Ambrose. It seemed to her at times that she was the only person who noticed the paucity of words and ideas coming from the pulpit, so eager were the parishioners to have Pastor Erickson’s holy approval.

“School’s going well,” Emmy said, feeling the awkwardness in Ambrose’s lack of response. She wanted to tell him all about her new life in Moorhead, and what an adjustment it had been for her, going from the immigrant shack her father had improved as much as he could, to the slightly larger, faintly more comfortable two-bedroom house situated in what Emmy had quickly learned was the poor side of the big town, on the lesser bank of the Red River. To the west across that river lay Fargo, which, in the early days of both settlements, had claimed a much bigger stake with the railroads than its little twin sister, Moorhead. Emmy was only beginning to understand the myriad effects of this dynamic, though, and worried that

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

17

if she tried to express her impressions of it Ambrose would wave away her insights like slow-moving attic flies.

When they reached the wide, warm basement the young couple wordlessly parted ways, Ambrose to join the men gathered around the coffee table, and Emmy to the kitchen and a sink of soapy water. Her mother passed with a plate of her homemade doughnuts, which were always hard and dry but somehow the most popular Sunday-morning hospitality item.

Emmy slipped into the bustling kitchen, quietly past the women swarming there, and out the back cellar door.

Once outside in the cement-lined structure at the foot of the stairs, Emmy let out a long sigh and climbed to the top, where she sat hugging her knees for warmth. She found an instant comfort in the solitude of the moment. Behind the church a number of young boys ran around in the snow, impervious to their reddening hands and dripping noses. Emmy smiled at their predictability—boys had been like this when she was young, and they would be like this when she was old. One of them stole another’s cap, and the shock of white-blond hair made Emmy wonder if her son would look like so many of the children who had passed through this yard.

Her own hair still held its childhood brilliance—a gift from her grandfather, along with the blushing skin—while Birdie’s had darkened to a tawny brown.

The basement door opened and out popped Svenja Sorenson, her russetcolored looped braids catching the morning sunshine and her pale blue eyes slicing up to meet Emmy’s in a squinted, freckle-splattered smile.

“Oh, Emmy! Here you are!” Svenja dashed up the steps and squeezed into the smaller space to Emmy’s left, rather than take the two feet of empty stair to her right. Emmy scooted over.

Emmy turned one palm up. “Here I am.”

“Tell me everything—what’s happening in the real world?” Svenja asked, smelling of strawberry jam. “Oh, how I would die to live in Moorhead, away from the gophers and milk cows and hay-smelling boys.” She propped her dreamy, round face in one hand. “What are the boys like in your school?

Have you made a new best friend?” Svenja was an only child with poor prospects who, Emmy imagined, would choose a life like so many of the

18

•

A my S ch eibe

women in the basement below, settling down with a local farm boy and losing her beauty slowly over time to successive babies and the layers of flesh they’d drape around her ample figure. Emmy had watched this progression plump the older girls in Glyndon, and she couldn’t deny that marrying Ambrose might seal for her a similar fate. Emmy felt a sliver of solidarity as Svenja pulled her into a confidential hug. “You know, when we graduate this spring, I might just join you there,” Svenja whispered.

“Oh, I don’t plan on being in town for that long,” Emmy said. “I’ll be back around here for good before you know it.”

Svenja shrugged, playing with a loose button on her threadbare cotton coat. “Don’t you ever wish there was more than this?”

“Sometimes.” Emmy looked Svenja in the eye. They had been baptized on the same day and confirmed together fourteen years later, but had very little else in common other than parallel time lines pointing forward from the step on which they were huddled. “Of course there’s more out there, but there’s plenty here as well. Do you?”

“Me?” Svenja shook her head with a light laugh before a cloud passed over her expression. “Can you keep a secret?”

“I’d rather not.”

Svenja took her hand and leaned closer, though Emmy hardly thought that possible. “My mother says that I should marry John Hansen. Apparently he’s been asking about me.”

“That’s good, right?” Emmy said, trying to sound cheerful. John was even older than Ambrose, and a longtime bachelor who lived with his aging parents on a disheveled sheep farm that smelled in a way that made Emmy roll up the window of the car on a hot day whenever they drove past. It didn’t smell much better in the winter with them closed.

“They do have quite a few acres of beets. Enough to afford a field hand, who comes all the way from Texas every spring.” Svenja attempted a hopeful aspect.

Out of kindness, Emmy chose not to speak the obvious—everyone knew John to be slow of thought, and beyond hiring himself out to work with the Branns’ cows, his prospects were slim.

“I know he’s not as worldly as Ambrose.” Svenja sprang to her feet. “But I suppose there are far worse fates. I’m going in. You?”

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

19

“It’s quiet out here, and too hot in there,” Emmy said, pointing at the door.

“Okay, then. You know where to find me.” Svenja sat on the iron handrail and slid down the length of it, just as they had done over and over again when they were small.

“God be with you,” Emmy said as Svenja slipped through the cellar door. Soon enough Emmy would have to follow, tie on her apron, and clear cups, as she did every Sunday. Then they would all get into the car and drive the half mile to the Brann farm, make the polite small talk, eat the overdone roast, and wait for the details of her fate to be decided. How could she not at least try to take a step in another direction, one small step to know what she might be missing? Emmy found great comfort in her life with her family, but she felt as she sat and looked out on the graves of people she had known, and people who had known her whom she didn’t even remember, that the distance between where she sat and the rectangle of earth awaiting her had precipitously shortened. Her foot itched and her stomach growled.

The inertia of passive solitude stretched within her as a deep shiver began to rack her body. A scrim of dread descended as she imagined the next ten minutes: rejoining Ambrose, having another chat about the weather with Mr. Brann, and saying a ten-minute good-bye to the pastor as he slowly worked his hot, damp hand from her elbow up to her shoulder while he talked about the Apostle Paul. The one time Emmy had tried to evade his lavender-smelling breath, Karin had lectured her for no less than a week on the shame of having a daughter who couldn’t show respect to a man of the cloth in God’s own house.

The door below her opened again, and Ambrose stuck his head into the cold, smiling tightly up at her. “You’re blue,” he stated. “Come in.”

Hearing his reined impatience, Emmy was startled to see that the Ambrose who stood at the bottom of the staircase was no longer the maypole that her childish imagination had wound itself around. Where once was a companion running, fishing, and hunting alongside of her, now there was a partner of a new sort: one whose lead expected a follow. His expression softened and he extended his hand with a coax of his fingers, a gesture whose familiarity pulled her away from Svenja’s romantic whisperings of more out there. Emmy turned the wheel of doubt back one click in Ambrose’s

20

•

A my S ch eibe

favor, took up the braces of her expected routine, and let the capricious notions of youth drift behind her in their gathering cloud.

O “Are you nervous?” Birdie whispered to Emmy in the backseat of their father’s old Coronet. The seats were threadbare, and the heat was so paltry that the girls had to spread horse blankets both under themselves and across their shared lap, causing a prickling sort of nonheat that they suffered without complaint. Emmy slipped her gloved hand into Birdie’s and nodded.

“Terribly,” Emmy said, looking out the window at the bleached monotony of the barren sugar beet fields. She swallowed hard against the dryness in her throat and took a deep, purposeful inhale, as though she were preparing to go underwater for an undetermined amount of time. Her parents sat on either side of her grandmother on the wide front bench seat, three bobbing heads in three different hats. As usual, Grandmother Nelson’s tiny frame was draped in layers of black fashion from the late 1940s, the absence of color or style marking her desire to be deep in the ground, next to her husband of fifty years. Emmy tried to imagine what that amount of time would feel like, how she would look at her grandmother’s age. Would she likewise shrink down like an apple-headed doll left for days in the sun? It was very possible that Emmy would outlive Ambrose, that she too would mete out her days in the middle of a son and daughter-in-law, being driven from one day to the next, and left to wander the rooms of an overlarge house with only the ghost of her dear dead husband to comfort her.

A forlorn smile pulled at Emmy’s lips and she immediately fought it down as the car turned off the main road and onto the long, narrow drive edged with plowed banks of gravel-studded snow that led into the Brann farm. Towering skeletal oak trees marked the property on four corners, connected by stands of bushy spruce planted as protection from the relentless year-round winds that would aspirate fine layers of topsoil straight into any open window, impervious to screens and sometimes even silting its way right through solid windowpanes.

At the top of the drive, the path curved into a circle around two tangled box elder trees, the spot where Emmy had spent many a warm Sunday af-

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

21

ternoon, either on a sturdy, gnarled limb or in the shady grass below. She could almost picture her own children up in these trees, spying on pirates or Indians, or maybe even little green men from Mars. This thought helped with the notion that she might someday be the lady of the enormous white Victorian house looming before them, the neatly trimmed green shutters and bare front porch giving Emmy the same old feeling of a thing untouched by love. Christian stopped the car in front of the big white slope-shouldered barn across the circle from the house, and Emmy crossed her fingers and made a quick wish: Please let me be happy here.

They were greeted at the door by Maria Gonzales, who had been both housekeeper and cook for the two men since Mrs. Emmaline Brann had died from consumption the summer before Emmy was born. It was from this tragedy that Emmy got her name—a sign of respect for the dead woman who had been Grandmother Nelson’s best friend. Maria was the smallest grown woman Emmy had ever seen, and the tightly wound bun of hair at the crown of her head had gone completely white in the years since Emmy had first looked up at it, and then gazed down on it, fascinated by its pristine roundness. Before Emmy was born, Maria had been a betabelero alongside her husband and five sons, splitting the beet roots in the muddy spring fields and thinning the rows by hand, stooped to the ground for hours on end. Moving out of the field and into the house was a rare but fortunate event for a migrant, and Maria’s cooking for the Branns bore none of the spice or color that Emmy had on occasion seen her take to the team of Mexican laborers who worked under Pedro on the immense Brann acreage.

Emmy removed her coat and slipped out of her snow boots, replacing them with the low-heeled church shoes that she had worn once a week, in every season, since her feet had reached their full size. The tight little group of Nelsons moved together into the formal dining room, where the table was set and Mr. Brann spoke in excited tones to the unfamiliar man Emmy had seen at church. She glanced at Ambrose, who stood behind a chair, ready to pull it out for her.

With the delicacy of a china teacup, Lida walked over to where the two older men sat, her arms extended in a warm welcome. “Why, I can’t believe my eyes,” she exclaimed, a childlike look of wonder brightening her face.

“I didn’t notice you at church.”

22

•

A my S ch eibe

The man stood and gently took her hand. “Dear Lida, you haven’t aged a minute.”

“Mr. Davidson was sitting in our pew,” Mr. Brann said, a proud smile of ownership on his narrow face.

“Please everyone, call me Curtis,” the stranger said, looking in particular at Lida, who seemed confused by his request. “With God’s help, I’ve begun my mission anew.” Emmy had never been invited to call a man of Mr. Davidson’s age by his first name, and certainly knew better than to do so in front of her mother. His teeth gleamed in a way that nearly glowed, small in size, but straight and neat between his thin, moist lips. Emmy assumed they were false.

“We’re glad to have you back with us,” Lida said, looking as though she might topple over. “God knows your heart.” She lifted one hand out to the room while holding fast to Mr. Davidson with the other. “You know my son, Christian, and his wife, Karin, of course. These are their girls.” A small sound clipped her speech and she pressed her smile into a frown for a brief moment, the ghost of some lost memory haunting her face. “If you will excuse me, we’ll go see what we can do to help Maria.”

“Naturally,” Mr. Davidson said, turning to Ambrose. “Which of these young ladies is Emmaline?”

Ambrose extended his arm toward Emmy, and she moved to his side.

“Emmaline, I’d like you to meet Mr. Curtis Davidson,” he said. “A good friend of our family.”

Emmy glanced at her father, who stood watching from the foyer doorway, hat turning slowly in his hands. She felt coltish and clumsy as she walked closer to Mr. Davidson. He was slightly taller than Emmy, with a puffy face and deep-set eyes under thick brows, and thinning gray hair streaked with an unnatural yellow that he had combed back in slick rows.

