Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

Jane tills through the inane and the meaningful, trying to distract herself from both where she is and where she’s going. Her fingers automatically find the spot below her collarbone where her comet-shaped birthmark lives, and she presses down. This has been a habit since childhood. She presses as if to make a connection with her real, true self. She presses until it hurts.

There are many references to books I love, inside Dear Edward, and this is one. Jane's comet-shaped birthmark is an homage to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, in which several of the characters have this birthmark. Cloud Atlas is a spectacular novel--one of my all-time favorites.

There is a note of relief. They have somewhere to start, even if it is the worst place imaginable.

When I wrote this paragraph, I felt some of my own panic as a writer subside. I didn't know, at this point, what was going to happen to Edward any more than he did, but I felt like this was the moment when his new life started. And I was relieved that he had found a starting place, not alone, but with his aunt and uncle.

Edward is aware that Besa is staring at her daughter, trying to deliver a message without words. And he knows—maybe, a little bit—why he came here. To be with another kid, to have a break from the intense, watching, worried eyes of adults. Besa says in a bright, we-will-make-this-work tone, “Have you ever been to camp, Edward?” “This is weird,” Shay says.

When I started writing Dear Edward, I had this strange idea that there would be a girl Edward's age who lived next door, and that he would end up sleeping on her floor. I couldn't imagine how this would come to be, until Shay showed up on the page. She blew into the book fully formed. I was grateful for her then, and I'm grateful for her now.

But when Eddie did stop crying, he became a sweet, smiling baby, who crawled around the apartment after his brother. He snuggled more than Jordan had. Jane’s depression was broken for good when she woke up laughing one morning because her baby was on top of her, dive-bombing her cheek with openmouthed infant kisses. Mwah, mwah, mwah.

This happened to me in real life. My second son, when he was maybe five months old, woke me up one morning by dive-bombing my cheek with kisses. If you've ever been kissed by a baby, you know how wet and ridiculous their kisses are. I think it's the only time in my life that I woke up laughing, and I love that I could put that memory into the novel. My baby boy is now eleven, but I was able to capture that moment in time, forever.

Florida has seen her husband, the brainy Jewish guy, and she imagines they have semi-regular decent sex but don’t spend a lot of time cuddling or making out. It’s her belief that people sealed up that tight can often benefit from some medicinal loosening. They have no idea how to unzip their own boundaries; they need them removed on their behalf. If she had any mushrooms on her, she would have slipped them into the woman’s purse. The plane gives a single judder as she lowers into her seat. “What’s up, pussycat?” she says, at the same time reflecting that she wouldn’t offer this girl any drugs. Linda’s uptight too, but in a disheveled way. Her wires are crossed and split and her energy flow is a mess. Psychedelics would just loosen her death grip on normalcy, and seconds later she’d be screaming, naked, in the street.

This passage amuses me, and Florida is certainly one of my favorite characters in the book. I happened to read Neil Gaiman's Sandman series while I was doing research for Dear Edward, and Gaiman is such a master at joyfully defying boundaries like space, time and distance, that I found myself thinking, Why can't I have a character who believes she's lived multiple lives? For this reason, I feel like Florida is more a Neil Gaiman creation, than my own.

Edward follows the man’s back through the crowded hall, then up two sets of stairs, then down another hall. Here, the kids look swollen and distorted, and Edward realizes they’re on a high school floor. The boys’ voices are louder and deeper, and when two kids mock-tackle each other near him, Edward flinches. Students lower their voices, though, and straighten up when they notice the principal. Several say hello, then give Edward a look. Principal Arundhi turns in to a room with a mottled-glass door. When the door closes behind them, the clamor of the hallway is muffled. The room and windowsill are lined with plants of various sizes, and more greenery hangs from the ceiling. Some have fat leaves, others are spindly and tall; two have small pink flowers. The air smells like moist dirt. The desk, in the center of this greenhouse, looks like a mistake.

I am deeply fond of Principal Arundhi. I didn't know he was going to be in the novel. When he tapped Edward's shoulder on the first day of school, I was surprised, but it made sense to me that the principal would seek out a kid in Edward's situation on his first day. And then when they entered his office and it was filled with plants, I thought, Who is this man? He was so lovely, and so very kind; I'm glad he showed up.

He closes his eyes for a second, and Edward sees the lines of pain on Gary’s face; they’re the same lines—carved by loss—that engrave Edward’s whole self, and the boy shudders in recognition.

As a writer, I'm satisfied with this scene. I like Gary very much, and I felt like I was able to express what I wanted to in their dialogue and Edward's thoughts. It's rare for me to feel like a scene couldn't use more revision, so I thought I'd point it out. No reader has ever mentioned this scene to me, so I don't know that it struck anyone else, particularly, but that's okay. I worked on this novel for eight years, and when I re-write I have an internal tuning fork that tells me if a sentence is correct and true. I try to get as many of the sentences as possible to hit the right note, but I'm unable (unfortunately) to get them all right.

It’s mid-October when the actor who plays Lucky leaves the show, and a new actor immediately takes over the role. On the swings later that afternoon, Edward tries to explain the injustice of this to Shay.

I watched General Hospital religiously when I was a teenager, and I too was VERY upset when Lucky was re-cast. I think that upset is deeper for Edward, though, because he's thinking about the loss of his parents and his brother, and how they are truly irreplaceable in his life.

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” —GEORGE ELIOT

I collect quotes, and this is one of my favorites. I keep what I believe is called a 'common book' where I write down quotes and lines that strike my fancy. Do you do this?

She whispers, “You’re not here. What was your seat number?” “31A.”

When I was writing the novel, my working title was 31A. I'm admittedly terrible at titles, and my agent and editor didn't love that one. My friend Helen Ellis, who is a wonderful writer (Southern Lady Code, American Housewife) came up with the idea to call the book Dear Edward.

The weariness in his uncle’s eyes makes Edward realize, for the first time, why John had needed to save him at all costs. His uncle—with all his will, attention, and care—had been unable to save anyone else. The babies Lacey had carried. Jane and Bruce, and his oldest nephew. And so he had been willing to wreck his own life, even his marriage, to make sure he didn’t lose the nephew who came to live in his house. “I wouldn’t have done that to you”—Edward looks at his uncle and then over at Shay; this applies to her too—“because I know what it’s like to be left behind.” He’s winded by the sentence, as if the truth has taken something from him. He feels a flash of fear, but then sees the look on his uncle’s face. John opens his arms, and Edward steps forward.

I re-wrote this scene a hundred times at least. I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn't get it to come out right. I was so wordy! Finally, I was talking to my husband about the scene, about how to express why Edward never would have killed himself. And my husband said, like it was no big deal, "Of course he would never do that, because Edward knows what it's like to be left behind." And I fell over because he had said the perfect and right answer. So, this is the story of why I'm happy I married my husband, even though sometimes he drives me crazy. Everything was worth it, for that line. :)

“I want to know what to do,” he hears himself say, and, like the decision to write to the co-pilot’s wife, the statement is a relief. He wants to know what to do. She taps the center of his hand. “That’s easy. The same thing we all must do. Take stock of who we are, and what we have, and then use it for good.”

Readers, the tarot card reader is Florida, in her next life.

The man says, “What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.”

I got the idea for this exchange from listening to a podcast, actually. I was listening to the actress Cherlize Theron talk about a traumatic event in her life that happened when she was around 13 years old--she witnessed her mother kill her abusive father. The interviewer asked Cherlize how long it took her to get over that trauma. She answered very calmly that she never got over it, that no one gets over that kind of thing, it simply becomes part of them. I got chills, and knew that that was exactly right, and how Edward would feel.