The Usual Rules Read online

  Praise for The Usual Rules

  “Maynard’s Wendy... speaks to a generation of young girls who are trying to navigate through a culture of loss, of wanting to belong to a family and at the same time free themselves from the usual rules.”

  —USA Today

  “Joyce uses her thirteen-year-old main character as a tool to personalize that day—and does it in a sad and beautiful way.”

  —Jane magazine

  “[Maynard] seems to deeply understand a teenager’s grief.”

  —People

  “Maynard has created a story of great hope, of an enduring belief in mankind that triumphs even before evidence of horrible cruelty and loss.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “Joyce Maynard takes us into the heart and mind of a thirteen-year-old girl struggling to come to terms with her mother’s death. What so many of us wondered about—and what most of us feared—is captured perfectly in these pages: the horror, the disbelief, the unspeakable grief, and the painfully slow recovery that come hand-in-hand with such a sudden and senseless loss.”

  —Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters

  “Any reader who has suffered great loss—loss of love, of certainty, of trust in the usual rules—will empathize with, and be comforted by, Maynard’s wonderfully authentic characters. The story of their journey from devastation to hope is honest, heartrending, compassionate, and, in the end, profoundly healing. A jewel.”

  —Martha Beck, author of Expecting Adam:

  A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

  “A heartbreaking, haunting, perfectly pitched novel about a young girl who loses everything one sunny September morning, and manages to find herself in the midst of it all. If we are still learning lessons post 9/11, then Maynard’s book should be required reading: to help us remember how we used to be; and to celebrate the stronger, spirited people we are capable of becoming.”

  —Jodi Picoult, author of Perfect Match and Second Glance

  “Out of violence, sorrow, and loss, Maynard has crafted a miracle: a heart-breaking and ultimately hopeful novel that has much to say about families and the ways in which they support and fail each other. At the heart of The Usual Rules is this: love and understanding are the means by which we save ourselves.”

  —Anne LeClaire, author of Leaving Eden and Entering Normal

  “The Usual Rules is a wonderful book, bravely, and beautifully written. Maynard . . . writes with humor, insight, and a touch of real genius. This writer understands so well that human suffering and human healing really take place not in the newspapers or on television, but quietly at home, in the details of everyday life, deeply affecting the people we know, and the people we are.”

  —Reeve Lindbergh, author of Under a Wing:

  A Memoir and No More Words: A Journal of My Mother

  “Joyce Maynard’s The Usual Rules is a funny and sad and exquisitely moving novel. And it is an important one, as we pick up the pieces of our culture following the events of September 11, 2001. What a blessing of a book Joyce Maynard has given us.”

  —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of

  A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories

  The

  Usual Rules

  ALSO BY JOYCE MAYNARD

  Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties

  Baby Love (a novel)

  Domestic Affairs (essays)

  To Die For (a novel)

  Where Love Goes (a novel)

  At Home in the World (a memoir)

  FOR CHILDREN

  Campout

  New House

  JOYCE

  MAYNARD

  The

  Usual Rules

  ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN

  NEW YORK

  For my daughter and sons, Audrey, Charlie, and Willy Bethel, whose love for one another shines through even when continents separate them, just as it did when the space they shared was no larger than the backseat of an old Ford station wagon, with a harried mother at the wheel.

  All the best parts of the young people in this book came from my life with you.

  THE USUAL RULES. Copyright © 2003 by Joyce Maynard. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Permission to quote from Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl granted by the Liepman Agency, copyright © 1982, 1991, 2001 by the Anne Frank Funds, Basel, Switzerland.

  Excerpts from The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers copyright © 1946 by Carson McCullers. Copyright © renewed 1974 by Floria V. Lasky. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company and the Estate of Carson McCullers. All rights reserved.

  Excerpts from Goodnight Moon used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 1947 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated. Text copyright renewed 1975 by Roberta Brown Rauch.

  Book design by Kathryn Parise

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Maynard, Joyce.

  The usual rules / Joyce Maynard. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-24261-1 (he)

  ISBN 0-312-28369-5 (pbk)

  1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Fiction. 2. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 5. Mothers—Death— Fiction. 6. Teenage girls—Fiction. 7. California—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A9638 U7 2003

  813'.54—dc21

  2002036754

  10 9 8 7 6

  It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

  It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too will end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

  — Anne Frank, in her diary, July 15, 1944

  The

  Usual Rules

  It was a story Wendy knew well, how she got her name.

  Your dad wanted to call you Sierra, her mother would begin, because you were conceived in the Sierra Mountains, on a camping trip. Trout fishing, naturally. But ever since I was a little girl, I always said if I had a daughter, I’d call her Wendy.

