Casebook (43 page)

She laughed with Ben Orion and picked at his shirts. She and Marge said more than once that they were giving each other the best years of their working lives. I never heard anything more about a family romance.

What I learned from those months of grave illness was the smile. She had a smile. Before, of course, the Mims had smiled, but when I try to remember her face in joy, it wasn’t the same; the expressions I could conjure were quick, fleeting movements, a tight-lipped
See
.

This was different. It was a gift. Her whole face was in it, like a nodding sunflower. She’d look at you and smile and keep holding it there, for you to take in all of her. She gave you her face smiling for what seemed stopped time; it must have been two or three slow minutes. You wouldn’t forget. And that had an ending, too, a soft ending that was an apology for leaving. A regret for the inevitable.

The last day wasn’t like anything I’d expected. We laughed. We ate on her bed, watched all of
Star Wars
, which she’d never seen before. Ella brought us food. My mother died at home, of metastasized breast cancer, with her three children, two friends, her ex-husband, and a dog.

Acknowledgments

Without Michelle Huneven’s wisdom and humor, my writing life would be too solitary and much less fun. I’m grateful to Lorin Stein for an early reading and central, valuable advice. Marina Van Zuylen, Sally Singer, and Jeanne McCulloch helped me immeasurably, tinkering with sense, scenes, and sentences. Yiyun Li read the book deeply and productively, following the voice and gently identifying its wrong turns. Alexander Quinlin, Eliot, Sam, Ezra, and Lucas have left their vocal fingerprints everywhere on these pages. Andrea Bertozzi was incredibly patient explaining the romance of math and the steps of an academic career. I used Ian Stewart’s
Letters to a Young Mathematician
shamelessly. His ideas are strewn throughout. To learn to cartoon, I studied
Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice
, by Ivan Brunetti, and I’ve lifted his blackboard message and given it to a female California professor. I talked to Mike Miller, a Los Angeles private detective, mystery shopper, and loss preventer, and his line “Everyone loves the firemen” started the character of Ben Orion. I’m indebted, as always, to my family—Grace, Gabriel, Richard Appel, and Elma Dayrit—for our peaceful household.

I’m grateful for the honest advice and spot-on suggestions—for my books and my life—from my agent, Amanda Urban. And I’m steadied daily by the abiding friendship and collaboration with my quietly brilliant editor, Ann Close.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MONA SIMPSON is the author of
Anywhere But Here
,
The Lost Father
,
A Regular Guy
,
Off Keck Road
, and
My Hollywood. Off Keck Road
was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize from the
Chicago Tribune
. She has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and, recently, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Santa Monica, California, and teaches at UCLA and at Bard College.