The story of Lilian Jordan – a born survivor – who at thirty, decides to reject her family and the conventions of life in the fast lane and devote herself to the search for her natural mother, independence, and unconditional love. Click here to purchase Living in Arcadia on Amazon.
Transcript
I'm going to talk some more about writing novels this time focusing on my second novel and also a little bit on the topic of grief which has been an ongoing theme or motif in most of my books when I came to write my second novel it was hard I didn't have any more ideas I can remember I was so angry at my therapist
I don't know why I was angry at my therapist she wasn't my publisher but anyway I said something to her like you know do I need to have another sister die to write another book which is melodramatic and stupid but in any case one day I was walking actually to see this therapist and I was thinking about how I had absolutely no ideas for a second novel and I was watching this dog training class and there was one woman there
a little younger than me pretty and she had this dog that clearly didn't like her and she clearly didn't like the dog they were facing in opposite directions and the dog was looking like he wanted to be anywhere else and so did she and I started thinking about how you can end up in a situation where you're taking a dog you didn't like to a dog training class and I started thinking about someone leaving someone in the middle of the night a boyfriend and leaving his dog behind. And that's where the idea came for Thomas Wolfe, who is a character in this novel, a dog.
Never had a dog, so I made that up. Well, we had a dog when I was a child, but mostly I didn't have a dog.
When I got to therapy, I just told my therapist all about my idea instead of talking about other things.
But that was exciting, and I wrote a second novel.
I was also getting my MFA at Brooklyn College while I was writing it and had the luck of a teacher who was giving me really good feedback. However, my publisher, the publisher of Stone Garden, turned it down. My British publisher, well, I didn't have a British publisher until they made an offer on this.
So, Living in Arcadia was published in England, Ireland, Canada, a few other places.
The next thing that happened was that I was able to go over to England and do some talks and things like that.
On with the theme of how dealing with grief, which seems to be one of my motifs or themes or recurring situations in novels I write, I wanted to read an excerpt.
Lillian Jordan is the heroine of this book
Thomas Wolfe is her dog and she has come to Maine to find what turns out to be her real mother, her biological mother.
She was adopted as a baby and they were going to tell her, her parents were going to tell her, but they kind of forgot and she found out in another way after she had decided she was going to get pregnant alone and had a blood test.
In the end, her biological parents were great and her decision to go find her real mother, her other mother, was based on other feelings and so this is just a scene where Helen, her mother, is speaking at an AA meeting and Lillian, who also is a recovering alcoholic, is sitting in the audience listening.
This is the first time that she has seen her real mother.
The meeting began.
Lillian looked around the room and saw a man waving at her.
It was one of the cooks from the Flaming Hearth.
Hey there, he said, far out.
She saw someone else, the girlfriend of a steady customer, and then another woman, a friend of Mildred's, leaned forward and smiled.
The speaker was introduced, and when she sat down at the table in front of the room, Lillian saw the face from the yearbook, slightly more lined and somewhat less sharply featured,
But Still the Same Perfect Cheekbones and Almond-Shaped Eyes She felt herself stop breathing, and then she began to count, using the numbers to stop herself from hyperventilating.
Hello, the woman said.
Most of you guys know me.
I'm Helen C., and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Helen, Lillian said in dumb chorus with the rest of the room.
I've been sober nearly 25 years.
I drank badly.
I stopped drinking because I couldn't do it anymore.
I got sober because being a dry drunk was as close to being dead as I'll ever come.
I couldn't drink anymore because I'm an alcoholic and that meant if I didn't stop, I'd die.
Lillian looked down at her feet.
She thought there was very little she wanted to know about this woman, but she also felt herself wanting to stand up, to stand up and tell all the people in the room that the woman they were listening to with such interest was actually her mother.
Little Faye is an alcoholic.
The meeting would simply continue.
People would nod and smile.
When I was first married, I used to hide my bottles from my husband.
It didn't make any sense.
He knew I was drinking.
He didn't drink, so I wasn't protecting my liquor supply.
I just didn't want him to see those bottles.
Lillian nodded.
She looked into the eyes of her mother trying to make her stare back.
Helen's eyes scanned the room and then dropped.
Lillian felt rage grow in her belly.
All around the room, people's heads were going up and down.
She stifled an impulse to laugh.
Liar, she felt like shouting.
Hypocrite.
When my child was born, I tried to stop drinking.
Emily was such a good baby, and I wanted to try and be a good mother.
When I got drunk around her, she could tell there was something wrong.
She was too quiet.
She tried to be a good baby so her mother would feel better.
Helen's eyes filled with tears.
Lillian looked around for an escape route.
She was sitting towards the front in the center of the row.
There were too many feet.
I controlled my drinking.
My husband and I were having problems.
I began an affair with his best friend.
Helen took a deep breath.
I had always loved this man.
He and my husband had shared an apartment together in college.
After Larry went to bed, John and I used to sit up and talk about all the things we wanted to do with our lives, traveling to Europe, moving to New York, writing books.
But we were stuck.
His wife had MS. She would never walk again.
He was the kindest person I've ever known. A good artist. But he couldn't save me.
He knew I was a drunk and he wanted me to stop. Something happened that changed everything.
I was born, Lillian thought. My husband left me.
John wanted to tell his wife about us, but I couldn't stand to hurt another person.
Anyway, I didn't believe anyone could love me that much.
Emily missed her daddy.
I made a terrible decision.
It was necessary for the survival of our family, but it never stopped hurting.
In the end, it ruined all the good there was.
You gave me away, Lillian thought.
I started drinking around the clock.
John couldn't get me to stop.
I told him I regretted everything that had happened between us and that I didn't love him.
I told him I'd given birth to a baby girl, our child, and abandoned her.
I invented other lovers and I described having sex with them.
Once or twice I hit him.
He kept trying to get me sober.
I told him I preferred to die rather than stop drinking.
I thought all of this would make him stop loving me.
Perhaps it did.
One night, after a violent argument, he shot himself.
You gave me away, Lillian screamed inside.
You killed my father.
Sometimes I look back and I want to change everything.
I didn't pull the trigger that killed John.
He had his own higher power.
Helen paused and took a deep breath.
Most of you know about Emily's accident.
I see myself from before full of dreams and unspoken ideas and I want to hold that young girl, that hopeful, brave person and tell her she's going to be alright.
That I love her.
I want to explain to my daughter that she had nothing to do with my anger and my disappointment.
Me, Lillian thought, you should tell me.
But I can't go back.
I can't save him.
I can't pull Emily out of that cold water.
I can't return the breath to my own daughter.
I can't drink.
I don't understand why some people seem to have happy lives.
But I do understand that I'm not very important.
When Emily died, I thought there was no good left in the world.
Sometimes I still feel that way.
I don't know why I stayed in this town, but something made me not run away.
I have a life.
Not the one I'd always expected, but the one I have.
When people ask me what I am, I think, no matter what I say, I am an alcoholic.
After Helen put Lillian up for adoption, her daughter Emily drowns with her husband as an adult.
Well, that's a lot of loss.
And why I went there?
I like to create situations where people are really tested and this was the situation that I imagined and also had known about from some other people and my own experience with death.
So, another really fun book and I would love you to visit my website theteachersway.com.
Thank you.
