Sneak Peek of My New Book!

Here's a sneak peek of my new book, coming soon.  It's about a child genius who is forced to live with her estranged father following her mother's death, and the struggles facing her living with an ordinary man who just doesn't understand.

Vivisepulture.

                “Can you use it in a sentence?” the boy with the glossy straight black hair asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.  Peter Wong.  That was the name written in block letters on his nametag.

                We were the only ones left on stage.  The footlights glared down on us, blinding me.  All I saw when I looked at the audience were blobs instead of faces.  Perhaps on purpose, so we won’t get stage fright.  My mother told me what to do if I got overwhelmed staring out at so many faces. 

                “Fix your gaze to a point above everyone’s heads,” she’d instructed.

                Since I couldn’t see individual faces, I pretended she was there, watching.  We had been preparing for this spelling bee for years.  You had to be twelve to qualify.  I was finally old enough to compete, but she was dead. 

                 “I’m sorry, that is incorrect,” one of the unsmiling judges declared.  He looked somberly at me.  “As you know, with only two people left in the competition, we have entered sudden death.  If Zoey Hardy can correctly spell this word, she will be declared the winner of this year’s New York State Spelling Bee.”

                I stood up, clenching my hands.  I gazed out at the theatre.   The lights glared down at me.  My head throbbed.

                “The word is vivisepulture,” the judge reminded me.

                I closed my eyes for a moment.  I didn’t need its definition or to hear it in a sentence.  It meant to be buried alive. 

                I’ve worried endlessly that my mother was buried alive.  So ironic that this is my word.

                Without opening my eyes, I slowly spelled the word, whispering the letters into the microphone.  I could see it printed on the list of spelling words in my mind’s eye.  I’ve spelled it in my dreams.

                “Correct,” the expressionless voice proclaims.  “Ladies and Gentleman, please congratulate this year’s winner, Zoey Hardy.”

                The applause was thunderous.  I forced a smile and waved, although I was annoyed they left out my middle name.  Elizabeth. I hated the name Hardy.  Too all-American, too vanilla, conjuring up visions of families huddled under blankets at football game and picnics at the beach.  Hardyland.  I didn’t belong there.  I never have.

                The next couple of minutes were a blur.  They took my photo for the newspaper.  I held up my winning plaque and smiled brightly, although my head hurt.   I just wanted to go home.

                 I thought if I won, I would feel my mother’s presence.  Instead, I felt nothing.

                “One more,” Brad says, holding up his cell phone.  “Smile!”

                I pulled up the corners of my mouth a bit, managing to walk a tightrope between compliance and disobedience.  The dance of our relationship.

                “Are you excited?” he asked.  “Did you think you’d win?”

                I raised and lowered my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug, turning to walk out of the theater.  Brad attempted to fall into step beside me, but I slowed my pace, allowing him to take the lead.

                He halted and held out his hand. “Come on, kiddo, we’re in the middle of New York City,” he said, his tone reasonable.

                I reluctantly laced my fingers in his, shrinking away from the contact of his warm, sweaty palm against my skin.  With that gesture, we became ordinary, just a father walking with his little girl. 

                I don’t know how we got here.

                Every time he brought up entering the spelling bee, I blew him off.  I had no intentions of competing.  Yes, it had been a dream my mother and I had, but that’s all.  Something to work toward on those long endless evenings when she was too sick from chemo to do anything besides listen to me run down endless spelling lists.  We talked about what I’d wear, where she’d sit, the moment when I won.  We always acted like winning was the only outcome.

                Last year, we watched the live broadcast of the spelling bee on public access and pretended she’d be watching from the audience this year.  Deep down I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  She was dying, although no one told me outright and I refused to admit it to myself.  She couldn’t die. She was my mother.  She’d been a vigilant presence all my life.  She was my world.

                It started out as breast cancer.  The renegade cells showed up on the scan when she had a mammogram.  It was already stage four.  I knew that was bad from the way my aunts stared when she told us.

                “You schedule mammograms like clockwork,” May said, shaking her head in disbelief.  “How could the cancer have progressed so far without detection?”

                No one had an answer for that.  Sometimes, that’s just what happens.  You can do everything right, but still get sick.  My mother ran three miles a day on the treadmill in the basement, and spent twenty minutes lifting weights every other day.  She had regular checkups, went to the dentist, ate right, didn’t drink beyond an occasional glass of red wine.  It wasn’t fair.

                “A body is like a car,” she said, shaking her head.  “If you maintain it well, it’s supposed to last a long time, and usually does.  Except sometimes, no matter how well you maintain it, the car still breaks down.  It’s a lemon.  It was defective when it came from the factory.”

                “You’re not defective,” I told her.  “You’re the smartest woman I know.”

