Connecticut Voices; Interview with Gwendolyn M. Parker

Hello and welcome to Connecticut voices a production of the Connecticut Center for the book in partnership with the Hartford Curran's North-East magazine. I'm Nancy Cobb and my guest is novelist Gwendolyn M. Parker. When Lynn M. Parker was a rising star on Wall Street but gave it all up to become a writer a graduate of Radcliffe College at NYU Law School. Parker spent 10 years as an international tax attorney and marketing manager. She was named a black achiever in industry for her first novel The same long bones when Lynne Parker returns to her childhood home of Durham North Carolina to evoke memories of a middle class black community struggling proudly to maintain its independence. These same long bones is set in the hate section of Durham in the 1040s before integration its hero Cyrus McDougal is modeled after Parker's great grandfather a physician who founded the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company which is now the largest black manage life insurance company in the country.

These same long bones is a story of loss and redemption. Family community race and human nature. The publisher is held in Mifflin. Quentin Parker lives with her daughter in Norwalk Connecticut and still keeps a small private law practice and she's already at work on her second novel. Welcome Gwendolyn. Thank you Nancy it's wonderful to be here great to have you here. This book is incandescent and the reviews that it is received and be kind of unparalleled press that it's gotten must be pretty great for you given that it's your first novel. It's it's really a dream come true for me I mean to have sort of a dream as a child to one day be a novelist to write books and to have that dream kind of go underground for a fairly long period in my life. And then for it to resurface and to have it be such a wonderful experience so far has just been fantastic.

So it was a childhood dream to be a writer. It really was yeah I was one of those those kind of kids that always had her nose in a book and you know I thought the price of coming to see my parents was you had to read me a story so I would meet all visitors at the door with a book in hand and. If you remember in fact when I first learned how to read I felt like oh my goodness I'm no longer dependent on these other people. I can read them myself and it just it was always a love affair that I had had with books and with words. And as soon as I realized that that people actually created these entities books I thought I would love to do this I would love to be able to create a whole world that people would spend time in. So yeah it's a lifelong dream. Where did the do you remember the exact point where the where the the channel changed a little bit and you you went into a business. It was it wasn't even so much that the channel changed as that I wasn't. I wasn't courageous enough to hold onto it. The dream never really went

out of my mind to me even when I applied to law school part of me was saying what are you doing. Is that right. Oh yeah that little quiet voice and all that. Oh yeah I did my first marriage walking down the aisle. Now we why don't we listen to those things. And it was I mean the voice was actually pretty insistent at times. You know I would get a new job another promotion and every time there was always this feeling of but this isn't you this isn't your life. This looks like a wonderful life maybe to other people but it didn't feel like my life it felt like my life was waiting for me to to have the courage to come to it. And I was sort of in this imposture role while always looking out. It's almost like being outside of yourself again. You know people somewhere I read people said everybody around you said you hate when you should be an attorney you'd make a great attorney but you never never 100 percent believe them. You know now and I knew too that they really were saying that because they couldn't think of that was a practical application that they could think of for what they saw

which was they saw a child who loved to read who loved words who wrote well and so they thought Well lawyers have to have these skills. Growing up in in North Carolina. There is this middle class black community that you talk about and you said some I guess some or somebody said that this this doesn't sound realistic for the 40s. And in fact it it's it's absolutely realistic. What I mean if you come across a lot of that people saying this doesn't seem I did it was kind of an initial reaction. Some of the early early publishers that that took a look at the book you know weren't as enthusiastic I mean they said oh it's a beautiful book it's beautifully written but we don't think the setting is realistic. And you know my first response was Well you know go to Dharm and tell people about their lives you know. Didn't really happen. Did you say this was my life and these and this was the community that I knew that didn't really matter. Yeah because people weren't asking for

more information they just kind of made an assessment it wasn't realistic you know thank you very much go away called a marketing assessment. Yeah a lot of publishing is is based on that sometimes. When somebody at Houghton Mifflin finally saw it for what it was. Well they they they had just a whole other reaction which was remember my editor saying to me he said you know I never knew about this world she said but I feel so privileged and excited to learn about it and to have an opportunity to spend time in it through your book so. And tell me more. So I mean it was a very different kind of reaction. But I think you know everything is timing everything is getting to the right person and you know I'm so happy with it Mifflin so I don't have any regrets about the other decisions that people made. It was like it was supposed to be right you know I go through or go through the interference in order to get the place right where it was supposed to be. The Cyrus MacDougall is the protagonist here in this book and your middle name is McDougal. Yes.

