B
efore dawn, Sam leaves Mena in the bed sleeping, naked and beautiful under the covers. He climbs quietly up the ladder into the loft and opens the laptop.And the words are suddenly there again. At his fingertips, spilling, filling the pages. He writes for hours, until his wrists ache with the effort.
When someone has suffered from starvation, bringing them back to health is not as simple as giving them a plate full of food, a fork, a knife. Rehabilitation must come slowly, carefully, so as not to shock the body. Refeeding is an art, the delicate balance of what a body wants and what a body can stand.
Sam closes his eyes, watches as Billy stands in line outside Shevlin Hall. He feels the way his tongue runs over his lips at the smell of bacon that emanates through the closed doors. It is summer, and the sun is warm. He is not the same man who came to this campus last November. He is a shadow of that man, a husk. But he is alive. Still, remarkably, and though he knows that the smells are likely deceiving, that they won’t,
can’t,
simply allow the volunteers to gorge themselves, he savors the remembrance of other breakfasts. He closes his eyes, feels the warm sun on his eyelids, and dreams the smell of bacon, the sweet acidity of juice, the buttery warmth of fresh biscuits.
Downstairs, Mena is making breakfast. He can hear the shuffle of her feet, the soft hum as she cracks eggs into a bowl, whisks them with sweet buttermilk and cinnamon. As she cooks, he writes, and he watches his fingers in amazement as they tap, tap, tap at the keys.
Finally, Mena calls up to him, “Breakfast!” And he is so hungry.
B
y the time Finn got home from Alice’s house that night, everyone was asleep. His parents hadn’t bothered to wait up for him like he expected. No one was there yelling at him about being ten minutes late. He’d even let the door slam shut, waiting for the light to come on. But nothing. He’d crawled into bed and fallen asleep smiling.
Now he wakes up to the sounds of the percolator, the smells of coffee and bacon. To the shuffle, shuffle of his dad’s slippers and their hushed voices, quiet so as not to wake him.
When he goes into the kitchen, his mom and dad are already sitting at the table, eating. His mother’s face is flushed pink, her hair messy. His father squeezes his mom’s hand and they say, together, “Morning.”
He plops himself down in a chair and his mother says, “Want some coffee, Finn?”
They never let him drink coffee.
He nods and she gets up, pouring the hot liquid into a chipped mug. “Sugar?” she asks.
He shakes his head and takes a long sip from his cup. The coffee is hot and bitter, and it warms him up from the inside out. And suddenly, he is overwhelmed by everything. By the fractured recollections of that crazy night, by thoughts of Alice, by the sheer stupid nostalgia he’s starting to feel about this cabin. But most of all by the fact that
this
is all he wanted. Really. That simple gesture of pouring him a cup of coffee nearly brings tears to his eyes. All this time, he’d just wanted them both to somehow accept that he isn’t the same person anymore. That he isn’t their baby. He isn’t a kid. He isn’t carefree or careless anymore. He isn’t
Finny;
he isn’t half of a whole. He is just Finn. Almost seventeen years old. More man than boy. Part of this family, but also almost grown.
He holds out his empty cup to his mom, and she fills it again.
“Let’s go out to the island this afternoon,” his father says to them both. “Just the three of us. Have a picnic. Take a dip.”
Finn says, “Yeah. Let’s do that. It’s going to be like eighty degrees today.”
After breakfast, Finn goes to his room and grabs the surfboard, angling it out of the narrow doorway, through the house, and outside. At the water’s edge, he strips down to his boxers and steps into the water. And then he is gliding, paddling out across the still water on his board. The air is getting warmer, but the water is still chilly. It is like skimming across glass. He is the only interruption in all this stillness.
When he gets to the center of the lake, he stops paddling and climbs onto his board, straddling it, holding on tight.There are two loons swimming near him. They aren’t even afraid of humans, it seems. He wonders what happened to the baby. It’s almost the end of summer; he guesses it must be all grown up.
Back at the house, his mom has already started packing. She’s ready to go home, she says. Ready. He wonders what it’s going to be like to go back to California. But as much as he misses it, part of him wishes they could just stay here. That he could just be here, with Alice, forever. His father has promised that they will come again next summer. And he’s got some money saved; maybe he can fly her out to see him during winter break. He tries not to consider the distance between them as he dips his hands into the cool water.
“Tell me a joke,” he says to Franny. “Make me laugh.”
The ocean is calm today, no swells in sight.
“Knock, knock,” she says.
“Who’s there?”
“Finn.”
“Finn who?” he asks. She is next to him on her board, her hair wet, her eyes sparkling in the light.
“Finn-ish up already and open the door!” she says, throwing her head back, laughing. “Get it?!”
“Ha, ha,” he says, rolling his eyes.
They both look behind them toward the endless expanse of water, but the sea is still. No waves. Just calm, calm water.
He lies back down on the board, puts his hands in the water, and starts to paddle back to shore.
H
ere they are now:
Late summer evening: Mena and Alice are in the kitchen of their cottage. Mena is showing Alice how to make bread. Sam watches them through the window from his Adirondack chair in the yard. They are laughing, their voices soft behind the glass. Mena catches him watching her and cocks her head. Smiles shyly. He almost turns away, wondering how long he’s been staring, but instead nods back at her, grins.
The air smells like autumn, the smoky musky scent of fall. Already, the air has gotten colder. Today when he and Mena went for a walk around the lake, he saw the first maple yielding to the approaching season: red leaves like a crimson splatter among all that green.
