Lacy Eye (34 page)
Authors: Jessica Treadway
On weekdays, after I'm done doing mammograms, I pick Josie up from nursery school and bring her back to my house. On nice days, I like to take her to Lake Merritt, not far from where we all live, to feed the birds in the wildlife sanctuary. It reminds me a little of Two Rivers, though I realize it's probably only because I want it to. Josie always asks me to recite the names of the birds; she especially enjoys hearing her grandmother say “bufflehead” and “American coot.”
We used to take Abby with us for walks by the water, but she'd been slowing down lately. And in the past couple of days, I noticed a glaze over her eyes. She'd never really been the same since we made the move out here; I think the plane ride, and the new surroundings, were too much for her. It also seemed she might be going deaf. None of this was too surprising, given not only what she'd been through, but the fact that she was almost fourteen now.
I knew when she wouldn't eat any breakfast this morning, or get up from her bed, that I needed to call the vet again. During the past two months, I've had to take her in almost once a week, though before today I always did it on my own time, because I didn't want to upset Josie. But today there was no choice but to make the appointment for early afternoon, and when I picked up my granddaughter, I told her we were going to take Abby to the animal doctor. “You can be my helper,” I told her, and the expression on her faceâexcited to have been chosen, solemn in her resolve to do a good jobâwas so similar to her mother's expression as a child that it clamped my heart.
“I'll hold your hand if you need a shot,” Josie said to Abby, patting the dog's head on her lap in the backseat. While we waited to be called into the examining room, I read Josie the names of all the animal groups from the illustrated poster on the wall. I wanted to distract myself from what I was afraid I'd hear when they took us into the room. Like some of the bird names at the sanctuary, the animal categories made Josie giggle, especially when she heard, “A drove of asses.”
I continued reading the list: “A nuisance of cats. A shrewdness of apes. An obstinacy of buffalo. An exaltation of larks.” The only one I skipped was “A murder of crows,” but because she can't read yet, she didn't notice.
“What do all those words mean?” she asked, and I said, “Pest, smart, stubborn, and happy.”
“A dissimulation of birds,” I added, seeing I'd missed one.
“What's that mean?”
“Well, if you dissimulate, it means you're pretending. Say you're a mommy bird and you leave the nest to get some food for your babies, and when you come back to the nest, you see that another bird is about to swoop down on it. You could make a noise and pretend you're hurt or something, so the bird that's about to go after your children will come after you instead.”
Josie looked thoughtful, imagining the scene. “All those words are too big,” she said finally. “You should just say you're pretending.”
“You're a smart girl,” I told her, as Abby's name was called and we stood up to lead her in. The vet lifted her onto the examining table, and I could tell just from the way he touched herâa soft, regretful patâthat the news wasn't good. As she had promised she would do when the needle came, Josie reached out to take the dog's paw. And I knew that even as young as she is, she understood the same thing I did: our trip here had been Abby's last car ride, and we wouldn't be bringing her home.
Still, I could tell it made us both feel better when the vet said he'd done everything he could to try to save her.
Many thanks to the following people, among others, for their support and good cheer during the writing of this book: Elizabeth Searle, Nancy Zafris, Lori Ostlund, Anne Raeff, Christine Sneed, Dawn Tripp, Elisa Bronfman, Deb Fanton, friends and colleagues at Emerson College, Laura Treadway Gergel, Jack and Katie Gergel, Sadie Johnson, and the rest of my generous, faithful family on both sides.
For their specific contributions to the manuscript and its publication, I am indebted to Ann Treadway, Molly Treadway Johnson, Lauren Richman, Monika Woods, Dianne Choie, and especially the dream team of Kimberly Witherspoon and Deb Futter.
Finally and foremost, deep gratitude to my husband, Philip Holland, for asking the right questions and listening to mine.
- The epigraph of the novel, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, is “Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” Do you agree?
- “My features looked as if they'd been pulled apart and rearranged, like a Picasso painting.” How did the alteration in Hanna's physical appearance change her as a person?
- “Inside, I was still waiting to feel normal again.” How has Hanna's concept of “normal” changed over the course of her family's history?
- Hanna describes the decisions she and Joe made during Dawn's childhood (not letting her have eye surgery, taking her out for a birthday “party”) with guilt and regret. Do you think these present day feelings are justified? Could Hanna have done anything differently to change the eventual outcome of her family's lives?
