Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

by Chris Bohjalian

  So, Lisa and Lisa’s mom bring my Maggie to me almost every day. I know she’s well cared for and has a good home. The plan is that I’m also going to live with the Currans when everyone decides I’m not a total basket case. We’ll see. Lisa’s mom had been looking for me most of those nine months I was hiding, posting things online that I would have seen that day in the Burlington library if I’d spent maybe another five minutes surfing around Facebook or the sites where my name appeared.

  These days, I still steer clear of what they call the social networks. It’s not that I’m antisocial. I’m just not ready for a reunion—even a digital one. I’m not ready for most of my friends, and I’m not sure they’re ready for me. Lisa answers my questions when I ask about Ethan or Dina or Claire. She doesn’t tell me much about the other Cape Abenaki families, and I don’t inquire. As I suspected, a lot of them have moved far away. Of course, none of the ones who’ve remained have tried to visit. It’s all just too awkward. And they have their own problems, right?

  I have not seen Cameron either. They don’t put it quite this way, but the implication is that they don’t want me to see him. They don’t think it would be good for him, and I can tell they’re a little afraid I would try and kidnap him or something. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Some days I can barely get out of bed. But he’s alive. He’s alive and he’s healthy. I didn’t accidentally kill him. They say that—finally—he is with a seriously awesome foster family, but they won’t tell me anything more.

  Most days I eat a little and I write a little and I read a little. I watch DVDs of old sitcoms. No TV. No Hulu. No iTunes. My choice. That’s too close to what’s out there.

  And I sleep—I sleep a lot—which I’m going to do right now, thank you very much. They don’t know that I stole a steel cutting knife from the kitchen. I don’t completely trust myself, but knowing it’s there helps. It helps a lot.

  So, good night. I’m sorry.

  Please know that: I am really, really sorry. I wish I could have stopped even one heart from breaking …

  But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to begin by thanking three people whose work is dramatically more important than anything I do.

  First, there is Annie Ramniceanu, associate executive director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services in Burlington, Vermont (www.spectrumvt.org). Annie is not merely an immensely gifted therapist and counselor with Spectrum, working daily with teens battling mental illness and substance abuse; she is also unbelievably patient with novelists asking relentless streams of questions. For half a year she endured my interruptions and helped me to understand the demons that mark Emily Shepard. Her efforts on behalf of young adults in northern Vermont are inspiring.

  Second, there is the leadership team at Fairewinds Energy Education, Arnie and Maggie Gundersen. Arnie was an Atomic Energy Commission Fellow and a licensed reactor operator who, as a senior vice president, managed or coordinated projects at seventy nuclear power plants across America. Maggie worked in public information and executive recruitment in the nuclear power industry. Today, through Fairewinds, they strive to educate the public and legislators about the realities of nuclear power—and the issues with aging plants around the world. They volunteered enormous amounts of their time to teach me about the dangers of nuclear power, how a plant works, and what Emily’s father’s life might have been like. I encourage you to visit the Fairewinds website (www.fairewinds.org), where you can learn more about nuclear power and find an extensive bibliography.

  I’m so proud to call these three people—Annie and Arnie and Maggie—friends.

  In addition, I want to thank Mimi Dakin, archives specialist at Amherst College—where many of Emily Dickinson’s papers are housed—who read an early draft of this novel and graciously shared with me her expertise and insights into the poet. Thanks also to Dr. Mike Kiernan, an emergency room physician at Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, Vermont, for helping me with the scenes at the hospitals in this novel. I also want to send big shout-outs to Rebecca Schinsky for showing me where the work of Emily Dickinson and the theme from Gilligan’s Island intersect, and to Matthew Furtsch for teaching me about duct tape art. As wiser people than I have observed, you just can’t make this stuff up.

  There were many books that were helpful. Among them? Chernobyl’s Atomic Legacy: 25 Years After Disaster, by Jon Glez; The Day We Bombed Utah: America’s Most Lethal Secret, by John G. Fuller; Nuclear Power: A Very Short Introduction, by Maxwell Irvine; Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Shadow of Rocky Flats, by Kristen Iversen; and Public Meltdown: The Story of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, by Richard A. Watts. I also want to express my admiration for the remarkable Karen Hesse. Her poignant, powerful, and beautiful novel for young adults, Phoenix Rising, chronicles the effects of a fictional nuclear plant accident in southern Vermont. It was published in 1994—a full generation before Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.

  My thanks as well to Jane Gelfman and her staff at Gelfman Schneider—Cathy Gleason and Victoria Marini; to Arlynn Greenbaum at Authors Unlimited; and to William Heyward, Todd Doughty, John Fontana, Kelly Gildea, Suzanne Herz, William Heus, Judy Jacoby, Jennifer Marshall, Sonny Mehta, Beth Meister, Anne Messitte, Roz Parr, Russell Perreault, John Pitts, Andrea Robinson, Bill Thomas, and the whole wondrous team at the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

  And, once more, I am grateful first and foremost to my extraordinary editor there, Jenny Jackson. I love talking with Jenny about books and (yes) about my books, because, pure and simple, her ideas always make them better. Often they make them a lot better.

  I am so fortunate to be married to Victoria Blewer. This is the nineteenth book of mine—seventeen published, two unpublished—that she has read. Usually she is reading the early drafts that no one should have to endure. And, it’s worth noting, she reads them for free. That’s love.

  Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Grace Experience Blewer, Victoria’s and my daughter. Grace was nineteen when I was writing this novel, and she was instrumental in the creation of Emily’s voice. She was always there to answer my questions about tone, and she taught me a lot—and I mean a lot—of new expressions.

  I thank you all so, so much.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Bohjalian is the author of seventeen books, including such New York Times bestsellers as The Light in the Ruins, The Sandcastle Girls, The Double Bind, and Skeletons at the Feast. His novel Midwives was a number one New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and three of his books have become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). His novels have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage, and Salon. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter. Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook or Twitter.