This Side of Providence (41 page)

Before, when she was just my teacher, she would have asked a lot of questions about how I was feeling and what I wanted to do, but now she has become something else, and we stand together for a very long time, both of us knowing that something else is what will keep us together, completely still, in the
warmth of her living room,
our
living room, for as long as we need.

Later, she tells me we can talk in the morning if I want, but that I should go to bed now, since it's been a long day. “It's been a long year,” I tell her. “I should be like fourteen by now.” She smiles and tells me that day will come soon enough. She follows me into the hallway but I stop her at the bedroom door, telling her she doesn't have to tuck me in anymore, even though she's done it every other night since I moved in. She looks like she's going to argue with me, but then she leans forward and kisses my eyelids closed, tells me to have sweet dreams.

In the dark of my bedroom, I hear Luz breathing in her sleep. I slip under the covers slowly, careful not to wake her up. Most nights, when I lie in bed before falling asleep, I think about my mother and how I don't want to forget that her hair smelled like cigarettes and that her eyes closed when she laughed and how she hugged me so hard I could feel the bones in her chest. Tonight I think about my father too, things I thought I had forgotten, like the sound of his voice calling my name to wake me up, or the feel of his hands covering mine as he fixed my grip on a wooden bat. For years I didn't let myself remember any of that. But after reading his letter and hearing how he still thinks of us, I can now see the way they used to dance together in our kitchen to slow songs on the radio, both of them still moving, still in sync when the batteries eventually went dead, and I can remember how they would pick me up and hold me between them, singing the rest of the words without the music, sometimes making up their own lyrics to end each song.

Everybody thinks they know the story of their own life, but all we have are the pieces we remember. And what we remember is only one part of the story. I wanted to tell the whole truth, but the real story is bigger than the part I can tell by myself. And maybe that's okay. Maybe what matters is how we tell our stories, or just that we tell them at all.

Acknowledgments

For their love, support, friendship, and keen words of counsel over the many years I've worked on this book, I would like to thank the following people: Mike B., James Cañón, Jane Carroll, Tony Charuvastra, Shad Farrell, Graeme Fordyce, Alexandra Geis, Katherine Guyton, Daniel Alexander Jones, Maria Massie, Jim Radford, Brett Schneider, Ron Sharp, Ira Silverberg, Anjali Singh, Bobby Towns, Rebecca Walker, and Sam Zalutsky.

I would also like to thank my friends, students, and colleagues at Spalding University, who have given me a home for the last decade and who continue to inspire me daily. I wrote significant portions of this novel while in residency at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and wish to thank the administration, staff, and fellow residents for making each stay so enjoyable. I have found respite in many libraries I wish to acknowledge, including: Brown University's Rockefeller Library, the Providence Public Library, the Providence Athenaeum, several branches of the Pasadena Public Library, USC's Doheny Memorial Library, and Art Center College of Design's Fogg Memorial Library.

My sincere gratitude goes out to the women at Prospect Park Books, Patty O'Sullivan and Colleen Dunn Bates, who have shown unwavering courage, loyalty, and grace during the process of preparing this novel for publication. They are true champions of the written word, and through their dedication and commitment to fulfilling our vision for this book, have shown themselves to be genuine and generous collaborators. A big shout out to Nicole Caputo for the gorgeous cover; she restored my faith in the power of an image to reflect something essential in even the most complex of stories.

Special appreciation goes to my family, for their listening ears and loving hearts, and for giving me the space one needs to create and complete a novel, with heartfelt thanks
to my daughters, Auden and Braxton, for asking all the right questions.

And a final, boundless thank-you to the one who worked tirelessly as friend, partner, editor, and midwife through the long and arduous process of birthing this novel, and who taught me that it is only after such labors that the real work of living can begin.

About the Author

Rachel M. Harper's first novel,
Brass Ankle Blues
, was a Borders
Original Voices Award
finalist, and selected as a Target
Breakout Book
. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and is on the faculty at Spalding University's low-residency MFA in Writing Program. She lives in Los Angeles.