Sunlight and Joy

by Barbara Delinsky

  RH: (Teasing.) But you’re not a total Luddite. You do own an e-reader.

  BD: Yes. I need to know the competition, so to speak. And truly? I do believe that by the time my grandchildren are in college, textbooks will all be electronic. This is the wave of the future. We can either fight it and be left behind, or join the revolution. But it’s like I said earlier. We have to tailor the revolution to our own needs.

  Take my work. I wrote my first couple of books by hand, but can’t imagine working without a computer now. For one thing, the editing capability is unlimited. I no longer write one draft, then a second, then a third. Editing is constant and ongoing. When I look at those early books, my fingers itch to edit. Not so now. Once I’m done with a book, there is not a single word I would change. That’s the beauty of writing on a computer. Want to change a name halfway through the book? Find and replace. Want to put Chapter 8 after Chapter 9? Cut and paste. And when that book is finally done? A few taps, and, zap, it’s on a computer in New York.

  RH: Speaking of computers and New York, Escape is about these things. Can you give us a hint?

  BD: Escape is actually about escaping those things! My protagonist is thirty-two, living and working in Manhattan, a lawyer married to a lawyer. Her life has become dominated by work, machines, and rush to the exclusion of people. Her friendships are shallow. She hurries to yoga, relaxes on cue, hurries back to work. She and her husband text more often than they talk.

  On one particularly frustrating Friday morning, she stops short, looks around, and realizes that the life she is leading is a betrayal of everything she once dreamed of having and doing. So she leaves.

  RH: Leaves? Just walks out?

  BD: Yup. Just walks out. Isn’t this every woman’s fantasy at some point, to just walk away from it all?

  RH: Was it yours?

  BD: More than once. When those three little boys were running around making noise and mess, and my husband was due home wanting the house neat so that he could play with those kids while I made dinner—yuck. Or more recently, when I was upgrading my website, orchestrating new author photos, traveling to promote one book, struggling to finish another, and planning a son’s wedding all at once, I wanted nothing more than to escape. There’s more than a little bit of me in both “Sunlight and Joy” and Escape.

  RH: More than a little? What else of you is in Escape?

  BD: New England, of course, where I’ve always lived. Escape takes us to the beaches of Cape Cod and the inns of the Berkshires, before finally delivering us to a New Hampshire town that is wonderfully wooded and personal, the antithesis of the world from which my protagonist comes.

  There are wonderful buffets at the bed-and-breakfast where the heroine stays. That’s from personal experience.

  The heroine follows trails through the woods that come from my own hikes.

  A tiny cat plays a small role in Escape, and this was personal to the extreme. Just as I started this book, my cat of eighteen years died. I cried writing the pages involving the cat.

  RH: What about the coyote? Where did that come from?

  BD: Coyotes intrigue me. I live in a suburb of Boston, on land abutting conservation land, and we do hear howl and yip from time to time. Occasionally there are news reports about a coyote wandering into the city, and I always ache for that poor thing. Okay, I’m sure that a few readers who’ve lost sheep or a housecat to coyotes will hate me for that remark, but what can I say? I brake for squirrels. I know that mice are pests, but when I find one dead in the basement, I think of its mother.

  I’ve always been a cat person, but several of my sons have dogs that I adore. Those dogs have appeared more than once in my books. One is even in Escape. It’s the Australian shepherd that’s been abused and desperately needs a home.

  But I’ve strayed. We were talking about coyotes, which are in Escape for a very specific reason. Totally aside from adding a mystical element to the book, they inspire the heroine. Coyotes adapt to survive, which is what Emily has to learn to do in her own world—which isn’t to say that she returns to New York at the end of the book. No, Escape is about dreams that don’t work out. It’s about prioritizing our lives and deciding what we need to do to survive. Coyotes’ needs are simple. At their most basic, so are ours. Too often in this high-tech world, we lose sight of them.

  RH: So Ellen, in “Sunlight and Joy,” washes dishes by hand. And Emily, in Escape, turns her cell phone off. How about you? Are you connected all the time?

