ALONE IN A ROOM TOGETHER: STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU By Jennifer L. Napolitano Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing Chair: (/ fJ /'J ') 4~ -v(. f1-·----G-- Richard McCann Dean of the College 2009 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMER~AN UNIVE~.SITY UBPJ\RY qiQlO UMI Number: 1466037 Copyright 2009 by Napolitano, Jennifer L. All rights reserved INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform: 1466037 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ©COPYRIGHT by Jennifer L. Napolitano 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother. ALONE IN A ROOM TOGETHER: STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU BY Jennifer L. Napolitano ABSTRACT Alone in a Room Together is a collection of original short fiction and nonfiction. Each piece, like each character, is independent, but linked thematically to the rest of the collection through isolation, grief, and obsession. The characters presented deal with events as seminal as unrequited love and the deaths of family members, finding the most difficult part ofloss to be the failure to connect to and communicate with even their closest confidants. As a line is drawn between what is said and what is unsaid, these stories attempt to present a simple truth: all people, no matter how much they are loved or surrounded by others, go through the world alone. 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I did not go through this alone. I owe so very many thanks to Richard McCann for his encouragement to write what was hard and be brutal in revisions - it's been a religious experience. I owe just as many thanks to Mary Kay Zuravleff for coming to my thesis rescue, for caring about my work, for MKZ interpretations and hookers on the wall. I've been blessed to have such wonderful workshop leaders in my time here at American. I'd like to thank Kermit Moyer for valuing my point of view; E.J. Levy for encouraging intelligence; Andrew Holleran for his enthusiasm; and especially Denise Orenstein for diner napkins, puppies, tiaras, and keeping the tension on the page. I have no words for all the love and gratitude I feel towards you all. I am forever grateful to Tim Napolitano, who never thought a writer was a silly thing for his daughter to be. I would also like to thank my sisters, Erin and Sarah Napolitano, for keeping me anchored to my past. Nearly every member of the faculty, staff, or graduate programs in the Department of Literature these past three years has touched my life in some way. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being my readers, my critics, and most importantly, my friends. 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii STORIES: WAITING ............................................................................................................... 1 WHAT GOOD FEELS LIKE ................................................................................. 9 ACTING ............................................................................................................... 17 WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU ............................................................................. 28 A RECIPE FOR BANANA BREAD ................................................................... 35 JOURNEYS .......................................................................................................... 41 PENNY AND THE END OF THE WORLD ....................................................... 51 THORNS .............................................................................................................. 64 FLOW ................................................................................................................... 66 ROCK GATE ................ : ........................................................................................ 68 HAIR ..................................................................................................................... 78 STAINED ............................ ··.···· ........................................................................... 87 STRANGERS ....................................................................................................... 89 THE ANSWER IS NOWHERE ......................................................................... 104 IV WAITING We waited in the next room while our mother died. I knew it was going to happen that day, because she was alive in my mind, just floating around with me. She was there from the minute I woke up, as I put on a bra and some deodorant, washed my face and brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back and tried to wipe the appearance of exhaustion from 'Under my eyes. She was with me when I fell into the seat of my car and drove for five miles before I realized I didn't have the radio on. She was there as the automatic doors to the hospital opened, as I breathed in the smell of sick people and stale coffee, as I stepped off the elevator onto the hospice floor. Same routine as always, no recognition of my senses; she hovered over me the entire time, jerking me awake and dehydrating me, draining me of any remaining emotions, sucking the life out of my soul the way the cancer was sucking the life out ()f her body. The morphine had pushed her into a coma two days before, and we were just waiting. I knew she hadn't died in the night, notjust because the phone hadn't rung, but because she just hadn't. If you live inside someone's body for nine months, you know when she's dead and when she's not. She was with me, thickly. I could feel her in the circles under my eyes - so dark they looked like bruises. I could feel her in the grease and sweat that stuck to the fold of my elbow. In the way I didn't have the energy to bathe, the energy to do anything really but wallow in my own grief. It was like her dying was the lens through which I saw the world in those weeks. The lens clouded my vision, but disappeared when I looked in the mirror. And if there was any doubt in my 1 2 mind, I knew she was still alive when I walked into the waiting room and saw my brother John, and saw that her life and death were still weighing on him. If she were still alive, something in his presence would have changed. The hospice floor, unlike the rest of the hospital, allowed visitors twenty-four hours, and I could tell John hadn't gone home the night before. The TV was still on, and the local morning news was beginning. John never watches the news. He'd been watching late-night comedy five hours before and hadn't remembered to turn the damn thing off. "Hey," I said, kicking his foot out of the way so I could step to the chair beside him. I waved the remote in his face and shut off the TV. "Yeah, sure," he said, and grinned. Then he shook the smile off his face, wrinkled his eyebrows, and looked down into his lap. Over the two months since she'd been admitted, and specifically in the past week, our bodies had begun reflecting emotions we weren't experiencing, simply because we weren't experiencing any emotions at all. We'd smile when we didn't feel happy, because what we felt was numb. We'd nod when we didn't feel positive, because what we felt was unsure. John knew I didn't care that he smiled, but he looked down to express shame, because what he really felt was nothing. "What were you watching?" I asked. "What? Oh, I don't know." "It's 6:00 in the morning. Conan ended four hours ago." 3 "Well, I don't know," he shrugged. "I guess I was watching whatever came on after that." "You probably watched infomercials all night and didn't even know it." I laughed, even though what I'd said wasn't funny, and I slapped my hand on his knee even though I didn't want him to react. He nodded and turned to face me, but his eyes suddenly widened and he let out a small yelp. "Oh, Cassie. I thought you were Tina this whole time. I didn't even look at you." I'd forgotten how to laugh genuinely, so what came out of me was more of an amused wail. This noise, filtered through the white noise of my mother hanging around my head, came out of concern for John's ability to carry on a conversation without knowing who was talking to, out of knowing Tina and I looked nothing alike, and for knowing our twenty-two-year-old sister Tina couldn't get out of bed that early in the morning even while her mother was dying. "Do you need anything?" I asked, standing. "I'm good. Coffee, later, maybe. If you get the chance." Mom was weighing on John as I left the room. He rubbed his left shoulder and stretched both arms before slumping back in his chair and shifting to find a more comfortable position. His gray eyes went from vacant to stormy in the second I turned to look at him, then he was gone just as quickly. He was done, giving up, the same way Mom was, the same way all the relatives that stopped coming around after four weeks had already. 4 John was stationary during most of his visits. He'd go and get food, if we were too tired, or he'd sit by Mom's bed, ifhe felt inspired to. And he tried to be the responsible adult and talk to the nurses and doctors, but I needed to be in the room whenever he did that because he never had any recollection of those conversations. Mostly, I'd say about eight hours of each day, he sat in the same chair, repositioning himself as need be and talking to anyone who started speaking to him.