by Edie Meidav
“I am,” admits the visitor. “Or I was.”
“He’s going to have a good time with you, I can tell.”
“Sorry?”
“You’ll see,” says the woman. Gold script on her chest spells out her name. Eileen Lynch. “You were his only child?”
“Yes.” The visitor’s hand waves the idea of filial kinship away like a phantom.
This Eileen Lynch seems to be someone who flanks descendents of the dead and probably doesn’t know Vic’s background. Eileen, a person of official warmth, clicks down the long gray hallway with its lighting flat, its doors closed, and tries changing the subject.
“Anyway, ever seen a dead person before?”
“I guess not.”
“Prepare yourself. I always tell people hold on to something when we open the door. Take a breath. You got to will yourself to breathe. Otherwise we find ourselves trying to join our friends on the other side.”
“Pardon?”
“You faint. It has to do with your will for life. What helps is if beforehand you create your intention. First, want to be alone with him?”
“Probably. What did you mean when you said that about him having a good time with me?”
Eileen is out of breath, these corridors making her mount private hills. “You don’t want to hear my personal history.”
“I do,” says the visitor.
“Okay. You asked. I was seventeen, I died and then came back.”
“No way,” says the visitor, not knowing how else to respond.
“Fell out of an apple tree. A doctor pronounced me dead and I saw my body from above. My grandma crouched over it. That whole bit. The tunnel, vague figures from the past. My third-grade teacher, the beckoning figure of light. They said I was dead for an hour and covered me with a sheet. Then I decided to come back. Because I had a purpose.”
“What—you mean—you connect people to the dead?”
Eileen gleams, tugging at her collar. “Well, I didn’t know it then but now I see spirits hovering around people. The dead connect me to people like you.”
“Like—now?”
“Your man is hovering right near you. I knew all about you before you came in.”
“Then what’s the point of going to see the body?” she asks.
“It’s for you, not them. You go, say your goodbyes. Because we hold on to sight but the dead hold on to hearing. Even after their vision goes they can hear everything. We stand on the shore and sing our goodbyes. You’re not an opera singer are you?”
“Why?”
“I once had someone go and launch into an aria. But never mind.”
“No,” says the visitor. “I’m a terrible singer but I’m okay at following other people’s tunes.”
She is at the door. She has not been in the same room with the dead man free for years. Maybe never.
“Well, anyway, the other important thing is don’t go in and lose yourself,” says the woman. “The undertow can suck you in. Some of them love to give life but some love to steal it. There’s no real constancy.”
“Should I wait?”
“Well, I tell people it’s like memory or breath. Goes in and out and there’s never a perfect time. It’s like they go in to join a tribe of dead people. You need to sit a second?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just take a moment. That’s what this bench is for. It helps. But whatever you’re scared of brings the greatest gifts, right? Because would you want to live life without jumping in? Sometimes your moment comes and you got to know when to seize it.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“We’re in bigger currents we can’t name. It’s like fish.”
“I do want to get what you’re saying.”
“A fish doesn’t say okay, give me a second, I’m choosing not to go into the mouth of that whale.”
“You’re saying the dead are the whale?”
“Just that no matter what happens in life you find very few absolutely wrong moments.”
“I should go in. I’m almost ready.”
“Because you’re getting a gift. The chance to say goodbye. It’s like hello. Not everyone gets that chance. If we’re all members of one family, one body, let’s say, you back off, it means you’re backing away from life itself. Like you grab a golden ring but fall off the horse.”
“I’m falling off?”
“A long time ago I found life’s short. No guilt or regret. You get the chance, call it luck, you leap. Want me to help you up? Someone in there has been waiting a long time. That person wants you and no one else. Can’t you see now is your time?”
TENTH OF MARCH, 2009 8:01 A.M.
Hogan’s hand on Rose’s belly: “That’s kicking all right. She’s strong.”
“She?”
“You don’t think we’re having a girl?”
“I do,” and her smile up at him swallows the sky and dusty mountains, the prospect of calm.
LATER
they rinse the back of his eyeballs in hot light so he may finally stand before them in a beautiful suit, ready to lecture, irradiated and weary. He waits until the right moment to ask the question they never forget, the one forever drumming their core. For the first time he does want their answer. Are you happy now?
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the editors of both Conjunctions and Guernica for publishing early excerpts.
The great generosity of the Lannan Foundation, the Bard Fiction Prize and the Howard Foundation all helped create favorable conditions. As did liberatory paragons Mary Caponegro, Robert Kelly, Brad Morrow.
A–Z plus a legion of students.
Thanks for the gift of place: Liv and Dan Leader and Leigh Stevens, offering orange-walled welcome; Marla Walker for proposing Joseph Cornell–like charm; and Lois Guarino, Livi and Stan Lichens for providing the miracle of a medieval nunnery in which to work.
For humanity toward this particular book: Rebekah Aronson, Sue Austin, Dianne Belfrey, Liza Birnbaum, Leon Botstein, Norman O. Brown, Sylvia Brownrigg, Jim Brudvig, Eugenie Cha, Carolyn Cooke, Mariah DeLeon, Shaun Dolan, Michèle Dominy, Gabriella Doob, Daisy Doro, Deb Durant, Cindy Herchenroder, Michael Ives, Dana Kinstler, Jane Korn, Evelyn Krueger, Marcus Leaver, Amii and Linda Legendre, Yasmine Lucas, Paul Marienthal, Joe Mathers, Vern Miller, Donna and Tony Monaco, Eric Myers, Mischa Nachtigal, Carol O’Day, Lisa Pearlman, Marcey Pollitt, Ira Sachs, Julia Sforza, Mercedes Sidor, Noel Tepper, Adrienne Weiss, Gena Wilson, Lisa Wolfe, Liza, Hedy, Katya. For dazzling endgame succor: Snapdragon Films, Kevin Salem, Tara Shafer, Larry Bensky, Sharon Guskin and Michael Ravitch as well as FSG’s production crew and jacket designer Jennifer Carrow. The late Ellen Margron and Carla Zilbersmith.
For immeasurable enthusiasm and unflagging support: Mae Ziglin Meidav.
For brilliance and inspiration: my editor, Eric Chinski, and my agent, Bill Clegg, showing their usual kindness in helping drive the cattle back to the meadow at the foot of the mountain while enlivening the journey with music on the lyre.
In memory of the benevolent lost grace of Tsvi.
The seed family: Stan, Eliana Esther Zoe, Dalia Elodie Rafaela.
A Note About the Author
Edie Meidav is the author of The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon and Crawl Space (FSG, 2005). Winner of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman and the Bard Fiction Prize, she teaches at Bard College.
Visit www.ediemeidav.com for links to a film and score composed for this book.
Also by Edie Meidav
The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon
Crawl Space
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 18 West
18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2011 by Edie Meidav
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpts from Love’s Body, copyright © 1966 by Norman O. Brown. Reprinted by permission of the Unive
rsity of California Press. Excerpts from The Systems View of the World, copyright © 1972 by Ervin Laszlo. Reprinted by permission of George Braziller, Inc. Lyrics from “Wild Things,” copyright © 1975 by Cris Williamson. Used by permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meidav, Edie, 1967–
Lola, California / Edie Meidav.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-374-10926-4
1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Families—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.E3447 L65 2011
813'.54—dc22
2010046275
www.fsgbooks.com