The Transformation of Things (31 page)

“I love you, too.” I watch him walk away, watch with wonderment that he still looks cool and perfectly calm, his hair just a little curlier from the humidity.

I take my phone out of my purse and check for messages, and I sigh when there aren’t any. Lisa is due any day, and she promised to text me as soon as she goes into labor.

Just as Will gets back, the music starts, and Dave turns around from in front of us, holding the video camera steady. Kelly walks out in her lavender bridesmaid’s dress, holding
on to flower girl Hannah, and flanked by ring bearers Caleb and Jack.

“Too bad your father didn’t want Sharon to stress you out,” Will says, “or you could’ve been up there, too.”

“Ha,” I say. “Too bad.”

Kelly looks overwhelmed, but when she sees Dave, her face lights up, and she blows him a kiss.

Sharon and my father walk down the aisle together, their arms linked, their faces glowing in a sheen of sweat and maybe love.

And then they stand under the chuppah, vowing, in front of the rabbi, all their senior friends, and us, to love, honor, and cherish each other in sickness and in health.

Will catches my eye at that part, and I smile at him. I wonder if my father will be able to do it this time around, and though I’m not a fan of Sharon’s, I’m still rooting for him to change, rooting for him to be the man that he thinks he might be able to be.

We’ve been talking more since I woke up, and though our relationship is still far from perfect, I can’t get over the fact that he came to visit me in the hospital, that he was there for me, in a way he never was for my mother. Maybe that was his way of apologizing, and maybe mine is simply showing up, not missing his wedding, not missing what might be a moment of happiness for him. I now understand how easily happiness can come and go.

Before I filled his prescription for prenatal vitamins, I took Dr. Horowitz up on his offer to get the genetic testing. I wanted to choose to live, to choose completely, as Ethel had said, and knowing seemed like the best way to do it.

The test came back negative, but as Dr. Horowitz said, it did not mean for sure that I’d never get breast cancer like my
mother. “There are no real promises in life, Jennifer,” he’d said. “No guarantees.” That, I understood.

As Kelly once said, I could always get hit by a bus, and having a stroke as I got my hair washed, I kind of did. Yet, somehow, I am still here, still breathing and healthy. As Ethel said, I’m the only one who can take charge of what I want. I’m in control of my own reality, my own destiny.

I look up when I hear clapping, and then I watch as my father breaks the glass with his foot.

I hear my cell phone buzz in my purse, so I take it out, my heart beating quickly in my chest in anticipation for Lisa. But I see it’s a text from Kat instead, who is only two states away at the beach in Hilton Head with Danny and the girls.
Bored out of my fucking mind! Who said staring at the ocean is relaxing??? Can’t wait till U guys get here!! Danny and the girls say hi. XOXO.

“What’s that?” Will leans over my shoulder.

“Kat.” I laugh. “She’s bored at the beach. She says she can’t wait for us to arrive.”

“Oh, you know she’s loving every minute of it.” He laughs. Just after I woke up, Kat quit her job and got a part-time one with the
Inquirer,
doing a column about motherhood that she can write from home.
This is all your fault, you know,
she called me and said, just after she got the new job.
You making me reevaluate what the fuck I was doing with my life.

I thought about our conversation in the coffee shop, and though it still felt entirely real to me, I knew what she was really referring to was my coma, my long period of, as Kat put it, scaring the shit out of everyone.

I hear the booming sound of Dave’s laughter, and Will and I both look up. Dave has Caleb on his shoulders, while Kelly clings to Jack and Hannah.

I look at Will, who stares at them, with this intense look of joy and admiration and want. He puts his hand on my stomach. “Is she kicking?” he asks. “Does she like weddings?”

As soon as his hand hits my stomach, I feel the soft kicks, the spiral jabs like uneven dance moves. It’s as if she knows that he’s out here, waiting for her.

It’s the first time he’s felt her move, and his face lights up with this boyish sort of elation. “She’s actually in there,” he whispers.

“She is.” I laugh.

He shakes his head. “Sometimes, I think this is all a dream,” he says.

“No.” I shake my head. “It’s definitely not.”

I take Will’s hand, and then we walk inside the hotel together, holding on tightly to each other, neither one of us willing to let go.

Acknowledgments

F
irst, I want to thank my agent, Jessica Regel, whose constant encouragement and enthusiasm for my work always amazes me. She is fabulous at what she does, and also a remarkable person. I feel lucky every day to have her on my side, as well as everyone else at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, who truly are the best.

An enormous thank-you to Lucia Macro, Executive Editor at Avon Books. Her passion, enthusiasm, and insight have made her an absolute joy to work with. Many thanks also to Assistant Editor Esi Sogah, and to everyone else at Avon, who have helped transform this from a manuscript I dreamed of seeing in print to a real, bona fide book.

I am overwhelmingly grateful to my writer friends, a constant source of support. You all make my life infinitely richer and more well-read. Thank you to Laura Fitzgerald and Morgana Gallaway for support on the home front and for fabulous dinners and talks. Thank you to The Novel Girls, who have been blogging and chatting with me since the very beginning of my publication journey: Tracy Madison, Lisa
Patton, Lesley Livingston, and especially Maureen Lipinski, who also keeps me sane and laughing on a daily basis.

