“That’s what you’re sitting there thinking? Seriously?” I try to unwind the rubber band from my hair until it becomes clear it will take hours of work, if not a haircut, to remove it. I growl out loud.
“Don’t get worked up, now.”
“Excuse me for getting worked up! I’m stuck here in this bed. They’ve told me almost nothing about what’s going on. My dad, who I should have never called, is lecturing me like I’m still a child. You tell me how I’m supposed to act right now. I mean, what exactly are you expecting me to do?”
He presses his bald lips together as if counting to ten. “Well,” he finally says, “you haven’t asked to see the baby. You haven’t asked to hold her.”
Squeezing my fists so tight that the nails cut into my palms, I begin to understand what it must have been like for my mother to have him constantly judging her. No wonder she preferred to stay locked in a room by herself.
“Dad,” I say, wanting to stand up, “I thought I had another month or two to prepare. I didn’t think I’d be doing this alone.”
Silence.
A strange squeak escapes from the back of my throat where the fear is hiding. “Why can’t you understand? I just don’t feel ready. Is that so crazy?”
I want from him things he can’t give. I want him to be a man who understands and says something to comfort me. I want him to be as powerful a father as he is a scientist. Instead, he crinkles the plastic wrap on the bouquet of flowers.
“What went wrong with her, Dad?”
He shakes his head.
“Please,” I say. “It’s my story, too.”
“I’m not sure what you want to know.”
“Tell me what she did that night before Anne took me away.”
He sets the bouquet on the floor beside his chair, then, slowly, he says, “She went to tuck you in to bed, though it was still quite early. The whole evening was upsetting to her and she wasn’t in a good state of mind.” He stops again as if that’s enough.
“What did she do?”
He takes a deep breath. “She was in your room for some time when she became hysterical.”
“What do you mean?”
“She started wailing and calling for me to save you. I ran to your room, and when I got there, she was shaking you. I didn’t understand why she wanted to wake you up, but when I put my face near yours, you were colder than I expected.”
I remember this—the feel of his mustache against my forehead before he covered my shoulders with the blanket.
“Your mother began to rock back and forth, and wouldn’t answer me when I asked what had happened. But she mumbled over and over that she was sorry.”
I remember this, too. Her face was hot and wet against mine, whispering, “I’m sorry, Bear.”
“At first I thought this was your mother’s problem—what we’d been dealing with for some months—and I was just trying to quiet her down. But what she said worried me. And when I noticed a cup beside your bed, I decided to taste what was in it.”
The bitter drink.
“That’s when I knew our problems were bigger than I’d thought.”
I find the story strangely comforting because I’ve heard something I needed to know. That we are different. That my mother could do things I could never do.
“Did I go to the hospital?”
He shakes his head, and here is where he made the calculation I’d always suspected. The kinds of problems our family had were the kinds he couldn’t get help for, not without risking everything.
“I checked your pulse and your breathing,” he says, massaging his upper lip as if there’s still a mustache there. “You were a fighter, like we could have guessed. And we stayed beside you all night, touching your skin and feeling for breath under your nose.”
“But you didn’t get help.”
He looks right at me. “That was a decision we were unsure of all night. We were unsure of many of the decisions we made that year.”
• • •
Someone knocks gently on the door before coming inside. “I’ve got someone here who wants to meet you.” It’s the nurse who cut me free from the bathroom door. She walks into the room, carrying a small bundle in her arms. “Are you ready?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I think you’ll change your mind when you see this face.”
It’s a shock to see how small she is, her face thin with blue veins running across her forehead. She looks too fragile to hold, but without thinking I’ve extended my arms. And now that I am thinking, I’m not exactly sure if my arms should be turned this way, as if I’m accepting a bag of groceries.
“I’ve never held a baby before.”
“Really? Never held a friend’s baby? Never did any babysitting?”
I shake my head, but that doesn’t stop the nurse, who lays my tightly bundled daughter in my arms.
