Within Arm's Reach Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  GRACIE

  CATHARINE

  LOUIS

  GRACIE

  LILA

  CATHARINE

  GRACIE

  KELLY

  LILA

  Part Two

  GRACIE

  LILA

  CATHARINE

  KELLY

  LOUIS

  GRACIE

  LILA

  NOREEN BALLEN

  KELLY

  LOUIS

  GRACIE

  LILA

  NOREEN BALLEN

  CATHARINE

  Within Arm’s Reach - ANN NAPOLITANO

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to my parents,

  CATHARINE MCNAMARA NAPOLITANO and JAMES ROMEO NAPOLITANO,

  for giving me every opportunity.

  Praise for WITHIN ARM’S REACH

  “A stunning first novel . . . This exquisite, skillfully written gem addresses serious issues—e.g., guilt vs. loyalty, the past vs. the present— while the narrative remains hopeful and includes ample doses of humor and wit.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Within Arm’s Reach explores this fertile territory . . . an Irish-American Catholic family living in New Jersey. We view this clan’s unfolding problems . . . without which family life—or at least family reunions—would be unbearably dull.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “A mosaic of the past intersecting with the present and a reminder that what we most love is what can do us the most damage.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way, Tolstoy once wrote—sort of. And he had not even read about the McLaughlin clan of Ann Napolitano’s interesting debut novel, Within Arm’s Reach.”

  —Miami Herald

  “Shows the promise of a very talented writer.”

  —Sun-Sentinel

  “Napolitano draws us in. . . . Gracie’s pregnancy and Catherine’s response to it is the catalyst that unfreezes [an] unhappy tableau and demands that truths long hidden be spoken and confronted.”

  —Tallahassee Democrat

  “A wonderful first novel . . . Napolitano gracefully and honestly charts the tensions as the various family members come together.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A fresh and exceptionally strong family portrait, mercifully free of the sentimentality that could easily have turned the proceedings into a soap opera.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Graceful and fluidly written . . . Napolitano’s clear-eyed narrative allows us to see the ghosts and desires along with the ties that bind.”

  —Booklist

  “Ann Napolitano has one of the most natural talents I have seen in a long time. . . . Within Arm’s Reach is for anyone who has ever had family difficulties, been in love or wanted to be in love, felt lonely or troubled, which, of course, makes it a book for just about everyone.”

  —Craig Nova, author of Cruisers

  “Ann Napolitano has written beautifully and wisely, and the product is a stunning and lasting story.”

  —Robert Inman, author of Dairy Queen Days and Captain Saturday

  “Within Arm’s Reach is, plainly stated, a beautiful story. Napolitano accomplishes the difficult task of interweaving multiple voices into a strong, subtle narrative that engages to the very end.”

  —Martha Witt, author of Broken As Things Are

  Acknowledgments

  Helen Ellis and Hannah Tinti have read nearly every word I’ve written for the last eight years. Thanks isn’t a strong enough word, but it will have to do.

  For their constant support I’d like to thank: Stacey Bosworth, Lauren Strobeck, Michael Napolitano, Leah Napolitano Ortiz, Peggy Kesslar, Kristen Fair, Suzanne Klotz, Dan Levine, Mrs. Ronning, Dr. and Mrs. Nap, Carol Fishbone and Toby Hilgendorff, Dina Pimentel, Jen Efferen, Chelsea BaileyShea, Joshan Martin, Theresa Lowrey, and the Sumner family.

  Thanks to my editor, Shaye Areheart, and my agent, Elaine Koster, for loving this book and giving it life.

  For inspiration and instruction I thank my teachers: David Boorstin, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Paule Marshall, and Dani Shapiro.

  My love and gratitude to Dan Wilde, who holds my hand.

  And I thank the McNamaras for their stories—both the ones they reluctantly told and the ones I made up.

  Part One

  GRACIE

  My grandmother gave birth often, which I suppose increased her odds for tragedy. Her firstborn, a sweet, chatty daughter, died when she was three years old from dehydration and the flu. My mother had become the oldest McLaughlin child by default, and three more of my five aunts and uncles were already walking or crawling, climbing over furniture, and driving my grandfather, whose heart had broken with the death of his first baby, crazy when my grandmother became pregnant with twins.

  Today twins are considered a high-risk pregnancy. I’m sure they were then, too, but my grandmother had four kids under the age of six to clean, dress, feed, and teach manners to with the help of Willie, the live-in black maid. My grandfather was a lawyer and on the weekends he played golf and in the evenings he drank scotch. This was long before the days of coparenting, long before it was even a word.

  My grandmother had to get my mother and Pat into neatly pressed uniforms and off to single-sex Catholic schools every morning. She had to keep the two youngest home with her while she and Willie split the cleaning, laundry, and cooking. She had to write letters to her mother and her husband’s mother each week, updating them on the family’s life. On Sundays, out of respect for the Lord, she met the challenge of keeping all of the children quiet and prayerful in their bedrooms without toys or any books other than the Bible.

