The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer (82 page)
Authors: Anne Tyler,Monica Mcinerney
She couldn’t wait to get onto the keyboard again today. She had so much to do. Catching up on the motel Christmas situation was a priority, but she also had an email to write to Ellen in Hong Kong. Lola didn’t get to see her nearly as often as she’d like, once a year at most, but the letters, phone calls, and lately emails they exchanged kept the bond between them strong. They had a regular correspondence going these days. Lola had even learned how to email photos of herself to Ellen. At Ellen’s request, in fact. For some reason, Ellen seemed to find Lola’s fashion style amusing.
Wow, Really-Great-Gran! she’d written in her last email. Pink tights and leopard-skin dress as day-wear? Watch out, Lady Gaga!
Lola googled this Lady Gaga and rather than being insulted, had been inspired. Which reminded her she wasn’t fully dressed yet. Fine for around the motel, but not spruced up enough for the shop. She made her way to her current room—number eleven of the motel’s fifteen rooms, the one with the beautiful view over the hills with just a glimpse of a vineyard. It was part of her arrangement with Jim and Geraldine, that she lived in her pick of the motel’s rooms rather than share the managers’ quarters with them. She’d just finished adding the final touch to her day’s outfit of purple pantsuit and gold belt—a large pink flower pinned in her short white hair—when she heard the sound of young Luke’s old Corolla straining its way up the drive. Ah, that lovely boy. So reliable. So clever, too.
It was twenty-three-year-old Luke who’d organized the entire computer setup in the charity shop. After finishing his apprenticeship with a local electrician, he’d moved to Adelaide, trained in IT, and was now rising through the ranks of a successful computer installation firm. The shop computer was what he called his “after-work work,” a labor of love whenever he was back in Clare visiting his mother, Patricia, another of the volunteers. There’d been opposition at first from some of the other ladies, but once they’d seen it in operation, well, it had become quite a computer club. Lola had needed to set up a schedule to be sure she got enough time for her own activities. Between Lola’s oldest friend Margaret and her online bridge club, Patricia and her Etsy handicrafts addiction, and another volunteer, Kay, with her eight hundred Facebook friends, it was sometimes hard to get even an hour at the computer to herself. There was also Joan, who loved posting videos of her cat on YouTube, another lady who Skyped her son in Copenhagen every Saturday, and even Bill, the shop handyman, who made a big deal of not having a TV at home but spent hours each week watching reruns on TV network websites. Remarkable all around, really. Their average human age was seventy-five. Average computer skills age mid-twenties, according to Luke. “You oldies pick things up quickly, don’t you?” he’d said admiringly, early on in his training sessions. “I wasn’t sure you’d get a handle on all of this.”
“I’ll have you know I used to run my own accountancy business,” Margaret announced, piqued.
“I was CEO of a local council,” Joan said.
“These hands helped more than a thousand cows give birth,” Kay the dairy farmer said, holding them up.
Luke had looked quite shocked.
As Lola pulled the door to her room shut behind her now and made her way to the front of the motel, she thought she saw Geraldine look out the dining room window. She gave her daughter-in-law a cheery wave. If Geraldine saw her, she didn’t respond. No manners as well as no personality, Lola thought. “Bye for now!” she called to whoever else might be watching. “Off I go into town. Off I go to do some useful charity work.”
An hour later, Lola’s mood wasn’t so bright. She’d been mistaken about the response to the Valley View Motel’s online Christmas offer. Yes, there had been more than a dozen enquiries via email, but not a single follow-up booking. God forbid she
would
actually have to spend Christmas alone. She peeked through the curtain separating the office from the shop itself—only one customer browsing and Margaret was well able to handle her.
Lola frowned as she checked the emails again. No bookings at all? Why ever not? She clicked on one of the queries at random, and noticed the mobile number under the person’s name. Was it standard business practice to make a follow-up call? Perhaps, perhaps not, but how else was she to find out? She took out her mobile phone. Luke had been astonished to see that as well. “You use a mobile?”