His suit was made from a brushed wool fabric that was fine and well fitted to his oddly shaped frame. As he lifted her hand in his powerful grip, a thick silver ring of diamonds set in a small cross shape on its flat surface flashed.

“Hello,” she said, and he brushed the back of her hand with his lips, a gesture that drew a bright shock of carpet light between them. “Oh,” she

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

23

said, rubbing her fingers. She hadn’t expected such strength from a man who had to have been almost as old as her grandmother, even though his corpulence gave him the features of a well-fed babe.

“You favor her,” he said with a nod to the kitchen door. This surprised Emmy, as she had never been told that she looked like anyone in particular, and certainly never her grandmother, whose complexion and hair had been dark, like Birdie’s. Perplexed, Emmy moved to her chair on the other side of Ambrose and smoothed her skirt across her lap, feeling the warmth of the heating grate under the table begin to melt her icy feet. She wondered why this man in particular would be invited on a day that had been intended for her and Ambrose. The stranger captivated the men, and Emmy couldn’t help wondering if his cursory glances at her were some sort of measurement that she would somehow fail, or if he had the kind of influence over the Branns that would result in her having to prove herself worthy in ways she couldn’t begin to attempt. If only the wedding could happen this May instead of next, then her feelings of being on uneasy ground might lessen.

That kind of thinking was useless in the face of her mother-ordered schedule. Karin deemed a year-long engagement the most appropriate; abandoning any part of the plan was unthinkable.

The conversation among the men shuffled through Mr. Davidson’s assessment of how the county had changed in the years he’d been away— apparently very little—which made Emmy wonder where he had been and why he seemed so curious about their family’s small piece of Moland Township. Eventually, the topic turned to the usual Sunday dinner speculation of when the earth would thaw and the beet seeds would be sown, what the Farmer’s Almanac had to say on the matter, and just how many cows on both farms were likely to give birth soon. Emmy fought the itchy sleepiness that comes from wearing layers of wool in an overheated house, drifting into the middle of the very important subject of calving.

“I’ve got a good deal of them here,” Ambrose said. “We’re going to be busy.”

“We’ve only got the two, the dam and the heifer,” Christian said, speaking for the first time since they’d arrived and causing Emmy to take careful note of the way he leaned back in his chair, while the three other men

24

•

A my S ch eibe

leaned forward. He picked a piece of lint from the tablecloth and rolled it between his fingers as though he found it more interesting than anything being said.

Lida entered on the tail of his words, her hands in quilted potholders carrying an oblong dish. “He’s been after me to sell that heifer,” she said to Mr. Davidson in a lilting voice, setting the steaming yams pooled with butter beside Christian’s plate and speaking over his head. “But I tell him she’s our fortune, the first piece of rebuilding our herd. We’ll fatten up that calf and sell it for two older dams.” Christian lifted his milk glass, but instead of drinking from it, he turned it slowly in the air.

“You always did know your cattle,” Mr. Davidson said, drawing a finger across the edge of his chin. He looked at Emmy and then at Christian, who set down the glass without further comment as Lida patted at the back of her tightly braided and wound hair, as though she were wishing it had been set and combed for the occasion. Something about Christian’s demeanor hung heavily in Emmy’s mind, a subtle aloofness in his aspect that she hadn’t specifically noticed before but felt quite certain had always been there, like a doily on the radio, or a layer of fine dust on a high shelf. It was almost as though he disliked the very idea of farming, and yet here he sat, pretending that its dissection was worthy of his consideration.

“Well, I think she’s already showing signs of discomfort,” Emmy said, attempting to assert a standing modeled after her grandmother’s. If Emmy were to be the wife of this household, she wanted her voice to be heard. Her father met her gaze and raised an eyebrow in what looked like mild amusement. Mr. Brann cleared his throat.

“What have you heard about the new leadership in Indiana?” he asked Mr. Davidson. “Will you be heading down there?”

“Ah, yes,” he replied, aligning his fork and knife. “They’ve got some fine ideas.” He watched Lida disappear into the kitchen. “But I think the Lord needs me to tend his flock here, begin again.”

Mr. Brann rubbed his hands together. “God willing, your voice will reach many eager ears,” he said, and picked up a small silver bell, ringing it sharply. It was the first time Emmy had seen him do such a thing, and it made her wonder what else might happen in the course of dinner. He set down the bell. “Until then, please make our home your own.”

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

25

“I thank you for the kind offer, brother,” Mr. Davidson said, looking around the room as though he’d already unpacked his bags in the main bedroom upstairs. “I’ve always felt at peace in Minnesota.”

Emmy cleared her throat. “I’ve never been to Indiana,” she said, only to find her second attempt at entering the conversation treated with the same maddening silence from the men, and a discreet tap on the knee from Ambrose that caused embarrassed heat to flow into her cheeks.

Karin hurried into the room with a platter of roast beef, carved and ladled with thick brown gravy. She went directly to Mr. Davidson and served him first, treating him with the kind of reverence that made Emmy wonder whether Mr. Davidson might be a minister of some sort. Emmy looked at her father, who was tracing a faint pattern on the tablecloth with his fork. The other women bustled in with an assortment of side dishes, then retreated to the kitchen to fetch more. When Emmy stood to help, Ambrose placed a firm hand on her shoulder and guided her back into her seat without stopping the flow of detailed information regarding the scientific timing of animal insemination that he was in the process of imparting.

She sat and clenched her teeth, filling her plate with whatever food was passed her way. If she wasn’t going to be allowed to talk like an adult or help like a child, she could at least occupy her mouth with something that might keep her from spitting in frustration.

“Curtis, you will honor us with a devotion?” Mr. Brann asked once all the food had been dispersed, the women seated, and hands folded in practiced anticipation of a blessing.

Mr. Davidson stood and motioned for the rest of the table to do the same, grasping a hand on either side of him. An awkward moment passed as the Branns and the Nelsons took up hands. Emmy closed her eyes and bowed her head, Ambrose’s palm moist on one side, Karin’s cold and dry on the other.

“Our Dear Lord,” Mr. Davidson broke the silence with a sonorous voice that sent a chord humming in Emmy’s chest. “When King David prayed for You to ‘wash him whiter than snow,’ he knew that he had to first come to You with the cleanliness of repentance and hope of forgiveness for his multitude of sins. For we are all sinners in Your eyes until we know what we have done and repented for it. Show these Thy children in this loving home

26

•

A my S ch eibe

how to be whiter than snow on the inside as You wash them in the purity of Your love and in the Life Everlasting. For without Your glory and the promise of Your home in Heaven, we are but ants in the field. Bless this food we are about to enjoy through Your bounty, and the bread that we break in the name of Your Son, through Whom we are promised the Divine Retribution at the end of our days. Please let us be thankful for this great country in which we live, founded on Your behalf, and protected by our tireless patriots.

Let us not take for granted our roles as protectors of God, country, women, and our religion, for there are those who would want us to cast aside Your mercy and Your ways for their own selfish needs. In Christ’s name we pray.

Amen.”

Though she was used to far longer devotions, when Emmy opened her eyes she had to blink against the sudden brightness of the white tablecloth set with white dishes and napkins, the good silver, and the crystal glassware filled with fresh milk. She took her seat and watched her own hand lift the glass and felt the cool liquid as it passed her lips, but for the rest of the meal she neither relished the food nor attempted to interject her thoughts on the rumbling conversation, which centered mostly on the sugar beet harvest that had only just wound down from its early winter frenzy.

How they could enjoy such endless minutiae on an annual topic—yield gains, soil astringency, labor contracts, upgrading of the discs and drills and tractors—bewildered Emmy, but it also made it easier for her to concentrate her efforts on chewing and swallowing. It became increasingly clear to her that the strange visitor’s arrival had taken precedence over her own affairs, and as the ticking of the clock became ever louder in her mind, she felt a curdled mixture of relief and dismay that the day was no longer about her betrothal. The minute the last bite of food was eaten, three of the men stood and moved off into the parlor, which Maria went toward, carrying a tray of coffee and biscuits. Christian lagged behind and turned to the foyer, pulled on his coat and walked out the front door. As the other women took the food into the kitchen, Emmy stood, stretched the nerves in the small of her back, and held still for a moment, trying to hear the men’s conversation drifting through the open parlor doors, wondering what they were talking about instead of her and Ambrose.

A Fireproof Ho me fo r th e B ride

•

27

“This new mayor over in Fargo,” Mr. Davidson said in a deeper, less polite tone than he’d used at the dinner table. “Is it true that he’s a Semite?”

Emmy stilled further, the tone of Mr. Davidson’s voice raising the flesh on her arms.

“It is,” said Mr. Brann. “We always said it would happen, but no one would listen.”

“Emmaline!” Karin said, grabbing Emmy’s arm hard and spinning her around. “You’re needed in the kitchen.”

Emmy’s hands shook as she quickly lifted the emptied plates and utensils and retreated to the overheated kitchen with a well-practiced resignation settling over the uneasiness that was simmering in her soul.

on-sale 3/17/15 Poxl West fled the Nazis’ onslaught in Czechoslovakia. He escaped their clutches again in Holland. He pulled Londoners from the Blitz’s rubble. He wooed intoxicating, unconventional beauties. He rained fire on Germany from his RAF bomber.

Poxl West is the epitome of manhood and something of an idol to his teenage nephew, Eli Goldstein, who reveres him as a brave, singular, Jewish war hero. Poxl fills Eli’s head with electric accounts of his derring-do, adventures and romances, as he collects the best episodes from his storied life into a memoir.

He publishes that memoir, Skylock, to great acclaim, and its success takes him on the road, and out of Eli’s life. With his uncle gone, Eli throws himself into reading his opus and becomes fixated on all things Poxl.

But as he delves deeper into Poxl’s history, Eli begins to see that the life of the fearless superman he’s adored has been much darker than he let on, and filled with unimaginable loss from which he may have not recovered. As the truth about Poxl emerges, it forces Eli to face irreconcilable facts about the war he’s romanticized and the vision of the man he’s held so dear.

Daniel Torday’s debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, beautifully weaves together the two unforgettable voices of Eli Goldstein and Poxl West, exploring what it really means to be a hero, and to be a family, in the long shadow of war.

DANIEL TORDAY is the Creative Writing Director at Bryn Mawr College. An author, and former editor at Esquire magazine, Torday currently serves as an editor at The Kenyon Review. His short stories and essays have appeared in Esquire, Glimmer Train, Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories, Harvard Review, The New York Times and The Kenyon Review. Torday’s novella, The Sensualist, won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for debut fiction.

Acknowledgment: Prologue

Before halftime on Super Bowl Sunday, January 1986, my uncle Poxl came over. He was just months from reaching the height of his fame, and unaware the game was being played. He wasn’t technically my uncle, either. He was an old friend of the family. For years he had taught at a prep school in Cambridge, where my grandfather had served as a dean. After a massive heart attack a year after I was born left my grandfather as much a memory to me as thin morning fog, Uncle Poxl came to fill the void. That Sunday he sat down in the living room and, speaking over the game’s play-by-play, started a story he could barely clap his gloves free of snow fast enough to tell.

A miracle had occurred that afternoon. His neighbor had died a few months back, and though my Uncle Poxl was consumed with the details of the upcoming publication of his first book, he’d advised the neighbor’s sons on the handling of the estate. The neighbor was an obscure literary novelist who’d enjoyed acclaim early and then none. Their father had left nothing more than his immense library—and thousands of dollars of debt from a mortgage on a house too far in arrears to sell. Uncle Poxl had become immoderately involved in figuring a way to help them, though it wasn’t clear what expertise they felt he could lend—decades ago he’d quit a job at British Airways to take a Ph.D. in English literature, then later dropped his dissertation on Elizabethan drama to finish what would in time become the successful memoir of his time flying Lancaster bombers

2

DANIEL TORDAY

for the RAF. Maybe they assumed that because he had owned a number of houses and apartments, he had a certain familiarity with ownership. Maybe people just assumed from listening to his confident tone that my uncle Poxl knew what he was talking about.

