Godmother: a novel

by Carolyn Turgeon

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  "You are an amazing person, Lil. I know you loved her. But what that man did ... you could not have known." She picked up a few of the newspaper clippings from the table. "I think you'll want to go through this stuff. There are some beautiful photos, Lil. Some of you and her, of that night. I just ... I want to help you."

  She didn't understand at all. She was supposed to be my friend, my one friend, and I could not make her understand me.

  "It must have been terrible to lose her," she said, her eyes filling with tears. "I can't imagine. What that man did to her, and then my god what she did to herself ..."

  "But I ..."

  She kept talking, her voice soft, relentless. "I know you are the one who found her by the water, bleeding. I read about all of it, Lil. It was in the papers, the next day, all of them, and Leo's grandfather kept the clippings. See? It must have been ... unbelievable. I am so sorry for what happened to you."

  I glanced down at the table, the pictures of two young women, the newspaper article lying face up, the words "Society Girl Takes Own Life After Violent Attack" blinking up at me. My head was spinning, the room hot and closing in. "No, Veronica!" I said. "You're wrong! I'm telling you what I am. You felt my wings. You see these feathers. I am going to have to leave soon, and I want you to understand. You did everything you needed to. You and George, the ball. It's perfect. You helped me. There is nothing to worry about anymore. It's fixed, all of it. That was all so long ago and now it's been fixed!"

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  "I don't ..."

  "I will show you, then," I said, as I stood up. Turned and lifted my shirt . I could hear the flapping of my wings, and a euphoria moved through me. She would understand perfectly now. My wings unfurled, feather by feather. I felt like I didn't have any boundaries, no skin, nothing. "Do you see?" I asked.

  I could feel my wings tapping the walls, hear the crash of a picture frame falling to the ground.

  To my shock, she just looked terrified. She was reaching down to the table, searching through the materials. "Wait, Lil," she said, pulling a photograph out of the pile. "Look." She strode forward, holding the picture up to my face. "Lil!" she said. "Look."

  The whole room filled with feathers. They drifted down, like snow. Why couldn't she see them? They were falling right on her, gathering on her shoulders, in her hair.

  She thrust the photograph in my face. It was black and white. Two girls at a dance. Dancing together, smiling at the camera. People standing around them in suits and gowns, holding drinks. One in a dark dress and one in a long, pale silk gown. Both beautiful, radiant. The shoes, the slippers, as clear as glass. Behind them was the water. A clock rising up.

  "Lil, none of it was your fault. I know everything. You couldn't have saved her. It wasn't your fault. You were a girl. There was no way you could have known what would happen."

  Something crept up on me then. A feeling, a memory.

  "Lil, it is okay to miss her. I know that everything you said to me was true, but you have to miss people. You have to remember them!"

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  I took the photograph from her and stared down into it. My face and hers. One framed by hair like moonlight, the other like autumn leaves. We had both been so beautiful. Young. The whole world spread before us.

  I turned it over.

  "1952, October 17."

  My head hurt. I pressed my palms to my head. My wings cut into my back, like someone was stabbing me.

  "Let me help you," Veronica said.

  "Winter Garden Palace."

  I was supposed to have protected her, but I had left her there. By herself. I shouldn't have left her alone. She was so beautiful, young. Much younger than me. But I had left her outside, someplace we weren't supposed to be. We didn't have invitations. Only one of us could go in, on the arm of that man. She was supposed to wait for me. And she did. She stayed there. I had left her alone just to be with someone I would never see again, someone who had first been hers. Should have been hers. And look what they had done to her.

  The room was filled with feathers. My wings flapped back and forth.

  What occurs in the world of faerie will become manifest in the world of men.

  "CINDERELLA," I said, jumping down from the carriage and making my way over to her. I could still feel the press of his fingers on my skin. "It's time to go."

