Susanna Daniel - Stiltsville

I ordered a hospital bed for the living room. I probably should have done this months before, to make Dennis more comfortable and give him more space for visitors, but I was always a step behind the disease. In the hospital after his fall, Dennis had been on a continuous regimen of morphine and muscle relaxants, but at home he turned away when I tried to give him his pills. Only Lola could get him to take them, and her days were numbered—once hospice started, she would no longer be needed. Instead, we would have a head nurse who checked in three times a week, plus two rotating shift nurses who spent an hour at the house in the mornings and evenings, every day. The first night home from the hospital, after refusing to take any pain medication, Dennis was restless. His voice returned in the form of ghoulish cries, unintelligible and unfocused, and he was soothed only by my lying next to him in the little hospital bed and singing softly in his ear. At first I sang the lullabies I remembered from when Margo was a baby, but then I sang songs I knew he liked, by Neil Young and Jimmy Buffett and Dolly Parton. He didn’t sleep, but he lay still; if I fell asleep, he would stir and cry out again, and I would be jarred awake, and resume my soft singing.

After a week of this—Dennis no longer seemed to need real sleep; he was in a stupor most of the day, and the line between awake and asleep had blurred—Lola told me I would need to ask the hospice nurse for liquid morphine to add to Dennis’s feeding tube. This was Lola’s last shift before the arrival of the hospice nurse the next day. Forcing painkillers on Dennis was not a job I felt I could pursue, so to change the subject, I asked Lola about her plans. She said she was going back to Ecuador.

“So soon?” I said. “Do you have a beau there?” I didn’t normally pry, but I was rattled in the face of losing her.

She didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “My father is dying. It’s been coming for a while.”

“I had no idea,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she said. She looked at me. “You will need to get some sleep.” She knew what was ahead of me though I still didn’t—the empty hours, the helplessness, the boredom. She went into the living room to say good-bye to Dennis. She stroked his hand, and he turned and made an expression that I took for a smile. She murmured quietly for a minute or two, and he grunted in response, and then she stood and bent to kiss him on the forehead. She passed me as she left. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and I said, “Thank you for everything.”

The next day, while Stuart gave Dennis a bath, I called Lola’s agency and left a message for her supervisor, saying that she had been a lifesaver and offering to be a reference should she ever need one. I never heard from her again. If Stuart acknowledged the end of her tenure at all, I didn’t see it.

The head hospice nurse’s name was Olivia. She was our constant during the weeks of rotating nurses and shifting medication schedules. She told us that Dennis’s listlessness, his swollen legs, his disorientation, the heavy snoring that substituted for breathing all came from lack of oxygen and the buildup of carbon dioxide in his blood. She brought in an oxygen tank, and from then on, he wore a clear tube under his nostrils, hooked around his ears. Every so often I was shocked by the sight of him. Olivia started him on liquid morphine. He was barely able to focus on my face when I stood above him, so I lay next to him for hours at a time, day and night.

One night, three weeks after hospice started, when we were alone—Bette had flown in from New Mexico, and Gloria and Grady were at the house most of each day, so we were rarely alone—I was bleary from sleeplessness and from remembering song lyrics and thinking of what to say to fill the silence. In desperation, I went to the bookshelf and took down the book of Wallace Stevens’s poems that Dennis had given me on our wedding day, and read to him until he fell asleep. When he woke, moaning, I read some more. I told him I remembered reading poetry with him when we were first married. I told him I remembered everything.

We fell asleep together after that, and he woke crying out and I fed him and read some more, and we fell asleep again. I woke as the sunlight began to worm across the floor, and I was shocked that it was morning. The next time I fell asleep, I woke with a startle not to Dennis’s moaning, but to a terrible silence. And before I looked over at him, I knew. I knew by the stillness of his body next to mine. A sob rose inside me, but then it stopped. This wasn’t a time for crying—that would come. This was a blessed pocket of time, a time without activity or mourning. I held my husband in my arms and pressed my face to his face. I kissed his lips. I told him I loved him. I told him, Thank you, over and over. I told him, Thank you for my life.

Though I’ve attempted to portray from memory and research certain historical events that took place in Florida during the years 1969–2004, this is a work of fiction. I’ve taken a few liberties with dates—most notably, in real life the incident with Arthur McDuffie and the subsequent trial took place in December 1979 and March–May 1980, respectively. I hope that my alteration of the dates causes no reader to feel that I’ve disrespected Mr. McDuffie’s memory or the events that followed the trial. Also, Christo’s Surrounded Islands were completed in May 1983.

Additionally, I’ve tried to portray as accurately as possible the flora and fauna of the area, but I’m no ecologist. Ultimately, my hope is that I’ve conveyed a general sense of life in South Florida during the years covered in the novel.

This is my first novel, and as such it owes a debt not only to its editors but also to the people who inspired me to become a lifelong reader and writer, and who stubbornly and enthusiastically supported my efforts along the way. This book is a direct result of the generous love and support I’ve received from my father, Bill Daniel, who shared his passion for the ocean; and from my late mother, Sue Collier Daniel, who shared her passion for words and books.