He was falling behind in grading for his classes, and in the early spring he would hit the road for his book tour, but something hadn’t let him give up this neighbor’s case.

“Then today,” Uncle Poxl said as Steve Grogan missed a receiver with a pass, “the deus ex machina!”

I had no idea what he meant at the time—I was barely fifteen, and what mattered back then were the Patriots and the Red Sox, a girl named Rachel Rothstein I was after in my Hebrew class who couldn’t have cared less for some wizened British war hero. But that Sunday I was too drawn in by his unerring voice, its dry gravity and utter self-belief, not to find out what happened to his neighbor’s sons. Somehow his voice had found the only register that could drown out the game’s clamorous announcers.

“Willie, the younger son, asked me if I’d help pack,” Uncle Poxl said. “He figured he’d give the books away.”

Poxl had noted my eyes on him now, not just my parents’. The volume of his wry voice rose perceptibly.

“We were a dozen books in when I dropped Saul Bellow’s Herzog. I picked it up, and a crisp hundred fluttered to the ground.

Willie and I looked at it like it was—well, like it was a rabbi on a football field.”

He looked at me. The Bears scored. I missed the play and the replay.

“Julian had used hundred-dollar bills as bookmarks in every one of his books. He’d get paid two hundred dollars a review, and put half back into the books. They hadn’t counted it all yet, but there must have been near to a hundred thousand dollars in those books—he didn’t write a review every week, but he wrote for that paper regularly, and others. Maybe he thought his sons would find it all. Willie

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

3

doubted it, and I did, too—we were a pile of cardboard boxes away from handing his estate to the Harvard Coop!”

Uncle Poxl kept talking, hauled along by the wonder of the thing.

I’d rarely seen him so animated. This was the first time we’d spent alone with him since he’d finalized copyedits on his memoir, and his appearance at our house was a surprise, given the frigid air and snow outside. We’d assumed we wouldn’t see him again until his first reading, here in Boston, scheduled for the week after the book’s publication date. I’d been longing to see him, my eccentric European uncle who’d lived so much life. But now the Patriots were in the Super Bowl for the first time, and my tongue buzzed like it did after I woke from a nap. My mother changed the subject, and by then I’d stopped caring about the game. Would the contents of a book ever carry the same meaning again?

This image of hundred-dollar bills spilling out of the pages of books would plague me for years. I tried to watch the end of the football game, but Grogan was awful, and a three-hundred-pound Bears lineman known as “the Refrigerator” scored a touchdown, and I couldn’t set my mind to anything but my uncle Poxl and when I’d finally get to read his stories between bound pages.

As I say, my uncle Poxl would reach the apex of his own literary success in the months ahead, after his book finally made its way into the world. Every season for as long as I could remember, Poxl had taken me to the opera, the symphony, to the Wang Center to see plays and musicals. If there was a performance of Shakespeare anywhere in our city, Poxl would find a way to take me. This wasn’t the kind of thing that should have interested me—a trip to Fenway was my idea of a cultural outing—but my uncle Poxl was built like a power forward and moved fluidly as a Bruin, and he was everything the other Jewish authority figures in my life weren’t. On Monday and Wednesday afternoons I suffered two hours of Hebrew school, where our

4

DANIEL TORDAY

aging teachers would ply us with tales of woe, melancholy stories of the survivors of death camps and ghettoization. I remember seeing for the first time, when I was only ten, the black numbers tattooed on a classmate’s grandmother’s wrist. I can see even now my young brain being tattooed with anxiety and pensive fear. My grandfather had survived that period and reached the States—only to die before I’d gotten to know him. It compounded my sense then that history was some untrammeled force acting upon us, leveling any hope of heroism like some insuperable glacier flattening mountains to plains.

Even the new young rabbi at our synagogue, Rabbi Ben Schine, who had come straight from Berkeley with a nappy beard and hair past his shoulders, calling us dude and trying to get us to talk Jewish mysticism, sat nodding solemnly as these stories were recited, fingertips tracing his copy of Night. I recognize now, of course, why we were being inundated with these truths. But I was fifteen, and what I needed was a hero—and hope. We might be able to see God’s body in the Kabbalah’s ten Sefirot, but it was 1986, barely forty years since our grandparents’ generation sat desperate and fated in their East European neighborhoods. Never again, our teachers incanted to us Monday after Monday, Wednesday after Wednesday. But when I picture myself in those rooms in the basement of our shul, even now I can only hear the incantation’s reciprocal: It will Happen again. Beware.

Be always aware. But I was growing to see myself as an exception then, too, for I was learning on those outings with Poxl West that I had an antidote in my family: There was more thunder in my uncle Poxl’s senescent face than in one strand of Rabbi Ben’s unkempt mane. Trailing him like the sweet whiff of cherry tobacco from a pipe smoker’s coat was the fact that he’d been a pilot for the Royal Air Force, a Jewish war hero, the only one I’d ever heard of.

I would’ve followed his broad shoulders into the ballet without embarrassment.

Though his teaching job held a certain prestige, Uncle Poxl was

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

5

an aspiring writer when we started on our trips. It was all he’d wanted in his later years, to get down stories based on recollections of his youth, and all he did with his free time. But in more than a decade, three novels had been rejected by New York editors. No matter how proud he was, his shoulders slumped a bit farther forward with each turning away. Regardless, my parents felt it an inherent good that Uncle Poxl serve as my monthly Virgil through the vague cultural life of downtown Boston—no accrual of rejections in New York could undo cultural currency in our small city, and any time spent with Poxl would do me good, they said.

What I learned from my Uncle Poxl on those outings didn’t come as we listened to Daniel Barenboim play the Moonlight Sonata. After each event Uncle Poxl would drive us out to Newtonville, where over sundaes at Cabot’s he would read passages to me from his latest project, this one not a novel but a memoir. After his return from a trip to London for the funeral of a captain he’d served alongside in the RAF, he’d finally decided he would write a memoir of his life during that time. He’d felt more comfortable writing fiction, but if it was a memoir the world needed, he’d write it. It wasn’t much different from the novels he’d read to me from in the past. They were full of strange, awkward depictions of sex, scenes that, looking back, I now realize I was too young to be hearing. Th is new book felt overwrought at times, a feeling I wasn’t too young to pick up on. But with this new project, suddenly the scenes he’d written were vibrant, absent the hesitations and wanderings of his earlier works. The sex scenes, while still graphic, were somehow easier to hear. Even today I feel a pride that borders on embarrassment intuiting that those scenes were crafted to make my younger self accept them.

“This next section,” Poxl said one night after four long hours of Don Giovanni, “is the most gripping scene of all, when the reader sees what we were really up against. The story of when the ‘S-Sugar’ bomber went down in a lightning storm.”

His hands flew up near his curly auburn hair. Uncle Poxl had one

6

DANIEL TORDAY

of those pointy red Ashkenazi faces whose very shape carries confidence and import. The bridge of his nose was so thin it simply faded into his high red brow. Atop his head he wore a trademark porkpie hat, the brown felt of which was always brushed. The hat’s name wasn’t lost on him: “It’s the closest to anything tref I ever come,” he said.

Out from the hat’s sides stuck shocks of his remaining translucent hair, which took light like a polished garnet. Lambent crimson ran to his cheeks through gossamer veins. But there was nothing varicose about my uncle Poxl’s face: He was hale and lissome, a man of indeterminate age but whose virility was discernible in the very color of his cheeks. He wore a black tweed Brooks Brothers suit with narrow lapels and a collar he’d popped against the Boston winter.

He saw no need to smooth it down now that we were inside spooning pralines and cream.

“My squadron flew into a thundercloud over Lübeck,” he said.

“That’s when the S-Sugar began to fly into the thundercloud, too.

Crack, boom, blue lightning! You’ve never seen anything like it.”

I asked him to read it to me instead of telling me about it—he’d written it down, after all, and I wanted to hear—and so he put his face to the loose pages before him and read. The world around us dropped away as I listened to my uncle Poxl read from his book. His hands spun dense nimbus clouds in the air between us as he narrated the bomber’s bravery. This was an entirely different kind of war story than the kind we read at Hebrew school—a story not of survival, but of action. It was as if he was crafting his great account before my very eyes, and I don’t know that I’ve been so close to history since. My uncle Poxl was born in a small city north of Prague but he had a diplomat’s accent—his cars had r’s, his parks, too, and unlike the living survivors we met or whose books we read in Hebrew school, his tongue wasn’t thick and muddy with Slavic consonants. As he described in the middle chapters of his book—I’d heard each of them as we talked over fudge and whipped cream—he had

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

7

been sent to London by way of a year in Rotterdam. By the time the Luftwaffe began bombing the East End, he was enlisted as a squaddie. Poxl was a Jew who had flown for the Royal Air Force during the war and lived to write about it. Though he carried in his broad shoulders the complicated burden of his own actions in those days, he had wrested his fate from the inevitable bearing down of history upon his fellow Ashkenazi Jews. And not only that but he’d lived to write about it, too.

And write about it he did. Each time he finished a new chapter he would take me somewhere new and recount to me his finest similes, the clearest arisen memory, the complicated feeling that arose as he remembered things he’d obviously spent most of his adulthood trying to forget—all for the sake of literature. For the sake of those who came after him. We talked about the fact that this is why men wrote: to leave behind their stories for those who would come years later.

“The pages are flowing from me faster than ever before,” Poxl said one afternoon. We’d just gone to stare at the Renoirs at the Museum of Fine Arts. He had an innate knack for spotting celebrity, and that afternoon, like two little kids spying on the neighbor’s wife, we watched Katharine Hepburn as she studied the great painter’s brushstrokes. But now we were again at Cabot’s, and he had promised to read to me from the middle of the book, pages he’d only recently completed. I asked him what the new scenes were about.

“Well, until I started writing, I’d entirely forgotten about the day I enlisted. The officer called me into his office,” Poxl said. “ ‘Weisberg,’ the officer said, ‘we need to talk. If you’re shot down over Jerry soil, a man with a Jew name like yours will be torn to pieces.’ So that’s how they came to call me Poxl West—the kind of name men remember.” He looked at me, and I looked back. I implored him just to read to me, and as he always did, he shuffled the pages in front of him and settled back into his tale.

8

DANIEL TORDAY

I sat and stared at my uncle as if he were the only hero we’d seen that day. Who needed some prune-faced old actress I’d never even seen in a movie when my uncle Poxl was there to recite his stories?

Even when he stopped mid-sentence and stared at the shimmering window behind me, an odd blankness coming over his face, as if he might stop, I felt I could read the story he was telling in the ageless lines of his sharp red face.

By the time I was a sophomore in high school he had finished the book. As I’ve said, this one quickly found a publisher. A small but prestigious press bought it, offering a respectable advance. A book tour was arranged, he completed his copyedits, the first edition was printed, and before he even had a chance to give that first reading in Boston—not three short months since that moment when he’d come to my parents’ house and interrupted the Super Bowl—the book began to get real notice. Before we saw him again we read the review on page twenty-three of The New York Times Book Review.

The reviewer was laudatory and honest: “Skylock is not a perfect book. There are some odd formalities in its language at times, and its second half is stronger than its first. But the story Poxl West has to tell is truly unique, a history we need, and there’s something undeniable about the quality of its details, the precision of its observation. Having finished it, I don’t think I’ve been so moved by a book in recent memory.” Without even talking with him I could imagine my Uncle Poxl’s response: “There are some criticisms in there, Eli, sure. Even The Great Gatsby isn’t a perfect book. But my book! Reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. The New York Times!”

I imagined the glint in his eye over a sundae we would share later that year. I knew even if I chided him, nothing would sway Uncle Poxl’s new, implacable optimism in the wake of its publication. He’d received an advance against future royalties, and notice in the paper of record.

