Baby Love (32 page)

Loretta’s last spring (he knew by then it was probably her last) he drove all over Manchester, looking for the best lilac bush. He waited until after dark, after all the house lights went out. Then he went into the people’s yard and chopped it down, right at the base. It was more a tree than a bush actually. He could just barely haul it into the back of his truck. It was a real bitch to carry up three flights of stairs.

He had to break off some of the branches to get it in the door of their apartment. There were little purple flowers shedding all over the place. He dragged it into the middle of the room. Loretta was lying on her mattress, her eyes closed, but not asleep.

“You want to see the lilacs blooming—well, here they are,” he said. Almost nothing made her cry by that point, but when he lay down next to her there were tears on her cheeks. She never said a word.

Mark and Sandy drop Wanda off at Rocky’s, then go home. Mark says nothing because he can’t think of what to say. Sandy says nothing because if they can just manage to never talk about this, they can go on like it never happened.

There’s a newspaper on the doorstep: ten more dead from the volcano, ninety-eight still missing. There’s a circular announcing this week’s specials at the Grand Union. There’s an envelope from a photographer’s studio.

In the picture, Sandy and Mark Junior sit in front of a snow-capped peak, not a cloud in the sky. Sandy’s eyes are closed, blinking, and her head is tilted a little to one side, the way they said to do in the brochure from the modeling school. One hand is raised (brushing a piece of hair out of her face). The other hand is wrapped around Mark Junior’s stomach. You can tell how tight she’s holding him by the way the fabric of his shirt is all pulled up, so his belly button shows. Sandy’s not exactly smiling but her mouth is turned up. She has just said cheese.

Mark Junior is looking right into the camera. One of his arms is raised too, but in a fist, like some protestor. The other arm is a little blurry (it must have been moving). He’s wearing his baseball cap.

But here is the amazing thing. He is not crying after all. His skin is not red and his mouth is not screwed up. He’s smiling. He looks like an angel.

Of course her dog doesn’t bark at Wayne. They never do. This one licks his bare feet as he comes up the walk and follows him onto the porch. There’s a bowl of granola on the table. Wayne takes a handful and starts chewing. He looks out toward the field at a little wooden windmill, a man swinging an ax up and down and up. Stiff breeze.

The door is not quite shut. No sound comes from inside the house except the noise a record player makes when the amplifier’s turned on but the record’s over. “I’m here,” he says, stepping in.

A few hundred yards back, Reg Johnson walks slowly toward the house, a rifle in his hands.

Joyce Maynard is the bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her memoir
At Home in the World
and her novel
Labor Day
, both bestsellers. Since launching her writing career as a teenager, Maynard has been a commentator on CBS radio, a contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and a reporter for the
New York Times
, as well as a speaker on parenthood, family, and writing. She has published hundreds of essays and columns for publications such as
Vogue
;
More
;
O, The Oprah Magazine
; and the
New York Times
; in addition to many essay collections.

Born in Durham, New Hampshire, in 1953, Maynard began publishing her stories, essays, and poems when she was fourteen years old. She won numerous awards for her work before entering college at Yale University in 1971. During her freshman year, Maynard sent examples of her work to the
New York Times
, prompting an assignment: She was to write an article for them about growing up in the sixties. In April 1972 that article, “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life,” graced the cover of the magazine, earning her widespread acclaim and instant fame.

Maynard’s story also caught the eye of reclusive author J. D. Salinger, then fifty-three years old, who wrote her a letter praising her work—launching a correspondence that ultimately led Maynard to drop out of college and move to New Hampshire to live with the author. Their relationship lasted ten months.

Maynard never returned to college. In 1973 she published her first memoir,
Looking Back
, a follow-up to her
New York Times Magazine
article published the year before. Having lived alone in New Hampshire in her early twenties, in 1976 she was offered a job as a reporter for the
New York Times
and moved to New York City. She left the newspaper in 1977 when she married Steve Bethel and returned to New Hampshire. The couple went on to have three children: Audrey, Charlie, and Wilson.

Maynard’s first novel,
Baby Love
, published in 1981, earned the praise of several renowned fiction writers including Anne Tyler, Joseph Heller, and Raymond Carver. Her next book,
Domestic Affairs
(1987)—a collection of her syndicated columns, which had run in newspapers across the country—reflected on her experiences as a wife and mother and further cemented Maynard’s status as one of the best-loved modern American memoirists.

In 1986, an area in Maynard’s home state of New Hampshire was selected by the US Department of Energy as a finalist to become the first-in-the-nation high-level nuclear waste dump. Maynard was one of the organizers of the resistance to that project, and she wrote a cover story about it that was published in April of that year and was widely believed to have contributed to the government’s decision to suspend the nuclear waste dump plan.

Maynard’s marriage ended in 1989—an experience she wrote about in her “Domestic Affairs” columns. Many major newspapers discontinued the column abruptly at this point, citing Maynard’s impending divorce as indication that she was no longer equipped to write about family life. Maynard continued writing—though for a much smaller audience—in the
Domestic Affairs Newsletter
.

In keeping with her practice of communicating actively with her readers, Maynard established a website in 1996; she was one of the first writers to do so, and she was a regular and visible presence through the brand-new technology of her site’s discussion forum.

Forbidden by Salinger to speak of him, Maynard chose to remain silent about their relationship for twenty-five years, until her daughter turned eighteen. Her decision to write about the experience in her 1998 memoir
At Home in the World
resulted in an avalanche of criticism, but eventually led to further disclosures by other women who had been in his life. Salinger died in 2010.

Maynard has also written two children’s books and two young-adult novels; of these,
The Usual Rules
was named by the American Library Association as one of the ten best young-adult novels of 2003. Her literary fiction includes
To Die For
(1991),
Where Love Goes
(1994),
Labor Day
(2009), and
The Good Daughters
(2010).
To Die For
was adapted into a film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman.
Labor Day
is currently being adapted for the screen by director Jason Reitman, and is set to star Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.

The mother of three grown children, Maynard now lives in Northern California where, in addition to continuing her career as a writer and speaker, she performs regularly as a storyteller with the Moth and Porchlight. She also runs the annual Lake Atitlán Writing Workshop in a small Mayan village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.