  Her mother loved musicals, the big old-fashioned kind. Growing up in Cedar Falls, the only time she ever saw a show was the annual Lions Club production, but one time they had the real Broadway version of Peter Pan on TV, with the actress Mary Martin playing Peter. Having a woman play Peter wasn’t as strange as you’d think, because she was skinny and her hair was cut short like a boy.

  This was way back. Wendy’s mother, Janet, was only five years old at the time. She herself had been named after a singer on her parents’ favorite show, Lawrence Welk. One of the Lennon Sisters. But even back then, she knew she wasn’t a Lawrence Welk type. She was going to be a Broadway dancer. She wanted to play Peter Pan herself. Someday that was going to be her flying over the audience, dancing with the Lost Boys, singing “I’ve Gotta Crow.” Her hair was long but she’d cut it.

  She got to New Yor
k on a bus when she was eighteen years old. Back home she’d done some typing for her father’s insurance office. With the money she’d saved she rented a room in the Barbizon Hotel, which catered to young women who came to New York City from places like Missouri. She went to auditions, but in the meantime she got a job as a waitress at a Chock Full o’Nuts restaurant and a second job, nights, as something called a Peachy Puff girl, selling cigarettes and candy bars at clubs in a little outfit that was basically a bathing suit, with a few ruffles on the bottom. That was where she met her friend Kate. The two of them saved up their money so they could buy tickets to shows. She went without food sometimes, but never musicals.

  Janet was a wonderful dancer. They always told her that. But not being able to carry a tune, she was out of the running for featured roles, if any singing was involved.

  Her big break was getting to be an understudy in A Chorus Line. Not for any of the main parts, but when one of the dancers in the company couldn’t go on, Janet did.

  The problem was, she got this look on her face when she danced. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t change. It’s fine to be happy, a casting director told her once. But you keep giving me rapture, and that’s a little much.

  The audience is meant to be looking at the featured performers, another director told her once. When you’re dancing, we end up watching you.

  I’ll try not to stand out so much, she said.

  I don’t think you can help it, he told her.

  The closest she ever got to an actual role was final callbacks for Princess Tiger Lily in a road company revival of Peter Pan. Not Mary Martin anymore.

  I think this time I’m going to get it, she had told her mother when she called with the news.

  The next day, running across the street on her way to the theater—her last audition, when it was down to just a handful of dancers—a bicycle messenger ran into her. She knew the minute she hit the ground that it was bad. She sat on the curb, on the corner of Forty-fourth Street and Eighth Avenue, crying. A man came out of a stage door, carrying a bunch of tools. A set builder. Hey, he said. You look like you could use a cup of coffee.

  That was Garrett. He was working as a carpenter, but he was really an artist. He took her out for dim sum that night. He was very handsome in a way that made her think of Billy Bigelow in Carousel. As soon as her ankle was better, they danced together in his loft. East Coast swing.

  They fell in love. He painted her. A few months later, he took her crosscountry in his truck. Camping mostly, and stopping along the way at places where the fishing was good. He loved to fish, and she actually liked tying flies, or thought she did, she was that much in love.

  By then she had started to wonder if it really was what she wanted most, to tap-dance in the back row now and then, nights when somebody in the company called in sick, living in her little one-room apartment, eating her soup alone. She was twenty-six years old. A whole new crop of terrific dancers landed in New York every year, also wanting to dance on Broadway. They were younger than she was, with the kind of fierce ambition she used to have when she first got to New York.

  The pregnancy—discovered a few days after they returned from their camping trip—came as a surprise, but not bad news. What do you say we get married? Garrett had said.

  From the beginning, Janet had understood that Garrett was something of a Peter Pan type himself. But she had a weakness for lost boys. Even a hit show would close eventually. A tour would end. A marriage and a baby ran forever. That was the hope anyway.

  I didn’t even have a boy’s name picked out, her mother told her. I was so sure you were going to be a girl.

  Wendy: the oldest of the children Peter took with him to Neverland. The sensible one, but full of spunk. The one who kept things together for everyone.

  Things had been rough in Neverland for Wendy and her two brothers, and the other Lost Boys. They hardly remembered their own mothers, they’d been gone so long, so it was Wendy who took care of them. She did things like mend their shirts, but she also told them stories.

  I’d do that, too, Wendy told her mother when they got to this part. If I had a brother, I’d take the best care of him.

  Some people might have gotten fed up with a person like Peter Pan. He was so irresponsible, but Wendy was patient. She loved him for the good parts and forgave the rest.

