The Eves
Page 1
what people are saying about the eves
“Brilliant! I laughed, I cried, I learned. What more can you ask for from a novel?” –Kathy Myerburg
“Even after I finished The Eves, I kept wondering about the characters and their laughter and their hard conversations. I especially miss being able to check in with Tobias.” –Bill Wild
“An incredibly riveting story. The characters, and the vivid descriptions of people, places, and events, immediately draw you in. This is a book I could not put down.” –Marilyn Kessler
I just finished The Eves and I’m sitting here with a flood of emotions going through my entire being. This is a gift of a book. The songs quoted, with listen links, are spot on and a special bonus. Totally, this is a movie in the making. Oprah needs to read it! Every woman on our planet needs to understand that her story is a priceless gift to the next! –Tammy Barnett
“This is an engaging book. The characters are fully drawn and interesting; the storyline connected me from the start, the movie can’t be far behind.” –Nicholas Kuffel
“A novel filled with style, dignity, and humor. A tightly and smartly written book, every word counts!” –Antonia Moreno Essig
“I enjoyed turning every page, until the last one. This is a book that we will be talking about for a long time.” –Bette Blitzer Mills
also by grace sammon
Battling the Hamster Wheel™ Strategies for Making High School Reform Work (Corwin Press, 2007)
Creating and Sustaining Small Learning Communities: Strategies and Tools for Transforming High Schools (Corwin Press 2008)
Copyright © 2019, Grace M. Sammon
All rights reserved.
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. Requests for authorization should be addressed to: grace@gracesammon.net.
Cover design by Ivica Jandrijevic
Cover illustration by Elena Brighittini, artstation.com/chwee
Author photo by StephanieDubskyPhotography.com
Interior layout and design by www.writingnights.org
Book preparation by Chad Robertson
Edited by Nancy Johnson
ISBN: 979-8-6489-4720-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data:
Names: Sammon, Grace, author
Title: The Eves – A Novel / Grace Sammon
Description: Independently Published, 2020
Identifiers: ISBN 9798648947207 (Perfect bound) |
Subjects: | Fiction | Grief | Coming of Age | Family life | Aging
Classification: Pending
LC record pending
Independently Published
Printed in the United States of America.
Printed on acid-free paper.
The Eves is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The links suggested in the Overture and Coda are suggested for your enjoyment not for purposes of monetarization.
dedication
With much love, gratitude, respect, and remembrance for
Josephine Theresa Caruso Sammon
Nearly two decades after your death, you still have reach!
To the two best contributions I have made to this Earth,
I love you beyond measure.
For my husband, patient, kind, and ever positive that it will all work out.
You are all my dash.
contents
what people are saying about the eves
also by grace sammon
dedication
contents
overture
eighteen hundred square feet and a cat
yesterday: forty acres and a mule
first, we walk
joan
hamlet act 1, scene 3
e
the grange project
jan
just for today
e2
next steps
oh, would some power the giftie gie us,
to see ourselves as others see us
the dash -
food for thought
the tug
eve
africa
the crater
re-entry
the naming
deirdre
two chairs
two truths and the lie
the blur
the same and then some
things happen in threes
jubilation
inquiry
not lost in translation
mother’s day
half full
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
dog days of summer
second harvest
reach
elizabeth
two years later: what’s past is prologue
coda
author’s notes
book club
discussion guide —basic book banter
book banter bonus
session with sammon
about the author
next steps
overture
Your children are not your children.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
Excerpted from Our Children
— Kahlil Gibran
Listen to it performed in its entirety by Sweet Honey in the Rock: https://youtu.be/HCVvoL_F5gA
eighteen hundred square feet and a cat
S
onia, Erica, and I drive in silence to my house, the roof of the convertible still down. The smell of earth and manure seeps from our clothes and mingles with the crisp Autumn air. Today provided so many images, statements, textures, and people to think about. Our silence is wrapped in the warm glow of Erica’s camera from the back seat as she flips through the hundreds of digital images she has shot.
I’m unsettled and can’t quite describe it. I’ve dropped out of so much. I’ve avoided being with Sonia, especially when she has her fifteen-year-old daughter, Erica, with her. I’ve avoided being around the energy, self-righteousness, and the sense of immortality of youth. I find that it scrapes too much at the wounds on my heart.
Sonia drops me off and deftly makes a three point turn on the street made narrow by cars parked closely on either side. I climb the three steps to the door of my row house. I kick today’s still-virgin, plastic wrapped Washington Post to the side of the porch. There, it joins weeks’ worth of unopened newspapers and an assortment of empty paint cans I’ve been intending to trash. Before I can get the key in the door Sonia has stopped in front of the house. As she sweeps the one wisp of errant hair back behind her ear, she reaches for a lipstick. Looking in the rear-view mirror she says “Jessica, I watched you today. You did not put your hand in the paint or leave your mark, but I saw you trace the hands of the others. Enough!” she says, cutting off whatever she thinks I am about to say. “Jess-cee-ka,” she clips, her eyes now piercing into me. “This hiding from the world stops today. It is decided. You will write about that place.”