One talk about well the community is a community in North Carolina a middle class community that is composed as I mentioned in the book people of African Native American and Scottish heritage and the Scots happen to have settled a lot in North Carolina and there are a lot of people with Scottish Scottish names African-American people with Scottish names. So I knew I wanted to do that with this character. And it just was really easy to use you know my own my own Scottish middle name. We had some debate about that at the with you but I wondered was there any you know should we change it and you know I briefly tried to think of some other names but you know I decided well it's not as though you use that name all the time. Their only concern was they didn't want people to think it was an autobiographical story which it's not. So we just kept it in a few people pick up on it like you do. Well I've only found I said there are many times when you see your middle initial spelled out so that so it was interesting to see. I just like to go back for a second

back to this to the tax attorney who was just for a moment to say when you talked about not being brave enough I mean my idea of bravery is being a tax attorney I can assure you. But everybody's perspective is different how when did you when did was was there a turning point. And I mean was there a point one day when your office and your office on Wall Street and you said I can't do this anymore I have to get out of here where you are secretly writing all along and then it was a decision I think that I was sort of making in stages. I had been actually been trying to work on a novel. First I tried to do short stories I thought well I'll do short stories on the side. I discovered I really had no affinity for the short form for the form. Did you work with a writers group or did you do this on your own. I was basically doing on my own. So that was a first piece of information that you know as a novelist. Was it realistic to think I was going to be able to write the kind of novel I wanted to do you know with the few hours that I had at the beginning and the

end of my very long day. I saw no you know I'm really going to have to make a choice. And I turned 36 and I'm a little bit melodramatic so I was like you know now 36 meant that I was now 40 and 40 meant I was you know really close always close. So I just it was I really felt not doing this is going to mean that my life will not have any meaning to me. And when I put it in that perspective the things that I was afraid of doing it in not not having any success doing it and finding I had no talent for it really paled against the fear that I would I would never have even made an opportunity to try to go after what I'd always wanted to do. My guest in Connecticut voices Quinlan Parker her first novel. Quite an amazing novel The same long bones. Maybe you could just briefly give an

overview of the story because it really starts with a death. And I know that you said when you sat down to write this you were surprised. That it did start with a death. Yeah yeah I was actually writing a different something totally different. And Cyrus who's the main character in this book was a subsidiary character in the piece that I was working on and a young girl decides she wants to come into town and sort of see this very wealthy very prominent black man and see his house. And I really conceive of it as a kind of coming of age tale for the young girl. She arrives at his house she looks in the front parlor and as I was peeping in through her eyes I typed and she saw a small coffin on a pedestal and I was I was totally stunned because it wasn't at all what I was expecting to appear in the story and I suddenly knew this was a whole other work. I knew it was going to be about the emotional journey that the characters would take as a result of this event

and the way the story is told we open really on the day of the wake of little Maddy McDougall who's the only child of Cyrus an ailing and we stay pretty much around that time frame. We later move back in time to when Mattie is actually alive and move up to the point of her death. And then the last part of the book takes place about a year after her death. So that was kind of the that that structure really was there right from the beginning for me I wanted to stay very close in on right around the time of the event and then think about. Well how did this come to happen. And then where are the people going to go from here. As a result of this event this notion of this death of this child and how it completely alters the lives so many lives around her and how it impacts of the subtextual thing for your changing you know the death of the of this the corporate attorney moving

in and this little girl in a way giving birth or helping these other people to be reborn in a certain way I don't know this is a stretch but oh no I think that's very perceptive. You know because I think there's. I think that writers are always. You know your own issues are being woven into the story that you're writing about. So I'm sure that there was a lot of that and certainly the journey that Cyrus takes which is a journey I saw as as a place of almost innocence that he had as a child as a young boy very dreamy young boy very loving felt very connected to everything and eventually had to incorporate into his sense of life that life has tragedy life has racism life has cruel. What do you do with that. Do you withdraw do you. You know not hope you not love. And that was so much of a journey that he was taking. And I think it's a journey that that I've been taking has in my life yes.

On that note my guest is going to Parker on Connecticut voices heard a novel they same long bones has been published to rave reviews as published by Holden Medland. Maybe you could read from that place of Cyrus's first confrontation with when his idealism is is challenged in the scene that I'm going to read for we are actually at the first place where Cyrus is innocence if you will is is shattered or taken away. And he's a young boy and he's going back to his childhood. Yes he's seven at the time he's living in a very small town. His parents have really sheltered him to a large extent as people were able to do in some parts of the south and from some of the more harsh realities that were around them. And the two things that you need to notice with the scene make sense is that Cyrus and his mother whose name was also Mattie were both very light skinned black people.

