Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [0]
ALSO BY ANDRE DUBUS III
The Garden of Last Days
House of Sand and Fog
Bluesman
The Cage Keeper and Other Stories
TOWNIE
· a memoir ·
Andre Dubus III
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK • LONDON
Copyright © 2011 by Andre Dubus
All rights reserved
I have tried to protect the privacy of real people here, living and dead, by changing the names of everyone except those in my immediate family and those who are already known to the public. I have also, when necessary, altered the physical descriptions of a few men and women.
Townie draws on material from three previously published essays by Andre Dubus III: “Tracks and Ties,” originally published in 1993 in Epoch, reprinted in the Pushcart Prize Anthology XIX and The Best American Essays of 1994 (New York: Houghton Mifflin); the foreword to Andre Dubus: Tributes (New Orleans: Xavier Press, 2001); and “Home,” from Death by Pad Thai (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006).
Lyrics from “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1975 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured.
All rights reserved.
Lyrics from “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words),” Words and Music by Bart Howard, TRO-© Copyright 1954 (Renewed) Hampshire House Publishing Corp., New York, NY. Used by Permission.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dubus, Andre, 1959–
Townie: a memoir / Andre Dubus III.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-08173-2
1. Dubus, Andre, 1959–2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I.
Title.
PS3554.U2652Z46 2011
813'.54—dc22
[B]
2010038029
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
For Austin, Ariadne, and Elias
And the boys try to look so hard…
“Born to Run,” by Bruce Springsteen
TOWNIE
CONTENTS
PART I: QUEEN SLIPPER CITY OF THE WORLD
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PART II: RIVER, FIST, AND BONE
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
PART III: HOLYHEAD
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART I
QUEEN SLIPPER CITY OF THE WORLD
1
I DID NOT LOOK into the mirror, not yet, not in the morning. My body was still so small and I only looked at it right after the weights when my muscles were filled with blood. There came the tap of my father’s horn outside. We were going running together, but what about shoes? All I owned were a pair of Dingo boots, the square-toed kind with the brass ring cinched in at the ankle. The horn tapped again.
I stepped into my younger brother’s room. Jeb was sitting shirtless in a chair, playing chords on his guitar in time to the metronome his teacher had bought him. His hair was wild and there was brown fuzz across his chin and cheeks.
“Jeb, you have any sneakers?”
He shook his head, kept playing, the metronome ticking, ticking, ticking. I ran into Suzanne’s room. My older sister was just about to turn seventeen, and she was curled asleep, her back to me. Her room smelled like dope and cigarette smoke. There were album covers spread on the floor at the foot of the bed: Robin Trower, Ten Years After, the Rolling Stones. In a swath of sunlight her blue sneakers lay side by side next to balled-up hip-huggers.
“Suzanne, can I borrow your sneakers? I’m running with Dad.”
She mumbled something, and I knew she wouldn’t be up for another hour or two anyway. I grabbed her shoes, stole some white socks from her drawer, and ran outside.
It was a Monday in August, the sun almost directly above us in a deep blue sky. We only saw Pop on the occasional Wednesday when he saw each of us alone and on Sundays when he would drive to our house and take all of us to a movie or out to eat, but the day before,