Electric City: A Novel (36 page)

“You’re here,” he said, and she would have said it first if she’d been able to speak.

They stepped closer, and their arms folded around one another as though they’d been doing this all their lives, except it had been almost ten years since they’d had the chance.

Time bending.

Sophie felt utterly calm and crazily jangled, her breath caught by the edge of release. Moths at an illuminated window. Leaves in the wind. Every promise returning to the truth.

Their bodies pressed tight, then tighter together. Cascading breaths, in and out, blending them.

She didn’t want to let go, not ever again. But he stepped back to take another look at her, and he touched the cold disc of stethoscope in her pocket, smiling, and she grinned back, wider than she had known she could stretch. When she placed a fingertip on the surface of the eye portrait at her throat, her pulse throbbed underneath the gold.

“Dr. Levine,” Martin said, without a trace of irony, and she’d heard it so many times but never quite this way, in the voice she’d missed for so long.

“Martin Longboat,” Sophie said. “Welcome home.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I
OWE MANY DEBTS
of gratitude to anecdotal as well as scholarly sources for this novel. My own childhood in Schenectady was certainly the initial point of origin for the emotional backstory, but when I began to focus on the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, I realized I needed my characters to be a decade older at the time than I myself had been (I was five). That decision further led to a chain reaction of invention and fictionalization, including treatment of the characters loosely based upon my parents and their friends, as well as my own school friends, and beyond.

The character of Martin Longboat was inspired by a Mohawk dancer whom I happened to meet in Central Mexico; the simple fact of his existence (and the discovery that he was exactly my age) revealed to me in a heartbeat how little I knew about the Native American history of my birthplace—and about the indigenous people who were my contemporaries. I began to consult books like
Indian Voices
by Alison Owings and
Myths of North American Indians
by Lewis Spence. I listened to some rare audio recordings and did my best to imagine my way into the ghostly residents of my hometown.

As with most writers of fiction, I took liberties with the facts I learned, when it suited the purposes of my narrative.

It was my father who encouraged me to consider using Charles Proteus Steinmetz as a character in my novel. In order to research his
significant role in the development of electricity, I consulted documents and photographs held by the Schenectady County Historical Society and the Schenectady Museum, including videos in the Schenectady Museum Film Series called “Charles Steinmetz: The Man Who Made Lightning” and “Thomas Edison Visits Schenectady.” I visited the Edison Tech Center (formerly called the Edison Exploratorium); I read
Nature’s Electricity
by Charles K. Adams, along with some of the essays and articles written by Steinmetz himself. Extremely informative was the biography of Steinmetz by John Winthrop Hammond. I pored over the images and texts of
Schenectady, A Pictorial History
, and
The General Electric Story
. What seemed so remarkable was how Steinmetz has been so nearly erased by time, even though during his lifetime he’d been considered as famously important as Thomas Edison. The recent video about Steinmetz (“
Divine Discontent: Charles Proteus Steinmetz
”) reinforces my conviction that this man, overlooked by history, is being restored to the giant-sized status he deserves.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

F
OR LISTENING TO
me through the darkest nights, lifelong thanks to beloved friend Maia Newman. For healing of body and soul, a deep bow of gratitude to Dr. Garrett Smith and your band of angels. For inspiration and abrazos, near and far, Ana Thiel. For countless exquisite dinners, Constance Holmes and John Van Duyl.

For sanctuary, sustenance and solace: Ragdale Residency, Lamu Artist Residency. And with special thanks to Susan Hall, Dorothy Jacobs, Mark and Nancy Jacobs.

For fellowship on the path, Carol Lopes and Harry Stark; for opening the door, Julia McNeal. For peaceful companionship, doggie care and graceful space-sharing, Brooke Deputy and Chris Malcomb. For long walks and longer talks, Lori Saltzman. For musical interludes and much more, guitar hero and impresario Joe Christiano.

For each and every one of my writing students who keep me humble and well-distracted, my sincere thanks. May the muse be with you.

For reading drafts of these pages (early and sometimes often), for generous encouragement to persevere, and for your wide hearts, thanks to Lynne Knight, Saint Rosner, Harriet Chessman, Wendy Sheanin, Steve McKinney, Meredith Maran, Larry Grossman, Michael Dales, Elizabeth Stark, Andre Salvage, and Lauren Reece Flaum (in blessed memory).

For seeing what some others could not, thanks to brilliant agents Miriam Altshuler and Reiko Davis. For commitment, teamwork, and leaps of faith, thanks to Counterpoint Press. For immeasurable wisdom, humor, patience and insight, a song of eternal joy to editor Dan Smetanka. Shine on.