My family has always been supportive in everything I’ve done, and without them, I know I never would’ve had the discipline or the conviction to write this book. Thank you to my dad, Alan Cantor, for sharing his experience with herbal medicine with me, and my mom, Ronna Cantor, the most experienced reader I know, for telling me honestly that the beginning was much too slow in the draft she read. Thank you to my sister, Rachel Cantor, who I am also proud to call a friend, and who continually inspires me to give my characters a sister.

Thank you to my children, and to my husband, Gregg Goldner, for always, always supporting me, for giving me the time to write, and for sometimes believing in me much more than I believe in myself. And an extra thank-you to Gregg for reading what probably seemed like infinite drafts of this book and offering advice, and beyond that, for being my best friend and the best husband anyone could ever ask for.

Once I, Chuang Tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Tzu. Suddenly I awoke, and there was I, visibly Tzu. I do not know whether it was Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that he was Tzu. Between Tzu and the butterfly there must be some distinction. (But one may be the other.) This is called the transformation of things.

—C
HUANG
Tzu,
CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

About the Author

JILLIAN CANTOR
was born and raised in suburban Philadelphia. She attended Penn State University, where she graduated with honors with a BA in English. She then attended the University of Arizona, where she received her MFA in fiction writing. While there, she was also the recipient of the national Jacob K. Javits fellowship. She’s the author of two books for teens,
The September Sisters
and
The Life of Glass. The Transformation of Things
is her first novel for adults. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two sons.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise for
The Transformation of Things

“The Transformation of Things
is an elegant and involving page-turner about perception, truth, and what’s really true about each of our lives. Part mystery, part love story, part coming-of-age, it is a wonderful book. I could not stop reading!”

—Barbara O’Neal, author of
The Secret of Everything

“Jillian Cantor’s
The Transformation of Things
is a moving and delicate look beneath the surface of a life, a window into the world of ‘what if,’ one woman’s unique journey through a tremendous personal challenge. It speaks to the power of the mind to heal itself, to uncover truth within fiction, and indeed to change one’s entire perspective on what makes life important.”

—Morgana Gallaway, author of
The Nightingale

“A provocative novel that raises fascinating questions about marriage and how to find our way back when love falters. Thoroughly original, highly engaging, and wonderfully tender. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended!”

—Laura Fitzgerald, author of
Veil of Roses

“Remarkable and magical,
The Transformation of Things
is a surprising and honest look at the assumptions we make about ourselves and those around us.”

—Maureen Lipinski, author of
A Bump in the Road
and
Not Ready for Mom Jeans

By Jillian Cantor

From HarperTeen

THE LIFE OF GLASS
THE SEPTEMBER SISTERS

A+ AUTHOR INSIGHTS, EXTRAS & MORE

Reader’s Guide Questions

1. When Jen’s husband, Will, is first indicted, she decides to stick by him, at the cost of her friendships and her country club life. Do you think she does the right thing? And why do you think she would believe in him, even though their relationship is on rocky ground in the beginning of the book?
   
2. How do you feel about the way the people in Deerfield treat Will and Jen after he’s indicted? Are they right or wrong in doing so? Did you initially feel bad for Will when he’s forced to go from judge to salesman, or did you think he got what he deserved? If you were friends with Jen, would you have reacted to her similarly or differently from her friends in the book?
   
3. Jen and her sister, Kelly, both still feel residual aftershocks from their mother’s death, even though it happened twenty years earlier. How do they handle their grief in different ways? How do you think Kelly and Jen both live their lives differently than they might if their mother had lived? Is Jen right to still be angry with her father, or do you agree with Kelly that at a certain point she needs to let things go?
   
4. Why do you think Jen is afraid to have a baby? Is Will right, that she’s not sure she wants to have a baby with him, or is it something else?
   
5. When Jen begins dreaming about her friends, sister, and husband, she begins to see that she was wrong about each one’s happiness. How does learning these intimate things about those around her begin to inform her choices about her own life? How do you begin to see the characters differently after learning more about them through Jen’s dreams? Is it true that we are each flawed in some way? Do you believe that, beneath the surface, we all have something lurking there that we don’t tell our friends, siblings, or even spouses?
   
6. Which character do you identify with most, Jen, Lisa, Kelly, or Kat, and why? Do you agree or disagree with the choices these women make about being mothers and wives?
   
7. At one point in the book, Ethel tells Jen about “the transformation of things,” about the man who dreamed he was a butterfly, and then woke up unsure whether he was a man dreaming about being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. How does this idea inform your understanding of Jen’s situation? Why is the book called
   The Transformation of Things?
   What are the ways in which Jen transforms herself?
   
8. Jen spends most of the book dreaming about other people in her life, learning secrets about them. But how did you feel when she started dreaming about herself? What did you believe to be her reality, and what did you believe to be her dream world? Did you notice any clues throughout the book that Jen might be awake when she was “dreaming” or vice versa?
   
9. Twice when Jen takes the train into the city, she comes across a little girl reading
   Goodnight Moon
   with her mother, a book Jen vividly remembers reading with her own mother. Who do you think this girl is, and why do you think these scenes are in the book?
   
10. How do the figurines that Will and Jen give each other act as symbols for what they want in life and with each other? Why do you think Jen finds the figurines at the end of the book?
    
11. Are Will and Jen right for each other? Do you think that they have both changed enough to make their marriage work by the end of the book? Why or why not?