Bleeding Heart (36 page)

“Oh, Graham,” Gwen said, shaking her head as she looked down into her glass. “I wish I knew how I felt about him. I wish I knew about that damned pledge!”

I’d told Gwen in the hospital that it was Tom who’d returned the unsigned document that she’d prepared for Mackenzie that committed him to his Bridgewater House contribution. And she’d asked me a question I hadn’t considered: “Did Tom say whether he’d taped it together? Or had he found it that way?”

“No, he didn’t say,” I’d told her. “Just that he mailed it back to you.”

“Because if Graham had taped it himself,” Gwen said, “then I think that would mean he intended to sign it. Which would mean he really did care about me.”

We’d gone over this question again and again in the weeks since Tom’s death, never getting any closer to an answer.

“Which do you
wish
it would be?” I asked Gwen now.

“You mean, did I want him to love me?”

“Yes,” I said. “And did you want to love him back?”

“I didn’t used to think so,” Gwen said. “I was too obsessed with getting his money, frankly. But the more I think about our time together, the more I miss it—and him. I think we were a lot alike—a little too volatile and greedy, maybe, but also pretty passionate. God knows, he had his faults, right? But something really did click between us. I think we would have fought like cats and dogs. But in the end? I think we would have made a damned good match. So, yes, I think I could have loved him if he’d loved me. But maybe the not knowing—the never being able to know—is what makes it seem possible.”

Gwen helped me wash the greens for the salad and get the water jugs filled, then wandered out into the living room, where everyone had gathered in front of the television. I stayed in the kitchen, thinking about what she had said. Occasionally, as the shock and terror of my final hours with Tom began to recede, the actual events of that night would come back to me with absolute clarity. And I could remember the sensation of sliding in my chair across the office floor. Running through the woods behind the house. The feel of cinder block against my skin. The sudden, urgent determination to live. And, at the same time, the sense of finally letting go. The stars swirling above me as I flew into the night. And beneath it all—or above; I wasn’t sure which—a sense of profound mystery. Something deep and wonderful that I’d yet to define, let alone begin to understand. Though I knew now how much I wanted to keep trying.

“They’re here!” Allen called from the other room. I heard the front door open and looked out the kitchen window to see Allen and Olivia walking across the lawn to greet Franny and Owen. Mara followed them out, along with Danny, who was holding her
hand. Then Danny broke free and raced toward the car, excited and happy.

“I’m coming!” I said, though there was no one in the kitchen to hear me. “I’ll be right there.”

Q. Where did the idea for the story come from?

A. Though I don’t intentionally set out to write novels about social issues, I do seem drawn to them for background themes.
So Near
involved a child car seat product-liability lawsuit and
A Place for Us
revolved around underage drinking and the Social Host Liability law, which holds parents responsible for what happens in their homes. I’ve long thought that hydrofracking, especially as it might affect a small, rural community, would be an issue that could contribute to an interesting and tension-filled story. But it wasn’t until I decided that I wanted the novel to have a mystery at its heart that I realized how I could work the subject into the fabric of the story. I always think a good mystery is like a Chinese box or a Russian matryoshka doll, where you have one thing hidden inside another and then another. It was fun to create a story with its own little series of nested mysteries—with hydrofracking at the center.

Q. Is fracking a big issue where you live?

A. Though western Massachusetts doesn’t have much in the way of shale-gas deposits, the possibility of fracking has stirred up some controversy in our area, and a bill banning hydrofracking throughout Massachusetts for at least ten years is currently making its way through the state legislature. Another point of contention, and one I address in
Bleeding Heart
, is wind power. Like almost all alternative energy sources, I think wind power has its pros and cons. There actually was a proposal to mount wind turbines on a mountain not far from where we live in the Berkshires, and it was eventually shot down, though not for the reasons I cite in my novel. But I think the crux of the problem—balancing the need to create green energy against health risks, high costs, and “not in my backyard” concerns—applies to fracking, wind, solar, and probably most alternative energy methods. Though I think it’s pretty obvious that I come down on the antifracking side of the equation, I hope I make it clear in the novel that I realize that the issue is complicated and divisive.

Q. Are you an avid gardener, or did you have to do a lot of research for this book?

A. The answer is actually yes to both. I am a passionate amateur gardener (see my Web site, lizagyllenhaal.com), but I did end up doing a lot of research on how a professional landscape gardener might go about creating “the most beautiful garden in the Berkshires.” Luckily, there are many wonderful resources on the Internet as well as gorgeous gardening books, including
Great
Gardens of the Berkshires
by Virginia Small, with photographs by Rich Pomerantz. I also try to make every Open Day (gardenconservancy.org/opendays) in our area and have been able to visit many private gardens for articles I’ve written for the Web site Rural Intelligence (ruralintelligence.com). The Berkshires are blessed with some magnificent historic gardens such as the ones at Naumkeag, Chesterwood, Ashintully, and the Berkshire Botanical Garden, which are all open to the public, as well as numerous stunning private gardens. It was a dream come true to create a fictional new garden—one where I had all the money in the world to spend! It’s funny, but I can see the garden Alice (and I) designed for Mackenzie so vividly in my mind, it really feels like a place I’ve actually visited and loved.

