The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  Mattie smiles, transforming her face into that beautiful teenager in the Polaroid photograph. She puts her arm around me. “Oh, that was easy, Alice. With you I see a woman who got stuck in a bad situation to save a little boy. I see a mother who loves her son. I’d have to be a lot older and blinder not to see that.”

  Then she wipes a tear away and turns back to the set, her arm still around me.

  That night when I’m putting Oren to bed (another privilege Mattie has sweet-talked the nuns into giving me), he says to me, “I was wrong about this being a bad place. The bad things that happened here were a long time ago. Everyone here now is really nice. Mattie’s friend Wayne said he’s going to bring his telescope one night. They’re both coming tomorrow to take us to the Cookie Walk. We’re going to carry lanterns and walk through the village and eat as many cookies as we want. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  I tell him I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I don’t ask him about the bad things that happened here a long time ago or how he knows about them. Instead I go the next day at four o’clock—the best time to catch her, Mattie has told me—to Sister Martine to ask her instead.

  “I guess you could say that bad things did happen here,” she tells me. We’re in her office having tea and “biscuits,” which turn out to be cookies. “St. Alban’s ran a home for ‘wayward girls,’ as they were called then, from the 1890s through the 1970s. I came here in the 1960s and the first thing I did was read all the files. It was hair-raising, let me tell you; the maternal and infant mortality rate was five times the contemporary national average. It was clear no one cared very much about those girls and their babies. ‘It is perhaps a blessing,’ one of my predecessors had written, ‘that the poor doves go so quickly to their maker, considering what lives lie ahead of them.’”

  “Wow,” I say, “that’s cold.”

  “As the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno,” Sister Martine responds. “I tried to improve conditions. I enlisted local doctors and health care advocates, wrote many an angry letter to the bishop. But perhaps what helped the most was just changing attitudes toward out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Once it was no longer considered a shameful secret, something to be hidden away, many girls could stay in their own homes rather than come to a place like this. And then, of course, there was Roe v. Wade and girls had other options.”

  Sister Martine must see the shock on my face—a nun remarking favorably on abortion?—because she smiles. “I’m not saying it’s the best option, but it certainly did decrease our numbers. So much so that the diocese threatened to shut us down. I pointed out, though, that there were many other ways to help women and children. And of course there were still girls—and women—who needed a safe place to come and have their babies.”

  “Mattie,” I say. “She had Caleb here.”

  Sister Martine places her hands together in a prayer position and then interlaces her fingers as if she is holding something inside them. “I can’t discuss any of my girls.”

  “I understand,” I say, “only, I wondered . . .”

  “Yes?” she prods when I hesitate. She opens her hands, palms up, and I have the feeling that I could spill whatever secret I wanted into those hands and it would be protected forever, the weight of it taken off my shoulders.

  “I understand you can’t give out anyone else’s record, but what about a person’s own record? The thing is . . . I think I was born here. My adoptive parents lived up here in Ellenville, so I wondered if I have a file and . . . would I be able to see it.”

  Sister Martine leans toward me, elbows on her desk, face grave. “Well,” she says, “as you may know, New York is a closed-records state, which is one of the reasons that if you were indeed born here I would not have been able to keep track of you.”

  I nod. “When my adoptive parents died I ended up in the foster system. I always thought—”

  “That if your birth mother had known she would have come to rescue you?”

  “Yes,” I say, embarrassed that she’s guessed my secret fantasy. I look up and see from the look of compassion on her face that she’s guessed my other one. “It’s not Mattie, is it? I’d hoped . . . when I learned she’d had a baby . . .” I stop, unable to go on, all the longing to belong to someone rising up, cutting off the air in my lungs.

  “That you were her baby?” Sister Martine says so gently it sounds like a prayer.

  I nod, unable to speak.

  Sister Martine gets up, comes around the desk, and perches on the edge of it. She takes my hand. “Do you think Mattie Lane could love you and that boy any more than she already does if you were?”

  I shake my head, letting loose a couple of tears. “No, but . . .”

  “But nothing.” Sister Martine clucks her tongue. “If you want to find your birth parents, I will help you. Mattie will help you. She and I found her own daughter a few years back. She’s happily settled in Buffalo with a family of her own. She’s never looked for her birth mother. She doesn’t need me, Mattie said when I asked if she wanted to make contact. But you do. And if you ask me, you’re the daughter Mattie needs. Just as Oren needs you to be his mother.”

  I nod and dry my eyes. Sister Martine gives me a tissue and a glass of water. Then she reminds me that our friends are gathering on the hill to go into town for the Cookie Walk. I get up to go and find myself embraced in Sister Martine’s strong, bony grip. “Go on,” she says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  It occurs to me that Sister Martine needs a few minutes alone to collect herself. What must it feel like to watch a baby she handed over to the world sit in front of her all grown up? Does she wonder what she could have done differently to make my life easier? Will Mattie?

