Bewilderness
Page 22
Out of everything that went down, the biggest unanswered questions have to do with Wilky. Why did he use again. Where did he get the pills they found in his jacket. Was it the first time he’d slipped or had there been others? How much of it was my fault? From everything I’ve heard in the rooms and read online, there are people all over this unhappy country asking themselves these same impossible questions. None of it makes any sense. Where do people go when they die? And why do they have to leave us in the first place?
I’m sorry, Luce. This last part, I’m screwing up completely.
All I know is, if anyone ever tries to tell you they have the answer, put your hand on your wallet. You’re about to get hustled. Sure, the sky might look pill blue from a distance, but once you’re actually up there in it, strapped into your parachute and jumping out into nothing, it becomes a whole new thing altogether. Years later, I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it is. As they say in the rooms, there are some things you never recover from, no matter what happens—and even now there are times when I can hear Luce cranking the volume on one of her mix CDs, blasting music from her bedroom, and singing her lungs out the way she used to.
“Ireeeeene!” she calls out between tracks. “Where are you?”
I’m right here, I say.
Acknowledgments
I waited tables in eleven different restaurants for over twenty years. Though the server nightmares endure, so does the love and admiration I have for the many brilliant, talented co-workers I met in those houses. This novel wouldn’t exist without them.
It also wouldn’t exist without the incredible Amelia Atlas and Leigh Newman, for whom I am infinitely, weepily, giddily grateful. Megan Fishmann, you are a freaking dream. Thanks to all of the amazing individuals at Catapult Books for taking on this project. Fellow readers, please support independent publishers. They’re saving us.
Mark Winegardner, a one-of-a-kind triple-threat writer/professor/mentor at Florida State, helped me from the first clumsy page to the end and beyond. Other FSU dynamos include Dr. Maxine Montgomery, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Skip Horack, Janet Atwater, Dr. Trinyan Mariano, Dr. Alejandra Gutierrez, and Dr. Jeanette Taylor.
David Haynes, my extraordinary thesis adviser at Warren Wilson College, taught me mountains about literary craft, while modeling leadership, generosity, and activism. Support Kimbilio! Thanks too, to the ever-brilliant Maud Casey, Christopher Castellani, and Megan Staffel.
The best writing group on the planet consists of SJ Sindu, Laurel Lathrop, Colleen Mayo, and Amy Denham, and I’m damn lucky to know these gifted people. Dear readers, please read their work. And then there’s Nathan Ballingrud, my fellow Western North Carolina fiction writer/server/friend. Read him too, people!
I went back to school pretty late in the game, with no undergraduate degree and little confidence. Many creative writers helped me in workshop and out. Thanks to Misha Rai, Sakinah Hofler, Clancy McGilligan, Marianne Chan, Alex Jaros, Sean Towey, Obi Calvin Umeozor, Tiffany Isaacs, Whitney Gilchrist, Rita Mookerjee, Shaw Patton, Laura Roque, Zack Gerberick, Casey Whitworth, Brandi Bradley, Jennifer Adams, Gary Sheppard, Mikayla Ávila Vilá, Daniel LoPilato, Latifa Ayad, Munib Khan, Damian Caudill, Maddie Kahl, Jess Cohen, Feroz Rather, Dyan Neary, Zach Linge, Jayme Ringleb, Aram Mrjoian, Iheoma Nwachukwu, Rebecca Orchard, Geoff Bouvier, Dorothy Chan, Alex Quinlan, Matthew Zanoni Müller, Denise Delgado, Matt Roesch, Matt Bondurant, Seth Brady Tucker, and Luke Hankins. Special thanks to Kevin Weisman for the earliest encouragement. Toodles for Chris.
I’m grateful to Sue Mancuso, Dr. Leigh Edwards, and P.E.O. International for their support of this project back when I was still drafting. Thanks too, to The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, and Boulevard for publishing early excerpts of this work.
Deepest thanks to Daniel Wallace, Bland Simpson, and Marianne Gingher for giving me a job during a global health crisis and for welcoming me into the UNC community.
Final acknowledgments go to family: All the love to Lynn Tucker.
All the love to my mom. Dad, I miss you and love you.
All the love to Melanie Lipof and Merle Weber. Joel, I miss you and love you.
All the love to Jared Lipof, always.
© Jared Lipof
KAREN TUCKER was born and raised in North Carolina. Her fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Yale Review Online, Tin House Online, Boulevard, Epoch, and elsewhere. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her partner and multiple cats.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 by Karen Tucker
All rights reserved
ISBN: 9781646220243
Jacket design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933583