by Sonja Yoerg
He asked her to choose the spot, so she suggested Steamboat Springs, where Janine had been since Christmas, managing condominiums. The move had seemed sudden to Carole, but Janine claimed she’d finally recovered from Mitch’s death and was itching for a fresh start. Walt said Colorado was too far for a five-day trip, so Carole proposed Cape Cod. He’d asked her why.
“Because it’s the one place where I remember being happy with my parents. I’d like to see it again.”
Clouds spit rain as they paralleled the Connecticut River Valley south. Walt was content to allow Warren to lead. “Better than having him on my tail.” They crossed into Massachusetts, where mid-June seemed more like spring. Forsythia bloomed and the trees hadn’t quite gotten used to their leaves. The mountains became hills then disappeared altogether. The land reached for the sea.
They curved past Boston and headed east. High winds scattered the clouds and yellow beams of sunlight shone on dark lakes, illuminating the marsh grass along their borders. Alison abandoned her book and stared out the window as Carole did, eager for a glimpse of the ocean. It would be Alison’s first, and the twins’. Walt had seen too much ocean in the navy, but that was hardly the same.
Carole rolled down the window as they crossed the bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. “Alison, if you lick your lips, you can taste the salt.”
“Oh my gosh, I can!”
They were staying in a motel in Wellfleet for five days, but had agreed to search for the cottage in Chatham on the way. Walt had asked if she remembered how to get there. “I doubt it. But the town’s small, or it used to be, so maybe we’ll stumble onto it.”
A while later, Walt left the main road and pulled up to a diner in Sandwich.
“I could’ve packed a lunch,” Carole said.
“Not on your life. Vacation’s for everyone.”
They squeezed into a booth. Carole ordered a tuna sandwich. Lester let loose a laugh and the waitress rolled her eyes.
“A Reuben, please,” said Walt.
“Sandwich, Dad,” Lester said, barely able to control himself. “You forgot to say ‘sandwich.’”
Warren passed his menu to the waitress. “I’ll have the same.” He glanced at Lester. “The same sandwich.”
Lester howled.
Alison bent over the menu, twirling a strand of hair. “I’ll have the chili, please.” She folded the menu, pressing her lips together to stop from laughing. “The chili sandwich.”
Walt caught Carole’s eye. Everything is right here, his eyes said. She smiled.
He was right.
They lingered over ice cream and set off once more along Route 6 and then south for Chatham. At the second crossroads, Carole instructed Walt to turn left. They passed several clapboard houses, one nearly engulfed by climbing roses, and rounded a corner. A half mile away was the sea, laced with rows of white wave crests, stretched taut to the horizon.
“Nantucket Sound,” Carole said. “Just a little farther. I never dreamed I’d remember.”
The road dipped. On the next rise, she asked Walt to pull over. Warren and Lester drove up behind them and everyone got out. The cottage sat as she remembered it, nestled in the dunes, enclosed by a picket fence in need of paint. The flowerbeds were overgrown but as colorful as Carole’s memory of them.
Walt pointed at the windmill, listing inland. “Hard push would finish that off.”
“Doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” Warren said.
Alison said, “It’s so pretty. I can’t believe you lived here a whole summer!”
“It was lovely.”
“Was Aunt Janine here, too?”
“No, before Janine. Just my mother and me. And my father.”
Alison ran ahead on a path through the dune grass toward the shore. The boys followed, loping. Walt walked with Carole to where the grasses ended and the water spread out before them, deep and wide and sapphire blue. Her mother used to stare at the ocean, and now she understood why. Some things were easier to reflect on when there was nothing in your way.
Carole turned to look at the house. A memory came to her of sitting inside on the window seat, the sun warming her shoulders and spilling onto the whitewashed floors. Her parents were in the kitchen preparing a meal, conversing softly, passing by the doorway from time to time, where sunlight reached them, too, from another south-facing window.
That was all Carole needed to remember. She had harbored her mother and her father in her own dark space, cultivating their worst selves like mushrooms. The truth of her parents was larger than what she could hold inside. It didn’t matter that she would never know how much fault to apportion to each, to the times they lived in, to their own parents and to fate. Here, at the edge of the ocean, light had fallen across the three of them for a time, a good strong light. They had shared love.
But Carole had come to recognize that an abiding love, one that would not give way to a hard push, depended on more than where light happened to fall. The truest, best love had nothing to do with luck. Luck was faithless, and worth little. True love wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t magical, but simply true in every sense: honest, loyal and sure.
Walt took her hand and led her toward the water. The boys had rolled up their pant legs and waded in the foaming surf. Alison raced across the smooth sand, arms outstretched, scattering sanderlings and sandpipers into the air. She was still a girl, Carole was relieved to see. The careless arrows of misfortune were tangents glancing off the pure circle of her dreams.