Q. The novel is written in Alice’s voice and from her point of view. Did you find it difficult or confining to write a whole novel in the first person?

A. I think that Alice is the first central character I’ve created whose past has made her cynical and somewhat forbidding. My protagonists from earlier novels have all been mostly as Alice described her former self: “I used to be such a nice person. Personable, obliging. My husband, Richard, once jokingly told me after a particularly dull dinner with a business associate of his that I ‘suffered fools too gladly.’ . . . The truth is, for most of my life, I liked being liked. I’d been raised to be polite and well-mannered. But I think it was also in my DNA.” Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older and a little jaded myself, but I really enjoyed seeing the world through Alice’s eyes. I took vicarious
pleasure in having her be irritable and demanding with people, which is something I would never allow myself to be. And it helped that Alice had an earlier life that I could have her look back on and contrast with her current existence and frame of mind.

Q. Where do you write?

A. My husband and I divide our time between Manhattan and a small cottage in the Berkshires. In the city, I usually write in a beautiful old Eames chair that I commandeered from my husband. Our place in the country includes an old horse stable that has become my “writing studio.” It still has the old iron stall feeders and leather harnesses on the walls. It remains permeated by a wonderful smell of animal and hay.

When we’re in the country, I wake up early and reread and rewrite on my laptop in the house, but in the afternoon I go out to the studio, bolt the door, and start the hard work of writing the next new word, sentence, paragraph, chapter. In the winter I have a fire going in the Jotul stove. In the summer I open the windows and listen to the birdsong and brook nearby. I can watch our family of wild turkeys parading up and down in the old paddock. Other sightings: woodchuck, coyote, fox, and, early last spring, when the trees were just greening out, a big black bear. It was a breathtaking moment when this wall of darkness lumbered right past me—so close that, if the window had been open, I could have reached out and run my hand through the bear’s ink black fur.

Q. Do you have a set writing routine?

A. I usually wake up early and reread whatever I’ve been working on. I revise constantly. Then I let the demands of daily life intervene for several hours and pick up again in the afternoon. Most days, I don’t hit my stride until three o’clock or so, and then if I’m lucky I get two or three good, productive hours in. I think a lot about what I’m working on when I’m not actually writing: when I’m gardening, for instance, or driving in the car back and forth between the city and our place in the Berkshires. I try to work out problems—a scene I can’t get off the ground, a character who refuses to behave—during that two-and-a-half-hour stretch.

A. What authors do you like? Did any of them influence you in writing this book?

Q. I read a lot of fiction and poetry, and my list of favorite writers is constantly changing and expanding. In no particular order, I love the fiction of Elizabeth Strout, Hilary Mantel, Allegra Goodman, F. Scott and Penelope Fitzgerald, Susan Isaacs, and Alan Furst, and the poetry of Richard Wilbur, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop, and Theodore Roethke, to name just a very quick and beloved few. Like so many other readers around the world, I was enthralled by Donna Tartt’s
The Goldfinch
. I went back and reread her first bestseller,
The Secret History
, which is set not far from us in the country; it’s equally wild and wonderful. When I decided to try to make
Bleeding Heart
something of

a mystery, I reread many of my favorite P. D. James novels. I think she’s an absolute master of the mystery genre—and just an all-around brilliant writer.

Q. What will your next book be about?

A.
Bleeding Heart
has two separate mysteries at its heart. One is resolved, but the other is left open. I did that on purpose because I want to write at least one more novel about Alice. I really loved writing about gardening and the Berkshires, so having Alice be a landscape gardener in the fictional Berkshire town of Woodhaven is the perfect setup for me. And, as I mentioned earlier, I’m drawn to her acerbic, no-nonsense nature. I’m not sure yet whether the next book will resolve the question of Alice’s missing husband, but I think it will again revolve around a mystery. As is often the case when I’m thinking about a new novel, I have just a few vague ideas and characters in my head.

1. What does the title mean? Who in the book has a “bleeding heart”?

2. Do you think Alice was justified in putting aside her principles to work for Mackenzie?

3. Whom did you suspect—and when—of being behind Mackenzie’s death?

4. Alice still spends a lot of time thinking about her husband. How do you think her unresolved feelings for him affect the action of the novel?

5. How would you compare Alice’s and Gwen’s attitudes toward money?

6. Do you think Mackenzie is a crook or just someone whose business takes a bad turn?

7. Alice has a way of misjudging important people in her life, especially men. Why do you think she does that?

8. What is it about Mara that makes so many female characters, including Alice, want to help and protect her?

9. What do you think of Alice’s decision not to mortgage the
house in Woodhaven even though she desperately needed the money?

10. Alice says that she’s happiest and most at peace with herself when she’s gardening. Is there someplace—or thing—that gives you a similar sense of well-being?

11. Of all the things that Alice wants to live for in the end, what do you think is most important to her?

Photo by William Bennett

Liza Gyllenhaal
spent many years in advertising and publishing. She lives with her husband in New York City and western Massachusetts. She is the author of the novels
Local Knowledge, So Near
,
and
A Place for Us
, all published by
NAL.