Now my Uncle Poxl was a writer.

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

9

Before the ink had dried on the newsprint in the Times, Poxl had moved out of his tiny apartment in Somerville and rented an apartment in Manhattan—the place was in Spanish Harlem, but it was a place in New York. Though he held no Ph.D., having been ABD for longer than I’d been conscious, he was offered an adjunct class at Columbia in the fall. He planned to take a leave from his job teaching ninth-grade English. He had syllabi to write and readings to conduct. He’d called my father one afternoon when I was at a basketball game, and I can still feel how my skin prickled with jealousy that I hadn’t been the one to answer. I could only hope and imagine he’d honed those very passages of his book on those Cabot’s trips of ours. Somehow I’d been a part of the writing of this book—I’d touched history, fame, and heroism all in one small passive reach, and though it later nudged me down my path, it gave me no solace at the time.

Uncle Poxl was to be a known writer, but as a result our Brahmin cultural outings were to take a hiatus.

I wrote him a letter congratulating him and briefly bemoaning not seeing him or the Rodins at the museum for a while. He wrote back with the promise of complimentary copies of his book—which we wouldn’t receive until we saw him for his reading in Boston. Those books hadn’t arrived. I allowed myself to assume he was simply too busy to send them along, or his publisher had forgotten to fulfill his request, but my parents could see the disappointment on my face each time mail arrived without copies of his book. I tried to remember what Poxl had written, but there were so many gaps to be filled, and what is the memory of words compared with reading the pages of a book? I longed to hold the object. I wanted to see Poxl West’s name on the cover.

But what I did get was that letter. I hadn’t flown his mind entirely. It was written on stationery, at the top of which was embossed The Algonquin Hotel in red letters, the color of which matched his face.

10

DANIEL TORDAY

“As soon as my tour is over,” Uncle Poxl said at the end of his handwritten note, which I still keep in a desk drawer today, “I’ll take you down to the island of Manhattn. We’ll go to the Galerie St. Etienne and I’ll show you the Schieles there—oh, the Schiele’s there! What a treat you’re in for, Elijah. You’ll come down to New York. Then you’ll really see something for once.”

Skylock: The Memoir of a Jewish RAF Bomber

ACT ONE

1.

I grew up in Leitmeritz, a small Czechoslovak city forty miles north of Prague. My father owned a large leather factory called Brüder Weisberg. It was a business he ran for his family, out of filial duty and love, and if this story is to be about something, it is love, not war. And if we are to understand romantic love, we must first understand the languid, sedentary love of family.

My father was among the most well-to-do Jews in Czechoslovakia. We lived in a large house on a hill above the streets of Leitmeritz. Its long stone façades overlooked the city all the way down to the Elbe, over the tufted green hills where I played as a child and endured the bullying of instructors at a strict gymnasium. When I was young I worked at my father’s factory.

I learned the trade, and on holiday accompanied him to the aerodromes, where the fortune he’d accrued allowed him the luxury of flying private aeroplanes. One day, I was to take over the factory.

Every Sunday, while my father flew his planes, my mother took me into Prague to see her mother, my grandmother. We arrived at the main train station and she walked me through Wenceslas Var, across the Charles Bridge and up to the castle

14

DANIEL TORDAY

mount to buy some smazeny syr before crossing the city to my grandmother’s town house. Black bulbs at the top of the cathedral stood out, imposing against the marbled sky. Walking up the cobblestone streets we passed cafés and bars where men stared at my mother’s beauty as we passed. From the top of the mount we witnessed the drone of the Vlatava pushing in its absolute grayness, bisecting Prague like some great creature finding it easier to keep watch over a city divided.

On one particular visit when I was thirteen, the city was overwhelmed by a gray damp chill. It was late October and cold enough to erase most odor from the air. Only the pungent smells of meat held the power to waft by on our walk to my grandmother’s immense town house in the Zizkov district. Cobblestones made a trail from the river, and beneath my feet I saw 2 . . . 4 . . . 16 . . . 132 . . . 17, 424 and on into infinity millions of cobblestones smudged to a variegated mix. The sky throbbed with fast-passing clouds. I walked with my arm in my mother’s until she stopped. I looked up and saw pasted to a stone wall posters drawn by the Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha.

My mother stood staring.

She was an amateur painter, a habit my father supported with a complicated reluctance I could not understand. On our trips to Prague she would always divert us when my father was absent, eager to see what art she could. While she stopped, two men paused alongside us to look at these posters, as well. Green vines enwrapped the bodies and breasts of stark naked women, in their hands bunches of grapes. One of the men next to us said to the other in a shallow, informal Czech: “Wouldn’t you like to have one just like her?”

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

15

“Flat up against a wall like that,” the other replied.

They both laughed and looked at my mother, expecting to have offended her.

She smiled at them.

She was not embarrassed by the nude women before us. The men’s lecherous leers and ugly comments did not faze her.

They looked at me, and my skin prickled.

They walked away.

I watched a change pass over my mother’s face: The skin about her eyes drew back and I saw there a kind of giddiness my father at all times looked upon with impertinent disdain.

We walked to my grandmother’s. She lived at 30 Borivojova, in a town house painted canary yellow. The components of its face were those chisel-cut rectangular stones one might find all across the city. On the front steps leading to the door sat a pair of angry lions. Inside the entranceway the air was close. Grandmother Gertrude, whom we called “Traute,” held my head to her bosom. She kissed me on my cheek and rubbed the invisible stubble over her upper lip against my nose. I longed to get away and departed for the lav, and when I reached it, I tended to myself. In the cobblestones that rose out of my memory came Mucha’s women—only overlaid by that scrim of stones, they grew even more angular. This new image seared itself across the backs of my eyelids. I felt the warmth of their painted bodies come to life under my skin.

While I was cleaning up, I heard footsteps.

I froze.

They veered off into a room nearby. As I moved toward the sitting room where I’d left my mother and grandmother, I

16

DANIEL TORDAY

noticed the door to a little-used room off the main dining room was open. Inside, I found my mother standing before half a dozen paintings propped along the far wall. A burlap tarpaulin that must have been used to cover them was strewn across the floor. The angular girl in the painting before my mother sat with her legs spread, her hands below her small breasts and a mossy tuft just covering her exposed pink sex.

The two paintings next to it it contained more of the same.

My mother took note of my presence. She blanched. Her shoulders drew back. A look crossed her face.

“I suppose I’m glad to see you like them,” my mother said.

“They’re the work of a great painter, an Austrian called Schiele.”

I looked away from the first painting and to one of an emaciated, naked older woman who appeared to be writhing in pain.

My mother pushed it off to the side to reveal a portrait of a similarly angular woman with her legs spread as if to form a wishbone, between them heavy brushstrokes of dark gnarly brown. My mother explained that she had posed for Schiele when she was young, during summers she spent in Neulenbach, outside Vienna. There she would go to his atelier to see him with his woman, Wallie. She took my mother to buy beautiful hats until Schiele was sent to prison.

But I could not listen to her words—for on the face of the second Schiele girl, I saw something fantastic, something I hadn’t noticed in the midst of my preoccupation with the fact that certain deep brushstrokes had been used to create the deep pink roundness of the areolae on that girl.

The face in that second painting was very young. But it was clearly my mother’s.

If that realization wasn’t enough, these paintings were the

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

17

exact images overlaid by cobblestones that I’d seen when I’d closed my eyes in the bathroom minutes earlier.

I blinked hard.

It was as if I had crafted Schiele’s style in my mind just minutes before. While I marveled at this coincidence, my mother said that before her marriage to my father was arranged she had sat for “her Egon” when Wallie was away. She had been the subject of a number of his paintings. Grandmother Traute had tracked down the others some time later, wishing them to be kept private.

“So what do you think, Poxl?” she said.

Again that look crossed her face.

“Let the boy to his tea,” Grandmother Traute said. She had arrived in the doorway—when I couldn’t say. “He hasn’t had a thing to eat.”

My grandmother sent me off to my tea. Voices rose from the other room and then cut out altogether. Something passed between my mother and grandmother. They returned to the drawing room. We ate. Mother sent me off for our coats and I heard corrugated words pass between them yet again. Soon we left without my learning what had transpired.

Then we were going home to Leitmeritz. My father planned to stay on another night in Prague to steal skyward one more day in his new plane. It struck me only later just how often one or the other of my parents was in Prague alone, each taking trips south almost weekly. Though in the years to follow I would learn from my father how to handle those small propeller planes that prepared me for the Tiger Moths I would later train on, my mother and I now rode the train home alone.

18

DANIEL TORDAY

“Now that I know what you thought of the Schieles,” she said, “tell me. Would you want to try your hand at painting one day?”

I’d only ever shown interest in books, and in my father’s leather. The latter was the only viable option for me. The former could survive in mind only as a potential avocation.

“I’ll take over Brüder Weisberg one day,” I said.

“Well, yes, but you could paint on the side.”

“If I was going to do anything,” I said, “I’d write, or at the least study books, I suppose.”

Her eyes grew gray. I did not know a thing about painting, but I knew my mother well enough to see I’d disappointed her.

I tried to say I could show her some of my writing if she wanted. But her eyes only darkened. She was staring out at the fallow fields alongside our window. Stands of sunflowers grew diffuse in the thickening evening light.

“Your grandmother felt very strongly against my having posed for Schiele when I was a girl,” my mother said. She continued to stare out the window as she spoke. “I was just the age when a woman is supposed to have her marriage arranged. My parents decided your father was the man for me. His family still lived in Prague then. They were a good family. This was before the riots, just before you were born, before we moved to Leitmeritz for good. But that summer I lived in Neulenbach and Egon—” She stopped for a second. Not looking at me, she started up again. “The painter Schiele, whose work I’ve introduced you to showed me how to paint. He suffered for his art.

He was jailed after everyone in town complained he was cor-

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

19

rupting their—that he should not be painting the portraits as he was painting them. It was only after his death that Vater would even let us keep his paintings in our house. Then Grandmother Traute became obsessed with tracking them all down, owning them.”

Again she stopped and looked out the window.

We both stopped talking. My mother went to sleep. She was a small woman with the curly rust-red hair a minority of Ashkenazi Jews are blessed with. A pair of earrings dangled from her lobes, each with a piece of amber the size of a child’s shooting marble. I put my head against her clavicle as I always had when I was a child. In her half-sleep, she pulled me to her, then took the amber from her ears. She clacked them against each other in her left hand. Only when the knocking of amber quieted did I know she’d passed fully into sleep.

I put my finger to her ear as I had when I was a child, as I would never stop longing to do. She lay against the door, stilled, sedentary, a woman frozen, having been captured in paint and only half-released back to the world moving past her. Her earlobe grown soft, ceding to the amber’s pull, drooping, awaiting the next trip to Prague.

2.

My name has appeared as pilot at the top of more flight manifests than I could possibly count. But you will not find a written record of the most memorable time I rose skyward. It was little more than a year after that trip to Prague with my mother.

20

DANIEL TORDAY

After many years left standing in a field at the aero club my father belonged to, watching him fly off and waiting for minutes, hours, until his plane appeared again in the sky—he a distant cloud obscuring the sun as I waited below—when I turned fifteen we drove down together to fly in his new Bene!-Mrāz Be-50 monoplane. Business must have been going well, a real fortune accruing, for this was the first plane he owned outright.

For weeks prior, my father had quizzed me on flight safety, and I had complied. And now here we were.

There was an overcast sky that early-spring morning. We’d left Leitmeritz before the sun rose above Radobyl and spoken little in the morning haze coming down, and we were alone at the aero club when we arrived. My father liked very much to teach me about the leather business, but there was a newfound energy in him that morning—one I’d observed many times before and now could finally share for the first time. In the small hangar I was overcome by the smell of petrol filling the air. As my father went about his work, prepping the parts of the wooden wings of his new plane, we talked with a freedom I rarely experienced with him. His hands were busy, and when your hands are busy, it liberates your voice.

