“Where does he live?”
“What is this where-they-live business, Audrey?” Lou Zelevansky poked me in the shoulder. “What are you, working for the FBI or something?”
“Sorry. I was just curious.”
“That’s all right,” said Belle. “I don’t mind. They live not far from here, as a matter of fact. On Union near Nostrand. But if things don’t get better they’ll have to move in with Carol’s piano teacher. She has a two-family house. She’ll just have to ask the tenants to move.”
Nostrand. One of the stations on my subway ride from the eye doctor’s. Only two away from ours, Utica. I had passed it twice this afternoon while I was supposedly studying with Arlene, an afternoon that felt very distant. Here was reality—these many victims, the clash of ideologies, politics somersaulting personal destinies. Movietone News in the making, previewed around our dining room table.
“This could never have happened under Roosevelt,” said my mother.
“Oh, you and your Roosevelt,” my father grumbled. “That is a moronic remark for two reasons. First of all under Roosevelt they were our allies. We needed them to fight the war. So of course it couldn’t have happened. Second of all, do you realize he knew all about the camps? They all knew, Churchill, de Gaulle. It was no secret. They just didn’t care enough to do anything, that’s all.”
“I can’t believe that,” said my mother. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s true,” said Mrs. Ribowitz. “Things are coming out. You read bits and pieces in magazines and put it together. We could have taken refugees in the beginning but we didn’t.”
“You see?” sneered my father, with a nod of esteem for the intellectual. “Millions of people rotted away and your Roosevelt didn’t lift a finger till it was too late, and even then he waited till he couldn’t help himself.”
“First of all he’s not my Roosevelt, and second of all we don’t have to discuss these things while we’re eating.”
“I ’m through eating,” said my father, pushing his plate away. “Is there any more coffee?”
My mother fetched the coffee pot and poured seconds while they all argued about Roosevelt.
“Well, whatever you say, I frankly find that very hard to believe,” she said. “I would have to read that with my own eyes. Do you know, I was so upset the day he died I almost started a fire in the oven.”
“You didn’t almost start it,” corrected my father. “You started it. It almost spread when you got the bright idea of pouring water over it.”
“All right, pardon me. The fact remains. That’s how I felt.”
“I never thought he was the saint he was cracked up to be,” said Mr. Capaleggio. “I always had my suspicions.”
“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk,” said my father. “Your Duce didn’t exactly help matters, did he?”
“How dare you talk to him like that!” said Mrs. Cappy, half rising out of her chair. “He was born right here in Brooklyn. He’s as much an American as you are, if not more. He’s never even crossed the ocean. And both his younger brothers fought in the war, and Vincent came home with his foot blown off and a Purple Heart.”
“Yeah, take it easy, fella,” said Lou Zelevansky to my father. “You’re way out of line there. Calm down and drink your coffee.”
Mr. Cappy just puffed on his pipe. “Leave him alone. I know what he’s like. He doesn’t mean it.”
“Okay. Okay. I spoke out of turn. No harm done, all right?”
I was stunned. My father, apologizing man-to-man. I wouldn’t have thought him capable of it.
“But I ’ll tell you one thing,” he continued, his voice low but still itching. “It is your Pope. That is the case, isn’t it? And you can’t tell me he didn’t look the other way for years.”
“He’s not my personal Pope. He’s the Pope, that’s all. What do you expect me to do about it? Challenge the Vatican? Start a vendetta on behalf of my Jewish friends?”
“Don’t you think we should change the subject?” said Mr. Tessler, who so seldom spoke that his damp throaty voice was always a surprise. “I ’m sure we could find a more congenial topic.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Nat. In a minute you can all tell me what you think of my apple pie.”
This was my cue to leave. I could not bear a congenial topic after discovering there was life in Brooklyn. Passion. Conflict. Thought. An ample scene for both my eyes. But only under cover of darkness, with the children safely unconscious.
“Excuse me, I’m going up to bed. This has been extremely interesting.”
“Yes, you really got an earful tonight, didn’t you, Audrey?” said Lou Zelevansky, giving me one more avuncular poke, in the ribs.
