Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs in his career, Hank Aaron 755, Barry Bonds 763. Hack Wilson set the single-season RBI record with 190 in 1930, though decades later historians found a discrepancy in a box score and changed the number to 191. Lou Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games, Cal Ripken 2,632. Orel Hershiser pitched 59 consecutive scoreless innings in ’88, eclipsing Don Drysdale’s record of 58 1/3. Cy Young won 511 games, Walter Johnson 417, Christy Mathewson and Pete Alexander both 373. Barry Bonds walked 2,558 times, Rickey Henderson scored 2,295 runs, Hank Aaron drove in 2,297 men, and Pete Rose got 4,256 hits, passing Ty Cobb’s 4,191—some say 4,189—in ’85. Mickey Mantle finished with a .298 lifetime batting average because of some mediocre seasons at the end of his career. Ted Williams lost the MVP award in 1941 to Joe DiMaggio and his 56-game hitting streak, despite hitting .406 that year. Dwight Gooden struck out 276 men as a rookie. Ralph Kiner won 7 home run titles despite playing in only 11 seasons.
Maybe he should have committed other facts to memory. Maybe he should have learned the dates of elections and political coups d’état. Maybe he should know the presidents in chronological order and their vice presidents and the dates of their elections and deaths, or the history of Mesopotamia or metallurgy, or the basics of quantum mechanics, but he didn’t know those facts, he knew baseball facts. He’d learned baseball facts originally because his father had known baseball facts and he liked having them to share with him, and then eventually they were just what rattled around in his head.
Roberto Clemente had a .317 lifetime batting average, was voted to start 17 All-Star games, and finished with exactly 3,000 hits. His plane crashed in Puerto Rico during an off-season relief mission he attempted to fly to Nicaragua in 1974 to deliver food to starving people. He was elected to the Hall of Fame immediately, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America forgoing the five-year waiting period they gave themselves to consider the value of a player’s contribution to the game.
He waited for the sensation of panicked blankness to come back, and after a while he started to wonder whether it had happened at all or whether he’d conjured it out of his fears. Something in the scene in the classroom had triggered it, some nagging déjà vu. He kept circling back to the moment when he turned to the board and saw the single word and didn’t remember how it got there. It hovered inscrutably, an insistent message in it.
He thought of the visit he had paid to his father’s own classroom before anyone knew what was really going on with him. He had watched his father come apart before his eyes.
Empathy. He hadn’t always had it. It was a muscle you had to develop and then keep conditioned. Sometimes he thought his real goal wasn’t to teach them to write better essays but to get them to think more about what it meant to be human.
Michelle had been trying to persuade him to reconsider his firm stance against having children, a child. He had told her from the beginning that he wasn’t comfortable taking the chance he’d get the disease or that the kid would. The line was going to end with him, he had said, and she had accepted it, until she lost her mother after Christmas.
He took out his wallet and dug around in the recesses of its folds for the little piece of tooth. He held it in the sunlight, felt the smooth enamel against his fingertips. It could have been a sliver of seashell, a shard of stone or scree. He had transferred it from wallet to wallet over the years. He had to stop torturing himself with it. He wasn’t helping anyone with all this regret.
He had agreed the night before to go in for genetic testing. She had gotten him to commit to having a child if he definitely didn’t have the gene. It struck him now that what he had been thinking about when he drew a blank before the class was an idea of this potential child. He could see a suggestion of this child’s face, an amalgam of his wife’s and his own. The truth was that even if he had the gene, he’d be willing to have a kid anyway, and not just because there was a chance he wouldn’t get the disease. If he got it, he’d do whatever he needed to do to shield the kid from it as long as he could.
The truth, he saw now, was that he wanted more than anything to have a child with his wife. Her life was as sparsely populated as his was, familywise. After her mother’s passing, her father had moved out to California to live with her brother, Ricky. Except for a cousin in Houston, Michelle didn’t have anyone else. Michelle and his mother had circled around each other for a few years. At first he thought it had to do with Michelle’s being Nicaraguan American, but lately he believed it had more to do with the fact that Michelle and his mother both had such strong personalities. They butted heads without the release of ever actually meaning to do so. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Michelle was a lawyer, that she’d been a clerk for a Supreme Court judge and was now at a corporate law firm. She’d already lived a lot of the life his mother might have wanted to live, and she wasn’t even thirty-five. His mother and Michelle had gotten close enough lately, though, that Michelle was now the one who called his mother when they had to make plans with her, and when they went over to his mother’s house, Michelle and his mother sat at the kitchen table after dinner playing backgammon while he watched television in the den. He knew that if he had a kid, Michelle and his mother could pull together even more, and it wasn’t hard to imagine Michelle calling his mother “Mami” soon enough, which he thought would make both of them happy.