                “Maybe it was a trade-off,” she said with her lovely smile.  “A defective body for a superior brain.  Do you think?”

                “No,” I said.

                It snowed the day the spelling bee was held last year.

                “Snow this early means there won’t be a lot this winter,” my mother said, gazing out the window.  “Spring seems so far off.”

                “That’s because it’s not even winter yet,” I said. 

                I stared at her hands.  Her face still looked the same, but her hands had shriveled, become talons.  Old lady hands.  She was aging rapidly.  Within weeks, her luxurious dark hair had thinned and started to turn white.

                “I wish I could see spring again,” she said.

                “You will,” I assured her.

                “I feel so bad that I won’t get to see you compete in the spelling bee next year.  You’ll be crowned champion.  I know it.”

                “I don’t care.  I won’t do it unless you’re going to be there.”

               

                Three days ago, Brad casually said, “Oh, by the way, we have that spelling bee on Saturday.  I sent in your application.  Dr. Huxtable gave it to me.”

                I was furious.  “I told you to forget about it.”

                We were in the truck, heading back from yet another art class at the community center.  I was already fuming because he’d been waiting for me outside the classroom door.  I don’t know how he managed to get past the receptionist.  Maybe she swooned when he twinkled those blue eyes.

                “How’s my girl doing?” he asked Ms. Able.

                I saw her eyes widen and her lips part, as she looked him up and down.  Did she think he was talking about her?

                “Very good, Mr.…Hardy, right?” she tittered.

                Puke.  Now I wasn’t sure if him flirting with my teacher was to distract me from being angry about the spelling bee, or if it was the other way around. 

                “It was important to your mother that you compete,” Brad said.  “If you don’t do it, you’ll regret it.”

                “You shouldn’t have done it without telling me,” I scolded.  “I’m not even prepared.  It takes weeks of studying.”

                “Oh please.  You’ve been studying for this thing for years.  Did you forget how to spell all the words in the last couple of months?”

                That was a good point.  I let out a massive sigh.  “Don’t you have anything else you’d rather be doing on a Saturday?”

                “Then watch my baby doll become the spelling champion of the world? Hell no.”  He gave me a rakish grin.  “The application was a hundred and twenty bucks.  Money I can’t afford.”

                “Shit,” I exclaimed, shaking my head.  Now I had to go.

               

                And I won.  But who cared?  Maybe if I was a schoolgirl, I’d be excited at the prospect of my picture in the paper and everyone knowing I was a champion, but in my current situation, what difference did it make?  Bob and Jen had already weighed in, pronouncing spelling bees nerd city, and I didn’t bother mentioning it to Elvira/Abby.  I knew she’d think it was lame. 

                Maybe my aunts would care.

                My mother would have been thrilled.   She would have taken me somewhere special to celebrate, perhaps a Tea Room where the tables were set with china and boasted linen napkins.  She would have made it special. 

                “How about some pizza?” Brad suggested, squinting up at the skyline like a tourist.

                “Pizza?” I asked, my voice dripping with contempt.

                Seriously.  Brad suffered from a distinct lack of imagination.  As he pointed out, we were in New York City.  The greatest city on earth.  And all he could think to do to celebrate my win was buy me a slice of pizza? 

                “Kiddo, I don’t have money for anything else.  I could go for some deli tuna.  What do you think, sound good?”

                I rolled my eyes.  “Whatever,” I said.

                “Hey, kid.  I’m trying.  You know this isn’t my scene.  But it was important to your mom.”

                “I didn’t want to come,” I reminded him.   “You gave me no choice.”

                He glanced up at the sky again.  Maybe he wasn’t looking at the skyline.  Perhaps he was entreating God for help.  “I don’t know what to do anymore,” he said.  “I don’t know how to make you happy.”

                “I don’t want to be happy.” 

                “Clearly.”

                Suddenly, I felt a rush of overwhelming, bone weary exhaustion.  So, I sat down, right on the sidewalk.  People parted around me like the Red Sea.

                Brad hovered over me, hands in his pockets.  His expression was unreadable.  “Zoey, get up.”

                “I’m tired,” I said.  I felt tears threatening.

                “Zoey, you can’t sit down in the middle of New York City.  You’re almost thirteen years old.  You’re not a little girl anymore.  I can’t carry you.  Get up.”

                “No,” I said.

                “Zoey, get up or I’ll beat your ass so bad you’ll never sit down again.”

                I leaped to my feet as if burned by the asphalt, whirling on him like a dervish.  “You’re awful!” I screeched in his face. “My mother died and I’m sad!  I’m really, really sad.”  Tears were pouring down my cheeks.  “And you don’t understand.  You can’t understand.  You don’t even try to understand.”