  I stood over her. She was asleep. So calm, peaceful. She never really got to rest, did she? I felt a wave of love for her

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  as I bent down and put my face next to hers. My cheek touched her cheek. She did not move.

  "Get up," I said, more loudly now. Her face was cold under mine. "Get up, my child. We need to go."

  I stood. The moon shifted. It was only then that I saw that the grass was covered in blood. The moon was just bright enough to illuminate it. And her wrists. The glass.

  I realized then: Her dress was ruined, the slippers in shards. Her wrists cut open.

  "No," I whispered. The glass slippers were in pieces around her. "What have you done?" I dropped down beside her, barely able to breathe. "I'm here! I came back. Wake up!"

  I was supposed to take care of her. She was supposed to live happily ever after. I put my hands on her shoulders, shook her as hard as I could. "I only left for a while," I whispered. "It was barely any time at all."

  She did not move.

  "Cinderella!" I cried, pushing her so that she was lying on her back, putting my palms on her face to revive her. "Wake up!"

  A terrible pit of grief opened inside me. Tears blurred my vision. I could feel glass in my knees but let it cut into me.

  "Wake up, child! I am here now!"

  She couldn't have been gone for more than moments. Just moments.

  "What have you done to yourself?"

  Desperate, I gathered up leaves and dirt, then opened my palm, let the mixture slide down her arms and chest. "Come back," I said, tears running down my face. I rubbed

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  it into her skin, focusing every feeling and desire inside me onto her. "I'm sorry I left you, but I'm here now. I won't ever leave you again." Her body was cold, unmoving "Please," I whispered, dipping my face down her neck to her shoulders. "You can't die. Not like this."

  She was supposed to have borne many children. Lived until she was a hundred, surrounded by her heirs. He was supposed to have loved her until then, stayed mad for her even as her skin dropped off her bones and her hair turned to ash. She had been made for him.

  "Forgive me," I said, lying next to her, pulling her to me. Everything inside me, shattered.

  We were supposed to have protected her. I was supposed to have protected her. How could she be so fragile? She, who had been made for him and who was destined to be queen.

  It was then that I heard them bearing down, the flapping of wings and the voices of the elders, condemning me.

  And then I was no longer holding her, and I could not make my way back to her. The world had no boundaries suddenly. I was falling, screaming, clutching at the air. I crashed into something. My eyes opened onto grass, dirt.

  I looked up and everything was changed. It was not my world. And it was not their world, not as I had seen it before.

  I stood on the ground, rooted to the spot. My limbs white and bulging. I wobbled as I tried moving. I was heavy. Enormous.

  "Help me!" I cried, and the sound of my voice startled me.

  There was only quiet. I could not detect anything

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  beyond the muttering of wind in the black trees, the dull swish of the moving grass.

  "Cinderella!!" I screamed. The sound rattled through me, and I coughed the way humans do, my body clenched together.

  I had heard stories about banished fairies, stories that made me lie awake with my eyes wide open.

  "Maybeth!" I called. "Gladys! Lucibell!" I pressed my palms against my throat and tried to force the sound out, to ignore the sensation rushing through my throat and over my lips. "Where are yo
u?"

  But I knew they were gone now, too. That they weren't coming back.

  A rustling sound distracted me, made me turn my head. A small boy stood staring, his hands hanging at his sides.

  "Bird," he said then, pointing.

  "What?"

  He smiled, made a flapping motion. "Wings."

  As he said it, I felt a strange sensation in my back, like knives cutting into me. I could feel something moving, a slight breeze rush past my cheeks.

  "No," I whispered. "No."

  I turned my head and something soft rubbed against my cheek. I tilted my head farther.

  A feather. Bright white.

  FINALLY I saw her, Maybeth, a flicker on the edge of the room. And beside her, Gladys. Lucibell. A trio of lights.

  Veronica couldn't see my wings. How could I have

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  thought that a human could understand? I was a fairy. I had made humans go mad, just by showing my face. Of course Veronica couldn't see. She was just a girl, after all. A regular human girl.

