The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
Page 57
At Lafayette, Paloma makes a right and Da follows suit.
“Oui. Très délicieux. It is very impressive and looks very complicated, mais, un, deux, trois, easy as pie.”
“What will you do with the other fish?” Da asks.
“With the cod, a pâté. Your fine anchovies marinated. Your spicy green flying fish roe served with crunchy potato latkes made from scratch. So much more, but we can talk recipes another day.”
He likes that she has referred to them having another day together, and follows her marching up wide Lafayette until it narrows, comes to a halt at Spring Street.
“So, Young Wong, while we’re waiting to cross, tell me one true thing about yourself. Anything at all. But preferably something you don’t tell most people.”
He is unused to anyone inquiring about his interior life, but still he can answer immediately. “I would be less stoic,” he says, and when he releases that hidden assertion into the thick hot air, the queerest feeling comes over him, a coolness from within, instantly lowering the temperature of his overheated, sweating body. His heavy heart weighing a few ounces lighter.
Cars trying to beat the changing light screech to a stop halfway into the crosswalk. Paloma says, “Très intéressant. S’il vous plaît expliquer. Explain in more detail, if you would.”
He waits until they have reached the other side, and then looks down at the top of Miss Rosen’s white head, just as she looks up. For the first time since she arrived at Haiyang Best, he allows her eyes to capture his.
“I am exhausted from living a life that makes me want to complain day and night, and saying so very little about it. I am locked up inside. There is much I want to do, but I need to escape first, find my way, find the place that I belong.”
When she nods slowly, thoughtfully, Da is filled with hope that she might have the answer he needs.
“What are you doing at eight tonight, Young Wong?”
“Selling fish. We do not close until ten.”
She begins walking again, and he keeps pace.
“Can someone replace you? That other one, the stingy hoarder of tape, the one scowling over my anchovies?”
“My cousin Bai? I cannot trust him to close up properly.”
“You feel locked up inside, so maybe this is the exact step you must take, to walk out the door.”
Will he free himself by simply having Bai lock up the store? He ponders as they continue down Spring, crossing Crosby, Broadway, Mercer, Green, until she makes a quick left onto Wooster and continues to the middle of the block.
“We are home,” Paloma Rosen says, standing in front of a great steel door flanked on either side by an eight-table coffee place and a florist.
“Miss Rosen, I’ve been thinking over your advice, and I don’t understand.”
“You will, Young Wong. You are to have your cousin lock up tonight because you are invited to a dinner party. Here, at my home. I might as well have one guest of my own and I have chosen you. Now, let’s go, up the stairs. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. I think you might have much in common.”
Joan does not know where Da Wong has come from. She did not expect to find a young Chinese fishmonger who yearns to be a painter in Paloma Rosen, but he exists now, along with his dirty-minded cousin, Bai, and the history of the fish market she has named Haiyang Best. But she saw Paloma Rosen on a steamy summer morning on an expedition for the procurement of seafood, shopping for the ingredients of a fine meal she has no interest in preparing.
She is, as Joan thought she might be, a sensational chef. She cadged Paloma’s recipes from dishes Martin experimented with when he took up cooking as one of his new interests, preparing dinners for the two of them from the start of the year until she escaped from Rhome.
Joan thinks how Paloma’s unwilling need to do right by Theo Tesh Park brings into her extravagant force field another young man who desperately desires clarity in his life, but does not yet know it is Paloma he requires. And Paloma Rosen, becoming a reluctant surrogate mother to Theo Tesh Park, will become more than a mentor to Da Wong, another mother of sorts, the one who will show him how to break free and discover his own new horizon. And Da Wong will see his future opening up when, after climbing the six double flights of stairs, he steps into Paloma’s loft, and then is led down the fifty steps to her studio, to see the new sculpture she has only begun carving. Within the untouched grain of the butternut wood, Da will instantly see the mother and child that Paloma sees, and Da will believe himself that child, Paloma the maternal, sheltering being, though Paloma imagines it herself and Theo. Da will look around the studio and feel he is home, the way Theo feels in Paloma’s presence. And Da can imagine painting his canvases in a far corner, out of the way, nearly out of sight. If only—he will think.
Joan reads over all she has written and wonders what will happen between Theo and Da—a friendship, a brotherhood of sorts, a love relationship, a fight for supremacy in the affections of Paloma Rosen? She’s not sure, but their journeys will be utterly altered by the old artist who will help them find a place in their souls where they will always be home.
