by Lisa Tucker
Glowing praise for Lisa Tucker’s spellbinding novel
Once Upon a Day
“Readable, full of enjoyable characters… Tucker raises great questions about the nature of parental and marital responsibility.”
—Denver Post
“Charmingly written … a good comfort-food story … the kooky, off-kilter characters, with their various eccentricities, feel like a good-days companions.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“The title of Tucker’s third novel sounds like a Nora Ephron movie, and on the surface the fanciful plot seems to play right along… . [But] another narrative strand casts a welcome emotional shadow … lifting Once Upon a Day out of the realm of romantic comedy and into the darker territory of an Old World fairy tale.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Readers will find this captivating, fish-out-of-water fairy tale and mystery-suspense-romance difficult to put down.”
—Library Journal
“The gifted Tucker tells a compelling story with uncommon empathy and grace.”
—Booklist
“Ambitious and sprawling.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Tucker is a graceful writer with an ability to create characters whose flaws help make them sympathetic and believably human.”
—The Boston Globe
“Beautifully written … intriguing.”
—USA Today
“One of those page-turners full of suspense and romance that is likely to keep the TV off and readers up way past prime time… . [Once Upon a Day] has its share of ordinary people; the poignant stories they share in this fairy tale of a book, however, are anything but.”
—Albuquerque Journal
“Fascinating … a real page-turner … Tucker keeps you guessing, crafting almost a mystery, along with a two-pronged love story that’s hard to immediately file away.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
“Tucker has a stylish, authentic way of revealing how it only takes one day for a person to lose hope—or regain it.”
—BookPage
“Readers are drawn into the story, compelled to discover the resolution.”
—Charlotte Observer
“Emotionally suspenseful … Once Upon a Day is [Lisa Tucker’s] strongest effort to date and it’s a lovely and surprising book.”
—Santa Fe Reporter
“Brilliant storytelling … Once Upon a Day [raises] profound questions about the limits of love, the power of the past, and the capacity of the human heart to deal with profound tragedy.”
—Bookreporter.com
Praise for The Song Reader
“An engagingly intricate debut… . The characters become as real to the reader as they are to [the narrator]… . Though brimful of sentiment, The Song Reader never spills over into sentimentality.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer (Editor’s Choice)
“This intoxicating debut may remind [readers] of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides, but it’s not lost in their shadows.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Tucker turns an engaging premise into a fascinating novel.”
—Denver Post
“A clear winner … [Be] among the first to discover a brilliant new literary talent.”
—The Albuquerque Tribune
“Tucker use[s] a winning formula: Give readers a good old-fashioned story … that people can’t stop talking about.”
—Philadelphia Weekly
“[An] intriguing and heartwarming tale of family and struggle.”
—The Times Leader
“Tucker’s song-reading device is ingenious… . [A] complicated story about the unbreakable bond between two sisters.”
—The Boston Globe
“Tucker has created a convincing musing on the importance of memory … [The] reader is left with a … satisfying, complex reaction.”
—Santa Fe Reporter
Praise for Shout Down the Moon
“The situations Tucker describes here in starkly lyrical prose are as chilling as if they were all derived from her own experiences.”
—People
“Tucker’s portrayal is refreshingly real.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[Tucker] excels at setting her young protagonists in the heart of complex, often damaging familial relationships.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
“Well-drawn, emotionally nuanced characters… . [This] compulsively readable tale deftly moves over the literary landscape, avoiding genre classification; it succeeds as a subtle romance, an incisive character study and compelling women-in-peril noir fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Tucker’s] straight-from-the-heart narration is instantly gripping.”
—Booklist
ALSO BY LISA TUCKER
The Song Reader
Shout Down the Moon
Washington Square Press
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Lisa Tucker
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9277-5
ISBN-10: 0-7434-9277-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-9278-2 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-7434-9278-1 (Pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2318-5
This Washington Square Press trade paperback edition May 2007
WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
This book is dedicated to Miles Tucker,
my beautiful son, who taught me how to imagine
and gave me back my life.
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Contents
Part One: The Charming Coincidence
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Part Two: Naked Heart
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three: Angel Moon
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Four: The Master of Dreams
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Five: Chapter Sleepers Awake
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Acknowledgments
About the Book
Questions for Discussion
A Conversation with the Author
Dame Fortune once upon a day
To me was bountiful and kind;
But all things change; she change
d her mind,
And what she gave she took away.
