Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories (20 page)

That was hours ago, years ago, a lifetime ago. If it weren't for the hollow ache in my gut, I could almost pretend that none of it had ever happened.

I roll down the window, just in case I'm sleepier than I think. The air is cool and smells like seawater. I haven't yet figured out what I'll say to Robin. She doesn't even know I'm coming. I should probably pull over and sleep, but I'm afraid that if I did, when I woke up I wouldn't have the courage to do whatever it is I'm about to do. A little sleep might put this all in the flat, reasonable perspective of daylight.

I remember the first night I went on stage in New York. I didn't come on until near the end of the first act, but I was too antsy to wait in the empty dressing room, so I came upstairs early. I stood in the dusty dark behind the back set wall and listened to the spill of familiar lines, mixed now with the laughter of an audience, a stray titter, a cough. The play was zipping along, and as my entrance drew closer, I started nervously running my lines in my head. A few lines in, I blanked. Suddenly, I couldn't remember what came next. Nothing, not what Rob said, not what I said, not a single line of the play from that point forward. Nothing but sheer blank terror. The bottom fell out of my stomach. I had a fleeting notion that I could run downstairs and grab the script off my makeup table, check the lines, find my place. But on stage, they were maybe six lines from my cue. Five. Four. I moved stolidly toward the stage right wing, to the edge of the light, and before I could think any further, there was my cue. I took a deep breath and walked into the blinding light, like stepping out of a plane and into the sky, trusting the chute will open.

Of course, it did. No problem. Once on stage, I was home. I knew what to do as if I'd been doing it all my life. The lines appeared as they were needed, as though I had just thought of them. And it was exhilarating, living in that moment, knowing only peripherally what might come next.

The moon, sweeping in and out of clouds, follows at a distance. The engine hums, the dog snores, pavement unrolls beneath the headlights. If some miracle were to occur and I was able to sleep again, this is what I would miss.

Debra Dean was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. The daughter of a builder and a homemaker and artist, she was a bookworm but never imagined becoming a writer. "Growing up, I read Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jane Austen and the Brontes," she said. "Until I left college, I rarely read anyone who hadn't been dead for at least fifty years, so I had no model for writing books as something that people still did. I think subconsciously I figured you needed three names or at the very least a British accent."

At Whitman College, Dean double-majored in English and drama: "If you can imagine anyone being this naive, I figured if the acting thing didn't work out, I'd have the English major to fall back on." After college, she moved to New York and spent two years at the Neighborhood Playhouse, a professional actors' training program. She worked in New York and regional theater for nearly a decade, and met her future husband when they were cast as brother and sister in A. R. Gumey's play
The Dining Room
. "If I'd had a more successful career as an actor, I'd probably still be doing it because I loved acting," she said. "I understudied in a couple of long-running plays, so I was able to keep my union health insurance, but the business is pretty dreadful. When I started thinking about getting out, I had no idea what else I might do. What I eventually came up with was writing, which in many ways was a comically illadvised choice, given that the pitfalls of writing as a career are nearly identical to acting. One key difference, though, is that you don't have to be hired before you can write. Another big advantage is that you don't need to get facelifts or even be presentable: most days, I can wear my ratty old jeans and T-shirts and not bother with the hair and makeup."

In 1990, Dean moved back to the Northwest and got her MFA at the University of Oregon. She started teaching writing and publishing her short stories in literary journals.
The Madonnas of Leningrad
, her first novel, was published in 2006. It was a
New York Times
Editors' Choice and a finalist for the Quill Award and the Guardian First Book Award (UK).

"In retrospect," she said, "I'm very grateful for my circuitous journey, that I wasn't some wunderkind. I like to think I have more compassion now and a perspective that I didn't have when I was younger."