The Art of Floating (32 page)

When Sia woke, she knew Toad was gone. The clotted feeling that had arrived with him had dissipated, and the house felt solid again. Full. Strong. As if its ramparts were all back in place. She sighed and felt around with her hand until she found what she was looking for. Gumper. He was, once again, where he was supposed to be. On the bed with his head on her hip. She looked at the clock. 4:30
A.M.

“Well, Gump, how do you feel about our morning walk?”

It had been weeks since they'd risen together and set off for the clam shack. Gumper was up in a flash. He pawed at her, buried his head against her, and grumbled. Sia brushed a tuft of fur from her face. She looked down at the sheet. It was coated with fur.

“Oh, mister, you need a good bath and brushing.” Gumper preened and leapt off the bed.

Twenty minutes later they were out the door.

Though it had rained the night before, the sky was clear and there was a chill in the air. The sun would rise a little later now that they were into late September. Sia's fingertips and nose were cold, and she made a note to bring a pair of gloves and a hat the next day.

When they reached the place where the teepee had been, she sighed. Everything was gone, even the few logs that had been there the day before. High tide had sucked it all away, leaving the beach covered in mucky seaweed.

Buoyed by the return of their routine, Gumper jumped and danced and jogged. He pulled a piece of driftwood from the surf and dragged it with him.

All along the way, there were two sets of footprints in the sand. Toad's, heavy and misshapen, and a fresher set—light and birdlike. The Dogcatcher, Sia knew.

It was 5:22 when they reached the spot where Toad had emerged from the sea. The sun was just beginning to peep over the horizon.

There the heavy footprints turned and led to the water's edge, then stopped.

Gumper buried his nose in them.

“He's gone, Gump,” Sia said. She sat down next to him and watched the sun come up.

Down the beach a ways, Sia saw the Dogcatcher standing near the clam shack. She was bent and brittle as ever, collecting, as Sia now knew, whatever it was she found along her way.

When she saw Sia, Evelyn Boon raised a hand and waved, then turned and scuttled away. Sia was tempted to chase after her to ask what she had seen earlier that morning, but realized it didn't really matter.

•  •  •

Later that day she drew a picture of Jackson and wrote out an invitation:

You're Invited

to a Memorial Barbecue

Celebrating the Spectacular Life of Jackson Dane

Husband of Odyssia

Father of Gumper

Son of Elizabeth and William

Brother of Jason, John, Justin, Joshua,

James, Jacob, and Jonah

Son-in-Law of M and Stuart

Best Pal of Nils, Harry, and Joyful Jilly

Best Buddy of Hannah-banana

Friend to all

“What's this?” Mrs. Snyder asked when Sia popped in to make copies.

“A drawing of Jackson.”

“Jackson?” Mrs. Snyder said. “It looks like Frankenstein.” She held it up to get a better look.

“Well, it's not. It's Jack. And as you well know, he was the artist, not me.”

“That is the truth, Sia, isn't it? How many copies?”

“Two hundred.”

“Come back in an hour.”

“You'll be at the barbecue, Mrs. Snyder?”

“Wouldn't miss it, my dear.”

•  •  •

“Mrs. Windwill?” Sia poked her head up over the fence.

Mrs. Windwill froze with one clothespin in her hand and another in her mouth. Mr. Windwill's blue shirt flapped in the cutting breeze. “Mm?” she said.

“I'm having a barbecue. A memorial barbecue for Jackson. I'd like you to come.”

Mrs. Windwill looked down at the grass. Like everyone in town, she'd learned the truth about Jackson's disappearance not long after Sia had. “I'm so sorry, Sia,” she said through the clothespin. “I'm so sorry I didn't see him go.”

Sia stepped through the gate. “I know, Mrs. W. It's not your fault. It's not even mine.”

Sia sat down at her desk and opened a notebook, then spun to study the map on the wall. There were six red pushpins now, one in each place Toad had appeared. She stood and took them out, then pressed a gold one right smack into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where she believed him to be now.

