She's Come Undone Read online

  PRAISE FOR WALLY LAMB’S

  She’s Come Undone

  A People Magazine Top-Ten

  Book of the Year

  A New York Times Notable

  Book of the Year

  A Los Angeles Times

  Book Award Finalist—

  Best First Novel of the Year

  “Mr. Lamb gives his vociferous heroine truly heroic proportions, in both the physical and the psychical sense. . . . John Updike once observed that J.D. Salinger loves some of his characters ‘more than God loves them,’ which might be said about Wally Lamb. . . . Those characters are equally endearing to the reader, as Dolores Price is, even in her most self-deprecatory moments: this reader kept rooting for her to overcome all adversity and find peace and happiness.”

  —Hilma Wolitzer, The New York Times Book Review

  “There’s so much to love in it. . . . I adore SHE’S COME UNDONE!”

  —Elinor Lipman, author of The Way Men Act and Isabel’s Bed

  “In SHE’S COME UNDONE, Wally Lamb taps into the troubled inner world of his female protagonist with a degree of realism that would make such notable women writers as Marilyn French and Margaret Atwood proud.”

  —Village View

  “At a time when most of us could use a little personal moment of triumph, spending some time with Dolores is great therapy.”

  —Digby Diehl

  “WARNING: Don’t read the ending in public if you don’t have two tissues handy. . . . It’s a two-boxer.”

  —The Wichita Eagle

  “. . . a warm-blooded, enveloping tale of survival. . . . Dolores has a killer mouth and the guts of a sea lion.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Dolores Price . . . [is] a character few readers will soon forget. . . . SHE’S COME UNDONE is a novel worth reading by a writer worth watching.”

  —Booklist

  “Lamb has written a tour de force, a magnificent and beautiful first novel whose lyric voice and compelling story couple to make an astonishing debut.”

  —Bret Lott, author of Jewel

  “A fat, satisfying first novel.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “Contemporary fiction just doesn’t get much better than this. . . . It’s the kind of book that makes you stop reading and shake your head, shocked by the insights you’ve encountered. In short, you’ll be undone.”

  —Hartford Advocate

  “An extraordinarily gifted author . . . a compulsively readable novel, full of heartbreak and savage humor, which dares to show us the ultimate fragility of love . . . a wonderful, inventive, ambitious, and, it cannot be stressed enough, hilarious, first novel.”

  —Kristin McCloy, author of Velocity

  “As you read SHE’S COME UNDONE your entire life will flash before your eyes. . . . It’s a little bit like strolling down memory lane with Dick Clark on one arm, Jean-Paul Sartre on the other. It’s scary, but Lord, it’s wonderful!”

  —Cathie Pelletier, author of A Marriage Made in Woodstock

  “. . . Wally Lamb can lie down with the literary lions at will: he’s that gifted. . . . This novel does what good fiction should do—it informs our hearts as well as our minds of the complexities involved in the ‘simple’ act of living a human life.”

  —The Nashville Tennessean

  “A remarkable novel. . . . Like John Irving, Lamb assembles a riotous and colorful cast of characters. . . . Dolores and her entourage stumble through the tumult and heartbreak of life as it is really lived. Theirs is a journey worth joining.”

  —Bookpage

  “This big, warm, embracing book . . . is all about the self and about rebirth, all about creating the family we wish to belong to and making peace with the one we were given. . . . Filled with a generous love and understanding of women . . . a healing vision of the way we must learn from, possess, and then undo the past in order to make a future.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

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  Portions of this novel, in somewhat different form, have been published as the short stories “Keep in a Cool, Dry Place” and “The Flying Leg” in Northeast magazine.

  “Ole Devil Called Love.” Words and Music by D. Fisher & A. Roberts. Used by permission of Doris Fisher Music & Allan Roberts Music. Copyright renewed 1971.

  “Respect.” Words and Music by Otis Redding. Copyright © 1963 by Irving Music, Inc. (BMI). All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

  “See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet” reprinted with permission of General Motors Corporation, Chevrolet Motor Division.

  “Tom Dooley.” Words and music collected, adapted, and arranged by Frank Warner, John A. Lomax, and Alan Lomax. From the singing of Frank Proffitt. TRO—© copyright 1947 (renewed) and 1958 (renewed) Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, NY. Used by Permission.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Stanley Kunitz for permission to reprint lines from his poem “The Wellfleet Whale,” copyright © 1985 by Stanley Kunitz.

  GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS MADE FOR USE OF THE FOLLOWING:

  “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran

  “Love Is Like a Heat Wave” by Eddie Holland, Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier

  “It’s My Party” by John Gluck, Wally Gold, Herbert Weiner, and Seymour Gottlieb

  “Our Day Will Come” by Bob Hilliard and Mort Garson

  “Chiquita Banana” by Leonard MacKenzie, Jr., William Wirges, and Garth Montgomery

  “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell

  “Tonight’s the Night (It’s Gonna Be Alright)” by Rod Stewart

  “Everyday People” by Sylvester Stewart

  “Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)” by Roger J. (Ram) Ramirez, Jimmy Davis, and Jimmy Sherman

  “I’m a Man” by Steve Winwood and Jeremy Miller

  “Mockingbird” by Inez Foxx and Charles Foxx

  “Undun” by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings

  To Christine, who laughed and cried and lent me to these characters.

