MARY AND O'NEIL (30 page)

Monday he drove to work, his mind buzzing with happiness. Everything he saw—the morning sunlight rebounding in the turning leaves, the bright yellow school buses and dutiful crossing guards, a woman putting on lipstick in her rearview mirror at a stop sign—filled him with a strange delight. It flowed through him like a benign electric current. So much joy! So much to look forward to! The awful months were over; he had stepped back into life. In the faculty workroom the morning talk among his colleagues was still of summer pleasures, of gardens planted and trips taken, of books read and movies seen, of mountains scaled and rivers kayaked and long, unhurried days doing nothing at all. They were teachers, with more time than money; their enjoyments, modest to a fault, seemed to O’Neil to possess the same unassuming purity of green grass, summer light, and flowers in a pail, and he listened to their stories with a feeling like kinship. This life they described was, after all, the same one he had chosen.

“O’Neil, what’s gotten into you?” someone asked—the science teacher who, so long ago, had explained the leaves to him. “Nine months to go,” Paul said. “What’s there to be so happy about? You’re grinning like an ape.”

“Was I?” O’Neil laughed and sipped his coffee; he didn’t know.

“Forty years old,” another said, shaking his head. He was a young man, just a few years out of college, who had joined the faculty a year ago. He had spent his summer teaching sailing on the coast of Maine, and was as brown as a shot of scotch.

“It’s not so bad,” O’Neil reassured him.

The young man helped himself to a cookie off the tray. “I don’t know about you, but I’d want to go hang myself.” He lifted his face and smiled so everyone could see he was joking. An embarrassed titter ran through the room.

“Trust me,” O’Neil said. “You won’t feel like that at all.”

The bell rang; off they went to class, sliding into the river of students that flowed through the hallways. Clanging lockers, books, and backpacks strewn everywhere—huge piles of them, heaped under stairways and in every open corner—the urgent din of voices, the girls erupting in shrieks, the boys croaking and wailing: it was like stepping into chaos itself.
Let’s hurry it up now,
O’Neil heard himself saying. They darted from his path like minnows in the shallows.
Let’s move it along, people
. How like a teacher, he thought.

His ninth graders were studying the
Odyssey
. It was, by the standards of the school, a rite of passage; his department chair liked to say that students at the academy had been reading it since the Trojan War itself. Even in the lower grades the students spoke of this task like a terrible fate that awaited them all. The
Odyssey
! they cried. All of it! It’s, like, a thousand pages long! And yet most of them came to like it, even as they refused to admit this. War, magic, adultery, ruination, betrayal; nymphs and cyclopses and men turned into pigs; a long trip and the yearning for home. What was it, in the end, but a metaphor for the trials of growing up? They had read to Book Eleven, “A Gathering of Shades,” in which Odysseus and his men, blown to a dark and nameless shore by Circe, queen of Aeaea, filled a trench with blood to summon forth the spirits of the dead.

“What are we seeing here?” he asked them. “Is Circe doing him a favor, or not?”

Half a dozen hands went up. “It’s like Odysseus is getting another chance,” a girl said. “Tiresias tells him everything that’s going to happen to him, so he can avoid it. It’s like he’s reading Cliff Notes.” She smiled. “Like he’s cheating on a test.”

Others disagreed; one boy, a passionate rationalist, thought it was a dirty trick.

“What good can it do him?” he asked. “How can it help you to see the future, if you can’t change it?”

“Well, that’s just the question,” O’Neil said. “What do you think? Is the future fixed, or isn’t it?”

The boy was immovable. “The future is what it is,” he said.

The discussion was spirited; they moved through the text line by line. As the end of the period neared they came to the part where Odysseus was approached by the ghost of his mother. Though he had taught the book a dozen times, this scene remained, for O’Neil, a moment of the deepest poignancy—the great hero, so full of arrogance, reduced to a childlike yearning for his mother’s touch. He rose, took his copy of the book from his desk, and read these lines to them:

     
I bit my lip

rising perplexed, with longing to embrace her,

and tried three times, putting my arms around her,

but she went sifting through my hands, impalpable

as shadows are, and wavering like a dream.

Wavering like a dream
. O’Neil stopped, the book cradled in his hand; he knew what was about to happen. All along he had hoped it would happen when he was alone, or else with Mary. He entered an interval of time that felt suspended, and in that instant he found he was at once aware of who and where and when he was—the physical parameters of his consciousness—and all the weeks and months that had brought him to this moment: the planes and airports and rental cars, the long white hours of the hospital, the jaws of the open moving van. He knew that soon he would begin to cry, and that the force of it would blind him. He would cry and cry and cry, and struggle for breath like a man who was dying, until another moment came when the tears separated on the surface of his eyes, and he would see again—see the world through tears. He felt all this coming toward him, a rumbling in the hills above, and then it did, more powerfully even than he had imagined it. His hands found the table so he would not fall.

“Mr. Burke, what’s wrong—”

“Shut up, idiot,” someone said. “Didn’t you hear? His sister died.”

His children: why had he thought they would not know? Of course they would know. And then he realized: everyone knew. They had only been waiting for him to tell them. The bell was ringing, but he sensed no stirring, no familiar shuffling of feet or papers or books. No one moved. Others would come—the changing period was moments away—but then he heard the sounds he longed for: the shade being drawn over the small square window, and the quietly locking door.

“Shhhh,” a small voice said, and he felt their hands upon him. “It’s all right.”

