|
Beautiful. Poetic. Haunting. These are just a few words to describe SAFEKEEPING by
Abigail Thomas --- a magical memoir that looks at the various stages of the author's life
with astounding clarity. Thomas, best known for her marvelously witty short stories, turns
her brilliant gaze to her own life. From her three marriages to her role as a mother to
her quest for fulfillment, Thomas lingers on the tragedies and triumphs of her life with
utter honesty. Broken up into three sections --- Before, Mortality, and Here and Now ---
each tale is simple yet profound. The stories range in length from a paragraph to several
pages, proving true the old rule of quality over quantity. She often chooses simple words
and simple sentences, but there is so much to read between the lines. It is difficult to
pick favorites when every story leaves the reader reeling.
In "Good Manners," Thomas writes, "'I'm going to have a baby,' I told them.
My boyfriend and I were holding hands on the brown couch in my parents' living room. 'I'm
really sorry,' I added. I was eighteen. It was 1960... Soon I was married. Everyone had
good manners; that was how we got through it. Sometimes the four of us sat in my mother
and father's living room and they asked my new husband, nineteen years old, about school
and politics and what books he'd read and listened politely when he answered. It was
civilized." Thomas's simple sentences are full of meaning at this momentous time in
her life.
Thomas's outspoken but refreshingly real sister appears in many of the stories, including
"Young Wasn't It," in which Thomas focuses on her role as a mother right after
high school. Thomas believes that motherhood happened simply because she was young, while
her sister contends that she wasn't just young but also completely unprepared. Her sister
points out that their own mother was also unprepared. "'Mom didn't exactly spend her
days in a red-checkered apron plying us with little goodies, now did she... Mother wasn't
born to put on our little mittens and then hang them up to dry,'" she seems to say
with zest. As in many stories, Thomas's sister forces her to delve into the heart of
something and to discover the truth.
One of the sweetest stories centers on a moment between a young Thomas and her father.
"Watching Her Father Eat Cake" is a long paragraph that describes Thomas's
passion for baking yellow cakes and the tenderness of watching her dad eat them. "My
father sometimes had two pieces. 'This is very good cake,' he told me. 'How did you make
such good cake?' and I would explain it to him. He was an important man, a scientist who
often stayed at his lab till all hours. It made me shy to have his full attention, but I
watched carefully as he ate every bite, his jaw clicking now and then as he chewed."
"A Simple Solution" gives us a glimpse of newly divorced Thomas on her own with
three children. She writes of her own difficult times with a sincerity that brought tears
to my eyes. "At suppertime I pulled out the bottom drawer in the kitchen cupboard and
turned it upside down because we didn't have a table. Then we sat on the floor and ate off
it. I felt resourceful... I went barefoot and it was New York City... I didn't understand
what was so bad. Perhaps I wanted to be one of the kids instead of the mother. Forgive me.
There are so many things that I would never do again."
One short tale that strikes with its biting humor was "Definition of Marriage."
"My mother said to me, 'Your father likes to think that he is personally responsible
for the sunrise. He thinks that if he didn't stand in front of the window every morning
and supervise, the sun would never come up. What he doesn't know,' she went on to say, 'is
that he couldn't do any of it if I didn't get up first and make the coffee and open the
curtains.'"
In "Fencing" Thomas eloquently describes the back and forth play between Thomas
and her ex-husband during her second marriage. "For him love/marriage was a fencing
match; you never allowed your opponent the upper hand. Your mate was your opponent,
although it was all in good fun. You never revealed your vulnerable spot, but you went
after theirs with the lightest of touches." Despite this fencing, Thomas and her
second husband become very good friends post divorce, so she is shocked in "When He
Told Her," when he reveals that he has cancer. In the very short "Drifting
Away," Thomas writes of her ex-husband's death --- "You died, and the past
separated itself from me like a continent drifting away."
The book ends gracefully with the beautifully written "What the Moment Can
Hold," in which Thomas writes about her granddaughter. "I gather her up,
nuzzling her soft face, and bring her into the bathroom, and my daughter, her breasts
heavy with milk, reaches up her arms for the child. The moment she is lowered into the
water the baby stops her crying, her body goes limp, her eyelids drop... We don't speak,
but my daughter touches my arm as we realize what we are looking at, what the two of us
are being shown... And I know what a moment can hold."
SAFEKEEPING is a truly magical memoir written with a reality and eloquence that leaves a
lasting, poignant impression.
--- Reviewed by Megan Kalan
© Copyright 1996-2010, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
