In the Works
Two Novels: Sorrow Park and Pantomime
Sorrow Park, a novel
Sorrow Park begins with a terrible act of neglect: Jessica March walks her five-year-old son Brian into the late-afternoon gloom of an upstate New York forest and abandons him there. Brian has autism and is deeply impaired, and he remains in the dark woods until he is found, unhurt but frightened, the next day. With Jess's unforgivable act comes the unraveling - and tentative recovery - of the March family.
The novel explores the wrenching sorrows and transcendent joys of raising a child with autism. Brian is both impossible and wonderful, but it takes a long time for Jess to understand him. The legal and emotional repercussions of the abandonment alienate Jess from her husband Rich, Brian, and his twin sister Evy, but with reconciliation comes a belated understanding of her inscrutable boy.
This novel was painful to write, for obvious reasons, but Brian's story reminded me constantly how lucky I am in my children, and how all of the wonderful teachers, therapists, and physicians we've had the good fortune to work with have made a difference in our autism-spectrum child's life. The only thing missing from Sorrow Park is a few cats; everyone should have a couple of cats in their lives (with fond memories of felines gone on to the fields of asphodel, and apologies to our now-pet, Noo Noo the Keeshond, who does not make grandma wheeze).
Sorrow Park is represented by the amazing Janet Reid, of FinePrint Literary Management.
A brief excerpt:
1.
The wind was sharp for late spring, and it blew the twins' hair into their faces. Jess could not cut Brian's hair, and if it weren't for the monster truck on his shirt, you would think he was Evy's sister. Their feet were bare, and so were hers, even though the ground was chilly. A scruffy dog loped up to the children and dared them to play; Evy laughed and squatted on her heels, letting the animal lick her face, but Brian lay down on the ground and groaned. He crossed his arms over the back of his head and his body went rigid.
She felt the familiar tightening in her chest. Count, she thought, and she counted to twenty, inhaling and exhaling on each number. He did not stop his noises.
"Go on," she told the dog, but it was merrily playing tug-of-war with Evy and a stick, and did not heed her.
The babysitter met them at one o'clock near the entrance of the state park.
"Take her to the party," said Jess, "and we'll meet you at home at four." Evy said good-bye, and went with the babysitter to her car. Then it was only Jess and her boy. She walked him back to the stand of fir trees, the mouth of the forest, and offered him a tennis ball. The dog, which had trotted alongside them, snatched it as soon as he dropped it.
She noticed the color of the sun. Usually it was a bright white, but on this day it had a sallow cast. She looked to the sky, shading her eyes against the light, but the sky was empty of almost everything: no planes, no birds, few clouds. The dog barked and Brian groaned, and Jess watched the emptiness impassively. It would soon be time to walk back through the park to the car. If she was sneaky, she could break off some lilacs on the way out.
When it came time to leave, Brian shook his head violently, side to side, in a sawing motion. Jess noticed abstractly, dreamily, the softness of his face, all pale curved lines. His cheeks, which she stroked at night while he slept, tracing from the bone to the hollow to the jaw, were flaccid.
"Come," she said, "it's time to go."
"No, no, no, no, no," he moaned, and beat his head against her hip.
"Hurry up, I have no time!" she said impatiently, and she thought, suddenly, that she did not like this boy.
"Count," pleaded Brian in his strange voice, and Jess sighed and counted, slowly, to ten. He rocked on his heels, hands over his face, and did not seem to hear her.
"The sun is odd," she remarked irrelevantly, and Brian looked briefly to the sun.
"Come," she said again, firmly, but the boy did not move. The wind, cold now, and damp, made his hair dance and his jacket billow. He looked like an elfin child. She observed this, and decided she disliked the elfin look of him, did not want to see him again, ever. A sudden rage choked her. When he rushed to her with a strangled scream and slapped her, hard, on the thigh, she covered her face with her hands, eyes dry and ground shut. Then, moving as if in water, or a dream, she turned away.
The sight of him standing there, the moment before she left him for good at the lip of the forest - wretched in the sallow light, his hair a weedy crown - would be forever imprinted in her memory.