by Julia Fine
Lastly, thanks to Rick, who juggles parenthood and career and good citizenship with overwhelming grace and generosity. It all works because of the work you put in. I love you deeply, and could not do this without you.
About the Author
JUlIA FINE is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award and the Chicago Review of Books Award. She lives in Chicago with her husband and children.
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Also by Julia Fine
What Should Be Wild
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.
THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE. Copyright © 2021 by Julia Fine. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design and illustration by Jarrod Taylor
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-297584-3
Version 01092021
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297582-9
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1Margaret Wise Brown to Marguerite C. Hearsey, undated (November 1934), Letter 15. Fishburn Library Archives, Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia.
2For examples of this trend in historiography, see George Mitchell, The End of All That: On Childhood After the Great War (New York: Redmond & Company, 1990) and Allison Somogyi, New Lands of Fantasy (Toronto: Duchess University Press, 1976).
1Maude Johnson and Robert Brown had a strained marriage, with Robert often on the road for his job as vice president and treasurer of the American Manufacturing Company. By 1942, Robert was living at his yacht club on the occasions that he was “at home,” and Maude had filled the void left by the ruined marriage with a brand of American spiritualism called Theosophy. The demands of the religion, combined with often debilitating high blood pressure, left her little energy for her children. Leonard Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
2T. S. Eliot, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth,” Dial 75 (November 1923): 480–83.
3Harper & Row, Brown’s publisher, also recognized the faults in the manuscript. A reader for Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom called the book “an overripe tomato” and advised against publishing it. Nordstrom appears to have gone ahead not because of the book’s merit but due to her close relationship with Brown, to whom the manuscript was vastly important; Marcus.
1Marcus, 101.
2W. R. Scott began this run with a book for middle-grade children written by Lucy Sprague Mitchell, from the first-person perspective of one of Christopher Columbus’s sailors.
1Brown was determined to write simple songs for children whose melodies and lyrics inspired them to come up with their own. Marcus, 258.
2Nielsen BookScan, accessed 17 May 2016.
1The Only House, half hidden in the trees, the boudoir out on the lawn, the rock face angling down to the water. In a nearby stream, Margaret is cooling a large bottle of white wine. A jar of milk sits at the bottom of the well, tied to a rope for its retrieval. There is no refrigerator.
2Lucille Hutchings.
3One and a half parts dry vermouth, four parts soda, one half part liqueur. Crimson, with a slice of lemon floating at the top. Margaret stirs it slowly.
1“It is one thing to be avant-garde,” says Michael gaily. “Quite another to be avant-honte.” The sycophants twitter. The party goes on.
2“She’ll never recognize you in that get-up.” Harry frowns. Michael giggles and adjusts her large blue hat. With the veil over her face, she might be homely. She might be disfigured. She might be Broadway elite.
1“Michael has had her fill of men,” says Bill Gaston, calling long distance. “Maybe from there she’ll move on to a goat.” Margaret grimaces, twists the telephone cord around a finger.
2Maybe from there she’ll move on to a goat.
3The light is better in the front room. Margaret pushes her bed toward the window. Michael tells her she’s a child, but with laughter. With a kiss.
1Clem and Posey return from a dinner at Michael’s apartment. “She’s so cruel,” says Posey, unbuttoning her coat. “It’s devastating to watch her demean Margaret.”
2The apartment is a floral fantasy, though Margaret coughs each time she waltzes through the kitchen. Gladiolas in the teakettle, peonies lining the windowsills, Margaret’s underwear drawer bursting with gardenias. The injured flying squirrel that has been living in the bathroom while Margaret nurses it to health seems confused. The cats keep throwing up daisies.
3Margaret and Leonard take the book to Bank Street School for a test run. An adenoidal boy stands up, uses his arm to wipe his nose. “Cars don’t go honk honk,” he says. A child next to him agrees: “They go awuurra awuurra.” Leonard laughs. “Well then, the cars will go awuurra,” says Margaret.
1The guests have retired to the screened porch. Margaret stands in the doorway, watching Michael opine. “This Freudian obscenity,” she is saying, and someone is laughing and Margaret is feeling small. She walks out to the dock. The rain is coming—she can smell it on the wind. The world feels vast and deep.
2“I heard you took tea on the library steps.” Michael laughs. Margaret says, “Yes, I’d forgot my invitation. They wouldn’t let me in, so Ursula and I had a Children’s Book Week luncheon of our own.” “She’s a terrible influence.” Michael doesn’t say more, because it’s already been said. Michael has made herself painfully known. “It was my idea,” says Margaret, setting her coat across a chair. “Exactly,” says Michael.
3Each time they speak, Michael tells Margaret that they have been living in sin, that Margaret is sinful. She has cast Margaret out of the East End Avenue apartments, cut off all contact. She is sickening. She is dying. She requests that Margaret exhume her youngest son’s body in Connecticut, have him reburied in the family plot in the Bronx. Margaret makes the arrangements. Margaret buys up blocks of tickets to Michael’s lecture show and calls in favors from her friends so that the seats won’t be empty while Michael stands onstage,
all spindly weightless bone. A doctor calls to say that Margaret is causing Michael too much stress. Can she please refrain from visiting the theater?