  When I get outside I see it’s almost dark, the sky a lovely clear violet, like Mattie’s eyes. I see her standing on the hill with Oren and Wayne and Doreen. They’re all holding lanterns; as I watch, Mattie starts lighting them. Atefeh, the woman from Stewart’s, is there too, with her two kids. When all the lanterns are lit they make a pattern, like a constellation, against the sky. But it feels incomplete.

  A few nights ago, when I was putting Oren to bed, he told me something he had read about in a book that Wayne gave him. He said that hundreds of years ago an astronomer had thought there might be stars we couldn’t see. He’d been watching the way stars moved and thought there was an unseen force pulling them into one orbit or another. The astronomer called that force dark stars.

  Watching the group, I picture the people who have made them the way they are: Mattie’s parents, Frank, Davis, Wayne’s dumbass brother-in-law, Doreen’s son, Atefeh’s brother and husband. I picture the people who have shaped my life: my birth parents, my adoptive parents, Travis and Lisa, Davis, Mattie, Sister Martine. All the dark stars have brought us to this particular moment and this particular pattern. We may not see them, but they’re always here with us, pulling us out of orbit and bringing us back in.

  Oren and Mattie lift their heads at the same moment and, seeing me, grin and wave as if pulled by the same force. I feel its tug too, and move forward to join them.

  Acknowledgments

  I thought a lot about family and community during the writing of this book. I’m grateful for the community of support I’ve found at William Morrow, starting with the amazing Katherine Nintzel, the best editor I could have wished for, and Vedika Khanna, Camille Collins, Molly Waxman, Shailyn Tavella, Rachel Meyers, and everyone else who has made William Morrow such a welcoming home. I wouldn’t have found that home without the faith and hard work of my agent, Robin Rue, and her assistant, Beth Miller. Writers House has been a true sanctuary.

  As always, I’m grateful for my family for their love and support: my husband, Lee Slonimsky; my daughter, Maggie Vicknair; my stepdaughter, Nora Slonimsky; and her partner, Jeremy Levine. I am thankful to count so many friends as family. Thank you to Wendy Rossi Gold for reading everything from the beginning and Ethel Wesdorp for thinking up the title.

  And lastly, I couldn’t
have written this book without the good people of Family of Woodstock, most especially Tamara Cooper, Susan Carroll, Ron Van Warmer, Deanne-Harriet Hoffman, Alan Rovitzky, Gayle Jamison, Nancy Meyer, Micheil Cannistra, and Sharon DeVries. Thank you for showing me that there’s no limit to how far we can extend the circle of family.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Carol Goodman

  About the Book

  * * *

  Finding Family

  Reading Group Guide

  Read On

  * * *

  An Excerpt from The Other Mother

  About the Author

  Meet Carol Goodman

  CAROL GOODMAN is the critically acclaimed author of twenty novels, including The Widow’s House, winner of the 2018 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and teaches writing and literature at SUNY New Paltz and The New School.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  About the Book

  Finding Family

  In the fall of 2016 I was teaching at SUNY New Paltz when a student came to my office to explain why she was behind in her work. I’d heard a lot of excuses in my years of teaching, but nothing quite like this. My student had fled an abusive marriage in the city and was living under an assumed name upstate with her two young children. She was struggling to make ends meet while also dealing with the post-traumatic stress of surviving domestic abuse. Of course I gave her an extension and asked what else I could do. She said that it had been helpful just to talk to me.

  That didn’t really seem like enough, though. I wanted to help her more, but I didn’t know how. I asked some of my colleagues, and the English department secretary told me that there was a place called Family of Woodstock that gave assistance and counseling to survivors of domestic abuse. I looked up the organization and was impressed to learn of all the services it provided, from food pantries to domestic violence shelters to a crisis hotline. I was happy to have such a resource to tell my student about.

  She’d beat me to it. The next time I spoke to her she told me someone else had told her about Family. She’d gone to its New Paltz branch and received help in obtaining Section 8 housing and finding a job. She was hopeful and optimistic. The people at Family had been wonderful.

  I was hopeful for my student too and made a mental note to check out Family at the end of the semester. Listening to my student had struck a chord with me. Domestic abuse had been an issue in my own life. Years before, when I fled an abusive marriage, I had been fortunate enough to have family to go to, but I was well aware that many women did not have that resource. How wonderful that there was a place like Family for those women and children—and for men too. I told myself I should volunteer there—someday—when I had time.

  I also thought, as I do whenever something truly touches me, that I might write something about a woman fleeing an abusive relationship who calls a crisis hotline. I began imagining a woman and a child on a bus driving through the snowy Catskills and another woman in an old house getting a call in the night. I started making notes for the book that would become The Night Visitors.

