We Come to Our Senses
Page 16
Nobody ever asks about the grown women.
Charlotte was still pretty and soft-spoken, though now with a master’s and a career, and the confidence to look squarely at the past. We stood under the fluorescence, smiling past each other, eyeballing bulk packages of cod, scrod, halibut. I wondered if she had made or kept that list, the one detailing who I was before the war.
She got my phone number before I could ask for hers, and she said we should get a cup of coffee.
Of course, she never called.
“Why on earth would we ever go back?” was the last I ever heard.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Dana Lee and Virginia Philomena, with everything I’ve got. To my wonderful family, Lindsey and Whiting and DeMasi and DeLoca. To Bill Clegg. To Jill Bialosky. To Liz Birch and Brendan McGrath, Allan B. “Preacher” Hunt, Kyle Beachy, Chris Bower, Thomas D’Angelo and Caitlan Mackinnon-Patterson, Werllayne Nunes and Molly Dondero, Lee Eastman II, Alice Randall, David Metcalf and Erin Moody, Margaret Patton Chapman and Tony Strimple, Richard Holland, Ken MacLeish and Rachael Pomerantz, Andrew Mullins, Justin McGuirk, Maggie Tate, Robert Rea, Cale Nicholson. . . . To Robert Olen Butler, Chris Clemans, Maria Rogers, Michael Strong. To Lynelle Keil, Scott Gray, and the Pals who visit Willow Street in Austin. To John and Angela Young, Rob Harrington, Carter Little, and My Extended Nashville Comrades. To Ted Ownby, Ann Abadie, Jimmy Thomas, and the staff at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi. To Sara Levine and everyone at the MFA in Writing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. To the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt. To Square Books. To the Iowa Review, and the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans. To all y’all, with a thanks that feels broken, because a word like thanks doesn’t even come close.
“Evie M.” published in the Iowa Review, reprinted in Best
American Short Stories 2014. “So Bored in Nashville” in
Southern Cultures. “Clean” in Fourteen Hills. “They” in
You Must Be This Tall to Ride. “Hers” in Forty Stories: New
Writing from Harper Perennial.
Copyright © 2016 by Odie Lindsey
All rights reserved
First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
For information about special discounts for bulk
purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at
specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830
Book design by Brooke Koven
Jacket design by Linda Huang
Jacket photograph © Joyce Vincent
Production manager: Louise Mattarelliano
ISBN 978-0-393-24960-6
ISBN 978-0-393-24961-3 (e-book)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS