My first novel was called Parting is All We Know of Heaven. It was written six years after my oldest sister was hit by a drunk driver while she was crossing the street and she died. I never intended to write about that. It just happened. I need to stress that.
Writing this book was hard. I changed many things, but underneath it all was the grief. Grief is something I feel is one of the most powerful parts of being alive and it is not easy. If you love you are going to grieve and so this is how I wrote a scene towards the end of the book.
My main character's name is Cordelia. Her sister Cynthia is the one in the book who is murdered. And this is Cordelia having to go get an abortion alone. How she feels without, I hope, telling as much as showing.
She wore another of Cynthia's sweaters, a faded and stretched cotton pullover with a rolled collar. It was sea green and the elbows were ripped. Her body had already changed, her breasts were bigger, and she felt heavy. It was difficult to wake up. In the cab, she huddled into the corner, wishing she could disappear into the cracks of the seat.
When she was small, her parents had a metal bookend that was a miniature replica of a Greek temple. She had wished she could shrink until she was tiny enough to hide behind the pillars. Her father drove an ancient Volvo with the floor so rusted you could watch the road move beneath you. She wanted to be small enough to slip out through the rust cracks.
When Cynthia had been in the operating room, Cordelia had gone into the bathroom and squinted at her reflection, squinted until her face disappeared in a blaze of light. Now she wished she could become a puff of smoke, smoke that would be blown away by the air sweeping through the cab as they hurtled towards the clinic.
“You want this corner?” Cordelia paid the driver and took the elevator to the 17th floor.
As she approached the reception desk, her knees buckled. Whoa, somebody's boyfriend caught her arm, a young man with rosy cheeks, whose hand was held by a small woman with red hair.
“It's the not eating,” she said, smiling at Cordelia.
She was told her name would be called. She started to read a New Yorker short story about a group of friends who were feeling disconnected. One of them kills himself. After a few minutes, she dialed Harrison's number on the payphone in the waiting room.
“Hello.” He sounded sleepy.
“Hi.” She had attempted cheerfulness, but her voice came out in a strangled shriek and she coughed slightly.
“Cordelia, what's wrong? Where are you?”
“Nowhere. I mean, I'm home and I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Let me call you back then.”
“Why?”
“The connection's terrible.”
“No, I'm about to leave.”
“Where are you?” Harrison began to sound very awake.
“Harrison?” What did she want to say?
“Yes.”The waiting room was now filled with people. Two men sitting with their girlfriends, looking self-conscious and responsible. Two women were whispering in the corner. Only she had come alone.
“I'm sorry.”
”Sorry for what?”
”Everything.”It was a hopeless conversation. Probably inspired by the New Yorker story. Her name was called over the loudspeaker.
“I have to go now.”
”Are you in an airport?”
”No.”
”Are you getting the abortion?”
”Yes.”
”Alone?”
”Sort of.”
”Jesus Christ, God damn you to hell, you fucking martyred bitch.”She hung up. The anesthetist gave her a needle in the arm and crossed her hands on her chest. She felt like the Lady of Shallot floating down the lake to her graceful death, dying for the love of Lancelot.
The orderly wiped the tears off her face and patted her hand. In her dream, Cynthia was teaching her how to read. Carefully and patiently, her sister sounded out the syllables. The strange part was that Cynthia was an adult, Cordelia was an adult, and knew how to read.
She kept interrupting, but Cynthia would not listen, continuing to stress the vowels and the consonants, reading aloud in a monotone. She woke up in a dimly lit room next to a moaning woman on a stretcher.
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Cordelia Cavanagh works as a receptionist at a New York City squash club but aspires to an acting career. After her sister is brutally murdered, she indulges in survivor guilt in the worst way and spends the rest of the novel trying to make sense out of her muddled feelings about her dead sister, her psychologist mother, and her frustrated actor father. Cordelia unwisely hooks up with Philip, a true lowlife, with whom she has fairly graphic but unexciting S & M sex. She also tries anorexia and drugs, to no avail. She finally comes to her senses and seems to resolve her conflict somewhat, but her relationships with various family members and friends remain tenuous.
