I finally just had to laugh about it. Working that hard freed me. Knowing that information, even if I didn’t include it, gave me the confidence to keep imagining. It’s really scary to write about the other—and a novelist has no choice but to do so. The essence of fiction, to my way of thinking, is the empathetic journey that writer and reader take. But making that imaginative leap into an other requires an assertion of the self that I, and perhaps many women, have learned to quell. The decision to write about people whose lives are different than mine was daunting. I could only begin by accepting that I might fail.
What would you like your readers to take away from ’Round Midnight?
I hope it’s a pleasure to read. I hope they care about the characters, and immerse themselves in an imagined world. That’s what I was doing. I was caught by the idea of these four women: one rich, one poor, two American-born, two immigrants, four mothers. (Actually, I wanted Coral not to have children; I didn’t want four mothers, but the life that she happened to live without children took me down a different path and away from this story, so I rewrote it.)
I wanted to write about women, about the intensity and intimacy of their lives; I wanted to capture some of those voices I hear when I walk in the park, or talk with people in my college, or work on a community project. I’m interested in experiences that are different from mine, in people who see the world differently than I do and who believe things that counter my own beliefs. In the world of possible questions, I like why.
Is there anything that you have found particularly gratifying about publishing ’Round Midnight? If so, what?
It was inexpressibly thrilling to have my editor’s first response be, “Thank you very much for writing a new novel, and thank you extremely much for writing this one.” On my end, I could hardly breathe for wondering what she would think, and on her end, she was thanking me for this particular story.
I didn’t know that I would be even more thrilled the second time, or that I would have an even clearer sense of how lucky I am to have this creative opportunity. All through writing this book, I told myself that lightning doesn’t strike twice, that the act of writing was the point, and that I must not count on anyone wanting to read it. I think that was a legitimate way to think about what I was doing, and yet, lightning did strike twice.
Are you working on anything now? Can you tell us about it?
I hope so! I’m answering this question eight months before ’Round Midnight comes out, and at this point, I’m not much past daydreaming. I spent the summer plotting out a new book, but I think I’ve dropped that idea. For me, preparing to write happens on two levels. I have to choose the story, and I have to make a plan for when I will write the book. It’s hard to predict how long the first takes—I’m letting my mind spin, and trusting that the characters and the situation will emerge—but I have a plan for the second. I’ll be ready to go when the story hits!
Turn the page for an excerpt from
We Are Called to Rise
1
* * *
Avis
THERE WAS A YEAR of no desire. I don’t know why. Margo said I was depressed; Jill thought it was “the change.” That phrase made me laugh. I didn’t think I was depressed. I still grinned when I saw the roadrunner waiting to join me on my morning walk. I still stopped to look at the sky when fat clouds piled up against the blue, or in the evenings when it streaked orange and purple in the west. Those moments did not feel like depression.
But I didn’t desire my husband, and there was no certain reason for it, and as the months went by, the distance between us grew. I tried to talk myself out of this, but my body would not comply. Finally, I decided to rely on what in my case would be mother wisdom, or as Sharlene would say, “to fake it till you make it.”
That night, I eased myself out of bed carefully, not wanting to fully wake Jim. I had grown up in Las Vegas, grown up seeing women prance around in sparkling underwear, learned how to do the same prancing in the same underwear when I was barely fifteen, but years of living in another Las Vegas, decades of being a suburban wife, a mother, a woman of a certain social standing, had left me uneasy with sequined bras and crotchless panties. My naughty-underwear drawer was still there—the long narrow one on the left side of my dresser—but I couldn’t even remember the last time I had opened it. My heart skipped a little when I imagined slipping on a black lace corset and kneeling over Jim in bed. Well, I had made a decision, and I was going to do it. I would not give up on twenty-nine years of marriage without at least trying this.
So I padded quietly over to the dresser, and eased open the narrow drawer. I was expecting the bits of lace and satin, even sequins, but nestled among them, obscenely, was a gun. It made me gasp. How had a gun gotten in this drawer?
I recognized it, though. Jim had given it to me when Emily was a baby. He had insisted that I keep a gun. Because he traveled. Because someone might break in. I had tried to explain that I would never use it. I wouldn’t aim a gun at someone any more than I would drown a kitten. There were decisions I had made about my life a long time ago; firing a gun was on that list. But there were things Jim could not hear me say, and in the end, it was easier just to accept the gun, just to let him hide it in one of those silly fake books on the third shelf of the closet, where, if I had thought about it—and I never did—I would have assumed it still was.
How long had the gun been in this drawer? Had Jim put it there? Was he sending a message? Had Jim wanted to make the point that I hadn’t looked in this drawer for years? Hadn’t worn red-sequined panties in years? Had Jim been thinking the same way I had, that maybe what we needed was a little romance, a little fun, a little hot sex in the middle of the kitchen, in order to start over?
I could hear Jim stirring behind me. He would be looking at me, naked in front of our sex drawer. Things weren’t going exactly the way I had intended, but I shook my bottom a little, just to give him a hint at what I was doing.
He coughed.
I stopped then, not sure what that cough meant. I didn’t even want to touch the gun, but I carefully eased the closest bit of satin out from under the barrel, still thinking that I would find a way to slip it on and maybe dance my way back to the bed.
“I’m in love with Darcy. We’ve been seeing each other for a while.”