- In what ways does Hanna identify with Dawn? In what ways will Hanna never understand her younger daughter?
- Throughout the novel, Joe challenges Hanna about her “lacy eye.” Should he have pushed her further? Does their divide over this concept reveal anything about their marriage?
- Dawn and Iris were raised in the same house by the same parents, yet grew up to be completely different from each other as adults. What do you think accounts for these differences?
- “[Iris's] words implied what I'd always guessed, that she believed I was somehow
choosing
not to recall the events of that night.” What do you think about this opinion regarding Hanna's memories of the attack? - Do you believe that Hanna ever actually considered Emmett to be the culprit in either the dog's poisoning or the attack against her and Joe?
- At dinner with her mother, Dawn says, “I knew the truth all along, I think. I just wanted to believe something else, so I didâ¦Hasn't that ever happened to you?” Clearly, Hanna is all too familiar with this experience, even as she sits there being asked the question. Why do people lie to themselves in this way? Were you ever in a situation where you avoided the truth because you wanted to or believed you needed to?
- The others in the family assume that Rud was using Dawn to gain access to money he believed she had. Dawn believed he was in love with her. How would you characterize Rud and his motivations?
- What do Hanna's memories from Dawn's childhood (including Dawn's humiliation at the Spring Showcase and then being tricked into thinking she was invited to a birthday party at the skating rink) reveal about both Dawn and Hanna?
- How does Hanna's discovery of Dawn's singing talent change her perception of her daughter? Did it change your view of her as well?
- How did the burglary of their home, which they believed Rud was responsible for, change Hanna and Joe? What did it take for Hanna to finally see what was going on?
- How do Hanna's experiences parallel her own mother's? How did each woman react to liars in their familiesâa daughter in the case of Hanna, and a husband in her mother's case?
- “Seated across from him, I felt both excited and anxious, not sure how I should act. I knew that people always advised
Be yourself
, but I wasn't at all sure of what
myself
actually was.” How did the start of Hanna and Joe's relationship lay the groundwork for their marriage and their family down the road? - What might Hanna's history with alcohol reveal about her, especially in the story she told Warren about drinking while she was home alone with her two young daughters?
- How did you react when Hanna read the interview in which Dawn described how she witnessed the attack on her parents, and in which it was revealed that she set fire to the tree house? Do you think Hanna was genuinely surprised?
- After the truth comes out and Dawn is taken into custody, Iris tells her mother, “People don't tend to remember things unless they have to.” Do you agree? Would Hanna have agreed with this statement before she found out everything that Dawn was involved in? What about after?
- “I was beginning to understand that I couldn't trust my own perceptions⦠the idea that I could see things so wrong made me breathless, and my heart skipped a beat.” Hanna realizes that she can't trust her own eyes when she goes in to see Dawn at the police station. Why does that comprehension happen to her only in that moment, after she has already learned about all that has happened?
- When Dawn finds out that her interview has been posted online, she explains, “I keep thinking people are going to be different than they are.” What does she mean by that, and what does that belief reveal about her?
- “Do I even know you, Dawn? Did I ever?â¦What kind of a person
are
you?” Is it possible for a person to be such a complete stranger to her own loving mother? - Hanna realizes she has been a “meek mother” like her own and Joe's: “I feel like I've only had a weak side.” Do you think that people can really be like this? If so, can they change, the way Hanna resolves to?
- From what you know of Dawn, do you think she is redeemable? Do you think Hanna believes she is? What do you imagine the rest of Dawn's life will be like, especially if and when she is ever released from prison?
- Hanna speculates about this question herself, but never quite comes up with an answer: Why do you think Dawn participated in the attack against her parents? Do you think there was any justification for her to do so?
Question:
What sparked your interest in writing
Lacy Eye
?
Answer:
I've always been intrigued by the concept of willful blindnessâthe decision people make to believe something other than what they know to be the truth. I suspect most people do this, to greater or lesser extents, and that the awareness of it has to cause us some measure of distress and dissonance, because we are actively blocking or ignoring the truth. With small things, it might be negligible distress, and we can put it out of our minds relatively easily. But bigger thingsâsuch as the truth my character Hanna cannot bring herself to face, about who committed the attack against her and Joeâcan, I believe, break a soul down and put us in psychic and spiritual danger, if not (as in Hanna's case) physical danger as well. The novel derives from my fascination with the notion of inhabiting someone who chooses to believe something she knows is false because it is easier than acknowledging the truth, even when doing so leads to negative consequences.