“Only for the time being. I’m saving up for an iPhone,” Lola told him. It was true, she was.
Her call was answered on the third ring. Lola put on her most polite voice. “Good afternoon. My name is Lola Quinlan and I wonder if you can help me. I’m doing a marketing survey into a recent online advertising campaign. No, please, don’t hang up. I won’t be long. Let me cut to the chase. You enquired about but didn’t book the Valley View Motel. Why not?” She listened for a moment. “But it’s
not
expensive. Not compared to other places. Really? You did? For three nights and Christmas lunch included? My word, that is a bargain. I’d have gone there instead myself.” She made three more calls. Two gave her the same answer—they’d found cheaper packages elsewhere. The third person had decided to stay home for Christmas.
Lola clicked on the different computer files until she found the wording for her Valley View Christmas Special online ad. Jim had given her his version before he’d sent it to the online accommodation sites. She’d tinkered with it a little bit before sending it out to some more sites of her own choosing, but obviously she’d not tinkered enough. Luke had given her a lesson in something he called meta-tags, words that people might use when going searching—”surfing, you mean,” she’d corrected him—online. She’d rewritten Jim’s ad until it included nearly every Christmassy word she could think of.
Christmas. Pudding. Santa. Carols. Holly. Come stay in our lovely ho-ho-hotel!
The Valley View was actually a motel, but still … The special offer included three nights’ bed and breakfast and a special three-course Christmas lunch
—turkey and all the trimmings!
She’d also added a line about a surprise gift for everyone. They would be surprising—so far they included a travel clock, a wooden picture frame, a jigsaw puzzle that she hoped had all its pieces, and a rather alarming red tie, all chosen from the bags of donations left for the charity shop. Lola had paid for them, of course. Above the odds, too.
She peeked through the curtain again. The customer had left and Margaret was now dusting the bookshelves. “Everything okay, Margaret?” Lola called out.
“Counting down the minutes, Lola,” Margaret called back.
Drat, Lola thought. She’d hoped Margaret would forget about her turn. She quickly sent an email to Ellen, sending her lots of love and asking for all her news, then turned her attention back to Christmas. She shut her eyes to concentrate hard for a moment, trying to remember marketing tips from the online course she’d completed the previous year. Eye-catching headings,
tick
. Clear, concise offers,
tick
. Irresistible offers. That was obviously where she’d gone wrong. Her current offer was too easy to resist. What would make something irresistible?
If it was free?
It took her only a minute to compose the new ad. Just as well, she had only eight minutes left before she’d have to hand the computer over to Margaret and her online bridge game. If Lola had followed Luke’s instructions correctly, the next group of people who emailed asking for extra details about the Valley View Motel’s Christmas package would receive this automated email in return:
CONGRATULATIONS!
You are the lucky winner of the Valley View Motel’s special Christmas package draw! Three nights’ accommodation, breakfast each day, and a slap-up Christmas lunch—all completely free! Simply reply to this email within twenty-four hours and include your contact details and I’ll get right back to you.
For extra authenticity, she added her own signature—she’d recently learned to scan it—and her mobile number. She pressed Send, sat back, and smiled. The bait was out there. All she had to do now was wait.
“Vivid characterisations and sharply honed dialogue…. McInerney brings humor and insight into issues of sibling rivalry, family secrecy and romantic betrayal.” –
The Boston Globe
on
Alphabet Sisters
Books by Monica McInerney
Lola’s Secret
At Home with the Templetons
Greetings from Somewhere Else
Upside Down Inside Out
The Faraday Girls
Family Baggage
The Alphabet Sisters
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks and love to my family in Australia, especially my mum Mary, my sisters Lea, Marie, and Maura, and my brothers Paul, Stephen, and Rob, for their help from afar with all sorts of research. Thanks also to my two Irish families, the Drislanes and the Dolans; Max and Jean Fatchen in Adelaide, Marea Fox and Andrew Storey in Queensland, Greg Cooley in the Clare Valley, Eveleen Coyle in Dublin, Karen O’Connor and Bart Meldau in London, Clare Healy in Tasmania, Fiona Gillies in Sydney, Nid Sangeengong in Adelaide, Sabine Brasseler and Michael Boyny in Munich, and Kay Ronai in Melbourne. A special thank-you to everyone at the Clare Library in South Australia, especially Val Tilbrook and Trish Jones.
