Dept. Of Speculation (11 page)
Read Dept. Of Speculation Online
Authors: Jenny Offill
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Family Life, #Psychological
Snow. Finally. The world looks blankly beautiful. We take the dog out in it. He races ahead of us, blazing a trail of pee through the whiteness. We walk towards the road. Sometimes the school bus is early, sometimes late. There is ice in the trees, a brisk, bitter wind from the east. The dog appears, dragging his leash. We wait by the mailboxes. One or two trees still have some leaves. You reach out to pick one, show it to me. “It has oblique leaves,” you say. “See?” I let you tuck it in my pocket.
The yellow bus pulls up. The doors open and she is there, holding something made of paper and string. It is art, she thinks. Science maybe. The snow is coming down again. Soft wet flakes land on your face. My eyes sting from the wind. Our daughter hands us her crumpled papers, takes off running. You stop and wait for me. We watch as she gets smaller. No one young knows the name of anything.
Many thanks to the Ucross Foundation, Ledig House, NYFA, and Ellen Levine Fund for giving me the space and time to write this book.
I am immensely grateful to Joshua Beckman, Lydia Millet, Rob Spillman, Elissa Schappell, Tasha Blaine, Michael Rothfeld, Merrie Koehlert, Greg Koehlert, Helen Phillips, Adam Thompson, Jon Dee, Steve Rhinehart, Fred Leebron, Liz Strout, Josh Glenn, Alex Abramovich, Mike Greer, Sam Lipsyte, Ceridwen Morris, Dorla McIntosh, Rebecca Leece, Laura Ogden, Bethany Lyttle, Ben Marcus, Ethan Nosowsky, Michael Cunningham, Matthea Harvey, Tom Hart, Leela Corman, Lucy Raven, Mimi Lipson, Anna DeForest, Aaron Retica, Sarah Bassett, Anstiss Agnew, Caroline Bleeke, Evalena
Leedy, Joshua Henkin, and Sam Fox for their generosity and encouragement in matters literary and far beyond.
Thanks to my agent, Sally Wofford-Girand, who stood by me all these years and knew just when to wrench this thing out of my hands, as well as to my editor, Jordan Pavlin, whose thoughtful notes made this book much better than it was.
Above all, I want to thank my family whose love and support are the foundation of everything good and true in my life.
And to the crackerjack editorial, publicity, and production staff at Knopf who shepherded this maddeningly formatted book to press, I owe each and every one of you a pony.
Jenny Offill is the author of the novel
Last Things
, which was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by
The New York Times
and was a finalist for the L.A. Times First Book Award. She is the coeditor, with Elissa Schappell, of two anthologies of essays,
The Friend Who Got Away
and
Money Changes Everything
. Her children’s books include
17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore, 11 Experiments That Failed
, and
Sparky
. She teaches in the writing programs at Queens University, Brooklyn College, and Columbia University.
Visit:
www.jennyoffill.com
For more information, please visit
www.aaknopf.com
Last Things