“Where’s Albie?” Franny asked her mother.
Her mother shook her head and made a little sound that stood in for the words no idea. Her mother never did learn to speak French.
“If you see him would you let me know?”
Her beautiful mother, maybe embarrassed now, looked up from her book for just a second and nodded. “Sure,” she said.
Franny didn’t think of knocking on the door to Bert’s study and asking him if he’d seen Albie, or checking to see if maybe Albie was in there with him. The thought never crossed her mind.
Instead, she went out the back door. She was still wearing her uniform from school: a plaid skirt and kneesocks, saddle oxfords, a sweatshirt from track over her white blouse. Her mother didn’t tell her to put on a coat or ask her where she was going the way she would have had Franny walked out the back door on a snowy night a few years before. Her mother was lost in a sea of irregular verbs.
Franny looked in the garage but Albie wasn’t in the garage. She walked a circle around the house and then went down the street, walking two houses down in one direction, three houses down in the other. She looked at the snow for bicycle tracks but there was nothing there, only her own footprints going in every direction. She was chilled now and her hair was getting wet. She was a little worried but only a little. She was thinking she could find him. She decided to go back to the house for her coat and as she was coming up the driveway she saw him, just a few inches of the side of his head behind the boxwoods beside the front door. He was wrapped in his red sleeping bag, staring up at the snow.
“Albie?” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Freezing,” Albie said.
“Well don’t. Come inside.” She walked across the soft snow covering the lawn until she was standing right in front of him.
“I’m too high,” he said.
Around every streetlight, every porch light, there was a soft halo of snow. Everything else was dark. “No one’s going to notice.”
“They will,” he said. “I’m really high.”
“You can’t stay out here.” Franny was starting to shiver. She was wondering what she had been thinking of, going out without her coat.
“I can,” he said. His voice was so light, so airy, as if it were part of the snow.
Franny stepped between the boxwoods, thinking she would have to pull him up. Albie was taller than she was now but he was skinny, and anyway he wouldn’t fight her. But as soon as she got back there with him she understood the appeal of this particular spot, the way you could see all things without being seen. The overhang of the roof kept them out of the snow for the most part. She could smell the pot on him now, sweet and strong. Franny and Albie drank together sometimes, and they smoked cigarettes, but they didn’t smoke pot together. Later that would change.
“Let me in,” she said.
And just like that Albie raised up his arm, never taking his eyes off the snow, and she sat down beside him. The sleeping bag was filled with down and when they were wrapped up together it was remarkably warm. They sat there like that, their backs up against the brick of the house, the coarse hedge just in front of them. They watched the snow fall and fall and fall until they thought that they were the ones who were falling.
“I miss my mother,” Albie said. In the one year when they were very close it was the only time he said it, and he only said it that night because he was very high.
“I know,” Franny said, because she did know. She knew it exactly, and she pulled the sleeping bag tighter around them and they stayed there together just like that until she lost the feeling in her feet and she told him they had to go inside.
“I lost the feeling in my feet a long time ago,” he said.
They put their arms around one another in order to stand. The front door was locked so they went down the driveway, dragging the sleeping bag behind them. Franny’s mother wasn’t in the kitchen anymore but the light was still on beneath the door to Bert’s study.
“I told you no one would know if you were high,” Franny said, and for some reason this cracked Albie up. He sat down on the floor and pulled the sleeping bag over his head, laughing while Franny got out the cereal and the milk.
Franny brushed the snow off her shoulders and made her way to the rented SUV. She had never told that story to Leo. She had meant to but then for some reason she decided to hold it back. Now she understood that at some point far out in the future there would be a night just like tonight, and she would remember this story and know that no one else in the world knew it had happened except Albie. She had needed to keep something for herself.
About the Author
Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three non-fiction books. Both The Magician’s Assistant and State of Wonder were shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, which she won with Bel Canto in 2002. She has won the PEN/Faulkner Award and been shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, and her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee.
ANNPATCHETT.COM
Also by Ann Patchett
State of Wonder
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012
Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. But Dr Annick Swenson’s work is shrouded in mystery – especially from her investors. When Anders Eckman, a mild-mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate, a curt letter reporting his death is all that returns. Now Marina Singh, Anders’s colleague and former student of Dr Swenson, must retrace her friend’s perilous steps and uncover the secrets hidden among the remotest tribes of the rainforest. Little does she know that, in this ancient corner of the jungle, she will face challenges beyond her wildest imagination.
‘The best book I have read all year. It made me laugh and weep and left me in a state of wonder: perfect from first page to last ... a masterpiece’ Emma Donoghue
‘A triumph and Pachett’s best book yet’ Guardian
‘An absorbing novel, intelligent yet magical, that will keep you wondering until the very last page’ Sunday Telegraph
Click here to order
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an irresistible blend of literature and memoir revealing the big experiences and little moments that shaped Ann Patchett as a daughter, wife, friend and writer.
Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage.
A memoir both wide ranging and deeply personal, overflowing with close observation and emotional wisdom, told with wit, honesty and irresistible warmth.
‘Witty, warm reflections on life, love and art of fiction ... she speaks about the love and happiness of her second and enduring marriage with immense beauty and insight, and without an iota of smugness’ Independent
‘Electrically entertaining ... Each of these essays feels fresh and bright and, just as importantly, they seem to fit together to achieve a fascinating whole ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind’ The Times
‘A brilliant mix of moving memoir and deeply personal essays ... consoling, inspiring, but, above all, true’ Mail on Sunday
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Run
Tip and Teddy are becoming men under the very eyes of their adoptive father, Bernard Doyle. A student at Harvard, serious Tip is happiest in a lab, whilst Teddy, a gentle dreamer, thinks he has found his calling in the Church, and both are increasingly strained by their father’s protective plans for them. But when they are involved i
n an accident on an icy road, the Doyles are forced to confront certain truths about their lives and the identity of an anonymous figure who is always watching.
‘A spectacular read … Full of suspense, exciting and unpredictable, this is a novel that keeps you guessing until the end’ Sunday Express
‘Her books are so warm, so overflowing with love and affection, that when you’ve finished reading one your first inclination is to embrace it’ Guardian
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http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/ann-patchett
First published in Great Britain 2016
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Ann Patchett, 2016
Ann Patchett has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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ISBN 978 1 4088 8039 5
eISBN 978 1 4088 8037 1
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Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
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