He's Gone (40 page)

I found a box in his closet yesterday, tucked way, way up high. I opened the lid and was shocked to see that the box had a leaf in it on a bed of cotton batting. It was a large maple leaf, nearly disintegrating. I didn’t understand at first, and then it came to me—a day in the fall when we’d met at the university campus. I gave him that leaf before we said goodbye. He loved me as best as he could, that’s what that leaf said. And I loved him as best as I could. But, oh, how we can sink and drown, we with our unforgiving selves.

I see Abby often, of course. My sister came for a three-day weekend. And I see Anna Jane and my mother and my father. I have gone to dinner at Maggie and Jack’s and at Mattie and Louise’s. I see Dr. Shana Berg. My poor ignored clients have stuck with me as I’ve slowly returned to work. I hear from Nathan, as well, but I keep him at arm’s length. Good-hearted Nathan, who holds my eyes a little too long and brings me food—he looks too much like he wants to save me. I stay pretty close to home right now. It’s snug, a cocoon, the setting for the necessary drawing
inward that comes before transformation. It’s Poll and me. During Ian’s disappearance, I was sure that
someone
had to know what happened, and it turns out that someone likely did. I can imagine him that night, his black nose pressed against the glass, his worried eyes. My dear, velvety Pollux, patron saint of sailors, witness to all human faults and lapses. Witness to bad singing aloud and naked dashes to the bathroom, white lies and deadly errors. My very short, fine friend. A good dog.

In this cocoon there is work to be done. Old structures are remade. I think, I write, I read. I try to make peace with myself. I try to remember the simple but difficult truth that we mostly do the best we can with what we have. What a feat that is, too, to do the best we can, given that we’ve got to drag our histories along with us, like one of those big old Samsonite suitcases from the time before luggage had wheels.

Alone
—oh, the angst and the joys of it; who knew? I’m free. I stretch out my legs and eat cookies off paper towels in bed. But, also, I must brave some ancient story that the night is too dark for me to handle. I believed that story for a long time. Believing a new one takes courage. You rip off the sphragis, and the body is bare and vulnerable underneath.

So I will build my own protective layer, made from experience and hard-won awareness. I have promised myself this. I will change, slowly, over months and years. And when I emerge, I will stay away from the hungry beaks of birds and the talons of owls. I will not fear long voyages over water. If I become tired or terrified and the promise of rescue arrives—a boat, a net, an outstretched hand—I will turn my back to it. I will turn my back to it and rise and fly, my tissue-paper wings evolving in midair, becoming strong as the wings of a pterodactyl, soaring now over that hill, and the next, and the next.

To the six cherished people who most understand what this book in particular means to me: Evie Caletti, Paul Caletti, Sue Rath, Sam Bannon, Nick Bannon, and Ben Camardi
.
Thank you for being there from the very beginning
.

Acknowledgments

Heartfelt appreciation to my new publishing family at Random House, most especially Shauna Summers. How grateful I am for your inspired thinking, as well as your talent and generosity. Thank you, too, to Jennifer Hershey, Jane Von Mehren, Gina Wachtel, Marietta Anastassatos, Nancy Delia, Virginia Norey, Leigh Marchant, and Angela Polidoro, for all that you’ve done for both me and for this book. I am a lucky woman to have my work in your hands.

Gratitude, as well, to all of my old family at S&S, who also made this book possible. Your spirit of goodwill in this endeavor to bridge two worlds makes me love you even more than I already did. Hugs to you, Jen Klonsky. Ben Camardi, and all of The Harold Matson Company, thank you for your unparalleled partnership of fifteen years.

Mom, Dad, Jan, Sue, Mitch, Ty, Hunter, and my dear friend Renata Moran—love you, family. Sam and Nick, my joy and heart, every book belongs to you. And to my sweet beloved, John Yurich—thanks for being both my husband and my one true love.

PHOTO: © JASON TEEPLES

DEB CALETTI is the author of nine highly acclaimed young-adult novels, including
The Nature of Jade, Stay
, and
Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
, a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN USA Award. She lives with her family in Seattle.

A Conversation with Deb Caletti

Random House Reader’s Circle:
You’ve written many popular teen novels, but
He’s Gone
is your first novel for adults. What was the inspiration for your adult debut? Did you have the idea long before you began writing it? And how was the writing process different?

Deb Caletti:
You never know how—or when—the idea for a book will appear. This one came right when I needed it, shortly after we’d begun discussing the possibility of me writing an adult novel. The inspiration arrived in much the same way that
He’s Gone
begins. I was lying in bed, trying to determine if my husband was home or not. I was doing that thing you do, where you listen for the sound of footsteps, or the toaster lever being pushed down, or coffee being made. And then, rather handily and helpfully, came the thought: What if you woke up one morning and found that your husband had vanished? The idea of writing the book as a confession came quickly afterward, as did the decision to explore the subjects of guilt and marriage, wrongdoing, and the way those old, treacherous voices from childhood can continue to haunt us. I began work
on the book as soon as I could, just after finishing
The Story of Us
. Sometimes you have an idea that makes you feel like a kid on Halloween night. Can we just skip dinner, so we can go? I wanted to
go
. I couldn’t wait to start this one.

