The Opposite of Fate (ARC)

by Alison McGhee

  Mallie had returned from the world between with no conscious memory of where she had been. She had worked and worked to come back. But as he himself would never be the William T. Jones he had been before that dark night of the broken girl, she too would never be the self she used to be. The truth was that no one could be who they used to be. Minute by minute, everyone was becoming the person they would be. Minute by minute, all the possible fates were being decided.

  Mallie

  She was two hours from home now, cruising along the thruway in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, hungry and low on gas. On impulse she took the Geneva exit. When she had turned twenty-one, Zach had brought her here to celebrate. They had driven up and down the shore of Seneca Lake, stopping at each winery for a wine tasting. The tiny cups, the sips, the swirling in her mouth. The listening to what each wine was like and the grapes it was made from and how upstate New York wine was its own wine, not like any other wine made anywhere, because that was what all wine was — particular to its region, specific and unique.

  By the end of that day she, a beer girl, had drunk a lot of wine, and all of it legal. She had crawled into the truck, laughing. She made up a song called “Legal at Last,” a meandering song with many verses, and sang it to Zach while he drove. She had laughed the whole way home. They had stayed up late that night, dancing.

  Geneva, New York, was a college town. A pretty town. A tired town. An old town. And a poor town, like most of upstate New York. This was day three of the drive home. The first two days, the box of pain and the box of fortune cookies had ridden hidden behind the seat. Neither box was heavy but they were a psychic weight in the truck. She hated to picture William T. reading all those newspapers, taking scissors to them, laboriously printing out the articles he’d found online, paper after paper wafting one after another into that slumping cardboard box. The fortune cookies weighed her down in a different way. But she couldn’t just throw them all out. Could she?

  She pulled into a Sunoco and bought a carton of yogurt and ten gallons of gas and paid with Burl’s cash. While the gas was pumping, she hauled the boxes out of the cab and hoisted them into the bed of the truck. No rain was predicted, no high winds. The old clippings and the old cookies could stay out in the elements, where she wouldn’t have to feel them right behind her. She drove down to the lakeshore, parked at the edge of a motel parking lot, got out of the truck and wandered, glancing up at the college that spread itself along a bluff overlooking the lake, the beautiful brick administrative buildings, the large houses.

  What would it be like to go to a college like that? What would it be like to pick up and move to a town like this and begin life all over again? You could be a massage therapist anywhere. There was no end of need. What if she just parked herself here, in Geneva, and set up shop? She pictured herself walking around the town, getting a studio apartment, living sparsely on Burl’s money until she was established. She would give herself a new name. She would wear her wig all the time. No one would know who she was.

  At first she had wanted to claw the wig off her head, the constriction of it, the unnaturalness. But you could get used to things that at first seemed impossible. Now it fit her skull like a snug winter cap. When she wore it, she could almost forget she was wearing it. But walk by a store window or lift off the seat even an inch to check the rearview mirror, and the glowing blue-green of her fake hair was a shock. The wig was like armor. Maybe people who carried handguns or knives or cans of mace felt the way she did when she had her wig on. Protected.

  A new life on her own in Geneva. A new life on her own anywhere. It was an option. Let everything from the past go — the people, the events, the unsolvable equation. Begin again anew.

  She sat down on a bench with her yogurt. Gulls wheeled and cried in the sky above the lake. Were they looking for food? Were they lonely? Had something upset them? Maybe they just liked the sound of their own voices. There were two more hours of thruway to go before Utica. She called Charlie, who picked up immediately. In the background she heard wind.

  “Charlie? Are you driving? You shouldn’t drive and talk at the same time. It’s distracting.”

  “You have no idea what I’m actually doing,” he said. “I could be waiting in line at McDonald’s for all you know.”

  “You hate McDonald’s.”

  “Or maybe someone else is driving. Maybe I made a detour and picked a friend up. Ever think of that?”

  “Is someone else driving? Are you not alone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Amanda’s not with you, is she?”

  “Mal! Jesus. No witchy stuff!”

  “Don’t think you can hide from me, little brother.”

  “Damn, Mal.” She heard the happiness in his voice and pictured Amanda, lovely, shy, fierce Amanda, behind the wheel. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Geneva. Considering just staying here. What would you think of that plan? If I scratched all the other possibilities and just started over on my own and didn’t tell a soul?”

  “Too late. You’ve already told a soul. Me. And Amanda too, by proximity.”

  “Oh. Damn. You’re right.”

  “You’ll have to go with Plan B now,” he said.

  “Which is?”

  “Plan B is like Plan A, with a slight variation. You still get to start over, just not on your own. Now get back in the truck. Hurry up! Drive! Bye!”