“Oh, cut it out, Lou,” I said. “I’ll be black and blue in the morning.”
My mother gasped and her mouth stayed open to reprimand me, but she thought better of it. “Don’t you want to wait for dessert?”
“No thanks, I’ve had enough. Good night. Good seeing you all.” I started for the stairs.
“Did you hear the one about Sister Kenny and FDR?” said Lou. “Sister Kenny was helping him into the pool one day when—”
“Could you hold it just a minute?” my mother interrupted, and there was a heavy silence.
When I reached the top of the stairs I called down, “It’s okay, I’m not listening.” I shut the door of my room. A moment later I heard a burst of collective laughter.
WITH THE MONEY the eye doctor gave me I took the class in Scene Study. The passage I brought in the first day was from A Streetcar Named Desire. I was Blanche DuBois, welcoming the adolescent newsboy into her sister ’s living room. The acting teacher, the same spindly teacher, recruited a boy to play opposite me. He hadn’t very much to do in the scene, merely light Blanche’s imaginary cigarette and receive her attentions, though who can tell what fertile residue these left in his life—he is only an incidental character and one needn’t worry about him. “‘Young man,’” I said. “‘Young, young, young man. Has anyone ever told you that you look like a young Prince out of the Arabian Nights?’” I crooned in a sultry voice, and as he stood in agonies of awkwardness I reached out to stroke not his cheek but the air a half inch from it, which I thought was a brilliant touch. The air near his cheek was unusually warm, and his eyes looked terrified, yet at the same time ever so faintly amused. The next lines called for me to kiss him, but I didn’t. “’ Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I’ve got to be good—and keep my hands off children.’” The class was awestruck.
IT WAS NEVER again as it had been with the eye doctor. I was right, at fifteen, when I foresaw that. Not only because he was the first; not only because he was… he was… Oh, yes, because he was the first, and himself, he was something that flies off the page every time I capture a word to define it. But also because never again could there be that particular set of voluptuous, atavistic, outrageous, and above all delicate circumstances.
I left Brooklyn. I leave still, every moment. For no matter how much I leave, it doesn’t leave me.
I didn’t become an actress in the end, but instead this I who makes up stories. In this story, I can’t help wondering if I have succumbed to the temptation of any maker of a memoir—to present it more dramatically, improve the events so that they yield a more precious truth.
How completely and
how deeply faithless we are,
writes the poet Marina Tsvetayeva,which is
to say: how true we are to ourselves.
Perhaps I haven’t succeeded in finding the girl I was, but only in fabricating the girl I might have been, would have liked to be, looking backwards from the woman I have become. For now I could do easily all that she did with such effort, though now it couldn’t happen. The very notion is an Escher construction: I am not a sheltered child but a grownup version of a child who never was. And maybe I am this way because she never was, couldn’t be. And yet it feels so real. If it wasn’t a memory to begin
with, it has become one now.
Does being true to one’s self mean offering the literal truth or the truth that should have been, the truth of the image of one’s self? It hardly matters by this time. By this time the border between seeing straight on and seeing round the corners of solid objects, between the world as smooth and coherent and the world as dissociated skinless particles, is thoroughly blurred. No longer a case of double vision, but of two separate eyes whose separate visions—what happened and what might have happened—come together in what we call the past, which we see with hindsight.
Memory is revision. I have just destroyed another piece of my past, to tell a story.
Hawthorne Books & Literar y Arts Portland, Oregon
Current Titles
At Hawthorne Books, we’re serious about literature. We suspected that good writers were being ignored and cast aside as a result of consolidation in the publishing M industry, and in 2001 we decided to find these writers and give them a voice. We publish American literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, although we won’t turn down a good international title if we find one. All of our books are published as affordable original trade paperbacks, but feature details not typically found even in casebound titles from bigger houses: acid-free papers; sewn bindings which will not crack; heavy, laminated covers with M French flaps and built-in bookmarks. You can probably buy Hawthorne Books wherever you buy books, or from our Web site (hawthornebooks. com) postpaid1 and for a substantial discount. If you like to read, we think you’ll enjoy M our books. If you like to write—well, send us something. We’re always looking.
