In Dahlia's Wake - Hardcover
Readers who love the books of Sue Miller and Elizabeth Berg will be unable to put down this powerful, intensely moving novel about a couple trying to rebuild their lives after the death of their child.
Rick and Naomi fell in love in college, married soon afterward, and weathered the setbacks in their lives—including Naomi’s repeated miscarriages—secure in their love for one another. With the birth of their daughter, Dahlia, everything finally glides into place. Their renovated brick house in Brooklyn is close to Rick’s podiatry practice, and when Dahlia is old enough for kindergarten, Naomi begins teaching at the private school where her daughter is enrolled. Then, in a single unbelievable moment, their close-knit life is utterly shattered. While on an outing with Rick, Dahlia is killed in a bizarre automobile accident, and Rick and Naomi retreat into grief-stricken isolation.
A moving portrait of ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances, In Dahlia’s Wake explores the ache of loss and the search for solace. In herdesperate desire to find a remedy, Naomi leaves her teaching job to volunteer at the hospital where Dahlia died and finds herself drawn to Michael McBride, the doctor who delivered the devastating news. Rick, haunted by guilt about the accident and tormented by Naomi’s emotional and physical withdrawal, falls into an affair with his office manager, the divorced mother of a young son. The distance between Rick and Naomi widens until another twist of fate and the unexpected insight offered by Naomi’s mother—who struggles with her increasing bouts of memory loss—awaken them to the value of their own lives and to the true meaning of family.
Rick and Naomi fell in love in college, married soon afterward, and weathered the setbacks in their lives—including Naomi’s repeated miscarriages—secure in their love for one another. With the birth of their daughter, Dahlia, everything finally glides into place. Their renovated brick house in Brooklyn is close to Rick’s podiatry practice, and when Dahlia is old enough for kindergarten, Naomi begins teaching at the private school where her daughter is enrolled. Then, in a single unbelievable moment, their close-knit life is utterly shattered. While on an outing with Rick, Dahlia is killed in a bizarre automobile accident, and Rick and Naomi retreat into grief-stricken isolation.
A moving portrait of ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances, In Dahlia’s Wake explores the ache of loss and the search for solace. In herdesperate desire to find a remedy, Naomi leaves her teaching job to volunteer at the hospital where Dahlia died and finds herself drawn to Michael McBride, the doctor who delivered the devastating news. Rick, haunted by guilt about the accident and tormented by Naomi’s emotional and physical withdrawal, falls into an affair with his office manager, the divorced mother of a young son. The distance between Rick and Naomi widens until another twist of fate and the unexpected insight offered by Naomi’s mother—who struggles with her increasing bouts of memory loss—awaken them to the value of their own lives and to the true meaning of family.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of The Four Temperaments, a novel that Doubleday published in 2002. She is the editor of and a contributor to The Barbie Chronicles: A Living Doll Turns Forty, as well as All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader. She lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her husband and two children.
1
Coffee Break
On a Friday morning in early December, Naomi Wechsler walked up Seventh Avenue, head bent slightly forward, umbrella positioned in front of her like a shield. It was wet and sleety and the umbrella kept getting pulled inside out by gusts--brief but sharp--of winter wind. Still, Naomi prevailed. She was on her way to Holy Name of Jesus Hospital for her morning in the pediatric ward, and she didn't want to get soaked. The three mornings a week she spent at Holy Name had become the scaffolding on which her days were precariously balanced. Naomi was scrupulous about honoring her commitment there; in some small way, it was what kept her going.
Rick, her husband, didn't understand why she wanted, no, needed to go to Holy Name. He had asked her about it repeatedly, and when her answers failed to satisfy him, he had begun a quiet but penetrating campaign of reproach: small, exasperated sighs and looks, a certain clipped tone when he asked if she was "going up there--again." But, then, it seemed that there were so many ways in which she had failed Rick these days. So many ways she could hardly count them. And he had failed her too. Still, she had resolved not to think about that today. She would not let herself.
