by Maria Semple
The Flood Girls.
I set the leather book on my drawing board and turned on the light. The endpaper split when I opened the cover.
Mom and Matty. Every drawing of her looks like a different person. All I had to work off of was my fading, shifting memory. Ivy, my intention was for her to glow. I captured it best in the one with Parsley. The background on the second page: That was from an actual book of nursery tales. Those crayon scribbles done by Ivy’s hand. The pillows on the rocking chair, embroidered by Mom, thrown away by the grieving, vengeful nine-year-old me. The guy who wrote the screenplay for King Kong, he and his wife used to have us over to watch the Broncos. Matty’s chicken scratches. When people die, their handwriting dies too. You don’t think about that.
I didn’t plan not to tell Timby about Ivy. When he was two, I was suffering through a particularly rough stretch of sleepless nights, emotions churned by another new shrink (this one Jungian, this one no help either). Joe and I were in Meridian Park, pushing Timby on a swing. I asked Joe if he hated Ivy and Bucky. He said, “That would make as much sense as hating a rattlesnake. You don’t hate rattlesnakes; you avoid them.”
When Joe declared on Highway 82 in Aspen that he was done with Ivy, he meant it. I honestly doubt if he’s thought about her more than a handful of times since that day. One thing I will say against Joe: He expects me to do the same. Joe can be done with Ivy. I will never be done with Ivy. I don’t want to be done with Ivy. She’s my sister.
The Aspen map! It took me a month to draw that damned thing. We used to love Richard Scarry and the Sunday Family Circus. For our birthdays, Matty would create treasure hunts. These were the only times he allowed us inside the lady’s big house. (The rest of the year, he pasted strips of S&H Green Stamps across the front and back doors. He told us he’d written down the serial numbers so we couldn’t sneak in.) Those birthday treasure hunts when Ivy and I could finally see the inside: wonders upon wonders.
And the bear. That’s a good bear.
“Mom!” Timby called. “Come here!”
I closed the scrapbook. And there it sat amid my jumble. Beautiful, every page of it, drawn by a person I used to be. The Flood Girls. Jinxed no more.
Timby was at the mirror on his step stool waiting for me with his toothbrush. If I’d ever had an excuse to skip our routine, it was then. But Timby and I had rarely missed a night standing shoulder to shoulder.
“Look at this!” he said, holding open an Archie Double Digest.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at.
“The last line!” Timby said impatiently.
In the panel, Archie and Jughead had just been busted by Mr. Weatherbee for something. Archie turns to Jughead and says, “Grab a rake.”
“That’s the first time in Archie history it doesn’t end with an exclamation point!” he said.
My little son. What a smarty. What a sweetie.
“Always ahead of me, you are.”
With my good hand, I held out my toothbrush. “Hit me with some of that.” Timby squeezed paste on it.
We began brushing.
After a moment, I stopped.
I lowered my toothbrush. I turned to Timby.
“I have a sister,” I said. “Her name is Ivy. She’s four years younger than I am and she lives in New Orleans with her husband and two children. That means you have an aunt and an uncle and two cousins you’ve never met.”
Timby lowered his hand, leaving his brush sticking out of his foamy mouth. He studied me in the mirror.
Now the hard part.
“Even though they don’t know us,” I said, “they don’t like us.”
Timby pulled out his toothbrush, spit into the sink, and looked up.
“They know you,” he said. “But they don’t know me.”
Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply to what they’re saying. Today I’ll wear a dress. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will keep an open mind. Today I won’t eat sugar. I’ll start to memorize “One Art.” Today I’ll try to score Timby and me tickets to the Pope. I’ll ask around about Scotland. I’ll clean out my car. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.
Acknowledgments
Thank you…
Anna Stein, Judith Clain, Nicole Dewey
Barbara Heller, Holly Goldberg Sloan, Carol Cassella, Courtney Hodell, Katherine Stirling
Eric Anderson, Daniel Clowes, Patrick Semple
Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Craig Young, Lisa Erickson, Terry Adams, Amanda Brower, Karen Torres, Keith Hayes, Mario Pulice, Julie Ertl, Andy LeCount, Tracy Roe, Karen Landry, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Lauren Passell
Arzu Tahsin
Clare Alexander, Mary Marge Locker, Claire Nozieres, Roxane Edouard
Ed Skoog, Kevin Auld, Nicholas Vesey, Phil Stutz, Tim Davis, Kenny Coble
Howard Sanders, Jason Richman, Larry Salz
Joyce Semple, Lorenzo Semple Jr., Johanna Herwitz, Lorenzo Semple III
Peeper Meyer
These pages begin and end with George Meyer, as do I.
About the Author
Maria Semple is the author of This One Is Mine and Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which has been translated into eighteen languages. She lives in Seattle.
mariasemple.com
ALSO BY MARIA SEMPLE
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
This One Is Mine
* Did I say it was a little late? I guess it’s eight years late. But I did say I was bad with dates. And numbers. And names. Although Camryn Karis-Sconyers is one I won’t soon forget.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
The Trick
The Flood Girls
Cracked Actor
Troubled Troubadour
Blur
The Plan
The Art of Losing
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Maria Semple
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by Maria Semple
Cover design by Kelly Blair
Cover art by Geoff McFetridge
Author photograph by Elke Van de Velde
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: October 2016
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“Skunk Hour” from Collected Poems by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 2003 by Harriet Lowell and Sheridan Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
“Morning Has Broken” from The Children’s Bells by Eleanor Farjeon. Copyright © 1957 by Eleanor Farjeon. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
“Mommy” and “Mad Mommy” illustrations by Poppy Meyer. Copyright © 2016 by Poppy Meyer.
“Meyer Mania” illustration by Patrick Semple. Copyright © 2016 by Patrick Semple.
All other illustrations by Eric Chase Anderson. Copyright © 2016 by Eric Chase Anderson
ISBN 978-0-316-40344-3
E3-20160819-JV-PC
