Envy (28 page)

Someone knocks on the door, and Will turns off the water. “I'll be out in a minute,” he says.

“Can I come in?” Carole's voice asks.

“It's not locked.” Will watches in the mirror as she closes the door behind her.

She stands beside him at the sink, and he watches their two reflections. “I wasn't serious,” she says, “about the pre-nup.”

He nods, starts to rub his eyes, but a stab from the stitched eyebrow stops him. “That blue-colored cloth, the plastic basins. Smell of Betadine. Like being back in the delivery room,” he says.

Her reflection nods. “We had that great window when Luke was born. Remember? We could see the top of the Chrysler Building, the sun shining on it.”

“I just remember him, and you. Cutting the cord.”

Her hair spread on the white pillowcase. One of her feet in his hands, the other in the labor nurse's. After—Luke was in her arms— there was the placenta in its plastic dish. Not formless and Jell-O-y, the way he'd imagined it, but a different thing entirely. Impossible to have predicted so rich a color, or so violent a beauty. The elegant tree of its veins, a perfect symmetry, and the way it gleamed, spilling over the sides of the dish. What is this I'm feeling? he remembers thinking, wondering at the prickling sensation behind his eyes. Then he realized he'd been holding his breath as he stroked a finger over its surface. Hot to the touch, slippery smooth. Something she'd made with her own body. A part of her that felt as she did inside, when he put a finger there, when he touched her.

Carole leans against Will's chest. She puts her arms around him and slips her hands into his back pockets. “Let's go home,” she says.

“And go to bed?”

“And go to bed.”

“Do you think, in honor of my injury, we could try it face-to-face?”

His hands are on her shoulders, and she looks up at him. “In honor of your injury? Or in apology for throwing things at you?”

“For whatever reason you say. For old times' sake. Because we want to. For the good of the cause.”

She puts her arms around him again, pulls him into her, hard, so her pelvis presses up against him. “What cause?” she asks. “Is it a worthy one?”

“It's us. Our cause.”

She pushes her face into the front of his shirt. “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay, okay,” a whisper he knows because he's heard it before.

Overheard it, really, because it isn't an answer; it's the way she talks herself through an unfamiliar task, a challenge she's determined to meet, even if she doesn't know how.
Okay, okay,
he's heard her whisper on the floor of their bedroom, twisting herself into a new yoga puzzle. Or at her desk, computer on, fingers poised over the keyboard, JavaScript for Dummies open in her lap. In the kitchen, frowning at the piecrust on the floured butcher's block.

Okay, okay,
Samantha watching her mother as Carole advances, step by confusing step outlined by the deceptively titled
Origami
Made Simple,
her fingers turning a square of gold paper into a frog, a crane, a tiny cup that, if folded correctly, promises to hold a sip of water.

“Okay?” he says again. She nods against his chest.

“Okay,” she says, still whispering. “Okay.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their generosity in discussing the work of a speech therapist, I thank Hillary Bogert, Karen Louick, and Heidi Volosov.

For her gracious response to disruptive (even when amusing) questions, I am indebted to Kera Bolonik. For the plunder of her vocation, I owe Janet Gibbs. For her wise and graceful editing, Kate Medina. For pushing me that much harder, Courtney Hodell and Christopher Potter. For reading between the lines, Gila Sand. For her own art, and more, Joyce Ravid. For her patience, Danielle Posen.

For her friendship and support since the beginning, Amanda Urban.

For as long as we both shall live, Colin Harrison.

ENVY

KATHRYN HARRISON

A Reader's Guide

A CONVERSATION WITH KATHRYN HARRISON

Random House:
Envy
is such a complex story. Where did you get your ideas? And how did you weave so many issues (the death of a child, a brother's betrayal, a distant marriage, adultery, and unknown paternity—to name a few) into such a cohesive narrative?

Kathryn Harrison:
The novel began as an exploration of grief, from the point of view of a mother who had lost her child. I think writers often use fiction to explore what frightens them, and I can't imagine anything more annihilating than the death of a child. In fact, it was impossible for me to get close enough to the mother's perspective, so I ended up trying on the father's role. I gave Will, the father, a twin because I've always found identical twins—the idea of another you—sinister in its implicit threat to identity, and from that point, the book accrued subplots, by means of an unconscious process I don't understand clearly enough to explain.

