As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (35 page)

A bubble of hope floated invisibly in the air over our heads, and with it a sense of normalcy—the old life—momentarily returned. Several of us took second helpings. A little boy was injured but he’d soon enough heal. And our lives, too, weren’t so deeply changed. There’d be time, still, to pick up where we’d left off. And so sometime during that meal Howard’s thoughts drifted, quite helplessly, and despite my father’s warnings, to Megan O’Donnell. And Bec spent a moment envisioning the new life that she and Tyler McMannus would soon share. Just before the table was cleared Ada gave a proprietary glance around the dining room, and there it was, just for a second, her old satisfaction with the place—
her
place—rising once again to the surface. And between Vivie and Nina those worries that had arisen in the last week, worries about something, unnameable as yet—a something that was wrong with Nina—were now but a fleeting thing. After dinner Leo could finally get back to his reading, to that article about universal chaos and motion. And Mort could tune in to a baseball game, catch up on the Yankees, whom, like God, he hadn’t had any contact with in the last week and sorely missed.

As for myself, I could believe, as I had many times that summer while in the upstairs bathtub, that I was separate from them, wholly different from them. When I said
me,
I sensed anew, I didn’t mean
them.

But then my mother began sobbing and in response we snapped back to attention, dropped our dreams.

The table was almost cleared when the doorbell rang. That would be another neighbor delivering another casserole, some of us must have thought. Though that night Bec was the one to open the door, and to our surprise there was Nelson, making his first visit to Woodmont, asking in a worried voice if there was any news, lately in my dreams when I return to this moment it’s me, rushing forward, beating out the others, opening the door, and hoping against hope that with my doing so a faint but unending scream—which is mine, my mother’s, and even my grandfather Maks’s—will finally cease.

But when I do no one is there, no one is ever there, and each time this empty space is as much a shock as the last.

“I thought I should come,” Nelson said next, his tone hesitant. He then thanked Bec, who he told us had phoned him the day before.

As Bec rose to make Nelson a plate of food, she handed me his hat, which I placed beside my father’s on the little table in the dining room with the telephone on it. Earlier the day’s mail had arrived and had been placed there too. That’s when I saw that Lucinda Rossetti had sent Davy yet another installment of their picture. As Howard carried in an extra chair from the kitchen, and as Nelson sat himself in it, catty-corner between my father and Howard, and as everyone shifted a little, to the left, to the right, and as my father patted Nelson’s back, saying, “Good of you to come, brother,” I opened the envelope and unfolded its contents. What was remarkable was how clear and perfectly ordinary the scene had become: the original red panel at the bottom was now a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, the three vases on it were rounded and shaded, and the bouquets arising from each vase were fleshed out, one with daisies, one with tulips, and the third left blank for Davy to fill.

I’m deeply grateful to Lee Boudreaux, for her spot-on insights, unstoppable enthusiasm, wise heart, and abundant joy—this process could not have been a happier one; Duvall Osteen, for her kindness, dedication, and skill in agenting this work; Nicole Aragi, for her expert helping hand; Amanda Heller, for the precision and thoroughness of her copyediting; Carina Guiterman, Carrie Neill, Betsy Uhrig, and the entire crew at Little, Brown, for their care and professionalism; my parents, Marian Katz and Myron Poliner, for sharing with me their knowledge and memories of Woodmont, Middletown, the 1940s, and absolutely everything else I asked about; Katherine Krauss Murphy, author of
Woodmont on the Sound
(Postcard History Series), for a book that so helped me envision Woodmont in 1948; Maryke Barber and Rebecca Seipp of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University, for invaluable research assistance; the reference team at Russell Library in Middletown, Connecticut, for additional research assistance; Debbie Sessions and Katherine Kominis, for their special knowledge of period details; Rachel Poliner, Tina Daub, Julia Campbell Johnson, Lynne Bonde, and Melanie May, for their unflagging support and for the many helpful mini-consults; the creative writers of Hollins University, colleagues and students, for their fellowship; rabbis Daniel Zemel and Jean Eglinton, for answering my questions about Judaism; and rabbis Louis Witt and Chaim Stern, for the words of prayer from which the title and epigraph of this novel are derived. For three Januarys the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts was a peaceful and enriching environment in which to write, and over several summers Carol Ridker’s home was too. I’m grateful to have worked on this book in both places. I’m especially thankful for the time and comments of those who read this work in progress: Marty Lopez, Dan Poliner, and Karen Osborn. I offer special thanks to Barbara Wiechmann, reader of my heart as much as my words. A final and most heartfelt thanks to Edward P. Jones, whose brilliance is boundless, and whose time, talent, generosity, and friendship have meant the world to me.

Elizabeth Poliner is the author of
Mutual Life & Casualty,
a novel-in-stories, and
What You Know in Your Hands,
a poetry collection. She teaches creative writing at Hollins University.

Mutual Life & Casualty

What You Know in Your Hands

Unusual stories. Unexpected voices. An immersive sense of place. Lee Boudreaux Books publishes both award-winning authors and writers making their literary debut. A carefully curated mix, these books share an underlying DNA: a mastery of language, commanding narrative momentum, and a knack for leaving us astonished, delighted, disturbed, and powerfully affected, sometimes all at once.

Two things instantly captivated me about this novel. The first was the autonomy afforded to Ada, Vivie, and Bec by inheriting “a room of [their] own” in the form of a summer beach cottage in an era when they must depend on a husband or a son to drive them to it. This paradox is just one of many rich details that bring this specific time and place to life on every page of this beautifully crafted novel. I was also deeply moved by the sense of duty and familial devotion that Poliner conveys with unwavering empathy. Even while we pray for Molly, Bec, Nelson, and the others to shed their burdens of grief and guilt, we see the abiding satisfactions of faith and family, of belonging to something larger than oneself. From the book’s first page, the beautiful rhythms of the language (it’s no surprise the author is a poet) and the feeling of being wholly transported to a different time, with its very different mores, held me in thrall.

______________________________________

Over the course of her career, Lee Boudreaux has published a diverse list of titles, including Ben Fountain’s
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,
Smith Henderson’s
Fourth of July Creek,
Madeline Miller’s
The
Song of Achilles,
Ron Rash’s
Serena,
Jennifer Senior’s
All Joy and No Fun,
Curtis Sittenfeld’s
Prep,
and David Wroblewski’s
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,
among many others.

For more information about forthcoming books, please go to
leeboudreauxbooks.com
.

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