Real Life & Liars (26 page)

Ivan plans to drive Jenny back to her car, which they arranged to have towed to a nearby gas station, once they finally got a cell-phone signal. They might have some time to wait for that tow truck, which is busy after the stormy night. They plan to walk on the shores of Lake Charlevoix to kill time, while they wait. Something tells me they will have lots to talk about.

“Don’t disappear to Nashville without sending at least a postcard,” I say, stretching up on tiptoe to hug him around the shoulders. Where did the little boy go who didn’t even reach my
shoulders? The toddler who liked to hang on to my pinky finger as we walked?

“When have you ever known me to make a snap decision?”

“Snap decisions never killed anybody,” I say. He holds me at arm’s length for a moment and smirks. “Well, okay, so some snap decisions are ill-advised. Still, you could do with a little more spontaneity.”

Ivan shifts his guitar on his shoulder and picks up his duffel bag. “I don’t know. Seems pretty foolish to give up a tenured position and go dashing off to wait tables and harass people with my songs in a strange city.”

Jenny appears beside him, having collected her things. “I think it would be worse never to have tried, to be lying there on your deathbed thinking, what if it’d worked?”

Van bites his lip and exhales sharply. I think the word “deathbed” has upset him.

I kiss him on the cheek. “That was a lovely song. You really have a knack.”

I fold Jenny into my arms. She feels like a daughter-in-law already, and I could get used to this. I hope it’s not an either-or choice: staying with Jenny or pursuing his dream. Maybe they need French teachers in Nashville, too.

And then they’re all gone with all their trappings and clothes and noise, except for the crumpled wreck of the Escalade that awaits a tow truck.

Max and I sprawl on the couch. I lean into his side, using him like my own personal lounge chair. As morning warms to afternoon, it’s starting to feel like summer again: the warmth presses in through the windows, especially those at the front of the house, where leafy branches used to filter the harsh light.

A metallic buzz and click announces the return of electricity. The television upstairs starts blathering. I want my silence back, but I’m too lazy to get up.

“I’ll get it,” Max says, “but you have to get off my leg.”

I peel myself up, and my spine feels stiff with just the few minutes I was resting there. I need some yoga, but first I’d like some proper tea.

I nearly drop my teacup on the counter when a horrific whining noise begins just outside my front door. I carry my teacup and saucer out to my front porch, facing the gaping hole in the yard and the muddy circle of upended roots.

Workers are sawing apart the tree limbs that are splayed across the street.

“Hey, babe,” says Patty, approaching from across the street, coming around the tree. “Not going out the window this time, I see.”

“Oh, you saw that, did you?” So that was how my family knew where to go looking. Patty saw me sneak out. Thank God she did, or I might have slipped off the pier in my marijuana haze. I’m too old for that shit anymore.

I park my butt on the porch’s top step. The morning sun, now moved to the side of the house, has already dried off last night’s monsoon rain. Patty comes along and plops down uninvited. But not unwelcome.

“Your house seems okay,” I say, sipping my tea, though it’s really too hot yet.

“Yep, just some shingles flying off. I might even have my stepson fix it rather than calling the insurance company. Seems like a lot of bother when he’s a roofer and all, anyway.”

I wonder if she’s heard about my foolishness on the pier.

“You wanna come to church with me next week?” she says, and I’m startled by the question. She knows I’m only a hair away from atheist, and she has never, in all our lives as neighbors and friends, asked me that.

“You think because I’m sick I need some churching up? Why, am I going to hell?”

“Just thought it might be nice.”

I shake my head and try to hide my disappointment by drinking more tea. I never would have thought Patty would try this, using my illness to evangelize.

She says, “There was this one lady in my church. Lung cancer. One of those people like Superman’s wife, who never smoked ever, but she got cancer anyhow.”

“Superman? Oh, Dana Reeve. Right.”

“She had the whole church praying for her, and she always had people giving her hugs, driving her places, helping her do stuff when she was feeling weak. It was a lovely thing to see.”

“I’m sure. And you’re about to tell me that she was cured, and it’s all due to all that praying and church.”

“No, she died, actually.” Patty turns to me and her face—etched by years of laughter and jokes and winks—is still and serious. “But I never saw anybody more serene. I’m sure she had her fearful moments, but man. She floated through the world, right up to the end.”

I can’t answer her, because to speak would break the dam loose. I set my teacup down because it’s started to rattle against the saucer.

