The Heights: A Novel - Softcover

Hedges, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452296773 ISBN 13: 9780452296770

Verlag: Plume, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

A "devilishly delightful" (Bookpage) new novel from an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and the author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Tim and Kate Welch are seemingly the last middle-class family in the exclusive neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, NewYork. Tim is a popular history teacher, and an ordinary guy. Kate is not ordinary, but she aspires to be. Brought up by a hippie mother, Kate stays home with their two young sons trying to be the responsible parent she never had. But their neat and tidy world is turned upside down when Anna Brody- beautiful, wealthy, and impulsive-moves into the most expensive brownstone in Brooklyn, and draws Kate and Tim into her world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

PETER HEDGES is a novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. He wrote both the novel and the screenplay What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and is the writer-director of Pieces of April starring Katie Holmes and Dan in Real Life starring Steve Carrell. His screenplay for About a Boy was nominated for an Academy Award. Hedges lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn, New York.

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3

KATE

THAT MORNING WE WOKE TO FIND OUR STREET BURIED IN SNOW. THE STOOPS, THE sidewalk, the row of parked cars were a blanket of white; the trees looked as if they’d been dipped in frosting, and the whole of Oak Lane—with its impeccably preserved century-old brownstones—had the look of a vintage photograph. Only the loud scrape from an approaching snowplow betrayed what Tim, my history-teaching husband, would like to believe: Erase the plow, remove the light poles and the telephone wires, toss out all electrical appliances, and it could be any other Brooklyn Heights morning, circa 1848 or 1902.

Staring down from our fourth-floor apartment, I made out the faint prints from Tim’s boots. Before sunrise, he’d crossed between two parked cars and trudged with his backpack full of graded papers toward Montague Street, where he’d climbed the steps to the Montague Academy. During the night, the thick flakes had fallen gently, but now it was morning, and the wind blew in gusts that rattled the windows of the living room/dining room/toy room where I was standing. I felt a chill.

Sam came running down the hall, his diaperless pants at his knees, crying, “Mommy, pee-pee! Pee-pee!” Teddy, newly four, followed, saying, “Sam made a mess!” Minutes before, I’d abruptly left the kitchen because, between the repeated calls of “More milk, Mommy” and “I’m hungry, Mommy” and “Mommy, Sam’s hitting me,” I knew either they’d stop, as asked, or I would snap.

With few places to look, it took no time for them to find me. Teddy had been up early due to a bad dream, and Sam had eaten hardly any breakfast, feeding himself only the brightly colored minimarshmallows from his favorite sugared cereal. “This will not do,” I announced grandly. But, of course, it would. It did.

When Tim phoned from school, I had to shout over Sam, who was shrieking, while Teddy kept pushing the button that made the phone go on speaker. Tim asked, “How’s it going?” more out of habit, I suppose, because one little moment of listening, and he’d know.

“Good, it’s going good,” I said, choosing not to tell him about a mysterious smell in the bathroom (the toilet was clogged and would not flush); the bar of oatmeal soap half-melted in the empty bathtub; the growing stack of unpaid bills; the clothes strewn, a Hansel and Gretel trail of little boys’ pants and shirts and underwear; and how when I finally made it to the sock drawer to finish dressing Sam, no socks matched. I made no mention of how the winter wind was sure to shatter our front windows, nor my prediction that this was going to be the coldest day of the year. After all, Tim was hard at work. Better to spare him.

Later, in the vestibule of our building, I managed to open the stroller and carry it down the stoop, all the while coaxing the boys to follow. I belted Sam in, lowered Teddy so he could ride standing in back, and we began our walk. Both boys were practically smothered under sweaters and coats and scarves and hats, gloves, boots—only their eyes could be seen. Beneath it all, I could hear them crying, and when I leaned forward to ask what was the matter, Teddy sobbed, “My eyes are cold.”

“I don’t know what to do about your eyes.”

Never enough. Never enough. A parent can never, ever do enough. I had the makings of a song.

Gloveless, scarfless, with my down jacket still unbuttoned up top— I’d forgotten about me.

Soon after we set off, it became clear that, because of the snow, our stroller wasn’t going to work. So, with the wind whipping and the need to think fast, I turned us around. Back home, I left the stroller in the vestibule and hurried to our storage closet in the basement to fetch Tim’s childhood sled. Outside, I wrapped the boys in an old blue blanket, set them on the sled, and pulled them behind me.

We were halfway down Hicks Street before I noticed other parents dragging their kids by the wrist, slipping and sliding, or struggling with strollers. Men and women, dressed for work, leaned into the wind as they headed toward the subway station on Clark Street, stepping gingerly, hoping not to fall. And here I came, pulling Teddy and Sam, the only children in the Heights riding to school on a sled. Glancing back, I could see them squinting in the way that comes only when they’re smiling. And suddenly, that great unreasonable distance we traveled each morning to R Kids Count Learning Center became a blessing. Some children were getting rides in carpools, and others would be arriving by car service and taxi. But the boys and I were envied—one stiff parent, Chad the Wall Street whiz, surprised me by shouting from the corner of Pierrepont and Hicks, in a manner half amused, half in awe, “Now, that’s the way to travel.”

For once I was the clever mother, the only mother with this rather terrific idea, and my boys, Teddy and Sam Welch, were content. These are the moments, I wanted to sing. These are the moments.

“Canceled,” Maria (always perky) Spence called out from her Range Rover on the corner of Pineapple Street.

“But why?”

“Boiler. Broken. Call me. Playdate sometime.” She had to go, her cell phone was ringing, and she drove on.

Teddy didn’t understand why we were turning around.

“The school has no heat, sweetie,” I said. “You’ll freeze, and we wouldn’t want that.”

“But I wanna go!”

With my promise of hot chocolate, Teddy calmed down. As I pulled the sled up Henry Street to Montague, Sam said, “Daddy, work,” and pointed toward the neo-Gothic ex–German Lutheran church that housed most of Montague Academy. On nice days, I often took the boys to the courtyard garden, where they climbed on the lower school’s playground equipment. This was not to be one of those days.

Instead, we turned right on Montague and headed down to Muffi ns and More. Across the street, Starbucks was doing impressive business. I preferred, as did the other mothers in my circle, the locally owned Muffins and More, which, rumor had it, was in danger of going out of business, but not if we could help it.

Handfuls of rock salt had been scattered on the pavement outside Muffins and More. The ice and snow had begun to melt. I tied the sled to a parking meter and held Teddy and Sam by their mittens as we walked carefully toward the door.

Inside, sitting at a corner table—which they managed to commandeer every day at this time—Tess Windsor, Debbie Beebe, and Claudia Valentine drank their espressos and cappuccinos and decaf lattes.

“Kate will have an opinion,” Tess said, picking up her parka, which had been lying across the only available chair. “Come over here, Kate.”

Tess usually packed a child’s activity ideal for bad weather. So it was no surprise to see her daughter, Maddie, who also went to R Kids Count, doing an origami project at a nearby table. Without prompting, Maddie offered to teach Teddy, who wanted to learn, and Sam, who seemed happy just to watch.

Debbie volunteered to go to the counter and get whatever the boys wanted. I gladly fished out a crumpled five-dollar bill, handed it to her, and plopped down in the open chair. Debbie was expecting her first in September. She often helped us with our children. “Practice,” she claimed, although on this particular morning, I thought it may have been to escape the conversation I was about to join. Claudia said, “We were hoping you’d come by, we want your thoughts.” Claudia has the throaty,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Plume
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0452296773
• ISBN 13: 9780452296770
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar