The Longings of Wayward Girls

by Karen Brown

  Craig comes downstairs and, late for work, drinks his juice at the counter. He leans in to give each child a kiss. “I’ll see you two tonight,” he says, and they each suppress a giggle, knowing they will be in bed asleep when he gets home, that there is a secret planned for him and they are now part of it. She rises from the table and Craig takes her in his arms, and she presses her mouth to his lime-scented neck. There is time for this, she thinks. Today she and Bea Sidelman will see an exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum. She will study her lines for Our Town. She will clean out the hall closet. Tonight she will put on a black cocktail dress like one her mother used to wear, low-cut crepe de chine; slip into black heels, her pearls—not as a child playing dress-up, but as the woman she is now able to become. She will celebrate her marriage with her husband at the restaurant where they had their first date.

  The early settlers of this land buried their children in family plots, on a rise of land visible from Sadie’s second-story window. Here a mother would have paused, her arms heavy with laundry or firewood, with another child on her hip, and then moved on to the baking of bread, to the planting of her garden, to the demands of a house that bring forgetfulness. Sadie still goes alone up the secret path through the woods. The cicada nymphs burrow beneath the leaf litter, down into the soil to feed on tree root sap, keeping their seventeen-year vigil. She sees the trees fan out like a blaze, the pond coated with ice. She watches the fog settle among the bare, black branches and the snowfall, its obscuring blanket. She longs for the sun in her hair and pauses, listening, as if she can still hear the high and happy voices of children—those who have come and gone, those who have never been. Each passing day, filled with the work of her life, is its own solace.

  For a long time she would dream she’d returned to her old neighborhood, where everything remained the same—the houses lining the street, the farm and the farmer’s fields in the distance. It would be summer, and the corn would do its fine green swaying dance. A thunderstorm would roll in, the lightning arcing and cleaving and the air sharpened with the smell of rain. She’d enter her house to discover her mother’s cigarette burning in the bright orange ashtray on the kitchen table, the phone cord stretched across the tile. She’d follow the cord and find the receiver sitting on the floor of the pantry, the dial tone discordant, her mother nowhere in the house, though she’d search from room to room, pulling open closet doors, expecting to find her. What did she want to tell her? she’d wonder. Now she knows, and finds she has stopped looking.

  Author’s Note

  On July 26, 1973, seven-year-old Janice Pockett of Tolland, Connecticut, left her home on her bicycle to retrieve a butterfly she’d hidden under a rock. She never returned. Janice’s case was given attention in the Hartford Courant, in often poignant reporting by J. Herbert Smith, Jon Lender, and George Gombassy. These newspaper articles detailed the extensive search, the fear of kidnapping, the effect on the family, and the ultimate struggle to move on.

  As a child growing up in a Connecticut suburb, Janice’s disappearance was a tragedy that unfolded a few towns removed from mine—one I knew nothing about until I discovered the newspaper articles years later as a curious writer. When I set out to create a fictional world around a missing girl, I wanted to reinvent the feeling of loss captured in the articles, and to provide some sense of closure that remains, as of this writing, sadly absent in Janice’s story.

  In seeking a setting for my novel I returned to the Connecticut town of my childhood. For information about Latimer Cemetery and a feeling of the town’s layout and history, I consulted the Wintonbury Historical Society and its wonderful book From Wintonbury to Bloomfield: Bloomfield Sketches, published in 1983. Bloomfield residents will recognize some of the names and places in my novel but will discover that in my fictional version the places have been relocated to suit my needs, the names given to invented people. In an attempt to relay the Colonial history I felt so strongly in my own childhood, my town is a combination of several towns, and the folklore and legends are appropriated from across the New England region.

  Finally, I wanted this book to be one about mothers, and mothering, about the nature of that role and its responsibilities, joys, and sorrows, and for this reason I was drawn to Colonial women’s diaries. That of Mary Vial Holyoke, a doctor’s wife from Salem, Massachusetts, which I found in The Holyoke Diaries 1709–1856, seemed to resonate the most for me. Its daily recording of visitors, travel, and chores includes the births of children, and almost as frequently, the deaths. Of the twelve children she bore only four survived infancy. In her spare accounting we glimpse a community of women taking turns at the bedside of her sick three-year-old, the child’s death a brief notation that we might miss if we were skimming the pages. I wanted to pause at that moment after the words were written, and then reveal its indelible mark on everything that comes after.

  Karen Brown

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Laura Mathews of Good Housekeeping, and Michael Koch, of Epoch, in whose publications portions of this book first appeared.

  I am deeply grateful to Samantha Shea and Valerie Borchardt, for the insightful suggestions that helped shape this work, and for their perseverance in finding it a home.

  Thank you to my wonderful editor, Sarah Cantin, whose attention to these pages was subtle, graceful, and wise, and to all of the Atria Books team who shared her enthusiasm.

  For the whimsical rendering of my fictional town, thank you to my talented niece, Jess Brown.

  For friendship and support, thank you to Susan Wolf Johnson and Tom Ross, and a special note of thanks to Jonadean Gonzalez, Delma Rodriguez, Lorelei Perez, Violet Pullara, Grace Landeta, Sandy Alberdi, and Jane Toombs—the Literary Dames. Your stories, generosity, and wine continually enrich my ideas about books and the people who read them.

  And finally, thank you to my family, and to my sister Beth—my first reader.

