An exact replica of a figment of my imagination: a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken

Author:Elizabeth McCracken
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Grief, Death, Elizabeth, McCracken, Novelists, American, 21st century, Gynecology & Obstetrics, Literary, Family & Relationships, Personal Memoirs, 20th century, Bereavement, Self-Help, American - 20th century, Biography & Autobiography, General, American - 21st century, Medical, Biography, Women
ISBN: 9780316027670
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2008-09-10T10:00:00+00:00

Years before I’d given away an antique postcard that said, beneath a drawing of a pine branch:

For thee I pine.

For thee I balsam.

(I regretted giving away that postcard almost immediately. The recipient didn’t deserve it. Me in a nutshell: I don’t regret a single instance of giving away my heart, but a novelty postcard with a really good pun? I still wish I hadn’t.)

Now I pined, and pined. I pictured myself: a pine tree. The trail of the lonesome pine. I saw myself green and leaning on the beach, inclined toward my unreachable darling. To be deciduous would be better. I could stand brown and brittle, and then naked, and then in the spring I would start over again.

Actually, that’s sort of what happened.

At the end of August we packed up the few things we’d brought with us to Holt. For the first time in our lives, we had not accumulated a single thing in a new country. We spent a few days in Suffolk, with Edward’s family, then a few days in London, then a few days in Boston. On September 5 we paid movers to clear out my vast storage space in Boston, all the things I hadn’t seen in four years, and we drove to Saratoga Springs. The rented house we’d arranged by e-mail months before (when Pudding was still alive) was in a bad state, with cigarette butts and condom wrappers and a fly-infested garbage can. The previous tenants had been smokers, and someone had tried to cover the smell with a quantity of Febreze, and then, when that failed, several spilled boxes of mothballs. Up until then we’d had good luck renting places sight unseen, so odds were it was time for us to land hard, but it felt like ominous luck. Moreover, the house belonged to a retired professor from the English Department who lived out of state, and I saw how quickly I could become a villain if I broke the lease. The movers arrived and unloaded our stuff into the house; we couldn’t figure out what else to do. When they finally left, I went upstairs to the bathroom and took the pregnancy test I’d been carrying around in my purse all day, and brought it down to the kitchen as it developed to show Edward.

Well, what do you know. This baby would be due in May.

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