His children were around him. They had sealed themselves away. The moment would pass, but until it did, no one was going anywhere.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to express his gratitude to the following:

Susan Kamil and Carla Riccio; Ellen Levine; Stephen Kiernan and Susan Chernesky; Andrea McGeary, M.D.; Students 1–7; The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; the College of Arts and Sciences of La Salle University; The MacDowell Colony; and K.M., for the inspiration of her courage.

About the Author

Born and raised in New England, Justin Cronin is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Awards for his fiction include the Stephen Crane Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He is a professor of English at Rice University and lives with his wife and children in Houston, Texas.

MARY AND O
’
NEIL

JUSTIN CRONIN

“Delicate, dreamy, and yet grounded in a crystalline world of the real,
Mary and O’Neil
offers many pleasures to its readers . . . an array of graceful and reflective stories that illuminate the painful and the ordinary in its characters’ lives with a distinctive sense of such moments’ mystery.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Few debut novels are as rich, subtle and gracefully written as Justin Cronin’s
Mary and O’Neil
. . . a mature, quiet novel, perhaps unexpected in a debut. Its very understatement belies its poignancy and strength.”
—The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland)

“The stories are delicately wrought and perfectly paced, giving the reader enough time to get to know the players and the players the time to reveal, or to become, themselves. . . . This is the kind of storytelling that goes down easy, and sticks to your ribs. More than once I had a lump in my throat.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Gentle humor . . . perfectly balanced prose . . . emotionally nuanced, beautifully written.”
—Newsday

“
Mary and O’Neil
is, pure and simple, one of the most tender, moving, and beautiful books I have read in years. Justin Cronin writes about love—between parents and children, between siblings, and, yes, between lovers—with a wisdom and humor that’s rare.” —Chris Bohjalian, author of
Trans-Sister Radio
and
Midwives

“Justin Cronin’s unusual and admirable book offers—in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout’s
Amy & Isabelle
—a rare combination of brilliant prose, precise feeling, and omniscient wisdom regarding the complicated bonds between generations. A wonderful debut.” —Andrea Barrett, author of
The Voyage of the Narwhal

“[A] powerful novel about romantic love and family love . . . Beautifully written . . . Yes, there’s aching beauty in this novel, but there’s a celebration of love and tenderness and joy also.
Mary and O’Neil
, like your first youthful romance, will live in your memory.”

—The Tampa Tribune

“Justin Cronin looks at family relationships with rare tenderness and wisdom. . . . Even in describing tragedy, Cronin writes with an intense awareness of the world’s pitiless beauty.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Written with an aching beauty—for the passage of time, the yearning for peace, the haunting sorrows and small joys that all of us know in life. There is wisdom in these pages. There is compassion and understanding. But most of all, this book contains genuine love.” —Chris Offutt, author of
Kentucky Straight
and
Out of theWoods

“[A] fine debut . . . the power of Cronin’s stories lies in their emotional truth.”
—New York Post

“One of those rare novels whose characters and events are so vivid they seem to become part of one’s own life. Justin Cronin demonstrates an extraordinary instinct for the essential moment, the resonant line, and the lasting image. This is a wonderful novel, luminous and compassionate, and very hard to put down.”

—Tom Drury, author of
The End of Vandalism

“A tender portrait of regular people . . . Through his characters, [Cronin] shows us the way happiness and sadness circle around each other, flashing through here and there, illuminating the roundness of human life.” —
The Austin Chronicle

“Justin Cronin writes beautiful prose that aches with its sense of passing time. He was born to tell stories, and he narrates his characters with penetrating wit as well as loyalty. His book has left me gasping with admiration, with appreciation, and of course with envy.” —Frederick Busch, author of
The Night Inspector

“With subtlety and grace, [
Mary and O’Neil
] illuminates momentous if commonplace events in the lives of a modern New England family. . . . A quiet debut, its very understatement giving rise to its poignancy and strength.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[An] elegant debut . . . Cronin’s sentences are suffused with the wisdom of moral choices born from random events. As a result, we grow close to his characters, sympathizing with their setbacks, and celebrating their milestones.”
—San Antonio Express-News

“Mary and O’Neil
contains such beautifully written prose that readers will want to pause between chapters, knowing the next could not possibly best what they have just read. Yet Cronin continuously betters himself with each passage . . .
Mary and O’Neil
can be read as a love story, as a life’s lesson or as a mellifluous narrative. However it is seen, the novel is a victory of beauty and insight both in the writing and the reading.”
—Memphis Commercial Appeal

“A writer of astonishing gifts.
Mary and O’Neil
is honest, meticulous, and ultimately heartbreaking.” —Gary Krist, author of
Chaos Theory

“
Mary and O’Neil
seems to emanate light. The writing is gorgeous and the secrets the characters reveal to us, even if they withhold them from each other, are the essential, private mysteries of yearning and love, loss and healing grief. This is a wise and deeply beautiful book.” —Marcie Hershman, author of
Safe in America

MARY AND O’NEIL
A Delta Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dial Press hardcover edition published February 2001
Delta trade paperback edition / February 2002
Delta trade paperback reissue / July 2004

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

Excerpt from “Leaf Season” by John Updike from
Trust Me
.
Copyright © 1988 by John Updike. Published by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc.

The author gratefully acknowledges
Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine
, where “Groom” and “Life By Moonlight” first appeared.

All rights reserved
Copyright © 2001 by Justin Cronin

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-049377
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Visit our website at
www.bantamdell.com

ISBN-13: 9-780-44033-5-061

ISBN-10: 0-440-33506-X

Published simultaneously in Canada

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