  BD: Well, I do leave on my cell phone, which means that email and texting are part of my life. That said, the phone is in the kitchen while I’m in bed at night, and I’m diligently training myself not to jump each time I hear the chime of arriving messages.

  RH: Do you like your e-reader?

  BD: For some books, yes. For instance, it’s more comfortable to hold an e-reader than a seven-hundred-page book. Likewise, taking five hardcover books on a vacation. Too heavy. And wow, I gotta say, to be away on vacation and read a review of a book, then be able to have it on your e-reader in seconds, how fun is that?

  Ah. But I do love holding a real book in my hands. I love flipping forward and back. I love reading to the point of suspense, then reading the end to see how things turn out. I horrify many people when I tell them that—but hey, once I know the plot line, I can focus on the nuance of character and prose. That’s the writer in me.

  Unfortunately, I don’t read much when I’m at work on a book, and after that, there’s the business side of my career. I probably spend half of my “work” time each week on that.

  RH: Are you into social networking?

  BD: Oh yes. Since communicating with my readers means the world to me, I’ve been on Twitter and Facebook from the start. I still have reservations about Twitter; I’m not sure readers of 350-page books are drawn to something with a 140-character limit. Facebook is something else. This has been a phenomenal way for me to interact with readers. It’s quick and easy. They ask questions, I answer. I ask questions, they answer. Every Tuesday, I post a question that requires a short response. I call it the Speedy BD Survey. My Facebook fans know to look for this each week, and I love what they write.

  My Facebook fans actually played a key role in Escape. But you’ll have to read the acknowledgments page of the book to learn what it was.

  And in addition to Facebook, there’s my website. Here readers can send really long notes, or listen to me narrate podcasts, or read summaries of my books. They can watch book trailers and can get the latest BD news.

  RH: News. That’s good. So where do we go for that?

  BD: Try either www.barbaradelinsky.com or www.facebook.com/bdelinsky.

  RH: Thanks. And thanks for your time. I’ve enjoyed this talk.

  BD: Me, too. Except next time, let’s skip the phone and do it in person, face-to-face. Deal?

  RH: Deal.

  An excerpt from the forthcoming Escape by Barbara Delinsky

  Available from Doubleday

  Chapter 1

  Have you ever woken up in a cold sweat, thinking that you’ve taken a wrong turn and are stuck in a life you don’t want? Did you ever consider hitting the brakes, backing up, and heading elsewhere?

  How about disappearing—leaving family, friends, even a spouse—ditching everything you’ve known and starting over again. Reinventing yourself. Rediscovering yourself. Maybe, just maybe returning to an old lover. Have you ever dreamed about this?

  No. Me, neither. No dream, no plan.

  It was just another Friday. I awoke at 6:10 to the blare of the radio, and hit the button to silence it. I didn’t need talk of politics to knot up my stomach, when the thought of going to work did that all on its own. It didn’t help that my husband, already long gone, texted me at 6:15, knowing I’d have my BlackBerry with me in the bathroom.

  Can’t make dinner tonight. Sorry.

  I was stunned. The dinner in question, which had been on our calendar for weeks, involved senior partners at my firm. It was i
mportant that James be there with me.

  OMG, I typed. Why not?

  I received his reply seconds before stepping into the shower. Gotta work late, he said, and how could I argue? We were both lawyers, seven years out of law school. We had talked about working our tails off now to pay our dues, and I had been in total agreement at first. Lately, though, we saw little of each other, and it was getting worse. When I pointed this out to James, he got a helpless look in his eyes, like, what could he do?

  I tried to relax under the hot spray, but I kept arguing aloud that there were things we could do if we wanted to be together—that love should trump work—that we had to make changes before we had kids, or what was the point—that my coyote dreams had begun when I started getting letters from Jude Bell, and though I stuffed those letters under the bed and out of sight, a tiny part of me knew they were there.

  I had barely left the shower when my BlackBerry dinged again. No surprise. My boss, Walter Burbridge, always emailed at 6:30.

  Client wants an update, he wrote. Can you do it by ten?