  Even though she was this sensible, motherly-type person, there was another side to Wendy. She was an adventurer. She was brave, even when she was captured by the pirates. At the darkest moments, she never gave up hope.

  Many times, when she was little, Wendy and her mother had rented the video of Mary Martin playing Peter Pan. When it got to the place where Peter asked everyone to close their eyes and think hard if they believed in fairies, to keep Tinker Bell from dying, Wendy had done it. Yes, I believe, she called out to the television set. I really do.

  Of course, everything had turned out all right in the end. That was one of the other great things about musicals, her mother said. The happy endings.

  PART ONE

  New York

  One

  Quarter past six. In ten minutes, Wendy would have to get in the shower. Her clock radio came on. A newsman was talking about the elections for mayor of New York City. She switched to music. Madonna.

  She went through her new school clothes in her head, thinking up combinations. Her mother said the great thing about the gray pants was how you could wear them with anything, but when she wore them yesterday, she’d felt as if she was playing dress-up. Nobody else in eighth grade had pants like that. She wished she’d gotten the purple-and-green-plaid kilt instead, that her mom said was impractical. Her mom, who owned three different-colored feather boas and red velvet harem pants, a leopard-print cat suit, and a tutu, not to mention all her old Peachy Puffs getups.

  Those pants really flatter your figure, her mother said when she put them on yesterday.

  Do you think I’m fat? Wendy said. Her mother was a size four, and they could share clothes now, but Wendy could tell that before long, her clothes would be bigger than her mother’s.

  Of course not. All I meant was they make you look even slimmer than usual.

  I’m fat, aren’t I? Wendy told her.

  You’ve got a perfect body. Much nicer than if you were one of those stick-figure types. I always wished I had a shape.

  In other words I’m chunky, said Wendy.

  You look just right, her mother said. Your bones are bigger, that’s all.

  Louie opened the door partway, just enough that she could see a corner of his face, eyes crusty, thumb in mouth.

  Are you dry?

  He told her yes.

  Positive?

  There’s just this one little drip but it got soaked up in my sleeper suit, so it doesn’t count. He stood there holding Pablo, with the old blue ribbon from when Pablo was new wrapped around his thumb. He liked to twirl the tip of the ribbon in his ear with his free hand while he sucked on the thumb of his other hand.

  Just don’t get any pee on me, she said.

  He positioned himself in the bed so every inch of the side closest to Wendy was touching some part of her. She could hear the slurping sound his lips made on this thumb, and his breathing, slow and quiet, still labored from last week’s cold.

  One two three four. He was counting the rabbits on her pajama bottoms, though after twelve or thirteen, he usually gave up.

  I dreamed we got a puppy, he said. The two of them had been after their parents about that forever.

  What kind?

  With spots. Little and fuzzy.

  Are you going to school again today? he said.

  I already explained to you, Louie. I go to school every day now except Saturday and Sunday. Five days in a row, school, and two days home, only probably a lot of times I’ll be sleeping over at Amelia’s Friday nights.

  I want you to stay home with me, he said.

  She could hear the shower running in the room next to hers. She called it her pa
rents’ bathroom, even though Josh wasn’t her real father, only Louie’s. It was easier, plus he seemed more like her father than her real one.

  You’ll be going to school, too, pretty soon anyway, she told him. Thursday is preschool orientation, remember? You might want to work on not sucking your thumb so much. The other kids might make fun of you.

  I changed my mind, he said. I don’t want to go to preschool after all. I want to stay home and play with you.

  Well, I’m not going to be home, she said. And even if I was, I probably wouldn’t play that much.

  Why?

  I’m not in that stage anymore. Once you get to my stage in life, you want to do different kinds of things.

  What?

  Josh was making French toast. The kitchen smelled of just-ground coffee beans and frying butter. He was playing the Teach Yourself Spanish tape. Part one of her mother’s birthday present last month. Part two was the trip to Mexico scheduled for next spring, when Wendy was going to stay at Amelia’s or possibly go to California to visit her real dad, but she wasn’t supposed to count on this. It had been nearly three years since she’d seen him.

  Her mother had said they couldn’t afford a trip to Mexico, but Josh told her she worried too much. Six months from now, I could get hit by a bus, he said, and boy would you ever wish you’d gone on that trip.

  The coffeepot made the sound that meant the coffee was ready. Josh poured himself a cup of coffee. Louie hopped in on one foot. He had taken off his cape now and replaced it with the cummerbund from his Aladdin costume. All week he’d been working on his skipping, and now he was circling the table, making little frog jumps. He hadn’t figured out yet how to alternate his feet.