Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Illumination Night: A Novel
Illumination Night: A Novel
Illumination Night: A Novel
Ebook246 pages4 hours

Illumination Night: A Novel

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A “wondrous” novel of fear, desire, loss, and discovery on Martha’s Vineyard by the New York Times–bestselling author of Practical Magic and Seventh Heaven (Chicago Tribune).

Elizabeth Renny has only made two decisions of consequence in her seventy-plus years. While the first, marrying her husband, had adequate results, the second—deciding she could fly from her bedroom window—is less successful. But her flight sets in motion a series of events that will forever change the lives of six residents of Martha’s Vineyard: a young boy who refuses to grow, a wife stifled by her irrational anxiety, a husband tempted by the unknown, a girl flirting with disaster, a gentle giant tortured by his size, and an old woman with nothing to lose.
 
Praised as “an intelligent novel” by the New York Times and “achingly vivid” by Newsday, Illumination Night is a sparkling and heartbreaking narrative that explores marriage, friendship, youth, yearning, disillusionment, and desire, a book as bright and memorable as the festival of lanterns for which it is named.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 23, 2014
ISBN9781453225776
Illumination Night: A Novel
Author

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is the author of many books for children including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and Nightbird. Her books for adults include Practical Magic, The Museum of Extraordinary Things,The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites. Half Magic is her favorite book for children and Edward Eager is her favorite children’s book author.

Read more from Alice Hoffman

Related to Illumination Night

Related ebooks

Literary Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Illumination Night

Rating: 3.7772727109090907 out of 5 stars
4/5

220 ratings18 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this story enough for it to hold my interest but the whole time I kept feeling like there was something missing but maybe that is the point of it. Most of us live our lives feeling like something is missing or off and few of us ever figure out what that something is. The setting of this story is Martha's Vineyard. The characters all lead fairly normal but simple lives until Jody moves in next door to help her ailing grandmother. She stirs things up enough to add interest and some drama to the characters lives and then she slips away to pursue a more freeing kind of life...or so we assume.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Simon can hear the sound of pine cones hitting the ground, or bones breaking" (p 4). You know you are in for a wild ride when you read that early-in-the-book sentence because, at that moment you haven't learned that Simon, at age four, has just heard the result of woman trying to fly. There are so many things you don't know...yet. I should also add that Illumination Night is a really fast read. I read the first 80 pages before coming up for air. My entire lunch break flew by without my eyes lifting from the page once. Alice Hoffman is one of those authors that can suck you into a story within the first few sentences. Once you are hooked you can't escape the story or the characters. This is a story of relationships. A grandmother, trying to understand her 16 year old granddaughter. They live next door to a married couple trying to live with their insecurities and unmet desires. All of the characters become entangled with one another when the teenager sets her sights on seducing the husband. And then, this part sounds like the punchline to a joke, a giant walks into the picture...Seriously, this is a simply beautiful story about relationships, the ones with healing and faith in them.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Probably not Hoffman's best work compared to the other novels I've read from her, but still an absolutely wonderful journey into the lives of unique characters whose intersections and effects are a fascinating worthwhile read. As ever, the characters are both believable and unique, with voices that resonate long after each page is turned. In the end, I admit that I wanted slightly more resolution, but Hoffman's work is nearly pitch perfect for the story and the problems she paints within. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I thought this was one of Alice Hoffman's weaker novels. It's about a disparate group of people on Martha's Vineyard. At times, the story was strong, but at other times, she just seemed detached from it, not fully engaged with the material. The giant subplot was not believable. However, I'm still going to read other books by her. It wasn't a stinker, it just wasn't one of her best.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this novel. I wish it was longer and some of the characters were explored a little more thoroughly, like the Giant, for example. The character Vonny was extremely annoying for me, very whiney and codependant. Using Martha's Vineyard as the backdrop was a nice touch.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Life and death and joy and pain. Hoffman deftly weaves her tapestry, affirming that life is often at its most beautiful when emotions are raw and close to the surface, and that when despite all we simply continue
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent writing with interesting characters. Elizabeth Renny is getting old and having "spells." Her granddaughter Jody has come to Martha's Vineyard to take care of her but is an angry, rebellious, sexually aggressive 16-year-old. Next door to Elizabeth is a young couple, Vonny and Andre, with issues of their own and a son who isn't growing. There is also a "giant" in the book who becomes involved with a couple of the characters. A haunting story and the author doesn't neatly tie up all the loose ends but does leave the reader with hope that the characters they have come to know and care about will survive and even thrive. Ms. Hoffman never disappoints.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Vonny and Andre have a son who is very small. Old Neighbor has her granddaughter Jody come to live and take care of her for a month. It becomes much longer and Jodi causes lost of problems, too much with the boys and flirts with Andre. There's a giant to match a giant story and some disaster as Jodi graduates, little Billy grows up a bit and Vonny has panic attacks that keep her home. The best description of panic leading to agrophoria that I've read. Good but not a 5.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was an enjoyable read but not my favorite by this author. It is a rather quiet story of real people full of contradictions and issues, and how they overlap, cross paths, evolve. Very introspective and human, very morally murky, and bittersweet.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A woman plagued with agoraphobia learns to deal with the world in this beautifully written novel. The ending is simply magical.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    meh. Fast beach read. Did not find the characters too believable and hence did not get into the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    First book I read by my other favorite author - Alice Hoffman. Read it in Ogunquit one summer vacation. Still remember buying it at the little book store downtown (gone now) I was swept away with her magical characters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of my favorite books! One of the few books I have read more than once. The first time I read it was over 20 years ago. Alice Hoffman‘s writing is definitely more prose than writing and magical all the way through. When Simon gets stuck inside his PJ top and when he opens his eyes the whole world is blue! I remember doing that as a child. I just love her writing. And I loved all the storylines. Now I want to go to Martha’s Vineyard and see all the lanterns
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is the first novel by Hoffman that I have read and I hope her subsequent work is better. Neither the story or the characters ring true. She should not have included references to birds since she knew nothing about what birds would be on Martha’s Vineyard at what season. Not worth the time to read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Vonny and Andrew live in Martha’s Vineyard with their five-year-old slow-growing son, Simon. Their next-door neighbor, Elizabeth Renny, falls from a window and must get assistance, which arrives in the form of her rebellious teenage granddaughter, Jody. Eddie, called “the Giant,” lives alone with his chickens, avoiding social contact due to his extreme height. This is the story of people living in this small community. Each of the main characters is dealing with an issue.