So and their past often passed as white. They were able to were able to pass as white when it comes up again and again. Yeah. Different ways in the book. Right right. Cyrus was 7 when the outside world first shattered the present. Up until then talk of places other than car or people other than his neighbors and friends was so much background noise the rattle of a plow blade turning. On this day however something was different. There was a tenseness in his father's voice and urgency even a hint of fear. We've got to get Harold and Louise out of town. His father whispered to his mother in the kitchen to drive them into Dharm tomorrow. Cyrus overheard from the porch and his imagination was set ablaze. He knew that Dharma was a place. Now suddenly it was a place with a meaning for him. Why were Harold and Louise to be taken there. Why was his father driving them and not their own

father Festus. How long would they be gone. Cyrus cast his mind back but could not remember a time when anyone went lightly from car to another place. People said I'm going into town or I'm going over to so and so's house. They did not often say I'm going to disarm. Most often when another place was mentioned it was in the past an appendage explaining where it was that someone other people came from whereas derm daddy Cyrus tast at supper just as they finished graze his father's lean face tightened. He was not a man comfortable with lies. It's about 100 miles from here he answered. The smooth brown of his face separating into a stream of colors yellow at his mouth and chin dark brown eyed his forehead a blackberry patch of red spreading between his eyes. You take the long road out of town past the church. Why are they going there. Cyrus

persisted. The golden light from the setting sun streaming in through the windows and open door seem to falter Ubi looked at his wife Mattie across the table. In the second it took their eyes to meet. There was time for a hundred questions and answers were to begin to tell their child about what had happened. When is it too soon to take innocence away. I'm taken her old in the we's Porter There you be said to stay with her Aunt Matilda. Wah. What isn't there Daddy Festus take them. You beez milkweed shaped ears quivered and so did his shoulders the weight of Cyrus his questions was an unwelcome burden. He had hoped irrationally that he would never have to have this conversation with his son. He examined Cyrus carefully before he spoke. Looking at the two O's of his eyes at the with and breath of his

shoulders and arms and out his small hands always smaller in reality than he imagined. He looked to at the trust spread across his son's skin like fresh honey. Then he thought ahead to how his answer would change Cyrus would rebuild him from the ground up. Ubi knew that Cyrus would be damaged by the truth as he had been as his wife had been as everyone he knew and loved had been for an instant he thought to lie to carve a cave to shelter Cyrus in deeper than the fields around the house. Deeper than the dense web of people among whom they lived deep within the grave toward which they were all heading. His wife's eyes though said what they had been saying all along he has to know it's the truth. He must begin to know. There was something here that happened Cyrus he started and he could see the coiled braids on

each side of his wife's head bobbing as he spoke. You're too young to know the full of it but you need to know some so that you can start to understand. Cyrus pushed the food on his plate into a circle. I'm going to tell you as much as I can what I think you should hear but I don't want you asking a hundred questions you understand. You have to trust that your mom and I will tell you what we think is right for you to hear. Cyrus nodded. There are lots of different people in the world you know that your mother and I have told you. Yes daddy Cyrus tried to remember who these people were but all he could retrieve was a jumble. And you know one kind of these people are what they call white people and they've got white or light colored skin instead of brown or black or red. You mean like me and mama Cyrus interrupted. Are we white people. Ubi and Mattie exchanged tight smiles. No you being answered you've got some of their blood in you.

Lots of folks have a little bit of everything all mixed together. But no you and your mom aren't white your color same as I am. So I was took a piece of bread from the basket on the table and plucked out the moist center with his fingers. How can you tell the white people then how do they look different. Ubi looked at the food in their bowls at the smooth pine boards of the table feeding his son growing things plaining the wood of the table. These were the things he understood and knew how to explain. It's not so much how they look though that's part of it he said. That's really who they are. Some of them may look no different from somebody you already know but basically Up till now all you've really known are the colored possum Indian. The only time you see the whites is when we go to the other side of town. Other than that we all pretty much keep to ourselves. Cyrus squirmed in his seat. So

they've been around and I just didn't know it. Well I suppose you we answered We never said well there son there's one your mom and I decided there was no need and still no need for us to be talking or for you to be going around them. You walk to the porch door from the table and looked at the vegetable garden in the front yard and beyond that to the large maple that partly hit the road. The thing is about white people most of them maybe not all but probably most you'd ever meet around here. They don't much like a colored deer you voice rose and for no good reason he tried to lower it. I can't tell you why. You just need to know that that's what so it's something for them to settle with the lord nothing new or any other color it's done to make it so. He turned and looked at his wife. Her arms and face and the skin at her throat the color a flower her eyes burning from the center of her face.