  Pregnancy, even of twins, did not get in the way of the daily routines. It couldn’t, really, since my grandmother was, for the first eleven years of her marriage, more often pregnant than not. So she picked up toys and assigned the children chores and shushed them around their father and kept an eagle eye on their manners at the dinner table and supervised prayers before bedtime as her five-foot-two, petite body swelled. She occasionally allowed herself a small nap while she sat upright at the kitchen table, a bowl of peas waiting to be shelled under her fingertips. But that was it. Birthing children, making a big family, raising it up right was her main job. She ignored all sharp pains, any warning signs that something might be wrong. She was never one to complain. Even now, at the age of seventy-eight, she refuses novocaine at the dentist’s office. She lies perfectly still, hands folded on her waist, while the dentist, shaking his head in amazement, drills into her teeth.

  My grandmother went into labor very suddenly one night after she and Willie had finished serving the evening meal. She set down a bowl of broccoli and pressed the heels of her hands hard against the edge of the table. “Children,” she said. “Meggy, elbows off the table. Your father and I will be eating later tonight. Kelly”—her sharp blue eyes on my mother, the oldest now that the true oldest was gone—“you’re in charge here, understood?”

  She walked carefully out of the dining room, aware of the children’s eyes on her, turned the corner, and collapsed. The doctor didn’t make it in time. Willie boiled water and carried a stack of clean towels to the bedroom and wept while my grandfather, scared and therefore annoyed, stood by the head of my grandmother’s single bed and told her to keep it down. He cursed the doctor for his slowness. He cursed Willie for moaning under her breath at the sight of blood. He cursed his pipe for not lighting on the first try. He cursed the childre
n in the other room for their existence. He cursed his first child, his sweet baby girl, for dying on him and leaving him here like this. Shipwrecked and lonely. Useless.

  The doctor, his pockets filled with lollipops for the McLaughlin children, showed up just as the twins were born. Stillborn. My grandmother must have felt it. After the long last shudder of labor she turned her head to the wall, shut her eyes, and began to wail. My grandfather and the doctor were shaken by the noise. The doctor bent over the babies, one boy and one girl, making sure that there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could do.

  My grandmother’s cries got louder.

  “Now, Catharine,” my grandfather said, looking from the still, purplish babies to this woman whose contorted face he did not know.

  The doctor gathered the infants in his arms. “Get them out of here,” he said to my grandfather. “She can’t take the sight of them.”

  My grandfather grabbed the babies and, glad to have something to do, an answer to the misery in that room, an order to follow, rushed through the house. He stumbled two steps at a time down the stairs. He strode through the living room, where Kelly, Pat, Meggy, and Theresa sat on the couch and on the floor where Willie had told them to Keep Quiet and Pray. The children watched, frozen in their places as their father moved past them, blood covering his crisp white work shirt, two purple babies held against his shoulder. He was in their sight for only a few seconds, but that was long enough.

  Then my grandfather was in the kitchen, where Willie had gone to hide after the doctor arrived. He yanked open the door to the garage and rounded the corner to where the huge metal garbage cans were kept. He lifted off one of the metal lids, and dropped the babies inside. They fell one after the other onto a cushion of broken eggshells and milk gone bad and a few potatoes that had sprouted knobs and spuds too unsightly to just cut off and ignore.

  THE STORY of the twins’ birth is a strange comfort to me. I recognize myself in the story; I recognize the people I come from and am surrounded by. It proves that even when the worst thing imaginable happens, the individuals involved still survive. The McLaughlins were able to limp away from the death of those babies. They remained a family. Daily routines, petty arguments, and relationships continued. I run this story over and over in my head because I need the convincing right now. I need to know that my world is not about to explode, in spite of any surprise or botched plan I throw at it.

  The twins’ stillbirth is just one of the refracted images that have made their way down through the communal memory of my family, breaking over each of us like a wave. My mother witnessed that day with her own eyes, and then twenty years later those same eyes saw my birth. She never spoke of the twins—because my mother, like her own mother, never speaks of anything important. But still, I was aware of what she had seen from her seat on my grandparents’ living-room floor long before I was able to put words to it.

  That has become my obsession, and sometimes livelihood, putting words to sensations, inklings, feelings. Looking for the back-story. I write a weekly advice column for the Bergen Record. I used to date the editor of the paper, and Grayson both came up with the perfect job for me and let me keep it after we broke up. He is probably my favorite ex-boyfriend. I love to come up with the right phrase, and to pinpoint the stories that have made people who they are. I enjoy working out other people’s problems. I like to come up with the final word, the right answer, and to see that printed indelibly in black and white.

  No one in my mother’s family ever talks about anything that can be categorized as unpleasant or having to do with emotions, and, as a result, they no longer have anything to say. My mother has no idea how to carry on a normal conversation; my aunt Meggy never stops talking and yet never says anything constructive; and getting more than four words out of my uncle Pat is a major feat. For them it’s not a matter of keeping secrets; it’s a matter of being polite, mannerly, and tough. The McLaughlins couldn’t spill their woes or ask for help even if they wanted to, because they don’t have the vocabulary. They are stranded within themselves, convinced that the only way is to silently persevere.