She spun back around and looked at the empty page.

It had been over . . .

No
, Sia thought,
no more counting. Let's just say it's been a long fucking time since I've sat at this desk with the intention of working. Jackson would have kicked my ass.

The triple tray organizer in the left-hand corner was still filled with the bits of paper on which she'd scribbled snatches of dialogue, images that had come to her while standing in line at the grocery store and revelationary moments she'd experienced in tree pose.

She picked up a pen from the holder Jackson had carved from an aspen trunk, probably the only thing she'd forgotten to pack away when she'd closed down the house. She scribbled a bit in the corner of the page. The pen still worked.

She took a deep breath as she leaned over the notebook.

“Once upon a time,” she wrote, “there was a man who loved his wife and baby. Like many wives and all babies, his were perfect. The family of three lived in a small stone house in a large grove of trees near a river. But when a terrible monster stormed out of the woods and killed the man's wife and baby, the man filled up with so much sorrow that he leapt into the river to drown. But instead he turned into a fish.”

As Sia wrote, she felt herself sinking into the story the way she always had and the words shifted themselves into order. The door to the cage popped open and slowly her heart worked its way free. She looked out the window. The sea was calm and steady, and the sky was perfectly blue. Except for one small puffy cloud in the west reminding her once again that nothing was ever perfect.

•  •  •

Her phone buzzed.

Jilly.

“Hey, whatcha doing? Want to grab a coffee?”

“Can't.”

“Why not?”

“I'm writing.”

Click.

On the morning Sia began to write again, the sign at the Unitarian Church read:

The soul should always stand ajar.
Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
(Emily Dickinson)

•  •  •

And the jump-jump-jump-ropers went like this:

Sexy, sassy Sia Dane

wrote good books

and found much fame.

Sexy, sassy Sia Dane

lost her husband

what a shame.

(boo hoo!)

Sexy, sassy Sia Dane

closed her house up

down the lane.

The grass grew high.

The grass grew thick.

Couldn't part it with a stick.

When a single shingle blew,

the house cracked open.

Would Sia too?

Sexy, sassy Sia Dane

found a man

perhaps a swain?

(
sshhh, shhhh!
)

Is he an alien?

Is he a fish?

Is he just a prick from Ipswich?

The beacon gleamed.

His gills did grow.

Then he disappeared so we'll never know.

Sexy, sassy Sia Dane

how many days

until she's sane?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

. . .

*Chapter 14—Palmer, Helen Marion, and P. D. Eastman.
A Fish out of Water.
New York: Beginner, 1961. Print.

*Chapter 29—Homer.
The Odyssey of Homer.
9.387–289. Trans. Richmond Alexander Lattimore. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.

*Chapter 46—Homer.
The Odyssey of Homer
. 23.27. Trans. Richmond Alexander Lattimore. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.

*Chapter 99—Rukeyser, Muriel.
The Speed of Darkness.
New York: Random House, 1968. Print.

*Chapter 106—“Plum Island (Massachusetts).” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed December 1, 2010. Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Island_(Massachusetts).

*Chapter 119—Enya. “How Can I Keep From Singing?”
Shepherd Moons.
Reprise/Wea, 1991. Compact disc.

The Art of Floating

To make
good use of this readers guide, you will need the following:

• a whiteboard
  or
  a large piece of paper with markers
  
• snacks (cookies, chips, grapes, chocolate cake, etc.)
  
• a sense of humor
  
• a sense of wonder
  
• a computer with Skype, if you'd like to invite author Kristin Bair O'Keeffe to join your book club conversation (She'd love to! And while Kristin can't guarantee she will join every Skype conversation, she'll do her best to join as many as possible.)
  
• a Twitter account
  
• wine (optional; recommended)
  

Spoiler alert: This readers guide assumes you have read
The Art of Floating
from cover to cover. If you haven't, stop reading now! The following questions may contain spoilers.