And Paloma Rosen? Her life too will alter in countless ways when she fully opens her heart to Theo Tesh Park and Da Wong, a massive renaissance in this late stage of her life that she never intended, desired, or imagined, but will learn to embrace.
She understands now why she had been researching Mandarin words and rude sentences, Chinese names and their meanings, types of fish and caviars and Chinese desserts, the Chinese symbol for the restaurant with the scrawny yellow chickens hanging in the window, the way the streets are laid out down there, her own recollections of wandering through Chinatown when she was a young writer and done for the day working on the stories in Other Small Spaces and Fictional Family Life, making notes of everything in the back of the notebook. It had made no sense to her over the last week in her pine suite, but it’s so obvious now.
There was always going to be a Da Wong. Just like there was always going be a Theo Tesh Park, and a Paloma Rosen. And a new Joan Ashby, freed from her story that had contained the tragedy she knew it required—the arc of calamity and catastrophe and misfortune and heartbreak. Her own Devata here in Dharamshala resurrecting her from the past, the whole of it making her so much more than she ever anticipated.
She looks at her watch, two hours have disappeared in a heartbeat, and suddenly she is freezing, and practically soldered to the boulder, and her body creaks when she stands, but then she’s jumping up and down in the snow, warming up her limbs, getting the blood flowing, relieved when she can wriggle her toes.
She slips her notebook and pen into her pack, slides the pack onto her shoulders, and she is climbing again, up and up and up, past thick deodars and oak trees, their branches woven together, intricately entwined from years of buffeting by strong winds.
The heavens have the snow on a switch, heavy snowfall that tapers off, then begins again, over and over and over. She climbs for another hour, then a second, then a third, wondering when she’ll reach the top, telling herself to be patient, that she’s on the right path, will arrive soon enough. At last only a few gentle flakes are falling, and then the snow ceases entirely.
She pushes herself up the steepest slope yet, seven hours away from Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise, drops her pack to the ground, and stares out. Kartar and his guidebook were right about Triund Hill.
She is at the peak, surrounded by majestic, spellbinding views, the expansive Kangra valley below, all those layered houses in the villages, and the vast energy running through the atmosphere, caused by the massive Dhauladhars, hits her like lightning. This is what it feels like to be home in the world.
She inhales deeply. She has shed all constraints and expectations, and she knows, as hard as it was, she did the right thing with Daniel. If some form of motherhood is part of every woman’s story, she has given one she birthed and grew from scratch a chance to find his way back. The decision she made wasn’t for her or for Daniel, not really or no
t only, but for those women who desired children and failed, for those who lost children to deaths nearly impossible to withstand, for those who tried their best and couldn’t make stick all the good lessons, for those caring for the damaged children who belong to others, and for those mothers and children who are lost to one another, left alone, and starving for love, wishing for the sweet snap that might make everything all right again. It was within her power to do right, and she did. The rest is up to Daniel.
Meanwhile, she has Paloma Rosen to complete, and writing students to teach, and a son whose accomplishments with Good Manning she would like to see, perhaps be a part of, and Amari to get to know, and she wants to meditate again with Camille and Ela in the Dalai Lama’s courtyard, and she wants the three of them to run naked many more times into Dal Lake, into all the sacred lakes in Dharamshala, into all the sacred lakes in the whole of the Kangra valley.
She thought she needed clarifying golden words straight from the Dalai Lama’s mouth, she thought she was waiting for him to respond to one of her letters, but the answers she has been seeking, she has discovered them herself. She has a marriage to end, a Dharamshala cottage to find now that Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise has served its high purpose, a home where she can live and write, a potential love to explore.
Snow begins sifting down, but a thin ray of sunshine has escaped, lighting up the clouds above and the valley below in waves of soft molten gold, pewter, and crystal. It’s growing late and a little colder, and she should make her way to the Rest House. She pulls out Kartar’s map, but, of course, it’s not drawn to scale, and she isn’t sure if the place she will stay for the night might be right around the next stand of trees, or much farther than that, and then she hears, on the breeze that has suddenly sprung up, “Joan Ashby, Joan Ashby,” and in the distance, beyond the top of Triund Hill, is Willem Ackerman, waving his arms, pinwheeling the snow.
“Kartar called me,” he yells out, running toward her, covering the distance between them rapidly, growing larger with each bounding leap.
He looks wonderful to her, grizzled and handsome and fully at home in these surroundings.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, when he reaches her.