At first, I hold her like I did the flowers: She’s just stretched across my stiff arms. Then I cradle her closer, and the nurse, who has not yet let go of the baby, moves my hand under her head before she steps away.
“See?” she says. “You’ve got it.”
She’s unbelievably light, and, right now, I can’t imagine being responsible for anything so small. Dad leans forward on his knees as if he doesn’t believe I can do it, either.
“Baby Girl Harris-Williams. Four pounds, six ounces. Perfectly healthy. She just needed a little oxygen and an ounce of formula to get the hang of swallowing and breathing.”
I can’t relax with my dad watching my every move.
“It’s okay to unwrap this blanket and have a peek at her hands,” the nurse says, exposing delicate arms and tiny, perfect fingers. “Have you thought of a name for her?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I say. “Maybe Mara.”
It’s spite that makes me say this, a chance to remind Dad that my mother is more to me than just her mistakes. Sometimes I think of her twirling, singing, telling her story of the woman in the golden gown, and I wonder who she might have become if we’d gotten her help.
The nurse squeezes my arm and whispers, “I’m going now. I just wanted to say congratulations on your beautiful baby.”
She’s still leaning over me when the phone rings. I shake my head as she answers it, letting her know I don’t want to talk.
“She’s not taking phone calls just yet,” she says. “M-hmm. M-hmm. Yes, I see. Hold on a minute.”
Covering the bottom of the receiver, she asks, “Would it be all right if your husband speaks with your father?”
Surprised, I slowly nod.
I’ve often wondered if they’d get along. I worked hard not to marry a man like my father. I avoided men in the sciences and found Simon in the music section of a bookstore. Dad seems to be enjoying their conversation, asking about the museums in Paris, and stunning me by mentioning the painter Paul Cézanne. Maybe they would have always gotten along like this, but I’ve kept them separate. My life has been easier that way: past in the past.
The baby wriggles in my arms, roots around, suckling my shoulder. When I stroke the side of her face, she turns, trying to suckle my hand.
I put my lips to the top of her fuzzy head and whisper, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” My lips stay there against her skin, which smells of sweet rice.
“I think she’s thinking of the name Mara,” I hear my dad say before the long pause. He holds the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I’ve never tried holding a baby and a telephone at the same time. I don’t want the cord to touch her face, so I switch ears, and fumble the phone until Dad has to position it above my shoulder.
“Hello, Momma,” Simon says.
The tears come easily. “I wish you could see her right now.”
“Tell me what she looks like.”
“She looks like a little old man,” I say, cracking a smile. “Little droopy cheeks. Wrinkly forehead. A big tuft of sweaty black hair that sticks straight up like a troll doll. She’s
amazing.”
“Tell me about her hands and her toes.”
I’m annoyed that Dad is still right here, listening to us, but I tell Simon, “She has her hand on the side of her face right now. The tiniest fingers you’ve ever seen. And her other hand is squeezed into a fist the size of a Super Ball. I haven’t seen her feet yet. She’s all wrapped up tight.”
“And she’s healthy?”
“She’s small.” I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “She had some trouble breathing and needed oxygen.”
“But she’s okay now?”
“I think so. I’ve been afraid to ask.” My father doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by his eavesdropping. I turn my shoulders a little toward the wall and ask, “When will you be back?”
“I just booked a flight,” he said. “I’ll be there soon, and then we’ll find out when we can take her home.”
“But nothing’s ready. The house is in boxes. We don’t even have a crib.”
“Can you imagine having her sleep that far away from us, anyway?”
I can’t. I can’t even stand to have this phone between us when I could take my other arm and curl it around her. I’m captivated with her eyelids, her little lopsided mouth, the way her nostrils flare with each breath.
“Are you ready to talk about names?” he asks, but my father is driving me crazy the way he just stands there, hovering over the bed, as if he’s waiting his turn.
