“I was just thinking, we could go there together.”
Jill stares past Tara for a second. They are putting the baby’s body in an ambulance. What looks like an empty bureau drawer is just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. A woman bends to examine it—you can see her trying to decide if it’s worth lugging home—and then moves on.
“They have this man there named Denver that kisses you while your baby’s coming out, so it won’t hurt.”
And Virgil thinks he’s so cool, with his three alternate positions and that pair of jockey shorts that says “Home of the Whopper.” Imagine what they do in a commune.
“They grow all their own food, no chemicals. At Christmas they make this giant fruitcake and there’s a candlelight ceremony that lasts until sunrise. Everybody singing. The babies there hardly ever get colds.”
What if she just never went home? Her father would call the hospitals, drive around all night in his pickup, looking for her. All her mother would worry about is the car.
When the baby’s born she will send a letter. Just a postcard maybe: You have a grandson. He looks like you, Daddy—bald.
And then one morning her mother turns on the Phil Donahue show. She doesn’t even look up from her ironing until Donahue says here’s our other guest, an unwed mother from a spiritual community in Georgia, and it’s Jill. Forget about strapless dresses: hers is unbuttoned to the waist and wide open. She’s nursing her baby on national television.
“What did your parents do wrong?” says a woman in the studio audience. (Those women on Donahue are always worrying about how to keep their kids from turning into drug addicts and lesbians.)
“My dad’s O.K.,” she will say. “My mother was a real tight-ass.”
“Why do you think you had such an easy labor?” Donahue asks her.
French kissing.
“They have this bus they drive around in,” Tara’s saying now. “And they’re always singing.” She has taken a wraparound Indian skirt out of the flight bag for Jill to put on over the hospital gown. She has set Sunshine down on the grass, and one of Mrs. Ramsay’s pamphlets lies beside her, with the pages flapping.
“So,” says Tara. “You want to come?”
Jill thinks about her father for a second—imagines that she’s sitting on his lap again and he’s telling her not to worry, he’ll make everything O.K., she’ll always be his little girl. Then she thinks about her mother.
“We could take my car,” says Jill. Nobody even sees them go.
Val is always a wreck in the morning. She’s not used to waking up this early, and certainly not the way she had to wake up just now. One minute she’s asleep in the guy’s car, having this terrific dream that they made her lead singer of Pink Floyd, and the next thing she knows, the guy is practically throwing her out of the car and saying, “I’ve got to split, man.” And there’s this little kid screaming his head off, and two chicks, one fat and one thin, getting into the front seat. No good morning or anything. And now she’s out in the middle of nowhere with her tits bare and the heel broken off one of her sandals—starving, among other things.
There is something sticking up through the leaves over by the water. She goes to look. Wild! A Jackson Browne album and two old Beatles. That’s one good thing anyway.
So she does what she always does when she can’t think of anything else. She sits down and reads the liner notes.
Greg is just rounding the last curve when he sees the girl sitting there. Skinny back, tiny bare breasts. She’s holding something but it’s not the baby. A book maybe, or a picture.
In another second of course he knows it’s not Tara after all. This girl is nothing like Tara. He parks the car, gets out. She looks up, tilts her head sideways for a moment, then comes toward him. She makes no effort to cover herself.
“Mr. Hansen?” she says. “Don’t you know who I am? It’s Valerie from art class. Remember, I did that oil painting of my foot for spring term? This is so cosmic.”
Even before her house comes into view, Wayne can smell the lilacs. The scent is almost too sweet, like having your face pressed tight up against some old grandma’s bosom at Christmastime. But it’s nice hearing birds for a change. And it will be good to put his feet on that grass, after twenty miles of gravel.
Loretta’s last spring (he knew by then it was probably her last) he drove all over Manchester, looking for the best lilac bush. He waited until after dark, after all the house lights went out. Then he went into the people’s yard and chopped it down, right at the base. It was more a tree than a bush actually. He could just barely haul it into the back of his truck. It was a real bitch to carry up three flights of stairs.
He had to break off some of the branches to get it in the door of their apartment. There were little purple flowers shedding all over the place. He dragged it into the middle of the room. Loretta was lying on her mattress, her eyes closed, but not asleep.
“You want to see the lilacs blooming—well, here they are,” he said. Almost nothing made her cry by that point, but when he lay down next to her there were tears on her cheeks. She never said a word.
Mark and Sandy drop Wanda off at Rocky’s, then go home. Mark says nothing because he can’t think of what to say. Sandy says nothing because if they can just manage to never talk about this, they can go on like it never happened.
There’s a newspaper on the doorstep: ten more dead from the volcano, ninety-eight still missing. There’s a circular announcing this week’s specials at the Grand Union. There’s an envelope from a photographer’s studio.
