by Sonia Taitz
PRAISE FOR GREAT WITH CHILD
“Taitz’s fresh, funny, and whip-smart new novel deliciously probes both legal and human partnerships, the mysteries of love and justice, and what it really means to be a mother, even as it follows a wonderfully flawed group of characters struggling to give birth to their truest selves. Enchanting, honest, delightfully sly, and not to be missed.”
—CAROLINE LEAVITT, New York Times bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World and Is This Tomorrow
“Prepare to be charmed. Wooed by one man while pregnant with the child of another, Abigail Thomas is one of the pluckiest, cleverest, and most delightful protagonists to come down the pike in a long time. Sonia Taitz explores the plight of the unwed mother and the maneuverings of a corporate law firm with equal grace and dexterity and a light yet brilliant touch. A delectable novel to savor . . . and remember.”
—YONA ZELDIS MCDONOUGH, author of The House on Primrose Pond
“This modern-day Jane Austen winningly and wittily takes on love, sex, pregnancy, and working motherhood.”
—MARIAN THURM, author of the New York Times-praised The Good Life and Today Is Not Your Day
PRAISE FOR DOWN UNDER
“A sly, subversive take on the familiar boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-becomes-a world-famous-movie-star-and tries-to-win-girl-back story, Down Under is a sheer delight. Sonia Taitz has written a fast-paced, quick-witted novel filled with trenchant observations about celebrity, aging, culture wars, and the search for true love. I raced through this witty and insightful book, anxious to reach the end. It came not with a whimper but a bang.”
—JILLIAN MEDOFF, bestselling author of I Couldn’t Love You More and Hunger Point
“Down Under is a beautifully constructed farce that reaches out in many directions—some amusing, some disturbing. The novel portrays a young boy’s thrillingly brave and heroic struggle with his domineering father. We are hooked on the character of Collum Whitsun, and on his girlfriend Jude’s obsession with this young, courageous boy. The writing is at all times so subtle and so right. When the middle-aged Collum sees himself become his father, the author brings a tragic dimension to her tale, even as the hero begins to go kablooey. It is all very enticing to follow her intelligent lead.
“While very much of the moment, and no less than a witty take on the zeitgeist, this novel is at the same time imbued with deep, dark truths and a sense of warped wisdom. Sonia Taitz is able to segue from an arch scene or grotesque moment to a heartfelt observation or smart insight with ease, finesse, and an unerring sense of literary mischief. A bravado performance, full of truth.”
—WESLEY STRICK, screenwriter and director of True Believer, Cape Fear, and Final Analysis
“Down Under is a sharp, sad, and funny trip to the emotional antipodes. Weaving a story that’s based, in part, on the broken soul of one of the world’s erstwhile heroes, the author takes us from the northern exurbs of New York to Australia and back. Love, madness, and the meaning of loyalty form the backbone of this fabulous (in every sense) yarn. Sonia Taitz combines depth, pathos, and hilarity, creating a love story that is part legend, part cautionary tale, and entirely delicious.”
—SUZANNE FINNAMORE, bestselling author of Otherwise Engaged and Split
PRAISE FOR THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER
Named a Best Memoir of the Year by Foreword Reviews
Nominated for the Sophie Brody Medal by the American Library Association
“Not your typical coming-of-age story . . . American Sonia Taitz, born to survivors of the Holocaust, lives under its long shadow in The Watchmaker’s Daughter.”
—Vanity Fair
“Taitz writes beautifully about religious roots, generational culture clashes, and a family’s abiding love.”
—DAWN RAFFEL, Reader’s Digest
“An invigorating memoir . . . especially noteworthy for its essential optimism and accomplished turns of phrase.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Funny and heartwrenching.”
—People
“One of the year’s best reads. This poignant memoir is a beautiful and heartfelt tribute to the author’s parents. Funny, yet moving . . . It is the story of an ambitious and gifted daughter whose aspirations and goals collide with those of her parents.”
—The Jewish Journal
“Heartwrenching, moving, and yes, hilarious . . . Fiercely tender and gorgeously written.”
—CAROLINE LEAVITT, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Sad Beautiful World
“A haunting meditation on time itself.”
—MARK WHITAKER, former editor-in-chief of Newsweekand managing editor at CNN
“A heartbreaking memoir of healing power and redeeming devotion, Sonia Taitz’s The Watchmaker’s Daughter has the dovish beauty and levitating spirit of a psalm. . . . A past is here reborn and tenderly restored with the love and absorption of a daughter with a final duty to perform a last act of fidelity.”
—JAMES WOLCOTT, critic at Vanity Fair and author of Lucking Out and Critical Mass
“Sonia Taitz has a good heart and an unmortgaged soul. Follow where she leads. You want to go there.”
—JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and an Academy Award
PRAISE FOR IN THE KING’S ARMS
“Beguiling . . . Taitz zigzags among her culturally disparate characters, zooming in on their foibles with elegance and astringency.”