“Well. You think about it.” Patty rubs my arm and squeezes my hand before getting up with an audible groan. I don’t watch her go back into her house. Instead I’m staring at the floorboards between my feet. The paint is peeling. The last time Max painted it, Van was just graduating from high school.

The buzzing pauses, and the silence makes me look up. The workers are pulling away great hunks of tree, leaving trails of wet leaves behind them as they pull the branches down the road to a truck. I wince as they haul the pieces up, and they land with a great rattling boom in the truck bed.

The saws roar to life again, deepening in pitch as they bite into the fallen maple. I can feel the grinding, chewing noise in my
chest it’s so loud, and I put my hand over my heart, then cross both hands across my body, as if to protect it.

A fluttering catches my eye, to my left. I turn to see a butterfly dancing a circle in the air. It cartwheels by, between me and the muddy ball of roots.

That’s when I look down in the hole left by the fallen tree. Tiny green shoots push up from the dirt, already reaching for the light.

1. Does Mira’s reluctance to have surgery for her breast cancer seem understandable?
   
2. What other reasons might she have for this reluctance beyond what she shares directly with the reader in the opening chapter?
   
3. Which significant life changes are facing Mira, and how might those changes be affecting her state of mind regarding the cancer diagnosis?
   
4. How would you describe the relationship of Mira to each of her children? How do these relationships affect the plot of the novel?
   
5. How do you react to Mira’s marijuana use? How much does it affect her decision-making throughout the book?
   
6. How would you describe the marriage of Mira and Max? How do you think their relationship plays into her reaction to her cancer diagnosis?
   
7. How does birth order affect the three grown siblings and how they fit into the family?
   
8. Which main character—Mira, Katya, Ivan, or Irina—do you understand the most? What parallels can you draw to your own life?
   
9. Mira observes in the book that children grow up any way they want to, despite a parent’s best efforts. Do you agree with this?
   
10. Why does Katya find herself driving by her old boyfriend’s house and secretly calling him? Have you ever felt drawn to a romance from your past?
    
11. What is the source of the friction between Mira and Katya, and does it seem justified to you? Do you have old childhood fights with your parents that still echo in your adulthood?
    
12. Do you think Katya and Charles’s marriage will endure? Do you think Katya will truly change her life? If so, in what ways?
    
13. Do you agree with Katya’s decision to stay with Charles? How else might she have reacted?
    
14. Why is Ivan so clueless about romance?
    
15. Do you think Jenny and Ivan have a future together? Why or why not?
    
16. Why do you think Irina engages in reckless romantic behavior?
    
17. What do you think Irina should do about Darius and the baby?
    
18. Do you believe Mira will change her mind about the surgery when she sees the doctor again? Why or why not?
    
19. What role does the Big Tree play in the novel?
    
20. How does Mira’s lack of formal religion play into the story? Do you believe her view has changed by the end?
    
21. How does the setting affect each of the characters?
    
22. Do you think the Zielinskis are a happy family at the beginning? How about at the end of the novel?
    

Why did you choose to write this novel using four points of view, and with Mira’s point of view in first person, the others in third person?

I wanted to write the kind of book I love to read. I love a good family drama with a big cast of characters and colorful personalities. Also, it’s fun for me as a writer to get into different voices. It’s hard to get bored when you switch perspectives regularly. It did make for some tricky logistical issues sometimes. It was hard for me to remember what each character knew at any given point and where all the rest of them were, since the progression from chapter to chapter is not always precisely linear. But that was part of the fun, too. I put Mira’s voice in first person because I wanted to leave no doubt that this is her story, first and foremost. Also, she’s such a bold character. It would have seemed strange to speak for her, instead of letting her speak for herself.

What inspired this story?

I’d been trying to get published for a while, and that effort to be commercial had wrung all the joy out of my writing. I finally decided that I should write to entertain myself, and even if rejections rolled in, I could at least enjoy the process and be proud of the result. Happily, this book was received very well. I suspect this manuscript was the most authentic I’d ever produced.

What kind of research did you do for the novel?

I did some reading, and contacted Susan G. Komen for the Cure, but the best research of all came from interviewing local doctors. A prominent oncologist told me that women of Mira’s age often discover a lump in their breasts while holding their grandbabies. I found that detail so poignant that I worked it into the book. Another doctor walked me through a “diagnosis talk” just as she would give a real patient. She also told me how patient reactions to breast-cancer diagnosis have ranged all over the map and didn’t always follow what seemed logical or reasonable. This bolstered my faith in Mira as a genuine character, even if her reactions might not be “correct” or “expected.”

