A Plot Twist Worthy of a Coming-of-Age Novel

Key Largo

As of three weeks ago, I was done. I mean really done.

I’d written those elusive words – THE END – then hit the return key before. But this time I meant it.

After reorganizing plot points, rewriting chapters, cutting, splicing, even adding a scene or two, I typed the final sentence of Of Sand and Bone, the second Big Book of Breath (third if you count Savage Island, which is more like a little book). It’s the sentence that’s changed about three times since I finished the first draft some months ago.

I won’t be giving away anything if I tell you what I wrote, so here goes: But he’s gone and I continue to fall.

Pretty ominous words, and ones that seem to have carried over from my fictional world into my real life. Book 2 is closed, done, finito. And yet I’ve continued to fall.

The weeks after finishing a book can be sticky.

At first, there’s the big exhale, accompanied by the clean-up of what I like to call the after-birth of a novel. Stuff like contacting the copy editor, reconnecting with the cover and text designers, and pulling together marketing ideas and scattered thoughts about looming projects, like sequels.

It’s a time of fits and starts, frustration, and lack of focus. Even if I’ve got a dozen story ideas tucked away for just this occasion, there’s this feeling of depletion. I’ve given all I’ve got, and while proud of the work and relieved the story has made it to the finish line, a pervading sense of detachment and disorientation visits me.

So, I think up chores and run errands, follow celebrity meltdowns and watch my favorite YouTube channels for hours on end, all while looking busy. This, inevitably, leads to bouts of self-flagellation, egged on by all the secret wallowing and sloth. This feeling of no-can-do creeps up on me, as if starting a novel is akin to some bygone skill, like doing the splits.

That’s why, to my joy and relief, and maybe because of a few virgin sacrifices to the gods of procrastination, THE END of Big Book 2 coincided with my daughter, Charlotte’s, Big High School Graduation Trip. One made up of a whole, blissful week of Mojitos, beach sunsets, and Cuban music.

South Beach, Miami

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? But hold on to your hats! Because like any story worth its salt, this marvelous excursion came with its own set of complications.

In addition to the drug-like draw of playing tour guide for a kid who earned this trip – straight As, varsity soccer, piano, guitar, you get the picture – and not having to think for one stinkin’ minute about my creative dysfunction, I also found myself having to truly confront the emotional journey of my eldest daughter’s pending adulthood. She’ll be eighteen next week, and starting college in the fall. While it’s not like she’s getting married off and sailing away to the New World on a schooner, likely never to be seen again, I also know it’s never going to be the same again.

So, in a plot twist worthy of a coming-of-age novel, I swapped being consumed by THE END of a fiction years in the making, with being overcome by the fact that this other epic story in my life, one nearer and dearer to me by far, was also coming to a close.

Seems like yesterday

Determined to squeeze every last drop out of everything that could possibly be squeezed, I made a silent vow that my daughter and I would do exactly what we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it. That we would hold nothing back. I wanted her to remember this trip as a heady collage of firsts and lasts. Let’s be honest, I wanted her to remember me, us. The way we have been these past eighteen years.

First up, we did a lot of talking: about Roe vs Wade, the abortion debate that has been pre-occupying the American political and cultural conversation; what it’s like moving in with a stranger, the differences between Midwesterners and Southerners and East and West Coasters, whether the Pina Colada is superior to the Strawberry Daiquiri.

We dug our toes in the sand, and floated in the blue-green, salty water. We read YA novels, watched comedies, parasailed, and on any given night ate our body weight in fresh shrimp. I let my thalassophobic girl (she taught me that word – it means fear of the ocean) cling to me in the water, like she did as a child – especially after she almost stepped on a huge, live crab. We drove from Key to Key, “vibing” with the spirit of each island, gaping at colonial Key West architecture, but NOT going on the Hemingway house tour. “I don’t care about the desk where he wrote, Mom. That’s boring as hell.” We also eavesdropped on conversations, endeavored to use our paltry few Spanish phrases, ate tres leches cake at every opportunity, took in the balmy ocean air, let our hair curl up until we hardly looked like ourselves, and most importantly, got closer as we prepared to let space come between us.

parasailing despite vertigo

I suppose we sauntered and swam through our days as if under a spell of perfect mother-daughter love, and basked in every word spoken, every touch, precisely because we knew it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. Not like this. Not now.

My girl has some serious growing up to do, and she’s going to need me to step back. I’m going to need to step up more for her younger sister, now that it’s her turn to barrel head-on into her tumultuous teen years – developing serious crushes, making new friends, resisting and succumbing to temptation. And I’m going to have to start the process of figuring out just how my life will look when mothering becomes less of a full time occupation and more of an occasional volunteer position.

Key West

We came home last Wednesday night, and it’s always strange to return from a vacation midweek. Charlotte had school the next day, and I, ostensibly, had to sit down to at least try to work. Our spell wasn’t broken exactly, but we were no longer alone, nor immersed in a strange and exotic locale. It was time to pick up where we left off.

I cuddled my youngest daughter, and soaked up all of her stories about how her week had gone – which friend got on her soapbox, the test she’s sure she flunked, the long rehearsals for the school musical. My husband had shopped for the makings of one of our favorite family meals – spaghetti carbonara – and we all hung out in the kitchen and cooked.

The next morning, as my workday threatened, I did all of my usual avoidance rituals – the ones I’ve been hating myself for: surfing Twitter, doing laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, paying way to much attention to our dog.

When I couldn’t possibly justify another distraction, I said a short prayer, opened a file I hadn’t looked at in ages, and put my fingers on the keyboard. It’s not the idea file for Big Book 3 of Breath, which has either no title or seven potentials, depending on how you look at things. It’s for The Tower of Silence, a Cold War historical thriller I’d started months ago, but had to set aside in order to do edits on Of Sand and Bone. It’s a project I’ve been uncertain about, to tell you the truth. I’ve found it hard to get back into the Cold War after immersing myself in the Golden Age of Archaeology for so long.

But the words came out strong, like they’d always been there. An indication that maybe Charlotte isn’t the only one who might need a little distance, some fodder for the imagination. To be put out on a limb, to grow.

Moscow, 1959

Polina seemed different today. Her form was nearly translucent, like the oldest spirits from his childhood fairytales, and Rodki Semyonov, her loving husband, could scarcely hear her voice. It was a voice that had once been high and clear, with the pitch of a songbird’s. So distinctive he could pick it out even in a throng of people.

“What did you say?” He asked her, refilling her tea cup.

But she was done talking, and looked out their window onto the weedy grass of their courtyard, before vanishing altogether.

New Year’s Day, 1938, was the day they had come for Polina, and every other close member of Semyonov’s family. Josef Stalin had been the jealous sort, and when he discovered Rodki Semyonov’s particular gift for puzzle-solving, he decided his own personal detective was just what he needed. Of course, a wife, a mother, and two young cousins were considered both an inconvenience and a conflict of interest, as far as a man like Stalin was concerned. They were taken from Rodki and sent to a gulag, where his wife and mother were buried alive, and his cousins were either worked to death, or eaten alive by fellow inmates, depending on who you talked to.

Sunset on Key Largo