  There was a commotion in the parking lot when she got back, a great squawking and flurry of wings. Gulls dive-bombing a car, from the looks of it. No, a truck. Her truck. A group of people stood watching in fascination and mild horror, arms crossed. She picked up her pace, even though there was something fearsome about the gulls. They were intent on the Datsun, lifting and settling en masse. Then she saw why. The box of fortune cookies was decimated, cookies crushed, torn cellophane wrappers floating to the ground. It was the futuristic version of that trip that she and Charlie and their mother had taken to the Jersey shore in childhood, when she had watched the enormous gull haul their block of cheese into the sky, indifferent to her shouts.

  Now she stood with the other onlookers and watched the gulls gulp down the cookies, fortunes and all.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” one of the men in the watching group said. His arms were crossed and his little girl leaned against his legs as if they were trees. Their roller bags, his large and hers small and purple, stood sentry beside them. “Kind of like a Hitchcock movie.”

  “All the possible futures,” Mallie said. “Gone.”

  The man looked at her questioningly. Strange girl with the blue-green hair and the strange statement. There were only a few cookies left now in the bottom of the box and they watched together as three gulls fought for them and, finally, gave up and flew away into the sky. Mallie walked over to the truck and peered into the bed, littered now with smashed bits of cookie and torn cellophane. William T.’s clippings were in disarray, as if the gulls had clawed through the paper looking for more fortunes. She leaned over and hauled the boxes up out of the truck, walked them over to the motel garbage can and shoved them inside.

  Utica, New York. Foothills Park. She parked beneath a young sugar maple, the playground and playing field spread out before her, stretched her arms up to the lowest branch of the tree and hooked her hands over it. Rough, cool bark. Green leaves brushing her skin in the breeze. She hung her head and the muscles of her neck pulled and stretched under the weight of her skull, and she thought again of her massage clients. Relax the muscles of your neck and let me support your head. People were not used to letting their heads be supported by another’s hands. Not used to letting go.

  When she looked back up, there was a small commotion by the playing field fence — a child had kicked his soccer ball over it and was crying. A young man picked it up and tried to hand it back to the boy. But the child shook his head and ran away, crying, and the man visib
ly drooped. Over the yards that separated them, Mallie could feel his sadness and how he was consumed by it. There was a story

  there.

  She turned away to see Zach’s truck pulling up to the curb behind the Datsun. Zach was shadowy behind the wheel, half turned around to the car seat visible in the truck, a car seat that held the baby who must still be sleeping, because Zach was getting out of the truck. As he stepped down, Sir bounded past him, tail pluming, straight to Mallie, and bowled her over onto the grass. He didn’t even bark, so desperate was he to see her, to push his snout against her hand, to leap and snuffle and crawl on top of her. Then Zach was there too. She stayed on the ground, her arms around Sir.

  Yes, she would have had Zach’s baby. No, she would not have thought twice.

  Yes, she would have aborted Darkness’s baby. No, she would not have thought twice.

  That time was past, though, and those choices were not choices anymore. The baby was alive and in the world. He had a name: Thaddeus. He had a life stretching out ahead of him, and what Zach had really been asking, back in Montana, was did she want to be part of it? But she already was. The baby was the result of a dark night and a girl left for dead. Like it or not, want it or not, she and the baby were part of each other.

  Zach looked once at the truck, making sure the child was still asleep, then covered the ground between her and him in a few long strides. Sir was pressing her against the trunk of the sugar maple, as if he didn’t trust that she would stay put if he didn’t guard her, but Zach pulled her up and put his hands on either side of her face. They curved together, silent, against the slender trunk of the tree.

  Woof. Woof. Woof.. That huge deep bark that ended with a choked-up little yip. Mallie didn’t know until she heard it how much she had missed Sir’s bark. She reached down to stroke his head but he was intent on something else, his whole body rigid. It was William T., across the playing field. Big man in the Jim Beam cap.

  “Sir!”

  William T.’s hands were around his mouth and he was calling to the dog he too loved. Zach raised a hand in permission and Sir took off, arrowing across the playing field toward William T. and the woman who rose from the ground to stand next to him. A woman whose light way of movement Mallie would know anywhere. William T. and Crystal. Sir was an arrow across the yards of patchy grass, tail flying as he tore across the tired playground to William T.

  “Mal!”

  In the other direction, her brother, Charlie — Charles — was cupping his hands around his mouth and calling her name. Slender Amanda with her gorgeous hair, rings glinting in the sun, stood on one side, and a lean man in a yellow cap — Beanie — on the other. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Everyone. Beanie and Charlie and Amanda and William T. and Crystal and Sir and Zach, together in this tired park in this old, tired city. All of them so familiar to her, bodies and smells and voices and touch. Their lives were laced throughout her own, inseparable. She could start all over again in a new town, a new life, but even if she did, she would be connected to these people forever.