                “My mother died too, you know,” he pointed out.

                “She didn’t die when you were twelve,” I said.

                Brad ran a hand over his face.  “This was a bad idea,” he said, as if to himself.  “I thought this would be a nice way for you to honor your mother.  I never imagined it would be so emotionally draining.  You’re not even happy you won, for Chrissakes.”

                “Why would I be happy, no one cares.”

                “I thought it was cool.”

                “Yeah, so cool you’re going to beat me when we get home.”

                “I just said that, so you’d get up,” he said.  “Zoey, what do you want from me?  Just tell me.”

                “You say you love and you’d do anything for me, even die,” I said, swiping at my tears.

                “Yes.  That’s true.  I love you with all my heart.  I’d do anything to keep you safe. I swear.”

                “Then why didn’t you marry my mother?”

                Long silence.  We had reached some sort of park, just an empty lot between buildings that boasted a swing set and a few concrete benches.  It was deserted on this chilly autumn day. 

                Brad motioned for me to sit.  He remained standing.

                He sighed.  “Zoey, that’s a very complicated question,” he said.

                “No.  It’s not.  You married Jen’s mom when she got pregnant.”

                “Yeah, and look how that turned out,” he said.  He sat down heavily beside me.  “Listen.  If I had met your mom before Suzie, things may have been different.  I probably would have married her when she got pregnant.  But after Suze…” he shrugged.  “I don’t talk about it, because I don’t want to upset Bob and Jen.  But I really tried to be a good husband and father. I gave it my all.  I left my family down south and moved all the way up here, so Suzie could be close to her family.  I commuted an hour and a half to Albany every day to do a job I hated.  And I was coming home to babies screaming, no dinner on the table, and Suzie gone.  She’d just up and leave the kids in the middle of the day.  And they were infants.  I’d come home to them in flooded cribs, their diapers not changed in hours, and God alone knew the last time they were fed.  One night, a rare night she was home, I confronted her.  She insisted I was exaggerating, trying to make her feel like a bad mother.  She slammed out of the house and never came home.  I gave up my job in Albany.  I may have hated it, but it had a future and it paid well.  I had to take a position at Walmart, because the hours were flexible.  People had to help me out.  Pop-Pop had to pay the bills.  I was struggling for so long.   Things were improving when your mother came along.  I’d just been promoted to manager.  And then she was pregnant, and I couldn’t do it again.   There was no telling what would happen.  Your mother had an unstable streak.  I’ve always been attracted to crazy women.”

                “She wasn’t crazy,” I said. 

                “Not the same way as Suzie,” he admitted.  “What I’m trying to explain is I was too wounded to take a chance on another woman.  I didn’t want to risk getting hurt again.  I guarded my heart after Suzie broke it.  I never gave another woman a chance.  That’s my failing, Zoey.”

                “Do you wish you had?” I said.

                “I’d be a lot better off financially,” he mused.   “She made a shit ton of money.”

                Brad had this terrific habit of speaking his highly inappropriate thoughts out loud.

                “If you could do it again,” I said.  “Would you have dated my mother at all?  If you knew I would come from it?”

                “Jesus.  Zoey, I think Peter Wong is probably celebrating his second place win a lot better than you are.”

                “The hell with Peter Wong,” I snarled.

                Brad snickered.  “Poor Peter.”

                “Answer the question.”

                “Zoey, if I knew what I know now, I would have married your mother.  I would have had you.  I wouldn’t have even stopped at you, I would have had a shitload of kids, and lived happily ever after in that huge house in Bedford Hills.  Satisfied?” He patted my thigh.  “Pizza?  Tuna?  Chinese?  Chipotle?  Choose, or I’ll choose for you.”

                As we rose and started walking again, it started snowing, just like it had a year ago, during the competition I didn’t enter.  Brad looked up in wonder.  “The first snowfall of the season.”

                “It snowed on the day of the spelling bee last year, too,” I said.  “I spent it with my mother.  She was so sad she would never see me compete.”

                The life I’d known was fading away.  I realized, blowing snowflakes off my nose, that part of me always felt this was a nightmare, and I’d wake up to find my mother alive and everything back the way it was.  But winning the spelling bee without my mother, only Brad in the audience, had reaffirmed that this was my reality.  My mother wasn’t coming back.  I would never see her again, or hear her voice, or see her face when I accomplished something terrific.  She was gone forever.

                “Maybe the snow is a sign that your mother is watching,” Brad said.  “You know, I believe, that even though you can’t see them, our dead loved ones are here, waiting for us to join them.”

                I hoped he was right.  In that moment, for the first time since her death, I felt my mother’s presence. 

                Well done, sweetheart she whispered.