  Here’s a little background. I used to be an idealist. Starting law school, I had dreamed of defending innocent people against corporate wrongdoing and, by graduation, was itching to be involved in an honest-to-goodness class action lawsuit. Now I am. Only I’m the bad guy. The case on which I work involves a company that produces bottled water that was tainted enough to cause irreparable harm to a frightening number of people. The company has agreed to compensate the victims. My job is to determine how many, how sick, and how little we can get away with doling out, and I don’t work alone. We are fifty lawyers, each with a cubicle, computer, and headset. I’m one of five supervisors, any of whom could have compiled an update, but because Walter likes women, he comes to me.

  I’m thirty-two, stand five-six, weigh one-twenty. I spin sometimes, but mostly power walk and do yoga, so I’m in shape. My hair is auburn and long, my eyes brown, my skin clear.

  We gave them an update Monday, I typed with my thumbs.

  Get it to me by ten, he shot back.

  Could I refuse? Of course not. I was grateful to have a job at a time when many of my law school friends were wandering the streets looking for work. I was looking, too, but there was nothing to be had, which meant that arguing with the partner-in-charge of a job I did have was not a wise thing to do.

  Besides, I mused as I slipped on my watch, if I was to put together an update by ten, I had to make tracks.

  My BlackBerry didn’t cooperate. I was hurrying to finish my makeup when it began making noise. The wife of one of James’s partners wanted the name of a pet sitter. I didn’t have a pet, but could certainly ask a friend who did. Thinking that I would have had a dog or cat in a minute if our lifestyle allowed it, I was zipping on a pair of black slacks when another email arrived. Why won’t sharks attack lawyers? said the subject line, and I instantly clicked DELETE. Lynn Fallon had been in my study group our first year in law school. She now worked with a small firm in Kansas, surely having a kinder, gentler experience than those of us in New York, and she loved lawyer jokes. I did not. I was feeling bad enough about what I did. Besides, when Lynn sent a joke, it went to dozens of people, and I didn’t do group email.

  Nor did I do anything but blue blouses, I realized in dismay as I stood at the closet. Blue blouses were professional, my lawyer side argued, but I was bored looking at them. Closing my eyes, I chose a blouse—any blouse—and was doing buttons when the BB dinged again.

  Okay, Emily, wrote my sister. You booked the restaurant, but you haven’t done music, photography, or flowers. Why are you dragging your heels?

  Kelly, it is 7 am, I wrote back and tossed the BlackBerry on the bed. I turned on the radio, heard the word ‘terrorism,’ and turned it back off. I was brushing my hair back into a wide barrette when my sister’s reply arrived.

  Right, and in two minutes I have to get the kids dressed and fed, then do the same for me so I can get to work, which is why I’m counting on you for this. What’s the problem?

  This party is over the top, I typed back.

  We agreed. You do the work, I pay.

  Mom doesn’t want this, I argued, but my sister was relentless.

  Mom will love it. She only turns sixty once. I need help with this, Emily. I can’t hear myself think when I get home from work. If you had kids you’d know.

  It was a low blow. Kelly knew we were trying. She knew we had undergone tests and were doing the intensive-sex-at-ovulation routine. She didn’t know that I’d gotten my period again this month, but I couldn’t bear to write the words, and then—ding, ding, ding—my inbox began filling. It was 7:10. I had to get to work. Burying the BlackBerry in the depths of my purse so that I wouldn’t hear the noise, I grabbed my coat and took off.

  We lived in Gramercy Park in a condo we could barely afford, and though we didn’t have a key to the park itself, we had passed Julia Roberts on the street a time or two. I saw nothing today—no Julia, no pretty brownstones, no promising June day—as I hurried to Fifth Avenue, sprinting the last half block to catch the bus as it pulled up at the curb.

  I was at my desk at 7:45, and I wasn’t the first. A low drone of voices already hovered over the cubicles. I awoke my computer and logged in, then logged in twice more at different levels of database security. Waiting for the final one, I checked my BlackBerry.

