Catherine (34 page)
Authors: April Lindner
Tags: #Classics, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance, #Juvenile Fiction / Classics, #Juvenile Fiction / Love & Romance
“Coop,” I began, struggling for the right words. “What happens next?”
He didn’t answer.
“With us, I mean. What happens to us?”
“What do you want to happen?” His voice was neutral, impossible to read.
“We’re just starting to get to know each other.” Again, my words came out in a tiny,
choked voice. “I don’t want this to be over.”
For the second time that day, he swerved to the shoulder, braked to a halt, and gathered
me into his arms. “It doesn’t have to be. Massachusetts isn’t that far from New York.
I’ll visit you. Or you’ll visit me.”
“Like my father will ever let me out of his sight again.”
“If you introduce me to your dad, I’ll make a good impression. Parents like me.”
“I hope you don’t mind being chaperoned,” I said. “My dad’s always been overprotective.
I bet he’ll be even worse now.”
Coop sighed. “How long till you graduate?”
“A whole year. Forever.”
“Well, you’ll have to come visit The Underground, now that
it’s yours. You can drop in every so often. Keep an eye on the place.”
I shook my head. “Seriously. You can’t give me The Underground. What do I know about
running a nightclub?”
“If you want, I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
I thought about that for a minute. Me, the owner of the legendary Underground, living
in New York City, getting to decide which bands to break into the big time? If I hadn’t
been so tired and homesick, it would have sounded exciting. Of course, I would have
to finish high school first, then college. Maybe I could go to school in New York
City—NYU, maybe, or Fordham—close enough to The Underground to learn the business,
to see if running my own nightclub was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
“And if you don’t want… Well, it’s still your family home. It’ll be waiting for you
until you’re ready. And I’ll be there.” We kissed, and it was different this time,
knowing we’d be far apart before long—sadder and even sweeter.
Before I was ready, Coop pulled back. “We’d better get going. We can’t let your dad
reach the club before we do.” He checked over his shoulder before returning to the
highway. “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Not if I’m going to impress him
as good boyfriend material.”
According to the GPS, we were still an hour from The Underground. I settled back into
my seat, thinking hard. There must have been a thousand things Coop and I needed to
say to each other while we still had time alone together, but, limp with exhaustion,
I couldn’t think of a single one. Instead, I yawned loudly.
“Tip the seat back,” Coop advised. “You can sleep. I don’t mind. Take my hoodie for
a blanket.”
I rummaged in the backseat and found it—warm and soft and smelling deliciously of
Coop. I pulled it over me, shut my eyes, and enjoyed the feeling of floating at sixty
miles an hour through the countryside, drifting in and out of sleep.
What happened next could only have been a dream, though it didn’t feel like one. I
leaned back to watch the landscape speed past, and, drenched in moonlight, the hilly
roadside dipped and swelled, its undulations soothing. Wind tossed the tops of the
trees just beyond the shoulder, and I noticed two distant figures walking hand in
hand along the edge of the woods. Though it was a perfectly ordinary sight—a slender
girl, her long hair whipping around her, and a tall, angular boy—it struck me as extraordinary,
almost miraculous. I thought to point them out to Coop, but couldn’t seem to find
my voice. For a long time we approached them, then, too quickly, we were flying past,
close enough for the car’s motion to send the girl’s hair whooshing back from her
face.
I turned in my seat for a better look and caught my breath at how lovely and familiar
their two moonlit faces were, even as they receded and grew as distant as twinned
stars. As I stared, they turned right and vanished from the roadside into the dark
woods.
Turn back!
I wanted to urge Cooper, but the words wouldn’t come to my lips, and the highway
was hurtling us on toward our futures and, anyway, there could be no turning back.
It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him:
and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same….
Those words, spoken by Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
, thrilled me the first time I read them. I was seventeen and shy to the point of
barely being able to speak to boys I liked, but I dreamed of someday feeling that
same connection with someone—a love so intense it could last for the rest of our lives,
and beyond. I fell in love with Heathcliff, and with
Wuthering Heights
itself—a love that led me, quite a few years later, to write
Catherine
, my own take on Brontë’s novel.
Wuthering Heights
is the kind of thick, delicious book that transports a reader to another world—the
remote and windswept moors in which ghosts walk and the living are as harsh and cruel
as the weather. So when I set out to write a modernization of
Wuthering Heights
, I needed a setting as exhilarating in its own way as England’s Yorkshire Moors.
I decided on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, mecca to artists, musicians, and writers.
The raw energy and excitement of New York’s underground music scene seemed like the
right environment for a modern-day Heathcliff and Catherine.
Once I picked a setting, the plot of
Catherine
began to fall into place. My Heathcliff would be an aspiring punk rocker, hot tempered
and wounded by an unspeakable past. And Catherine, a nightclub owner’s daughter, would
be talented, spirited, and a bit spoiled. Like the characters who inspired them, they
are flawed and sometimes selfish, but capable of an intense and electrifying love.
Of course
Wuthering Heights
, with its multiple narrators and multigenerational sweep, is more than just a great
classic love story. When the love between Heathcliff and Catherine is thwarted, their
lives are twisted out of shape like the wind-blasted trees on the moors. This blighted
love casts a shadow over the lives of their children. As much as anything else,
Wuthering Heights
is the story of how Catherine’s daughter finds her way out of that shadow and into
the sunlight. It was important to me, in writing
Catherine
, that the story unfold over the course of two generations—which is how the character
of Catherine’s daughter, Chelsea, came into being. Though I could never hope to approach
the richness and complexity
of
Wuthering Heights
, I wanted Catherine’s story to be told in more than one voice: her own, and that
of a daughter struggling to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.
Wuthering Heights
has haunted the imaginations of readers for generations. Like Heathcliff, who begs
Catherine’s ghost to visit him so he can feel her presence once more, I return again
and again to
Wuthering Heights
, eager to be haunted anew by its characters. Writing
Catherine
was my way of returning to that ghost-riddled landscape—of stepping into Catherine
and Heathcliff’s story, however fleetingly. I hope that readers who enjoy my retelling
of Brontë’s great novel will be inspired to return to the original—or, maybe, to read
it for the first time, and allow themselves to be swept away.
Thanks to my editor, Julie Scheina, who smoothed my path with patience, generosity,
and know-how. Thanks also to Amy Williams, agent extraordinaire, and to Ann Green,
Ted Fristrom, and Jamey Gallagher, who provided feedback and encouragement.
Extra-special thanks to Eric Coulson, who lent me his considerable expertise on guns
and gunshot injuries, and to Dan Courtenay, owner of the venerable Chelsea Guitars.
Thanks to Jesse Malin and Bowery Electric for a jolt of inspiration and a glimpse
into the real thing.
I’m also grateful to Denise Duhamel for her memories of the Hotel Chelsea circa 1989,
and to my Facebook brain trust for their input on all sorts of cultural ephemera:
Ali Barsanti, Alli Hammond, Diane Wilkes, Ned Balbo, Shenandoah Lynd, Chris Bamberger,
Melody Lindner, Lori Askeland, Cindy Gagnon
Raschke, Lydia Ricker Butler, Laura Pattillo, Daisy Fried, Cecilia Ready, Victoria
R. Palmer, Beth Kephart, Monique St. Amant, Susan Sink, and Ann E. Michael, among
others.
Finally, hugs to Andre St. Amant, for his willingness to share me with my imaginary
friends.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by April Lindner
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning,
uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission
of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual
property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes),
prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected].
Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-0-316-21471-1