“Do you like the books you’re studying at the gymnasium, Leopold?” he said. Only my father called me by my full name.

Everyone else just called me Poxl. “Your mother tells me you long to study books. Perhaps you’ll be a writer.”

“I didn’t tell her that,” I said. “I want to take over the business. But I told her that if I were not to take over the business, I’d be more interested in books than I would in painting.”

His hands stopped moving along the wood of the ailerons

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

21

he’d been working on. I watched him make twin fists, knuckles pink against white skin, and then release them. Then he began again at his work.

“Yes, your mother and painting,” he said. “Very hard to get her off that topic once she’s begun.”

I agreed with him and though I thought of mentioning the Schiele paintings, asking him about my mother’s life before I was born, before they met, I quickly thought better. I recognize now that of course my father knew more about my mother and her business than I possibly could have gleaned, but I was her son and a teenager, so what really could he have told me? Here we were together. It was precious time, this time alone with my father, and I had none of the petulance of a teenager that morning. I had a goal and that goal was to get into my father’s new monoplane and see our world from above.

And so we flew.

My father sat in the cockpit and I sat in the passenger berth behind him, both of which were open, and he called out to ask me if I was ready, and when I said I was, we began taxiing ahead. As the nose of the plane began to lift I could feel the middle of my stomach dip toward the balls of my feet, and then the ground was lifting away from us. The field drew in at its edges below us and the Be-50 made a mighty racket, a whirring I could feel shaking deep inside my ears, but here it was! The gray of overcast skies pushed cloud masses against my eyes, and with the wind stiff and bracing against our faces in those open seats, the smell of petrol blew away. Instead, there was now the smell of droplets of water in my nose, the fresh morning smell of clouds. My father veered west, and soon we were passing in the sky above the old city

22

DANIEL TORDAY

of Prague. From thousands of feet above we could see every block—down below was my grandmother’s house in Zizkov among the many terra-cotta roofs, I knew, and to the west the castle mount, and what I remember most then was how I longed to talk to my father about it. I wanted to tell him what it looked like to see that city from above, how close it all seemed and how absurd that a walk from the Charles Bridge up to Grandmother Traute’s should feel significant, now seeing that one was but a thumb’s length from the other.

But even a shout was lost in the racket of the air in those open areas, and my joy at that flight came in my simply sitting back and taking it in, knowing that my father was taking me skyward. While he had a certain genius at business, in all other venues in life I could remember him only as passive—it was as if he was saving up all his energy and mastery for the two things he cared for most: selling his leather and flying his planes. I do not blame him for it; I know he didn’t see that it could make my mother feel he did not give her the attention she deserved, or that it might make me want and need more than he could give.

As we flew southward all the way down to Czesky Krumlov, where we could see the great oxbow in the river, my father’s right hand shot out to the leeside, pointing at the massive medieval castle at the village’s center. The cloud cover began to burn off, and while wisps of cloud might appear far ahead, that’s not what I could see, and it’s not what I remember. What I saw for that whole long flight each time my neck grew too stiff to continue craning, to look out at the land below, was the same thing I would see every time I flew with him in the years ahead, the same

THE LAST FLIGHT OF POXL WEST

23

thing I would see when my father bought a Tiger Moth biplane the following year, that same invisible guide that would be emblazoned on my eyes whenever I flew: I saw before my eyes the back of my father’s helmeted head.

on-sale 3/17/15 A computer-hacking teen. The girl who wants to save him. And a rogue mirror reflection that might be the death of them both.

In private, seventeen-year-old Brandon hacks bank accounts just for the thrill of it. In public, he looks like any other tattooed bad boy with a fast car and devil-may-care attitude. He should know: he’s worked hard to maintain that façade. With inattentive parents who move constantly from city to city, he’s learned not to get tangled up in things like friends and relationships. So he’ll just keep living like a machine, all gears and wires.

Then two things shatter his carefully-built image: Emma, the kind, stubborn girl who insists on looking beneath the surface – and the small matter of a mirror reflection that starts moving by itself. Not only does Brandon’s reflection have a mind of its own, but it seems to be grooming him for something—washing the dye from his hair, yanking out his piercings, swapping his black shirts for … pastels. Then it tells him: it thinks it can live his life better, and it’s preparing to trade places.

And when it pulls Brandon through the looking-glass, not only will he need all his ill-gotten hacking skills to escape, but he’s going to have to face some hard truths about who he’s become.

Otherwise he’ll be stuck in a digital hell until he’s old and gray, and Emma and his parents won’t even know he’s gone.

Huffington Post lists N. K. Traver’s Duplicity as part of one of the great YA book trends to look for in 2015 —don’t miss it!

As a freshman at the University of Colorado, N.K. TRAVER decided to pursue Information Technology because classmates said “no one could make a living” with an English degree. It wasn’t too many years later Traver realized it didn’t matter what the job paid—nothing would ever be as fulfilling as writing. Programmer by day, writer by night, it was only a matter of time before the two overlapped.

1. Seven Years Bad Luck

It figures that between the two of us, my laptop is the first to grow a conscience.

“You had no problem yanking credit cards last week,” I remind it, tapping my finger on the desk as I glare at the words on the screen. Words that should say STARTING JOB as my newest hacking bot cracks BankPueblo.com’s security layer. Words that should say PROCESSING as the bot downloads two hundred fresh account numbers to my thumb drive.

Words that should not say GET SOME SUNSHINE, LOSER. I must’ve typed the wrong name for the bot. My laptop’s full of old code I keep telling myself I’ll clean out and I must’ve triggered one of my old insult programs. I hit the shortcut keys to close everything, then reopen the console window and type the name of the bot, again. Z-O-O-M-F-I-S-H— ONLY COWARDS STEAL FROM THOSE WHO CAN’T FIGHT BACK, says this good-for-nothing piece of metal that dares call itself my computer.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I mutter, but I’m not feeling so sure about this anymore. That’s not an insult I would’ve coded into my own work. And if what’s happening now isn’t something I wrote . . . that means it came from somewhere else.

Which is, I remind myself, impossible.

1

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 1

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

I set my jaw and type the name of the bot. Again. All but the last letter: “zoomfis.” Then I hit the H key and the Enter as fast as I can, but somehow, somehow in that millisecond between keystrokes “zoomfish” changes to PLAY A SPORT IF YOU WANT EXERCISE and I slam my fist on the desk.

How? How the hell would anyone— My computer starts typing.

YOU SHOULD FIND A DIFFERENT HOBBY.

I didn’t touch the keys. I didn’t type anything that should trigger an insult, not “zoomfish,” not “you freaking traitor,” not anything, but there are the words on my screen, white as ice.

And my heart comes to life in my chest, because I know what this means but I want to keep thinking it’s impossible.

I need to reboot. Now, before the virus digs into my hard drive and downloads my hacking bots or my passwords for the hacker forums or the list of sites I’m planning to hit after I clean out Bank Pueblo. I jab the power key to restart, but it ignores me. Ignores me and says, YOU WEREN’T VERY NICE TO EMMA.

My blood changes direction. My fingers sting from the death grip I have on the desk, but I can’t let go, can’t stop shaking my head no no no because it can’t know about that. It can’t. That happened fi fteen minutes ago, maybe twenty, and it would take longer than that to hack through the firewalls on my computer.

Which means this is more than a virus someone planted and forgot about.

Someone has a live feed to my room.

I eye the camera lens on my laptop and jerk open the desk drawer to find something to cover it. I wish I hadn’t smashed the overhead light after Emma stormed out, because that leaves 2

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 2

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

only my lava lamp to see by, and its useless glow is just making more shadows. My fingers find a stack of Post-its. I rip the top note off and stick it over the lens.

There are new words on the screen. Words I want to unread the second I read them.

I THINK YOU REGRET WHAT YOU SAID TO HER.

My heart thumps Do you? Do you? Do you? and my grip on the desk slips from sweat. Emma is none of his business. How I feel about it is none of his business. If she hadn’t ruined everything telling me how she wants . . . things for us, I wouldn’t have had to break her heart.

That weird ache starts in my gut again, the same one I almost got rid of by running zoomfish.

I don’t regret things.

AFRAID OF CARING FOR SOMEONE BESIDES YOURSELF?

I’m done with this guilt trip. He’s clever, I’ll give him that, psyching me out while he’s probably corrupted half my hard drive, and I do what I should have done to begin with and switch off the wireless. That’ll kill his sicko webcam and anything he’s downloading. It’s going to be a pain getting the virus off my system, but— YOU THINK IT’S THAT EASY?

I think I actually squeak. Squeak, like a little kid afraid of his own shadow, not someone used to living in them. I don’t remember getting up but I’m five feet away from the desk now, my chair overturned in a pile of printer paper. The breath I’m holding chokes free.

He can’t. He can’t keep typing if I’m not connected to the Internet.

I paw for anything behind me I can use as a weapon, and I come up with—I squint in the dark—the long tube of cardboard 3

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 3

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

my newest Metallica posters arrived in. Great. If something leaps out of my computer, I can amuse it to death. It’ll have to do. I wait in the corner, tube poised like a bat. My laptop glows, innocent.

I inch forward.

No new messages.

I inch forward again.

The cursor blinks on and off, on and off, not typing anything. I right my chair and reach for the laptop’s power cord.

YOU KNOW WHY THIS IS STILL WORKING, RIGHT?

“How the hell are you doing this?” I snarl. The tube crumples when I clench it and I chuck it aside. Nothing’s going to jump out, nothing’s even really happened except he’s rigged the virus to type a different set of phrases after the wireless turns off. Obviously that’s it. It can’t be that hard to do. I’ll figure out how after I dig his virus up and break it to pieces.

Then I’ll find him.

THAT’S THE IDEA.

He just— Did he just read my . . . ?

HERE’S THE GAME, HACKER. I’M DONE WATCHING YOU RUIN PEOPLE’S LIVES. HEARD THE PHRASE “YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY”?

YOU’RE ABOUT TO LIVE IT.

Something in me wakes up. Common sense, maybe, because I slam the laptop closed, rip out the power cord and eject the battery, and that’s what I have in my hand when I see movement to my side. I don’t care if it’s a moth, if he’s somehow in my room I’m going to get the first move, and I chuck the battery at whatever it is and glass shatters and I duck and I realize— I’m an idiot.

4

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 4

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

The remaining shards of my now-broken closet mirror wink at me, then drop to the floor in tattletale chimes.

I stand there a minute, breathing deep, my heart beating crazy in my ears. Something in the back of my head whispers seven years bad luck and something else says that’s a load of crap and I suck a piercing in my lip, because louder than that, like the virus guy’s hissing in my ear, are the words here’s the game, hacker.

He couldn’t have read my mind.

Couldn’t.

I pace so I can breathe. I kick torn textbook pages and shredded posters out of the way as I go, flexing my hand, plucking splinters out of my knuckles as I glance at the fist-shaped dent in my dresser.

I remind myself I don’t regret things.

I’d usually leave this mess for Mom to remind her I’m still alive, but I can’t sit here waiting for my laptop to turn itself on or blow up or who knows what, so I stoop for a piece of plastic that used to be the case for an old Manson CD. My hand is shaking and all I can do is look at it.

Because who found me? Who cares enough to fi nd me?

Can’t be a cop, because he’d cut to the chase and knock on my door with a warrant, not play cat-and-mouse on my laptop. Can’t be a bot because he knows personal details about me. Like what happened with Emma. But I can’t think of anyone, even super hackers who get their thrills hunting other hackers, who would care what I say or do offl ine. Emma’s not the kind of girl who’d have connections like that and she’s not the kind of girl who’d get revenge, either.

Dammit, it doesn’t matter what kind of girl she is. I don’t need her. I don’t need anyone— Something on my floor glints. A piece of the mirror, though 5

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 5

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

I can’t imagine what it’s reflecting since I haven’t moved. The puckish gleam of my lava lamp isn’t near bright enough to cause a flash. I glance at the ceiling, at the wooden blinds half covering the window, and decide it must’ve been something outside. I’m tossing pieces of chapter six from my Spanish book into the trash when the shard winks again.

