The Book of Atlantis Black

by Betsy Bonner

  I agreed to meet Dr. Hayes in person for coffee at the NoMad, a hip Manhattan hotel on Twenty-Eighth and Broadway. Dr. Hayes had a wax-tipped mustache, and marvelous tattoos on his forearms—a line from The Waste Land, another from Shakespeare, and a sleeve of moths. The servers seemed to know and like him.

  I thanked him for helping me, and let him know that I understood “closure” was a myth for most people. When my father died, I told him, his death had receded into the past and taken up a smaller amount of space. What complicated things for me about my sister’s death was that I couldn’t get a simple answer about what literally had happened. Probably “solving the mystery” wouldn’t have brought any more “closure” than if Atlantis (and my mother) had died with no mystery or weirdness. Still, most survivors do get a set of concrete facts to deal with. Or not deal with. It would have been easier to put something certain behind me—what, exactly, did I have to accept?

  I told him that I suspected that Gretchen might have forged one of the toxicology reports (the one involving alcohol, which supposedly proved that Atlantis couldn’t have died of an opiate overdose because the amount in her blood wasn’t enough to kill a person) and mailed it to my mother (or left it in her house). He laughed. So what if she had? When he’d seen the report, he’d thought that translating it had been a waste of his colleague’s time and my money.

  By Tijuana standards, he told me, the investigation into my sister’s death had actually been pretty thorough. The bump on her cranium that had caused a brain hemorrhage was most likely the result of her having fallen facedown on the floor after a heroin overdose. The pancreatic hemorrhage was also most likely the result of an overdose. Dr. Hayes couldn’t say with certainty that the body was my sister’s, but he did say he didn’t think I was crazy. “You’ve inlaid your obsession into the frame of writing a book,” he wrote to me in October 2015. “But mostly I don’t think you are crazy because I very much want you not to be crazy.”

  ·

  I still have questions. At the time of my sister’s disappearance, she had driven away everyone to whom she mattered. Is there anyone now who could tell me what really happened to her? That is, anyone who could be believed?

  I never tried to meet my sister at the Louvre because I knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t—be there. And I also dreaded that she might actually show up. If she were still alive in the year I write this, she’d be forty-two. But she’ll be thirty-one forever.

  My own life has been shaped by what I inherited: most of all, my sister’s story. I’m still living off of her fortune.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am most grateful to my editor, Masie Cochran, and to my agent, Mary Krienke, for their belief in this book; and to all at Tin House for their hard work, especially to Craig Popelars, Nanci McCloskey, Molly Templeton, Diane Chonette, Jeremy Cruz, Elizabeth DeMeo, Alyssa Ogi, Yashwina Canter, Anne Horowitz, and Allison Dubinsky.

  To Tim Adams, Bettina Heffner, Leah Jackson, and Elizabeth MacNeill Misner: thank you for your generous spirits and courageous love.

  To my first readers of early drafts, especially to David Gates, Rachel Paige King, and Paul La Farge: you helped bring this book to life through your tireless questions and encouragement over the years.

  Thanks to the T. S. Eliot House for providing generous support during the editing process.

  Thanks also to Buddy, Stephen Byler, Jane Carr, Christopher Castellani, Ben Downing, Sacha Evans, Nick Flynn, Jennifer Gilmore, Michael Greenberg, Dr. Jonathan Hayes, Kit Heffner, Amy Hempel, Dr. John Heussy, Chloe Honum, Tara Howley, Lee Clay Johnson, Jus’Mayne, Colleen Kane, Kelly Loudenberg, Margot Lurie, Ricardo Maldonado, Deirdre McNamer, Catherine Meehan, Ryan Murphy, Lynn Phillips, Orianna Riley, Wendy Salinger, Bernard Schwartz, Erika Seidman, Jesse Sheidlower, Dr. Stanley Siegel, Wylie Stecklow, Ginger Strand, Catherine Talese, Amanda Turner, Heidy Valbuena, Elizabeth Van Meter, Remy Weber, Jonathan Wells, Joel Whitney, and Rebecca Wolff.

  Thanks to my teachers, and to my creative writing students, for giving me hope.

  BETSY BONNER is the author of the poetry collection Round Lake. She is a former Director of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she now teaches creative writing. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and the T. S. Eliot House. She grew up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and lives in southwestern Vermont.

  Author photo: © Catherine Talese

  “The detective quality of this strong memoir is both maddening and fascinating. The reader is made to feel what it’s like to be denied answers in an essential search.”

  —AMY HEMPEL, Sing to It

  “Atlantis Black was—is?—an extraordinary woman whose descent into madness will leave you spellbound and heartbroken. Betsy Bonner writes with the precision of a poet and the courage of a survivor. I could not put this book down.”

  —DOMENICA RUTA, With or Without You

  “Scrappy and queer, charismatic and enigmatic, the young musician who reinvented herself as Atlantis Black left behind a haunting archive that complicates rather than resolves the narrative of her vibrant, troubled life. In this beautiful exploration of her sister’s life and disappearance, Betsy Bonner has crafted a terse, urgent page-turner that is equally ode, elegy, and mystery.”

  —CHELSEY JOHNSON, Stray City

  “Her manic, self-destructive sister wanted to be famous, but it took Betsy Bonner’s literary gifts to make her a rock star on the page. In mournful, meticulous—and sometimes wryly funny—prose, The Book of Atlantis Black gives us an unforgettable portrait of an impossible yet compelling young woman taken down by her own demons, and fighting every step of the way.”

  —DAVID GATES, A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

  Copyright © 2020 Betsy Bonner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

  Cover design: Diane Chonette

  Cover photo: © Orianna Riley

  First US Edition 2020

  ISBN 9781947793774 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781947793873 (ebook)

  Interior design by Diane Chonette

  www.tinhouse.com