B0042JSO2G EBOK (29 page)

Down in the cellar they were slicing white pineapple and slabs of white whale meat
Nora where’s Nora?
They were cutting white flesh
where was her heart?
She used to have a madonna in gold leaf by her bed
she said she’d never leave me
she used to have a white halter dress she used to sing in the choir she trimmed the girls’ hair she had a rose garden
Nora

I’m right here

This was not just a day trip, her parents were going on a pilgrimage

We’ll say a prayer for you
the smell of rose water, you clipped your finger in and made the sign of the cross
I better go they said I better go
ribbons marked the place in the rice pages
have you forgotten? I’m right here don’t forget
think of those less fortunate
don’t forget, that’s nonsense, don’t forget, stop being absurd

Let’s turn you over

The thing is it only hurts when it hurts
she said her prie-dieus
I better go
her mother taught her to make
stew first brown the meat
they had cake at tea she took a sunbath
don’t be absurd
they celebrated D-Day by taking a swim
don’t be ridiculous
she bought a red winter coat an evening dress from Bonwit Teller she tried on a darling bathing suit but they had no charge at Neal’s
but the thing is it hurts all the time
they went starlight coasting she had lunch with Lila at Schraffts’ he brought her a gardenia they talked about two things what they did was a secret
that’s nonsense
Frank was in the parlor shaking change in his pocket it had snowed the steps were deep and white after the party they went to bed at six they hit a snowbank on the way home and had to crawl in the window his cheek was hot he lifted her
the way you looked made me want to kiss you
her mouth turned into a sea anemone a hand was clamped over her mouth
one day there will be no dawn
they went to a double feature she forgot her wallet and scarf they walked home
I don’t have any news
the tar was warm through her tennis shoes the trees were black
that’s alright you don’t have to say anything
she might have had another life
don’t be absurd
another woman had her life he carried it off in his pocket
it endures inside he said
she was a tray of bones she was pregnant again
where is inside? can we go there together?
other people were living in her apartment a cyclone was coming her father went up to the church balcony without warning anyone about the storm
it is all in the mind
the baby was wrapped in a blanket then it began to unravel in the wind till all that was left was a little wooden stick
there are no oceans in the mind
she was the same age as her mother
first there is the world then the mind comes after
her soul was turning down
so being there first is important after all
there was no more
stay like that always
she was so small
she says she’ll never leave me
no more to say or do
or think or be
don’t be that way that’s nonsense
he once touched her lips
then what are you doing
that was
don’t stop
that was
don’t leave
that was all
don’t forget don’t be absurd don’t be
that was
stay like that always
don’t forget me
don’t be absurd I won’t
don’t forget me I
will always I will never I will always

It could happen anytime. It could happen tonight.

Yes well we thought that Thursday.

You can’t tell. Nora said you can’t predict.

Was Dr. Baker here this morning?

Around noon he came.

What did he say?

That it could be anytime.

Very helpful.

Would it make a difference if we knew? I mean really.

We could … I don’t know … plan. We could … we’d just know.

It wouldn’t make a difference. We’d still be waiting. That’s all we can do. Be here and wait.

I wouldn’t
want
to know myself, Nina said.

I wonder if she’s finished up there, Teddy said.

We can wait another minute.

Is that the fountain on out there?

No.

Yes it is. Listen.

Who turned it on?

They all looked at each other. No one spoke.

God, Constance said.

It’s a nice sound, Margie said.

They listened to the water running in the dark.

I’m going to have to go.

Yes, I know.

Her mouth was parted and her breath rattled in her throat. After a silence she said, Will you come back.

Of course!

Tomorrow? You’ll come back tomorrow?

I’ll do my best. But it may have to be the day after.

He waited a moment or two then said very softly, Are you asleep? Little angel?

No, I’m not asleep.

I will try to come tomorrow. But it’s complicated. It’s been lovely to see you, he said.

Yes, she said. So lovely. My father used to call me angel, she murmured.

I won’t say good-bye.

No, she said. Don’t.

He did not come the next day, he did not come the day after. He did not come again.

1. Minot gives the novel an epigraph from William Faulkner: “I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.” How does this quotation relate to
Evening?
Does Ann try to “conquer” time?

2. Minot renders Ann’s thoughts in what might be called stream-of-consciousness. Which things does Ann remember most distinctly? Which does she remember least distinctly? Which does she repress? What does the relative weight she allows each memory tell us about the emotional shape of her life?