This time I’m focused enough to know nothing outside made that light. I pluck the glass off the floor and turn it, trying to recreate the flashing, but I get nothing. I wouldn’t care except that freaking hacker guy said he wanted me to find him, didn’t he? And how am I supposed to know if he means online or . . . or here? That makes me freeze and squint out the bottom of my window, but no one’s shining a flashlight in, no one’s standing on the street below.

I hate this. I’m supposed to be the kid they warn you about in those “online safety” classes. I’m supposed to be the monster, not this jerk. I’m Brandon Eriks, I like to break things, I’m good at breaking things, and if this guy’s itching for a fight, he’s found one. If he wants to meet, let’s meet. There’s a reason the kids at school stay away from me. There’s a reason the Feds can’t trace my hack jobs.

I just have to figure out his riddle. “Your own worst enemy. You’re about to live it.” They must be codes. I start working out an algorithm in my head as I pick up the rest of the shards and carry them with me to the bathroom. The phrases sound familiar, but I don’t know if that’s because I keep thinking them over and over or because I’ve seen them someplace.

I flip on the bathroom light, toss the shards into the seashell trashcan, and— and do a double take at the mirror.

No way.

It’s because I’m jumpy over that whole seven years bad luck thing. That has to be it. I move my hand across the counter, 6

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 6

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

and back. Across, back. The mirror moves with me, like a mirror should.

Of course it does. It’s a mirror.

But I swear when I threw the shards away, my reflection fl ipped me off.

7

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 7

1/21/15 8:29 AM

2. “Other” Brandon

“Brandon!”

Someone pounds on my door, hard enough that it sounds like it’s the third or fourth knock, not the first. I jerk my head up and wince as my face pries itself from the keyboard. My laptop screen flashes to life. I squint as it comes into focus, cursor blinking after the random set of characters my cheek pushed, underneath a message that says RUN SUCCESSFUL. Above that, it says ZOOMFISH. What the— “Brandon! Don’t you have class at seven-thirty?”

I check the clock. Eight-twenty a.m., meaning I’ve already missed first period and will be running on three hours’ sleep.

Last I looked, it was five a.m. and I still hadn’t found the damn virus. The activity log on my laptop claims I didn’t even turn my computer on until nine last night, an hour after my new stalker made his threats.

Like it never happened.

“I’ll take this thing off by its hinges,” Dad says, rattling the handle. “What did you do to this lock?”

I breathe out and slog across the room, push a key code into the box by the door, and twist open the knob. Dad glares up at me (he has to glare up at everyone, even Mom) and adjusts his 9

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 9

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

nerd’s glasses. I’d say he looks mad, but he always looks like that.

“God, you’re a waste of talent,” he says. “You can build code locks but you can’t do better than a C in history?”

“Missed you, too,” I grumble.

“Save it. I’m supposed to be on a conference call with London right now, after getting absolutely no sleep on the redeye from Atlanta. But no, instead I’m excusing myself to see if my high school junior has got himself to class yet. Did you sleep in all last week while I was gone?”

I think about that and make a face. Not because I ditched, but because . . . I didn’t. Because I started meeting Emma before school— “Brandon, when are you going to grow up?” Dad shouts.

“I shouldn’t have to babysit you at seventeen! Dammit, I—” His face pinches. A muscle works in his jaw as he pokes a bony finger into my chest. “Get your things. You have ten minutes, then I’m driving you to school.”

“What?” I say, though it’s more of a squeak (shut up) because I can’t decide if I’m stoked he’s driving me or terrified to be dropped off in public. “No, I’ll get ready fast, I’ll drive myself—” “No. I’m done with your games. What are you missing right now?”

“Creative writing. It’s a joke.”

“Oh, which means you’re getting an A, of course, so you can afford to skip?”

I close my mouth.

“Did you do your homework this weekend?”

“Yeah.” It’s mostly true. Somewhat true. The more Dad gives me that soul-piercing look, the less sure I am. “I mean, some of it—” 10

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 10

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

“Nine minutes left. After school, I’m picking you up and you’re coming right home and sitting in that living room until I say you can leave.”

He slams the door in my face.

I’m too shocked that he’s going to make London wait— so he can drive me—to yell my usual snappy comeback. I trace the knuckle dent in my dresser and pull out a Rage Against the Machine tee. Grab a pair of old school jeans off the floor, then it’s combat boots over those, a black leather wristband that makes Dad grind his teeth, just need to make sure my hair’s jacked up enough to get the same reaction— except my room has no mirror, so I’ll have to use the bathroom’s.

I glance at my laptop, lid closed on the desk.

It let me run zoomfish, so everything’s fine, right?

I listen for Dad and close myself in the bathroom. Dolphins smile at me from the shower curtain, and I shake my head at the seashell tile and think this room is one of the reasons I never bring anyone over. I guess that’s the good thing about moving so often. This theme’s a year old, so in another six months we’ll have a new house and I’ll have a new room I don’t show to anyone. And new stuff, meaning a dresser without my fist emblazoned on the front, because Mom is all about “New.” Seriously, I’ve never owned anything for more than two years.

I think of Emma showing me her bracelet.

“It was my grandmother’s,” she says. She holds her wrist over our unopened textbooks, angel’s smile in place. “Grandpa gave it to her, and she gave it to me before she passed away. Now it’s like I always have them with me.”

I reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull back. I hold her wrist and trace the tiny gold chain with my thumb, my pale finger against her tan skin, trying to understand how something this old can still exist. It’s like trying to see a new color.

11

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 11

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

“This helps when you miss them?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. Watching my finger on her wrist. She laughs, quietly. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I can hear Grandma talking to me sometimes when I look at it. Telling me about the night Grandpa gave it to her.”

I turn my arm to see more of my scorpion tattoo. I hear Bev and Eric, my sophomore year friends, cheer as the artist fires up the gun and starts drilling into my skin. I smile.

“Not crazy,” I say.

I grit my teeth. I don’t want to think about Emma.

And nothing in this house means anything to me.

I search the medicine cabinet and pop a few caffeine pills.

Wet my hand and lean toward the counter-length mirror to run it the wrong way through my hair, and— My wristband is gone.

I stare at my arm and try to remember if I actually put it on. It’s not on the floor or the counter. Of course, it would’ve been the last thing I grabbed, so maybe I meant to get it when I noticed my broken mirror and came straight to the bathroom instead.

I decide that’s what happened. I rake my hair back until it looks like I had a run in with a falcon, which doesn’t take much considering I slept on my keyboard, then lean in to check how bloodshot my eyes are. They look clear enough, but last night was a bad night and sometimes I get bored waiting for a bot to finish, but I swear I threw out that rubber cement— My reflection blinks.

I jerk back. It’s not possible, not possible, to see yourself blink.

I don’t feel that tired. I won’t until after lunch when the pills run out. I watch myself a moment longer, wanting and not wanting to see it happen again, and when it doesn’t I go for the doorknob. My reflection goes for the light switch. I yank 12

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 12

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

the door open just as the room pitches into darkness, bolt into the hall, and slam the door behind me.

I didn’t touch the light.

But it’s off.

Your own worst enemy.

I’m going crazy. Apeshit bonkers. Viruses stay on computers, they don’t turn into magic curses. This is what happens when you break a mirror? Not that that makes sense either, because the superstition is just bad luck, not freaky reflections moving when they shouldn’t.

Yeah, it’s finally happened. I’ve officially lost my mind.

“Brandon, time’s up!” Dad yells from downstairs.

I chuckle to myself, because, you know, that’s what crazy people do, and grab my backpack off the floor, where it’s sat untouched all weekend. To prove I’ve further gone off the deep end, I contemplate the thumb drive on my desk awhile, the one that should be full of zoomfish’s spoils if it worked like it said it did: two hundred names, addresses, routing numbers and passwords for Bank Pueblo’s richest clients. If I leave it here, Bank Pueblo may never fi nd out they’ve been hacked and the owners of those bank accounts will continue on with their happy little lives like there’s nothing at all that can hurt them.

I think of Dad calling me a waste of talent.

I snatch the thumb drive off the desk and fl ip it into my pocket.

“It’s time to straighten up, son,” Dad says, as he backs my tenyear-old Corolla out of the driveway. I gaze longingly at the silver BMW Z4 in the garage, which used to be mine before I got three speeding tickets and Dad got sick of shelling out bribe money to keep my license active. Still, it was worth the sacrifice. Dad drove me to school for a whole week after.

13

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 13

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

“Your mother’s working eighty-hour weeks, you know, with not a day off in between. She deserves to come home to a quiet house. You need to think of how hard this is on her, with all the traveling I have to do right now. Yet she still finds time to go to the grocery and clean and fi ll your pocket with lunch money. It would be nice if you showed some appreciation. No more ditching. No more skipping assignments, and I’m serious this time. You’re out of this house as soon as you graduate if you don’t have a college lined up, you hear?”

“Whatever.”

I slump against the seat and watch the Corolla’s side mirror.

Dad starts in about other privileges I’ll lose (iPhone, Internet, my human rights) if I continue doing what I’ve done the past five years, and I tune him out because I’ve heard it all before.

Instead I think about third period. Spanish III. Where I sit right next to Emma Jennings. “. . . a total embarrassment for someone in my position. Your mother and I don’t understand why you can’t just . . .”

The reflection in the side mirror rolls its eyes. I sit straight up, look at Dad, look back at the mirror, then down at my hands. I’m clenching the seatbelt, but in the mirror, my hand unscrews the bar piercing I have through the bridge of my nose, removes it, and tosses the silver out the window.

I stare at it until the reflection flashes, and it’s me again—I mean, it’s always been me, but now it’s wide-eyed, white-faced me— and I feel up the ridge of my nose.

No more piercing.

“Do you have a test today?” Dad asks. “Is that why you’re so ner vous?”

“Er, no,” I stammer, refusing now to look at the glass in case something else goes missing. “It’s, um, about a girl, kind of.

Not exactly excited to—” 14

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 14

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

“You and Ginger broke it off already? Could’ve told you that wouldn’t last. Girls like that are only trouble, and she knows we have money—” “God, Dad, Ginger was six months ago! This is . . . someone else. Doesn’t matter, don’t want to talk about it, aaaugh!”

I jerk back against the seat as my reflection throws both nose rings out the window. It didn’t hurt, didn’t feel like much of anything, but when I grab my nose I find only the holes where they used to be. I must be high. That or it’s one of those stupid dreams where your alarm goes off and you eat breakfast and go to school, only to realize you’re buck naked, and five minutes later the real alarm goes off and you’ve never been happier to actually get up.

I’m praying that’s what it is. I take a deep breath and run a hand through my hair and sink low so I can’t see the mirror.

“Brandon, what is—” The sound of crickets fi lls the car.

Dad fumbles with something in his pocket, almost takes the Corolla up a curb, then fl ips his cell phone to his ear. “Matthew Eriks speaking. Doug! I’m glad you called, did you get my report . . .”

That’s how we pull into the school lot. Dad yacking with Doug and me feeling up and down my face. I jack the door open while the Corolla’s still rolling and get as far away from it as the narrow sidewalk allows, but I don’t lose any more metal, and Dad’s turned around before I even have a chance to look back.

By the time I get inside, I’ve convinced myself I forgot to put those piercings in this morning. I’m hallucinating about the mirrors because I’m running on three hours’ sleep. There’s no other explanation for it.

(Here’s the game, hacker.)

15

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 15

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

No other explanation.

I have five minutes until the bell rings to dismiss fi rst period, so I shove my backpack into my locker and grab my Spanish homework and a pen. It’s the only homework I did this weekend, since Emma and I did it together.

Before she ruined everything.

Before she said— I grit my teeth and stuff the paper in the trash.

