The Sabbathday River (69 page)

Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River

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“I hate what you did,” she said aloud, thinking this might represent some kind of middle ground, but she found, to her great dismay, that she could not bring herself to hate even that. And how terrible a person she must be, not to hate even that!

“What I did”âJudith moved her feet in the waterâ“I did to spare us all. Her suffering. Because she would have suffered. Later on, I mean. And as it was, she didn't. It was fast, Naomi. Joel made sure.” She shook her head, as if to dislodge the memory. “That's all I cared about, really. For Joel it was a little bit more complicated, of course.”

Naomi, cautious, waited. She kept her eyes on Judith's ghost feet, white underwater, as they made the current swirl into a circle.

“For Joel it would have been a question of faith, do you see? Of saying, to
God”
âshe spat the wordâ“that he accepted this. God did it, but Joel accepted it. Like, he said, when Abraham did what God asked him to do. Or when Miriam put Moses in the river, she was telling God she trusted Him to do the right thing. Even if the right thing was to
send him over a waterfall, then it was all right. She would accept it. We had to be the same way, he said.” She shook her head. “He actually believes that, you know.”

Naomi, who by now did know, nodded in silence.

“I mean, he has to. He'll do anything for a little hope. A little hope is so fucking narcotic.” She laughed, darkly, her eyes were wide and flowing like the river's surface. “Maybe he thought there was going to be some Pharaoh's daughter out there for us, to save her. But we got you instead.”

I'm sorry
, Naomi nearly said. For not being a Pharaoh's daughter. For not letting that poor cold baby float away in the first place.
Because I was wrong about everything
. From the very first moment to this moment, from the eddy in mid-river to this one by the riverbank, at Judith's feet, Naomi had done everything wrong.

“Did you get the hope at least?” she said, thinking aloud.

Judith surprised her by shrugging. “Well, I guess so. I'm pregnant,” she said, and the extra word, the word she didn't say, hung for a moment on the stagnant air between them, then was lifted by a small, stray breeze and taken off down the Sabbathday. Naomi, watching it go, thought how alike they were, in the end, Judith and Heather, though they each would have shunned the comparison. How Heather had given back her baby in wild hope for what she had lost, and Judith for what she had not had in the first place. Perhaps it would work better for Judith than it had for Heather, Naomi thought, though she herself would not wait to see if it did. She would not know what happened to the baby Judith carried, since she would not know Judith after today. Grieving for a dozen things at once, she got unsteadily to her feet and reached down for her sandals. She did not look at her friend. “I have to go.”

“You're going now? Right now?” Judith spoke harshly, her face streaky and tight. “Right this second?”

And that was when it occurred to Naomi that she
could
go. And yes, right this second. She could leave right away, after allânot tomorrow, as she'd planned, but now. Since she had already packed what little she was saving, her vital places filled with vital things, and there was nothing to keep her. She could get in her car and floor the gas, and drive and drive until she would have to close her eyes to see the people she had left behind. But only seeâbecause they had passed by now beyond her reach, even if she were still inclined to reach for them.

Lines from “Spilt Milk” by Sarah Maguire (from Spilt Milk, Seeker & Warburg, 1991) and “Sheol” by Craig Raine (from Clay, Whereabouts Unknown, Penguin, 1996) are quoted with the permission of the authors.

Lines from “The Language Issue” by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, translated by Paul Muldoon (from Pharaoh's Daughter, Wake Forest University Press, 1990), “If Luck Were Corn” by Peter Fallon (from News of the World, Wake Forest University Press, 1993), and “Terezin” by Michael Longley (from Gorse Fires, Wake Forest University Press, 1991) are quoted with the permission of the authors and Wake Forest University Press.

I thank these friends and relations for having generously allowed me to quote from their poetry.

Also by Jean Hanff Korelitz

A Jury of Her Peers
The Properties of Breath

Author's Note

Canavan disease is a rare neurodegenerative disorder caused by a deficiency in an enzyme called aspartoacyclase, which in turn causes progressive spongy degeneration of the brain. In the most common form of the disease, onset occurs in the first few months of life and death by three or four years of age. The enzyme was identified in the mid-1980s, but prenatal diagnosis by amniocentesis was extremely difficult and unreliable due to very low enzyme expression in amniotic fluid cells. In 1994 the gene for aspartoacyclase was mapped to the short arm of chromosome number 17. The most common mutation was identified at nucleotide 854, with suggested carrier frequencies ranging from 1 in 36 to 1 in 59 in the Ashkenazi Jewish population (similar to the frequency of the Tay-Sachs gene), though the disease also occurs in other ethnic groups. Since 1994, DNA testing has allowed parents to undergo carrier testing and accurate prenatal diagnosis to determine if they are carrying an affected fetus. There is no cure for Canavan disease and the only available treatments are supportive and palliative.

DNA testing for the purpose of establishing parentage or kinship was not available until 1990.

Acknowledgments

During the writing of this novel I relied on the kindness of friends. Linda M. Bonnell, Pharm D. and Leslie Vought, M.S., C.G.C., gave me invaluable and enthusiastic assistance with serology and Canavan's disease. Peggy O'Brien lent me her snowbound house for two critical weeks. Deborah Michel provided her customary close readings and one-woman cheering section. Five years ago, Sally Kahler Phillips told me that I really ought to write a novel about that strange Irish case. This turned out to be a good idea, and one for which I am appropriately grateful.

I thank Dr. Vivian Fromberg for her guidance through the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
. Dr. Eleanor Nicolai McQuillen, M.D., M.S.A., my consultant in forensic medicine, solved every problem I presented her with and several she didn't know I had.

I am beholden to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for a fellowship during the winter of 1997.

The “Sabbathday Affair” on pp. 26-29 owes its genesis to “The Pemi Affair” by Kirk Siegel, which appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of
The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
. I appreciate his forbearance in allowing his true misadventure to inspire my fictional one.

I am so grateful to Pam Bernstein, Donna Downing, Arabella Stein, Judy Klein, and Jonathan Galassi for believing in this novel and its author.

In memory of two children who died during the writing of this book:

Olivia Kuenne,
aged five years

Thaddeus Wills,
aged twenty minutes

No room has ever been as silent as the room
Where hundreds of violins are hung in unison.

âMichael Longley, “TerezÃn”

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003

eISBN 9781466806795

First eBook Edition : December 2011

First edition, 1999
Second printing, 1999

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Korelitz, Jean Hanff, 1961â