Cascade

CASCADE

CASCADE

M
ARYANNE
O’H
ARA

VIKING

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To Nick and Caitlin
Don trí mhuicín

O Rome! From all your palms, dominion, bronze and beauty, what was firm has fled. What once was fugitive maintains its permanence.

—Robert Lowell, “The Ruins of Time”

To those who offered advice and encouragement during the long period when I first conceived
Cascade
as a short story and then a novel, I say thank you: Monique Hamze, Susan Conley, Lily King, Electa Sevier, Diane Whittemore, Katie Whittemore, Janet Tashjian, Don Lee, DeWitt Henry, Ellen Tarlin, Ellie Frazier, Pamela Painter, and members of my old writer’s group: Ted Weesner, Jr., Nicole Lamy, Audrey Schulman, Tyler Clements, Dan Zevin. A double thank you to Ted for recommending me for a St. Botolph Club emerging writer’s grant, and thank you to the St. Botolph Club for awarding me that grant, which marked the true beginnings of this novel getting off the ground. The Massachusetts Cultural Council also recognized
Cascade
in its early stages, and I’m grateful for the support.

I am indebted to those people who provided me with crucial details about art and the time period, about dams and winches and land assessments and Shakespeare: my mother Florence Bavaro and her extraordinary memory, the late, lovely Frances Poole, Evelyn Gates, Joe Antonellis, Rick Cullen, Clif Read at the Quabbin Reservoir Visitor’s Center, Georgianna Ziegler at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and some extraordinary artists: my beloved brother Michael Bavaro, Bobbi Robbins, Jack Tremblay, and three former W.P.A artists—James Lechay, Alan Rohan Crite, and Paul Cadmus. I would also like to recognize the former residents of the Swift River Valley, whose sacrifice inspired this book.

I always had faith that when the time came, this book would find the right editor. Thank you to the elegant Kathryn Court for her grace and care with
Cascade
, and for assembling a superb support team, which has been so capably led by Tara Singh.

Stephanie Cabot is more than a wonderful agent; she’s a remarkable human being, and I am fortunate indeed to have her, Anna Worrall, and the rest of the Gernert Company on my side.

Finally, I cannot imagine life without my brilliant daughter, Caitlin, an astute reader and natural editor whose insights and wisdom informed so much of this book. And for the love and support of my husband, the unique and generous Nick O’Hara, I am eternally thankful.

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Authors_Note

December 1934

AND SOMETHING BECOMES SOMETHING ELSE

D
uring his final days, William Hart was haunted by drowning dreams. Every night, at the sound of his shouts, Dez came awake herself, always briefly startled to find a husband—Asa—sleeping beside her. She would dash across the hall, fearing another heart attack, but by then her father would be lying quietly, gazing at the plaster ceiling. Probably half the town was having drowning dreams, she’d say, reminding him that the reservoir was an old rumor and ticking off good reasons why it would never happen—the state had looked to Cascade before. If it was too expensive to build so far from Boston six years ago, then surely, in these hard times, nothing would come of it.

Usually that kind of talk made him feel better and in the morning he’d be rested and fairly optimistic, ready for whatever diversion she had planned for him—a new copy of
The American Sunday Standard
borrowed from the library, a coil of his favorite black licorice from the Handy Grocery, an offer of a game of chess.

But the night after Christmas, he hushed her irritably—“Desdemona!”—as if she were still a child. His white hair spread across three pillows, his eyes blazed. He was frail, but he was also a lifelong player of Shakespearean kings; he could still play the part of regal.

“There are so many ways of drowning, my dear.”

They passed a moment without speaking. Downstairs, the banjo clock ticked, and across the river, a train blew its horn. William Hart’s stage, where stars like Lionel Barrymore and Kathryn Tranero had taken bows, had been dark last season for the first time in twenty-five years. That darkness was all he thought about.

“We’re not going to drown,” Dez said firmly, and slipped from the room before she could confess that she, too, was under water. She had been since September, when the dean of the Boston Museum School called her in to say that her tuition had not been paid, since Rose wrote,
He’s had to let Annie go, the yardman, everyone but me.

The next morning, the diversion was French meringues, a first for her—she wasn’t much of a cook. And she was dubious, eyeing the puddle of clear slime at the bottom of the copper bowl Rose said to use. Remarkable to think that this beater contraption would change all that, but Rose had said earlier, “Have faith,” and so she gripped the red wooden handle with her left hand and began to crank with her right, beating air into the eggs, faster and faster. Don’t stop, Rose said, even when your arm feels like it’s going to fall off. Which it did, becoming separate, mechanical, a moving part thrusting forward and around, forward and around. She became conscious of the linoleum under her shoes, the countertop digging against her hips, arm crying out
stop
, but it was fascinating, too, to see how the nonstop forcing of one thing into another could cause such a complete transformation. Air into egg. Increasing in volume, expanding, until all at once the bowl was full of shiny white meringue, thick and lustrous as paint. Sweet on the tongue. She spooned dollops of it into Rose’s canvas
pastry bag, then—a whim—piped it into tiny sculptures: why not? A dozen pointy kings’ crowns to make her father laugh.