—JAN STUART, The New York Times Book Review
“Evelyn Waugh, move over. . . . Even the heavy moments have verve and wit.”
—JESSE KORNBLUTH, curator of HeadButler, cultural essayist for New York and The New Yorker, and author of Married Sex
“In the province of gifted poets, playwrights and novelists.”
—Foreword Reviews
“In her gloriously rendered novel . . . Taitz writes passionately and wisely about outsiders, and what happens when worlds apart slam into each other.”
—BETSY CARTER, former editor-in-chief of New Woman and author of The Puzzle King and Nothing to Fall Back On
“A witty, literate, and heartfelt story, filled with engaging characters and relationships.”
—Jewish Book Council Reviews
ALSO BY SONIA TAITZ
FICTION
In the King’s Arms
Down Under
NONFICTION
Mothering Heights: Reclaiming Motherhood from the Experts
The Watchmaker’s Daughter
PLAYS
Whispered Results
Couch Tandem
The Limbo Limbo
Darkroom
Domestics
Cut Paste Delete Restore
The Day Starts in the Night
Copyright © 2017 by Sonia Taitz
All rights reserved
First edition, 2017
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address McWitty Press, 1835 NE Miami Gardens Drive, Miami, FL, 33179.
www.mcwittypress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902202
ISBN: 9780997755404
Cover design by Jennifer Carrow
Interior design by Abby Kagan
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
—GEORGE ELIOT
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Acknowledgments
A Reader’s Guide
A Note About the Author
1
Falling into a rut in the road, pregnant, unmarried Abigail Thomas realized the literal gravity of her circumstances. Now in her sixth month, awkward and lumbering, she might have to rely on others to keep any sort of balance. She raised her eyes up and saw a handsome man, hauling her up on her swollen feet. It was warm for mid-October. Abigail was sweating in her “business” maternity wear—aubergine twill, black pearls on ears and neck, support stockings with a weirdly large belly balloon. The morning traffic whizzed by.
“Are you all right?” Abigail found herself leaning against the man’s torso. She held on to his shoulders. Slowly, as she straightened, they parted.
“Thanks,” she responded, her voice quavering. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You tripped into a pothole. You nearly got run over!”
“Oh . . .” Abigail felt so lightheaded now that she could hardly speak. This was unusual for her. The world seemed a blur that no words could begin to define.
“Well, I’m up now,” she said dubiously. Was her leg actually bleeding?
“Must be hard for you,” he said, checking her up and down.
“What’s hard? This?” She pointed nonchalantly to the roundness at her waist. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You sure?” His voice was kind.
“I am just a little upset,” she admitted, tonguing a tear off her lip. “My knee hurts—oh, god, ugh!” She was noticing the blood and the torn stocking.
“Here, you’re OK,” said the young man, leaning around to stroke briskly down her back. Abigail’s jacket had picked up grayish street grit. He dusted off her shoulders, too, his head near her face as he leaned over to get all the spots.
Woozily, Abigail explored her Good Samaritan. He was of a pleasing height—not too tall, not too short. His thick hair was shiny and wheat-colored. She was close enough to smell him, and he smelled good, like fresh bread and cucumbers. In the base of her stomach Abigail realized she was starving. Could a nauseous woman feel hunger? During pregnancy, apparently, yes.
“Would you like me to call your husband or something?” he offered. Abigail, who suddenly couldn’t walk a straight line, let him take her arm.
“I’m not—I’m not married,” she said, aware of his firm touch through her suit sleeve. Then she toppled again, this time nearly taking the man down with her. He held her up and steadied her.
“Do you want to sit somewhere—maybe get something to eat?”
Had he read her mind?
“I’ll be late for work,” she murmured halfheartedly.
“You should take it a little easy; you’ve had a shock,” he said, as she limped alongside him, gripping his arm.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, with what she hoped was conviction, stopping to feel if her leg was still bleeding. It was, but at least the flow was finally slowing down. “You fall, you get up.”
He didn’t quite seem to believe that. There she was, his expression implied, no wedding ring. A single woman—an unwanted pregnancy, perhaps.
“You’re happy to take life as it comes, huh?”
Abigail raised her face and met his eyes.
“Happy?” she repeated in wonderment. It was such an old-fashioned word. People used it lightly nowadays, but for her, it had deeper meaning. She wanted happiness; she actually pursued it (as was recommended by the Constitution), but it always seemed to evade her.
Abigail looked closely at the stranger, noticing that he hadn’t shaved. The tiny hairs growing from his skin were a mixture of brown, sand, and gold. She felt like touching them, fully appreciating the way they stood like little wheat stalks together. He had an approachable quality.
“Well, I’m happy right now, to be helping you,” he said, smiling. His eyes were wide and willing. They were shining, almost glittering; if she looked really closely, Abigail could see herself in them.