RH:
Envy
is your sixth novel. But you've also written wonderful, intimate memoirs (
The
Kiss
and
The Mother Knot
). How do you move from completely looking inward and writing about your own experiences to writing a novel like
Envy,
which has a male protagonist? Is it more challenging to focus on the male perspective, or does the distance make it easier?

KH:
I've found that alternating between fiction and nonfiction works to alleviate the strains associated with each. The hardest part of fiction, for me, is plotting. Nonfiction doesn't demand the invention of plot, but it does pose challenges in terms of how much information is to be revealed, and in what order. As for the male perspective, the cerebral answer is that it makes conceiving a character more fun, challenging. The more honest answer is that my relationship with my mother, who was emotionally distant, and who left me in the care of her parents when I was six, gave me the perfect means of learning what it was like to suffer in loving a woman who always eludes one's grasp—a conventionally male role, romantically speaking. So what may appear on the page as a very different experience from my own, as a heterosexual woman, is actually pretty familiar to me.

RH:
How did you create Will's character? What made you decide that he would be a psychoanalyst? What do you think his profession adds to the story?

KH:
Will began as a veterinarian, as a means of my pursuing the career I thought I'd have when I was a teenager. But after hanging out with a few vets, doing my research, I discovered that vets didn't have a lot to say: their patients, after all, don't talk to them. So maybe turning Will into a psychoanalyst was an overcorrection, going from a man of few words to a man of unlimited words, one who can't stop the torrent of words that flows from him.
Envy
is a much “talkier” book than my others, and that gave me a chance to have some fun with various kinds of dialogue. Jennifer arrived as pure voice, the rest of her taking form after her words were uttered. I wanted Will to be very smart, and very articulate, and very able to parse and address other people's problems while remaining blind to his own, so his being a shrink gave me the perfect opportunity to do that.

RH:
Will's relationship with his twin brother, Mitch, is fascinating, and the motivation for the book's title. Yet Mitch never physically enters the story. Was this a conscious decision from the start? What would have been gained or lost by bringing Mitch into the plot?

KH:
Yes, how real is Mitch? I don't think I can answer the question. As a catalyst—as
the
catalyst—for nearly all of the novel's action, he is integral, and yet he doesn't appear, except in Will's memory, and through his conversations with other people. So is he a part of Will? Will's dark side? The physical aspect of a man who is—other than sexually—trapped in his head? I think of Mitch as Will's doppelgänger as much as his brother. It wasn't a conscious decision, really— not many of them are, in a novel—but I can't imagine
Envy
without him. He completes Will; together they make one hero, or anti-hero. Good and bad, mind and body, etc.

RH:
Luke's tragic death is the impetus for the deterioration of Will and Carole's relationship. How were you able to capture the intense grief these characters felt without having experienced it yourself?

KH:
I haven't lost a child, but I have lost the family I grew up with: first my mother, twenty years ago now, then my grandfather and grandmother, who raised me for her. While I was writing this book my father-in-law died, a man to whom I'd been very close (and who was the inspiration, if not model, for Will's dad), and who functioned to remind me of the visceral quality of grieving. I do know that grief— grief intense enough to threaten one's understanding of oneself— requires a person to forge a
new
self. I don't imagine that what I've felt approaches losing a child, because such a loss disrupts the natural order of things, and seems unbearable to me, but I think—I hope— I could extrapolate enough from the experiences I did have to grieve convincingly on the page.

RH:
Jennifer is such a fascinating character. How did you create such an uninhibited, troubled, forceful young woman? Did you know she was going to be wild from the beginning? Or did she grow into something different than you had planned?

KH:
As I said earlier, Jennifer arrived as a voice, a totally unplanned addition to the novel's cast. In this way she is a sister to other female characters of mine—to May from
The Binding Chair,
to Francisca from
Poison,
to the Aleut in
The Seal Wife,
whose muteness, or refusal to speak, is a kind of communication. All of these female characters arrived unbidden and collided with the story I thought I was writing, changing it utterly. I'm not sure I can explain why this happens, other than that when I allow these women to refuse the roles forced on them, and to speak, to say what they want to say, rather than what other people want to hear, I address some of the damage my early life inflicted on me.