3. Outsiders see Ann rather differently than she sees herself. Her daughter Constance, for instance, says that “her big thing” is “her stuff”; “That’s what she cared about, her house and her pictures and all her things” [p. 129]. Her daughters imply that she doesn’t laugh much [p. 32]. The doctor’s wife says Ann is “just like other women, maybe a little more stylish if you had to say something, but like other women” [p. 12]. What, if anything, does this elderly Ann have in common with the young, passionate Ann she still feels herself to be? What does this dichotomy imply about the differences between our inner selves and the outer person our friends and family see?

4. What might have attracted Ann to each of her three husbands? How did she come to view each of them as the years went by? How does the language in which Ann recalls her marriages differ from the language in which she recalls Harris, and what does this difference in language tell us about her feelings?

5. Ann wishes that she “might have been able to read the spirit within herself and would not have spent her life as if she were only halfway in it” [p. 137], then goes on to reflect that “her life had not been long enough for her to know the whole of herself, it had not been long enough or wide” [ibid]. In what ways has it not been wide enough? Does the fault for this lie with the cruelty of fate, or with Ann herself? If fault lies with Ann, what might she have done to make things different?

6. How would you describe each of Ann’s children? How has each been molded and shaped by his or her relationship with her? How does each of them behave toward her? Has the essential sadness of Ann’s life rubbed off on them?

7. How has Paul’s death affected Ann, Teddy, and the other children? Has it made them closer, or estranged them from one another? How, and at what times, is Ann compelled to remember Paul?

8. What sort of a person is Harris, really? What do you deduce about him and about his feelings, principles, and desires from his behavior, from what others say about him, and from the short section written from his point of view [p. 232-233]?

9. In one of Ann’s imaginary discussions with Harris, he says that she might have become a little “hard” [page 224]. Does this seem a fair assessment, judging from what you know of the older Ann? If so, how does this hardness manifest itself and why has she become hard?

10. How does Minot thematically link Buddy’s fate with the fate of Ann and Harris’s romance? In what ways is this particular weekend the turning point in Ann’s life, and how has Buddy’s fate intensified this process of change?

11. Does Ann ever feel responsible for what happened to Buddy? Does Harris? Does a sense of responsibility for this tragedy, or a lack of one, have any specific effect on Ann’s future life?

12. Ann conducts a number of imagined conversations with Harris in which the two meet again, for the first time in forty years. What sort of person is this elderly, imaginary Harris? Is he the sort of character you can imagine the young Harris growing into? How do you think the real sixty-five-year-old Harris might remember Ann?

13. If Ann and Harris had married, what sort of a life might they have had? Would they have been happy together? Might Ann have been unhappy and unfulfilled even with Harris?

Susan Minot’s first novel,
Monkeys
, was published in a dozen countries and received the Prix Femina Étranger in France. She is the author of
Lust & Other Stories, Folly, Poems 4
A.M., and
Rapture
, and wrote the screenplay for Bernardo Bertolucci’s
Stealing Beauty
, and she co-wrote with Michael Cunningham the screenplay for the film adaptation of
Evening
.

Monkeys

Lust & Other Stories

Folly Poems 4 A.M.

Rapture

Evening

EVENING

During a summer weekend on the coast of Maine, twenty-five-year-old Ann Grant fell in love. Forty years later—after three marriages and five children—she finds herself in the dim claustrophobia of illness. As she careens in and out of delirium, the memory of that weekend returns to her with intense clarity. Here, in a singular time of complete surrender, Ann discovers the highest point of her life. Superbly written and miraculously uplifting,
Evening
is a stirring exploration of love’s transcendence and of its failure to transcend.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70026-2

LUST AND OTHER STORIES

In this sublime collection of short stories, Minot focuses her observant eye and lyrical voice on the delicate emotional negotiations of young New Yorkers. Deceptively simple, these stories uncover small moments that yield larger truths—about the ways in which women and men come together and come apart again, about the disappointments and hopes of lovers who know what they want but don’t always know how to keep it. With a flair for the telling detail, Minot offers us a poignant meditation on the nature of desire and loss.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70925-8

MONKEYS

This luminous story of family life has become a modern classic. The Vincents are a large and awkward New England family. Augustus Paine drinks too much; his wife, Rosie, a high-spirited Catholic, holds the family together, towing her seven “monkeys” to church, to boat races, and picnics in Maine. Susan Minot writes with delicacy and a tremendous gift for the details that decorate domestic life, and when tragedy strikes, she beautifully mines the children’s tenderness for each other, and their aching guardianship of what they have.