The Fates Will Find Their Way (16 page)
A
t the end of the day, we find ourselves somewhat unprepared, standing for a final moment at our bedroom windows, for the obvious realization that this—
this
, all around us—is our life.
It’s that pink time of night. It’s that time of night just before our wives come to bed. We can hear them rummaging about in the kitchen beneath us, turning off lights, returning a stray dish to its rightful place in the cabinet, giving the dog a final treat. They’ve just hung up the phone; just finished saying good night to whatever daughter or son has most recently gone off to college; just finalized holiday travel plans, having decided that flying really is a much safer option for a teenager than driving (because, honestly, it doesn’t seem right that an eighteen-year-old, much less a sixteen-year-old, should even be allowed behind the wheel of a car)—but for that moment, as our wives climb the stairs, just before we hear their hands on the bedroom doorknob, we stand and look at the already darkening neighborhood spreading out beyond us, beneath us. The sky has turned from pink to purple, and where the streetlights flicker to life, the air is lavender, effervescent.
At the end of the day, it gets no simpler, no less complicated than to admit that this is our life. This is our home. Here is the window and the curtain and the first leaf of fall. This is our bedroom, and there is our pillow and there, just next to it, is our wife’s pillow. On the other side of the bedroom door is our wife, about to come in, about to join us and swap her day clothes for pajamas. While we hang our ties and jackets, she will pull back the comforter, pull down the sheets. She will turn on both bedside lights and she will climb into bed, waiting.
Tonight we will sleep, perhaps holding one another, perhaps not, hoping somehow even as we sleep that there will be no telephone call in the middle of the night; hoping, simply, to wake up, to go about our day, to cover the pool finally tomorrow and admit the end of summer.
And, suddenly, something new is now certain, something that we hadn’t ever thought of before. There will come a day when we will think of Nora Lindell for the last time. We will think of her as the sixteen-year-old we once knew. We will imagine her in her field hockey sweats or in her uniform with her knee socks at half mast or maybe we will think of her in her jean jacket, with her back against the base of Trey Stephens’ aquarium, braiding Sissy’s hair. Whatever the memory, we will think of her, wonder what might have been, and we won’t even know it while it’s happening, but it will be the last time we ever think of her. That day will come. It is a certainty now. And it gets no more obvious than this: this—
this
, all around us—is our life.
T
hanks to everyone at Sterling Lord, especially Jim Rutman and Addie Wainwright. Thanks also to everyone at Ecco (Dan Halpern, Abigail Holstein, Allison Saltzman, etc.) but most especially to Lee Boudreaux, the world’s gentlest and most acute editor.
I owe my family everything, but there are some specifics: I have to thank my mother, Stacy Stinchfield, who gave me her farm for the summer (and, yes, a little longer) in order to write more freely. If I hadn’t had Lone Duck, I probably wouldn’t have
The Fates
. I also have to thank my siblings, Noah and Greta, for their loyalty and support. Thanks also to the rest of my family—Jack Pittard, Lee Stinchfield, Brooke Galardi, Olivia and Georgia Pittard—for existing in the first place. This world would be unmanageable without you.
There are others to thank: Ann Beattie, for one. I could make a career of thanking Ann Beattie—for creating opportunities, for providing me encouragement, but mostly for not being afraid to expect more, to demand better. I also have to thank the University of Virginia and its other amazing faculty: Deborah Eisenberg, Chris Tilghman, John Casey. These people are such careful and caring teachers, and I am ever grateful for their attention and advice.
There are still others: Mundo Otal for lending me his perfect name, Emma Rathbone, Tom Bouman, Eve-Lyn Hinckley, Hugh Merwin, Zoe Pagnamenta, Benjamin Warner, Jim Shepard, Peter Fallon, everyone at
McSweeney’s
, everyone at The Downtown Grille in Charlottesville, especially Robert Sawrey.
And Andrew, I of course have to thank Andrew Ewell, for sitting across from me while I wrote it all down, for distracting me when I needed to be—Frisbee, Pimm’s Cups, Scrabble—and even when I didn’t need to be—Frisbee, Pimm’s Cups, Scrabble.
And, finally, to end where it begins, a quiet—if difficult—thanks to Malcolm Hugh Ringel, a.k.a. Pops, who was—and is—responsible for so much of who and how I am. My family only might recognize the similarities between the fictional obituary for Herbert Lindell and the very real obituary we wrote in 2006 for Malcolm Ringel. Still, it merits explanation: it would have been easy enough to create a wholly original obituary, but there was the strong desire to pay tribute, to keep the obituary somehow permanent, not ephemeral, and therefore preserve the memory, the man. And so, though there is no connection between the real Malcolm Ringel and the fictitious Herbert Lindell—except, perhaps, that they are both loved fiercely by their daughters—I could not help but indulge in the obituary’s inclusion. And so, to my family, I say thank you for understanding. And to Malcolm, I say again (and again and again and again) you are missed, ever, ever missed.
H
ANNAH
P
ITTARD
’s fiction has appeared in
McSweeney’s
, the
Oxford American
, the
Mississippi Review
,
BOMB
,
Nimrod
, and
StoryQuarterly
, and was included in
2008 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories
. She is the recipient of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award and a graduate of the University of Virginia’s MFA program. She divides her time between Charlottesville and Chicago, where she currently teaches fiction at DePaul University.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY
. Copyright © 2011 by Hannah Pittard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition February 2011 ISBN: 9780062041579
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
