“No. By life. Or, not life, really, but by Vietnam. Like, Dad could have been a regular dad. He could’ve told us stories or given advice or…I don’t know, guided us somehow. And he never got the chance. Doesn’t that make you mad?”
“Did I tell you I’m taking psychology?” Murphy asks.
“Only one billion times.”
“So there was this one study where they asked a whole bunch of people, ‘Would you trade your situation for someone else’s?’ Like, if the other person had more money or a bigger house or a better job or whatever. And you know what?”
“What?”
“Most people said no.” Murphy licks a pink drop spilling down his cone. “I forget the percentage. I’m not a brainiac like you.”
“Ha ha.”
“The point is, most people stuck with what they had. Because even if someone has more money or whatever, you never know what kind of problems they have on the inside. So if some scientist in a white coat came up to me and was like, ‘Hey, Murphy, would you like to swap your Dad with a guy who talks and watches fireworks on the Fourth of July and doesn’t walk in front of trolleys?’ You know what I’d say?”
I shake my head.
“I’d say, ‘Hell, no.’ I get what you’re saying about the stories and whatever, but that’s just not the cards he was dealt. And in the end, we all just do the best we can with what we’ve got. And yeah, he wasn’t perfect. Yeah, lost opportunity, whatever. But he did guide us, in his own way. There’s a lot you can do without talking. You can play catch. You can play Scrabble.”
I look away, and Murphy waits for me to look back.
“And he loved us,” he tells me. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” I look at Murphy with his crazy sunglasses and messy hair. “You know something, Murph?”
“What, Monk?”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
He laughs. “Thanks. That actually means a lot, coming from you.” Then he smashes his cone against mine and leaves a big pink smudge on my perfect double chocolate.
We sit for a few more minutes, crunching through our cones, watching the lake that’s been here, will be here, forever and ever, water, ice, water, ice, water. “Murphy?”
“Oh, God. Another deep question?”
“No. I just want to know if the North Stars have a shot.” They just shocked us again by winning their first playoff game. Murphy actually kissed the TV screen at the buzzer.
“Probably not. Saint Louis is pretty sick.”
But I smile because right now we’re still in between, like the dead/alive cat. They could win. It’s possible.
* * *
Mom’s sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee and the Sunday paper, which I have never seen her read in my entire life. The sun is up somewhere, I guess, but not here. The curtains are open, but the sky is so full of clouds the apartment’s a shady gray that makes it creepy, like someone’s about to jump out of a closet. It’s like yesterday—with Murphy, eating ice cream on the bench in the sunshine—never happened. I want to tell the universe, No take-backs, but the universe doesn’t listen to me (obviously).
“Morning, butter bean,” Mom says.
“Morning. How come you’re not at church?” I sit down at the table and tuck my feet under me to keep them warm.
Mom shrugs. “I don’t know. I just woke up and…didn’t feel like it. You want some breakfast?”
“Not yet. It’s freezing in here.”
“I know. I just heard the heat click on.” She turns a page of the newspaper, but she’s not really reading it. Her eyes are wandering around the pages. Then she says, “April twenty-first!”
“What about it?”
“It’s my granny’s birthday.” She smiles and closes the paper. “We should plant some flowers in her honor.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yes. She had the most beautiful garden.”
“Yeah, well.” I toss my arm toward the window. “Pretty sure they’ll die out there.”
“We should ride our bikes,” Mom says, like she didn’t even hear me.
I sit up straighter. “Mom. Please don’t go crazy. I need you. I only have one parent left.” I’m only half kidding about this.
Mom laughs and looks right at me. Her eyes are a deep, dark brown. They’re tired, but normal. Thank God. She messes up my hair, then stands up and carries her coffee cup to the counter. “Justin,” she says. “You can’t wait for everything to be just right or you’ll wait your whole life. Get dressed. I’ll buy you a doughnut.”
I yawn. “Okay, in that case.”
* * *
My fingers are numb on my handlebars, and the wind is kicking up. The fern in Mom’s bike basket is waving its arms around like a panic attack. “It’s a little early for flowers,” the woman at the nursery said, frowning at Mom. “We can get a hard freeze all the way to Memorial Day.” And I wanted to punch her.
But Mom just smiled and said, “Well, what’ve you got?”
My ears are plugged with cold so all I can hear is gravel under our tires and tree branches shaking in the wind, and I can’t remember being this happy.
We turn off the bike path onto Water Street, where we live. Where everything is. Where at the very end, Dad killed himself or didn’t, and the lake is crashing into itself over and over. Mom tilts her head to the left when we get near the bakery, because I couldn’t hear her if she tried to talk. We slow our bikes down and park them in the alley so the wind won’t knock them onto the sidewalk. The screen door to the bakery is blowing around, and I catch it and hold it so we can walk inside. Mom is carrying the fern. I guess she figures it needs a rest too.
