by Dana Spiotta
“I know. I know,” Sam said. She rubbed her daughter’s back, and Ally let her. Ally leaned back on the bed.
“What a comfy little bed,” she said. “I like it.”
“Why don’t you rest,” Sam said. Ally stretched out. Sam tucked the blanket around her. She closed her eyes. Sam continued to gently rub her back through the blanket. To Sam’s surprise, Ally’s breathing slowed and she fell asleep.
Sam sat on the edge of her single bed and watched her daughter sleep. This moment, she thought. This moment. If only her mother, Lily, were here with her too. But Lily was here with her.
Sam knew that after her mother died, the last worries and pains would fall away. Sam would see her mother as not merely her mother, but as a full, perfect human. Sam would apprehend the whole of her mother’s life, her girlhood through her old age, the whole of her body, her mind, her heart. Her existence on earth would be clear and perfect. Sam was from her, a part of her, and Sam would feel, in a profound way, that she remained a version of her, a derivative. This soothed Sam, to feel her mother’s traces in every molecule, her light in every aspect. Her mother would die, but Sam would still be here. She didn’t quite believe it yet, but she knew it just the same.
When Ally stirred from her nap, Sam made her coffee. Then Ally drove back to Matt’s. Tomorrow Matt would pick up Lily and bring her here, and that night they would all have dinner together: Ally, Matt, Lily, and Sam.
Sam’s head ached, and she was very tired. She turned off the lights in the living room and looked out through the leaded windows at the city. It was cold and wet and beautiful. She made a fire, and then sat watching the firelight making the glaze on the tiles glow. She touched the bandages on the back of her head and winced. She lay down to rest.
* * *
—
Sam slept for nine hours without waking. In the morning, as her consciousness streamed in with the sun, a vision came to her, unbidden but not unwelcome: of the ends of things, the time between now and then, the world without her.
Acknowledgments
While writing this book, I relied on a number of people to guide my research. Thank you to Christine Healy for her time, intelligence, and hilarious insights; and to Peter McCarthy for his knowledge and thoughtful conversations, as well as for being an early reader. Thanks also to Lynne Della Pella Pascale, Samuel Gruber (and his beautiful My Central New York blog), Clifford Ryan, Carol Faulkner, Scott Manning Stevens, Beth Crawford, Tro Kalayjian, Mike Goode, David Haas (and his @syracusehistory Instagram), and Eric Bianchi. And gratitude to Joan Farrenkopf for space in her Hawley-Green house for my writing retreat weekends.
Thank you to the writers who read early versions of this book: Chanelle Benz, Anna Moschovakis, Jonathan Lethem, Elizabeth Horvath, Don DeLillo, Sarah Harwell, and Jonathan Dee.
Much gratitude to Melanie Jackson (as always but in particular with this book) for her insightful advice, her friendship, and her faith in my work. Thank you to Jordan Pavlin: her wisdom, encouragement, and fine attention made this novel much stronger.
My husband, Jon, and my daughter, Agnes: thanks for putting up with my eccentric (and endless) writing demands and for letting me steal words right out of your mouths.
Many answers, questions, and ideas came from the Onondaga Historical Association, The Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York, the Onondaga Nation website, and the Erie Canal Museum. The Oneida Community Mansion House was an inspiration, both staying in the building and the lectures (Anthony Wonderley’s especially). The Stammering Century by Gilbert Seldes and Desire and Duty at Oneida by Tirzah Miller and Robert Fogarty (among other books) helped me imagine life in the Oneida Community.
The dictionary definitions of “period” and “menopause” quoted by MH and Sam come from Google Dictionary. The song lyrics “Once upon a Dream” are by Jack Lawrence and Sammy Fain. The many etymologies that Ally looks up come from Etymonline (app) and Webster’s Third. The line Sam quotes about wastewater in Onondaga Lake comes, as she admits, from Wikipedia, as does the perhaps apocryphal story that Wallace Rayfield was one of the architects on the People’s AME Zion Church. The quote from Alice Bunker Stockham is from Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. The bible quotes in Clara’s letters and journal are from the King James Bible. All the T-shirts described at the 2017 Great New York State Fair are actual T-shirts I saw for sale at the Great New York State Fair. I owe a debt to the city of Syracuse, a place I find endlessly fascinating. Inspiration for this novel came from the many beautiful old structures in Syracuse, especially the houses Ward Wellington Ward designed (including the Garrett house).
Thank you to the American Academy of Arts and Letters for support at a crucial period. Thank you to the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences for giving me the time and resources to write. And thank you to the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program’s faculty and students.
A Note About the Author
Dana Spiotta is the author of four previous novels: Innocents and Others, which won the St. Francis College Literary Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Stone Arabia, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Eat the Document, which was a National Book Award finalist and was awarded the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Literature; and Lightning Field, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Spiotta was a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Spiotta teaches in the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program. She lives in Syracuse with her family.
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