Big thanks to my agents, Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown in London and Fiona Inglis of Curtis Brown Australia, and to my three publishers—everyone at Penguin Australia, especially Clare Forster, Ali Watts, Kirsten Abbott, Cathy Larsen, and Sally Bateman; Imogen Taylor, Trisha Jackson, Caroline Turner, and all the team at Pan Macmillan in London; and Alison Walsh and all at Tivoli/Gill & Macmillan in Ireland.
And, once again, all my love and thanks to my husband, John.
T
HE
A
LPHABET
S
ISTERS
A Reader’s Guide
Monica
McInerney
SISTERS TALKING ABOUT SISTERS
MONICA MCINERNEY
, author of
The Alphabet Sisters,
has a real-time e-mail conversation with her three real-life sisters. Lea, forty-five years old and a management consultant, is in Hobart, Tasmania. In South Australia is Marie, forty-three, a journalist and mother of four (three girls and a four-week-old boy); and Maura, thirty-eight, mother of Xavier, also four weeks old. Monica, thirty-nine, is in Dublin, where she lives with her Irish husband.
There are also three brothers in the McInerney family, Paul, Stephen, and Rob. Their mother, Mary, now lives in Adelaide, after moving from the family home in the Clare Valley (the setting for
The Alphabet Sisters
) last year. Their father, Steve, was the railway stationmaster in the Clare Valley for more than thirty years. He died of cancer in March 2000.
MONICA:
Hello, my sisters. To set the scene—it’s 8 am in Dublin. It’s been lashing rain all night, but so far this morning it is dry with a watery blue sky. I’m at my desk in my office, with the lights on because it’s still dark. It’s getting very autumnal for this early in October. All the trees are changing color, everyone has colds, and we’re about to switch to winter time, so it will be dark at 5 pm soon. There are Christmas decorations in the shops, too, by the way.
LEA:
I’m here in Hobart, at 6 pm. Switching to summer time robbed us of an hour of sleep on the weekend so I’m as tired, grumpy, and disorganized as a mother with a newborn baby. Check this out and you’ll be able to see Hobart’s weather for yourself: http://www.rosebay.tased.edu.au/webcam
MARIE:
It’s a beautiful bright spring day here in Adelaide, 4:30 in the afternoon, but I just got up from a nap. The new baby’s unsettled, so are the rest of us, and I don’t think I’ll even get to the shops before Christmas.
MAURA:
Okay, maybe I’m last, but then, so I was! I’m in a place away from my home in Clare—I’m at our mother’s house in Adelaide (I’m her favorite daughter, just in case that subject comes up) and it’s a lovely sunny day. My ma is sitting on the verandah holding my beautiful four-week-old son, Xavier. Hopes are he will nap until we’re done here.
LEA:
This is going to be a bit weird, like that seven-second satellite delay thing that happens on the TV news. Any ideas for managing it? (said the eldest one)
MARIE:
Maybe we should set up a chat room (said the second eldest, creatively and innovatively, yet not knowing what a chat room was or where the door would be)
MAURA:
No, forget the chat room, this is fun. You spend the whole time trying to catch up and being all confused as to what’s going on. Kind of like my life, really.
MONICA:
What about I start by asking you three a few questions? (said the bossiest one)
LEA:
I thought Marie was the bossiest one.
MARIE:
No, smartest!
MONICA:
First question, then. How do you think your relationship with your sisters differs from your relationship with other female friends?
LEA:
I am quite happy with my friends to behave like a forty-five-year-old, whereas with my sisters I am perennially eight years old, at least for some subjects.