RH:
On the topic of Jennifer, I read somewhere that you'd like to see her return in another one of your novels. Can you explain your affection for her? And do you think you'll be able to bring her back?

KH:
It's delicious—intoxicating, really—to create a female character who is unapologetically selfish and “bad,” and who gets away with wreaking havoc on other people's lives. Literature almost always punishes the bad girls; it's nice to turn tables every once in a while. Too, no matter her sins, Jennifer is very full of life, and very hungry, psychically, and I think those characters are always bewitching. They are to me.

RH:
What about Will's troubled relationship with Carole? Do you think a crisis like Will's affair with Jennifer was necessary to save his marriage?

KH:
Yes, I do. Will needed to break open his marriage, violently, in order to understand what happened even before the death of Luke to set the stage for estrangement between him and Carole. It's as if he unconsciously understands that he needs to take this risk in order to save his marriage.

RH:
Which character was the hardest to write? Why?

KH:
They're all hard; they all present challenges. I think it's difficult to write children without sentimentalizing them or forcing them into the role of miniature adults, so Luke and Samantha, and the child versions of Will and Mitch, made me most anxious to not misstep. Any character who requires my puzzling something out cerebrally is harder than one like Jennifer—the kind who just pops out of my unconscious without needing too many adjustments.

RH:
The cover image is so understated and beautiful. How did you and the jacket designer come up with it?

KH:
All I did was applaud—all credit to the art director. I do love it.

RH:
What are you working on now?

KH:
Something very different—a true story of three murders within the same family, twenty years ago, in Washington state. I admit I have a true-crime addiction—like Carole does—and my fascination with murder does fuel my interest in this story, but beyond that I want to understand how people move on after cataclysmic events like this. So I'm interviewing all the people involved, including the murderer and the sister he did not kill. So far it's very compelling, and exhausting, to deal with such loaded material.

READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

How does envy, one of our primal emotions, function in the novel? Discuss both the obvious and ambiguous ways in which it works.

Will's occupation easily lends itself to constant self-scrutiny. How would Will's character be different if he weren't an analyst? Do you think we'd know more about his innermost thoughts, or less? How would this change affect our impressions of Will?

Will has, in some ways, failed in his role of caretaker. In childhood, he was unable to protect his twin from pain and abuse; in adulthood, he could not protect his own child from a fatal accident. And his relationship with his wife, Carole, lacks the emotional security of marriage. Discuss how this affects his sense of self.

Stereotypically, we think of men using sex to threaten and intimidate women, but in
Envy,
we see women using sex in similarly aggressive ways. How does Jennifer's punishment of Will differ from Carole's?

Beyond dire sibling rivalry,
Envy
is a novel about grief—about mortality and loss—which each of the Morelands must grapple with. In the wake of his son's death, Will obsesses over paternity. Carole's way of managing grief is illuminated by her reading habits—from yoga magazines to grisly true-crime books (or from a Buddhist acceptance of suffering to a bloody, cathartic confrontation of death). What about Will's parents? How do they cope?

Discuss the parent-child relationships in
Envy
. Do the parents— Will's father, Jennifer's mother, and, of course, Will and Carole— maintain appropriate boundaries between themselves and their children?

Discuss Harrison's use of water imagery in the novel (for example, Mitch as a swimmer or Luke's death while sailing). What purpose does it serve?

Although Will's brother, Mitch, is the psychological linchpin of this novel, the catalyst for loss, he never appears. Is it possible to regard Mitch as Will's doppelgänger rather than his actual twin? How strictly realistic is this novel?

What does
Envy
have to say about secrecy?

Will and Carole go against stereotypical gender types. Will, the man, lacks the emotional control of his wife, Carole, who is self-contained and unwilling to reveal her feelings in what we consider a typically feminine manner. Is this inversion significant to the novel's plot? What effect does it have on the story's catharsis?