The From-Aways (39 page)
Authors: C.J. Hauser
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Literary, #Sea Stories
S
ifting through the mail at the kitchen counter, I find a postcard mixed in with the envelopes. The picture is of a sunny little house with a dozen cats asleep on the porch. On the back, Quinn’s handwriting:
Back soon. This place is a dump.
I stick it to the fridge. The phone rings. Charley says she’s coming over for dinner, and what am I planning on making?
A
S
I
LEAVE
Deep’s, paper sack in my arms, I spot Carter Marks across the way, his foot up on the rail of the carousel. He is talking to Frank, who is not paying any attention to the horses careening by. Carter is holding the brass ring, twisting it in his palm so it goes all the way around and winds up at the beginning again. I start over to tell him that I heard from Quinn, but then I see it. In his back pocket. A postcard sticking out, something like a snapping alligator on it.
A
T HOME
, I put a pot of water on to boil and go sit on the front steps to wait.
The light gets bluer and in the dimness the clamshells in the drive glow white.
Then I hear it. Listen. The buoys, gonging in the dark.
How many times did June hear that sound while Hank was on the boat, and have to trust that he would make it home? How many times did she stand by the window, and just listen? I imagine that Henry, who is miles down the coastline, afloat in his truck, will also hear it. I know he is too close to too many rocks, but he will hear the buoys, and he will know to turn around.
I
have long thought that there should be a kind of town hall message board for the universe where a person like me, who is lucky enough to have received help and kindness from an absolutely silly number of people, might post a notice of public thanks.
This is going to be a long scroll unfurling . . .
There are not enough lobsters in Maine to thank:
My editor, Kate Nintzel, for choosing
The From-Aways
not once, but twice, and for her brilliant edits, which pushed me to make this the book I hoped it would be. (Also, for pointing out that there was a totally unprecedented amount of underwear swapping in the first draft.)
My agent, Meredith Kaffel, with whom I am in cahoots. Good writers have wise voices whispering in their ears and I am forever grateful that Meredith whispers in mine. As an agent, Meredith, thank you for some Arthurian-legend-level shit. There is no one better. As a friend, I am so lucky to know a person as beautiful as you.
Margaux Weissman at William Morrow, for being the kind of lady who could hang at the Uncle anytime.
Much gratitude is owed to all the good people at DeFiore and Company and William Morrow, without whom there would be no book at all.
Cora Weissbourd, my mortal enemy at first and best of friends thereafter. You are my first and favorite reader. You knew, when I didn’t, that Leah and Quinn belonged in the same book. These two women, you said, they could be friends. Thank you for dispensing this crucial wisdom, and for then taking me to the bar, and for being
you,
which is the only reason I can write about a friendship like Quinn and Leah’s and know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Janice “be still my heart” Garvey, a teacher without equal and even better friend, who once struck me with an (abridged)
OED,
who first taught me Yeats, and who recited the Saint Crispin’s Day speech with such glee that we all knew we were in for something special.
Jennifer Natalya Fink, the baddest-ass lady at Georgetown University. Thank you for reading all my miserable early stories compassionately, and for pointing out the path I might walk down next.
The late, great Alvaro Ribiero, S.J., whom I remember and miss every time I draw a whale around a student’s run-on sentences.
Jacob Appel is owed a great debt of thanks for making sure I did not starve over the past seven years. Jacob, those samosa dinners, and words of advice, and reiterations of your totally batshit-crazy conviction that I would publish a book were just what I needed, and you knew it.
Josh Henkin of Brooklyn College once drew a diagram of Leah and Henry’s marriage on the blackboard. At the time this drove me bananas. A year later I realized Josh was right about everything. Thank you, Josh, for this, and for being the kind of teacher who truly cares about his students and sends e-mails that start:
I was thinking about your novel again the other day and . . .
Ernesto Mestre-Reed, for sending me on a spiritual-novel-finding mission with Juan Rulfo and Somerset Maugham as guides.
The many other wonderful teachers at Brooklyn College who have helped me along the way: Michael Cunningham, Amy Hempel, Myla Goldberg, Ellen Tremper, and Jonathan Baumbach.
Other helpers, friends, and early readers who are owed a crustacean or two:
Nicole “where’s my tea?” Aragi, John “djellabah dancin’ ” Freeman, Kelly Farber, Rachel Perry, Joe Gallagher, Tasia Hanmer, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Anna Carey, and Jake “there’s nothing wrong with the present tense” Lemkowitz.