O Fortune, long I’ve sued to thee;
The gifts thou gavest me restore,
For, trust me, I would ask no more,
Could ‘was’ become an ‘is’ for me.
—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
Once Upon a Day
PART ONE
The Charming Coincidence
one
STEPHEN SPAULDING was very happy, and you can’t say that about most people. He hadn’t sought happiness, but he recognized it. This was his gift: to know what he had.
When it was gone, of course he knew that too. He changed from a man who could smile at strangers first thing in the morning to a man who wouldn’t look anybody in the eye. He’d lost his family in a freak accident, and the rest he let go of as easily as opening his hand and releasing a string of balloons. Goodbye to the family practice he had just started with two friends from his residency. Goodbye to the Victorian house he and Ellen had gone deeply into debt to buy when she got pregnant during his internship. Goodbye to the cradle and the tricycle and the pink and purple birthday party dress Lizzie never had a chance to wear.
More than a year later, he still hadn’t adjusted to the way time itself had been altered. Before there was never enough time, and the list of things he and Ellen had not gotten around to doing was one of many things that still tortured him. The untaken trip to Paris bothered him less than the movies they’d talked about renting. Why hadn’t they watched them? Ellen’s entire list could be watched in a weekend. He knew this because he had done it, several times. He watched the movies his wife had wanted him to, and thought about what she would say if she were there. This was back in the early months, when he was trying to give her gifts, as though she could come back if only he worked harder to make her want this life.
After the accident, there was too much time. Each day stretched before him like a flat Kansas highway, the only landmarks the meals he forced himself to choke down, the few chores he performed, and the occasional walks he took, rarely noticing anything or anyone on his path. He finally bought the old green and white Checker cab not because he needed the income—his compensation from the city would support him forever, especially since he had no desires, nothing he wanted now—but because he could drive it as little or as much as he liked, sixteen hours a day, more if his insomnia was bad.
He wouldn’t have sued, but the city gave him an enormous sum anyway. The newspaper headline called it a “regrettable tragedy.” It was a Sunday in late July; the police were chasing a teenager who had stolen a rusted-out ’84 Toyota from a neighbor’s driveway. The car was worth less than five hundred dollars, but the patrol car that slammed into his family at the intersection had been going over eighty miles an hour. He was driving; Lizzie was in her booster seat in the back, behind Ellen. The teenage thief turned himself in when he heard what had happened. The policeman who was driving took early retirement.
And Stephen, the barely thirty-year-old family practice doc, became a cabbie. What difference did it make? His knowledge of how to heal bodies had done nothing for him anyway. His wife and four-year-old daughter had still died right in front of his eyes.
Now he was learning the quickest way to the airport from any street in St. Louis. How to slide around a bus, and when to change lanes so his customer would feel they were making progress. What times the restaurants and bars closed, and which of his regulars would be likely to drink one too many and need a ride on a Saturday night.
People often mentioned what a safe driver he was. The safest cab driver they’d ever ridden with. He nodded, but he didn’t respond. He never drove without the radio playing. Talk show, pop music, news channel, it didn’t matter. The radio was his excuse not to talk.
The only time he would answer was when a customer asked about the amusement park tickets. They didn’t ask often, even though he’d had the tickets laminated and kept them displayed above the visor, right next to his license. Stephen wasn’t surprised. He knew most people aren’t interested in their cab drivers.
He wasn’t surprised; still, he longed for the question. He longed for another opportunity to tell the whole story of that perfect July day at the amusement park: riding the water slides and the Ferris wheel and the child’s roller coaster; eating hot dogs and ice cream—mint chocolate chip, Ellen’s favorite; trying to win a giant stuffed panda bear, and when he couldn’t make the ring toss (a setup, he was sure), buying the bear for his daughter anyway.
Every time he told the story, he added a few more details. As the months went by, the story often filled the entire drive; sometimes he would still be talking while his customer was trying to hand him money and get away.
He knew he was going too far, but he couldn’t help himself. Back at his apartment whenever he tried to think of that day he drew a blank. It was only in the cab, talking to strangers, that he seemed to be able to bring it all to life: the feel of the sun on the back of his hands and the bright drips of green falling off their cones onto the hot pavement and how awkward and adorable Lizzie looked that night, lugging the giant panda to their car.
