Tied to the Tracks
Read Tied to the Tracks Online
Authors: Rosina Lippi
Table of Contents
“Lippi’s zany, likable characters—including a frumpy Yankee film-maker and a strong-willed elderly writer—are imaginative and well-delineated.”
—The Washington Post
—The Washington Post
“With her newest novel . . . [Lippi] turns her buoyant creative talents to the romantic comedy genre with an effervescent tale of a trio of offbeat Yankee filmmakers plunked down deep in the heart of Dixie.”
—Booklist
Acclaim for Rosina Lippi’s
Homestead
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award
Homestead
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award
“Exceptionally vivid . . . a book of marvels.”—Charles Baxter
“Outstanding.”
—Booklist
“Very fine and moving. Lippi has a clear eye and a sharp tongue.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“By the time you finish the first of these linked stories, you can hardly bear to have it end.”
—The New Yorker
“A novel of great depth, compassion, and tenderness.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Moves us to tears and makes us grateful for it.”—Dorothy Allison
“The weight and tender history of old silver and the tang of stainless steel.”—Amy Bloom
“The women in this haunting book are deeply and uniquely of their place, yet they speak (often wordlessly) of women’s longings and satisfactions everywhere.”—Rosellen Brown
“Keenly observed . . . absorbing.”
—Publishers Weekly
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Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2006 by Rosina Lippi.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the
author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY and the B design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
eISBN : 978-0-425-21532-6
Lippi, Rosina, 1956-. Tied to the tracks / Rosina Lippi. p. cm.
1. African American women authors—Fiction. 2. Documentary films—Production and direction—Fiction. 3. Women motion picture producers and directors—Fiction. 4. Georgia—Fiction. I. Title. PS3562.I5795T’.54—dc22
For Bill, who makes all the difference
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
ONE
Ogilvie College, Ogilvie, Georgia. Est. 1825. Private (Episcopal). Students: 1,800; Faculty-Student ratio: 1:8; expensive, selective. Don’t even think about this place unless you’re seriously into work, because they boot slack asses out of here faster than you can say
grits
. Class size so small there’s no chance of catching a nap in the last row. Professors accessible, discussion encouraged. Ogilvie students take academics, school traditions, politics, theater, and football seriously. Hey, it’s the South. Beautiful campus, great dorms, lousy food. The town is pretty but boring, but never mind: Savannah is an hour away on the train.
grits
. Class size so small there’s no chance of catching a nap in the last row. Professors accessible, discussion encouraged. Ogilvie students take academics, school traditions, politics, theater, and football seriously. Hey, it’s the South. Beautiful campus, great dorms, lousy food. The town is pretty but boring, but never mind: Savannah is an hour away on the train.
“The Way We See It,”
www.undergroundundergrad.org
Summer in Georgia, sweet and ripe and heavy with heat at a quarter to nine in the morning. In the window of a redbrick building awash in early-morning light, the figure of a man. Tall, broad of shoulder, rumpled short, dark hair, blue eyes. Framed by oak and ivy he looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine. Elegant, self-assured, unapproachable.
It’s only John Grant,
Lydia told herself.
Lucy Ogilvie’s oldest boy. You’ve known him all your life.
And still he seemed as alien and remote as a face on a television screen. John Grant had connections, money, looks, education, position, authority; he had a beautiful fiancée who was his social equal, and on top of all that, he was the new chair of the English department at Ogilvie College.
Lydia told herself.
Lucy Ogilvie’s oldest boy. You’ve known him all your life.
And still he seemed as alien and remote as a face on a television screen. John Grant had connections, money, looks, education, position, authority; he had a beautiful fiancée who was his social equal, and on top of all that, he was the new chair of the English department at Ogilvie College.
It had been a stupid idea to make an appointment to see him. She was thinking of turning around when he caught sight of her.
“Lydia?”
A smile broke out on his face. A real smile, one that made the skin around his blue eyes crinkle, but more than that: it made him look real. His voice was deep and a little hoarse and his tone—the word came to mind and she couldn’t dismiss it out of hand—sincere.
“Come on up, coffee’s on and time’s a-wasting.”
The office was a mess. Stacks of boxes everywhere, books in wobbling towers in front of empty bookshelves, a cascade of binders. He held the door for her and she stepped over a small mountain of manuscripts bound with rubber bands to get to the couch. The whole time he talked, asking questions and sometimes answering them himself, but his manner was easy and his tone friendly. He might have spent half his life in the North with his father’s people, but John Grant sounded like Georgia to her, and more than that, he had things to say and he wasn’t afraid to share them. He was in the middle of a story of lost boxes and wayward moving vans when he interrupted himself to hold out a cup in her direction.
“Milk? Sugar?”
Lydia, against all inclination and training, told him the truth: she liked both, in quantity. This didn’t seem to faze him at all, he just loaded up the cup and then brought it over to hand to her. And then John Grant pulled out a white bakery bag, transparent with butter and smelling of browned sugar. “Have a cinnamon roll,” he said. “They’re still warm.”
Lydia studied his face closely, but found no trace of mockery. She had this idea—and very strange it was, too—that she could sit here and devour a couple thousand calories and he wouldn’t take any real note of it.
“So,” he said when she had told him she’d already had breakfast, “what made you decide on Ogilvie College?”
She said the first thing that came into her head. “Probably the same things that brought you back here after so many years.”
That made him laugh out loud. He stood up and went to the window. “This is the best place on earth,” he said. “It gets under your skin.”
Lydia said, “So why did you leave?”
He turned back to her. “Because I had to earn the right to come back to stay. That’s how it works in academics. Now what about you? Why Ogilvie?”
“Because of the reputation of the creative-writing program. I want to work with Miss Zula.”
He was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. “Okay, that’s what you write down on an application. What’s the real reason?”
Lydia considered lying, and then told the truth. “Because I’m afraid to leave home.”
He thought about that for a minute. “My advice is, take advantage of this place while you’re here, you’ll forget about being scared. Now, you wanted to talk about your schedule, do I have that right?”
Lydia said, “Maybe I should make an appointment to talk to an adviser about this, you’re busy.” One last opportunity for him to get rid of her, send her to somebody, anybody else. One last chance for him to be dismissive, to be dismissed.
John Grant said, “Nah, you’re here, and I might as well jump right in. You got a copy of that schedule with you?”
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