    I liked parts of this book quite a bit, especially the first half. The description of “illumination night,” an annual event, is beautiful. I enjoyed the relationship between Jody and her grandmother, a much-needed relief from her overbearing parents. The last half of the book is extremely sad. The characters start with problems and end with problems, though perhaps different ones. There is little humor or joy to be found. Surely someone in this town is happy? The storylines are well developed until they just….end. Maybe I missed something, but it seems it seems unfinished to me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The plot takes a back seat in this languid, dreamlike tale that perfectly captures the passions and fears of Martha’s Vineyard neighbors. Especially striking are the descriptions of teenage Jody’s ambivalent emotions and her first love with the island’s most reclusive inhabitant.

    I think many readers will be disappointed with the slice-of-life style, preferring something with a more proactive plot and story resolution.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book has the kinds of characters you fall immediately in love with, from the rebellious teenage girl, to her elderly grandmother, the sullen motorcycle enthusiast and his tiny four year old son who just can't grow fast enough and his mother who has severe anxiety issues. Every character is someone you want to know. Every character is beautifully created and woven into the story.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book gets a big fat MEH, from me. It’s not horrible, it’s just boring. I’ve read and enjoyed some of Hoffman’s other books, like Practical Magic and Blue Diary, so I thought I’d try this one. The novel, set on Martha’s Vineyard, introduces us to a variety of characters, but never really settles into a groove.One of the major problems is that Hoffman is trying to tell too many stories at once. First there’s Vonny, who has issues with her rich father and is suffering from agoraphobia. Then we have her son Simon, who is far too small for his age, and her husband Andre, who is tempted to have an affair. Add to the mix, Elizabeth, an elderly neighbor with failing health, and her granddaughter Jody, a rebellious teen who moves in with her for the summer. But that’s not all folks! There’s also a giant, perhaps the most interesting character of the book, but we barely scratch the surface of his story. Throw that all together and try to connect the dots and you end up with a bit of a mess. In the end we aren’t induced to care about any of the characters. Though some of the plot lines are interesting, we never get a chance to become invested in any of them. Skip this one and try another of her books if you’re curious about her work.  

