“Yeah,” Darrell says. “It’s good. It’s great. But he wants to join the Guard to pay for it.” He clearly hates the idea. The army. “But I can’t tell him what to do. He’s not a kid.”
I think, but not aloud because I know he won’t want to hear it, It’s only weekends, right? I’ve seen the commercials. Weekends and a month in the summer. Something like that. It’s not like he’s joining up. Not like he has to go fight real enemies. It’s not even like we have those anymore. It’s just practice. Killing practice, but no one actually dies.
I think we must all have had enough of war by now, that from now on it will be there — always but only peripherally — like a shadow, to keep us expectant, keep us on our toes. But not real war. Not boys putting on uniforms to go away and not come back. It makes me feel better, to know this.
“Maybe it’ll work out, or there’ll be some other way.”
“Maybe,” he says. This time what he does not say is “He’s yours too, you know,” for which I am grateful, and I imagine it is because he knows I am not planning to fall off the face of the earth again. Like before. Once was enough. I know that. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it won’t be that.
He looks at me for, it feels like, the first time. “How have you been?” he says.
I have to smile. “Not bad. Getting by.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
He leans into me, and I have to lean back, hard, or fall over.
“So now what?”
“I don’t know. I miss California. The ocean.”
“Just the ocean?”
“And a whole gang of dead folks. Some live ones too, though.”
“Ghosts,” he says.
“All of them?”
“In a way.”
“Are you a ghost?”
“I am.” His shoulder feels so necessary, next to mine. Like a limb I didn’t know I was missing. I don’t know which limb, or what kind of necessary, and it’s okay. He tells me we need our ghosts; we are made of our ghosts.
“I could be starting to figure that out,” I say. “I could be starting any day now.”
“Don’t wait too long,” he says.
I say I won’t.
Something else to figure out, and soon, is what, on earth, I want. And to know if this trip has been worth… all I let slip away. Maybe if I knew the final destination. Or not. Could be that’s the whole point of this exercise, to not really know much of anything, but to feel it, finally, and to live with that.
We wait, still leaning but not quite so hard, not so much like there’s something we’re trying to prove.
Eventually he says, “The ocean isn’t going anywhere.”
I look beyond the sagging fence, the precarious confusion of swings and slides and monkey bars taken finally down by the weather, and the years. I see no hawk, no rabbit, no horse — just that one small mountain range in the distance, still holding its own out there, a reminder that there is such a thing as permanence, or something close to it.
Darrell reaches his long arms out, palms up, toward those mountains. I know what he is doing. He is presenting to me this landlocked, bone-covered, rock-strewn, river-crossed country — and that ridiculous sky. These are extravagant gifts I really do not deserve. But it is just like him, always trying to give me things I don’t deserve.
“What about this?” he says.
“This is good,” I say, and stay where I am, for now. I try as hard as I can to concentrate, to see what he is seeing. What is out there. What is left. What is possible. Still. Or again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have been realized or even dreamt of without the benevolence of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I am eternally and deliriously grateful to my teachers, my cohort, and the ones who wandered in, for generous teaching, reading and thoughtful criticism; for believing in me and for making me believe; and for setting the bar so damn high. Special thanks to Yuko Sakata Burtless, Lydia Conklin, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Judith Mitchell, Chris Mohar, Lorrie Moore, Rob Nixon, Jonis Agee, Meghan O’Gieblyn, Hannah Oberman Breindel, Barrett Swanson, Jacques Rancourt, Josh Kalscheur, Vicente M. López Abad and Seth Abramson.
I am also indebted to the John Steinbeck Center at San Jose State University, Nick Taylor in particular, and to the Elizabeth George Foundation, for generous support while I wrestled these sentences. And to Jon Peede at the Virginia Quarterly Review, for invaluable assistance in wrestling a critical mass of them; I learned a lot from you.
Thank you to the Squaw Valley, Napa, and Mendocino writers’ conferences for support and community, and especially to Jim Houston, in memory, for his indelible warmth and good heart; to Gary Short for many reasons, but mostly just because; and to Peter Orner, for his generosity of spirit and for the final chapter.
Friends, family and fellow writers who have read this book for me in all its messy iterations, bless and thank you: Constance Palaia, Terese Palaia, Lee Doyle, Al Perrin (in memory), Raoul Biggins, Coco O’Connor, Frances Scott, judy b, Margaret Sofio, Sallie Greene, and Emily Nelson.
Bless and thank you, too, Dick Jones, for giving me Asia (and free rent for life at 1 Nga Kau Wan), but not for leaving us so soon.
For the others we lost before I had a chance to say in just the right words what a huge part of my life you were: Tenley Galbraith, Shery Longest, Pat Ramseyer, Bill Owen, Jeffrey Kirk, and Anthony Holliday, you are dearly missed. And for the ones still kicking (too many to name) at the Wild Side West and Teamsters Local 921, I hope you know who you are. I bet you do.
Finally, a million thanks to my agent, Emma Sweeney, for her many talents and her guidance; to her assistants, Suzanne Rindell and Noah Ballard, for all the not-at-all-little things: and to my editor, Trish Todd, for hawk-eyed and insightful editing, and for taking a chance on an old dog and her tricks.
Simon & Schuster Reading Group Guide
The Given World
Marian Palaia
In her riveting debut novel, Marian Palaia courageously explores love, loss, and survival, offering a candid and unforgettable look at what it means to be human. Unable to come to terms with the disappearance of her beloved brother in Vietnam, Riley leaves her home in Montana behind and sets out on a wild and uncertain journey to find peace. From San Francisco to Saigon, she mingles with a cast of tragic figures and misfits — people from all walks of life, bound by the unspeakable suffering they have endured and their fierce struggle to recover some of that which they have lost. Spanning more than twenty-five years, the coming-of-age story of one injured but indefatigable young woman explodes into a stunning portrait of a family, a generation, and a world rocked by war — and still haunted by it long after.
Topics for Discussion
1. Why does Riley leave her home in Montana? What informs the choices she makes about where she travels? Does she ultimately find what she is seeking in each place?
2. How do Riley’s parents respond to her departure and her long absence? Consider how the author uses shifts in point of view to reveal this information. Are the reactions of Riley’s parents expected? Surprising?
3. In the first chapter of the book, Riley says: “They say our early memories are really memories of what we think we remember — stories we tell ourselves — and as we grow older, we re-remember, and often get it wrong along the way. I’m willing to believe that, but I still trust some of my memories.” Is Riley a reliable narrator? How can we determine it? What does the novel seem to indicate about the nature of memory? Is memory a benefit or a curse?