She leads Joan down a blinding, vacant corridor. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she says, abandoning Joan at the doorway like the ferryman of Hades.
A powerful scent of roses fills the girl’s room, although there are no flowers in sight—just a handful of browning white clovers on the table beside the bed. The girl is lying on her back, her head facing the window, away from Joan. White cotton hospital blanket tugged up to her chin. Joan observes the girl’s lunar hair. Dark and greasy roots contort the dimensions of her head, making it appear, for a moment, like the only thing in the room.
Across from the bed, a muted television broadcasts a mess of gray: pebbles, feathers, sticks, and bones. The footage is grainy, as though captured by a security camera. It takes Joan a while to understand what she is seeing. It’s a bird’s nest, industrial and sturdy, built into a structure of wooden rafters. Squinting, she finally notices three gangly chicks in the chaos, feet the color of raw corn, talons black, eyes both frightened and murdery, faces framed in beige, beaks hooked, mouths bent into curmudgeon-frowns, dark adult feathers bursting at random from bodies of cloudy white fuzz. They look very wrong, and Joan is certain that birds were not meant to be seen this way. Text on the top right of the screen reads: Vacca Vale Falcon Cam. The lower left shows the time and date. Huddled together, these endangered young villains are hulking, awkward, and watchful. The chicks will be killers one day soon, Joan knows, but it won’t be their fault. For now, they’re helpless, at the mercy of the creature who brought them into this place, condemned to wait for someone more powerful to feed them.
Slowly, Blandine’s head rolls toward the door, revealing a face as pale as the walls, washed blue beneath the eyes, green around the mouth, a dash of dried blood across an eyebrow.
“Susan,” she says. It sounds like she hasn’t spoken in days.
“No, Joan. It’s Joan.” Joan grips her umbrella, afraid of the half-dead girl before her, afraid that death is contagious. “From the laundromat. I mean, from the Rabbit Hutch. I live below your apartment. I’m the lady with . . . without a bird feeder?”
The girl blinks like a cat in the sun. “Joan,” she says.
They observe each other in silence.
“What’s this?” Joan asks, gesturing toward the television.
It takes Blandine a long time to respond, and when she does, the words seem laborious for her. She lugs them into the room as though they’re pieces of furniture. “Falcon cam. Live from Jadwiga’s. Nurse put it on.”
“Oh. That’s . . . they look so . . . um. Cute.”
At this, the girl frowns, evidently disappointed in Joan.
“How’s the goat?” asks Blandine.
“Yes,” Joan says, elated to offer something good. “The goat! He’s doing very well! He’s—”
“She.”
“She! Sorry. She. They took her to the vet. They gave her a brace, some medicine, a new home, and she’s going to be just fine. Would you believe it? Her injury wasn’t so bad, it turns out—it had something to do with how young she was, how her bones haven’t fully hardened yet? They called it—um . . . what did they call it . . . oh yes, a ‘green stick break,’ if I recall correctly. Full recovery expected within three weeks. She’s actually been adopted by this animal sanctuary in Michigan? Yeah. Everybody’s talking about it. There are all these internet things about her. Memes, right? Yes—memes. She’s become a bit of a sensation. Yeah, so. Neat.”
When she read the coverage of the stabbing, Joan found it terrible how energetically the journalists belabored these points. As though the goat’s happy ending formed an appropriate resolution to the events at hand.
On Blandine’s face, a smile flickers, growing brighter. Joan sees tears sparkling in the girl’s bloodshot eyes, but she tells herself it’s a trick of the light.
It occurs to Joan that she should have brought flowers. Or a fruit basket. A book of sudoku? What does a visitor bring to comfort a recently stabbed teenager she hardly knows? Joan notices a clunky library book beside the hospital bed. She-Mystics: An Anthology. She recognizes it as the book from the laundromat. Right now, the girl doesn’t look strong enough to pick it up. If Joan finds the right moment, she will offer to read to Blandine. She will offer to visit every day. She will be neighborly.
Stasis looks unnatural on the girl, who is visibly drained of the frenetic energy that Joan observed the first time they met. Joan is reminded of a photograph she once saw: a horse sitting on a carpet in a darkened room, watching television. When Joan looks at the girl in the hospital bed, she can finally picture the grievers. What comments would fill the obituary guest book, Joan wonders, if Blandine had died?
For a long time, the two women study each other.
Joan wants to say: I don’t have an emergency contact, either. She wants to say: I’m glad they didn’t kill you. She wants to say: I am sorry for every instance I took when I could have given.
“You’re awake,” Joan says instead, incongruously.
A peculiar flash of light shivers across the room.
“I am,” Blandine replies. “Are you?”
Acknowledgments
From this novel’s inception to its distribution, countless people worked to improve The Rabbit Hutch and unite it with readers. The immensity of such a gift exceeds language; the gratitude I have tried to articulate below is but a fraction of the whole.
My brilliant literary agent, Duvall Osteen, was my guide and ally from the beginning. She shepherded this book out of my laptop and into the world with expertise, generosity, and verve. I am grateful to the entire team at Aragi Inc. for welcoming and supporting me.
My editor, John Freeman, possesses that rare trinity of genius, work ethic, and integrity. He helped The Rabbit Hutch become itself by challenging it with a depth of humility that continues to move me. I thank both John and Duvall for understanding—never taming—this novel’s wildness, and for infusing my first publication process with so much joy.
Knopf is the greatest literary home imaginable, and I am thankful to the whole team for the time and energy they devoted to this book.
Thank you to my literary agents abroad: Jemma McDonagh, Camilla Ferrier, and Caspian Dennis. I am immensely grateful to the publishing teams at ?ditions Gallmeister, Guanda, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, and Oneworld Publications.
My writing professors from Notre Dame uprooted my literary preconceptions and planted far better ideas in their place. I thank Joyelle McSweeney, Orlando Menes, Steve Tomasula, and Anne García-Romero. I cherished their generosity as an undergraduate and continue to cherish it now.
I am grateful to my NYU professors who challenged, supported, and even sometimes employed me. Deborah Landau fosters the literary community that has permanently enriched my life. Rick Moody served as my thesis adviser during The Rabbit Hutch’s most formative stages; his feedback, reading lists, and broad-spectrum wisdom were foundational to the development of this novel. I could not have pursued my MFA without those who fund the Lillian Vernon Fellowship. The instruction of Rivka Galchen, Nathan Englander, David Lipsky, and Yusef Komunyakaa continues to guide me. Jonathan Safran Foer’s manifold support has been invaluable over the years, and I am especially thankful for his early advocacy of The Rabbit Hutch.
My MFA cohort immeasurably strengthened this novel and its author. Special thanks to Crystal Powell, Francine Shahbaz, Lindsey Skillen, Jacquelyn Stolos, Jordan Tucker, and Lynn Pane.
My gratitude to my beloved New York seraphim, whose brilliance, friendship, and group chat continue to nourish me: Steph Arditte, Tess Crain, Laura Cresté, Alyx Cullen, Emma Hine, Sophie Netanel, and Torrey Smith. Supreme thanks to Kate Doyle, the workshop’s founder, who creates a meaningful literary community wherever she goes. I would never have submitted this novel to agents without Kate’s encouragement.
For their friendship, I thank Sarah Young, Christian Coppa, Alex Coccia, Brittanie Black, Grace and Jonathan Franklin, Stephanie and Jason Pham, and all the Andrews.