by Carol Anshaw
* * *
Claude puts the salads on the table. Neale gets out of the oven a loaf of that bread that’s almost baked and you just polish it off yourself. She tries to take it out barehanded, says damn, then drops it on the floor, then picks it up with a dishcloth as a potholder. Her hands are a tapestry of small suffering from pots of inadvertently spilled pasta water, thoughtlessly gripped oven racks and pot handles. It’s like she has this one, very specific cognitive delay. It’s too endearing. Cate feels a brimming at the back of her eyes.
Talk skitters around the table. Joe likes his new school here better than the one in Chicago except that it doesn’t have Kiera. He wouldn’t say he has friends yet, but no one is beating him up in minor, deviously non-bruising ways, which did happen in Chicago. The capricious and cruel tactics of the new administration, of course, drift into the conversation. (The only conversations within Cate’s earshot that don’t feature the president are those where a moratorium is imposed at the outset. “Let’s not talk about him today. It’s too depressing.”) At the moment, he’s trying to put in place a new travel ban, which is almost exactly the previous travel ban.
“I’m waiting for France to go on the list of banned countries,” Claude says. “We French are a danger to someone who likes his meat well-done.”
Neale wants to know about the new play Cate is working on, a futuristic romance Molly and Lauren are trying out in the summer on the Santa Barbara launchpad.
It’s a struggle for Cate, getting through the meal. It’s difficult eating lettuce, talking in an anodyne way about her work and not crying, all at the same time.
When they’re finishing up, a tour of the town is suggested, also a game of Clue, which is an old favorite.
“Just a minute,” Cate says, looking hard at the bowl of fruit Claude has set down in the middle of the table. “I think Sailor needs to go out. He just passed a smoke signal. I got him a burger at the rest stop.” A lie, but who will call her on it? She should be able to sit through this lunch and then have some fruit and a cup of Claude’s Marco Polo tea afterward, ask him about life in the ashram, listen with Joe to some of the Basinski album she brought, but she can’t.
“Back in a sec,” she says, then heads for her car. Sailor follows without question. Not questioning sudden changes in plans is one of the best features of dogs.
Neale doesn’t call Cate on her drive home. She won’t be happy about Cate’s escape, but she will get it.
They drive back on roads instead of highways, Sailor with his head out the window. When they are at a stop sign and Sailor sees three horses in a fenced-in field, he tries to climb out the window.
“If you want, we can go see them,” Cate tells him. “See what’s up.”
She waits with him by the fence until one of the horses, heather gray, dappled with deep brown spots, comes over and dips his head so he and Sailor can make each other’s acquaintance by twitching noses in the delicate air between their faces. Watching this, something pleated fans open inside her. The happiness of animals in a green field on a fine day, of course. But also a glimpse of the amount of information that can be given and received just by approaching without an already composed story, then holding still and paying absolute attention.
acknowledgments
Thanks to:
My excellent editor, Trish Todd.
My extremely able copy editor, Polly Watson.
Jane Hamilton, Mary Kay Kammer, Sara Levine, Steve McCauley, Julie Wlach, and Barbara Mulvanny for their sharp readings and excellent criticism
Michael Paulson, Daniel Ostling, Alex Fraser, Erin Gioia Albrecht, and Elvia Moreno for helping to fill in my many blanks about the art and business of theater and set design.
My partner, Jessie Ewing, for always showing me larger possibilities than I would have come up with on my own.
Right after the Weather
Carol Anshaw
This reading group guide for Right after the Weather includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Carol Anshaw. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Right after the Weather takes place in the fall of 2016. Cate, a set designer in her early forties, lives and works in Chicago’s theater community. She has stayed too long at the fair and knows it’s time to get past her prolonged adolescence and stop taking handouts from her parents. She has a firm plan to get solvent and settled in a serious relationship. She has tentatively started something new even as she’s haunted by an old affair. Her ex-husband, recently booted from his most recent marriage, is currently camped out in Cate’s spare bedroom, in thrall to online conspiracy theories, and she’s not sure how to help him. Her best friend, Neale, a yoga instructor, lives nearby with her son and is Cate’s model for what serious adulthood looks like.
Only a few blocks away but in a parallel universe we find Nathan and Irene—casual sociopaths, drug addicts, and small-time criminals. Their worlds intersect the day Cate comes into Neale’s kitchen to find these strangers assaulting her friend. Forced to take fast, spontaneous action, Cate does something she’s never considered. In the aftermath, she’s left knowing the violence she is capable of.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Although Cate speaks positively about Maureen in early chapters, it becomes clear that there is some disconnect in their relationship and she has to start selling herself on the romance. Where did you notice this happening?
2. Discuss Cate’s friendship with Neale as compared to her relationships with Maureen and Dana beyond two being lovers, one a friend.