  I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to volunteer at Family under normal circumstances. I was indeed busy, teaching three college classes, working on a new book, editing the previous book. But then something very abnormal happened: the 2016 election. When I awoke on November 9, 2016, I thought about how much more vulnerable so many people were about to become: immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ people, women. I wanted to do something. Which is when I remembered my intention to someday volunteer for Family. Maybe that someday had arrived. I could at least call and set the process in motion.

  So I did. I called the hotline and a volunteer told me I could come in and fill out an application for hotline training. The next session began in February. I told the volunteer that I’d fill out an application, but she must have picked up something in my voice, because she told me to hold on. When she came back she asked, “What are you doing right now?”

  “Sitting here feeling crappy,” I told her.

  “Do you want to come in and help with a mailing?” she asked.

  I told her I’d be right over.

  I spent that day sealing newsletters with round stickers and chatting with a couple of lovely women. We didn’t talk about the election because, as I was to learn, we don’t talk politics at Family, since we serve everyone no matter what their political leanings. I watched volunteers bag up food from the food pantry and answer phone calls from strangers all across the country. Family is the oldest continuously running crisis hotline in the United States and handles all kinds of problems: its motto is “Any Problem Under the Sun.” I signed myself and my daughter up to help serve food at Family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner, and I registered for the hotline training, wondering how in the world I was going to fit that into my busy schedule but determined to do so.

  In the months between that day and when I began volunteer training, I started The Night Visitors; by the time I began my shifts on the hotline I had finished most of the book. It may seem surprising that I wrote most of the book before I began working at Family, but I’m glad I did. The first thing I learned in my training is that everything you hear at Family—on the phone or in the building—and any personal confidences shared during training are completely confidential. I know that I never used anything that I heard at Family in this book because I’d written most of it before I started there. I did ask in my training if I could share procedural methods from the training and was told I could. So I was able to give my character Mattie some of the techniques I learned in training. Mattie knows how to brace her body for a physical blow and how to ask someone if she is thinking about suicide. I also learned, though, that much of what Mattie does goes against procedure, but by then I knew Mattie was the kind of woman who might throw out the rules when she had to.

  The people I have met at Family inform the spirit of this book. Their dedication, selflessness, good humor, and kindness never cease to amaze me. They gave me hope in a year that seemed at times bleak and hopeless, when it seemed that the selfish and opportunistic had gained sway in the country. Family taught me that there are kindly ones willing to help the vulnerable and that family is not determined by biology—it’s what we make from the people we help and are helped by. And in the end, that’s what I wanted for my characters Mattie, Alice, and Oren—to find their family of choice.

  Reading Group Guide

  Do you consider Frank a sympathetic character? Did his death change your opinion of him?

  How does the hidden house layered within Mattie’s house symbolize her relationship with Caleb and the rest of her family?

  How does the book’s wintry setting affect the events that take place? How does it constrain and aid the characters?

  How did the alternating points of view between Alice and Mattie shape your impressions of both women?

  How does the Greek mythology featured throughout the book inform the book’s setting, characters, and events?

  At the start of chapter thirteen, Oren decides Mattie is Princess Leia and Alice is Rey in their game of Star Wars. To what degree does this reflect Mattie and Alice’s relationship? Are there other roles you would assign them or some of the other characters in the book?

  Many characters are either running from the past or stuck in the past. In both cases, voices call to them from the past, whether it’s Mattie’s mom, Caleb, or Davis. How effectively does each of the characters deal with these voices? Are there voices from your past that echo in your ears?

  Forgiveness and vengeance are major themes in the book. How do they balance and counteract each other?

  How does the book’s ending subvert society’s expectations of how families are supposed to look and the roles and respon
sibilities people are supposed to take on?

  To what degree do you think Caleb’s actions were driven by vengeance versus love?

  Support between women plays a big role in the book, not only with Mattie and Alice but with Doreen, Atefeh, and Sister Martine as well. How does this contrast with the men in the book? How do you think this will affect Oren as he grows up?

  Read On

  An Excerpt from The Other Mother

  “Can you tell me when you first thought about hurting your child?”

  “It was a few days after we’d come home from the hospital. I was carrying her down the stairs . . . there’s a steep drop from the landing and when I looked over it I suddenly had this . . . picture in my head of myself lifting her over the banister and dropping her.”

  “And did you ever do anything like that? Deliberately drop her . . . or hurt her in any other way?”

  “No! It was just a thought. I’d never hurt my baby . . . in fact, I did everything I could to make sure I didn’t hurt her . . . to keep her safe.”

  “What exactly did you do to keep yourself from hurting her?”

  . . .

  “Ms. XX?”

  . . .

  “Ms. XX, what did you do to keep your child safe?”

  Chapter One

  She’s crying again.

  I don’t know why I say again. Sometimes it seems as if she’s done nothing but cry since she was born. As if she’d come into this world with a grudge.