As Naomi came to the corner of Sixth Street, she checked her watch. Only a little past nine. She was not due to arrive until nine-thirty. She decided to duck into Barnes & Noble to buy a cup of coffee from the cafe. There was free coffee on the ward and coffee sold in the hospital cafeteria, but Naomi knew from experience that the former was flavorless and cold; the latter, flavorless and hot. She had a little extra time this morning. She could indulge.
Shaking the excess water from her umbrella, she folded it up before stepping inside the double doors of the bookstore. Quickly, she made her way to the cafe and got on line. To her left was a table with a large display of Godiva chocolates: gold boxes tied with red ribbon and adorned with pinecones, the same gold boxes tied with blue ribbon and adorned with silver stars. Christmas and Hanukkah, the December twins, had arrived in New York. There were also foil-covered chocolate Santas with rouged cheeks and abundant white hair meant to resemble confections of a hundred years ago and mesh sacks of chocolate coins wrapped in silver and gold foil. Naomi picked up six sacks of coins and six Santas. She knew that several of the children on the ward had dietary restrictions forbidding them to eat chocolate, but surely there would be some who would be allowed to have it. And there were always the nurses. Her hands full, she stood patiently in line waiting for her turn.
There was a man ahead of her wearing a greenish-gray raincoat and a ridiculous-looking yellow rain hat, the kind of thing fishermen wore and was now found in J. Crew and L.L. Bean catalogs. The hat seemed to be too large for him and resembled, in some vague way, a hen that had come to roost on his head. When he ordered his coffee--a double hazelnut latte with whipped cream and cinnamon--she thought she could detect something familiar about his voice. When he turned around, she recognized him. Michael McBride, the head of the pediatric unit at Holy Name. The man who, last summer, had told her that her seven-year-old daughter, Dahlia, was dead.
McBride stood there, a cup of steaming, fragrant liquid in his hand. She saw at once that he knew who she was.
"Mrs. Wechsler." It was not a question. "It's been a while."
"Only five months, two days, and about ten hours," she wanted to say. But she didn't.
"I hope everything has been . . . all right . . . with you. And your husband."
"We're fine," Naomi said and moved past him. She could sense him still standing there as she ordered, but she didn't turn around again. Instead, she paid for the coffee and the chocolate and accepted the bags with which to carry them, all without looking at him a second time. She went over to a high, circular table to retrieve napkins, a stirrer, and a packet of sugar. It wasn't strange to run into him, of course. He worked in the hospital and now she did too. The only strange thing about the encounter was that it hadn't happened sooner.
Back outside, the wind was still blowing the sleet around in wet, angry gusts. Naomi reached the hospital's wide, automatic doors with relief. As she stepped inside, she opened the lid of the coffee, took a sip and then another. She saw McBride, yellow hat now collapsed under his arm, talking to a doctor right next to the large, lavishly decorated Christmas tree in the hospital's lobby. She stayed out of sight, so that she wouldn't have to speak to him. But even McBride's presence, painful as it was to her, wouldn't stop her from coming here. If she ran into him again--and she knew she would--she would find some way of being, or acting, that didn't rip her heart out. She knew she would be able to do it. Hadn't she managed to live through the last five months? If she could do that, she could do anything.
Although they had never discussed it, Naomi suspected that Rick avoided the hospital entirely. She could imagine him walking along Seventh Avenue, toward that well-stocked secondhand bookshop that had opened on Seventh Street, or toward Two Little Hens, the bakery he liked up on Eighth Avenue, always making sure that he was on the other side of the street.
Naomi herself wasn't entirely certain why she was drawn here. She told herself it was better than spending her days on the couch, her eyes tracking the progress of the light as it filtered into the front windows of the house in the morning and, later in the day, through the dining room windows in back. But that was only part of it.
This was the year she had planned to return to graduate school, for her PhD in English literature. Dahlia was getting older; Naomi thought that she could comfortably leave her with Rick when she took her classes or spent time in the library. After Dahlia had died, though, Naomi lost interest in pursuing an advanced degree. Yet she didn't want to go back to teaching either.