3. Cate would probably describe her relationship with Joe as an intergenerational friendship. What value do you think this friendship holds for each of them?
4. Graham is an “open-ended presence” (p. 25) both in Cate’s apartment and in her life. They have an unusual arrangement. How does it change through the course of the novel?
5. How are all of Cate’s relationships a way of building a family?
6. The author intersperses Cate’s perspective with Nathan’s point of view. What does this add to the narrative?
7. Cate comes to Neale’s rescue, but the experience leaves her isolated, and she realizes that in the aftermath “she has arrived on another side of everything. No one is over here with her” (p. 155). Why do you think she feels alone? Does she also, as Dana suggests, feel powerful? How do you think you would feel in her situation?
8. If you came upon a friend in the same situation, do you think you’d jump in to stop the assailant?
9. How does the incident in the kitchen change Neale and Cate’s relationship?
10. A theme of this novel considers what we owe to the people who have cared for us. Discuss how this theme plays out throughout the narrative.
11. At the end, Cate has pulled off the highway. What direction do you think her life will take from here?
12. Do you think she’s a slightly different person from who she is at the start of the book?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Read Carol Anshaw’s previous book, Carry the One, with your book group and discuss the similarities and differences between it and Right after the Weather.
2. Discuss whether you ever done something that you had previously considered yourself incapable of doing.
3. Pull up a map of Chicago and plot the settings for scenes from the novel.
A Conversation with Carol Anshaw
Both Right after the Weather and your previous book, Carry the One, deal with the repercussions of a single life-changing act. Why do you think your work comes back to this?
A while back, in an interview, a writer said what follows violence is always interesting. In these two books I follow that trajectory in different ways. In both cases, characters are
yanked out of their usual lives and set down in an entirely different place. That gives me a lot to work with.
Much of this novel grapples with the aftermath of the 2016 election. Why did you choose to write about the topic? How did the election affect your writing process?
As I was writing the book, the election happened. There’s no way these characters would’ve been able to ignore it, so I had to put it in and use it to underline the characters in their relation to it.
In addition to writing, you paint, so you have a foot in multiple artistic worlds. What kind of research did you do for Cate’s work in the theater?
I read a lot. I talked with several set designers and I went on a backstage tour of a Broadway theater. It was a world that was new to me so it was fiercely interesting. I hope I got it right.
How did you come to the shocking revelation Maureen shares with Cate on p. 20?
I needed something that would probably be a deal breaker in a budding relationship, something that would make staying in it very tentative.
What was the most challenging scene to write?
The scene in the kitchen.
In the course of working on this novel, did any of the characters’ actions or reactions surprise you?
Well, of course I’m writing book so surprising me is not an option, but the character I had to keep figuring and refiguring was Neale. How would she react to being attacked? To Cate’s rescue? To her parents’ stepping in? To her husband’s return?
Why did you choose not to dramatize the scene where Cate rescues Neale?
I did. I just broke it up into pieces of flashback. That way I got to both show it and run it through Cate’s memory.
In writing the scene where Neale is assaulted, did you consider what you would do in Cate’s situation?
Every step of the way.
Instead of chapter numbers, you give each a word or two. Can you explain these?
I put these in as I start to write a section. I almost never change them later. They’re like little pushpins for me. When I want to go back to a section, I can find it right away. I can build out the section from that small point.
Of all the characters in this novel, which would you most like to know in real life?
Cate.
What do you hope readers take away from this novel?
That people, when pressed, are able to come up with heroic moments.
What are you working on next?
I’m writing a novel about a woman from her twenties through her seventies.
More from the Author
Carry the One
about the author
CAROL ANSHAW is the New York Times bestselling author of Carry the One, Aquamarine, Seven Moves, and Lucky in the Corner. She has received the Ferro-Grumley Award, the Carl Sandburg Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. She lives in Chicago and Amsterdam.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Carol-Anshaw
Facebook.com/AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks @AtriaBooks
Also by Carol Anshaw
Carry the One
Lucky in the Corner
Seven Moves
Aquamarine
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Carol Anshaw
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition October 2019
and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Interior design by Alexis Minieri
Jacket design by Donna Cheng
Jacket art by Tim Robinson / Millennium Images, UK
Author photograph by John Reilly
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Anshaw, Carol, 1946– author
Title: Right after the weather / Carol Anshaw.
Description: New York : Atria, 2019. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018042085 (print) | LCCN 2018043656 (ebook) | ISBN 9781476747811 (eBook) | ISBN 9781476747798 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476747804 (pbk.) Classification: LCC PS3551.N7147 (ebook) | LCC PS3551.N7147 R54 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042085
ISBN 978-1-4767-4779-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-4781-1 (ebook)