Book preview

Illumination Night - Alice Hoffman

Chapter One

ILLUMINATION NIGHT

SIMON looks out his window and sees something white moving in the window of the house next door. It is the first Saturday in July and so hot that dragonflies light on his window ledge, too weak to fly. Simon lifts himself up by leaning his arms on the ledge; his toes are pressed against the baseboard molding. He can hear the ocean, which lies beyond a tangled field of beach plums and scrub pines. He can hear the white material in the window next door flapping against the bright blue sky, and his dog, an old German shepherd named Nelson, digging himself a hole in the dirt.

Simon, who will be four in November, has his own room, painted blue, up under the eaves. From here he can hear his father, Andre, working on his motorcycle out in the shed. The radio is turned on in the shed, and music spirals upward. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Simon’s mother, Vonny, lights the right rear burner of the stove. It’s an old black stove, and beneath the heavy metal the floorboards sway. The stove was installed in the twenties, as were the plumbing and the electricity that flickers whenever there’s a thunderstorm. The house itself—two small bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen, parlor, living room, bath, and sun porch downstairs—is a brown shingled cottage that sags in odd places. The ceilings are too low and the pipes moan. Outside, along a low stockade fence, old, dusky roses grow. The first time they saw the house, the year before Simon was born, Vonny could not believe Andre was actually considering it. There were bats in the upstairs bedrooms then, and a family of skunks lived under the porch. Andre had just sold his company—he designed and manufactured three-wheeled motorcycles—and they bought the house the way they got married, suddenly, startling themselves with their own recklessness. The weekend they bought the property was the first time either of them had been to Martha’s Vineyard. After the realtor showed them the house, they went out to lunch, then came back to explore on their own. Andre went immediately to the cellar, to inspect the foundation, and when Vonny went to look for him, her foot went right through the rotted wood of one of the steps. She lurched forward, then suddenly, as though the wood had released her, regained her balance. She sat down on the second step and began to cry. The flashlight Andre held made circles of light as he knelt to examine the rotten stair. He wore a white shirt and blue jeans and an old black jacket. He swung one leg over the splintered wood and watched her cry. Two hours later they bought the house.

It has been five years and Andre has never regretted it. On the other hand, in the dead of winter Vonny thinks a lot about Beacon Street. She hates the stove here; a draft always blows out the pilot light as she cooks, even on hot, still days. Today, she is fighting with the stove as she boils potatoes for potato salad. Simon can hear her reach into the cabinet for the big lobster pot as he takes off his pajama pants and gets shorts and a T-shirt out of his dresser. He pulls his p.j. top up and gets stuck inside. When he opens his eyes everything looks blue. He finally gets his p.j.s over his head, then sits down to dress himself. He is extremely proud of some of the things he is able to do. He loves the way his mother’s eyes widen when he manages something that was impossible even a week earlier. If the world ended at the front door, Simon would not care, although he might like to extend it a bit to include the shed and the stony path where he rides his bike—his father has bolted two wooden blocks to each pedal—as far as he’s allowed. Beyond that spot there is a cliff and, after a drop of twenty feet, a salt-water pond. The water there is so murky it is impossible to swim, but the beach is littered with false angel wings and bone-white crab claws and, in the height of summer, pink marsh mallows grow wild in the thickets.