The air is full of sugar and yellow light and stillness. “Hey there,” Joseph says. He’s the owner and has a bald head and glasses and a friendly smile, and an apron full of flour and one stripe of pink jelly across the front. I grin at him because he’s the one who gives Benny H. coffee and a doughnut for free every morning, and I can’t think of anyone I love more (besides Mom and Murphy) at this second. “Sorry about the door,” Joseph says. “I should just prop it open, but I like the drama of that breeze.” Mom smiles like she knows exactly what he means. “Pretty fern,” Joseph adds.
“Thanks,” Mom says.
I order a chocolate doughnut and Mom gets glazed, and we sit with the fern on the little table between us, in no hurry, in the gold-leaf light, while Joseph chats with the customers, some coming from church and some not, and the door bangs and bangs in between two worlds, and it reminds me of the Dakota being created at the meeting of two rivers, like Mom and me being created at the meeting of street wind and bakery light. It’s the kind of moment that Dad would have protected in a poem, and the kind that superstrings will repeat and repeat and repeat, without us even asking, after we leave.
One of the best things to come out of my first book, Once You Know This, was being invited into middle schools to talk to kids about writing. To hear all of your beautiful, inventive ideas and insights, and to watch you create your own writing, especially when you didn’t think you could.
I love that writing is accessible to all of us, no matter who we are or where we live. Because ideas are everywhere, all around us, all of the time. So if you want to be a writer, or any kind of creator, my best advice is to BE AWAKE and to BE CURIOUS. Pay attention to everything around you, no matter how small it may seem. Poems and stories often begin with a single thought, or image, or phrase, or connection, and bloom from there. As Mark Twain wrote, a writer “can only find out what [the story] is by listening as it goes along telling itself.”
That’s how this book began. I knew only that the main character would be a boy struggling with something that set him apart, and I was curious to see where it would lead. As I began to write, other characters stepped forward, the s
etting and time appeared, and the details sharpened. I did research Minnesota history and read books about war to give the scenes depth and color. But when I wrote, I simply imagined myself as Justin and walked through his world, which materialized as we went, almost as if he were creating it himself. Writing feels like magic in this way, because the story comes both from some other plane and from my own history.
Now that it’s out in the world, Like Nothing Amazing Ever Happened has a life of its own. It doesn’t belong to me anymore, which may be the most magical thing of all: stories can mean different things to different people at different times, and those things can all be true. This story now belongs to you, and you get to decide what to take from it, and what it means.
In addition to writing, I love dance. And one of my favorite quotes comes from Martha Graham, a dancer and choreographer who reshaped dance in the twentieth century. She said:
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
I am convinced that all of us have a creative spark, whether it’s expressed through dance or writing or inventing or painting or building or singing or some other way. I hope that you will have faith in yours, will rest assured of its uniqueness and importance, will cultivate it and trust it. I hope you’ll keep the channel open. And I can’t wait to see what you’ll do in the world.
As always, so many family and friends (and strangers) to thank. I am the sum of everything you’ve taught me.
Most of all, to Andre, Stan, Andrew, Leo, and Ila. You are the center of my world, and being with you is better than everything. Every day, I’m amazed at my luck, to hear the front door close behind me and your voices from every direction.
Thank you to Mom for tracking down all the history books and making friends with all the librarians in the process. (For teaching me how to move sweetly and strongly in this world.) To Dad for taking me ice fishing as a very little girl. (For teaching me to use the depth finder, on the lake and in life.)
Thank you to Corby Baumann for being my touchstone and source of hockey terminology. (Watching you play hockey is my proudest junior high memory.) To Ashley Cauley, honestly, just for being you: my coffee bean and sea ghost. And to Regina Benjamin for insisting (vehemently, repeatedly) that I trust my voice. And to Joy Lamar and Jenny Langhinrichsen-Rohling for being steadfast sources of encouragement and light.
Thank you to Wendy Loggia and Audrey Ingerson for growing this book in all good ways. I’m still stunned that I have this opportunity at all. And to Dan Burgess and April Ward for the beautiful art and design.
Thank you to Tim Mulcrone for your research and remembrance of 1991 police protocol. To Lisa Stevens with the Excelsior–Lake Minnetonka Historical Society for the excellent sources. To Dr. Katherine Hayes at the University of Minnesota for pointing me toward Dakota history. To Gwen Westerman and Bruce White for their invaluable book, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota. And to Tim O’Brien for The Things They Carried, David Finkel for Thank You for Your Service, and Sebastian Junger for War.
Emily Blejwas grew up in Excelsior, Minnesota, where she learned to ice fish and love the North Stars. She now lives in Mobile, Alabama, with her husband and four children. She directs the Gulf States Health Policy Center in Bayou La Batre. Her first novel, Once You Know This, was a Junior Library Guild selection that School Library Journal called “a poignant and emotionally driven debut.”
EMILYBLEJWAS.COM
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Like Nothing Amazing Ever Happened Page 13