Page 8 of Golden Girl
Bigger: Who will pay her bills, settle her affairs, make sure the kids are provided for? She doesn’t have a will. Why would she need a will? She’s fifty-one years old and has no medical problems. Vivi’s father died when Vivi was seventeen, in a car in the garage, and Vivi’s mother died five years later, at the age of forty-six, but she was a smoker and obese. Vivi ran every day, she was trim, she hadn’t taken so much as a drag off a cigarette since leaving Ohio—she was the picture of good health. Why would she need a will?
She should have had a will. She should have named an executor, someone to handle things. Vivi’s best friend in the life she’s leaving behind, Savannah Hamilton, is coping with her two aging parents who are in an assisted-living facility in Weymouth; her mother has Alzheimer’s, her father has regular dementia, and Savannah’s overwhelmed. But the kids aren’t quite capable yet, not even Willa, and so Savannah will have to handle it.
Bigger: Vivi’s novelGolden Girlis coming out on July 13. Vivi can recite the (starred!)McQuaidreview by heart.
Howe digs deeper than usual in this shimmering tale of one young woman’s quest to escape her past. Alison Revere grows up in a Cleveland suburb yearning to become a writer. Alison’s high-school boyfriend, Stott Macklemore, sings in a garage band and dreams of making it big. After Alison’s father kills himself, the two grow even closer and talk of getting married after they graduate. Stott writes a song for Alison called “Golden Girl” and is courted by a major recording label. Stott heads out to California, and Alison, devastated at losing another person so close to her, is determined to get him back to Cleveland, no matter what she has to do or say. In the second half of the novel, Alison finds herself summering with her college roommate’s family on Nantucket. She moves to the island year-round, meets and marries a local boy, and publishes her first novel, entitledGolden Girl.Alison’s life appears to be…golden…until Stott Macklemore reappears and forces her to reckon with the secrets of her past.Golden Girlis filled with Howe’s signature summery scenes but it’s her larger message about the irrevocable decision Alison made as a troubled teenager that will stay with the reader.
The question Vivi was asked most often at her events and in interviews wasDo you base your characters on real people? Do you write about events from your own life?Vivi often felt like her readers wanted the answer to be yes; they yearned for the fiction to betrue. Vivi explained that she useddetailsfrom her real life: Her white pitcher with the bisque scallop shell that she bought at Weeds on Centre Street appears in three of her novels. Vivi wears Jessica Hicks jewelry and so do all of her characters. Vivi’s best friend, Savannah, is known for her witticisms, and Vivi borrowed (stole) them on a regular basis. But this wasn’t the same as writing about people she knew or about her own life.
Until this year. The plot ofGolden Girlrecounts the dramatic events of Vivi’s senior year in high school—but the only person who would know this was her high-school boyfriend, Brett Caspian, whom Vivi has not seen or spoken to in over thirty years. Before writingGolden Girl,Vivi had scoured the internet for any sign of Brett. He wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok. He wasn’t on LinkedIn. Vivi had checked the white pages, but there were no Caspians listed in the greater Cleveland area. A casual e-mail sent to the only two high-school friends Vivi remained in contact with—Stephanie Simon and Gina Mariani—confirmed that Brett had never been to a class reunion (neither had Vivi because her parents were both dead and the house in Parma sold). Though Vivi wondered what had become of him, she’d reached the conclusion that Brett Caspian didn’t “do” social media; wherever he was, he had no idea she was a novelist and would never, ever realize thatGolden Girlwas about him. Them. With a few minor changes.
Concerns about Brett Caspian (somewhat) quelled, Vivi was excited about her new book. This was Vivi’s best shot at finally hitting the top spot on theNew York Timesbestseller list. Number one. It sparkled for Vivi like the star on top of a Christmas tree. Her last book,Main Street Gossip,debuted at number three on the hardcover list and number two on the combined list. So close! She was poised—maybe?—to get to number one this time.
Vivi realizes that the powers that be aren’t likely to let her return to her life on Earth so that she can move the All-Clad pan off the walk, pay her landscaper, or even promote her new novel.
But what about her most important responsibility?