In the picture, Sandy and Mark Junior sit in front of a snow-capped peak, not a cloud in the sky. Sandy’s eyes are closed, blinking, and her head is tilted a little to one side, the way they said to do in the brochure from the modeling school. One hand is raised (brushing a piece of hair out of her face). The other hand is wrapped around Mark Junior’s stomach. You can tell how tight she’s holding him by the way the fabric of his shirt is all pulled up, so his belly button shows. Sandy’s not exactly smiling but her mouth is turned up. She has just said cheese.
Mark Junior is looking right into the camera. One of his arms is raised too, but in a fist, like some protestor. The other arm is a little blurry (it must have been moving). He’s wearing his baseball cap.
But here is the amazing thing. He is not crying after all. His skin is not red and his mouth is not screwed up. He’s smiling. He looks like an angel.
Of course her dog doesn’t bark at Wayne. They never do. This one licks his bare feet as he comes up the walk and follows him onto the porch. There’s a bowl of granola on the table. Wayne takes a handful and starts chewing. He looks out toward the field at a little wooden windmill, a man swinging an ax up and down and up. Stiff breeze.
The door is not quite shut. No sound comes from inside the house except the noise a record player makes when the amplifier’s turned on but the record’s over. “I’m here,” he says, stepping in.
A few hundred yards back, Reg Johnson walks slowly toward the house, a rifle in his hands.
A Biography of Joyce Maynard
Joyce Maynard is the bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her memoir At Home in the World and her novel Labor Day, both bestsellers. Since launching her writing career as a teenager, Maynard has been a commentator on CBS radio, a contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and a reporter for the New York Times, as well as a speaker on parenthood, family, and writing. She has published hundreds of essays and columns for publications such as Vogue; More; O, The Oprah Magazine; and the New York Times; in addition to many essay collections.
Born in Durham, New Hampshire, in 1953, Maynard began publishing her stories, essays, and poems when she was fourteen years old. She won numerous awards for her work before entering college at Yale University in 1971. During her freshman year, Maynard sent examples of her work to the New York Times, prompting an assignment: She was to write an article for them
about growing up in the sixties. In April 1972 that article, “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life,” graced the cover of the magazine, earning her widespread acclaim and instant fame.
Maynard’s story also caught the eye of reclusive author J. D. Salinger, then fifty-three years old, who wrote her a letter praising her work—launching a correspondence that ultimately led Maynard to drop out of college and move to New Hampshire to live with the author. Their relationship lasted ten months.
Maynard never returned to college. In 1973 she published her first memoir, Looking Back, a follow-up to her New York Times Magazine article published the year before. Having lived alone in New Hampshire in her early twenties, in 1976 she was offered a job as a reporter for the New York Times and moved to New York City. She left the newspaper in 1977 when she married Steve Bethel and returned to New Hampshire. The couple went on to have three children: Audrey, Charlie, and Wilson.
Maynard’s first novel, Baby Love, published in 1981, earned the praise of several renowned fiction writers including Anne Tyler, Joseph Heller, and Raymond Carver. Her next book, Domestic Affairs (1987)—a collection of her syndicated columns, which had run in newspapers across the country—reflected on her experiences as a wife and mother and further cemented Maynard’s status as one of the best-loved modern American memoirists.
In 1986, an area in Maynard’s home state of New Hampshire was selected by the US Department of Energy as a finalist to become the first-in-the-nation high-level nuclear waste dump. Maynard was one of the organizers of the resistance to that project, and she wrote a cover story about it that was published in April of that year and was widely believed to have contributed to the government’s decision to suspend the nuclear waste dump plan.
Maynard’s marriage ended in 1989—an experience she wrote about in her “Domestic Affairs” columns. Many major newspapers discontinued the column abruptly at this point, citing Maynard’s impending divorce as indication that she was no longer equipped to write about family life. Maynard continued writing—though for a much smaller audience—in the Domestic Affairs Newsletter.
In keeping with her practice of communicating actively with her readers, Maynard established a website in 1996; she was one of the first writers to do so, and she was a regular and visible presence through the brand-new technology of her site’s discussion forum.
Forbidden by Salinger to speak of him, Maynard chose to remain silent about their relationship for twenty-five years, until her daughter turned eighteen. Her decision to write about the experience in her 1998 memoir At Home in the World resulted in an avalanche of criticism, but eventually led to further disclosures by other women who had been in his life. Salinger died in 2010.
Maynard has also written two children’s books and two young-adult novels; of these, The Usual Rules was named by the American Library Association as one of the ten best young-adult novels of 2003. Her literary fiction includes To Die For (1991), Where Love Goes (1994), Labor Day (2009), and The Good Daughters (2010). To Die For was adapted into a film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman. Labor Day is currently being adapted for the screen by director Jason Reitman, and is set to star Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.