“Waiting for you.”
“But I’m on a pilgrimage.”
“I know. Kartar thought you might be. But why not let someone walk with you, beside you?”
“I don’t know. I thought a pilgrimage was meant to be done alone.”
“Well, you’re wrong. You don’t need to do it alone. But what took you so long? I expected you hours ago.”
The snow is a curtain dropping from the heavens, falling down all around them, huge flakes dancing in the narrowing space between them, and Willem is reaching out his hand to take hers, but before she holds out her own, before she takes the next step forward, Joan says, “There are so many lost souls in the world, and I had to stop for a while, to write about another lost boy who is about to be found, saved by a woman who never imagined herself a mother.”
LITERATURE MAGAZINE
Fall Issue
(RE)INTRODUCING JOAN ASHBY
Although Joan Ashby declined to discuss with us her twenty-eight-year absence from the world of literature, she is breaking her lengthy silence in a major way.
Working from a cottage in an Indian valley beneath the Himalayas, she has embarked on the next act of her writing life. Ashby’s long-awaited first novel, Paloma Rosen, will be released next year in January. Her second novel, Words of New Beginnings, will follow in late December. Two novels in a single year from this exceptional writer reclaiming her voice.
Thus, this is the perfect time for those unfamiliar with her work to read her collections, and for those who are already familiar to read her again. Then brace yourselves, as we at Literature Magazine are bracing ourselves, for what will come.
Acknowledgments
Joan Ashby might not thank anyone, but with heartfelt gratitude I thank my wonderful connector, Pam Bernstein Friedman, my stellar agent, Erica Spellman Silverman, and my terrific editor and publisher, Amy Einhorn.
Deepest thanks also to:
Everyone at Flatiron Books, especially associate editor Caroline Bleeke and vice president/director of sub-rights Kerry Nordling;
And at The Borough Press, Harper Collins UK, which acquired the first foreign rights to this book, especially Suzie Dooré; publishing director; Kate Elton, publisher; and Charlotte Cray, associate editor.
And to:
Sherri Ziff, great friend and best critical reader, willing to read everything, wanting to read anything.
Atienne Benitez DeConcillis and Ginger Buccino Mahon, whose friendships mean so much to me.
Michael Stewart, for being the good man that you are, and the dearest of friends.
David Smith, for all that we share in our strong and generous friendship.
Tikka Yashvir Chand, a lovely and kind man, who informed one of the characters.
Dr. D. P. Singh, for the Hindi translations.
James Lloyd Davis and MaryAnne Kolton, early and enthusiastic readers, so generous of heart, time, and spirit.
And to:
Herbert and Annette Wolas, all-around fantastic parents, loving, supportive, and fearless, who have always said, “We can handle whatever you write.”
My sisters, Collette and Claudine, and their families, the Rasmussens and the Shivas, who have happily followed my writing life.
Eli and Ava, my bonus children, thank you for being in my life and allowing me to be in yours.
David and Anita Dickes, my FIL and MIL, who cheer me on.
Ming Wolas, Pearl Wolas, and Henry Wolas Dickes, who spent and spend much time sitting quietly while I work, watching the sentences come and go.
And to:
Michael Dickes, my brilliant husband, who illuminates all that he creates, makes his own words sing, his own images fly, who adores nearly all of the words that I write. A short story brought us together, and how lucky we are that those particular words spelled true love. NC, NL, ND, ND.
And to every bookseller and every reader of this book, my most enormous thanks to you.
Recommend
The
Resurrection
of
Joan Ashby
for your next book club!
Reading Group Guide available at:
www.readinggroupgold.com
About the Author
Cherise Wolas is a writer, lawyer, and film producer. A native of Los Angeles, she lives in New York City with her husband. The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is her debut. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part II
Chapter 30
Part III
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE RESURRECTION OF JOAN ASHBY. Copyright © 2017 by Cherise Wolas. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.flatironbooks.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-08143-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-16658-6 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)
ISBN 978-1-250-08144-5 (e-book)
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
First Edition: August 2017
eISBN 9781250081445
1 Eleanor Ashby, Joan Ashby’s mother.
2 Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Storr & Storr.
3 When Other Small Spaces was published, Ashby, who graduated early from high school and completed college and graduate school in four years, was a fiction editor in New York at Gravida Publishing, now subsumed within Annabelle Iger Books, a subsidiary of Hargreen House.