If Giamatti was baseball’s philosopher king, Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post is its poet laureate. How Life Imitates the World Series and Why Time Begins on Opening Day are both beautiful works of baseball literature.
Art figures prominently in Anne Charon’s life, as it has in mine.
There are a lot of worse ways to spend time than viewing the works of Paul Cézanne and visiting the Arensberg Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Cézanne’s paintings have always intrigued me. Along with what I discussed in Light of Day, Cézanne anticipated the modern era and the Cubist movement. His play of light and pigment, refraction, and space offer great insights into art and perception.
I wish I’d been able to discuss the paintings of Reginald Marsh when I wrote Light of Day, but the story did not permit it. Any visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, however, should include a long look at Marsh’s work in the museum’s permanent collection.
An Excerpt from The First Warm Evening of the Year
Read on for a glimpse at Jamie M. Saul’s latest spellbinding story, which explores the complex, intricate relationships between friends and siblings, husbands and wives, and shows that true love can be discovered in the most unexpected places—on sale in April 2012 from William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE FIRST TIME I SAW Marian Ballantine she looked like a burst of bittersweet among the winter branches in her bright red coat and orange scarf, her hair thick and dark, the way certain secrets are dark.
She extended her hand, which folded over mine, and said, “Not what you expected, was it?” Marian might have known that there were more than a few other things to which she could have been referring, besides the circumstances for my arrival. I might have even believed that she was nothing more than a pleasant distraction from the unpleasant purpose for my having to be there, except I was aware of more than just her presence. It was her face, mostly, illuminant from deep within her eyes, and more complete than a simply attractive face, more involved. It was a welcoming face, which made me think for a moment that she’d mistaken me for someone else, or she thought she might have known me from some other time. It revealed the certainty of recognition and familiarity. No one had ever looked at me quite like that before. That’s when I fell in love with her.
A few weeks before, in the middle of a slow morning in March, I was alone in my apartment. According to my datebook it was the last week of winter, but I was feeling the “damp, drizzly November in the soul” that Ishmael talks about and sends him sailing toward his rebirth of wonder. For the past month or so, the rumblings of discontent, an emotional stasis had settled in. All the things that used to give me pleasure were unsatisfying now. I had a lucrative career doing commercial voice-overs for television and radio, with the kind of freedom that most of my friends envied; a relationship that allowed me an autonomy that other men seemed to desire—my girlfriend, Rita, was the least possessive person I’d ever known—and that I once wanted, too.
I couldn’t quite locate the reason why I now felt so unsettled, as though my collar were always half a size too tight—and it had been a long time, it seemed, since work or relationships provided me much satisfaction.
This morning I’d decided to rest all considerations of heart and mind, feeling that loafing away this delicious lazy day and its unblemished and undemanding time was just what I needed to pull myself out of the doldrums.
Outside my window the sun had broken free of all clouds. A smattering of people crossed the street against the light, hailed taxis, ran after buses, walked the paths of Central Park, beneath the sad, bare trees and dreary lawns. I stood and watched Manhattan’s anonymous society and felt a sense of well-being. I was one of them, at peace with myself and the city. The gloom of the morning had passed when the doorbell rang and my doorman handed me a registered letter with a Shady Grove, New York, postmark and the return address of an attorney named Frank Remsen.
I recalled the name Shady Grove, but why, I didn’t know. It couldn’t have been from a book, since it was a real place, and I was sure I’d never been there, but a registered letter from a lawyer, even if I had remembered the town, was the sort of thing to fill me with apprehension, which was why the letter remained unopened while I finished my coffee and allowed myself the illusion that this day still belonged, complete and inviolate, to me.
Then, I sat down and slowly peeled open the envelope.
I read the letter once, and a second time, and even then I wasn’t quite sure what to think. It seemed like such an unusual request: Mr. Remsen was writing on behalf of Laura Stevenson, who was requesting that I act as executor of her estate. There was nothing in the letter saying why Laura wanted me to do this, and nothing at all about Laura, except that she lived in Shady Grove, New York, hoped I remembered her, was aware that this was coming out of nowhere, so I could certainly decline, and would I please call Remsen with my answer at my soonest convenience.
I stared at Laura’s name, not because I didn’t remember her, and not because I needed time to make my decision. I knew Laura Stevenson, or had known her, twenty years before, when she was a student at Juilliard, and I at Columbia. Her name was Laura Welles back then. Why would she want me to act as her executor after all these years? And what was so urgent about it?
I walked into my bedroom, opened the daybook on my desk, and checked my appointments, but I’d already dialed Remsen’s number.
I told him I’d just received his letter. “And it’s all very vague.”
There was silence at the other end, as though I’d given the wrong response, but it didn’t last long.
