Tunnel of Love
Page 39
In the morning, she put her new looseleaf book into her knapsack, along with a couple of sandwiches and the money she’d been filching from her mother’s purse, and Brandy’s, for days.
“Good luck today,” her mother said, “and don’t forget your keys.”
Robin gazed at her for a long moment, with the stillness and focus of a photographer. Miriam was drinking coffee, bending daintily over the sink so as not to spill any on her car-rental-agency uniform. It included a perky red bow tie that set off her dark hair and eyes, and her name was embroidered in red on her white blouse.
“So long,” Robin said. Then she went out the door and past the school-bus stop on the next corner. About a mile away, she hitched a ride to the Greyhound station in Phoenix.
There was a long line outside the elementary school designated as Nathan and Linda’s polling place. Nathan had only become an American citizen in January, so he was going to be voting for the first time, too. In honor of the occasion, he’d bought a small flag for Phoebe that she waved with reckless patriotism in everyone’s face, when she wasn’t chewing on it. Robin had come along with them because she had nothing else to do that morning. School was closed and Lucy was at the dentist’s. They’d spoken for hours on the phone the night before, until Linda threatened to pull the plug.
The line into the school moved very slowly and Robin began to complain after about ten minutes: the sun was in her eyes, she was thirsty, she was tired of standing, and she had a blister on her foot. She offered to take Phoebe around the corner to a coffee shop, where they could sit down for a minute and Robin could get a Coke. “I’ll be back before you get inside,” she promised.
Linda hesitated, but Nathan took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to Robin. “Bring us something cold, too,” he said. The whole scene seemed vaguely familiar to Linda, but she was too focused on the children to really think about it. She watched them go down the street until they disappeared around the corner. The line into the school stopped for a while before it started creeping forward again, but the mood of the prospective voters remained patient and upbeat. They were like ticket-holders waiting to get into a hit Broadway show. After about half an hour, Linda and Nathan were almost at the school door. Linda said, “They should have been back by now. Save my place, okay? I’ll just run around the corner and see what’s keeping them.”
Nathan held her firmly by the elbow. “No,” he said. “Don’t worry, they’re okay.” He made a visor out of his hands to protect her crumpled brow from the sun, and in the slanted shadow he kissed her lightly on the lips.
In the school’s gymnasium, they were directed to the registration tables for their precinct. Nathan went to the table marked A-L, Linda to the one marked M-Z. After she signed the register and was handed a ballot, she waited on a short line to get into a voting booth. It was a narrow, three-sided cubicle that reminded her of those boxes magicians use to make their assistants vanish, except that there was no curtain here. How could anyone have any privacy? When the man right in front of Linda went into the booth, she turned and saw Robin standing in the doorway of the gym with Phoebe in her arms, surveying the place. “Yoo-hoo! Robin! Over here!” Linda called.
In moments the man came out and gave his ballot to the inspector. Now it was Linda’s turn. She waved to her children, who were coming toward her, and stepped inside the booth. It was the most private and mystical place she’d ever been. Her body had become the missing curtain, shutting out the room and all the people behind her. In here, she was the magician, the magician’s vanished girl, and the audience waiting to be wowed. Earlier that morning, she and Nathan had lingered in bed to look at the election pages in the newspaper, but Linda had known for a long time who she was going to vote for, and why. She put her ballot in the slot and punched in her choices with the stylus, carefully and hard. Then she removed the ballot and stepped out of the booth, delivering her votes to the system and herself back into the living world.
A Biography of Hilma Wolitzer
Hilma Wolitzer (b. 1930) is a critically hailed author of literary fiction. Her work has been described by the New York Times as “often hilarious and always compassionate.” Born in Brooklyn, New York, she began writing as a child. She was first published at age nine, when a poem she wrote about winter appeared in a local journal. She was voted the poet laureate of her junior high school, but after graduating from high school at sixteen she worked at various jobs, from renting beach chairs under the boardwalk in Coney Island to pasting feathers on hats in a factory and holding a position as an office clerk.
Wolitzer married at twenty-two, and though her family consumed most of her time, she began writing again. Her first published short story, “Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket,” appeared in print when she was thirty-six. Eight years (and several short stories) later, she published Ending (1974), a novel about a young man with a terminal illness. The New York Times called it “as moving in its ideas as it is in its emotions.” Ending was released when Wolitzer was forty-four years old and she was dubbed the “Great Middle-Aged Hope.”
She followed this success with In the Flesh (1977), a well-received novel of a conventional marriage threatened by an affair. Since then, her novels have dealt mostly with domestic themes, and she has drawn praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. In the late seventies and mid-eighties, Wolitzer also published a quartet of young adult novels: Introducing Shirley Braverman (1975), Out of Love (1976), Toby Lived Here (1978), and Wish You Were Here (1984).
Following her novels Hearts (1980), In the Palomar Arms (1983), Silver (1988), and Tunnel of Love (1994), Wolitzer confronted a paralyzing writer’s block. Unable to write more than a page or two a day—none of which ever congealed into a story—she did not publish a book for more than a decade.
After working with a therapist to try to understand the block, she completed the first draft of a new novel—about a woman who consults a therapist to solve a psychic mystery—in just a few months. Upon its release, The Doctor’s Daughter (2006) was touted as a “triumphant comeback” by the New York Times Book Review. Since then, Wolitzer has published two more books—Summer Reading (2007) and An Available Man (2012).
In addition to her novels, Wolitzer has published nonfiction as well, including a book on writing called The Company of Writers (2001). She has also taught writing at colleges and workshops around the country. She has two daughters—an editor and a novelist—and lives with her husband in New York City, where she continues to write.
A three-year-old Wolitzer poses for a portrait, taken in 1933.
Wolitzer with her mother, Rose Liebman, and sisters, Anita and Eleanor, circa 1943.
Wolitzer drew this picture of FDR in 1945.
Wolitzer and her husband, Morton, celebrate their wedding day, September 7, 1952, in Brooklyn, New York.
Wolitzer sits on a park bench with her daughters, Meg and Nancy, in 1964.
Wolitzer relaxes on the beach in Oyster Bay, New York, with her daughters in the 1960s.
Pictured here (clockwise): Wolitzer, Linda Pastan, Stanley Elkin (with his back to the camera), and Tim O’Brien talking at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1985.
Wolitzer has frequently visited schools across the country to teach children about writing—experiences that she remembers fondly. Pictured here is a thank-you note from a fifth-grade student in Greenville, South Carolina, circa 1992.
Wolitzer enjoys time with her grandsons, Charlie and Gabriel, in Springs, New York, in 1996.
Wolitzer with her husband, now a retired psychologist.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means
, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Hilma Wolitzer
cover design by Angela Wilcox
978-1-4532-8786-6
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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