If the beach were long enough, her daughter would teach her feet to fly.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Ploof v. Putnam was a real case. The inciting events and the trial occurred much as I’ve described, but nearly three decades earlier. The social and political tension between the French Catholic lake-dwelling families and the Protestant elite persisted through the first half of the twentieth century. Some would argue it persists today, albeit in altered form.
Henry Perkins, the driving force behind the eugenics movement in Vermont, was a real man. I used the true names of some of the public figures; others I fabricated. I relied heavily on Nancy L. Gallagher’s excellent study of this bleak chapter in Vermont history: Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State (University Press of New England, 1999).
I portrayed the historical treatment of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped as accurately as I could. Mental hospitals in Vermont did have visiting days for the public to view patients, and treatments such as insulin coma therapy, colonics and submersion in ice-water baths were given to patients almost without regard to symptoms or diagnosis. Through the mid-twentieth century, people, particularly women, could be institutionalized on demand, or with the aid of a doctor.
Finally, the typical onset for schizophrenia is during young adulthood. However, the disease also has a distinct adult-onset type, often marked by auditory hallucinations, thought confusion and paranoia, and is more responsive to antipsychotic medication than other types. Antianxiety drugs such as Valium are not used to treat schizophrenia; Carole’s improvement after her initial visit to the doctor was due to the episodic nature of the disease. Schizophrenia can be intractable, and even patients who respond to treatment suffer from serious side effects, some permanent. That is still true today.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. The story is filled with water symbolism. Indeed, each of the main characters is associated with a body of water: Solange and the lake, Alison and the river, Carole and the ocean. What meaning do these places have for each of them throughout the story?
2. Carole is able to hide her schizophrenic symptoms for some time by withdrawing from her family and making excuses for her behavior. But the members of her family, with the possible exception of Alison, are not very perceptive. Everything is “right as rain,” as Walt says. Do you think this is common? Are we at least able, or willing,
to see problems in those we are closest to?
3. Carole’s relationship with her mother changes several times throughout the course of the story. Significantly, on her eighteenth birthday, she learns about her mother’s affair and her sister’s parentage, and begins to despise her mother, rather than pity her. After Carole meets Walt, she softens toward Solange, then comes to resent her when she believes she has inherited her illness. By the end of the story, do you believe Carole accepts her mother? Does she forgive her? Should she? Are there relationships you have had that have taken a similarly torturous path?
4. Class conflict is central to Solange’s story, but it is also present in Alison’s life, especially in her relationship with Delaney. How does it affect Alison? How did Carole sidestep this conflict in her life?
5. Given the disparity between the backgrounds of Solange and Osborn, was their marriage destined to fail? Who do you think was more at fault and why?
6. How does Solange come to have an affair? Was it a decision, an act of desperation or the inevitable unwinding of her fate as shown to her by the fortune-teller? How do you think she saw it? How did you?
7. When Solange becomes pregnant with Janine, she faces some hard choices. She eventually runs away to the dock with Carole’s help, but is intercepted by Osborn and the police. Given her position, what were her alternatives? Should she have given up the baby?
8. What is the significance of the title? Carole’s tormented childhood leaves her with a deep-seated self-hatred that emerges during her illness: her bad blood from her parents. How does this relate to “all the best people”? For Carole, what are “the best people” like? Are those your criteria, too?
9. Warren and Lester are fraternal twins, as are Walt’s brother—Janine’s late husband, Mitch. By contrast, Carole and Janine are separated by ten years and have different fathers. Thinking about the sibling pairs, how do the relationships add to the theme of inheritance and upbringing, i.e., nature vs. nurture? How do the characters respond differently to misfortune?
10. Janine is callous and self-absorbed, to say the least. Most of her vitriol, however, is internal and her behavior is mostly acceptable—even charming. Is her anger and vengefulness a legacy from Solange and/or her “pirate” father, or the result of being spurned by Osborn’s family? More simply, is she a sociopath, incapable of change, or could she become a good person?
11. Alison and her grandmother, Solange, both have red hair. They also share a belief in magic, as exemplified by the blue box. How is that significant in the story? Near the end, Alison thinks, “Magic spells were concentrated wishes—she understood that much—but maybe the wishing part was more important than the magic. Maybe you had to wish that hard to find out what you really wanted.” Does this mean her belief in magic had changed?
12. Alison and Solange both receive tarot readings. Their cards are the same (the High Priestess, the Wheel of Fortune and the Fool), but the orderings were different. What meaning did Alison and Solange attach to the readings? Did that alter the course of their actions? If you have had a tarot reading, did it have any effect on you?
13. Alison is on the cusp of adolescence. What aspects of her feelings—about her mother, her friends and her teacher—are “normal” for her stage of development? If Carole had not become ill, what do you suppose Alison’s relationship with her mother and the others would have been like?
KEEP READING FOR AN EXCERPT OF SONJA YOERG’S NOVEL . . .
The Middle of Somewhere
Available from New American Library!