  Grateful acknowledgment is extended to the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and to the Norwich Free Academy for their generous support of this project.

  Thanks to the following, whose encouragement and/or critical response helped shape the book:

  Lary Bloom, Theodore Deppe, Barbara Dombrowski, Joan Joffe Hall, Jane Hill, Terese Karmel, Nancy Lagomarsino, Ken Lamothe, Linda Lamothe, Eugenia Leftwich, Ann Z. Leventhal, Pam Lewis, Ethel Mantzaris, Faith Middleton, David Morse, Nancy Potter, Wanda Rickerby, Joan Seliger Sidney, Gladys Swan, and Gordon Weaver.

  I also thank John Longo, former third-floor custodian at the University of Connecticut’s Homer Babbidge Library, who shared his lunch and conversation with me during the seven summers this story came together and who later taught me a lesson about courage.

  I am grateful that this novel fell into the loving care of my agents and friends, Linda Chester and Laurie Fox, whose sharp eyes and warm hearts helped me to prepare the story.

  And finally I extend special thanks to my editor and paisana, Judith Regan, who, while cradling her week-old daughter Lara in one arm and my manuscript in the other, decided to midwife this novel.

  CONTENTS

  An Introduction to the 20th Anniversary Edition: She’s Still Out There

  Part One: Our Lady of Sorrow

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5


  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two: Whales

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Three: The Flying Leg

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Our day will come

  If we just wait awhile . . .

  —RUBY AND THE ROMANTICS

  Toward dawn we shared with you

  your hour of desolation,

  the huge lingering passion

  of your unearthly outcry,

  as you swung your blind head

  toward us and laboriously opened

  a bloodshot, glistening eye,

  in which we swam with terror and recognition.

  —FROM “THE WELLFLEET WHALE” BY STANLEY KUNITZ

  AN INTRODUCTION

  TO THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

  She’s Still Out There

  Dolores Price first came to me as a voice. I was in the shower after an early morning run, hustling to get ready for my teaching day at the high school where I’d worked for the past nine years. “Well, the dork just left me,” the voice said. “Good riddance.” She was unnamed, not yet visible. But in those eight words, she sounded wounded, irreverent, and funny. I liked her immediately.

  A few years earlier, at the age of thirty, I had become a father and begun writing short stories. For my first Father’s Day my wife, Christine, gifted me with an electric typewriter—high tech at the time. It was 1981. On the day the woman spoke to me about her dorky ex, I had four unpublished stories under my belt. I gave the voice a name—Mary Ann—and she began telling me about her marriage and divorce. I thought I was writing short story number five.

  I had completed a couple dozen pages of Mary Ann’s story on the morning when, for some reason, I recalled a seventeen-year-old girl with whom I had worked ten years earlier while student teaching. Sheila was a lonely, introverted kid who, because of her obesity, couldn’t fit at a student desk and, instead, sat at the back of the classroom at a table. Her peers didn’t bully her, but because her size made them uncomfortable, they made her invisible. Sheila was complicit in that invisibility. She never spoke, never interacted with the others. As long as they didn’t look behind them, she wasn’t there. In my grandiose naïveté, I decided I would save Sheila’s life by engaging her in class discussion. But each time I called on her, she shook her head and remained silent. Her fat was a fortress that no rookie teacher was going to penetrate. And so, by the time my student-teaching stint was completed, Sheila was still a mystery. But my sudden recollection of her a decade later hit me like a bolt of lightning. I fused fictional Mary Ann’s voice to my visual memory of nonfictional Sheila and my story was suddenly electrified.

  At the time, I was enrolled in a master of fine arts writing program at Vermont College. (Today it’s the Vermont College of Fine Arts.) I showed my work to my teacher, Gladys Swan, who said, “Well, muh dear, I think you have a few too many pots boiling on the stove for this to be a short story.” I asked her what she thought I should cut. “Maybe nothing,” she said. “Maybe you’re trying to tell yourself you want to write a novel.” Had I known at that moment that I was about to embark on the nine-year roller-coaster ride that would result in She’s Come Undone, I might have run screaming from the room. But ignorance served me well during that exchange. “A novel?” I said. “How do you write a novel?”

  Gladys advised me to return to the wellspring. “The world is a very old place, and you’re never going to tell a completely original story,” she said. “The reason the archetypal stories have withstood the test of time is because they illuminate the human condition. People need them to be told, over and over. If you want to write a modern novel, study ancient myth.”

  I left my meeting with Gladys armed with a reading list that included Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Heinrich Zimmer’s The King and the Corpse, and Homer’s mythopoetic masterpiece, The Odyssey. As unlikely as it sounds, the latter story eventually became the spine of She’s Come Undone. I built Mary Ann a backstory and sent her off on a conflict-laden quest to find herself.