Biggest: Caring for her children. Leo is eighteen, technically an adult, but he’s still a mama’s boy. He loves Vivi’s cooking and often wakes up asking what she’s making for dinner; he let Vivi take him to Murray’s to buy clothes for his senior banquet and graduation (and he trusted her opinion, which both the girls summarily ignored). The winter before, when Vivi was knocked flat with a sinus infection, Leo binged the first three seasons ofThe Crownwith her, and hadn’t that been the thing that made her feel better—her big, strong son snuggled up at her side?
Earlier this spring, when Leo said he couldn’t decide between the College of Charleston and the University of Colorado, he and Vivi made a list of pros and cons that was evenly split. He asked Vivi what she thought he should do. Selfishly, Vivi wanted Charleston (there was a direct flight from Boston and, hello, it was Charleston) but her gut told her Charleston might not bethatdifferent from Nantucket and she thought Leo would thrive someplace completely new—like a big school in the Rocky Mountains.
“Boulder,” she said.
He’d exhaled and said, “That’s my choice too, but I thought you’d be sad if I was so far away.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “I will be sad, you’re my baby. But part of being a parent is wanting what’s best foryou.”
Vivi had planned to drive Leo out to Colorado herself. It was going to be a proper road trip with carefully curated stops at diners and kitschy motels, scenic overlooks, and historical monuments. She was going to let Leo play his music no matter how badly it hurt her ears and she was hoping that when it was just the two of them in the car with nothing but open road ahead, they could really talk. And then, once Vivi had dropped him off (with the laminated card she’d make of laundry instructions), she would climb back in her car and have a good, loud cry. Her last child, her baby boy, launched.
Vivican’tmiss taking Leo to college. And she has a grandchild on the way. Everyone would agree it’s patently unfair for her to die without ever holding her first grandchild. Then there’s Carson, who seems to need a mother now more than ever. Vivi can’t leave her kids down there by themselves. They’re herkids. She’s theirmother.
Dying isn’t an option, sorry.
Vivi is up in the clouds now, though she can still make out her body lying on Kingsley. There’s a white Jeep next to her. It’sCruz’sJeep; he bolts out and runs to her. “Vivi!” He whips out his phone, and she hears him saying he needs an ambulance at Kingsley and Madaket. “My mom is hurt, it looks like she was hit, she’s on the ground. She needs help!”
Cruz crouches beside her, his shoulders heaving. He takes her hand. “Stay with me, Vivi, you’re not going anywhere. I need you. We all need you.”
They all need me!she thinks. Then she thinks,He called me his mom.
Vivi hears a siren in the distance. She can’t look; her poor body, and poor Cruz! Vivi turns her head away—and comes face to face with a middle-aged woman with sensibly cut ash-blond hair wearing a flowing white muumuu and a silk scarf expertly knotted around her neck.
“Hello?” Vivi says. The woman standing before her appears to be flesh and blood, and she’s holding a clipboard, like someone organizing a literary luncheon. Vivi feels like she’s about to be given her table number.
The woman is wearing reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Whereas the scarf is elegant and looks expensive—Vivi studies the elaborate animal print in the signature shade of orange and determines it’s (excuse me!) anHermèsscarf—the glasses are of the drugstore variety. “Hello, Vivian,” the woman says. “Welcome to the Beyond. I’m Martha.”
Martha looks familiar. She reminds Vivi vaguely of…
“Of your first reader, Maribeth,” Martha says. “Yes, she’s my younger sister.”
“You havegotto be joking! You’re Maribeth Schumacher’ssister?” When Vivi’s first novel,The Dune Daughters,came out, Maribeth Schumacher bought twenty copies and gave them to all her influential friends. These friends then told their friends and neighbors and sisters-in-law and so on and so on and so on—just like the infamous Fabergé shampoo commercial. In this way, Vivi’s devoted readership was born.
“Iwas,” Martha says. “She sent me all your books right up until I died, two summers ago. I lived in Memphis, so it was nice to read about the beach.”
Memphis; Vivi went there on tour, but she stayed out by the University of Memphis and all she remembers is Central BBQ and the gated community where she went running. She didn’t make it downtown to see Beale Street or the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. She’d told herself she’d do that next time.
Now there won’t be a next time!
“But that’s not why they assigned me to you,” Martha says. “It’s just a coincidental aside.”