For telling me what I was doing wrong and how to fix it, I thank my teachers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Joy Williams, Chris Offutt, Elizabeth McCracken, Ethan Canin, and the late Frank Conroy, whose advice on life and writing I refer to regularly. I also thank Connie Brothers, who called me in the spring of 1999 and told me I’d earned a place at the Workshop, then guided me through my years there.

For giving me the time to write the first half of this novel, I thank the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, with special thanks to Jesse Lee Kercheval, who rented me a quiet and happy apartment and introduced me late in life to babysitting (and quite possibly gave me the courage to start a family of my own).

Many thanks to my excellent readers, who no doubt improved the book immeasurably: my talented friend Miriam Gershow; my father-in-law, John Stewart, Sr.; and my friends Kathy Ezell and David Wahlstad, who fixed numerous inaccuracies with regard to regional flora and fauna, and more. For taking the time to lend me their medical expertise, I thank Dr. Marvin Forland and Dr. Ellie Golestanian. Also, thanks to my friend Marse Dare, who lent me her name.

I’m grateful to my agent, Emily Forland, and my editor, Jennifer Barth, for taking on the book—and for telling me that they cried at the end.

To my dear friend Curtis Sittenfeld, who for a decade has generously shared with me her steady encouragement, tough love, and excellent guidance, and without whom I would still be spinning my literary wheels—I cannot thank you enough.

Finally, I thank my husband, John Stewart, who inspires me every day to write love stories—then goads me into actually doing it. No better feet under which to spread my dreams.

Susanna Daniel was born and raised in Miami, Florida, where she spent much of her childhood at her family’s stilt house in Biscayne Bay. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and son, where during the long winter she dreams of the sun and the sea, and of jumping off the stilt house porch at high tide.

Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep, The Man of My Dreams, and American Wife, and Susanna Daniel, author of the debut novel Stiltsville, met at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Here they talk about friendship and its role in—and beyond—novels.

Curtis Sittenfeld: One of the many things I love about Stiltsville is that it starts with the main character, Frances, making a new friend, Marse, and then pretty much immediately falling for the guy Marse likes. Yet these two women become very close, even though only one of them can get the guy. Were you consciously defying stereotypes about female friendship, or did this just feel like the organic way to depict these characters?

Susanna Daniel: There’s a lot of bad press out there regarding female friendships, which are so much more nuanced than stereotypes would have us believe. When Frances meets Dennis, her friendship with Marse is just beginning, but already they both know there’s potential. Neither woman wants to throw that away. There’s a moment when Frances tells Marse that it’s not like her to flirt with—not to mention steal—another woman’s guy, and their future pretty much hinges on Marse believing her. Which she does. To grant your friend permission to pursue what might turn out to be the love of her life—that’s a sign of trust and humility, which Marse is strong enough to give.

CS: So much of Stiltsville is about Frances’ marriage to Dennis. I’m wondering how you think getting married and having children—or not getting married and not having children when the people around you are—changes the nature of women’s friendships.

SD: I think there’s a lot of truth to the idiom that it takes a village—not only to raise a child, but to support a marriage. Because their lives take such different paths, Frances and Marse must make exceptions for each other that they might not make for other friends. Their differences might have divided them, but instead, Marse becomes a member of Frances’ family in a way that a married friend could never be. Late in the book, Frances says that Marse had been almost like a second wife to Dennis in some ways, over the years. But she loves and trusts Marse like a sister, and when Marse’s life changes unexpectedly, Frances must look outside her own troubles to support her friend the way she’s been supported for so long.

CS: Two of Frances’ best friends are her daughter, Margo, and her sister-in-law, Bette. What are the particular pleasures and complications of friendships with family members?

SD: Bette, Dennis’s sister, is one of the most complicated characters of the book. In order to forge a friendship early on, Frances must become a confidante of Bette’s, which isn’t an easy thing to do. Unlike Marse, who remains in Frances’ daily life until the end, Bette has to choose between family and love partway through the book—and the choice she makes breaks Frances’ heart. But later, Frances has to make a similar choice with regards to Margo. Moving away from family, in *Stiltsville*, is not a choice made lightly or without a lot of heartache, but sometimes it’s the only way for a character to grow.

CS: You and I met in 1999, on our first day as graduate students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, when we were the only two women in a class of eight. One of the most frequent questions I get about having attended the Workshop is whether it’s competitive and back-stabbing. How do you answer this question?

SD: The program is definitely competitive in nature, though not back-stabbing. Writing isn’t a team sport—ultimately it’s all about you and what you produce. No one can undermine you if you’re focused and ambitious. That said, workshopping material is not for the faint of heart—not because people are back-stabbing but because they are bright, experienced readers, and devastatingly honest. At the same time, I’m grateful for the Workshop for many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s where I met the woman who continues to be my great reader, advocate, and friend: you.