  "I need to say good-bye," I said, suddenly calm. "I don't come from your world, Veronica."

  Come back, they said. Come to the water.

  "I was a fairy godmother," I said. "I came here to help you. You are a beautiful, beautiful girl, and you will be happy. Everything is okay now. Go, my child."

  I stretched out my arms and moved them up and down, letting the feathers caress them. So soft, as soft as fur.

  All I could hear was the flapping of wings, the whispers of my fairy sisters finally come back to me. I could almost taste the water sprinkling onto my face and hands as it would when I got home again. I would glide through the air with the other fairies, looking for the glittering blue lake where our two worlds--air and water--met. Laughing, we'd slip into the water and let everything go soft, quiet.

  "Lil!" I heard, but it was so faint, barely a whisper. I turned around and saw Veronica through the haze of the feathers.

  "I have to go now," I said, trying not to hit her with my wings. "I have to go home."

  I smiled and turned to the door. I could barely breathe. I had known they would come back. All this time, even despite everything, I had known that they would someday return for me. Maybeth was my sister, Gladys and Lucibell had been my very best friends, and I knew they would forgive me. I knew they would find a way.

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  Come to the water, I heard, louder now, and I pushed out of the building, into the street. All the pain lifted from me as I walked toward the voice. Toward her.

  My muscles warmed and stretched out as I headed south. My wings flared behind me, but no one seemed to notice. They really couldn't see. I laughed out loud, ecstatic. Already I was changing, shifting, becoming invisible to them. Leaving their world behind.

  It was a beautiful world. It always had been. Full of so much pain and beauty and grief and love, people you cared for so much that losing them could shatter everything. It was all so beautiful. Veronica and George, the rows of books, the whole crazy, pressed-in city. But it was, finally, their world. Not mine.

  I put one foot in front of the other and just went and went, not caring if I walked into people, smashing into them with my shoulders and elbows. All I could think of was the pure lake water from the other world, how you could look down and see palaces and coral, crazy multicolored fish passing underneath. The hush as you passed into it, opening your eyes onto a sky blue, slow-moving universe.

  Come, they all said, their wings tickling my face. I laughed with joy.

  My sister. The lake. The sensation of flying through the air, of having skin that was smooth and beautiful and pale. Wings spreading out on either side of me.

  I walked along the river, the water straining against my senses. I followed the sound of wings to the pier, my pier, with the small clock tower at the end of it. The clock glowed from the other side, mirroring and magnifying the

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  one I stood below. The sky was bright blue. I came right up on the water.

  "Where are you?" I whispered, looking in, and tears of relief ran down my face.

  I saw them. Maybeth and Gladys and Lucibell. There they were. Staring up at me from under the surface of the water, laughing, in human form so I could see them, their wings spread out behind them. I laughed, too. I was so happy. I looked around at the bored commuters, all oblivious to this miracle taking place just under their noses. No one could see them but me.

  I pressed against the rail, climbed up onto it.

  All the years, centuries of walking the earth, weighed down by what I'd done, what I'd lost, the pain in my heart and gut, these useless wings that now, even now, were flaring up behind me, and for once it was okay. I could shuck off my shirt, let them expand out on either side of me, a huge white heart, me at the center, always alone and burdened and never for a moment being able to forget what I'd done, and now it was over, they had returned to me, they were taking me back, calling me home. And only then, right then, the moment I thought it, the fairies disappeared and Cinderella was there, her face rippling in the water beneath the pier, as beautiful as the first time I saw her.

  She was looking up at me, smiling. "I forgive you," she said. "I am okay now. Everything is okay."

  "I'm sorry," I said, but I knew she could not hear me over the sound of the air, the sound of the water. "I missed you so much."

  "Come back to me," she said, reaching out for me, the tips of her fingers surfacing from the water.

