Hesitation Wounds
By author - Amy Koppelman
Blurb:
The new novel by the author of I Smile Back, now a film starring Sarah Silverman.
The acclaimed author of I Smile Back, Amy Koppelman is a novelist of astonishing power, with a sly, dark voice, at once fearless and poetic. In Koppelman’s new novel, Dr. Susanna Seliger is a renowned psychiatrist who specializes in treatment-resistant depression. The most difficult cases come through her door, and Susa is always ready to discuss treatment options, medication, and symptom management but draws the line at engaging with feelings. A strict adherence to protocol keeps her from falling apart.
But her past is made present by one patient, Jim, whose struggles tear open Susa’s hastily stitched up wounds, revealing her latent feeling that she could have helped the people closest to her, especially her adored, cool, talented graffiti-artist brother. Spectacularly original, gorgeously unsettling,HESITATION WOUNDS is a novel that will sink deep and remain—like a persistent scar or a dangerous glow-in-the-dark memory.
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Excerpt
When I
was a little girl, I would sit on the roof and watch
you spin around in circles. Arms in air. Palms toward sky.
You turned and turned without ever falling. I should have
recognized your balance was superior to my own. Instead,
I stood, moved my body as you did, round and round,
and quickly sank to the ground. You joined me there, leaned
back onto your elbows, and smiled at me as I worried about
how long the world would spin. Yours rotated on a singular
axis, which I, for many years, mistook for purpose.
Time spins until it stops spinning. That simple. Later.
Older. High. We watched the world spin without our
having to move. And now, all these years later—even with
distance—it is, still. Perspective, I’ve learned, is intrinsic
to equilibrium. Happiness, on the other hand, is a sole
operator. Denying you—click clock—until you become older
than you ever thought capable. Your hands protruding from
dark sheets drag the covers up over your head as you ache
to remember and forget. Uncertain as to which would be a
better outcome. The
pink morning light casts a glow across the ceiling.
I check the time. It’s 6:15 a.m. The train leaves at
8:15 a.m, so we have time. But not too much time. I swing
my legs over the bed, grab my glasses. Today is your forty-fifth
birthday. It’s hard to believe we haven’t seen each
other in nearly twenty-eight years. I understand intellectually
that twenty-eight years is a long time. I was a
girl then. I’m a middle-aged woman now. But for some reason
it doesn’t feel like a long time ago and I don’t feel
old. I
guess there’s some kind of cognitive dissonance at work,
because there are still moments when I’d swear you’re alive.
Not whole, maybe, but pieces. On Halloween, for example,
a three-foot-tall pirate—partial, I would soon discover,
to Almond Joy bars—had your same dark and pensive eyes.
I held out the candy bowl, he looked up at me, and in a
flash, a split second between his hold off and my go ahead, you
were alive. What
I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older is that time isn’t,
for both good and bad, a linear construct. The past beats
beneath the present, threatening to unmask and reveal my
regret to the world, or perhaps worse, to the forty-four year-old
woman who greets me every morning in the bathroom
mirror. She too brushes her teeth, flosses twice a day,
applies bleach strips to combat the inescapable decay. Cavities,
receding gums, bone loss. The ability to delude oneself,
and this I can validate from both professional and personal
experience, is central to processing loss, yellow teeth
enamel the least of it. I keep
two pictures beside my bed. One Margo sent a few weeks
after your funeral. You’re sitting on the bench at 149th,
watching a subway car pass through the station. It has
“BENARD IS KING” painted in huge orange and blue block letters
in honor of the Knicks’ legendary small forward. Just
to the right, in smaller black letters, is your tag. “JAKYL.”
If you look closely, you can make out the shell toe of
your Adidas resting atop a trashcan. What you can’t see is
that my feet are resting there too. Margo wrote “Memory
lives forever” on the back of the photo, which is really
not true. Memory lives only as long as the people who
remember. I
spin. I am
spinning.A
rhinoceros dances on his tippy-toes. A porcupine eats ice cream
and I wait for you to return to me. Your face—I can
reach out and nearly touch it before you fade. It will never
be that we will age together. You eternally nineteen. I try
to figure out still. What I missed. Words I let pass, smells
I didn’t recognize, unfamiliar tastes and sounds. Each
an opportunity I failed to seize. Each a possibility to
save you. Although now, so many years, so many patients later,
I am aware that treatment is not without consequence,
death without promise, visions without meaning.
And hand holding is merely that. You
spin. The
foul-smelling summer envelops both moon and stars. You
stand alone, nothing left to wish upon. But you insist.
For
what I’m still not sure. A sign of validation. A resuscitation
of sorts? It doesn’t occur to me to ask. You reach
for my hands and I reach back—ours an unconditional covenant—until
you break it, letting go. You are spinning. Lightning
bugs illuminating Kodachrome. Your
teardrops, embedded in dust, have scattered into places
I have more and more difficulty accessing. Around the
corner—through the door—the third page in the navy photo
album. Thirty-five-millimeter film. Auto exposure mode.
There you are: orange towel, blue trunks, a slight smile
and sunburn. There you are again, seagulls surrounding
you, a bag of potato chips dipped in ketchup—what
book is that you’re reading? And
there I am. In the kitchen. A paper cup in chubby hands. “Milk?
Water? Apple juice?” Mom asks. “Apple
juice.” She
returns from the fridge with a large glass bottle. “Mommy,
how much do you love me?” We
face each other. The smell of freshly cut grass itching
at my nose. I mention this because we are away on vacation.
It’s a summer day, a beautiful summer day. The kind
of day where people water flowers, paint houses, cut grass. “How
much do you love me?” I ask again. “With
my whole heart,” she answers. “Then
what about Daniel and Daddy?” “I
love them with my whole heart too.” “How?
How can you love all of us with your whole heart?” “Well...”
She takes a moment. “The heart isn’t like a Dixie
cup. It doesn’t fill, it expands.” And
then. Space and time a defy-able entity. You and I are
facing each other. You’re sipping a milkshake through a
paper
straw. Daniel Seliger, age eight, sips milkshake through
a paper straw, and when the straw softens, when he can no
longer draw the vanilla through, he begins to cry. I turn
away. Memory is like this for me now. I can turn away
from it. I repeat this thought out loud, as if the mere
act of saying it, like an incantation, will transform the
idea into reality. And because it’s true. I can do this
now. Most of
the time.
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About the Author:
Amy Koppelman is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, A Mouthful of Air and I Smile Back. She received her undergraduate degree from University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Koppelman and her screenwriting partner adapted I Smile Back for the screen. The film, starring Sarah Silverman, premiered at the 2015 Sundance, Toronoto and Deauville Film Festivals. Amy lives in New York City with her family. She is an outspoken advocate for women’s mental health.
Amy would love to participate in your book club when reading her newest book - Hesitation Wounds.
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