He didn’t realize how he’d begun to live for these discussions until a rainy morning in April, when they suddenly came to an end.
He’d picked up a girl at the bus station downtown. One of the weirdos, though this one wasn’t pierced or tattooed or obviously strung out, but even more bizarre, naturally pale as a made-up Goth, but dressed like a throwback to the fifties: long flared black skirt, fluffy pink sweater, even the white ankle socks and saddle oxford shoes. Her hair was in a thick braid, twisted like some kind of tight crown on top of her head, and she was sitting up so straight she looked uncomfortable, eyes unblinking, small white hands folded carefully in her lap. Stephen had already put her out of his mind when she mentioned the tickets about ten minutes into the ride. But before he could tell her about the slides or the food or even the perfect weather that day, she noticed what no one else had: that the tickets weren’t stubs.
“What happened?” she said. “Why didn’t you ever use those?”
He flushed with a confusion that quickly turned to anger. It had taken him nearly a year to perfect the story of the amusement park—for chrissakes, couldn’t he have even this? He wasn’t asking for all the days and hours and minutes he would have had with Ellen and Lizzie, he was just asking for one more day.
Stephen had been taking his family to the park when their car was broadsided. Lizzie had wanted to go all summer, and that day they had the tickets: they were really, finally going. All he had done in his story was change “were going” to “had gone.” A mere verb shift, and yet it changed everything.
And now this strange girl in his cab was forcing him to change it back.
Her voice was entirely innocent. She had no idea what she’d taken from him. But then again, he had no idea what she was about to give.
two
WE HAD A FATHER who loved us. Even as my brother Jimmy turned his back on the Sanctuary, I knew he had to still believe this, deep in his soul.
In my earliest memory, Father was holding Jimmy and me on his lap, telling us how important we were to him. More important than all his money, more important than the Sanctuary, more important than the stars in the sky or the ground below. The most important thing in the known world, the most important thing imaginable. “I want you two to be happy here forever,” he said, his voice as tender as his arms around us. “Whatever you want you can have, as long as it won’t hurt you.”
As long as it won’t hurt you. Too bad Father had such an active imagination. When I was eight years old, I read a story about a girl on a tire swing, with long flowing hair glittering in the sun as she moved back and forth. I asked for a swing of my own, but Father couldn’t do it. “Swings can wrap themselves around your neck and choke you, Dorothea,” he said. “You can fly out of a swing and sever your spine.” When Jimmy wanted paints—not watercolors, like we already had, but real rich colors, thi
ck—so he could try to copy the encyclopedia picture of a Roman centurion onto his bedroom wall, Father wanted to give them to him, I know he did. He was shaking his head sadly when he told Jimmy, “Those paints are poison. The toxins could seep into your skin.”
From pets that might bite to bicycles that could crash, our father had to protect us. He couldn’t bear the idea of a plastic swimming pool, no matter how shallow, because a child can drown in only a few inches of water. Climbing trees was a sure way to break your arm, or worse. There were dozens of trees on our property, but none of them had limbs lower than twenty feet, thanks to Father and the chain saw he kept locked in the storage shed. From my bedroom window, the trees looked like a clump of upright celery stalks.
I was weaker than my brother; perhaps this was why it was easier for me to sympathize with Father’s worries. I was only two years old when I developed what Grandma called my “nervous breathing,” and what the doctor called an anxiety disorder. My heart would pound at a hundred and eighty beats per minute or more, and my breath would develop a frantic rhythm to match. Father taught me how to control it, so I wouldn’t lose consciousness, but still, the horrible feelings of dizziness and panic were something I could never entirely forget, and they lurked in even my happiest moments, like snakes poised to strike.
We lived on thirty-five acres that straddled the border of Colorado and New Mexico, more than twenty miles from the nearest town. The four of us—Father, Grandma, Jimmy and me—were survivalists. That’s what the local preacher said anyway, when he came for a visit to see what we were up to, and went away convinced, without ever stepping foot inside, that our father knew what he was about.
After he left, Father laughed. Each month, we ordered nearly everything we needed from Colorado Springs: three freezerfuls of food that arrived on the first Tuesday in a clean white truck. “Survivalists?” he said. “We wouldn’t survive twenty-four hours without the delivery man.”