Now I don't want you to ever hate you be continued walking back to the table laying his hand on his wife's shoulder. But you have to know this about the whites. It's not a good thing about them. Cyrus looked at his mother's fierce stare and at his father's studied calm. A small storm rumbled in his stomach. Why don't they lack the color he asked. Why they got to settle up with the Lord is the Lord angry with them now Cyrus I told you you'd be said abruptly striding back to his seat. You can't be asking a hundred questions. I don't know why they feel like they do. I told you that. And about the Lord it's not right for me to even say it's just my opinion. But daddy have they done something wrong. Yes his father said exasperated. Yes they are sin and against the Lord they are breaking his commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself. But like I said That's for the Lord to know and judge not us. What we have to know is how to

live different and to be careful of them we can. Cyrus tried to imagine what these white people who are disobeying the Lord were like how they could have gotten to be so bold. Are they like Teddy Franklin. That boy you said never minded anyone. That's a good way of looking at it Cyrus his mother said resting her hand on his arm. Think of them as bad children who don't mind and how you have to steer clear because you never know what kind of trouble they might bring. But why don't they man the Lord Cyrus persisted. I wish I could tell you that Cyrus his father answered but I can't. But the thing I'm trying to tell you what I'm trying to say is that some of these white people got Harold and Louise's Daddy they heard him and they kept on hurting him and hurting him. Till he died. Cyrus suddenly felt the whole room shift

so that everything tilted all the plates on the walls the one from his grandmother Sarah's house and the ones that his mother had painted and the shelves that held their books and the clothes that hung on pegs on the walls. He was in the middle of a wild turning. He wanted to crawl under the table grab hold of his father's legs and never let go. Now I don't want you to be afraid you'll be said lifting his chair and moving it closer to Cyrus. Your mother and I would never let that happen to you that's why we steer clear of them whenever we can and most of them feel the same way we do. Happy to know that things stay separate you understand. Yes Danny Cyrus answered. I mean that. He repeated. So why are Harold in the we's going Cyrus tast. Are the white people going to hurt them too. Matty grabs Cyrus's hand. Nobody's going to hurt any of our children she said.

Not you. Not Harold. Not Louise. That's why your dad has taken them to derm. We've got people there who can look out for them until they catch the people who did this and take them away. Then Harold and Louise will come back home and be with their mama and sisters and brothers just like always. Cyrus suddenly worried that despite his mother's tight grip. He might slide off the chair through a crack in the floor and never be seen again. What he thought of his mother and father were wrong. What if there were white people right outside the door right now. What if they'd been there listening all this time to his daddy say they were bad. Or maybe they were hiding in the outhouse down that long dark hole. Cyrus could think of a dozen places where someone could get him and his parents would never know. How could his parents protect him from someone who got hurt and killed. Festus

Porter. Got his mother and father to keep him safe from someone who could just grab and kill Festus. And what about how they looked. How could they look like him and his mother and still be something else. This white people thing. Maybe they were white people hired Nat with a colored who'd heard him when no one was looking and then go back to pretending to be colored. Maybe that was what happened to Festus. Felt like crying but his fear was stronger. When did you have your first. Blast of racism. When was your idealism shattered. I think the first one that really made an impact on me was I was pretty old I think I was. It was after we moved from the south so I probably was about 9. Probably around 9. Moved to outside of yaps out of New York to Mount Vernon New York.

And I experience a little bit because I was a first time and I went to integrated schools and some of the teachers were not as wholeheartedly enthusiastic about me as my teachers had been you know in my early grades. But none of them were particularly cruel just little things not calling on me or you know not seeming to have as much enthusiasm but the thing that really stayed in my mind was. Actually I was completely by myself and I was looking at a Life magazine and they had some photographs of a Ku Klux Klan meeting. And there was one photograph taken out in a field of a woman and her child who probably was about my age sort of close up photo. And the looks in their face were so filled with hate and venom and I was really just very terrified looking at the picture and looking at that look on their face and it suddenly dawned on me that that would be how they would

look at me if they saw me. And. Now when you're a child and you and if you're lucky as I was lucky your and your life has been filled with people. Feeding back to you you know love and encouragement to have to kind of take in. You could inspire that sort of hate and. Disgust really because of the color of your skin because of the color of your skin was was a very very shattering experience for me just to think about that and to think that there were people like that and that they had those feelings and would have those feelings and they would have nothing to do with what I'd done that there'd be nothing I could do about it to make it any different. Such a strong through line in this book is Community Connection. Neighborhood family nurturing. You had this not only it sounds like from your own family but also from that early community that you grew up in right you're very close to your parents.