Next door, Elizabeth Renny, who will be seventy-four this winter, holds up a white scarf. Through it, the wide expanse of lawn looks gauzy and far away. Beside her there are thin curtains that cling to her skin. This cottage is newer than the one next door, built at the turn of the century. She has lived here, in Chilmark, for more than fifty years. Last night, two starlings got caught in her chimney and Elizabeth Renny could hear them beating their wings all night. She could not sleep, and then this morning there was silence. Awake in her bed, Elizabeth suddenly felt light-headed and she has felt more and more giddy as the morning wears on. She wonders if the starlings managed to rise up in the chimney without moving their wings. When she looks outside, the sleeplessness and heat have a strange effect on her. She has been worried about the coming winter since May. She is all alone; her daughter lives in a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. For the past year, there has been a film over her right eye. Lately a black spot has formed in the center of her vision. At night, she is frightened by silly things: the sound of crickets, branches brushing against the window, the pressure of a cat’s paw against her mattress. Now, she couldn’t care less. Through the scarf, everything looks white and she can feel her body lessen its pull on her. Usually, her bones feel as if they’re already drawing her into the earth. It smells sweet up here. Clover and rose of Sharon. In the pine tree a mockingbird leaves its perch and soars above the highest branches. Elizabeth Renny hears the calls of the birds she leaves bread for every morning: starling, cardinal, mockingbird, nuthatch. When she leans forward she sees that what she thought was a cloud is a cluster of white herons, effortlessly sweeping across the sky. Outside, there is music from the portable radio in the neighbor’s shed, but she doesn’t hear it. Simon is the only one who sees the white thing move into the air. Against the sky it’s like a cloud. For a moment it drifts toward the trees, then drops quickly. Up in his room, Simon can hear the sound of pinecones hitting the ground, or bones breaking. A clattering sound, which makes him think of his own kitchen. A spoon hitting against a metal pot.

THEY had fought over the shed and each thinks the other has won. Vonny had wanted it for her potter’s wheel, Andre for his motorcycles, and in the end there was an uneasy compromise. Andre set up Vonny’s kiln against the wall near a small window barred with wire mesh. On days when she fires pottery he pulls the bike he’s working on—currently a 1934 Norton—into the yard and spends the rest of the day in a black mood. When Vonny finally withdraws her plates and mugs, the shed is still so hot Andre has to wait hours before going back inside. On these days he works until midnight, although he has no timetable. He has come here to do what he wants—restore old motorcycles that he sells to collectors. Growing up in New Hampshire, he was taught not to talk too much, and not to listen much either. Now Vonny, who knew exactly what he was like when she married him, wants more from him. It would be as though he expected her to cross a bridge, when he knew from the start she would go a hundred miles out of her way to avoid one. He had been used to New Hampshire girls who went to bed with him for a price: a declaration of love, the possibility of a future, dinner at a steak house with several glasses of wine. When he moved to Boston, a sudden decision based on two feet of snow and the sound of his father coughing in the middle of the night, he spent a great deal of time going out with women who all seemed to have complicated plans they continued to think about while he was kissing them. Most of them left him because they were uncomfortable with his silence. Vonny did not—then, at any rate—expect him to talk. When they made love the first time, in his apartment, Vonny wore nothing but black knee socks patterned with blue roses. It had taken him completely by surprise that a woman who declared she was terrified of bridges would suggest they go to bed only a few hours after they’d met. When she closed her eyes and arched her back, Andre felt his skin grow hot and his chest constrict. He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes long before he fell in love with her.

This wanting to talk began with her pregnancy. She would wake him at three in the morning and want to discuss his childhood. She would grill him about his father—a county employee who drove a snow plow—and insist he consider the effects of his mother’s death—the car she was in had gone out of control on a stretch of ice when Andre was eleven. The way Vonny wanted him to talk was different from the other women he had known. There was an urgency to it that made him pull even further away. Sometimes, during her pregnancy, Andre dreamed he had to swim to shore in an ocean that grew deeper with every stroke he took, and when he woke the next morning his arms felt the strain.

He would never tell Vonny, but he enjoys being alone more than ever. He is alone, working on the Norton, when he hears the crash. Two of Vonny’s unglazed plates roll off the top of the kiln. Through the small window he can see a white thing with arms and legs. He sees it as it bounces upward from the ground, then collapses. The plates, which hadn’t broken when they fell, are shattered as Andre runs over them. He keeps right on running, through the hedge of lilacs that separates their yards. He can feel his body expanding and he feels the same sort of pounding in his head as he used to—and had forgotten about until this moment—the year his mother died, when he ran home from school every day, panicked until he reached his own front door.