I take my usual route down maroon hallways; right, left, left, and I’m in The Corner, a small area that opens to the second floor. Sometimes kids throw crap off the balcony, but they’ve known for a while now not to throw anything at me.

The sun shifts down from windows in the ceiling. I slide against the wall just outside the light. Press my fi ngers along my nose until I realize what I’m doing and promptly pull out my phone.

The thumb drive in my pocket burns like a hot coal. I fish it out and plug the adaptor into the phone to check that the accounts are actually there. I don’t know if I’m more or less confused to see that they are, but I’m not exactly a stranger to doing things I don’t remember, so if zoomfish actually worked, I’ll roll with it.

200. You game? I text.

My phone vibrates thirty seconds later. When can we play?

11.5, I type. I slip the phone into my pocket as laughter drifts around the corner, soon followed by the last two people I wanted to see today.

Dad’s right about one thing. Girls like Ginger are trouble.

Candy pink hair, bangs swept over one eye, dark makeup that makes her green eyes promise you anything you want. And always pushing the dress codes, today in a loose black tentacle skirt whose shorter pieces can’t be longer than twelve inches, 16

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 16

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

atop torn fishnets and knee-high buckle boots, like something out of a pirate fantasy. Her long-sleeved shirt might’ve been school legal if the lace in the front didn’t dip so low.

I don’t need to look at Beretta to know what she’s wearing.

Kid thinks she’s a zombie and bites like one too, and she’s always in something dirt-stained and torn.

“Well, well,” Ginger says in her babydoll voice. “Look who’s back in The Corner. Thought you’d switched crowds on us. I can totally picture you in Calvin Klein.”

I shoot her a glare and pull my phone back out. Ginger saunters over, darkening my screen with her shadow.

“Branching out to corrupt the innocent now, are you?” she says. “Or maybe you’re going soft on us.”

My phone buzzes. I tap to open the message and then Ginger’s finger is on my nose, where the metal between my eyes used to be. I grab her hand and squeeze, hard.

“Ouch, Brandon, damn!” She pulls away, then raises an eyebrow. “So if you’re not going soft . . . did you do any corrupting while you were gone?”

See you then, says the message from my contact. I think about fifty grand, about the ZR1 Corvette I’ve been wanting, and it must bring a smile to my face because Ginger squeals.

“No!” she says, hand to her mouth. “You took Emma Jennings’s v-card, didn’t you? Dog!” “What?” Beretta shouts, fingers frozen over her smartphone.

“And you haven’t burst into flames yet?”

“Ginge, shut up!” I say. “I didn’t take any v-cards. Emma’s just been helping me with Spanish and econ, okay? End of story.

Leave me alone.”

Her smile softens. “Baby, you haven’t called me Ginge since we broke up.”

For once I’d like a girl to exist who didn’t overanalyze 17

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 17

1/21/15 8:29 AM

N.

K .

T R AV E R

everything. I’ve never been so grateful to hear the period bell, loud and metallic from the overhead speakers, and I scoop up my book and head for the hall. I’ve almost escaped when Ginger grabs me by the belt loop and swings in front of me.

“You know, I’ve missed you a lot,” she says, tracing a black fingernail over the R on my shirt.

“She really has,” Beretta says behind her, fingers flying over her phone screen. “I’m sick of hearing about it, so if you could just get back together so I could hear about something else please, that would be great.”

“Forget it,” I say.

Ginger trails her finger down my chest and gives me a twisted little grin. “You remember how good I am at making up?”

“Almost as good as you are at being annoying,” I snap, pushing her hand away.

“Oh, come on,” she says, hands on her hips. “I made you happy.”

“That’s debatable.”

“I won’t pick fights about stupid stuff. Promise. I’ll limit my texts to very important announcements only.” She steps closer.

“Everything else was good, right?”

“We’re done, Ginger.”

I skirt around her, past giant “Deathrow” Riggs and his Goth group. She follows and grabs my hand. I shake her off.

“Look,” I say. “The only way you have a chance of spending time with me is if you know anything about trig. I have an assignment due tomorrow and I haven’t paid attention half the semester.”

She considers this and tries for my hand again. I shake her off. Again.

“Sure,” she says. “I’ll stop by tonight.”

18

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 18

1/21/15 8:29 AM

DUPLIC I T Y

“I meant during school, you know like—” She disappears in the other direction. “Lunch or something.”

I’ll probably need a restraining order by the end of the week.

I sigh and consider the door of Spanish III, which has never looked so much like it might open into Hell, until I remember I’m Brandon Eriks and I’m not afraid of anything. I’m a machine, all gears and wires. Like the tattoo on my right arm.

Gears and wires and not caring a bit whether Emma’s inside already.

Not caring.

Not.

19

053-59250_ch01_4P.indd 19

1/21/15 8:29 AM

on-sale 3/24/15 Gail. Hannah. Bridget. Lizzy. Flavia. Each of them has a shameful secret, and each is about to find out that she is not alone…

Gail, a prominent Boston judge, keeps receiving letters from her husband’s latest girlfriend, while her husband, a theology professor, claims he’s nine-months sober from sex with grad students.

Hannah, a homemaker, catches her husband having sex with a male prostitute in a public restroom. Bridget, a psychiatric nurse at a state hospital, is sure she has a loving, doting spouse, until she learns that he is addicted to chat rooms and match-making websites. Lizzy, a high school teacher, is married to a porn addict, who is withdrawn and uninterested in sex with her. Flavia was working at the Boston Public library when someone brought her an article that stated her husband had been arrested for groping a teenage girl on the subway. He must face court, and Flavia must decide if she wants to stay with him. Finally, Kathryn, the young psychologist running the group, has as much at stake as all of the others.

As the women share never-before-uttered secrets and bond over painful truths, they work on coming to terms with their husbands’ addictions and developing healthy boundaries for themselves. Meanwhile, their outside lives become more and more intertwined, until, finally, a series of events forces each woman to face her own denial, betrayal and uncertain future head-on.

From author Sylvia True comes The Wednesday Group, a captivating, moving novel about friendship, marriage, and the bonds that connect us all.

SYLVIA TRUE was born in Manchester, England, and now lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children. She received her BS in chemistry and her Master’s in Education, and now teaches chemistry at Holliston High School, where she is the head of the Science and Technology Department. The Wednesday Group is her first novel.

Lizzy h

T

he wind howls, then quiets to a gray whisper. Lizzy pauses in front of the bedroom door holding a bottle of wine and two goblets. Her casual nightshirt shows off her long legs. If this marriage is going to survive, they need to reconnect.

She opens the door and stands at the foot of the bed. At fifty-two, Greg could still pass for thirty-five. He has a full head of dirty blond hair, a boyish grin, and healthy skin—no age spots, no circles under his brown eyes.

“Thought you might want some wine,” she says.

“What kind?” He sits up a little.

“Chardonnay.”

“I guess.”

She senses his hesitation and begins to pour.

“That’s enough.” He holds out his hand.

There’s still plenty of time. He’s always been a slow starter, although she’d thought that would change after he confessed.

“What are you watching?” She slides under the covers, not too close, but close enough so that he can easily touch her.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

2

•

sylvia true

“Antiques Roadshow.” A woven tapestry, an elaborate depiction of an old church, is displayed.

“How much do you think that’s worth?” she asks.

“Don’t know.” Greg yawns loudly, a signal that he is not in the mood.

The small rejections build on one another. But she’s not about to give up. After a few more sips of wine, she inches closer.

“Want to just talk awhile?” she asks.

“Sure.”

Finally, he turns off the TV. She reaches for the cord on the closed shade behind her. A little moonlight would be nice.

“Leave it,” he tells her.

She does, although she’d like to look into his eyes, to see if he really does want her.

He finishes his wine. “Maybe I’ll have some more.”

Her vision has adjusted enough to see the bottle. She refills both of their glasses, and they drink in silence. If she’s too assertive, he’s only going to feel pressured and withdraw. Eventually, he places his glass on the floor, then turns to her and runs his fingers, stiff and tentative, along her neck.

He holds her face, kissing her forehead, her nose, her lips. Her shoulders relax as he grows more forceful and moves a hand down her nightshirt.

“That feels nice,” she tells him.

“Why don’t you take it off ?”

She pulls the shirt over her head, glad to be rid of it.

He cups her breast, and she gently slips her hand below his waist.

He sheds his flannel pajama top. They hold each other. She’s missed his skin touching hers, but after a few seconds, she senses his loss of urgency.

She kisses his neck and begins to slide down. His thighs tense and he stops her.

“I’m sorry.” He sighs.

“It’s all right,” she says, and moves back up.

He grimaces and squirms as he shifts her head from his shoulder. “A

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

the wednesday group

•

3

cramp in my arm,” he tells her, then sits and gropes for his pajama shirt.

After he puts it back on, he lies on his side of the bed.

Her chest aches. “Do the guys in your group talk about how they deal with sex . . . after? I was thinking if it’s an addiction, like alcohol, people have to talk about how they’re going to deal with it when they’re sober. You know?”

He responds by tapping the mattress with his hand.

She waits, trying to be patient. He clears his throat, as if that will help to dislodge the words that seem stuck.

“I thought,” she begins, “when you stopped watching, you’d want me again.”

“It’s not that.” His voice is tight.

She wishes she could do the wise thing, say good night and bring this up another day when he’s not so defensive and vulnerable, and she’s not on that boundary where rejection begins to harden.

“Then what?” she asks.

“It’s . . .” He’s stuck again.

“Do you want me?”

“Lizzy.” He slaps the mattress. “I’ve told you I do.”

There, it’s out. What she was begging for—yet it’s not enough. “It doesn’t feel like it when it’s so hard for you to say it.” She sits up and gathers her long, curly hair. She’d worn it down for him. “You told me when you stopped watching, things would change. And they haven’t.” The words are hot; anger slips out.

“Christ, Lizzy, we go over the same shit. Th ings have changed. I’m going to my groups and seeing a therapist. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

She isn’t looking at his face, but she imagines he is sneering. “So how long will it be?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“What can you answer?” Her voice is louder than she intended.

“This is going nowhere.” He sits up.

She can tell he’s getting ready to leave, to sleep in the guest room.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

4

•

sylvia true

“I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just hard sometimes knowing you’d rather be looking at young women on the computer than making love to me.”

He flips back the covers. “Why don’t you tell me what exactly it is you want me to say?”

“That you love me. That you want me and not them. That you think I’m pretty.” She detests that she’s sinking this low.

“I do tell you those things.”

“Only when you want me to shut up.”

He swings his legs off the bed. “I can’t do this anymore tonight. I have to get up early.”

She wants to extend an olive branch, to tell him she’s willing to work through this, that she loves him. But she doesn’t.

He walks to the door.

“Just tell me you aren’t watching porn,” she says.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry I’m not changing fast enough for you.”

The door slams behind him.

Every cell in her body feels as if it’s about to burst. She wants to follow him, to keep fighting until they reach some sort of resolution. But of course she knows they won’t.

She curls under the eiderdown. The room smells like stale wine. The beginnings of a migraine nag at her temple. He’ll be asleep in ten minutes, relieved to be away from her. She listens to the wind growl, hating him, hating herself more.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

Hannah h

H

annah stirs an hour before her alarm clock is set to ring. Adam’s snores remind her of a dolphin puffing as it comes up for air. She tries to fall back to sleep, but when she closes her eyes, she feels restless.

A familiar unease weighs on her. The children are fine, life is good, but the sense of dread remains. In this state, neither asleep nor fully awake, she is less adept than usual at shoving away the feelings of despair. There is a leaky border between the subconscious and the conscious. A shower, a cup of hot coffee, and editing a few photographs will keep her occupied until it’s time to get the kids up.

At breakfast, Hannah does Alicia’s hair while she eats her Cheerios.

Sam, who hates milk in his cereal, crunches. Hannah wraps an elastic at the end of Alicia’s braid and kisses the top of her head. She has become skilled at knowing the right moment to slip in a squeeze or a pat.