FINALIST, 2005 OREGON BOOK AWARD
Core: A Romance
Kassten Alonso
Fiction / 208 pp $12.95 0-9716915-7-6
This intense and compact novel crackles with obsession, betrayal, and madness. As the narrator becomes fixated on his best friend’s girlfriend, his precarious hold on sanity deteriorates into delusion and violence in this twenty-first-century retelling of the classic myth of Hades and Persephone.
“Jump through this Gothic stained-glass window and you are in for some serious investigation of darkness and all of its deadly sins. But take heart, brave traveler, the adventure will prove thrilling.”
Tom Spanbauer Author of Now is the Hour
TITLE INCLUDED IN BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2006
501 Minutes to Christ
Poe Ballantine
Essays 160 pp $14.95 / 0-9766311-9-9
This collection of personal essays ranges from Ballantine’s diabolical plan to punch John Irving in the nose during a literary festival, to the tale of how after years of sacrifice and persistence, Ballantine finally secured a contract with a major publisher for a short story collection that never came to fruition.
“My soul yearns to know this most entangled enigma. I confess to Thee, O Lord, that I really have no idea what Poe Ballantine is talking about.”
St. Augustine
Decline of the Lawrence Welk Empire
Poe Ballantine
Fiction / 356pp $15.95 0-9766311-1-3
Edgar Donahoe is back for another misadventure, this time in the Caribbean. When he becomes involved with his best friend’s girl and is stalked by murderous island native Chollie Legion, even Cinnamon Jim, the medicine man, is no help—it takes a hurricane to blow Edgar out of the mess.
“This second novel … initially conjures images of Lord of the Flies, but then you would have to add about ten years to the protagonists’ ages and make them sex-crazed, gold-seeking alcoholics.”
Library Journal
God Clobbers Us All
Poe Ballantine
Fiction / 192pp $15.95 0-9716915-4-1
Set against a decaying San Diego rest home in the 1970s, God Clobbers Us All is the shimmering, hysterical, melancholy account of eighteen-year -old surfer -boy/orderly Edgar Donahoe, who struggles with romance, death, friendship, and an ill-advised affair with the wife of a maladjusted war veteran.
“Calmer than Bukowski, less portentous than Kerouac, more hopeful than West, Poe Ballantine may not be sitting at the table of his mentors, but perhaps he deserves his own after all.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
Things I Like About America
Poe Ballantine
Essays / 224pp $12.95 0-9716915-1-7
These risky personal essays are populated with odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer. Written with piercing intimacy and self-effacing humor, they take us on a Greyhound journey through small-town America and explore what it means to be human.
“ Part social commentary, part collective biography, this guided tour may not be comfortable, but one thing ’s for sure: You will be at home.”
Willamette Week
WINNER, 2005 LAN GUM PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION
Madison House
Peter Donahue
Fiction / 412pp $16.95 0-9766311-0-5
This novel chronicles Victorian Seattle’s explosive transformation from frontier outpost to metropolis. Maddie Ingram, owner of Madison House, and her quirky and endearing boarders find their lives linked when the city decides to regrade Denny
Hill and the fate of their home hangs in the balance.
“ Peter Donahue seems to have a map of old Seattle in his head… And all future attempts in its historical vein will be made in light of this book. ”
David Guterson Author of Snow Falling on Cedars
Clown Girl Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk
Monica Drake
Fiction / 298pp $15.95 0-9766311-5-6
Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a neighborhood so run-down that drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Using clown life to illuminate a struggle between integrity and economic reality, this novel examines issues of class, gender, economics, and prejudice.
“The pace of [this] narrative is methamphetamine-frantic, as Drake drills down past the face paint and into Nita’s core … There is a lot more going on here than just clowning around.”