He could honor his father by loving the kid the way his father had loved him. And if he had to be vulnerable in front of the kid, if he had to be defenseless and useless and pathetic, if he had to forget things and piss himself and get lost on the way home, then so be it. If the kid didn’t handle it well—well, that was what kids did. They went out too often, they stayed out too late, they said things that cut to the quick, they forgot responsibilities, they broke your heart. Years later they thought about it all.
And what did parents do? They saw more clearly than their kids did. They forgave their kids, even if they didn’t say so. Even if they couldn’t say so. They did.
He couldn’t wait to get home to his wife. She would be surprised by his change of heart. She might be more surprised by how much he had to say. She was always trying to get him to talk. Well, tonight he was going to talk. She wasn’t going to be able to shut him up. He was going to tell the whole story, even the parts he wasn’t proud of. He would have to find a way to tell it so it made some kind of sense. He would have to tell it from the beginning. He’d have to give her enough detail to let her see it for herself. It was lucky that he had such a good memory for that kind of thing. It was all in there somewhere, he was sure of that. He would dig it out.
He rose and walked to the fence that cordoned off the edge of the island. He took one last look at the little chip of tooth and tossed it in the water. It disappeared without even the tiniest detectable splash, to settle unseen on the riverbed. Maybe in a few thousand years it would make its way out to the ocean. Maybe in another few thousand it would wash up on the shore of a wholly different world, with new species, a different atmosphere, and a tenuous place for man. For now, while he breathed and moved, while he felt and thought, there was still, between this moment and the one of his dying, the interval allotted to him, and there was so much to live for in it: the citrus snap of fresh black tea; the compression and release of a warm stack of folded towels carried to the closet between two hands; the tinny resonance of children in the distance when heard through a bedroom window; the mouth-fullness of cannoli cream; the sudden twitch of a horse’s ear to chase a fly; the neon green of the outfield grass; the map of wrinkles in one’s own hand; the smell and feel, even the taste of dirt; the comfort of a body squeezed against one’s own.
He would hug his kid as much as he could. “Good,” he’d say. “Good. Good.”
Acknowledgments
For the titles of parts I, III, IV and V, I am indebted to The Great Gatsby, “Skunk Hour,” by Robert Lowell, “Love Song: I and Thou,” by Alan Dugan, and “Meditation at Lagunitas,” by Robert Hass.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
READING GROUP GUIDE
We Are Not Ourselves
Matthew Thomas
About This Guide
This reading group guide for We Are Not Ourselves includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Matthew Thomas. 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
Epic in scope, heroic in character, and masterful in prose, We Are Not Ourselves is a multigenerational portrait of the Irish American Leary family.
Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed.
When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn’t aspire to the same, ever bigger stakes in the American Dream. Although she encourages him to want more, as the years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.
Through the Leary family, novelist Matthew Thomas charts the story of the American Century. At once expansive and exquisitely detailed, We Are Not Ourselves is a riveting and affecting work of art––one that reminds us that life is more than a tally of victories and defeats, that we live to love and be loved, and that we should tell one another so before the moment slips away.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Thomas begins his novel with two epigraphs, one from Stanley Kunitz and one from King Lear. Did the epigraphs inform your reading of the novel? How did they relate to each of the members of the Leary family? Why do you think Thomas chose to use the phrase We Are Not Ourselves, taken from the King Lear epigraph, as the title of his novel?
2. When Eileen is growing up, she’s aware that “men were always quieting down around her father”, whom “everybody called…Big Mike”. Describe Big Mike. Why does he command so much respect from the outside world? Does this influence Eileen’s behavior? In what ways? How does Big Mike’s legend compare with the reality of what he is like when he is at home with Eileen and her mother?
3. Even after Eileen buys the apartment building from the Orlando family, she’s obsessed with the idea of owning her own house. Why is this so important for Eileen?
