* * *
Since I couldn’t visit Carmen as I’d promised, I wrote to her. I sent her a gift every week—Swedish fish, chocolates, cakes from De Robertis—and a letter every day. I gave her news of our neighbors, of our friends, of the upcoming trial of William Dankow. Since his arrest, the rooster had vanished. I never saw him in the park, never heard his unnerving squawk again. I wondered what had happened to him.
I described to her my struggles to write the first column of Astrid Sees All. Readers had sent hundreds of questions to the Underground, but I felt like a fraud. Who was I to give advice to anyone? I tried to fake it, as Carmen had once advised me, but Wes saw right through that and told me to try again, to be honest this time. I thought I’d gotten good at faking things, but now I realize I never really mastered it.
At the end of every letter I wrote,
I am here. Julio and Diego are waiting for you. The apartment is ready to welcome you back. I know that you will need someone to care for you, and I can do it. I stopped partying. I’m learning to cook, if you can believe it! I learned how to care for another person by watching you, Carmen. When you leave the Humph, if you want to, you can come home to me.
Six weeks of letters. She didn’t write back.
Then, in the third week of December, a postcard. On the front: A photo from the nineteen-sixties of four young people playing Ping-Pong in a wood-paneled room with chintz curtains. On the back, a caption: THE HUMPHREY-WORTH CENTER, TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK. PATIENTS RELAX IN THE BUSBY KEANE MEMORIAL RECREATION LOUNGE, COMPLETE WITH CHECKERS, CHESS, AND PING-PONG. And the handwritten message:
Getting out December 23. Just in time for Christmas! Holly jolly. L&B taking me home with them. Don’t try to visit me—they hate you. They blame you for everything. I know it’s not fair, but I don’t correct them. I kind of enjoy it. You always wanted to be the bad girl. Now you are.
—C
Her parents will try to keep her with them as long as they can. I understand that. But someday she will get restless and want to leave. Someday soon, I think. When that day comes, I will be ready.
In the meantime, I sit at my window and watch the park. I keep my stethoscope on a hook nearby. Mrs. Lisiewicz said it was dropped by the “ambulance men,” but I know that it’s a gift from my father. I like to place the eartips in my ears and the chestpiece on my chest and listen to my breath. I whisper a waltz, “One, two, three. One, two, three…” I listen to my heartbeat. And when Carmen comes back, I’ll listen to hers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to the following:
My editor, Trish Todd, who is not only thoughtful and brilliant, but fun to work with; and everyone at Atria, especially Libby McGuire, Jonathan Karp, Lindsay Sagnette, Fiora Elbers-Tibbetts, Lisa Sciambra, Dana Trocker, Isabel DaSilva, Laywan Kwan, Suzanne Donahue, Felice Javit, Elisa Rivlin, and Polly Watson.
My agent, Sarah Burnes, for her tenacity, wisdom, and heroic willingness to read my terrible early drafts; and everyone at the Gernert Company, especially Sophie Pugh-Sellers, Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardner, Anna Worrall, and Julia Eagleton.
Friends, readers, advisors, bandmates, and partners in crime: Darcey Steinke, René Steinke, Biz Mitchell, Deborah Heiligman, Rebecca Stead, Judy Blundell, Marthe Jocelyn, Margo Rabb, Kristin Cashore, Betsy Partridge, Barb Kerley, Barnabas Miller, Libba Bray, Dan Ehrenhaft, Elise Broach, Bennett Madison, and Maia Danziger.
Ezra, Talia, and Zachary Weiner for being kind and funny souls.
Kathleen, John, and Jim Standiford, Karen Yasinsky, Jon Weiner, and Deborah Heiligman (doing double duty) for being sisters and brothers in spirit as well as by blood and by marriage.
My parents, Will and Betty Standiford, for everything.
And Eric Weiner, for being a miracle.
Gratitude and love to you all.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Standiford is the author of many books for children and young adults, including The Secret Tree, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Astrid Sees All is her first novel for adults. She was born in Baltimore and lives in New York City with her husband.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Natalie Standiford
“Avenue A” from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF FRANK O’HARA by Frank O’Hara, copyright ©1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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Interior design by A. Kathryn Barrett
Jacket design by Laywan Kwan
Jacket photograph © Bruce Gilden/Magnum Photos
Author photograph by Nikola Tamindzic
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Standiford, Natalie, author. Title: Astrid sees all : a novel / Natalie Standiford.
Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York : Atria Books, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034560 (print) | LCCN 2020034561 (ebook) | ISBN
9781982153656 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982153670 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T364736 A94 2021 (print) | LCC PS3619.T364736
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034560
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034561
ISBN 978-1-9821-5365-6
ISBN 978-1-9821-5367-0 (ebook)
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