The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells
Page 22
“Stay,” I had said, and that is what I had done. I pictured already a daughter in this room, pink as a shrimp, bundled in blankets and warmed by the fire, Ruth bringing elaborate outfits that the child would never wear except for her delight. Felix measuring her height on the landing as she grew. First too tall, then too pale, then from nowhere another girl would arrive: slender and beautiful with long black hair and shining eyes and I would think: It’s Leo. Her father, reaching through time at last. She would meet some man and marry him, wearing Ruth’s diamond brooch, and follow him to England. Felix and I would see her to the boat, and watch as it tore away from its streamers and good-byes. “There she goes,” my brother would say to me, all gray hair and glasses, and I would fall into his arms weeping. I pictured us both, much older, Ruth long dead, in this room when I would ask why he never moved into a flat with a man he had been with for many years, and Felix lighting his pipe by the window and saying, “We promised to stay, didn’t we? We promised, bubs.” And I knew, already, that I would never tell him the strange story of my life.
For is my story really so unusual? To wake each morning as if things had gone differently—the dead come back, the lost returned, the beloved in our arms—is it any more magic than the ordinary madness of hope?
But we do wake, each of us, to find things have gone differently. The love we thought had killed us has not killed us after all, and the dream we had for ourselves has shifted elsewhere, like a planet our starship is set for; we have but to lift our heads and right ourselves, move toward it once again and start the day. We will not get there in our lifetime, and some would say: What’s the point? A journey to stars that none will see but our children’s children? To see the shape of life, is all we answer.
I lay there and watched for a long time as the bar of gold shortened on the floor and dissolved into a glow. The glass, the gloves in shadow now. I pulled the drapes aside and saw, out the window, the setting sun, coldly lighting the world. And there: the first few flakes of snow. Another promise kept. I settled myself into bed and watched the snow begin to fall. Time for sleep. And so, as always: tomorrow.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Endless thanks to Lynn Nesbit; Lee Boudreaux; Walter Donohue; Cullen Stanley; Frances Coady; Michael Chabon; Beatrice Della Monte von Rezzori; Brandon Cleary; Carmiel Banasky; the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, especially Jean Strouse and Alice Hudson; the San Francisco History Center; Chapin’s 1917 Greenwich Village; Miller’s 1990 Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way; the Macdowell Colony; the Yaddo Corporation; Santa Maddalena; the Aspen Writer’s Foundation; and the Cattos—but most especially to Daniel Handler, my best reader; and to David Ross, my best companion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDREW SEAN GREER is the bestselling author of The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was a Today book club selection and received a California Book Award. He lives in San Francisco.
www.harpercollins.com/andrewseangreer
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
ALSO BY ANDREW SEAN GREER
Novels
The Story of a Marriage
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
The Path of Minor Planets
Stories
How It Was for Me
CREDITS
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photograph © by Plainpicture/Hanka Steidle
Frontispiece photography © iStockphoto.com/Andrew Cribb
Map of the West Village by Suet Yee Chong
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF GRETA WELLS. Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Sean Greer. 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-221378-5
EPub Edition JULY 2013 ISBN 9780062213846
13 14 15 16 17 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com