4. When Eileen enters nursing school “she knew that even if nursing wasn’t the field she’d have chosen, she’d been training for it without meaning to from an early age”. Describe Eileen’s childhood. How have Eileen’s experiences with her mother helped prepare her for the job? Occasionally Eileen feels the instructors are “treating her with something like professional courtesy”, and it makes her think of the way men in the neighborhood treat her father. Why? And why does this make her uneasy?
5. When Ed turns down an offer to be the chairman of his department, he tells Eileen, “It’s all about having the right ambition”. What does Ed think the “right” ambitions are? Why is Eileen so upset that he has turned down the job? How does his ambition conflict with Eileen’s?
6. After Ed has lost his temper and “flipped out” on Connell, Eileen tells him that “it had better not [happen again]. I don’t give a damn what your father did to you. That boy’s not him”. Why do you think Ed is so reticent to talk about his relationship with his own father? Does Ed’s relationship with his father inform his parenting style with Connell? If so, in what ways?
7. On moving day, when Eileen arrives at her new house, “Her first thought as she took in the house through the window as that it didn’t look the way she’d remembered it”. Contrast Eileen’s memory of her new house with the reality of what it looks like. What accounts for the change in the way that Eileen views the house? Why is she so baffled when her movers ask her where they should place her belongings within it?
8. Connell attends one of Ed’s classes in order to complete a school assignment. Describe Connell’s experience in the classroom. Although Connell is unnerved by his time in Ed’s classroom, he keeps his word to Ed and decides not to tell his mother how strange it had been. Why do you think Connell chooses to keep this information to himself? Do you agree with his decision to do so? When Ed apologizes to Connell, Connell tells him, “It’s all right . . . I already know what kind of teacher you are. You teach me every day”. How does Ed teach his son?
9. Who is Bethany? Do you think her friendship with Eileen is healthy? Why or why not? Why does Eileen agree to accompany Bethany to the faith healer? Compare and contrast Eileen’s experiences with Vywamus with her experience going to a therapist. Why does Eileen think that going to the faith healer is “better than therapy”. Do you think going to the faith healer has helped Eileen? How?
10. Ed is reluctant to attend a party with Eileen at the home of one of her colleagues and tells her, “They’ll never know the real me”. What does he mean? Were you surprised by Ed’s diagnosis? Were there any instances of foreshadowing in the novel that led you to anticipate what Ed’s illness was? What were they? Who do you think is “the real” Ed?
11. When Connell tells his friend Farshid that he and his family will be moving and expresses reticence about it, Farshid tells him, “You just need to reinvent yourself”. Do you agree with Connell that “I have to invent myself before I can reinvent myself”?. Why does Connell tell his mother that he wants to move even though he’s ambivalent about the prospect? What does moving into a new house mean to each member of the Leary family?
12. When it comes to dating, Eileen would “rather be alone than end up with a man who was afraid”. What traits is Eileen looking for in a partner? How does Ed measure up to Eileen’s ideal partner? Were you surprised that she ends up marrying him? Eileen sees them as “coconspirators in a mission of normalcy”. What does she mean? Describe their relationship. How does it evolve?
13. After Ed gets sick, Connell avoids going back home. Why is he so afraid of going home?
Connell tells Eileen that caring for Ed is “too hard for me. It’s too much” and that “I’m not you. . . . That’s the problem right there”. How does Eileen react? Is she justified? Compare and contrast the way that both Eileen and Connell deal with their sick parents. In what ways, if any, are they alike?
14. After Ed’s diagnosis, Eileen takes “a third path, the pragmatic one. It hadn’t happened for a reason, by they would find something to glean from it anyway”. What does Eileen’s reaction tell us about her character? Describe your first impression of Eileen. Did you like her initially? Did your impression of Eileen change as you read on? In what ways and why?
15. Eileen’s mother tells her, “Don’t ever love anyone. All you’ll do is break your own heart”. Why does she offer this advices to Eileen? In what ways has Eileen’s mother’s heart been broken? Do any of the other characters in We Are Not Ourselves suffer heartbreaks? What has caused those instances of suffering?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Baseball is important in the Leary household. Ed and Connell relate to each other through the sport. When Eileen goes to a game with Ed and Connell, she realizes that “she did some of her best thinking at ball games, or while Ed was listening to them on the radio”. Watch a baseball game with your book club. Discuss why Eileen might find watching games calming. Did the experience have the same effect on you?
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