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  I heard a woman scream from the pier, voices shouting, but there was no time to turn and tell them it was okay, that this was all I had wanted, that everything was okay now and I was only going home.

  I leaned forward, smiling down into the water, and let my wings unfurl slowly behind me. And then I took a deep breath, and went to her.

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  Acknowledgments

  I had a ton of help while writing this book, from all sorts of people who read and gave me feedback and encouraged me and let me benefit from their brilliance. I am grateful to all of you, especially Jennifer Belle, Lindsey Moore, Elaine Markson, Gary Johnson, Heather Proulx, Catherine Cobain, Ron Bernstein, Eric Schnall, Jeanine Cummins, Massie Jones, Joi Brozek, David Bar Katz, Robert V. Wolf, Anton Strout, Mary McMyne, Angela Amstutz, Dinah Prince Daly, Kelvin Palaciosa, Rebeca Dain, John Lawton, Scott Jones, Jeremy Tescher, Shax Riegler, River Jordan, Valerie Cates, Orly Trieber, Chelsea Ray, Barb Burris, Heather McConnell, Brenna Sniderman, Alina Vogel, Jason Chopoorian, Kathy Patrick, Maryann Curione, Philip Mead, Christine Duplessis, Anthony Madrid, and Warren Ellis.

  And thank you to those who inspired bits of this book: Julius Lang and the Center for Court Innovation for making me love the garment district, Lana Guerra for being the coolest hairdresser ever, Kevin Heafy for having a gym at the Chelsea Hotel, Steve Turnbull for collecting bookly ephemera, Tommy Colomara for introducing me to the ferry boats at Pier A, and Kevin Davis for telling me about modern-day balls. And thank

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  you, again, to Eric, who made me go to the Frick, to Joi, who had truffle martinis with me at the Pierre, and to Massie, who actually designed Veronica's dress during one long phone call.

  And of course I thank my family: Jean Turgeon, Catherine Turgeon, Alfred Turgeon, John Krinbill, and Mary Margaret Krinbill, who, with failing eyesight, read an early draft of Godmother through a magnifying machine.

  I mean really.

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  Reading Group Guide

  1. Talk about Lil as a narrator. How does your opinion of her change throughout the book? Do you like her? Is she a reliable narrator?

  2. Describe the relationship between Lil and Veronica. What brings the women together? What do you think of their friendship?

  3. Fairies are a constant presence in the novel, in the human world as well as in the world of Lil's past: in the fairy tales in George's shop, in the fairy paintings in the Frick, in Veronica's book about the Cottingley fairies. Talk about
other representations of fairies you've come across. What do you think accounts for the popularity of these representations in our culture? What makes fairies such a robust subject for the imagination?

  4. Lil is often hungry. What does this mean? What does her relationship to food say about her emotional state generally?

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  5. What are the differences between the fairy world and the human world? What does each world offer to Lil? What is attractive and unattractive about each world? Do you agree with the way Lil characterizes the human world?

  6. How does the Cinderella in this book differ from more traditional representations? How would you describe this Cinderella? What do you believe accounts for the choices she makes?

  7. Characterize the relationship between Lil and Cinderella and how it progresses and shifts throughout the book. What do you make of those shifts?

  8. Retellings of the Cinderella story, as well as of other stories and myths, are more popular than ever. Why do you think this is? Why are these stories so powerful? What function, if any, do you think they serve for us?

  9. Why is the prince so attractive to Lil? What do you think of her emphasis on him seeing her? Is Lil in love with the prince in your opinion? Why or why not?

  10. Two phrases are repeated throughout the novel, both from books Lil sees in George's shop: What happens in the world of faerie is manifested in the world of men, and All my old loves will be returned to me. What do these phrases mean? How would you explain the import of each within the novel?

  11. Lil, Veronica, George, and Cinderella have all experienced significant losses. What has each of them lost? How

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  do they deal with those losses? Is there anyone in the book who has not experienced some kind of loss?