For the last three years, she had been employed at a small, tony private school in Brooklyn Heights. The neighborhood--elegantly maintained homes of brick, brownstone, and limestone; tall, graceful windows with a glimpse of a chandelier through one, a sheer, patterned curtain at another--was lovely. She liked the other teachers and the headmaster, the orderly routine of her days that included classes in the mornings, prep periods in the afternoons, and lunch with her husband when he could take a break between his appointments. And Dahlia had been enrolled there as well, in the lower school, so that Naomi's morning and afternoon commute dovetailed nicely with the dropping off and picking up of her daughter. But the teaching itself had worn her down, the room of jaded fifteen-year-olds, surreptitiously making calls or playing games on their cell phones, the girls exchanging notes or examining their hair for split ends.
And what girls they were. The leader of the pack, Cordelia Cox, was tall and thin-faced, with a cascade of black hair, a jeweled navel ring, and an uncanny ability to cow both her friends and enemies. Once Naomi had found her in the girls' bathroom, taunting Meg Stanton, one of her less popular classmates, with a handful of tampons. Cordelia had used lipstick to color their tips red; when Naomi had walked in, Cordelia was holding one of the besmeared tampons aloft by its short, white string.
The other girls were visibly frightened when they saw Naomi. Not Cordelia. The tampon was swaying a bit, as if she had been shaking or flicking it with her finger.
"What's going on here?" Naomi had said, looking back and forth from Cordelia's cool, composed face to Meg's tense, uncomfortable one. "Are you conducting a hygiene class?"
"I was just explaining to Meg about the differences in tampon sizes." She pointed to her selection, fanned out on the sink. "Super, regular, light." Some of the other girls couldn't help snickering.
"And the lipstick?"
"To make them seem more realistic. Aren't you always telling us to use realistic details, Mrs. Wechsler? To make our writing 'come alive'?"
"Well, class is over," Naomi said in a clipped, furious voice. She abruptly knocked all the tampons off the sink. "Clean this up. Now." The other girls quickly knelt down and began gathering tampons. "There's lipstick on the floor and on the sink. Someone will have to clean that up too."
Cordelia hadn't moved, though Meg had managed to inch away toward the door. Naomi looked over at her. "That's all right, Meg. You can go."
When the room was tidied again, Naomi dismissed the other girls but asked Cordelia to remain behind. The audacity of that girl. And the cowardice of the others.
"Throw that out," Naomi said, indicating the tampon Cordelia still held. Cordelia complied, but nothing seemed to penetrate--or to alter--the controlled, condescending look on her face.
"Was that fun?" Naomi asked when the tampon was at last in the trash.
"Was what fun?"
"Tormenting Meg."
"Meg." Cordelia looked bored. "Meg can take care of herself."
"Evidently, so can you." Naomi sent Cordelia back to class with the others. Had she stayed any longer, Naomi thought she might have actually slapped her. Instead, she ran the cold water and splashed it on her wrists and face. She was so angry she was shaking. Later, she mentioned the incident to the headmaster, who commiserated and called Cordelia into his office. There had been a detention and some community service that the girl had been asked to perform. But somehow, Naomi didn't feel vindicated, only disgusted. She had had enough of these entitled girls, this school, this work. She needed to immerse herself in somethi...
Coffee Break
On a Friday morning in early December, Naomi Wechsler walked up Seventh Avenue, head bent slightly forward, umbrella positioned in front of her like a shield. It was wet and sleety and the umbrella kept getting pulled inside out by gusts--brief but sharp--of winter wind. Still, Naomi prevailed. She was on her way to Holy Name of Jesus Hospital for her morning in the pediatric ward, and she didn't want to get soaked. The three mornings a week she spent at Holy Name had become the scaffolding on which her days were precariously balanced. Naomi was scrupulous about honoring her commitment there; in some small way, it was what kept her going.