Yeah yeah. And I just was in Durham just this past two weekends ago. But our county library brought me down and I did a reading there and they're reading an African-American bookstore there. And I went to the street where I grew up on. And. All of the people that lived there when I was growing up were still there. I mean my cousin that lived next door to me I stop by and he said Yeah I've got a few of me oh girl you know the guy doesn't read you I'm really busy he said well you can make time for a meal and I went by in 45 minutes he had the pot roast in the cabbage and the rice and the gravy and everything. Comfort food comfort food Absolutely. And. You know I was I was leaving in fact he said he said you know he said I'm so proud of you girl he said you were a sweet child I was just such a feeling of a continuity you know that this was a home that I'd run in and out of you know a thousand times as a child.

So it's a great feeling you know to go back I've been back a couple of times in connection with the book and the community has been very very excited and supportive. So it's nice. In thinking of you and thinking of Wendell and that as that little girl in the community. Now perhaps we should go to that place in the in the beginning of the book. Matty's wake and. Get a sense of how these echoes of your own childhood in this community that you've created and hate in these same long

bones and then Parker in this scene that I'm reading from as you mentioned we're at the home of Cyrus in a lean for the wake for little Mattie and really the whole community has gathered and they'll be a lot of different characters that you'll hear about the only one I'll mention is little Lily who is about twelve good friend of Maddie and she's also one of the people there for the wake. Maybe we should just let them our listeners know that Mattie was at the top of the slide of her slide in her backyard fell on her head hit and she died right. Exactly. That evening as people arrive for the wake they settle themselves in different areas of Cyrus an alien's house in the kitchen along with empty plates piled precariously on every surface. We're guess intent on laughing and eating

at the center of that group was Cyrus's uncle Reggie. His short cropped hair lightly sprinkled with flecks of wire Gray his frame no longer as taut and lean as it had been in Cyrus's youth but still poised in charge with by Talib in good humor. Not even his dark suit could detract from the ruddy color of his skin. The wide sparkle of his smile or the hearty clean scent of clothes incense in there was his trademark. He had cut the hair of every man in the house at one time or another and there was something familiar in his hands even now as he clutched the small tip of a chicken wing as if their soft touch along all those scalps and astringent tightened faces and next to Lingard. He completed one circle around the morsel he held before he continued and did that tell you about the TAM Matty told me she was going to turn herself into a flower. His audience his wife Viola her hips folded gleefully over the sides of the kitchen chair she sat

in Willey back gate so named because of his wide flapping years which hung astride a small peanut sized space. Mrs. Johnson sister Thelma who kept house for the canvases and I had a turn of the college registrar as rail thin as Viola was corpulent rolled back to him their encouragement. Let's hear it they said. Or no that's a new one. Oh tell that one. His wife insisted. Her voice shaking the life out of the ward tell before making the last two words dance her whole frame shook a shiver of flesh as she spoke and her eyes seemed to swim with the pleasure of remembering. OK here's the one I read you said waving the Finnish chicken wing with a flourish as if you were sweeping away with his hand the last impediment between his listeners and a true moment of joy. It was in this very kitchen he began motioning toward the seat Biola setting both odd in that leaned forward

as if they could peer back into time. And I was waiting for Cyrus to finish dressing. There were chuckles. You know what a finicky dresser that man is he added. Don't we know it. Bet joined in his own dandy looks the silk dotted bow tie the studs of his collar a comical counterpoint. Well in comes little Mattie Louise from the back yard. I can't tell you what a sight she was. The warmth in the room from the stove from the half eaten food from the bodies standing in a close circle seemed to arc and lift them out of the time they stood in. Mattie became a presence as real as the chairs the table the pots and pans the glasses lining the drain board stained with lipstick. Reggie leaned over as if he were about to chuck her under her chin. She was covered. Good. Reggie continued from heah touching one side of his head to hear sweeping his hands to the other side to hear sweeping both hands nearly down to his

shoulders in the back and that Chad had hair Biola at it not like this O coot with honey. Reggie finally concluded to a chorus of Oh my goodness. Don't just say Now don't you tell me. Viola expanded her husband's tale. Honey she said. Chow put it all over herself but she was going to be a flower if she did. Now you tell me how child gets the thing so mixed up in their head. Viola and Reggie than the others looked out of their enclave out past the dining room to the living room where the coffin lay as fondly as they might have looked across the room to a smiling breathing Mattie who had come in to hear their tales. Viola got more greens from the pot on the stove Batra filled his glass with ice water from a pitcher on the counter and they went on another story about Matty continuing with that pause in the dining room next to the kitchen. There wasn't any laughter. Only the somber weight of mannered good

