Praise for Night Swim
“Jessica Keener steps boldly into the terrain of Eugene O’Neill, conjuring up the pathologies and quirks of a besieged Boston family in stark, quivering detail that never entirely distracts us from the looming sense of crisis. This gripping first novel announces the arrival of a strong, distinct and fully evolved new voice.”
–– Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Critics Circle Award winner, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
“An amazing new literary voice, Jessica Keener explores the fine-laced network of tangled familial relations in language both bold and intricate. Night Swim is the deeply moving and devastatingly beautiful work of a fearless writer.”
—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants
“Jessica Keener has an ear for the nuances of family life and manages, in this book, a small miracle — describing, convincingly, a family suffering the rigidity and opaqueness of a small-scale tyrant, yet honoring his authority and treating his painful struggles with kindness. Keener’s heroine, a 16-year-old girl impatient to achieve womanliness, is a marvel of curiosity, impulsiveness, and generosity. What a lovely book!”
–– C. Michael Curtis, Fiction Editor, The Atlantic
“I loved this novel. It was just breathtaking and I was really left in awe. There was not a wasted word, or scene or emotion that did not resonate or ring true. The pages ached.”
–– Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
“I could not put this book down. I related to so much of this, the whole demographic. Jessica Keener is an exquisite writer. Her observations are as good as good literature gets. Masterful. I tore through this at warp speed. Simple and gorgeous. I haven’t read something with so much hunger in a long time.”
–– Risa Miller, author of Welcome to Heavenly Heights, PEN Discovery Award winner
“This polished gem is damn near perfect. There is so much to admire-the luminous prose, the details that bring a time and place and family so vigorously to life. The main character, Sarah, is so real and vital — a breathing, complicated, yearning, hungry-for-life young woman who bears her mother’s loss in a unique way.”
–– Patry Francis, author of The Liar’s Diary
“Reading this was pure pleasure. Just gorgeous. Jessica Keener’s Night Swim is a poignant and sensual examination of a life and a nation on the cusp of change. Sixteen-year-old Sarah brings us a moody and burgeoning wisdom as she pulls us toward secrets we recognize — the desire to hurry past pain and loss toward adulthood, the pull to belong and yet not be absorbed completely into the will of others. In a delicate balance of rebellion and compassion, Sarah teaches us to listen and hold tight to our dreams.”
–– Susan Henderson, author of Up From the Blue, a Shelf Awareness Top 10 Books of 2010
“Night Swim marks the debut of a brilliant novelist. With grace and compassion, Jessica Keener takes us back to Boston during the early 1970s. When maternal love is silenced at the untimely death of her mother, 16-year-old Sarah Kunitz finds her own voice through choices both sweet and sorrowful. Keener’s lyrical prose sweeps you into the story and onto a stage where Sarah’s here and now meet her yesterday for a flawless finish.”
— Carolyn Burns Bass, founder of #LitChat
“Night Swim presents us with an entire world, drawn from our own recent past by means of the novelist’s most important gifts: close observation and compassionate attentiveness. It feels real, and it feels true, and above all else it feels lived.”
— Jon Clinch, author of Finn, an American Library Association Notable Book
Night Swim
A novel by
Jessica Keener
fiction
studio
books
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 events, locales, organizations, or persons
living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the
intent of either the author or the publisher.
The Fiction Studio
P.O. Box 4613
Stamford, CT 06907
Copyright © 2012 by Jessica Keener
Jacket design by Barbara Aronica Buck
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-936558-26-1
E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-936558-27-8
Visit our website at www.fictionstudiobooks.com
All rights reserved, which includes the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form
whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.
For information, address The Fiction Studio.
First Fiction Studio Printing: January 2012
Printed in Canada
The following excerpts from Night Swim originally appeared in: MiPOesias: “Night Swim”; Eclectica: “Saving the Fish Tank”; Wilderness House Literary Review: “Solo”; Night Train: “The After Party”; and The Huffington Post: “Mother and Daughter.”
“Nylons” received a finalist award in fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant Program. “Solo” won a Chekhov Prize for Excellence in Fiction, chosen by the editors of Wilderness House Literary Review. “Night Swim” was nominated by the editors of MiPOesias for a Million Writers Award.
The author gratefully acknowledges:
Lyrics from “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell used by permission. Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc.
Lyrics from “The Circle Game” by Joni Mitchell used by permission. Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc.; Westminster Music LTD
Lyrics from “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell used by permission.Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc. Westminster Music LTD
Lyrics from “Time and Love” by Laura Nyro used by permission. Hal Leonard Corporation
Lyrics from “Corinna Corinna” by Bob Dylan used by permission. Music Sales Corporation Inc.
Lyrics from “Aquarius” by James Rado and Gerome Ragni used by permission. Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc
Lyrics from “Up, Up and Away” by The 5th Dimension used by permission. Hal Leonard Corporation.
Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of copyrighted material and to make full acknowledgement of its use. The author regrets any errors or omissions, which will be corrected in subsequent editions upon notifications in writing to the publisher.
Constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
Joni Mitchell
“A Case of You”
So winter froze the river
And winter birds don’t sing,
So winter makes you shiver
So time is gonna bring you spring
Laura Nyro
“Time and Love”
For Barr
1
Prelude
Mickey Fineburg’s email brings everything back again.
Hi, Sarah. Remembering those good ‘ol days in the neighborhood. Saw your CDs online. Sampled the links. Wow! Impressive. How did you end up in California?
I kissed Mickey under a broken pool table in my basement. We were eight, his lips warm as play dough, pressing with earnest intention. I pressed back, happy and unafraid, oblivious to Mickey’s younger brother watching us. That night at the dinner table Mother looked stern and surprised. She said: Mickey’s mother called me. You’re too young to start, Sarah.
Start what? I wondered.
I do a quick search online. His company bio says he resides in Greenwich, Connecticut, after living in London for twenty-three years. Married with three children. I write Mickey back — “Thank you so much. I moved west after high schoo
l. Just read your company bio. Did you like living overseas?”
Mickey answers right away. Loved London. New England is a shock. Remember those fires we burned? Can you believe our parents let us do that?
I write: “Your dad wasn’t too happy about it.”
In the fall, Mickey’s dad and my father raked leaves from our lawns, scraping and pushing leaves into piles on our small, dead-end street, then setting those leafy mounds aflame, Mickey and I poked at truant sparks. We lit sticks and spun smoky spirals in the air.
Another message: Lost Dad last year. Mom’s doing pretty well in assisted living but her memory’s gone. What about your father?
I write back: “So sorry to hear that. My father lives with his second wife in Florida. He can’t walk — bad hips — but his memory is intact.”
Mickey lived next door. I knew the Fineburgs the way I knew the border of fir trees dividing our properties: always there, a part of my neighborhood. That kiss was a childhood game we played once like other games, like war or kickball or hide and seek — nothing more; his dad was someone who waved to me from behind a lawn mower.
Then Mickey writes: I hope this doesn’t sound too personal but you’re up late...
I’ve been through this hundreds of times, this stirring about the house at three, four a.m., this deep hour when people closest in my life — Alan, my husband — and three sons, dissolve like particles in a sea. Time at this hour doesn’t follow lines but circles and dips into underwater caves. My kids all live on the East Coast, post-grads in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. Alan would be asleep in our bed, but he’s in New York on a business trip.
I write one last time. “So nice to hear from you after so many years. Thanks for getting in touch.” Then I turn off the computer, switch off my desk light, and in the darkness move down the hall to bed, returning to the past for answers, skipping as it is easy to do in my older mind from one year to the next, to a place that is no longer there. It’s as if I’m swimming toward forever, only backwards.
Chapter One
The Dinner Table
I grew up in a six-bedroom house in Soquaset, Massachusetts. Nobody spelled the name of our town correctly. Letters came to our house that said Soquashit or Sacquatics, or Socket. And Massachusetts always invited too many esses and not enough tees. The town, seven miles inland, was close enough to water by car but a good hour north of Boston. In the fifties and sixties the town flourished and became known for its excellent school system and lush neighborhoods. By the time I turned seven, Mother let me — the second oldest and only daughter of four — walk to Soquaset Square without an adult.
Our blue, clapboard house had slanted ceilings in the attic bedrooms where my oldest and youngest brothers slept; window seats in the den; and closets full of Mother’s gowns, high-heeled shoes and cedar shoehorns. Neighbors admired our house for its stained glass windows in the turn of the stairs and in the dining room windows facing west. At dinnertime, when the sun exited the front yard, it left a trail of orange shadows across my plate.
“Anybody home? Hello? Anybody home?” On weeknights at a quarter to six, Father trudged up our driveway, flung open the kitchen door, and bellowed his greeting as if he expected our house to be empty and the furniture cleared out. He was a tenured professor at a small, private college, who rarely modulated his voice between podium and pantry. To think there might be a difference didn’t occur to Professor Leonard Kunitz.
“Hello? Irene! I’m home!” The kitchen door closed with a determined thud.
“Irene?”
“Coming, Leonard.”
In harmonic contrast Mother floated down from the bedroom to meet him for a pre-dinner drink. She moved without gravity, a cumulative effect of her pain pills, the ones she took three times a day. Together in the den, Father flipped two shots of vodka down his throat while Mother drank Scotch with a twist of lime and one ice cube. She took medium swallows. They smoked cigarettes in flowered armchairs, embraced by the arc of the bay windows that gave us a grand view of the backyard.
Usually dinner lasted all of twenty minutes — a frantic rush to gulp down firsts, then seconds.
“There’s more chicken in the kitchen,” Mother said. “Luanne? Could you bring what’s left?” Luanne was our black maid from Haiti.