1
Liz hopped from foot to foot and hugged herself against the cold. She glanced at the porch of the Yosemite Valley Wilderness Office, where Dante stood with his back to her, chatting with some other hikers. His shoulders shrugged and dropped, and his hands danced this way and that. He was telling a story—a funny one, judging by the faces of his audience—but not a backpacking story because he didn’t have any. His idea of a wilderness adventure was staring out the window during spin class at the gym. Not that it mattered. He could have been describing the self-contradictory worldview of the guy who changes his oil, or the merits of homemade tamales, or even acting out the latest viral cat video. Liz had known him for over two years and still couldn’t decipher how he captured strangers’ attention without apparent effort. Dante was black velvet and other people were lint.
Their backpacks sat nearby on a wooden bench like stiff-backed strangers waiting for a bus. The impulse to grab hers and take off without him shot through her. She quelled it with the reminder that his pack contained essential gear for completing the three-week hike. The John Muir Trail. Her hike. At least that had been the plan.
She propped her left hiking boot on the bench, retied it, folded down the top of her sock and paced a few steps along the sidewalk to see if she’d gotten them even. It wasn’t yet nine a.m., and Yosemite Village already had a tentative, waking buzz. Two teenage girls in pajama pants and oversize sweatshirts walked past, dragging their Uggs on the concrete. Bleary-eyed dads pushed strollers, and Patagonia types with day packs marched purposefully among the buildings: restaurants, a grocery store, a medical clinic, a visitor’s center, gift shops, a fire station, even a four-star hotel. What a shame the trail had to begin in the middle of this circus. Liz couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.
She fished Dante’s iPhone out of the zippered compartment on top of his pack and called Valerie. They’d been best friends for eleven years, since freshman year in college, when life had come with happiness the way a phone plan came with minutes.
Valerie answered. “Dante?”
“No. It’s me.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“Asleep in the car. No service most of the way. Even here I’ve only got one bar.”
“Dante’s going to go nuts if he can’t use his phone.”
“You think? How’s Muesli?” Valerie was cat-sitting for her.
“Does he ever look at you like he thinks you’re an idiot?”
“All the time.”
“Then he’s fine.”
“How’s the slipper commute?” Valerie worked as a Web designer, mostly from home, and had twenty sets of pajamas hanging in her closet as if they were business suits.
“Just firing up the machine. You get your permits?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Try to sound more psyched.”
How could she be psyched when this wasn’t the trip she’d planned? She was supposed to hike the John Muir Trail—the JMT—alone. With a few thousand square miles of open territory surrounding her, she hoped to find a way to a truer life. She sure didn’t know the way now. Each turn she’d taken, each decision she’d made—including moving in with Dante six months ago—had seemed right at the time, yet none were right, based as they were on a series of unchallenged assumptions and quiet lies, one weak moral link attached to the next, with the truth at the tail end, whipping away from her again and again.
Maybe, she’d whispered to herself, she could have a relationship with Dante and share a home if she pretended there was no reason she couldn’t. She loved him enough to almost believe it could work. But she’d hardly finished unpacking before her doubts had mushroomed. She became desperate for time away—from the constant stream of friends in Dante’s wake, from the sense of sliding down inside a funnel that led to marriage, from becoming an indeterminate portion of something called “us”—and could not tell Dante why. Not then or since. That was the crux of it. Instead, she told Dante that years ago she’d abandoned a plan to hike the JMT and now wanted to strike it off her list before she turned thirty in November. She had no list, but he accepted her explanation, and her true motivation wriggled free.
The Park Service issued only a few permits for each trailhead. She’d faxed in her application as soon as she decided to go. When she received e-mail confirmation, a crosscurrent of relief and dread fl
ooded her. In two months’ time, she would have her solitude, her bitter medicine.
Then two weeks before her start date, Dante announced he was joining her.
“You’ve never been backpacking, and now you want to go two hundred and twenty miles?”
“I would miss you.” He opened his hands as if that were the simple truth.
There had to be more to it than that. Why else would he suggest embarking on a journey they both knew would make him miserable? She tried to talk him out of it. He didn’t like nature, the cold or energy bars. It made no sense. But he was adamant, and brushed her concerns aside. She’d had no choice but to capitulate.
Now she told Valerie, “I am psyched. In fact, I want to hit the trail right now, but Dante’s holding court in the Wilderness Office.”
“I can’t believe you’ll be out of touch for three weeks. What am I going to do without you? Who am I going to talk to?”
“Yourself, I guess. Put an earbud in and walk around holding your phone like a Geiger counter. You could be an incognito schizophrenic.”
“I’ll be reduced to that.” She dropped her voice a notch. “Listen. I have to ask you again. You sure you feel up to this?”
Liz reflexively placed her hand on her lower abdomen. “I’m fine. I swear. It’s just a hike.”
“When I have to park a block from Trader Joe’s, that’s a hike. Two hundred miles is something else. And your miscarriage was less than three weeks ago.”
As if Dante could have overheard, she turned and walked a few more steps down the sidewalk. “I feel great.”