intentions here labored respect was the goal. And in order to display it people held their bodies tightly and spoke in hushed whispers. The Reverend Frankel was one of those talking whispering actually in the Edda Baldrige his ear droning on about the details of his last trip to New York. His manner solicitous and eager as if he would deliver as much pleasure to her in the telling as he had derived for himself on the trip. Mrs. Baldrige whose attention however was on Cyrus in a lean and her daughter Lily who were all in the next room Cyrus stood by the mantel his arm loosely encircling aliens ways as their neighbors the Arthur squeezed Elaine's hands offering their condolences. Both Terry and Frank Arthur were short and round. Neither of them tall enough to obscure at his view and I watched as alien attempted to rouse herself to acknowledge that Arthur's soft words yet even from this distance Etta could see the thick

haze that engulfed her. She had felt like that she remembered two years before when her husband suddenly died. As if life were a pulsing welcoming thing but she was frozen in rigid clamped off like a vein at the edge of its warmth. Across the room she could see that Lily who had headed directly for the coffin when they arrived and had stood over it for a few seconds as if in a trance was now sitting seeming chained at every limb in a chair beside it. Lily ailing Cyrus all three of them seemed bound to the other weighing down their places in the room heavier than anyone else. As if grief were stone pulling them under. If she could add a thought she would clear everyone from the room would rouse them would rouse even Mattie if she could make her live for them. If she could even for a moment. Lily stirred in her chair as if she felt her mother's eyes on her and stretched her

leg to ease the cramp she had been persistently trying to ignore. This was the first time she had moved in 20 minutes. She willed herself to be still not as some might have supposed out of depression or grief. But rather in sympathetic solidarity with her friend. Play unnaturally quiet and stiff. She hadn't expected to be so frightened by seeing Maddie's body. She had seen dead bodies before. The first was Mrs. Butler who looked at the way clearly thought like an imposter in a pink dress no one had ever seen her wear with her hair in a series of flattened curls through which you could see her pale pink skull and grasping a bouquets of flowers and a gesture that seemed the most uncharacteristic of all. Lily had half expected her to rise up from the coffin throw off her absurd pink dress to reveal a stark and more fitting Navy one disdainfully

tossed the small bowl Kate some simpering woman like Mrs. Macon and dismiss all of the mourners with one brusque wave of her hand. That would have been like the Mrs. Butler she knew. And then there'd been her father's funeral which she still couldn't let herself think about. This death however Maddie's death was different. Mattie was nearly her age and size. The dress she had on was the one she normally ward of church. Her hair was braided in three braids the way she always wore it and Lily could still see the scar Mattie's arm from the cut she had gotten one day when they were skating together. All that was so familiar and yet nothing was the same. Her eyes were closed not squinted shut as they'd be in the pool or if she'd got dirt in her eye but closed as if she were sleeping and when had Lily ever stood over Matty when she was sleeping. Lily had an urge to pull up the satin

that covered Mattie's legs and take a peek to reassure herself that her friend's legs were the same long and skinny her bony knees covered with scabs. But what would that prove. Matty wasn't going to laugh again or ride her bike with her or sit on the porch drinking lemonade or do any of the hundred things they used to do together. And it was going to be that way always forever and ever. Lily felt sick thinking about it. She couldn't hold forever in her head not when her father died. Not now. It all felt too sad. She stretched her other leg and looked again at the coffin. What if that was me. She thought for a second. What if I could never move again. Never open my eyes never see my mother or my teachers at school or any of my friends. She suddenly felt that she was choking. Awful

terrible horrible that would be. And then the renegade thought came. Lucky me Lucky me. She rejoiced in the feeling. Her leg stretched out in front of her where she could see them. Her eyes open unable to look all around the room her heart beating and her breath going in and out. And all of her memories and plans and dreams still intact. She wanted to run around the room and sing. Lucky me. And suddenly she was on her feet before she even knew it. Up next to the coffin before she was even aware of any intent to stand. She rocked back slightly on her little patent leather heels and grabbed the side of the coffin to steady herself. It was so quiet and hot in the room. She wanted to reach down and touch Matty's face or her hand something but her

