“I can’t, Ruth. I want to say I’m sorry, but I’m not. You need to climb down from here all by yourself. I’m doing you a favor.”
“You know what? Mrs. O’Sullivan told me if I don’t get married I won’t go nuts. Think about it. She said Isabel was already doomed. She said not to grab on to things like a drowning person. You’re the only thing I still want to hang on to. You’re always there in my head, even when you’re not there. Leaving me is not a favor. You need to get down and let me leave you.”
It’s almost daytime now. Soon the color of Magdalene’s hair will resolve out of its blackness. If she climbed up next to her now, Ruth would feel the heat of her and smell the linen of her coat. It’s a trick, like Mrs. O’Sullivan said. You just have to let go.
If Magda is going to get down, the slow way or the fast way, it will be by herself. They’re all by themselves now. Whatever gravitational force kept them spinning around each other, stuck in repeating circles, it’s gone. That doesn’t mean they won’t know each other, or even love each other still. It means they have three separate souls, weighed in the balance one at a time. Isabel’s mom saved Ruth, so she’ll need to be waiting to save Isabel. Magda’s right about that; they need to be there while Isabel’s in and when she gets out.
Ruth turns away towards the ladder. She imagines Magdalene falling, her coat fluttering out like a pair of dark wings. Mackie falling into Magdalene. Dark angel falling away from her, leaving her alone in the sky. Sparks flying up as Magdalene hits the trees.
Maybe that is how it ends. Maybe.
Ruth throws her leg out over the railing and into the ladder cage. There is the sudden feeling of the world again, rushing underneath her, the air and the salt from the sea, the crazy poetry of all those kinds of light mixing together, Lefty and Old Mr. Lipsky and Mrs. O’Sullivan’s secret nighttime world. Ruth and Isabel and Magda are the people who can feel what all of it means. Why would you give that up? Their lives together, the things they’ve seen and done and felt, are already so much more than other people have. Whatever happens next, it was worth it.
Turns out the wave she felt coming that night on Seaview Road was a holy wave. Like all real visions it was terrifying and it was beautiful. It crashed over everything and washed them like beach glass, taking away their edges and their clarity. But in the end it left Ruth scoured and dazzling. She is empty and pure now.
There is a place for her, between the sun and the other stars.
Acknowledgments
IF NOT FOR Danielle Zigner at LBA Books, you would not be holding this novel in your hands. She didn’t just rescue it from the slush pile, she believed in it, fought for it, and nurtured it through everything that came after that with heroic patience and good humor. Allison Hellegers at Rights People found the book its New York home, but much more important, she made me feel that it did what I hoped it would do.
Thanks to my friend Sally Mills for the lucky dime. For reading drafts, partial or complete, once or many, many times, thanks to: Shamira Meghani, Lisa Miller, MaryLee Miller, Maia Pollio, Mahine Rattonsey, Danny Reilly, and Angela Sherlock. Bonnie Zobell, Marko Fong, Eamonn Lorrigan, and everyone in the “Long Stuff” office at the Zoetrope virtual studio provided support and advice early on. The whole of my big, remarkable family has been behind me on this. I am so grateful.
Neelam Masood, woman of all automotive knowledge, explained to me how vintage brake systems work and how a girl might go about sabotaging one. Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society shared his stunningly detailed memory of meteor showers visible from Long Island in the spring/summer of 1979. It is not his fault that I later moved the Lyrids to an impossible date and time. Both Lisa Miller and JoAnne Buntich gave me legal and historical advice regarding property titles (it mattered at one point), juvenile detention law, and social work. Again, mistakes and misapprehensions are my own.
So after all that, you hope for an editor to notice your novel or, better still, like it. If you’re pretty much the luckiest author ever, you get someone like Emilia Rhodes, who genuinely loves your book, understands what you want to say, and applies her remarkable intelligence and patience to helping you say it. I am grateful to Emilia and the whole wonderful team at Harper New York for being so excited about Little Wrecks. The feeling a writer has when that excitement comes across is indescribable. I won’t try; I’ll just say thank you all very, very much.
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About the Author
Courtesy Meredith Miller
MEREDITH MILLER grew up in a large, unruly family on Long Island, New York, and now lives in the UK. She is a published short story writer and literary critic with a great love for big nineteenth-century novels and for the sea. Her short stories have appeared most recently in Stand, Short Fiction, Prole, Alt Hist, and The View from Here. Little Wrecks is her first novel.
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Books by Meredith Miller
Little Wrecks
Credits
Cover art by Mia Nolting
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Gates of Eden” Written by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.
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LITTLE WRECKS. Copyright © 2017 by Meredith Miller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960407
ISBN 978-0-06-247425-4 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © June 2017 ISBN 9780062474278
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FIRST EDITION
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Meredith Miller, Little Wrecks
Little Wrecks Page 26