Publishers Weekly
So Late, So Soon
D’Arcy Fallon
Memoir / 218pp $15.95 0-9716915-3-3
An irreverent, fly-on-the-wall view of the Lighthouse Ranch, a Christian commune the eighteen-year-old hitchhiker D ’Arcy Fallon called home for three years in the mid-1970s, when life’s questions overwhelmed her and reconciling her family past with her future seemed impossible.
“ What would draw an otherwise independent woman to a life of menial labor and subservience? Fallon’s answer is both an inside look at ’70s commune life and a funny, poignant coming of age.”
Judy Blunt Author of Breaking Clean
September 11: West Coast Writers
Approach Ground Zero Edited by Jeff Meyers
Essays / 366pp $16.95 0-9716915-0-9
The events of September 11, 2001, their repercussions, and our varied responses to them inspired this collection. By history and geographic distance, the West Coast has developed a community different from the East; ultimately shared interests bridge the distinctions in provocative and heartening ways.
“September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero deserves attention. This book has some highly thoughtful contributions that should be read with care on both coasts, and even in between.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip
Mark Mordue
Travel Memoir / 310pp $15.95 0-9716915-6-8
A world trip that ranges from a Rolling Stones concert in Istanbul to meetings with mullahs and junkies in Teheran, from a cricket match in Calcutta to an S&M bar in New York, as Mark Mordue explores countries most Americans never see, as well as issues of world citizenship in the twenty-first century.
“ Mordue has elevated Dastgah beyond the realms of the traditional travelogue by sharing not only what he learned about cultures he visited but also his brutally honest self-discoveries.”
Elle
FINALIST, 2006 OREGON BOOK AWARD
The Cantor’s Daughter
Scott Nadelson
Fiction 258pp $14.95 / 0-9766311-2-1
Sympathetic, heartbreaking, and funny, these stories – capturing people in critical moments of transition – reveal our fragile emotional bonds and the fears that often cause those bonds to falter or fail.
“These beautifully crafted stories are populated by Jewish suburbanites living in New Jersey, but ethnicity doesn’t play too large a role here. Rather, it is the humanity of the characters and our empathy for them that bind us to their plights.”
Austin Chronicle
WINNER: 2004 OREGON BOOK AWARD; 2005 GLCA NEW WRITERS AWARD
Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories
Scott Nadelson
Ficion / 212pp $15.95 0-9716915-2-5
These interrelated short stories are graceful, vivid narratives that bring into sudden focus the spirit and the stubborn resilience of the Brickmans, a Jewish family of four living in suburban New Jersey. This fierce collection provides an unblinking examination of family life and the human instinct for attachment.
“ Focusing on small decisions and subtle shifts, Saving Stanley closely examines the frayed ties that bind. With a fly-on-the-wall sensibility and a keen sense for dramatic restraint, Nadelson is … both a promising writer and an apt documentarian.”
Willamette Week
WINNER, 1983 PEN /FAULKNER AWARD
Seaview Introduction by Robert Coover
Toby Olson
Fiction / 316pp $15.95 0-9766311-6-4
This novel follows a golf hustler and his dying wife across an American wasteland. Trying to return the woman to her childhood home on Cape Cod, the pair are accompanied by a mysterious Pima Indian activist and shadowed by a vengeful drug dealer to the novel’s apocalypse on the Seaview Links.
“ Even a remarkable dreamer of nightmares like Nathanael West might have been hard-pressed to top the finale … Unlike any other recent American novel in the freshness of its approach and vision.” The New York Times Book Review
The Well and the Mine
Gin Phillips
Fiction $15.95 0-9766311-7-2
In 1931 Carbon Hill, Alabama, a small coal-mining town, nine-year-old Tess Moore watches a woman shove the cover off the family well and toss in a baby without a word. The apparent murder forces the family to face the darker side of their community and attempt to understand the motivations of their family and friends. Most townspeople don’t have enough money for a newspaper and backbreaking work keeps them busy from dawn until well after dusk. But next to the daily toil of hard work are the lingering pleasures of sweet tea, feather beds, and lightning bugs.
Leaving Brooklyn Page 16