Remsen said, “I thank you for getting back to me, Mr. Tremont.”
“My father is Mr. Tremont,” I told him. “Call me Geoffrey.”
“Laura was aware that you’d have a few questions, Geoffrey—”
“She can get in touch with me herself. Even after all these years.”
“She wanted me to ask you, and she didn’t want to see you—Well, actually, she didn’t want you to see her.”
“You said didn’t.”
“Laura died,” he said. “A week ago. There really isn’t very much—” Remsen began.
I only then realized that I’d turned my back to the phone, and was staring at the floor. “Wait a minute.” I kept looking down. I had a feeling of disbelief, because in my mind, I could recall a girl named Laura Welles, and all I could think, as irrational as it was, was that girl should still be alive.
“Can you tell me how she died?”
“Cancer. Lung cancer.”
I took a moment before saying, “What about her husband? When I knew her she had a—”
“Her husband passed away some years ago, as have both parents. Laura had no children.”
“What about the brother?”
“You know Simon?”
“I’ve met him.”
“Laura hadn’t stayed in touch with him.” Remsen cleared his throat. “There was some trouble years ago. She had her reasons.”
I knew about those reasons and remembered the spring in ’86, but I said nothing about it to Remsen.
“But that was then,” he was saying, “so who knows? Anyway, I should tell you I notified him a couple of days after the funeral. He wanted to know how to find you. I said I’d have to check with you first. He didn’t leave a number or anything.”
I was aware now of the room feeling hot and airless.
“When would I have to take care of this?”
“At your convenience. Of course, sooner would be better than later.” He had the kind of voice that made me think of those men who go bald before they’re thirty. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “it isn’t much of an estate. Her house and furniture. Nothing terribly complicated. All you have to do is make sure the people and charities receive what she specified for them, that her house is sold for a fair market price, and the money’s donated to the high school music program where she taught. Basically, that’s it.”
“A music teacher? When I knew Laura she was a jazz musician and lived in Paris.”
“She moved back here after her husband died. This is her hometown. She taught at our high school for the last ten years or so.”
I’d already turned around, and had a pen in my hand.
“I’ll need her address,” I said, “and directions. I can’t leave town until Tuesday.”
Remsen said it could wait until then, and told me how to get to Shady Grove and find Laura’s house.
I hung up the phone, sat on the edge of the bed, and tried to remember Laura Welles.
I wish I could say that my mind was ripe with memories, but I hadn’t given Laura very much thought in all these years. Although we’d been good friends, close friends, when we were both in school, we hadn’t stayed in touch once she’d moved to Paris. I suppose we might have kept up if we’d lived closer to each other or had the convenience of e-mail like we have now. And now there were things that I wanted to remember about her. Not the broad things—how she looked, what neighborhood she lived in, things we did with our friends. The smaller things. What we’d done on a specific afternoon, what we’d talk about late at night over a beer, what was important to her, and what she shook off. Anything that might have conjured Laura Welles for just a minute, given texture to the sadness I was feeling, and held more than this pitiful context.
I am not blessed with the deepest memory—when I was in the theater, I could always remember my lines and cues and marks, but the exact year of a show, or where we played, I couldn’t say—and I didn’t do much to keep up with people from my past or any of my old friends from school, including Laura, and all that was left was a smattering of recollections, parties we’d gone to together, nights at the West End, over on Broadway, where we used to eat inexpensive food and listen to jazz. I recalled one night when we seemed to be doing a lot of catching up and gossiping, so it might have been when we’d just come back from summer vacation, and we were laughing a lot; although it could have been almost any time, since the West End was one of our haunts, we always had things and people to talk about, and we always made each other laugh. It might have been just before the start of our senior year, when Laura sublet a studio apartment in the same building where I was living—I was staying in my brother Alex’s apartment while he did his residency in Chicago—Laura and I certainly would have been happy about that.
I remembered that we used to go to some of the downtown clubs and stay out all night, sometimes all weekend, and we went to the theater and concerts once in a while. And one night, in someone’s apartment near Lincoln Center, looking out the window at the people on their way to the opera, maybe, or the ballet, Laura said she liked watching them from up high like that. She said most things looked better from a distance.
Copyright
The excerpt from All the King’s Men, copyright 1946 and renewed 1974 by Robert Penn Warren, is reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
LIGHT OF DAY. Copyright © 2005 by Jamie M. Saul. Excerpt from The First Warm Evening of the Year copyright © 2012 by Jamie M. Saul. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Saul, Jamie M.
Light of day: a novel / Jamie M. Saul.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-074752-8
1. Suicide victims—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Sons—Death—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.A823L54 2005
813'.6—dc22
2004056676
ISBN 978-0-06-219093-2 (pbk.)
EPub Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN 9780062207883
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