“You know what—can you call me back?” I ask. “I’d rather talk when it’s a little more private.”
My father helps me hang up the phone, moves it close by so I can reach it on my own. “I’m going to have to go home for a while,” he says. “I have a cat to feed, and I need to take a shower and get some work done.”
“It’s okay,” I say, because the word “thanks” won’t come out.
He kisses me on the cheek, something he’s never done, and says, “Isaac Newton was born early, too,” the word “too” coming out of his mouth like a choke.
I can’t speak.
“I’ll call you,” he says, and walks to the door.
When he turns back for one last look, without even thinking, I salute him.
A part of me will always be eight years old, living that last year we had Momma with us. And my story of that year always ends with our walk because that’s when there was hope. That’s when we could still choose any ending.
The power of suicide, the thing that makes it particularly poisonous, is that it lets one person have the last say without giving others a chance to respond. My mother left us with her fear that she’d pass down the parts about herself she hated. And I know, in many ways, I look like the very mess she worried she’d create with my knotted hair, quick temper, and easy tears. Some nights I’m startled awake with the ways we are similar—how, on certain days, I, too, could sit and stare at nothing, could fill my pockets with something heavy and sink underwater. But what I desperately want to tell my mother, if she’d given me a chance to respond, is this: It wasn’t perfect, but I never needed perfect.
The baby cries and I pull her close. Then, because no one else is in the room, I open my gown and hold her against my breast. It’s a clumsy movement—not at all like women who nurse easily and discreetly in parks and museums—as I flash the room and forget to support her head. Sensing the nipple against her cheek, she quickly turns her head, mouth open wide, and takes it, just the tip at first. The pain is so sharp, my eyes water. We try again, this little one mad now—mad the milk is trapped on the other side of her tightly clamped lips, and mad I’m tugging that nipple away. This time when she opens wide, I shove a mouthful of breast in, wince in pain, but soon forget the hurt. I’m too caught up in her little face, one side mashed against me, and eyes that are gray-green—not like anyone else’s I know.
Wherever my mother is, I hope I can offer her this mercy, that she might know she didn’t destroy me. That she might see me here, falling in love.
My husband calls again and I tell him about the baby’s toes and the teeny little diaper and crusty piece of umbilical cord still attached to her navel. Simon relishes every detail, and then tells me he’s just gone from store to store in search of a book of baby names written in English, which he’s now holding in his hands and will stay on the phone with me until we’ve found her a name.
“Look up my mother’s name,” I say, brushing the baby’s hair back from her forehead. “Tell me what it means.”
I hear the pages flip, and Simon quietly saying M names: “Marion. May. Maggie.” He pauses. “Mara. Bitter sorrow.”
“Bitter sorrow? Are you serious?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“But that’s awful. We can’t name her that.”
“Then we’ll start at the beginning,” he says.
He reads out names, beginning with A, pausing to know our baby’s cry and to hear the funny squeak she makes whenever she swallows. He reads until his voice is hoarse, and when he gets to the end of the R’s, her name, the one that so clearly belongs to her, is right there: Ruby. Small and lovely. Shining after so much has broken.
I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I close my eyes, holding Ruby close, tears spilling into the corners of my mouth, and I see my mother, in sleeves like angel wings—twirling. Lifting.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Absolute gratitude to my agent, Dan Conaway, for his wicked genius and, more important, for his friendship, which was what allowed me to finish this book; to my editor, Brittany Hamblin, for giving me such creative freedom and for the suggestion that made the story pop; to Stephen Barr for being a consistently positive force; to Carrie Kania for being my kind of badass; to Emin Mancheril for the perfect cover; and to the smart and supportive team from Harper Collins—Paula Cooper, Jennifer Hart, Alberto Rojas, Vanessa Schneider, Brenda Segel, Stephanie Selah, Juliette Shapland, Carolyn Bodkin, and Amy Vreeland—for making things happen.
