University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 8-9-2006 Adrift Alexis Wiggins University of New Orleans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Wiggins, Alexis, "Adrift" (2006). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 430. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/430 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. 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ADRIFT A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Fiction by Alexis Shaak Wiggins B.A. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2000 August, 2006 © 2006 ii Para Diego, mi ancla iii Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................v Epigraph...............................................................................................................................1 Book I...................................................................................................................................2 Book II ...............................................................................................................................32 Book III............................................................................................................................136 Book IV............................................................................................................................188 Book V.............................................................................................................................266 Epilogue ...........................................................................................................................283 Vita...................................................................................................................................295 iv Abstract Adrift is a novel about Telemaka Miller, a beautiful young woman who cannot say no to men as a result of her father’s abandoning her when she was young. Loosely based on Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey (in which Odysseus’ son, Telemakos, sets out to look for his lost father), the novel traces Telemaka’s search for her father through an endless string of lovers. The novel opens in 2005, when Telemaka is in her late twenties, and works its way backward through her twenties, teens, and adolescence to the moment in her childhood when her father left the family. v It could not lift the heavy agonies I felt For the fatherless wanderings of my own sons But some sorrows are like stones, And they never melt. -Omeros, Derek Walcott 1 Book I 2 January 2005, twenty-seven years old i. You are beautiful. People look at you in shopping malls, on subway station escalators, on the corner of Seventh and West 4th. Men catch your eye and hold it, as if lasers could reach from pupil to pupil across the room and radiate a message: come home with me, or, sometimes: let me love you. Women never look you in the eye; they look you up and down, a two-second glance during which they drink in your suede boots or pointy-toed flats, your smart pant-suit, size 4, or little black dress and cashmere cardigan, your hair pulled back and clipped, emphasizing high cheekbones that have the faintest color of a late summer sunset, or hair down, framing your face with dirty blond wisps. Their eyes are not lasers, but quick explosions of envy, comparing and competing, like a camera’s white flash in the dark. You are beautiful. You have been told this for as long as you can remember, even on the third day of your life, when you sat in your mother’s sad arms in the hospital lobby for your father to pick you both up, late as usual. An old woman leaned over and told your mother that you were beautiful, a beautiful baby with eyes the color of blueberries. You were told every birthday, when you had a bowl-cut and bigger, blue-green eyes and wore the dresses Grammy made you, with knee socks and mary-janes, and opened presents, feigning surprise that you were good enough to deserve so many. You were told every Thanksgiving, especially the one in D.C. when you wore the long black dress and heels and people who saw pictures of it later told Nance, your D.C. grandmother, you were gorgeous, a beautiful genetic extension of her. You were told every Christmas, even the one when you had your head shaved, hoping to finally be anonymous, ugly, hoping to 3 avoid that word – beautiful – but people still called you it, said only you could pull off a shaved head with that face. This is not about pity. You are not trying to earn anyone’s sympathy. You know that people don’t care to hear it, have learned from experience that when you say: I don’t feel beautiful; I feel average and normal; I feel me, just me, like anybody else on the street, a person, they don’t believe you. They tilt their chins down, eyes fixed on you, saying: give me a fucking break. So you do, because you don’t know how to make them see you are telling the truth: that you don’t see anything special in your face. You don’t see beautiful or ugly. You just see the face of the girl you have always been and who usually still feels like the twelve-year-old version of you, knock-kneed; breasts only a fantasy, years away; scores of lovers yet to touch your body, feel it from the inside; your big green eyes nearly popping out of your head; all blond hair and confusion and tears and curiosity. This is mostly what you see when you look in the mirror. But how do you say that to people? How do you make them see you don’t want sympathy? You just want them to know that Beautiful, whatever that is, is a camera flash. It’s nothing. It’s like beautiful is all you are, all you get to be, over and over again; some carousel that seems fun at first and then makes you throw up all over your party dress, a child who can’t even control herself. 4 ii. I meet Patrick on a Saturday at Caro’s housewarming party. Caro has just moved to Roosevelt Island where she has an amazing view of the skyline. The first thing every guest does when he or she arrives – me included – is shuffle over to the balcony sliding glass door and ooh and ah over the way lighted-up, nighttime New York is right there, at her window. Someone says, “The skyline without the twin towers is like a whore with no tits.” I look over and see that the guy who made the comment is a handsome, pale, blond- blue-eyed Irish type staring out the window. A few people laugh nervously, and no one responds until Mark asks Caro, “Where’s the beer?” and this seems to break the silence and get people moving towards the kitchen. I head off to Caro’s room and bring the bag with her housewarming gift in it inside the bedroom, because I need to sign the card first. The room smells of new paint, the walls a clean, toothy color. I sit down on her bed, which is made, a veritable miracle, and sign the card. I’m good at coming up with meaningful and heartfelt cards in a very short period of time. It only takes me a minute to think of: C, Well my little tart, now you have the best view in the city. Hope you plan to show it off to more of your Wall Street “friends.” Hee hee. In all seriousness, I’m so happy you found a place you love. We will share years more of memories here, and I hope lots of pints of Cherry Garcia. Love you, babe. Xoxo, Tellie. I blow gently on the ink so it won’t smudge, then slip it in the envelope and lick its sticky edge. I love that taste. I write Carolina Espinosa Robles on the outside, our little joke. She insists she has two last names, not one, because her parents are Spanish, and she refuses to hyphenate the two last names, even though having two unhyphenated last names in the U.S. is a pain in the ass and causes her no end of 5 trouble on official documents and in doctors’ waiting rooms. She’s proud like that. I drop the card in the bag. Caro has taken care to put up all the wall hangings and bookshelves with little hand-blown glass vases and her framed photographs on the bureau. I love her photographs. They are the kind of photographs that appear on bureaus in magazines like Architectural Digest, but Caro’s are real. The first – my favorite – is an old, grainy black- and-white of her father. He was an actual bullfighter in Spain in the 70s, and the picture shows him in his suit, sitting atop the shoulders of two other bullfighters, surrounded by a crowd of people. He is looking away from the camera and smiling, and something about his grin strikes me as so sincere that it makes me smile every time I see it. He holds what looks like two wallet-sized patches of black carpet in each raised, triumphant hand, but they are not carpet. They are bulls’ ears, his prize for fighting well. “Sick,” I said to Caro when she first told me. She just shrugged. “It’s Spain,” she replied, as if this explanation made the two cut-off ears less disgusting. The picture of Caro’s now-retired bullfighting father stands front and center on the bureau, and I know that this is because – while she loves her mother – she adores her father.