Effie and Devin arrive with Zu-Zu, who runs up to Sam with a plastic container full of cookies. “Tookies,” she says to him, thrusting the container into his hands.
“Are these for
me?
” he asks.
She nods her head and squeals, delighted. He takes the cookies from her, and she climbs up into his lap. He opens the container and offers one to her, takes one himself. She leans back against his chest, makes herself at home, and looks out at the water with him, nibbling.
“Don’t let her have any more before dinner,” Effie says to Sam. “No more,” she coos to Zu-Zu. “Sam, we brought wine too. Is Mena inside?”
“She’s in there with Alice,” he says, and Effie and Devin disappear into the house.
“Finn?” Zu-Zu asks.
“He’s just down there,” Sam says, pointing to the shore.
Finn is down at the water’s edge, ankle deep in the lake, his naked chest glowing in the half-light. He skips stones across the water, one after the other. He’s gotten so tall this summer; he’s taller than Sam now. His shoulders have broadened. His hair has grown. His arm is strong, and the stones skim the surface, weightless.
Sam is thinking, of course, about the words that might capture this: the feeling of one child breathing against his chest, while another disappears into the shadows. For the eager moonlight that appears before the sun has even fully set. For summer’s quiet acquiescence to fall. For that place between today and tomorrow.The words escape him for now, elusive, but it doesn’t matter. Zu-Zu breathes against him. His son walks in and out of light. Summer comes to an end. Tomorrow they go home.
Time to eat,
Mena says.
They all sit at the picnic table. Mena lights candles. In the flickering light, Sam watches her. Wants her. He remembers the way her skin felt against his. The warmth of her stomach, her hands, the heat of her breasts.
He pours wine into glasses. Effie lowers Zu-Zu into Devin’s lap. Alice and Finn lean into one another. Mena sits down, sighing, smiling. And they eat.
Their voices, tinkling like glass, echo off the still water. It is the end of the summer, dusk, and the lake is theirs. Twilight, and everything is possible.
After dinner, the wine is gone. Finn and Alice disappear into the shadows together. Devin and Effie take Zu-Zu home. They clear the table, and Sam pulls Mena by the hand to the chairs that face the water. He sits down, and she curls up on his lap. It is chilly now that the sun has set. He wraps his arms around her.
The coffee she has made is hot and sweet. The cup sits steaming on the armrest of the chair.
There must be a word for this,
he thinks. It is on the tip of his tongue. He struggles, but it still won’t come.
“It’s not the same,” Mena says.
“No,” he agrees.
She looks out at the water, at the sun slipping into the horizon.
“I really miss her,” she says.
“I miss her too.”
Mena leans her head back, into his chest, and he puts his fingers in her hair. She breathes deeply. Soon, their chests rise and fall together, their heartbeats separate but similar. They are somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. Between
then
and
later
. Between
was
and
will be
.
“Tora,”
Mena whispers as her eyes flutter closed.
Tora, tora, tora,
beats her heart.
Sam closes his eyes too,
tora, tora, tora
concentrates on the steady rhythm, on the contented and certain thrum of
now, now, now.
A N
OTE FROM THE
A
UTHOR
This novel began with Franny. In my mind she appeared first as a six-year-old child, swinging on a tire swing on a late summer evening. She was vivid and bright, as luminous in my mind as if she were real. Over time, she grew into a young woman in my imagination: a daughter, a sister, a talented dancer. And then she disappeared.
Studies have shown that approximately 15 percent of all young women suffer from some form of eating disorder, and that one out of one hundred girls between the ages of ten and twenty suffer from anorexia.According to the American Anorexia/ Bulimia Association, one thousand girls in the United States die every year from this disease. In my own life I have watched countless friends, family members and students struggle with their relationship with food and with their bodies. This obsession is pervasive, it seems—even inescapable—in our culture.
I began to think about hunger then, about the most primitive and essential desire we as humans have. I read Sharman Apt Russell’s fascinating book,
Hunger: An Unnatural History,
in which she examines the ways in which hunger affects the global population. Hunger is, at the most basic level, the body’s reminder that we must eat. It is a physiological alarm clock that tells us our body needs fuel. Hunger is a potent force. It is, perhaps, the most formidable need. For people deprived of necessary sustenance, hunger is suffering. Conversely, for some, it can be a source of power.
I read a lot of books about eating disorders, including the incredibly visceral and honest
Wasted,
by Marya Hornbacher, and the heartbreaking memoir
Andrea’s Voice,
by Doris Smeltzer and her daughter Andrea Lynn Smeltzer, who died as a result of her struggle with bulimia. I read the seminal
Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa,
by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. I also spent hours searching Web sites, including the more subversive (and now often disguised and difficult to find) pro-Ana/Mia (pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia) sites.
What I learned in my research is that this flirtation with hunger has a long history: from the fasting saints in the Middle Ages to the Victorian “Fasting Girls” who achieved celebrity status via their self-denial. From hunger artists whose starvation was a public spectacle to the girls who flaunt their concave bellies and razor-sharp spines on the Web today. I came to understand that this love affair with hunger is irresistible to some, despite its often lethal consequences.
When Franny dies, she leaves behind a family grappling to understand what happened to her. This novel begins with Franny, but it ends with those she left behind. For the Mason family, the end to their hungry season comes only when they are ready to begin nourishing themselves and one another again. My hope is that this story will not only honor those who have lost their lives to this horrific disease, but will also feed the souls of those who love them and those who continue in their struggle to survive.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
THE HUNGRY SEASON
T. Greenwood
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The following questions are intended to
enhance your group’s reading of
THE HUNGRY SEASON.