When he kneels down, she looks like a bird caught in a net. His hands shake as he begins to pull the scarf that is wrapped around her off her face. Then, because he has the strong sense of interfering in something much too private, he stops and feels over the chiffon for her pulse. Her wrist bone is amazingly sharp; though he can’t tell if her pulse is weak or strong, it seems regular. He stands, not knowing whether he should leave the old woman alone. Then he runs to her house, in the back door, to the telephone on the kitchen counter. Two cats are on the table, lapping milk from a cereal bowl. Neatly creased and folded paper bags are wedged between the refrigerator and the counter. He dials 911 and in a voice that doesn’t sound at all like his own tells them that Mrs. Renny has had an accident.

AT the end of the month, when an ambulance delivers Elizabeth Renny back home, it has already been decided. Her daughter’s girl, Jody, will come to stay for the rest of the summer. Mrs. Renny’s daughter, Laura, who is a school psychologist in Hartford, has two other children, young sons, and a husband and can’t be expected to look after her mother, even if she has a broken collarbone and a broken leg, which, at her age, may or may not heal. When Jody was told about the decision she stayed out all night and refused to tell her parents where she had been. She alluded to a seedy nightclub in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, but in fact she had spent the night at her best friend Becky’s house, smoking cigarettes and crying and watching late-night TV. Her parents, who have problems of their own, now have the good fortune of simultaneously doing a good deed and getting rid of her. They settle Mrs. Renny in, move her bedroom from upstairs to the downstairs parlor, do enough food shopping to last two weeks, and leave on the ferry, distant enough at last to comment on how quickly time passes, how their daughter is growing up.

After her parents leave, Jody takes one look at the bedroom that was once Elizabeth Renny’s and is now hers, and realizes the depth of her parents’ betrayal. She is sixteen. Her hair, though long in the back, is clipped short in front; she wears a smudged line on each eyelid. She has been planning to escape from Hartford all along, but not to a house that smells like cats. They have gotten her a bicycle with a basket so she can ride to the local market, and have opened a checking account which, they have pointedly told her, will never contain more than a hundred dollars. Because there is no escape, Jody unpacks all of the things she has hidden from her mother: three bottles of nail polish, a tiny blue bathing suit, a package of red hair dye, her birth-control pills.

ALL that first evening Jody worries that now that they’re alone, she will have to actually talk to her grandmother. But Elizabeth Renny says next to nothing. Jody can tell she’s in pain; her grandmother keeps her eyes lowered as though she has done something wrong. Rather than be bored to death, Jody cleans the kitchen, feeds the two disgusting cats, and makes scrambled eggs and English muffins for dinner. She would kill for a frozen pizza. When she brings the tray into the parlor her grandmother says, Oh, you shouldn’t. You don’t have to cook for me. Yet she eats every bite, even though Jody knows she’s a terrible cook. Afterward, Jody rinses off the dishes, and when she comes back into the parlor with her grandmother’s medicine, she finds the old lady has fallen asleep. Jody wakes her and, as she holds out grandmother’s pills, their hands accidentally touch. Jody withdraws hers so quickly that several pills fall onto the carpet and she has to search for them in the cat hair and dust.

She knows her mother would love to see her groveling like a slave. At home, she wouldn’t even carry her own plate to the dishwasher. The whole thing is mortifying and she prays that her grandmother can go to the bathroom without her help. At seven o’clock she lets the cats out. At seven thirty she phones her friend Becky collect, and when Becky accepts the charges Jody bursts into tears.

My parents will kill me when they get the phone bill, Becky says, but Jody can tell she’s delighted, her kindness knows no bounds now that Jody has literally been cast into the sea.

I’ll probably lose my mind in less than twenty-four hours, Jody says.