friend's body seemed to keep floating away. Stomach turned and she felt a clammy chill spread from her chest to her toes and the room spun away into darkness. When Lynn and Parker reading from the same long bones her first novel it strikes me that this sense of community of community rallying is so opposite from that kind of hubris that speaks of Wall Street. To change world so dramatically not just from a tax attorney but to change that. That kind of fabric to live with these characters back in this community back in this nurturing place was that a comfort. It was a comfort. And. Although I mean I think the thing that that I found really unusual and surprising to me about corporate America if you will is how

much people are really looking for community and craving it. And then finally I think. Yeah anywhere anywhere and everywhere and so even though you have this environment that really is not at all productive of that you still have it when you see people kind of relating like a family. So I mean it wasn't wasn't a complete turn because I really had spent a lot of time you know with my coworkers noticing this noticing. You know who was the father figure and you were like the siblings. And people trying to get each other's approval. So the difference is I always think that you only get such little snippets of it you only get a little fleeting glimpses and then the opportunity for real gatherings for really exploring the different roles within the community only happen in front of the water cooler or maybe they'll happen at a lunch sometime right. Right. And the the. To be able to literally flesh it out in these same long bones as it were is is sort of actually actualizing this community. Yeah. And we

all crave and we're you know becoming we're we're losing each day I mean I was call it the talking over the fence we don't we just don't do that people are craving stories they're craving. Place to gather. Yeah and I have since that I mean one thing that's been very moving for me as an author is to get that feedback from readers because you know when I go places so much of what people tell me is that. This reminded them of something other that actually happened or that they wished had happened or that they were longing for or looking for or hoping for. So I think that it's something that we really do all share. And one reviewer not reviewer but I guess interviewer asked me you know was this nostalgic. And I said well I don't think it's nostalgic because it's very much alive today. Yes. It's something that people are desperately searching for and I think really. Is one of the fundamental questions facing our society of how

will we function as a community how will we derive a sense of community that's going to have to be very different than the past. It's not going to be based on a very homogeneous group of people. It's going to have to have a very different look to it. But we have to come up with it. We do. And there's no blueprint. Right right. Unfortunately the more time we spend in the workplace and it's not just corporate America I mean I know when I'm home writing alone a lot. I I you know I go mad I drive to stop and shop and talk to the clerk I find myself talking to people in the aisles of the cereal that you just I mean it's vital to feed that part of yourself. And when the phone does not do it for me anyway you know I think it's why you see so many elderly people you know having long I mean you know we had long conversations in the lines in front of you it you know the supermarket because that's probably their only human contest right. That's right that's their community.

So we try to invent it wherever we are absolutely we're an inventive species. What surprised you most about it. This whole experience of writing traveling around getting feedback. Well certainly the I think the biggest surprise to me has been how I guess uniform the response has been it's not been completely uniform but. It's been basically so positive I think I was sort of steeling myself you know for a lot more descension you know you know people raising their hand and saying well that's what has all of these problems and Bob is that the attorney coming out you know. So you know I was just getting ready for the sort of counter argument. I thought it was so I was you know very pleasantly surprised that has been such a you know such a basically positive experience. And the other thing.

Was a surprise but I think was what I really was most hoping for which was that it would be a book that would touch a wide variety of people and you know to hear from. A woman I have a friend of her friend who you know was in her late 60s grew up in Oklahoma lives in Minnesota that she loved this book it reminded her of her own childhood someone else a young African-American fellow in Philadelphia he said you know I never had this kind of experience I've always lived in an urban environment. He said I used to hear stories from my parents or my grandparents about their communities and I feel like now I've had. Opportunity to make that part of my own life. So I just you know young people old people white people black people men women you know for Sal Yeah yeah it is yeah. And if it is when I said the thing about comfort food I mean there's something very comforting and

about these characters and and a familiarity and it just feels like there's an incredible warmth and sadness and. I there's a piece in here that I'd like you to read actually between the husband and wife who have lost their child Mattie. Alien and Cyrus. And they're so there's so much tension between them throughout the book there's so much of getting getting almost getting close and then pulling back and. And I wondered if you would read that piece if this is YOUR would you know OK this is in the middle of the night in this scene and there's a storm which has awakened both Cyrus and his wife Elaine. A few blocks away. Both Cyrus and Elaine were also awakened by the storm. Neither of them moved each hoped the other would think him or her asleep. Yet each knew the other was awake. Cyrus could tell because of the change in