The mother of three grown children, Maynard now lives in Northern California where, in addition to continuing her career as a writer and speaker, she performs regularly as a storyteller with the Moth and Porchlight. She also runs the annual Lake Atitlán Writing Workshop in a small Mayan village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.
Maynard in 1955.
Maynard and her sister Rona with their mother in Durham, New Hampshire.
Maynard at age eight with her sister Rona in 1961. The two stand before a window painted by their father, artist Max Maynard.
At age fifteen, Maynard won the Scholastic Magazine Writing Competition for one of her short stories. She continues to support the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, which over the years have recognized such young artists as Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath, Robert Redford, and Andy Warhol.
Maynard with (left to right) her father Max, husband Steve, and daughter Audrey in 1980 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Maynard with her two older children, Audrey and Charlie, in New Hampshire in 1982.
In 1986, a large portion of the state of New Hampshire was nominated by the Department of Energy to become the first-in-the-nation nuclear waste dump. An active organizer and vocal opponent of the project, Maynard published a cover story on the issue for the New York Times Magazine. Shown testifying at hearings in spring of 1986, Maynard names the defeat of this project as among the proudest moments of her life.
Maynard with her mother, Fredelle, at Fredelle’s wedding to her longtime partner shortly before her death. In 1989 Maynard’s mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Maynard documented the story of her last months in her syndicated newspaper column, “Domestic Affairs.” That same year, Maynard’s marriage ended and she moved with her children from her rural home to the town of Keene, New Hampshire.
A 1991 photo of (left to right) Audrey, Charlie, Willy, and Joyce in the kitchen of their Keene, New Hampshire, home. During this period Maynard was a frequent speaker on family and parenting, and continued to write her “Domestic Affairs” column.
Maynard’s novel To Die For was adapted for film in 1994. In the film, she played the lawyer of Nicole Kidman’s character. To fulfill her mother’s childhood ambition to be in the movies, Maynard carried her mother’s ashes in her briefcase.
Maynard at home in Mill Valley, California, in 1997, at one of more than one hundred gatherings she has hosted to teach people how to make pie. “I do it to honor my mother, to encourage the idea of making good food from scratch, with more love than fuss, and to raise money for causes I believe in,” she explains. The family dog Opie is held by one of the bakers; the group stands in front of a painting by Max Maynard.
In 1999, Maynard traveled the globe promoting her memoir At Home in the World, which was translated into fifteen languages. At one press photo shoot atop the tallest building in São Paolo, Brazil, her son Charlie’s skateboard turned into a prop: “One reporter asked me to stand on the skateboard. Another suggested I kick up my leg. Just as my son Charlie was saying, ‘Bad idea, Mom!’ the skateboard gave out from under me.”
Maynard teaching a group of students at her annual writing workshop at her second home of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, in 2006.
Maynard with her sister Rona (former editor-in-chief of the Canadian magazine Chatelaine, as well as a writer) in Mill Valley, California, around 2008. This photograph accompanied a story in which Rona and Joyce each wrote about being sisters—a story, Maynard says, “that went a long way to repairing our relationship.”
Maynard pictured with her children on New Year’s Eve 2012. From left to right: Audrey, a school counselor living in New Hampshire; Will, an actor frequently seen on television and in films; Joyce; and Charlie, a DJ and turntable artist known as “Captain Planet.”
Maynard at her home on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, in 2006.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint from previously published material:
Essential Music: Excerpt
from “Hungry for Your Love” by Van Morrison. Copyright © 1978 Essential Music. All rights reserved.
Fermata International Melodies, Inc.: Excerpt from “Feelings.” English lyrics and music by Morris Albert. Copyright © 1974 by Augusta LTDA, Sao Paulo, Brasil. All rights for U.S.A. and Canada assigned to Fermata International Melodies, Inc., 6290 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California, 90028.
Glad Music Co.: Excerpt from “Take Me” by George Jones and Leon Payne. Copyright © 1965 (1979) by Glad Music Co. All rights reserved, including the right of public performance for profit. International Copyright Secured. Made in U.S.A.
House of Bryant and Acuff-Rose Publications, Inc.: Excerpt from “Sleepless Nights” by Boudleaux Bryant and Felice Bryant. Copyright © 1960 by House of Bryant. Rights ouside the U.S. administered by Acuff-Ross Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of House of Bryant and Acuff-Rose Publications, Inc.
Ice Age Music: Excerpt from “The New Kid in Town” by J. D. Souther, Don Henley and Glenn Frey. Copyright © 1970 by Ice Age Music. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Jobete Music Co., Inc.: Excerpt from “Heatwave (Love Is Like a).” Words and music by Eddie Holland/ Lamont Dozier/ Brian Holland. Copyright © 1963 Jobete Music Co., Inc. Used by permission.
Peer International Corporation: Excerpt from Wildwood Flower by A. P. Carter. Copyright 1935 by Peer International Corporation. Copyright Renewed by Peer International Corporation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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