Talking to Becky brings back some of her old spark, and when the cats start clawing at the screen, Jody kicks open the door with her bare foot. There are thin blue clouds in the sky and the high call of a mockingbird. Becky carefully recounts the reactions of all their friends when they heard that Jody had been sent away. Already, there are interesting rumors: a pregnancy, a drug problem, a divorce in the family. It is not even eight o’clock when Jody gets off the phone. At first this place seems absolutely silent, then there are strange noises: the hum of the refrigerator, gravel hitting against hubcaps when a car speeds by, the creak of the stairs when she goes up to her bedroom after locking the back door (something she would never think of doing at home) and making certain her grandmother is still asleep and—this she doesn’t admit to herself—alive.

She spreads out her comb and brush and nail polish on top of the painted white bureau, but it doesn’t help. She gets into her nightgown, but once in bed she hears squirrels running in the walls. Their weight against the plaster makes it seem as though they will break right through the walls and into her bed at any moment. She gets out of bed, pulls on a pair of shorts and a white sleeveless undershirt, then goes to the open window and lights a cigarette to calm her nerves. She has brought a clear glass ashtray up from the kitchen and now she balances it on the window ledge. Her eyeliner has rubbed off on the pillowcase and without it her gray eyes look much bigger. Impossible as it seems, the sky has only begun to grow dark. The leaves of the lilacs make a whispering sound and it’s still too hot. Jody smokes her cigarette, and just when she’s feeling a little better she hears footsteps outside. She’s not exactly a country girl; she imagines bloodthirsty wolves in the bushes. But it’s only a German shepherd come to lie halfway between her grandmother’s yard and the neighbors’. When Andre leaves the shed, Jody leans both elbows on the windowsill. He wears blue jeans and, because it’s still so hot, no shirt. She can’t make out his features, but he has long dark hair, which he shakes out of his eyes as he leans down to lock the padlock on the shed. Then he whistles sharply, for the dog. The memory of something white makes him look up, directly into her window. Jody quickly moves back and not until he turns away, the dog trotting to catch up to him then following him through the door, does she lean forward, vainly hoping that if she sits there long enough she will see him once more.

IN seventy-three years Elizabeth Renny has made only two decisions of consequence: when she married Jack Renny and left New York for Chilmark, and when she imagined that she could fly. Now, she thinks that if embarrassment could really kill you, she’d be dead. She had not been unconscious, though she pretended to be when Andre rushed to her. She had closed her eyes, frightened that he might lift the scarf from her face.

She had been intoxicated by July. After years of not seeing much—the confines of her house, her cats, peculiar patterns of moonlight when she tried and failed to sleep on hot summer nights—she had suddenly seen everything. For the first time in months the black spot in her eye seemed unimportant; her fear of blindness evaporated. Now, she has ruined her granddaughter’s summer and, frankly, her own. She has always believed she hates living alone, but as she listens to Tina Turner, in stereo—on portable radios in the shed next door and up in Jody’s room—she realizes she prefers cats. The white one is Margot, the big tom, Sinbad. She keeps bells tied around their necks to warn birds away. Her granddaughter tosses hunks of old bread out onto the porch, instead of breaking the crusts into pieces. Jody spends most of her time sitting out in the yard writing letters, and in the afternoon she bicycles into town for groceries. Mrs. Renny makes out a small list each morning—usually lettuce, cat food, some sort of jam, bread, plums. She had worried that Jody would run wild, but Jody always comes straight home from the market. The worst her granddaughter has done is to put a red streak in her hair, which is rapidly fading. When Elizabeth Renny was sixteen she was still a child. She was never out by herself at night until her own daughter was eight years old, and then only because her husband was away and there was the threat of a hurricane. She drove them to the town hall, where mattresses had been laid down and coffee and crullers were set out on a bridge table. She would like to be inside her granddaughter’s body for an hour, just to see how it feels. How would Tina Turner sound through her granddaughter’s ears? What would the sun feel like on her skin? How fast would her legs move when she bicycled down the road?

She can tell her granddaughter is afraid of her. She catches her staring when they eat dinner. Elizabeth can move around the house now, dragging her leg behind her, using two canes. When the doctor came to visit, she could tell he was amazed not to find her in bed, wasting away. She has always been strong. When she was younger she picked beach plums and spent an entire week

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1