1. When Sia decides to take Toad home with her after discovering him on the beach, do you cheer her on or bury your head in your hands and cry out, “Don't do it!”? Why? What would you have done in her place?
   
2. It seems that Sia lives in one heck of a quirky town in which advice is dispensed from a church sign, piping plovers divide the population, and you're never quite sure what is real or imagined. But is it really all that different from any town anywhere in the world? Aren't there quirky aspects of any place if you dig deep enough? What's quirky about your town?
   
3. M is a wildly passionate mother. How is she like or unlike mothers you know? What do you like about her? Does anything bug you?
   
4. Play a word-association game. Have one person in your group call out the following words while each person in the group writes down the first thing that pops into her head. Afterward, compare lists. How do your words differ? How are they similar? What does it all mean?
   

   a. Gumper
   

   b. the Dogcatcher
   

   c. jump rope
   

   d. Mrs. Windwill
   

   e. piping plover
   

   f. Hannah Willow
   

   g. spaceship
   

   h. motherhood
   

   i. Jackson
   

   j. lost
   

   k. Odyssia
   

   l. found
   

5. Watch Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax's TED talk “Compassion and the True Meaning of Empathy” (http://www.ted.com/talks/joan_halifax.html). Then consider Sia's deep reservoir of empathy. What role does empathy play in your culture/family/community? What value do you place on it?
   
6. Kristin Bair O'Keeffe stretches the traditional structural rules of storytelling in this book. Some chapters are just one line long; one chapter contains nothing more than the definition of the word
   fledge
   . Which storytelling aspects of
   The Art of Floating
   do you most enjoy?
   
7. Sia's heartache over Jackson's disappearance is so great that it often seems she'll never recover. She gets a lot of feedback and advice from folks around town. What advice would you give her?
   
8. You get to hang out with either Sia or Jilly for the day. Which do you choose? Why?
   
9. The lines between reality and the imagined (or perceived) are often blurred in this novel: floating/not floating, fish/not fish, alien/not alien, lost/found, and so on. Does this mimic “real life” or are things in “real life” more cut-and-dried?
   
10. When people around the world find out about Toad, they become territorial and go a little crazy. Dr. Dillard, for example, is determined to put Toad in a psych ward. What does the world's response to Toad say about our culture today?
    
11. Do you want Sia and Toad to end up together? (Come on, be honest!)
    
12. Take a look at the epigraph, which is taken from Homer's
    The Odyssey
    , and consider the various other references to
    The Odyssey
    throughout the book (Odyssia's name, M's obsession with the book, Sia's journey home, etc.). What is reflected in these references? What is Sia's relationship to Odysseus?
    
13. While there's a lot of humor around the battle between the “plover lovers” and their opponents, there's also an essential question about the choices humans have to make about protecting the environment. How far should we go to save wildlife? Why? Does Sia's town take it too far by closing beaches for the plover?
    
14. With which character do you most associate—Sia, Jackson, Jilly, Toad, the Dogcatcher, M, or Richard? Why?
    
15. Jilly and Richard: Will they make it?
    
16. What made you laugh in
    The Art of Floating
    ? What broke your heart?
    
17. How do you feel when you discover who Toad is and how he came to be that person?
    
18. Many things are lost and found throughout this story: Toad, Hiroshi Aomori, Sia's pen, M's virginity, Jackson, innocence, Sia's ability to write, the objects in the Dogcatcher's house, and so on. Make a list of all the things you've lost and found throughout your life, big and small. Then study it. Talk about it. Compare it to lists others make. Hash it out. Make a bit of sense of it.
    
19. Movie time: Whom do you see playing Sia? Jackson? Toad? Jilly? M?
    
20. Got a question for Kristin Bair O'Keeffe? Send it to her via Twitter. She's out there in Twitterland waiting to hear from you (@kbairokeeffe). (Please note that Kristin will do her best to respond to all tweets but can't guarantee a response.)