MAURA:
My relationship with my sisters is:
(a) Different, depending on which sister we’re talking about. There is, though, a thread of sameness—probably about shared memories (although that’s probably not true—being the youngest girl, I was raised on stories about what happened in the family while we were growing up, so I’m actually not sure whether what I recall is actually my own memory at work, or a recollection of stories I’ve been told). Friendships are usually different because they’re more grounded in the present.
(b) Tension-filled at times. Curiously, my relationships with my sisters are both more relaxed than with my friends (the go-into-their-house-and-make-your-own-toast thing) and more tense (awareness of how to hurt the other, whether intentionally or, more often, not).
MARIE:
I think I have different relationships with each of you, and each is very valued and loved. But, to generalize, I think my relationship with you all is, on some levels, more honest than what I have with many friends, although not always. I tend to let rip with my full and true colors to family—the good, the bad, the ugly and, particularly, the childish (in good and bad ways). But I might well not tell you all about every night out I’ve ever had or when I’m miffed with you. (Then I’ll tell my friends about you!)
I don’t really have different relationships with my friends, but my sisters are among my very best friends, and have set the template, really, for the level of intimacy, care, and consideration that I need from real friendship. That’s when you’re not all being mad/rude/out of control, of course.
LEA:
Sisters—biggest laughs, biggest fights, biggest tantrums, biggest hearts.
Friends are all of these but the volume and color go down a notch or two (except when I am missing my sisters and transpose years of sister stuff onto girl friendships, creating surrogate sisters). I like Maura’s idea about friends being more grounded in the present. You’re kind of on alert with sisters, especially with three of them, for shots (I use the word reservedly) coming from any direction and any era. Often your sister didn’t mean anything by that, but the past is the filter you ran her comment or action through before it hit your normally intelligent and mature brain. A simple statement from a sister can be like the most dense and layered poem ever written.
MONICA:
When I think about my sisters, I feel surrounded, and in the middle of something, hundreds of layers, going back years but also looking forward to how things will be for all of us, knowing we will be a part of one another’s lives. With my friends, thoughts come and go. I’m very focused when I’m with them, talking to them, e-mailing them, but we dip in and out of one another’s lives. With my sisters, I feel like I am immersed in you. You three are part of me, on my mind in a constant way, either when you’re worrying about something (perhaps a recent troubling conversation) or amusing me (something said in e-mail or conversation that makes me laugh out loud, which happens very often, or a childhood memory that can go either way) or making me feel grateful that I have each of you (the way I know I can call on each of you for help with work, life advice, or just to listen or laugh at a story).
Next question: Does it feel like our relationship has changed as we have gotten older, or are the battlefields/sticking points the ones formed in childhood?
MARIE:
I think our relationships with one another change all the time and generally don’t relate to how things were when we were kids except when, all of a sudden, we hit a “stab from the past” road bump and then I can erupt in all the rage of childhood. I actually don’t see us in terms of oldest, youngest, prettiest (me!), most successful, etc. It’s more about relating to the different individuals we’ve become, despite all that shared background. Just when you think we all know what the other is talking about …
I forgot to say in the other bit that for me it’s the fun and laughing that are the most important. I do laugh with my sisters probably more than with any other people on earth.
LEA:
I like the way we deal with the hard stuff—an amazing mix of hard-nosed practicality, deep love, and compassion, and then the blackest and wickedest of humor.
MAURA:
I think my relationship with each of you has changed. As we’ve gotten older, I’ve learned more secrets about Lea and Marie. I wasn’t a part of their younger lives, but that’s fine, as I’ve heard about those times quite enough. With Moni, it’s a different sort of change—not the “just getting to know you” type of thing, because we shared a room and spent so much time together, even built an altar in our bedroom together and all. I think it’s become a little more mature. Most of the time at least.