The specific eventâthe attack on Hanna and Joeâis based on an actual crime in my hometown in upstate New York. In that case, it was a college-age son who was convicted of murdering his father and attempting to murder his mother. The mother originally seemed to implicate her son, but later came out in staunch public support of his innocence. For purposes of the novel, I changed the “real life” situation to that of a young woman with a sociopathic boyfriend, because I was more interested in depicting the relationship of a mother and daughter than that of a mother and son.
Q:
What was the primary challenge in writing this novel?
A:
I think the biggest one was telling the story from the point of view of someone who is fooling herself. Even though the events are related from the future, after the point at which she understands she's been deluding herself, I wanted her to render those events with the thoughts and emotions she had when they occurred. So I had to always be calculating a balance between retrospective insight and the psychic energy Hanna invests in trying to believe what she wants desperately to be true.
Q:
Where did the titleâthe concept of “lacy eye”âcome from?
A:
I consider that to be a fortuitous mistake of the fingers. When I was writing the book, I had a lot of working titles for it, but I knew none was exactly right. One day when I was typing “lazy eye” to refer to Dawn's eye condition, I typed “lacy eye” instead. I moved my fingers to the keyboard to fix it, but before I did, I lifted them away again and said out loud, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.” Even though my brain hadn't quite caught up to it, I knew somehow that “lacy eye” was going to be significant. I was very happy to have accidentally hit upon a phrase that felt intriguingâdifferentâand also represented the notion of making something more attractive by giving it a prettier name.
Q:
Did the idea of writing a story about willful blindness come first, or did you start with the violent act that set so much of the story in motion (or was it something else entirely)?
A:
My desire to understand a character like Hanna, from the inside, was the impetus for writing the book. I both could and could not understand how and why a person would set aside what she must know, intellectually and objectively, in favor of what serves her more in terms of emotional and spiritual survival.
Q:
How were you able to put yourself in the position of fear and distrust that Hanna lived in after the attack?
A:
I think there are three elements that allow a fiction writer to explore the emotions of a character who's had an experience the writer hasn't: information, imagination, and empathy. Gathering information might mean reading about or listening to people who've been through what you're writing about, and then adapting and applying that knowledge to your character. Imagination and empathy are much more intuitive, and ultimately, in my opinion, more important to the success of the character's depiction. I've never ascribed to the “Write what you know” directive as far as experience goes; it has more to do with psychic inhabitation of another human being's soul (even though that human being is someone you've made up). Whether readers believe your depiction has less to do with whether you've had a certain experience than with how well you can imagine and render it. For example, someone who is a mother can write badly about being a parent; the experience itself won't make her a good writer. Conversely, it's possible for a childless writer who is deeply invested in rendering a mother's perspective to do so successfully; that same writer could also inhabit a father's point of view. I am not a parent, but I hope I have created in Hanna a mother readers will believe.
Q:
What was your process for writing this novel?
A:
With the two novels I've written, the scenes haven't come in chronological orderâI start with whatever feels most emotionally resonant to me, then work around that. In the case of
Lacy Eye
, I began with the scene of Dawn calling to tell her mother she wants to come back home to live. In early drafts, the mother's immediate reaction was to think
You're kidding, right?
âto have an instinctive aversion to the idea. But the more I thought about that scene, it seemed to me that I needed to make her initial reaction a positive one, precisely because she is so adept at fooling herself. In the final version, I
do
have Hanna putting off, for a few moments, “registering” what Dawn has asked, before she tells us that the prospect of Dawn coming home makes her happy. That pause is meant to indicate her internal, mostly subconscious suspension of the
You're kidding, right?
that, on some level, she wants to voice. Then I show her wariness begin to creep in on the night Dawn actually arrives. Throughout the entire writing of this book, I had to gauge the pace and level of what Hanna allowed herself to realize at any given point.
I wrote a lot of pages that didn't make it into the final version, so finishing the manuscript took me longer than it would have otherwise. Mostly, those pages are about Hanna's original family situationâher father's deception of family friends, his imprisonment, etc. I narrowed the novel's scope down toward the end to keep the focus on the family Hanna created with Joe, and the event that divided that family in the end.
Q.
What would you most like readers to take away from Hanna's story?
A:
Perhaps the motivation to consider how damaging and destructive it can be when people hide the truth from themselves. And to remember thatâas the wise writer Flannery O'Connor once saidâ“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”