It was an emphatic statement.
Revving the car, she is gone in an instant, with only an eye roll and a shrug of shoulders from Erica in the back seat.
As soon as I open my door the heat from the waist-high, silver-painted radiator hits me. Gabler raises her h
ead just long enough to acknowledge me before she curls back up on the shelf over the radiator. She is twelve pounds of cat, and nearly fourteen years of age. She’s a beautiful Tabby, but Gabler now pales in comparison to her theatrically-strong, Hedda Gabler namesake.
Roy Gillis, my general contractor, has a soft spot for cats. He has not only built her the shelf to perch on but also a rather attractive little flight of stairs to help her get to the warmth of the radiator. Like everything Roy does, it is methodical and done with great attention to detail. The little staircase matches my main staircase exactly, complete with banister and newel posts. The fact that these two pieces sit “kitty corner” from each other isn’t lost on me. It was a sweet gesture.
I peel off my sweatshirt and toss it on to the bicycle parked at the foot of the staircase. There, it joins an array of clothes that don’t ever quite make it upstairs. I toss the house keys into the bicycle basket where they sink to the bottom of an oleo of odds and ends. As I head down the hallway towards the kitchen, I almost realize that the place is in more disarray than I’d like. I’d also admit, but only to myself, that there’s probably something wrong with my being in the house less than a minute and the fact that I am already in the kitchen pouring vodka into a crystal tumbler. Neat, no ice, just the biting warmth of a double shot of vodka over which to mull the day and Sonia’s parting comment, a mandate that I write about this day and the people we’ve met. It is an intrusive demand. I don’t need to become one of Sonia’s many personal projects.
Sipping my vodka, I turn and lean against the cabinets on the east wall of the kitchen, relaxing into the safety of this space, I see the note taped to the counter. Roy does this daily as he leaves. It will outline what he’s done and where we need to go next with the renovation. Most days, I read them.
“Jes,” it begins. He’s the only one who calls me that. To everyone else I am, and have always been, Jessica. Unless, of course, you add the always-a-warning-that-you-are-in-trouble middle name. “Jessica Marie” coming out of either parent’s mouth was enough to make me stop what I was doing and coil with guilt, justified or otherwise.
To Roy, however, I was, immediately, just “Jes,” not even bothering with the second “s.” He must think I am a lot more uncomplicated and straightforward than I feel.
“Jes, the plastering on the wall in the hall is done.”
“I’ve got the new kitchen door in. I also installed the up-dated humidity gadget for the space over the windows in the dining room—I’m glad we found a better home for the orchids than the floor of your bathtub. You’ve probably noticed that already.”
I hadn’t.
“Oh, by the way, I ignored you on the crown molding in the front parlor. Think you are wrong on that, but we can discuss. It got late so I am walking over to Columbia Rd. and picking up Cuban. Should be back in about thirty minutes. I’m counting on you being hungry. No obligation to share a meal, but we can talk about the next stage of the renovation if you want. Meanwhile, if you are reading this, you beat me back, go look at the parlor. RLG (6:37p)”
6:37p. Roy is nothing if not precise. He is also patient. I started this project nearly a year ago thinking I could quickly and gracefully sail through a complete renovation of my hundred-year-old quintessential DC row house, all 1800-plus square feet of it. The idea was that it would help me renovate my spirit. It’s not turning out that way. Too many memories.
I have to admit that what we have accomplished, however, is lovely. I’ve wanted to preserve much of the 1900s feel of the house while I upgrade it to a place of elegance and comfort. Comfort, what would that look like?
The kids and I moved here over 20 years ago, after the divorce. When I first looked at this place it had been leased out to college students for decades. Layers of paint later, it still looks like they live here. Ryn was just two-and-a-half and Adam was an ever-so-tiny three months old. Washington Capitol University had hired me to work in its undergraduate division. With that one bit of security, I left my husband James behind in Sarasota to continue running his plastic surgery practice, to work on the commission planning the regional medical school, and to pursue his desire for youth and beauty—both his and others.
I chose this house, in an area that was once considered an “outskirt suburb of Washington, DC” because it was within walking distance of good schools, was in a diverse neighborhood, and because I could be at the National Zoo pushing a stroller within minutes. The streets are heavily tree-lined, and you can imagine a different era as these row houses began to spring up. In the 1900s, Helen Hayes, First Lady of the American Theater, grew up here, so did Walter Johnson, one of the legends of the original Senators baseball team. The neighborhood is listed on the District’s historic registry as one of the ‘original escapes from the city.’ Escape sounded exactly like what I needed after the divorce, and I’ve cherished my ability to do just that these last three years. What did Sonia accuse me of? Hiding? Ridiculous!