  My last name is Leary, but I have a lot of McLaughlin in me. It’s like looking at a reflection in a broken mirror; I can see the sharp corners and growing cracks of my family. I see pride fix my thin lips shut. I see the irony of my profession, where I ask everyone to come to me with their heart on their sleeves, while not allowing anyone a good look at who I am. I spend my nights at the Green Trolley, laughing, drinking, making eye contact with some man I’ve never met before and feeling that lightness spread through me, but I know this is not—was not ever—a step toward revealing myself. I tell lies in that bar. I sometimes give a false name. I tell men whatever I think they want to hear, and once the words are out of my mouth, I half-believe them. I never tell anything close to a whole truth, to anyone.

  Unfortunately, I now have a secret that I won’t be able to hide for much longer. There’s no lie, fib, or narrative that will keep people from knowing this truth. Everyone will take one glance in my direction and know my story. My belly will give me away. Twenty-nine-year-old woman, not enough steady income, no husband, pregnant.

  Tonight I picture my dead grandfather hugging his dead infants to his shoulder, ruining his fine white shirt forever. Breathing steadily, in and out, aware of the muscles in his calves as he pumps down the stairs, aware of the throbbing at his temples, the dryness in the back of his throat, which means he will have a drink at the first chance he gets. He clutches the babies and feels all these things and thinks, At least I am alive. Then he thinks it as a question, as he rushes past the living children sitting tight as balls on the floor and on the couch.

  Am I alive? Is this my life?

  CATHARINE

  I stop the car because everyone I have ever lost is standing in the middle of the road.

  They are lined up across my lane of traffic in front of the Municipal Building. I see them from a distance but don’t immediately recognize their faces. They look like a family on their way to visit the Municipal Building to log a complaint, or to have their day in court. Their body language and slightly formal clothing make them appear serious and purposeful. There is an elderly couple, and behind them a middle-aged man holding an infant, his free hand stretching back to a three-year-old girl with white-blond hair. I wonder where the mother of the little girl and the baby is. Why is the middle-aged man alone with two children? The elderly couple is clearly too old, and too dependent on each other, to be of much help—the man’s hand is under the woman’s elbow, their heads are cocked toward each other as if afraid to miss one word.

  I have to remind myself that times have changed. There are single-parent households now, and wives leave husbands, whereas in the past the man nearly always left the woman. There is no telling what might be possible these days. I am, in fact, thinking about what might be possible as I drive along North Central Avenue toward the Municipal Building. Specifically, I am thinking about my granddaughter Gracie. I am on my way home from a visit with her.

  I hadn’t seen Gracie or Lila for two weeks, while I was getting over a bad cold. But I noticed the change in Gracie as soon as she walked into the kitchen. There was a heaviness to the way she moved, and a shine to her face. There was more to her than there had been. I didn’t say anything, of course. I told myself that I couldn’t be right. Gracie’s not married. And my instincts are not as trustworthy as they once were. There is no way this young boy-crazy girl—she is still a girl to me— could be with child. I must be losing my mind.

  “What’s with that face?” Gracie had asked, her hand on the teakettle.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my face,” I heard myself say. “Your grammar is atrocious. Do you even listen to yourself speak? You should pay more attention to language, Gracie. You and your sister don’t speak proper English. Your cousins are even worse, I’m sorry to say. Maybe if you’d spent more time in church, listening to the fathers preach . . . Everything’s been
diluted in you.” I had to shake my head to make myself be quiet.

  “I know, Gram.” Gracie smiled and rolled her eyes at me. I could tell she was trying to help calm me down. “All my problems would disappear if I went to Mass regularly.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” I said. My head ached. “It couldn’t have hurt.”

  I stopped talking then, but I felt no better, no more in control. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from careening after this impossible idea about the girl standing before me making my tea the way I like it, with no sugar and a drop of milk. Leaning against the rickety kitchen table in the house Gracie rents from her father, I saw myself, my past, in her. That period in my life when I was endlessly making, carrying, delivering babies. After all, when I was Gracie’s age I was halfway through making my family. At twenty-nine I was carrying Meggy, or perhaps Johnny. I had lost my daughter, but not yet the twins.

  I am thinking about my babies as I drive closer to the people strung like a chain across the street. I have always had the ability to identify a pregnant woman before she has even begun to show. I wasn’t expecting motherhood in Gracie, which is why I wasn’t sure right away. But now, my hands wrapped around the unwieldy steering wheel of my car, I know it is the truth. I just don’t know how I should feel about it.

  I’m nearly on top of the family before I recognize them. It is just a feeling at first, a seizing in the pit of my stomach, and that’s when I begin to slow down. My foot presses down on the brake seemingly without my control. The car bucks beneath me. I recognize the individuals, one by one. Mother. Father. Patrick. My eldest daughter. And, cupped against Patrick’s chest, is not one infant, but two.

  I stop the car. Except for the twins, who are busy yawning and fussing against Patrick’s suit jacket, my family looks in my direction with little expression. Patrick doesn’t seem to see me at all; he is busy with the children. Mother and Father are leaning toward each other. My daughter is bent over pulling up her knee socks. I give an extra-long moment to gazing at the twins. I have never had the chance to lay eyes on them before. They are so very beautiful, and so very mine that my old shriveled breasts ache, hoping for milk.