The good people of McSweeney’s, but particularly Vendela Vida and Jordan Bass, for the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award—the funds and emotional kick in the pants from which helped me finish this novel. Amanda’s work is the very best, and I couldn’t be more pleased that I’ve wound up being published by her same house.
The ESPY Foundation and the people of Oysterville, Washington, for setting up the most civilized writing arrangement I’ve ever had: stories for oysters, every Friday.
The Florida State University crew, for giving me a new writing home, and for making all the terrible jokes about Florida in this book that much more funny.
Everyone back home, I am thankful to you for teaching me how to cut up, and how to drink whiskey. As you’ll see in these pages, you all owe the town of Menamon a two-hundred-dollar fine.
My students, I love you even when you are driving me crazy and I say things to you like: “You Are All Driving Me Crazy!” Your voices and enthusiasm make reading and writing new for me every day, and I thank you for that. Particular shout-outs to my Gotham students, the Writopians, the ladies of GirlSummer, and everyone I met at CUNY.
My writing group—Ruth Curry, Snowden Wright, and Nadja Spiegelman. You came into the life of this book when it and I were at their most broken. Thank you for the love and tough love, the bourbon and cigarettes, for making me laugh and laugh and laugh. (Special thanks as well to Lindsay Nordell and Nadja Spiegelman for recording this novel’s first-ever audio edition.)
The Trout Family of Writers, particularly David Greenwood, Stephen Aubrey, Erin Harte, Wythe Marschall, Chloe Plaunt, Chris Roth, Helen Rubinstein, Liz Stevens, Lauren Belski, and James Donovan: in many ways this is a book about the family a person is not born to, and so has to find along the way . . . the people in life you recognize as part of your
karass . . .
I am so lucky to have found you all.
All the Hausers in Maine and beyond, thank you for reminding me every Thanksgiving that there is a very particular tribe that I belong to.
Thank you to Goca and Tijana Igriaé, and especially Randall Joyce, who gave me my first-ever book of poems.
My grandparents Ed and Maureen Joyce. Thank you for reading me all the Oz stories, thank you for telling me long, complicated recipes over the phone, thank you for giving me my first guitar, and thank you for indulging me when I say: Can you tell me the story about X again? Again? Again?
My sister Leslie, without whom I wouldn’t last a day in this world. Thank you for understanding everything, and for thinking things are funny when no one else does, and for cocking your head to the side and giving me that look that means
really?
when I need you to. I love you so much. It’s SCIENCE.
My father, for teaching me the beauty of
Naturlangsamkeit,
the slowness of nature. For making me a good listener and a keen observer of the world. For telling my petulant ten-year-old self that the art of writing is
what,
Christina? The art of rewriting, Dad.
My mother, for whom an apple is always a Granny Smith green apple. For whom no moment is too small to deserve a narrative. You have always shown me how the world works through stories. You are the best storyteller I know. Thank you.
End of acknowledgments (but the thanks go on and on . . .).
CJ
The Story of Lavender and Leopold |  |
Meet CJ Hauser
CJ H
AUSER
is from the small but lovely town of Redding, Connecticut.
Her fiction has appeared in
Tin House, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly
, and
Esquire
, among other places. She is the 2010 recipient of McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award and the winner of Third Coast’s 2012 Jaimy Gordon Prize in Fiction. A graduate of Georgetown University and Brooklyn College, she is now in hot pursuit of her Ph.D. at Florida State University.
Though ever and always a New Englander in her heart, CJ currently lives in a small white house under a very mossy oak in Tallahassee, Florida.
www.cjhauser.com
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The Story of Lavender and Leopold
W
E WERE SMALL
, my sister Leslie and I. We were five and eight and on Nantucket for the summer. My family used to go there “before it was spoiled,” which is what everyone calls the time that begins with the moment they themselves start spoiling a place.
But it
was
magical. Everyone wore cutoffs. No one wore shoes. The outdoor shower ran hot and we ate steamers and drank the broth from a mug, and afterward we went to the penny candy store, which smelled like Pixy Stix dust, and bought fudge and crystals of purple rock candy that we sucked on for hours even though they were jagged in our mouths. We were always sunburned at first, and after that we were naked and brown. There were small scurrying sand crabs that tickled your fingers if you stuck your hands in the sand. If you were as small as we were, you could catch just about any wave and ride it to the shore. On stormy days, when there were small craft warnings, we watched the churning sea from the window and did puzzles inside. The ocean smelled strongly of salt and dark plant matter. Everything was sticky and sandy and warped.