The writing process wasn’t all that different from my other books. My previous nine young adult novels are full length and fairly complex and character driven, and my readers are already a mixed bag of ages, falling generally in the older teens to adult range. There is always a teen protagonist, but my books also feature adult characters of varying ages—mothers and daughters both struggling with screwed-up love lives, for example, or generations of women with something to say about relationships, family, and identity. I tend to try to push the boundaries of YA, offering more thought-provoking material than readers of that age might be used to, along with a slower, more literary pace. So writing a book for adults wasn’t a great leap. The only real difference I found was that the boundaries I always try to push didn’t exist anymore. There were no more fences for me to stay in or out of. It was very freeing. I found that, for me, writing within those boundaries is actually in many ways more challenging.

RHRC:
He’s Gone
takes place in Seattle, where you also live. Do you feel that your life in the city inspired or influenced the novel? If so, how?

D.C.:
Setting has always played a huge part in my books, and I have no doubt that’s because I live in such an
evocative
place. I like to approach setting as if it were character, with a character’s traits and quirks and moods. Seattle—and the San Juan Islands, and the towns of the mountain foothills that I’ve previously written about—all have so much character, it’s hard to
cross a street without seeing something to include in a book. We are bombarded with setting here, which is a lucky thing for a writer, I think. It
offers
itself.
He’s Gone
primarily takes place in a particularly eccentric and picturesque part of our city—the houseboat community around Lake Union, where I once lived part-time. It seemed an especially fitting setting for the book. First, there is water everywhere, and these characters are, well, literally
drowning
in guilt. But even more than that, the houseboats and their docks are a little off kilter. Yes, they’re charming and shingled and dripping with gorgeous flowers. Ducks paddle by, and so do friendly kayakers. Sailboats swoop out to the lake on a glorious day. But, too, the houses and boats are rocking and clanging. The old piers sway and creak. On a rainy day, it’s a little spooky. On any day, it’s all slightly deranged.

RHRC:
Though the story begins when Ian vanishes, he feels like a fully evolved character by the time we reach the ending. Can you tell us a bit about the challenges of fleshing out a character who is mostly “offscreen”?

D.C.:
I like the idea of this, the “off screen” character. I also have one in my book
The Story of Us
. That character, Janssen Tucker, is totally absent until he appears for his one line at the very end of the book. The idea appeals to me because there are a lot of “offscreen” people in our own lives. You can come to know your partner’s ex or their deceased parent in a very real way, even if you’ve never met them. You can come to have very strong feelings about them, an understanding of them, a full picture, just from what you hear. In writing, the challenge to make a character come alive even when he’s not on the scene is met in the same ways it happens in real life. You hear stories
about the person. Your partner tells you about his ex, but so does his best friend, and so does his mother. Maybe you see a photo or hear a rumor. Maybe you hear a voice on an answering machine.

Ian, in
He’s Gone
, needed to be much closer to the reader than Janssen Tucker did in
The Story of Us
. Aside from Dani, Ian is the most important character in the book. It’s crucial to
feel
him right there, even though he’s missing—to feel the press of his control, to even feel his breath on her face during that picnic. He needs to be so well known that we understand both his complicated emotions and the bind those emotions have put Dani in. Dani’s own flashbacks serve this purpose (we actually “see” Ian during those times), but Nathan’s accounts of their relationship flesh out Ian’s character, as do Isabel’s and Abby’s. What we see of his relationship with his children and Mary and especially his father hopefully fill Ian in further. What I also felt helped bring Ian close were the times that Dani heard him speak in her head. That’s about as close in as you can bring someone.

RHRC:
Dani has a compelling narrative voice, and it’s easy to take her version of the truth for reality. Ultimately, though, we find out that she’s not a reliable narrator. What made you decide to go this route?

D.C.:
I went this route because we are all unreliable narrators, not just in the way we tell our stories to others, but how we tell them to ourselves. Maybe
especially
how we tell them to ourselves. All of us create our own versions of an event, of our
lives
, even, not because we’re liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that. Facing the truth is a
messy business. You’ve got denial, and pride, and the fact that understanding takes time; you’ve got perspective (or lack of it) and the pesky fact that we can only face the truth we can stand to face at any given moment. I didn’t see Dani as being willfully deceitful in the way she tells her story. I saw her as struggling with a hard truth that she hadn’t even entirely admitted to herself yet. It’s one of the toughest human being jobs, I think, being utterly and completely honest with yourself.

RHRC:
One aspect of
He’s Gone
that really stuck with us is the imagery involving butterflies. Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration there?

D.C.:
My first marriage was an abusive one, and long after I left it, a very good friend, someone who knew me well, reflected on that time. He said, “You were like a butterfly, caught in a net.” I never forgot those words. Butterflies became personally symbolic to me. I knew I wanted to one day use this symbolism in my writing—the fragility, the strength, the capture, the escape. Because, yes, there is the helplessness of being trapped, but there is also what happens when the butterfly manages to get free.