  Mallie leaned back into Zach’s arms, this man she had touched thousands of times, the person closest to her in all her life. She had touched him as a friend and touched him as a lover but she had not touched him as the father of a child and she could feel the difference in him. Familiar and different, at the same time. She had known Zach Miller from the day she had watched him not smile on Picture Day. She would once have said there was nothing she did not know about this man, but she knew now that was not true. Not about Zach, not about anyone.

  Both the baby and Johnny were still asleep in the shade, a breeze drifting over them through the open doors. Somewhere out there was Darkness. Darkness would always be out there, his presence weaving its way through her life and the lives of everyone close to her. When the dark birds closed in, she would have to fight them off. The equation of Time and Mallie and Pain and Darkness was unsolvable, and she would forever be solving it anyway.

  Mallie stood with her arms around Zach as the people they loved, Crystal and William T. and Charlie and Beanie, closed ranks around them. Maybe there could be good things to come, she thought. Maybe there could be beautiful things.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a long time coming, and it went through countless revisions and permutations. My thanks to those who helped midwife it into being: Julie Schumacher, lifelong compadre, brilliant writer, unshakable support. Kathi Appelt, my Texas soul sister, and Aria Dominguez, poet and reader extraordinaire, whose reactions to an early draft buoyed me through multiple revisions. Mark Garry, the Painter, who listened with typical patience and insight through the many conversations over the years it took me to puzzle my way through this book. And my children, those born to me and those

  not — where would I be without you? My people. My thanks and love and eternal devotion to you all.

  For their great kindness, generosity, professional expertise and whole-hearted interest in the themes of this book, I thank Megan Hunt, Laurel Ann O’Rourke, Rebecca Zadroga, Kathy Insley and Sharon McCartney.

  My gratitude and respect to Helen Atsma, editor of my dreams, whose stellar editorial eye divined the possibilities of this book and whose wicked wit and big heart sustained me during multiple revisions. Thanks to Amy Edelman, whose sharp eyes always manage to see what I missed. Thanks to Pilar Garcia-Brown, organizational whiz, and the entire wonderful team at HMH. And finally, Doug Stewart, agent and beloved friend, who believed in my writing long before anyone else did, you are a prince among men.

  Reading Group Guide

  Local towns, and by extension the nation, are divided after Mallie’s rape In Mallie’s family, William T. leads one side and Mallie’s mother Lucia leads the other. What did you think about their arguments? Was there a right or wrong answer?

  “Burl was mild-mannered but stubborn to the core. It was people like him who would eventually rule the earth someday, millennia from now when everyone else less obstinate had just given up.” What other instances of obstinacy and stubbornness occur in the book? Do they define any of the other characters, and if so, how do these traits affect their own lives, and the lives of others around them?

  Birds appear frequently as imagery, or as literal presences — in your opinion, what do these birds represent? Do they hold different meanings for different people? How are they related to themes of magic and transformation?

  There are many examples of parent-child relationships — how do emotional ties compare and contrast with biological ties? What does family look like for each person, and what does chosen family look like for each person?

  Mallie is a trained massage therapist. What is the role of physical touch throughout the book?

  There are many descriptions of games that the characters play with each other, from Zach’s “Something hard, something impossible, something good,” to Mallie’s “Once upon a time there was a sister,” to knock-knock jokes, to Bananagrams, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders. Who instigates these games, and why?

  Are the sections from the perspective of Darkness real, or all Mallie’s imagination? Discuss.

  Mallie and Zach have their box of fortune cookies, and in many instances, Mallie thinks about the symbolism of the cookies and imagines multiple different futures and possibilities. How did the author play with the concept and literary device of fate? Why do you think the author decided to title the book, The Opposite of Fate?

  Why is Mallie so fixated on math, like algebraic equations and fixed and unknown variables? What do these thought processes reveal about coping in the face of trauma?

  Why did Zach run away without telling anyone about Mister and Sir? If you were in Zach’s place, what would you have done?

  Throughout the novel, characters give each other nicknames: Mallo Cup, William T., Charlie, Darkness, Mister. When do characte
rs embrace these nicknames, and when do they reject them — and why?

  By the end of the novel, secrets come out that change the way we see characters, and the way characters see each other. Whose character changed the most from the beginning? Did any of the revelations change your mind about a character? Did more information about individual actions draw out any forgiveness from the other characters, or from you?

  About the Author

  Alison McGhee’s bestselling novel Shadow Baby was a Today Show Book Club pick, and her picture book for adults, Someday, was a number-­one New York Times bestseller. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, has three grown children, and lives a semi-­nomadic life in Minnesota, Vermont and California.

  alisonmghee.com