  With my novel well on its way, I submitted an excerpt to Northeast, the Sunday magazine of the Hartford Courant. Faith Middleton, now of National Public Radio fame, was reading Northeast’s “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts. She notified me that she liked my story and was sending it on to editor Lary Bloom for his consideration. When Lary called to say that the story would be published, I was so elated that I picked up my son, now a toddler, and tossed him so far into the air that his head hit the kitchen ceiling. Luckily, it was one of those drop ceilings with the foam-backed pads, so Jared didn’t hurt his head. It just disappeared for a second and then came back into view. “Keep in a Cool, Dry Place” was published on Easter Sunday of 1982. I got up early, drove to the convenience store, and purchased the Hartford Courant. Then I went back to my car, flipped to my work in print, and cried like an idiot. Shortly after that, while preparing a vocabulary lesson for my high school students, I looked up the definition of the word “dolorous.” Marked by or exhibiting sorrow, grief, or pain, the dictionary said. That was when Mary Ann became Dolores.

  In all of literature, you will not find a character more unlike bold and valiant Odysseus than inhibited, caustic Dolores Price. And yet, they take parallel journeys. Odysseus must leave the safety and security of his beloved Ithaca, do battle in the Trojan War, and then find his way back home. Dolores must launch herself past the claustrophobic safety of her grandmother’s Easterly, Rhode Island, home to honor her dead mother’s wish that she go to college. On their respective journeys, both characters are banged up and bloodied. Both do their fair share of banging up and bloodying others. Both are aided along the way by oracles. “I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” Dolores’s friend Mr. Pucci tells her just before he dies from the ravages of HIV-AIDS. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.” Like Odysseus, a renovated Dolores returns home by story’s end, sadder, wiser, and ready to test the life’s lessons her journey has taught her about how, for the sake of herself and others, to live a more authentic life.

  As the novel was nearing completion, I began to have fantasies that it might be published, but I was in the dark about how the publishing industry worked. My parents had recently celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary, and for a gift I gave them a trip to New York City, booking them a room at the Edison Hotel, where they had stayed on their honeymoon. Before they left, I asked my mom and dad if they might bring me back the yellow pages of a phone book so that I could get some addresses of New York publishers. My sweet and timid mother went to the Edison’s front desk and asked permission to tear out said yellow pages from the phone book in their room. My father later reported that the desk clerk had looked at her funny and said no. But my not-so-sweet-and-timid father took a different approach. He went back up to their room and tore out the pages anyway.

  Figuring that publishers probably had slush piles, too, and that I might get lucky twice, I was busy stuffing and addressing manila envelopes the morning my wife came upstairs to my office and handed me a letter on Mary Kay–pink stationery. The letter was from a California-based literary agent, Linda Chester, who’d written to say that she had read another of my stories, “Astronauts,” which the Missouri Review had recently published. If I already had a literary agent, Linda said, I should consider hers a fan letter. (A fan letter? For me?) But if I was seeking representation and had anything longer—something of nov
el length, perhaps—then maybe we could talk.

  Linda, by now my agent, had promised Judith Regan, an up-and-coming editor at Simon & Schuster, a “first look” at Undone once it was finished. My timing, however, was terrible. Judith took my completed draft with her to the hospital where she was about to deliver her daughter Lara by cesarean section. Judith later told me that after Lara’s birth, she was feverish, in pain, and in no mood to read. She picked up my story anyway, planning to get through a polite twenty pages before sending it back with a “no thanks.” Instead, she stayed up all night reading it and, upon discharge from the hospital, hobbled into Simon & Schuster and told the publisher she wanted to purchase the novel.

  Still on maternity leave, Judith invited me to Manhattan for a meeting at an Upper West Side restaurant. It was a scorching August day, I remember. I was so naïve about the way New York works, I had no idea how to hail a cab. Instead, I walked the forty or so blocks from Grand Central Station to the restaurant and arrived nervous as hell and sweating like a pig. Judith offered her hand for me to shake, and when I extended mine, I was mortified. That morning, I had cut my finger and covered it with the only first aid in the house—one of my son’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Band-Aids. But Judith must have forgiven me my faux pas. We became fast friends and have remained pals ever since.

  Shortly before Undone’s release, I gave a bound galley to my parents. My mother’s reading was pretty much confined to McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal, and my dad’s frequent boast was that he had not read a book since high school, and that he’d never finished any of those. But three weeks later, he called me to say that he had read Dolores’s story from start to finish, and that he liked it. “But I was surprised you didn’t kill her off at the end,” he said.

  “Oh? Why is that?” I asked.

  “Well, she could still be out there.”

  Judith Regan’s mother, Rita, had a similar misconception that Dolores was made of flesh and blood, not printer’s ink on paper. “She wants to meet Dolores,” Judith informed me. I told Judith I’d like to meet her mother, too. “No, no,” Judith said. “My mother doesn’t want to meet you. Just Dolores.”