Silver Girl
Page 33
“What are these?” she asks.
“For making wishes,” I say. “We’ll throw them into the lake one at a time, taking turns, and make wishes. Whoever’s last gets their wish to come true.” She’ll be last; I rigged it that way. That’s why I say that, so her wish will come true.
“Are they special?” she asks. “Are they different from regular rocks?”
“You’re right,” I say. “These are special. You start.”
She selects one of the pebbles that Jess’s mother left with me, examines it by turning it around and around in her hand, thinking, as if there’s one way to hold it that’s luckier than other ways. She still believes these sorts of things. That’s another thing she’s good at.
Then she scrunches shut her eyes and tosses in the stone, throwing so hard it’s like she wants to hit Michigan. It barely plinks, that tiny pebble hitting this whole huge lake, but when she opens her eyes, I see that she’s almost quivering with the importance of this wish. “Your turn,” she says. “You.”
I pitch my pebble underhand so it arcs high across the blue sky and I lose it in the water’s shimmer. On another day, I might throw it hard, wanting to hit Michigan myself, even knowing that’s impossible. That’s okay. I already got my wish.
I guess if Jess wants to find me someday far off in the future, she will; she’s like that. She might, might not. I know I’m not getting married and my name will stay the same. One day, my name will be printed on a book. If Jess wants to know who I was—who I am—she can read that. They all can.
For now, next time we come to the lake, I’ll bring paint, and Grace and I can write our names together on these rocks, just for fun and to show we were here. Now, this is the beginning. This is home.
HISTORICAL NOTE ABOUT THE TYLENOL MURDERS
The basic facts are as described in the novel: In the fall of 1982, seven people in the greater Chicago area died after ingesting tainted Tylenol capsules that had been filled with cyanide and returned to drugstore shelves. As of this writing, no one has been convicted of the crime. However, while writing Silver Girl, I did take some fictional liberties, along the lines of creating a fictional murder victim and tweaking the timeline of events.
If you would like to read more about this crime, I recommend the online articles “A Bitter Pill” by Joy Bergmann, originally published in the Chicago Reader, and Bergmann’s follow-up to that piece, “The Tylenol Mafia,” also published in the Chicago Reader.
Additional source material included Tymurs by Scott Bartz.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have only one list to scribble in my composition notebook, People to Thank Effusively... though I cannot possibly prioritize and arrange and number. I’m grateful to each of you, more than I can say.
Kerry D’Agostino is the best agent in the world; she absolutely believed in this book from the beginning! And how lucky I am that Silver Girl landed with Olivia Taylor Smith at Unnamed Press! (Really, I long to use more exclamation points here because I am so grateful and so delighted to be working with these two women and with everyone at this fine press.)
Thanks to the editors of the following journals where various chapters of this book were published; I appreciate your early vote of confidence and your thoughtful edits: Cincinnati Review, Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Midwestern Gothic, River Styx, WIP (Works [of Fiction] in Progress).
Completing this book was a long and complicated journey, so how delightful that I spent some of that journey writing and revising in these lovely places, each offering a writer what she craves most of all, time and space: the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Many chapters in this book started as prompts composed in fifteen-minute bursts in my monthly prompt writing group. I’m honored to work alongside these writers on the second Wednesday of every month: Michelle Berberet, Nancy Carson, Mary Daly, Joanne Lozar Glenn, Lisa Leibow, Mark Morrow, Grace Morsberger, Lauri Ploch, Charlotte Safavi, and Nina Sichel. And thanks to Maribeth Fischer, whose example inspired me to form our group, after she told me that she wrote pages and pages of her own beautiful novels while writing to prompts.
The students and faculty at the Converse College low-residency MFA program in Spartanburg, South Carolina, are an avid and joyful audience, eager to hear from my works in progress, quick with compliments and challenging questions. I always emerge from the cocoon of our residencies feeling inspired. Special thanks to our MFA director, Rick Mulkey, for being an excellent administrator and a dear friend.
There are writers I turn to time and time again, who are always there to cheer, console, advise, and grab a drink (or two). Thanks for your continued friendship and your generous wisdom: Marlin Barton, Sandra Beasley, Michelle Brafman, Mary Cantrell, Susan Coll, Dan Elish, Rachel Hall, Anna Leahy, Carolyn Parkhurst, Amy Stolls, Susan Tekulve, Paula Whyman, Elly Williams, and Mary Kay Zuravleff. Also, I’m thankful that my tribe of Facebook writer-friends feels to me more like friends than simply “friends.” I’ve learned so much from all of you.
After writing a book set in a college, surely I must thank all my writing teachers, especially these folks, some from way back when: Mary Kinzie, Arturo Vivante, Jeff Lipkis, Tim O’Brien, Mark Richard, and Richard Bausch.
Thanks to my parents, Donald and Catherine Pietrzyk, and my sister, Susan Pietrzyk, and her partner, Tanya Olson, who remain unfazed by and utterly supportive of this author in the family. I love the enthusiasm that exudes from Veronica Grogan, Cynthia Weldon, and Gerry Romano. And I honor the memory of Ann McLaughlin, who taught me much about shaping a novel.
Finally, last on this list, but always first in my heart, Steve Ello. At the end of one story, I am fortunate to find my new beginning with you.
BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION GUIDE
Note: There are no right or wrong answers to these questions; they are intended to provoke lively conversation.
1. Why is the narrator unnamed? How did you feel about that element of the book?
2. Why is this book not told in chronological order? What are the benefits and ramifications of this choice?
3. In what ways is this narrator unreliable and untrustworthy? In what ways is she also painfully truthful and honest?
4. How did your feelings about the narrator and the (sometimes harrowing) decisions she makes shift and evolve over the course of the book?
5. Have you had a complicated friendship with someone, perhaps reminiscent of the narrator’s friendship with Jess? What kept you in that friendship? Or what eventually led to the end of that friendship? What keeps Jess and the narrator together?
6. The Tylenol murders took place in 1982, and product packaging and surveillance security have been transformed as a result. Does this crime feel like a relic from an earlier time? Or are there elements to these murders that feel relevant to today’s culture?
7. These girls feel tremendous pressure to behave a certain way. Who applies this pressure? How do the characters find escape from these relentless expectations? How would you compare these expectations with your own experience coming of age?
8. How do the various characters in this novel treat and consider material goods? Their appearance? Are their concerns superficial? Why/why not?
9. In “Pretty,” the narrator accuses herself: “No one thinks about money the way you do.” How do you think about money? Have your views changed over time? How do you imagine other people think about money?
10. In “Two Girls,” the narrator thinks, “Utter power, like God. That was what [the Tylenol killer] wanted, power—I felt sure of it...It was scary to understand that about him.” How would you describe the narrator’s interpretations of power? Are there times and situations where she has power, or imagines she does? When is she powerless? Why does she think about power so frequently?
11.
How does the physical landscape reflect and provoke the narrator’s experience?
12. What is the role of stories within this book? How many different stories are told or are alluded to? Why does Grace like hearing about the Silver Girl?
13. How would you describe the narrator’s view of personal relationships? How has she come by these feelings? Do her views change over the course of the novel?
14. In “The Bedroom,” the narrator writes, “That endless yearning, that empty hunger, even when I knew it wasn’t sweaters I wanted (though also, actually it was). It was to not care how many sweaters I had; it wasn’t a number, but a word: ‘enough.’ And that word was impossible, it seemed to me.” Do you think it’s possible to have “enough”? Why/why not?
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