aliens breathing an alien could feel Cyrus's alert thoughts. They heard the thunder and the rain and from his side of the bed Cyrus could see the dark clouds roll away from the moon. From her side Ayling could see the shadows the clouds made on the wall as they sped across the sky. Alien thought of the picture of Maddie and of Lily's having drawn it. And then she faced the inescapable fact that Lily was alive to come into her own in this way and Her Matie was not. If she could would she ask that their lives be switched. She thought of Lily's mother no matter added his faults. She couldn't wish this much heartache on another soul. But what of Cyrus. What heartache did she wish on him. What about all those times she had accused him. Cyrus was strong. She'd

always thought to herself but was he. If he was so strong Where had the man she married gone if he was so strong. What was that look on his face this afternoon when he opened the picture of Mattie. We can't go on like this. Aly Cyrus suddenly said Cyrus he rolled onto his back. I mean it we can't I can't Ayling didn't want to move. She wished one of the clouds she'd been watching would envelop her and carry her away. I know you're awake. Please a lean We have to talk. She rolled over so that her face was in her pillow and she bit into the feathers. Then she rolled toward Cyrus her head tucked into the corner of her arm. I can't Cyrus she began. Ilene sweetheart Cyrus said Cyrus don't. She said don't humor me. He

reached out his hand toward her and then pulled it away. She sat upright in the bed. I know what you're thinking she said. What aniline Cyrus Tass What is it that you think I'm thinking. She put her hands over her face and pressed her eyes. You know she said. I don't. Cyrus answered. Please tell me. You can never forgive me. Elaine finally breathed into her hands. Q I forgive you for what. Cyrus asked. I'm the one I was going to make the world over. I'm the one you've said it. Ilene interrupted. Now not you me. I just say that she began to whisper it was me me you for being jealous of Manny Ayling said.

Envying her for being jealous that no one was trying to crush her. God heard me. God punished me if I had loved her the right way. She would never have died. Cyrus thought of the right way to love the right way to live and knew he would never count on either again because there was no secret pathway around pain. Leaving never never never he said. Healing pulled her legs up to her chest. You had to Cyrus she lit up for you. I was never that way I couldn't when ever I heard her. When she would the way she smiled I couldn't. I wanted to. Honest to God I did. But it was. God and she would and you saw I was believe in me how I

wanted if I could just for one second Cyrus really Cyrus said but ailing didn't hear him. He tried gently to pull her hands away from her face and then tried to move her legs from her chest but Ayling resisted and as he tried harder she pulled herself tighter so they stayed like that. Their tensions and strengths equal neither moving until Cyrus took his hands away. And let them hover above her stroking the space between them. He poured all of his love into that space using everything these painful days had forced him to now. And he circled her around with his love which was open to heartache and cruelty even death. Stroking the air between them around and

around slowly ever so slowly closer and closer until just his fingers brushed her skin feathering across her. He trailed one finger slowly after the other and soon as she let him his touch grew a little stronger so that he was stroking her the kneading her skin then taking her face in his hands. He cupped his hand over hers on her face. Only look at me he said. She let her hands drop and slowly looked up in her husband's face she recognized the child they had birthed together and had lost. So soft she said. And as she said it she suddenly knew it was true. As she looked at him she saw as if she had never seen him before that he was as soft as

she was not at all strong the way she'd always imagined but soft at the center soft at the center of his eyes. At the center of his heart where anything and everything could pierce him just as things pierced her and his strength was just muscle and bone that shielded his soft heart. Hold me she said and Cyrus took her into his arms. He held her against his chest where she could hear his heart beating and she wrapped her hands around his chest and up to where she could stroke his face. She could feel the pulse behind his ear and he could feel her breasts against him and she could feel his breath in her hair and he could feel her eyelids moving across his chest. They held onto each other each melting into the other. All the grief and the

anger and the Reserve and the guilt melting until there was nothing left in either of them but a hole into which they were both opening. You loved our child and Cyrus said neither of them moved. They kept their arms tight around each other until the sun came up each falling slowly deeper and deeper closer and closer to the center of the other's heart. When Parker from the same long bones which was her first novel published by hope and myth thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. This is great. We had production assistance from Eugene AMA Truda Paul Brown composed and performed RC music. Our series producer is fearless jockey and I'm Nancy Cobb. Join me again

next week at this time for Connecticut voices. Connecticut voices is a production of the Connecticut Center for the book. R.J. Julia booksellers and the University of Connecticut co-op bookstore in partnership with Northeast the Hartford Current Sunday Magazine. If you would like to support Connecticut voices by joining the Connecticut Center for the book please call us at this station. The number is 2 0 3 2 7 8 5 3 1 0 and ask for extension 1 300. That's 2 0 3 2 7 8 5 3 1 0. Extension 1. Three hundred.