Her father, a hardscrabble emigrant from South Wales, had no use for frivolity. He used to say, “Happiness is for half-wits.” This was the word by which he labeled contented housewives, frolicking children, and what he called “ethnics.” Was he himself one of the ethnics? In his native UK, yes. Like the Irish (and the Arabs, the Pakistanis, the West Indian blacks, the Jews), the Welsh were considered alien, a dark, elfin folk who liked to drink, sing, and weep. Even in America, where such things hardly signified (as long as you had money), Owen Thomas’s ruddy face, lightbulb-shaped nose, and curly black hair seemed an embarrassment to him. Until it had thinned and unkinked through age, he had gelled his hair backward into a helmet of impenetrable dignity. A neat, thin mustache completed the look of natty selfregard. But none of this made him anything close to “happy.”
“I really think you should eat something.”
“You’re really being gallant,” said Abigail, coming back to the man in front of her. He seemed so gentle, so courtly. The men she tended to “go with” (though these occasions were infrequent) were more the Doberman type. Taut, alert, straining at the limits. Abigail never saw her suitors during work hours. When they met, it was in the dark: restaurants or fancy wine bars, once in a while ending up in her bedroom with its dimmable lighting. These men came predictably loose on aged single malts or flavored vodkas; they then made blunt erotic overtures. If she agreed, they fell tame and whimpering, grateful during the encounter. Afterward, they were silent again, lean and rangy, Dobermen breathing gruffly and slowly until the next chase and retrieval. They saw themselves as real men, career soldiers; like her, they did what they had to do.
What she now had to do was use the bathroom. Then she could eat. As though reading her mind, he steered her to a coffee shop on the corner.
“It’s in the back,” said the nice young man, discreetly letting her run pass him through the doorway so she wouldn’t pee herself.
Sitting, sighing, Abigail reassured herself that she would not always be vulnerable like this. There was only a limited time for pregnancy; afterward, she would certainly be normal again. She would have the baby, drop the extra pounds, and reclaim her good old balance. She wouldn’t be subject to these awful, unpredictable pratfalls.
Just the other day, she had nearly fallen down on the subway. No one had given her a seat, which she took as a politically correct statement that mothers-to-be are not invalids, just “differently able.” Especially those in business clothing, primly enclosed in their corporate armor. She’d been trying to read her Manhattan Law Journal while soaring down the dark path to midtown. Abigail thought she felt fine; she thought she had the rocking and the pitching and the stopping in control. In the end, though, she had landed in the lap of a sour-faced woman in glasses. These were her humiliations for the time being.
To be waterlogged, gourd-like. Not exactly how she wished to be seen after three tough years at law school and nearly seven more at the firm. Sure, she’d passed the bar exam on the first try, and had survived a lengthy stint of hazing—which had not completely ended. (She wasn’t partner yet.) But it was embarrassing to be a woman in the quintessentially delicate state. Pregnancy, Abigail thought,
was a temporary disadvantage that did not fairly represent her. Before, if you’d woken her in the middle of the night, she could still parse sentences and chop up sentiments into their legal components and valences. But now, if you woke her in the middle of the night, she’d rush to the bathroom then fall back into bed like a big, heavy lump.
At this moment, though, unfair as it was, Abigail felt blurry. Were those actual tears in her eyes? There was a pain in her knee as she walked over to the sink to wash her hands, and probably some blood that she didn’t want to look at just yet. Abigail tasted vomit in her throat, a familiar sensation these days. A tear slid down her face and she splashed some cold water on it. She felt ashamed of herself, as though she were not just falling, but failing.
Her dad used to say, “Good old Snowball, never melts.” That was his way of praising Abigail when she was a little girl and didn’t cry when she was hurt or sad. Griping, whining, complaining, weeping—these were signs of weakness, of softening with ambivalence toward the fact pattern. What worldly impact could ambivalence make?
Hardworking and gruff, Owen had built himself up from handyman to superintendent, from superintendent to building manager, and from manager to owner. As a landlord, he was sober and reserved. Whether checking out a basement boiler, meeting a banker, or initiating eviction procedures with his stalwart Armenian lawyer, he wore the same charcoal suit and pressed white short-sleeved shirt. His ties bore the only sign of his past—a tie tack dragon, rampant, clawing. This fierce Welsh icon pierced the middle of an otherwise blank chest.
Abigail’s father was solid; he could make an impact. He had made a huge dent in his daughter, a negative space around which all her will had converged. Behind every successful woman, they say, is a dad who is proud of his girl. Abigail had had that. But she wondered if he’d feel proud of her now, collapsed and weepy, hair in her face.
For a moment, she almost surrendered to self-pity. It had been scary to be down, and now she felt sodden—and her hair did bad things when she perspired. It was curling up and wandering, a damp webwork. A twining, jungly cage of her own unwilling design. She could hardly stand to look at herself in the bathroom mirror.