  Are you going to yoga? asked the paralegal who worked two floors below me and hated going to yoga alone. I would be happy going alone, since it meant less chatter and more relaxation, which was the whole point of yoga. But if I had to go home to change before the firm dinner, yoga was out. Not tonight, I typed.

  Colly wants Vegas, wrote a book group friend. Colleen Parker was getting married in September and, though I had only known her for the two years I’d been in the group, she had asked me to be a bridesmaid. I would be one of a dozen paying three hundred dollars each to wear matching dresses. And now a bachelorette party in Vegas? I was thinking the whole thing was tacky, when I spotted the next note.

  Hey, Emily, wrote Ryan Mcfee. Ryan worked one cubicle down, two over. Won’t be in today. Have the flu. Don’t want to spread it around.

  This should have been important. It meant one man-day of lost work. But what was one more or less in a huge cubicle room?

  Logged in now, I set to gathering Walter’s information. It was 7:50. By 8:25, I had a tally of the calls we’d received from last weekend’s newspaper ads—and I could understand why our client was worried. The number of claimants was mounting fast. Each had been rated on a ten-point scale by the lawyer taking the call, with tens being the most severely affected and ones being the least. There were also zeroes; these were the easiest to handle. When callers tried to cash in on a settlement with proof neither of harm nor of having ever purchased the product, they stood out.

  The others were the ones over which I agonized.

  But statistics were impersonal and, in that, relatively painless. I updated the figures on how many follow-ups we had done since Monday, with a numerical breakdown and brief summaries of the claims. At 8:55, I emailed the spreadsheet to Walter, logged in the time I’d spent making it, shot a look at my watch and dashed downstairs for breakfast. Though I passed colleagues in the elevator, being competitors in the game of billable hours, we did little more than nod.

  Going from the 35th floor to the ground and up again took time, so it wasn’t until 9:10 that I was back at my desk with a donut and coffee. By then, the cubicles were filled, the tap of computer keys louder and the drone of voices more dense. I had barely washed down a bite of donut when the phone began to blink. Hooking the earpiece over my head, I logged in on my time sheet, pulled up a clear screen on my computer and clicked into the call.

  “Lane Lavash,” I answered as was protocol with calls coming in on the toll-free lines listed in our ads. “May I help you?”

  There was silence, then a timid, “I don’t know. I got this number from the paper.”

  Frau
ds were confident. This woman sounded young and unsure. “Which paper?” I asked gently.

  “The, uh, the Telegram. In Portland. Maine.”

  “Do you live in Portland?” I readied my fingers to enter this information.

  “No. I was there with my brother last weekend and saw the ad. I live in Massachusetts.”

  I dropped my hands. Massachusetts was prime Eagle River distribution area. We’d received calls from as far away as Oregon, from people who had been vacationing in New England during the time the tainted water was on sale. Strict documentation of travel was required for these claims, well before we looked at documentation of physical harm.

  I cupped my hands in my lap. “Do you have cause for a claim against Eagle River?”

  Her voice remained hesitant. “My husband says no. He says that these things just happen.”

  “What things?”

  “Miscarriages.”

  I hung my head. This was not what I wanted to hear, but the din of voices around me said that if not this woman, someone else would be getting pieces of the Eagle River settlement. Miscarriage was definitely one of the “harms” on our list.

  “Have you had one?” I asked.

  “Two.”

  I entered that in the form on my screen, and, when the words didn’t appear, retyped them, but the form remained blank. Knowing that I wouldn’t forget this, and not wanting to lose the momentum of the call, I asked, “Recently?”

  “The first one was a year-and-a-half ago.”

  My heart sank. “Had you been drinking Eagle River water?” Of course, she had.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you document that?” I asked in a kind voice, though I felt cold and mean.

  “Y’mean, like, do I have a receipt? See, that’s one of the reasons my husband didn’t want me to call. I pay cash, and I don’t have receipts. My husband says I should’ve made a connection between the water and the miscarriage back then, but, like, bottled water is always safe, right? Besides, we were just married and there was other stuff going on, and I figured I was miscarrying because it wasn’t the right time for me to be pregnant.” Her voice shrank. “Now it is, only they say there’s something wrong with the baby.”