Camilo met me before work. He’d chopped off all his hair and it spiked in crazy tufts. He looked like a small animal, blinking a little in the light of early afternoon. It felt to me as if I’d come face-to-face with a stranger, or someone that I recognized from a photograph. He’d asked to see me, but once in front of me, he didn’t seem to know where to start. He told me that he was having immigration troubles still—his mother had torn an important page from his passport years before. He told me that he was angry at me for abandoning him, that it made him think of all the times his mother had left him, that he didn’t want me to think of him as a bad person, that the girl didn’t mean anything and he never would have mentioned her but for the overwhelming value he put on honesty. That trust was the lifeblood. That he still had hopes. That he didn’t want to be angry. That he loved me. “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you love me?”
The word bewildered me. It was like a sound fallen out of another language, one existing far away from where we had taken place. I excused myself, and went to work.
A few days after that, a friend mentioned that Corah had written an article about sex positivity. We were getting on the subway, and when I just stared at her, she went on, “You know, this whole thing about how we should love our aging bodies, and each other’s aging bodies. And she talked about affairs as a way to reinvigorate the marriage.”
“Oh,” I said, and at the surprise in my voice, my friend glanced at me: “You can’t really be surprised about that.”
But that wasn’t what had startled me. It was the complete absence of feeling. The name was a name, like any name. It meant nothing. It was the name of someone I’d met a year ago, in a faraway place, for a specific and inexplicable period of time. “No,” I said, “I guess I’m not surprised,” and then the next stop was mine, and I got off.
* * *
—
ON THE ONE HAND, OBSESSION is a tool. Boats are built and fleets set sail and books are written and languages are mastered because of it. And then on the other hand, when it descends like a veil, we forget that there was ever anything on the other side. We lose contact, and then context.
When I think of what I know about Assia, the list of questions is longer than the answers I’ve assembled. But the same could be said for Corah, or for the version of myself who spent a year living a life so far removed from who I understood myself to be, that I might as well have been on another planet. Assia never put it together, the story she needed. Neither did I—hers, or Corah’s, or my own. I think we searched in the rubble in order to see ourselves reflected back—what we might be, what we could become—in ways that defied our own articulation. Assia used Sylvia as her mirror, and both Corah and I used equally unstable yet highly reflective surfaces for our own.
I think a lot about Assia’s dream of the pike. It’s been passed through so many filters (hearsay, a dream, a poem about a dream) that the exact truth of it has become irrelevant. The value for Ted Hughes lay in the metaphor, and for him the metaphor was perhaps of secrets: the seeds of love, the fetus curled in the great golden eye. For me, it’s neither truth nor metaphor that lingers. It’s the image of a woman sitting at a breakfast table, loose hair and mug of coffee, given the license to be fascinating. Her audience is hungry, captivated; in that moment, they lean in astonished. She’s woven them a story so odd and brilliant that she’s captured even herself.
They lean in, and for a brief, bright, dangerous moment she sees herself reflected in their eyes—uncurled, uncurling, about to be born.
To my parents, Mark and Sue,
and to my brother, Chris
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following:
My agent, Allison Hunter, for your enthusiasm and support, and for reading one story and then asking the life-changing question, “Do you have more?” My editor, Caitlin McKenna, whose unerring insights make this a better book and me a better writer. And a big thanks to the whole team at Random House, for your tireless work.
My family, for your endless curiosity, your delight in the strange, and for always marching to the beat of your own drum.
My chosen family, among them three people without whom The Island Dwellers wouldn’t exist:
Erin Chen, for decades of thinking out loud together—you are imprinted in my creative DNA. Some of these stories were written while living together in Boston.
Marilu Snyders, for your storyteller’s sixth sense and adventurer’s heart—“Pretoria” is for you. Some of these stories were written while living together in Osaka.
Swan Huntley, for your insight, flair, and fearlessness—and for always finding the funny in the fucked-up. You helped me take the first tangible steps to making this a book.
I am equally blessed for: Matt Kelly and Katie Consamus, who have, at different times, created a household with me, made that household a home, and forgiven my lackluster cleaning; Emma Caraher, who shows up in far-flung cities (and sometimes countries) when I need her steady hand; Doraelia Ruiz, whose paintings are on my walls as I write; Nick Westrate and Billy Carter, who took me as family from day one; Christine Scarfuto, Kevin Artigue, and Andrew Saito, who are my siblings in theater-making and mischief; and Basil Kreimendahl, whose instinct and artistry (and carpentry) constantly inspire me. Thank you for making me a place in the world wherever you are.
My theater family, whose daring, compassion, and humor sustain me. They are many, and for this, I am lucky, but among them:
Mike Donahue—we’ve made many things together—plays, meals, big decisions. I’m thankful for it all, with the exception of that cassoulet. So much of what I know about storytelling was learned from and with you.
Max Posner—whether it’s MacDowell, midnight on Ryder Farm, or the steps of Juilliard, thank you for our ongoing conversation about this thing of life & art & life.
Michael Yates Crowley—remember how you held my hand as I got my first tattoo? Thanks for holding my hand as I started my first novel. It’s a very similar sensation.
And my thanks and love to a handful of collaborators whose work on my plays taught me about rhythm and structure in ways that directly influenced these stories: Saheem Ali, Jeremy Cohen, Kimberly Colburn, Lee Sunday Evans, Adam Greenfield, Mandy Greenfield, Dan Kluger, Marti Lyons, and my grad school mentor Alan MacVey.
To my frequent actor-collaborators: thank you for saying Yes, especially on all the projects where we got paid twenty bucks and blew it at the bar. How you bring language to life has influenced how I write.
Samantha Sherman and Renata Friedman, the other ⅔ of The P-Patrol. You are fierce, kind, and excellent.
Team UTA—Larry Salz, Geoff Morley, and the inimitable Rachel Viola. You are the answer to the question, “But how is writing a real job?”
Thanks to the artistic homes that nurtured and housed me, especially when I had five million bees living inside my apartment and needed a place to sleep: New Dramatists, Space on Ryder Farm, the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and the Lark.
Special thanks to the Playwrights of New York (PoNY) Fellowship, and its founder, Sandi Goff Farkas. Your generosity has been truly life-changing—it is directly due to you and the PoNY that I had a year of time, space, and financial freedom in which to finish this book.
The MacDowell Colony for all your magic, for the things you make possible and the people you contain, who exist nowhere else.
And to Dane Laffrey: We both build worlds for a living, but the one I love most is the one I’ve built with you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEN SILVERMAN is a New York–based writer and playwright, a two-time MacDowell Fellow, and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant and the Yale Drama Series Prize. She was awarded the 2016–17 Playwrights of New York fellowship at The Lark, and is a member of New Dramatists. She completed a BA in
comparative literature at Brown University and an MFA in playwriting at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and was a fellow in the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
jensilverman.com
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