  THE LONGINGS

  of

  WAYWARD GIRLS

  KAREN BROWN

  A Readers Club Guide

  QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Read the epigraph of the novel aloud. How does it serve to frame the narrative that follows it?

  2. Consider the mother-daughter dynamics that are depicted within the novel. How do you think Sadie’s experience of being mothered by Clare impacts how she mothers Sylvia?

  3. What do you make of Sadie and Craig’s relationship? Why do you think Sadie is drawn to Ray to begin with, and why does she ultimately return to Craig? Do you believe Ray when he writes to Sadie, “I knew who I had. I knew who you were”?

  4. The weight of history—and the sense that it can repeat itself—is felt throughout the novel. As a group, can you brainstorm moments within the novel in which it appears (as Faulkner once famously said) that “the past isn’t dead—it isn’t even past”?

  5. Consider the theme of female companionship in the novel. In what ways is it shown to be sustaining—and in what ways can it turn sinister?

  6. Both Sadie and Clare are involved with the local theater troupe. What is the difference between this kind of formalized acting and other forms of role-playing that are depicted throughout the novel? Using examples of each, compare and contrast.

  7. Turn to the scene on p. 137 in which Kate shows the neighborhood women the Christmas village she has created in her basement. Why do you think Kate has chosen this hobby? What do you make of Sadie imagining Kate returning the next day to her basement, only to discover that “the mothers and fathers and children in her village will have shifted position, moved into other rooms, other houses, stepped out into their snowy yards to stand together without her intervention”?

  8. Think about how fate and free will are juxtaposed in the novel. How could the suitcase that Sadie discovers in the old Filley homestead be seen as emblematic of both—or, put differently, as the perfect melding of destiny and agency?

  9. What do you make of Beth as a girl—and later, as a grown woman? In w
hat ways can she and Francie be seen as reflections of each other?

  10. Consider the domestic spaces that feature prominently in this novel (basements, perhaps) and those that are rarely shown (for example, kitchens). What kinds of activities are the characters engaged in, in each setting? In terms of tone or atmosphere, how are the scenes that take place indoors different than those that transpire outdoors?

  11. As a group, reread the scene in which Clare and Patsy run lines from the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana. Given what lies ahead for these characters, how do you interpret these lines?

  12. While many of the novel’s characters are guilty of various wrongdoings, do you feel that true malice is at the root of any of their crimes? Are there moments when certain individuals could have acted differently to prevent others from getting hurt? Discuss using specific examples from the text.

  13. The Longings of Wayward Girls ends with Sadie describing a recurring dream she has about entering her childhood home and wandering the rooms, looking for her mother: “What did she want to tell her? she’d wonder. Now she knows, and finds she has stopped looking”. What answers has Sadie come to by the novel’s conclusion? To what extent do you believe she has made peace with her mother’s memory?

  14. Though not a ghost story in the classic sense, The Longings of Wayward Girls is filled with ghosts. Who are they, and how does their presence shape the narrative’s development?

  ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

  1. The summer of 1979 is a transitional summer for Sadie, and though her thirteenth birthday is still a few months off, in her personality and demeanor she arguably “becomes” a teenager during July and August. Did you have a summer that was similarly monumental to your personal development?

  2. As a group, watch the 1964 film version of The Night of the Iguana. Imagine Clare (and later, Sadie) playing the role of Hannah Jelkes, here depicted by Deborah Kerr. Does the movie make you think differently about any aspects of The Longings of Wayward Girls?

  3. Speaking of movies, pretend that you are casting the film version of The Longings of Wayward Girls. Brainstorm whom you might cast as Sadie, Ray, and Beth. What about Clare, Bea Sidelman, or Kate?

  4. As twelve-year-olds, Sadie and Betty play a seemingly harmless prank on another girl—one that sets off a chain of events with disastrous consequences. Looking back on your childhood, did any of your own transgressions initially seem innocuous but ultimately lead to harmful or damaging outcomes?

  ROBERT BAISDEN

  Karen Brown is the author of Little Sinners and Other Stories, which was named a Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly, and Pins & Needles: Stories, which was the recipient of AWP’s Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has been featured in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, and Good Housekeeping. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of South Florida.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Karen Brown

  “Reeling in the Years.” Words and Music by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Copyright © 1972, 1973 UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. and RED GIANT, INC. Copyrights Renewed. All Rights Controlled and Administered by UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

  By Tennessee Williams, from THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, copyright © 1961 by The University of the South. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  “Cecilia.” Copyright © 1969 Paul Simon. Used by permission of the Publisher: Paul Simon Music.

  Excerpt from “Young” from ALL MY PRETTY ONES by Anne Sexton © 1962 by Anne Sexton, renewed 1990 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by Anne Sexton.

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  First Washington Square Press trade paperback edition July 2013

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  Designed by Kyoko Watanabe

  Cover diesng by Laywan Kwan

  Cover Photograph © Ayal Ardon / Trevillion Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Karen, 1960–

  The longings of wayward girls : a novel / Karen Brown. — First Washington Square Press trade paperback edition.

  pages cm

  1. Women—Connecticut—Fiction. 2. Secrets—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. 4. Suspense fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R7213L66 2013

  813'.6—dc23

  2012044427

  ISBN 978-1-4767-2491-1

  ISBN 978-1-4767-2493-5 (ebook)