My deepest thanks to those who read and edited early drafts, encouraged and pushed me, made me a better writer, made me a better friend, kept me in this game, opened doors, hugged all of my important packages before mailing them, shared Thai food during an ice storm, helped me finish off bottles of scotch, drew pictures that cheered me, lent my character bells for her shoes, came up with the beautiful title, restored my spirits over a glorious weekend in Canada, gave me much needed pep talks, and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself: Zett Aguado, Bob Arter, Terry Bain, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Bruce Bauman, Laura Benedict, Ritchie Blackmore, Melvin Brooks, Terri Brown-Davidson, Kim Chinquee, Tish Cohen, Elizabeth Crane, Keith Cronin, Jim Daniels, Juliet DeWal, Karen Dionne, Frank DiPalermo, Kevin Dolgin, Xujun Eberlein, Richard Edghill, Pia Ehrhardt, Janet Fitch, Patry Francis, Neil Gaiman, Sands Hall, Tom Jackson, Tommy Kane, Jessica Keener, Roy Kesey, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Dylan Landis, John Leary, Brad Listi, Kathy and Kenny Machin, Brian McEntee, Ellen Meister, Darlin’ Neal, Lance Reynald, Jordan Rosenfeld, Gail Siegel, Robin Slick, James Spring, Tracy Tekverk, Jim Tomlinson, Amy Wallen, John Warner, Kimberly Wetherell, and Tom Williams.
Thank you to some very important communities in my life: the candid Zoetrope Virtual Workshop, where I learned to edit fearlessly; the nourishing community of writers at Squaw Valley, where I realized I could dream bigger; Nile Rodgers’s inspiring We Are Family Foundation, where I volunteer; and my beloved LitPark, where I’m constantly renewed.
Finally, thank you to my mom, who read the first terrible poem I ever wrote and told me I had talent; and to my brilliant, artistic, funny, big-hearted boys, for being so understanding of this long process. Now we celebrate!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SUSAN HENDERSON is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the founder of the literary blog LitPark: Where Writers Come to Play (www.litpark.com). She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. Her work has appeared in Zoetrope, the Pittsburgh Quarterly, North Atlantic Review, Opium, Other Voices, Amazon Shorts
, The Future Dictionary of America (McSweeney’s, 2004), The Best American Nonrequired Reading (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), and Not Quite What I Was Planning (Harper Paperbacks, 2008). Henderson lives in New York and Up from the Blue is her first novel.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
PRAISE FOR Up from the Blue BY SUSAN HENDERSON
“Susan Henderson’s Up from the Blue deftly portrays a family with contradictions we can all relate to—it’s beautiful and maddening, hopeful and condemning, simple, yet like a knot that takes a lifetime to untangle. This is a book that you will love completely, even as it hurts you. It is a heartbreaking, rewarding story that still haunts me.”
—Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“A haunting tale of the terrible ways in which we fail each other; of the whys, the what-ifs, and the what nows. This is not a book you’ll soon forget.”
—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants
“A rare literary page-turner full of shocking discoveries and twists. Susan Henderson has created a remarkable narrator—as memorable for her feistiness as for her tenderness. Up From the Blue is going to be one of this year’s major debuts.”
—Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of The Bucolic Plague and I Am Not Myself These Days
“Up From the Blue is a heart-wrenching, tender story with a mystery that kept my pulse racing. What a joy to discover Tillie Harris, the most memorable, charming, and plucky narrator in fiction since Scout Finch.”
—Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
“Susan Henderson masterfully weaves a story where family can both indelibly wound, and yet also redeem. Heartbreaking, compelling—ultimately beautiful.”
—Samantha Dunn, author of Faith in Carlos Gomez
“Haunting and unsettling, Up From the Blue’s real alchemy is the way it uncovers the stories that alternately save us and keep us from our real truths. Incandescently written, this is a stunning debut with heart.”
Up from the Blue Page 26