Rick, her husband, didn't understand why she wanted, no, needed to go to Holy Name. He had asked her about it repeatedly, and when her answers failed to satisfy him, he had begun a quiet but penetrating campaign of reproach: small, exasperated sighs and looks, a certain clipped tone when he asked if she was "going up there--again." But, then, it seemed that there were so many ways in which she had failed Rick these days. So many ways she could hardly count them. And he had failed her too. Still, she had resolved not to think about that today. She would not let herself.
As Naomi came to the corner of Sixth Street, she checked her watch. Only a little past nine. She was not due to arrive until nine-thirty. She decided to duck into Barnes & Noble to buy a cup of coffee from the cafe. There was free coffee on the ward and coffee sold in the hospital cafeteria, but Naomi knew from experience that the former was flavorless and cold; the latter, flavorless and hot. She had a little extra time this morning. She could indulge.
Shaking the excess water from her umbrella, she folded it up before stepping inside the double doors of the bookstore. Quickly, she made her way to the cafe and got on line. To her left was a table with a large display of Godiva chocolates: gold boxes tied with red ribbon and adorned with pinecones, the same gold boxes tied with blue ribbon and adorned with silver stars. Christmas and Hanukkah, the December twins, had arrived in New York. There were also foil-covered chocolate Santas with rouged cheeks and abundant white hair meant to resemble confections of a hundred years ago and mesh sacks of chocolate coins wrapped in silver and gold foil. Naomi picked up six sacks of coins and six Santas. She knew that several of the children on the ward had dietary restrictions forbidding them to eat chocolate, but surely there would be some who would be allowed to have it. And there were always the nurses. Her hands full, she stood patiently in line waiting for her turn.
There was a man ahead of her wearing a greenish-gray raincoat and a ridiculous-looking yellow rain hat, the kind of thing fishermen wore and was now found in J. Crew and L.L. Bean catalogs. The hat seemed to be too large for him and resembled, in some vague way, a hen that had come to roost on his head. When he ordered his coffee--a double hazelnut latte with whipped cream and cinnamon--she thought she could detect something familiar about his voice. When he turned around, she recognized him. Michael McBride, the head of the pediatric unit at Holy Name. The man who, last summer, had told her that her seven-year-old daughter, Dahlia, was dead.
McBride stood there, a cup of steaming, fragrant liquid in his hand. She saw at once that he knew who she was.
"Mrs. Wechsler." It was not a question. "It's been a while."
"Only five months, two days, and about ten hours," she wanted to say. But she didn't.
"I hope everything has been . . . all right . . . with you. And your husband."
"We're fine," Naomi said and moved past him. She could sense him still standing there as she ordered, but she didn't turn around again. Instead, she paid for the coffee and the chocolate and accepted the bags with which to carry them, all without looking at him a second time. She went over to a high, circular table to retrieve napkins, a stirrer, and a packet of sugar. It wasn't strange to run into him, of course. He worked in the hospital and now she did too. The only strange thing about the encounter was that it hadn't happened sooner.
Back outside, the wind was still blowing the sleet around in wet, angry gusts. Naomi reached the hospital's wide, automatic doors with relief. As she stepped inside, she opened the lid of the coffee, took a sip and then another. She saw McBride, yellow hat now collapsed under his arm, talking to a doctor right next to the large, lavishly decorated Christmas tree in the hospital's lobby. She stayed out of sight, so that she wouldn't have to speak to him. But even McBride's presence, painful as it was to her, wouldn't stop her from coming here. If she ran into him again--and she knew she would--she would find some way of being, or acting, that didn't rip her heart out. She knew she would be able to do it. Hadn't she managed to live through the last five months? If she could do that, she could do anything.
Although they had never discussed it, Naomi suspected that Rick avoided the hospital entirely. She could imagine him walking along Seventh Avenue, toward that well-stocked secondhand bookshop that had opened on Seventh Street, or toward Two Little Hens, the bakery he liked up on Eighth Avenue, always making sure that he was on the other side of the street.