I think there’s a different depth to our overall relationship as sisters since Dad died. Not a pious thing but just an acknowledgment that yucky things happen to even our family (even though we all perform as if it’s a golden world). As a result, I think we’re all a little bit kinder to one another because we have a shared vulnerability. It’s easier to be kind if you have a sense of the pain/confusion/guilt/anger that someone else can feel and Dad’s death gave us that measure, I reckon.
LEA:
I agree with you about the Dad stuff. It did change things heaps and took us all a big leap into—oh, I don’t know—for me the things I ratted on about you guys to other people I no longer felt like doing anymore. We can sort of pick on one another now but it doesn’t feel vicious like it could/did in the past.
MONICA:
I agree. It made everything more fragile and therefore more precious. When there were nine of us, when Dad was alive, it was like being part of a solar system, I thought. All revolving around one another, vaguely keeping in place. If you looked up or around, you knew who you would see. Dad dying changed that forever. I got—and still have—such a sense of things being able to change in an instant, and that a gap could appear at any moment, which would not just mean that terrible grief and shock, but also the shifting around, trying to make sense of it all. “What do we do now?” It’s made me—not obsessive, exactly, about thinking about you all, brothers, mum, as well as sisters—but so conscious of it. Being far away in Ireland sometimes makes me feel so sad, because I have a longing just to be close and in the middle of you all, and to feel safe and sure of the world. Wanting to be back to being eight years old again.
LEA:
It was a big gift Mum and Dad gave us—that sense of safety when we were kids. Mum thinks that the house had a lot to do with our sense of ourselves and a certain confidence. This big, beautiful, solid home we had to go off to school from and come home to every day. Incredible security. And also Mum and Dad when there were troubles, both so solid, making us know we would be fine, we would get through, it’d be okay. I still have that sense from them mostly, although not always, since that gap in the wall that Dad’s death opened up. But if he opened it, it means he’s there somewhere on the other side of it. Hope so, sisters.
Regarding battlefields. All is well and yes, I feel I am
very
grown up and mature except when I’m tired, which always seems to happen when I am back in the bosom of the family. Then I get the sooks and am back in those eight-year-old shoes again. I think, for me, it is hard flying in and out for brief visits. I found it easier in a way being there on a continuing basis, like during the time with Dad when he was dying (except for that hard bit to it). I needed to be held within the family circle physically for a while and I think I regained my footing. I’m pretty wobbly on some of the trips back, as much because of what I’ve left behind (busy work, needing a holiday, being a bit stressed) as what I’m heading into on my visit (busy families, busy lives). It’s hard to gauge immediately or even in a few days where things lie with your sisters. You do have some of the most intimate talks with your sisters, but like any relationship, you can’t guarantee one another you’ll be in the place for a deep talk when each of you needs that connection.
MONICA:
It’s been strange/odd/different/bad/good being away from you all the past couple of years, when so much has been happening in the family [the family home being sold, pregnancies, two new babies]. At times it’s been a bit like reading a book about you all, or hearing a radio serial. I’ve heard about your lives on the phone or read e-mails, rather than seen any of it happen, which gives it all that air of unreality. It’s been especially strange sometimes when I was working on the new book and shifting and changing plot lines or characters, and then reading a family e-mail and thinking “Well, perhaps now is the time that this happens or that character realizes this or these two people start being honest with each other.” Then I remember, “You can’t do that, these are real people in this e-mail, not your characters.” I know from past experience that it takes a little while to find my place in the family again after being away, trying to fit in, trying not to be hurt by all the in-jokes that have come up while I’ve been away. And also really wishing it could be like this all the time, all of us sitting around the table talking and laughing and trying to out-do one another, which is one of my favorite things in the world. But I also know I need to be away, because it is too seductive otherwise and I would never want to do anything other than talk and laugh with you.
I agree that we have very different relationships with one another. That makes sense. It criss-crosses back and forth, I think, depending on what each of us needs at the time. And of course it is different because of proximity—Maura and Marie, you see each other so regularly, that must make a big difference. It’s different for Lea and I, who drop in and out only a couple of times a year, or in my case these days, once every year or so.