Feeling the vodka warm me, I ponder Roy’s note and review our progress. The first-floor renovations included taking down some walls and starting on the installation of a bathroom. These are the only spaces I’ve really let Roy and his workmen address in detail. I love the new space between the kitchen and dining room. Roy captured exactly what I imagined. Now that we’ve taken down the west wall of the relatively small kitchen, it opens to the large dining room forming a wonderful space for entertaining. If I entertained. The entire south wall of the dining room, to my left as I look out from the kitchen, is shared by eight-foot-tall windows and a built-in window seat that runs the length of the room. Roy’s built in a clever hot house with a humidity function across the top of the windows for the orchids. Orchids, outrageously prized here, and ridiculously simple to grow in Sarasota. For decades, a friend of mine there kept sending me varieties. Keeping them in a humid bathroom kept them, mostly, alive.
Roy has divided the kitchen and dining room spaces with low cabinets, opening on either side into each room. For the counter tops he has found the perfect piece of stone. “Catholic church altar white” or “tombstone white” marble was what I requested. He found the piece with just the slightest striations of black. It feels thick to the hand as well as, somehow, to the eye. Around the rim there is a pencil-thin groove, pleasant to run your hand around, and useful in catching spills. Three small hand-blown blue glass lights dangle above the counter with sufficient light and a dimmer on the wall to control for mood. Roy argued for four, I insisted on three. The counter has just enough overhang on one side that three leather-topped stools slide neatly underneath, opening the possibility of three people sharing a space, reading the paper, eating. Even so, I usually eat in the upstairs office or in the parlor.
Walking through the dining room, I marvel how Roy has beautifully refinished the doors separating it from the front parlor. He’s even been able to preserve the original push-in light switches, top for on, bottom for off. I slide open the heavy pocket doors. I am sure that Roy has closed them for effect so that I will be impressed at his work from today and a room transformed.
The room smells earthy, transporting me to days when my father did home projects. Sawdust shavings are swept neatly in a pile to be vacuumed up later. The bed I’ve brought down from upstairs, the bottom of one of the kid’s trundles, is to my left, neatly covered with a drop cloth. I sleep in here most nights now. The piano to the right is one that once belonged to my parents. A fireplace, with its twin above in my bedroom, hasn’t worked since the kids were little. There are piles of papers and boxes and Gabler’s kitty litter tray in a corner. If you could ignore all this, you would notice that Roy was exactly right about the crown molding. It is the perfect touch. It provides the elegance of a distant era and it brings your eye up to the really wonderful twelve-foot ceilings that give the small room a sense of classic enormity. I am learning that Roy sees what I cannot.
He rings the bell announcing his arrival before walking right in. His signature, “Greetings
, greetings,” and a quick, “Hello beast,” directed at Gabler, come wafting in along with the smell of spices and chilies, meat, and rice. He’s a bundle of energy. At 65, it seems he can’t sit still for a minute. He quickly eyes his handiwork in the parlor, gives me a wry smile, and heads straightaway to put the bags down in the kitchen as he babbles.
“Hey, how was your day, did it work out as planned, what was Erica’s reaction to everything, are you hungry?” These, all separate questions, rush out of his mouth as one run-on sentence before I have a chance to answer any one of them. He continues, “I bought yucca frita with garlic sauce to share, seafood paella in saffron sauce for you, black beans and pork for me. I also bought wine, but see you have water. Should we eat here at the counter or did you want to sit in the parlor and admire the molding?”
He winks after his last sentence. It’s all streams of consciousness for him. I haven’t said a word since he’s walked in and he already has the meal laid out so we can help ourselves. I opt for paper plates versus china and unwrap the plastic forks from the restaurant. I hand him a bottle opener and a wine glass. With his back to me, I pour myself more vodka.
As he bustles about and babbles, lathering butter on the warm Cuban bread, I wonder if he is another Sonia project or an add-on to mine? Sonia was his first client and she has passed him around to others. Roy’s business, “Gillis Custom Remodeling: creating homes of grace and classic style” is only a few years old. He used to be one of the chief executives at Morgan Mac Brokerage before it tanked along with the rest of the country’s economy. He’s amazingly even in demeanor for having weathered the trauma of those days. I suppose the golden parachute he received cushioned the fall and gave him the excuse he needed to leave the industry and his third wife. His soft New England accent comes out when he uses specific words making him sound, in part, like the man in the old Pepperidge Farm commercials I remember. Sonia tells me he’s classically trained in music, speaks German fluently, and seems to know his way not only around carpentry, plumbing, fabrics, but also women. He seems far more complicated than a “Roy.” He should carry a name like Jonathan, Garret, or some such.