She moves behind Sam, who inherited his thick brown hair from her dad. Hannah bends her neck, sniffing Sam’s hair. The earthy scent reminds her of the first hint of spring.

Adam walks in, smiles at her, and pours himself a coffee. Until he’s had two cups, he doesn’t talk much. He’s tall and well-built, with cropped

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

6

•

sylvia true

red hair, and his light blue eyes are muted just enough so they always seem gentle.

He leans against the counter.

It’s the fourth week in January, and the morning sun shines dully through the skylight. Hannah glances at her family, pulls up her shoulders and tells herself that she’s going to stay positive and upbeat.

Adam smiles, softly, and she knows he feels the dip in her mood. He has mentioned she should get checked for seasonal affect disorder and believes the long New England winters are tough on her.

The kids finish their cereal, scamper off to get their backpacks, and head for the bus stop. Adam pours another cup of coffee, then reaches for Hannah, tugging at the arm of her sweatshirt to pull her in for a hug. She cozies into his chest and feels at home in his arms. She’d like to stay this way for a little longer, but he has to get to work, and she has things to do as well.

She steps away. “I’m fine,” she says, as she picks up a couple of plates from the table.

After he leaves, she meanders to her studio and looks over a wedding album she has put together for a couple who are coming around noon.

It’s a good representation of her work, but nothing that really grabs her.

In the last picture, the groom is carrying his bride as she waves to the camera. Funny, Hannah thinks, how this is what she ended up doing for a career, wedding photography, when her own wedding day had felt like the biggest farce of her life.

Leaving her studio, she walks through the roomy kitchen and down the hallway to the laundry room. Even this room has plenty of natural sunlight. She and Adam designed the house with lots of unique angles and dormers. A dream house, a dream life. And yet.

As she sorts the darks from the lights, she feels something, like a folded dollar bill, in a pocket of Adam’s pants. She pulls out a business card, turns it over and sees a number with an area code she doesn’t recognize. Certainly nothing alarming, yet her hands tremble. Even after all these years telling herself everything is normal, assuming those hor-

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

the wednesday group

•

7

rible episodes are long past, she can still think the worst. She reminds herself that his firm has clients from all over the country, but her heart beats erratically as she drops his pants into the washer and adds an extra cup of detergent.

In the kitchen, she picks up the phone. The dial tone drones. She begins to punch in Adam’s number, but stops and hangs up.

The rest of the day passes in a hazy, panicked blur. Her clients come for their album, tell Hannah she’s gifted, and write her a check. After they leave, she can’t remember their names.

If he ever slipped again, she’d told him she would leave him. Slipped.

What a stupid word for this. Slipped is when you lose your footing on the ice, when you forget your keys in the supermarket, when you hand in a field-trip form for one of the kids a day late. Slipping is not bulldozing your wife’s life.

She calls her mother to ask if she can watch the kids tonight. After a few nosy questions, which Hannah evades, her mother agrees.

It’s probably a futile plan. Actually, in truth, she hopes it’s futile, and yet she finds herself dressing for the part. Old worn jeans, a heavy black sweater, her hair in a ponytail, and a modest amount of makeup, which she knows is ridiculous but can’t help putting on.

She makes ravioli for the kids, helps with homework, folds the laundry. Adam’s pants are at the bottom of the pile. Her mom arrives on time and raises her eyebrows when she sees how Hannah is dressed.

“I’m just hanging out at a friend’s. No need to be fancy.”

Hannah kisses everyone good-bye and slips on Alicia’s furry pink Ugg boots, which are on the back doormat. In the car, she takes out Sam’s Red Sox baseball cap from her purse and puts it on, along with her sunglasses, even though it’s already dark.

Adam’s office is down the hill from the State House. She drives around the block a few times before finding a space close to the parking garage he uses. She takes her phone from her purse and tosses it from one hand to the other. It would be so much easier, so much saner to just call. To ask. But what if he lies? And what if he tells the truth? Either way, she

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

8

•

sylvia true

won’t believe him. Trust is the most fragile thing in the world, and no matter how hard she’s tried, or how hard they’ve worked, it’s a canyon she can never quite make it across.

She slinks down when she spots him heading into the garage. Adam’s car has a low, wide backside that’s easy to follow. She stays a few cars behind. For a moment she’s proud of her accomplishment, proud that she managed this whole scheme. Then the reality of why she’s doing it intrudes, and her heart, which has been racing for the past hour, races faster.

It’s fifteen degrees outside. The heat in the car is on low, and yet her palms sweat.

He turns onto Huntington Ave. He’s not taking the Mass Pike.

What if he goes to some seedy hotel? Will she bang on the door of his room? She imagines his paramour, and her hand slips along the side of the wheel. She turns the heat down lower and opens the window. The air, dry and frigid, stings her neck.

The light ahead is yellow. She races through it. The car in front of her takes a right. Now there’s just a VW between Adam and her. What if he sees her? She rolls the window down a little farther. If he sees you, tell him the truth. You’re not doing anything wrong. But she feels wrong. Wrong, and confused, and scared. Scared to death.

It feels endless, the drive down Route Nine. Finally he takes a right into the Natick Mall and parks in front of Nordstrom. She shakes her head, smiling. He probably needs to look at some sort of structural thing for the new wing of the mall his company is designing. He’s working, just not at the office. She’s been hysterical. She’s been following her husband’s car, as if she’s in some spy movie, on this freezing night in January, wearing her son’s baseball cap and her daughter’s pink boots because there was a phone number on the back of a business card. She’s ready to continue on the path of how idiotic she is when she reminds herself that she’s not really hysterical. After all, there is history.

She’s about to drive home but decides against it. She parks three aisles over from him. He gets out of his car and walks quickly. She no-

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

the wednesday group

•

9

tices he’s not carry ing a briefcase. Actually he’s not carry ing anything, and his head is tucked down a little more than usual, something only she might notice.

In Nordstrom, she glances around. Without any customers, the sales people look sluggish. He takes the escalator to the second floor, where the women’s clothes are. Maybe he’s buying her a gift. But he walks through the department and into the mall, which is empty, a ghost town.

Hannah tugs the brim of the hat a little lower and stays to the side, so if he does happen to look over his shoulder, she can race into a store.

Adam walks straight across, right to the public restrooms. He never slows, never turns his head. She stands at the end of the short corridor that leads to the bathrooms. This is a dead end.

She glances to her right, sees an elderly man heading toward Neiman Marcus. On her other side is a tall woman talking on her phone. No one is pushing to get into the restrooms. She takes a few steps, stops, and looks around. No one. A few more steps. She cranes her neck trying to see. If someone comes from behind, she’ll say she’s waiting for her son.

No one is behind her. She hedges a little farther. Four urinals face the wall. The stalls are large with heavy wooden doors. She dashes into the last one, then looks down at her pink Uggs. Even though there are only a few inches of open space at the bottom of the door, she doesn’t want anyone seeing her boots. She climbs on the closed seat and squats, her right hand against the beige tiled wall, steadying her. Adam is two stalls away. A faint odor, a combination of ammonia and cologne, makes her want to gag. She holds her breath.

Then the phone rings. But it’s not just any ring. It screams the “Chicken Dance.” Sam decided it would be funny if that was her ringtone, and she didn’t have the heart to change it. He put the same silly ring on Adam’s phone, and clearly he didn’t change it, either.

“I’m here,” he whispers.

Her stomach pitches and reels. Breathe, she tells herself, don’t lose it now.

Someone comes in the restroom and goes into the stall with Adam.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

10

•

sylvia true

Sweat drips down her forehead, but she can’t wipe it off, afraid she’ll lose her balance. Her thighs ache from squatting.

There’s unzipping and unbuckling, followed by a crinkling of foil.

Then Adam moaning.

“Don’t stop,” he grunts.

Although the stalls are large, semi-private, and divided by granite walls, the wooden door tremors, as if there’s an earthquake.

Hannah’s stomach spins. She’s dizzy. The palm that rests against the wall slips, and she loses her balance. She tries to break the fall by twisting sideways. Unsuccessful, her purse clamors to the floor. Her legs give out.

Her head hits the wall, and her pink boots poke into the neighboring stall.

Adam and whoever is with him stop.

“Hello,” Adam says. “You okay in there?”

She pulls her feet back in, picks up her purse, and sits on the toilet seat. She’s not okay. She feels seasick and puts her head between her knees.

“I’m getting outta here,” the other man says.

Hannah jumps up and opens the door of the stall. She has to see what he looks like. On his way out, he glances over his shoulder. He’s tan, wearing a tight T-shirt that shows off his muscles. His leather jacket is slung over his shoulder. He looks directly at her, and she thinks he must know who she is. He’s young and handsome and doesn’t wait around for any drama.

Adam rushes out of his stall and stares at her.

She touches her cheek and is surprised to feel tears.

“Hannah,” he says, then stops.

She drops her purse and turns to the sinks. They have sensors, and she waves her hand, trying to get some water. Nothing comes out. Adam joins her, and with one swift motion the faucet runs.

She splashes cold water on her face, and for a second she feels better.

Her face dripping, she picks up her head and gets a whiff of body odor.

Adam’s eyes look cloudy. With his hands shoved in his pockets, he

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

the wednesday group

•

11

emanates shame, and she finds herself feeling bad for him, awkward and embarrassed.

“So this wasn’t some sort of business meeting?” she asks, sarcastic, her voice raspy, her throat still pushing down acid.

“What?” he asks.

She covers her mouth, because she suddenly has the giggles. It’s that funereal, inappropriate laughter.

“Hannah, this isn’t funny.”

She shakes her head no, as a chuckle escapes.

“Hannah, stop,” he says.

“Sorry,” she sputters, and goes back to the sink. But again she can’t get the damn thing to work. She glances in the mirror and sees him looking at her, then her gaze drops. His belt is twisted. She holds on to the white porcelain as her knees buckle. He catches her so she doesn’t hit the ground, but not in time to stop her from throwing up all over the floor.

They stand there, together. He holds her as she looks at the mess.

She pulls away from him and yanks out a wad of white paper towels. On her knees, she begins to wipe.

“Leave it,” he tells her. “Let’s get out of here.”

The paper scratches lightly on the floor. She can’t leave it. She puts the dirty paper towels in the trash, then grabs more to finish the job.

Adam tugs at her arm. “Come on. Let’s go home so we can talk.”

The word home sits like a boulder in her empty stomach. How can they live under the same roof ? How will she tell her mother, her children? What will she tell them? When?

“I wish I were dead,” she says.

“Hannah, don’t say that.”

She grabs her purse and runs out of the bathroom. Adam stays a step behind.

In the parking lot, she climbs into her SUV and slams the door. Adam pounds his fist on the window. She starts the engine and backs up. There is nothing to say.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof

12

•

sylvia true

She arrives home before him. The kids are in bed. She thanks her mother, tells her everything is fine but she has a slight headache, so she’s going straight to bed.

For the next two days she throws up the way she did when she was pregnant. Adam offers to stay home, and she shakes her head violently, no.

Exactly one week after the incident, after Adam’s numerous pleas to talk, she agrees to go with him to his therapist. Hannah’s been two other times, once a few days before they married, and again when the children were toddlers.

Nancy Baron, a small gray-haired woman, with clunky earrings too big for her face, sits on her hands when she listens. For most of the first forty minutes, Hannah cries as she retells last week’s event.

“It sounds excruciating,” Nancy says. “If you decide to stay in this marriage, Adam has a lot of work to do.”

If she wants to stay? She should leave. But she can’t. Not yet. She feels weak and pathetic. Her hands cover her face.

“You need support,” Nancy says. “A friend of mine has a doctoral student who is starting a group for spouses of sex addicts. I think you may find it very helpful.”

Hannah shakes her head no, but Nancy hands over a card anyway.

Hannah slips the card in her purse. The thought of telling random women about Adam’s supposed addiction feels intolerable.

WBRT: Prepress/Printer’s Proof