Father sat at the head of the table and ate like a starved child, his dark, quick eyes scooping up the slightest imperfections in everyone around him. He had small shoulders, a slight paunch, and wore loosely tucked in shirts, blazers, knit ties, and crumpled corduroy pants, which set him apart from Mother’s fastidious appearance and those of her country club peers.
“Leonard, there’s plenty of rice.”
Opposite him, Mother sat straight as a violin bow, her back to the kitchen. The kids sat two and two on either side. Mother’s dyed blond hair was short and layered like rose petals, her favorite flower. Adorned in a suit and matching scarf, she looked streamlined as a glass vase, and fashionable, even when she came in from the garden in slacks, the dirt and thorns clinging to her gloves.
“Why don’t you start the coffee now,” Mother said, as Luanne carried in more chicken and rice in a covered dish and set it on the table.
“What are we having for dessert, Irene?” Father asked.
“Cookies.”
Mother had petite features — tiny wrists, slim calves that she liked to show off at parties — and the largest collection of shoes in the neighborhood. On her side of the family, Grandpa Joe built a successful shoe manufacturing company, which my uncle took over and managed. Mother was the silent partner and the reason people said we were rich.
On our small street, an elderly lady, Mrs. Brenwald, lived on the other side of us. She never went outside. Every Saturday a boy from the town market delivered grocery bags to her front porch. When I had nothing to do, I crouched by the living room window and waited for her to appear behind a curtain at night. Did she have a secret? An ugly past? My younger brother, Robert, said she was a witch but I believed that she floated in a world between earth and heaven — a harmless ghost, a lost angel.
The only evidence that Mrs. Brenwald once had an existence outside her house sat in her driveway. An antique Ford covered in a sheet was anchored to tires profoundly out of breath, squashed by endless seasons passing. More than once, Father called the police to take the car away. “A pile of crap,” he called it, but the car remained impervious even to him.
This proved to me that Mrs. Brenwald made a pivotal decision many years ago, and that she had willed her life into its present shape. I found this idea both mystifying and attractive. To form one’s destiny seemed monumental, like exploding holes through a mountain to get to the other side. But, in fact, that’s what I wanted to do.
I’d like to believe that Mother wanted that too, choosing an alternate path that even she didn’t expect.
~~~~~
“Sarah, bring me The Complete Works, will you?” Father said. He waved his fork like a sword, stabbing it in the air while he chewed his last bite of chicken breast.
I dashed through the rooms, across carpeting green as the fairways at the country club where we belonged. In the den with its built-in bar and bookshelves, I found the book of Shakespeare housed behind a picture of Father dressed in toddler’s clothes. His thick hair fell in ringlets to his shoulders, his white apron — a popular outfit of the period — rimmed his ankles.
My great grandmother, Sarah Davida, was there too, on the shelf, staring out from her tiny village in Russia. Her name, which I inherited, meant “beloved princess” in Hebrew. She wanted to become an opera star but that was an absurd dream for a poor, Jewish farm girl. Instead, she milked cows and married a teacher from the old country, a quiet, studious man who peered over the Torah. I stared at her picture and wondered what it must have felt like to give up a dream, to stand before the mountainside, the beautiful sky beyond, and realize that she had to turn away and go back down into a small, grimy town. I didn’t want that to be my fate.
>
She sang at shul. She sang to lighten her chores, she sang to her five children before bed at night; and through those children, she transported her musical seeds and they grew inside me.
Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high––
Judy Garland’s voice bubbled in my mind as I scanned the family line-up. Further down the shelf, my grandmother looked square-faced. Tired. She died when I was too young to know her, a cold turned to pneumonia. Father told us she had blue periods, dark phases signaled by closed shades. In their Brooklyn apartment, his mother drank tea on a couch “the color of flamingos!” On better days, something would shift in her, he said — the sun warming the kitchen table in the morning — and soon the house filled with her friends from the sisterhood, temple organizers, and bake sale fundraisers. The smell of cinnamon and coffee meant good times at home. Maybe this is what Father saw in Mother when they met: a darkness familiar to him in his childhood.
“Sarah? Are you lost? We’re waiting for you!” Father called to me.
I carried the book back to the table and sat down. By then, Luanne had cleared away the plates for dessert. She was a shy, comely woman with walnut brown skin who spoke in hushed, guarded tones around my parents. She became another person when my parents went out.
“Please, sing me that bridge song again,” I asked when I found her dusting a lamp in the den. I sat on the couch and squeezed my knees to my chest to show her I meant it. Please? She held a dust rag in her hand. The smell of lemon polish made my nose itch. It opened the pores in my brain.
She looked out the bay windows and opened her mouth in a wide “O — Oh, Lord, show me that bridge. I’m standing at the water, and I can’t see that bridge.” It surprised me how she talked in a whisper yet sang solid and penetrating as an oboe.
On Sunday, her day off, she wore white hoop earrings, purple lipstick and a torso-hugging blue dress with matching hat. She walked to the end of our street. A black man picked her up in a white Dodge Dart and brought her back late the next evening, after I was asleep.
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