Your novel’s epigraph is the famous first line from
Anna Karenina,
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” How do you think that quote applies to your book?

I’m sure happy families are alike—all two of them! I’m being glib here, but my point is that every family has its problems, the Zielinskis included. It’s funny, some people who have read the manuscript seem amazed at how screwed up these characters are, when to me they don’t seem that far out of bounds. Maybe people are reacting to how all these problems seem to be coming to a head all on one weekend. That’s the way novels work, though. More drama that way.

Is the story autobiographical?

No. Mira is diagnosed with cancer before the story even begins, and that diagnosis drives much of the plot, but that’s not a reaction to anything that’s happened in my life. Everyone has
someone in their circle of family and friends touched by cancer, but that’s not why I wrote about it. I needed a crisis to drive the story, and breast cancer is singularly terrifying to women. As for the other plot elements, I can relate to each of my characters on some level, but no one character represents me in the book.

There’s one male voice in the book: the middle child, Ivan. Was it hard to write from a male point of view?

Not especially. I can relate to Ivan quite a lot, in fact. He’s a struggling songwriter and at the time I wrote the book, I was an aspiring novelist. It wasn’t hard to convey his feelings of frustration over trying to break into a creative profession. Also, he and I share a love of Monty Python.

Why did you set the book in Charlevoix, Michigan?

This little town in northern lower Michigan is known as “Charlevoix the Beautiful” and it fits. I spent many summer weekends there visiting my grandparents, and some of my happiest memories come from walks on the dune at Mt. McSauba, or taking in a sunset from the pier. Mira and Max’s house is loosely based on the home on Dixon Avenue where my grandmother grew up. Charlevoix (pronounced SHAR-le-voy) is one of my favorite places in all the world, and I figured if I had to spend a year or more writing a book, I should at least dedicate the hours in my imagination to someplace beautiful.

CONTRARY TO THE STEREOTYPE OF WRITER-AS-LONER, I’M A PACK
animal, and thus have many people to thank for their assistance in the creation of this book.

Thank you to my agent, Kristin Nelson, and my editor at Avon, Lucia Macro, plus the rest of the team at HarperCollins, for loving Mira as much as I do and giving me a chance to share her with the world.

The following people helped me with research. A huge “thankyou” to Kristine Nelson for meteorological expertise, Ann Kuipers and Tim Jenks for information on natural health, and Keith Cronin for insight into the music-publishing business. Several people helped me research breast cancer, including Susan Sorensen, Executive Director of Spectrum Health Regional Cancer Program Dr. Mark Campbell, Sharon Roberts with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Dr. Cheryl Perkins, Spectrum Health Director of Radiation Oncology Mary Mencarelli, R.N., and Dr. Jane Pettinga, whose fictional diagnosis talk was invaluable. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

I consulted these books in my research:
Just Get Me Through This: The Practical Guide to Breast Cancer
by Deborah A. Cohen with Robert M. Gelfand, M.D., and
Straight Talk about Breast Cancer, From Diagnosis to Recovery,
by Suzanne W. Braddock,
M.D., Jane M. Kercher, M.D., John J. Edney, M.D., and Melanie Morrissey Clark.

Thank you so much to my first readers, Eliza Graham and Barbara Sidorowicz, for their wise critiques and for making sure the Escalade didn’t magically move from one place to another (or mysteriously change into a Hummer.) Thanks to Jill Morrow for service as sounding board and amateur therapist. I’m grateful to Becky Motew, and Mark Vender, for his consistent support, no matter the continent or time zone.

I couldn’t have accomplished this without the support of my writer friends, those I’ve befriended online and in living color. Their commiseration and expertise are beyond price. I’m also terribly grateful for the support and cheerleading from Denise Taylor and the crew at Schuler Books and Music.

Thank you to Mrs. Dykema, though I knew her as Miss Zagers at Townline Elementary. She was the first one to teach me the “show, don’t tell” rule, and about the joy and necessity of revision. It was in her class that I first felt like a writer.

To my family and friends, I can’t tell you how much your support has meant to me. Thank you to my sister, Kimberly, my parents, John and Jan Riggle (my first editors and my first typist), and all those who cheered me on and took me seriously as a writer, long before I was an “author.” I love you.