Naomi herself wasn't entirely certain why she was drawn here. She told herself it was better than spending her days on the couch, her eyes tracking the progress of the light as it filtered into the front windows of the house in the morning and, later in the day, through the dining room windows in back. But that was only part of it.
This was the year she had planned to return to graduate school, for her PhD in English literature. Dahlia was getting older; Naomi thought that she could comfortably leave her with Rick when she took her classes or spent time in the library. After Dahlia had died, though, Naomi lost interest in pursuing an advanced degree. Yet she didn't want to go back to teaching either.
For the last three years, she had been employed at a small, tony private school in Brooklyn Heights. The neighborhood--elegantly maintained homes of brick, brownstone, and limestone; tall, graceful windows with a glimpse of a chandelier through one, a sheer, patterned curtain at another--was lovely. She liked the other teachers and the headmaster, the orderly routine of her days that included classes in the mornings, prep periods in the afternoons, and lunch with her husband when he could take a break between his appointments. And Dahlia had been enrolled there as well, in the lower school, so that Naomi's morning and afternoon commute dovetailed nicely with the dropping off and picking up of her daughter. But the teaching itself had worn her down, the room of jaded fifteen-year-olds, surreptitiously making calls or playing games on their cell phones, the girls exchanging notes or examining their hair for split ends.
And what girls they were. The leader of the pack, Cordelia Cox, was tall and thin-faced, with a cascade of black hair, a jeweled navel ring, and an uncanny ability to cow both her friends and enemies. Once Naomi had found her in the girls' bathroom, taunting Meg Stanton, one of her less popular classmates, with a handful of tampons. Cordelia had used lipstick to color their tips red; when Naomi had walked in, Cordelia was holding one of the besmeared tampons aloft by its short, white string.
The other girls were visibly frightened when they saw Naomi. Not Cordelia. The tampon was swaying a bit, as if she had been shaking or flicking it with her finger.
"What's going on here?" Naomi had said, looking back and forth from Cordelia's cool, composed face to Meg's tense, uncomfortable one. "Are you conducting a hygiene class?"
"I was just explaining to Meg about the differences in tampon sizes." She pointed to her selection, fanned out on the sink. "Super, regular, light." Some of the other girls couldn't help snickering.
"And the lipstick?"
"To make them seem more realistic. Aren't you always telling us to use realistic details, Mrs. Wechsler? To make our writing 'come alive'?"
"Well, class is over," Naomi said in a clipped, furious voice. She abruptly knocked all the tampons off the sink. "Clean this up. Now." The other girls quickly knelt down and began gathering tampons. "There's lipstick on the floor and on the sink. Someone will have to clean that up too."
Cordelia hadn't moved, though Meg had managed to inch away toward the door. Naomi looked over at her. "That's all right, Meg. You can go."
When the room was tidied again, Naomi dismissed the other girls but asked Cordelia to remain behind. The audacity of that girl. And the cowardice of the others.
"Throw that out," Naomi said, indicating the tampon Cordelia still held. Cordelia complied, but nothing seemed to penetrate--or to alter--the controlled, condescending look on her face.
"Was that fun?" Naomi asked when the tampon was at last in the trash.
"Was what fun?"
"Tormenting Meg."
"Meg." Cordelia looked bored. "Meg can take care of herself."
"Evidently, so can you." Naomi sent Cordelia back to class with the others. Had she stayed any longer, Naomi thought she might have actually slapped her. Instead, she ran the cold water and splashed it on her wrists and face. She was so angry she was shaking. Later, she mentioned the incident to the headmaster, who commiserated and called Cordelia into his office. There had been a detention and some community service that the girl had been asked to perform. But somehow, Naomi didn't feel vindicated, only disgusted. She had had enough of these entitled girls, this school, this work. She needed to immerse herself in somethi...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDoubleday
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0385503628
- ISBN 13 9780385503624
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages304
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