Angie watches as her mom bends to take off her flat black ballet shoes, the edge where her big toe sticks out starting to wear toward a hole. The shoes are such a familiar thing—Angie’s momentarily surprised by seeing them in this context, struck by a strange tenderness toward them. She unties her sneakers and the three of them walk across the sand.
Angie’s finally here, on the beach where her parents stood together all those years ago.
* * *
Justin sets up blankets and umbrellas, and Sam arrives with Miguel and Cherry a few minutes later.
“You remember,” Justin says to Marilyn, “when you dropped your shoe off the pier?”
Marilyn laughs. “Yeah. I still have those red flip-flops James bought me.”
“We had some good times,” Justin says.
“We did.”
While the others get up to play football, Marilyn begins The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Angie starts The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, one in a stack of books that Justin gave her to take home.
When she turns around, she sees Marilyn texting, smiling at her phone.
“Who are you talking to?” Angie asks.
“Manny,” Marilyn says. “After you left—I was such a mess. I didn’t know who else to go to. He’s always been a great friend.”
Angie raises her eyebrows.
“I just wanted to let him know everything’s alright. We’re going to have dinner this week.” She reaches out and tugs at Angie’s toe. “Take a walk with me?”
“Okay,” Angie says, and lets her mom lead the way, the sun dipping toward the water, the colors of sky reflected in the wet sand. They pass kids building castles, families playing Frisbee, a woman in a tiny gold bikini, a toddler running from the waves, people of all ages bobbing in and out of the sea.
When they reach the pier, Angie thinks they’ll climb the steps, but instead, Marilyn walks beneath. The dark of the shadow makes the water ahead so bright. Even on a busy beach day like today, it feels private, almost secret. Angie takes in the salt-stained smell of the old wood.
“This,” Marilyn says, “was one of your dad’s very favorite spots. His own mom first showed it to him.” She pauses. “It was where we’d go to talk, to dream, to be alone with each other…”
Angie puts her arm around her mom. “You miss him, huh?”
Marilyn nods. “Always.” She rests her head against Angie’s. “He would be so proud of you.”
Angie wonders if her mom’s right. This trip did take courage; actually, she thinks, for the first time she’s proud of herself. She’s still not sure what she wants to “be”—maybe a journalist, she thinks now, or a teacher, or a lawyer, or a documentary maker—but she knows she doesn’t want to feel too small to make a difference.
* * *
On the walk back, Marilyn suggests they stop at Hot Dog on a Stick. Angie remembers it from the food court in the mall; now she sees the root of her mom’s love of the place. The little stand by the beach is the original, Marilyn tells her—another discovery she’d once made with James. They get as many hand-dipped corn dogs and cups of fresh lemonade as they can carry, and return to the others.
“I wanna get in the water,” Sam says after he eats his corn dog in three bites. He looks to Angie. “You?”
Angie grins and jumps up.
She steps out timidly at first, the waves breaking and foaming around her stomach, but with Sam’s encouragement finally she dives under.
You can’t understand how wonderful the ocean is, Angie thinks now, until you’ve been swimming in it. She and Sam float on their backs, contained in the endless blue of water and sky.
How many of the seven billion people in the world are seventeen years old? How many are pregnant with a future child, and how many still feel like children themselves? How many are squinting into the same sun? How many are floating in the sea? How many are mourning lost loves, and how many are falling for the first time?
As they make their way to the shore, Angie reaches out, tentatively, for Sam’s hand. He lets her take it. She thinks of what Justin had said: it’s all a question of perspective. She and Sam—two tiny drops of water, but here, together, suddenly they are an ocean. Maybe it’s true that there are no happy endings. But, right now, Angie is grateful to be at what feels like a beginning.
Seventeen years is too short to see on the cosmic timetable of our universe, of our planet, or even of our species. But it’s the time Angie’s dad had on this earth. Angie doesn’t know how many years she’ll get, but right now, she’s here, among the living. Conscious and breathing. She’s alive on this day, in this world full of violence and unthinkable horror, cruelty and kindness, wonder and so much love.
Epilogue
MARILYN
Marilyn means to head to Amarillo, the city where she was born. She’s made it ten hours from LA with only gas station food and bathroom breaks, but by six thirty the road is starting to go bleary ahead of her and she’s starving again. So she pulls off I-40 in Albuquerque—the Central Avenue exit seems like a good bet. After checking into an Econo Lodge, she asks the clerk—a sweet, pimply-faced kid who couldn’t be much older than she is—about a place for dinner. He recommends the 66 Diner down the road, so she walks the few blocks to stretch her legs. She likes the low brown buildings, the epic sky, the sudden mountains. She likes that it is quiet; she likes that there is space. The desert heat has begun to soften with the evening, and the air feels clean and thin and smells like memory.
When she walks into the diner, a pretty girl in a poofy blue dress greets her and guides her to a sparkly vinyl booth. She’s suddenly so tired, she could fall asleep right there. Marilyn asks the girl what’s good to eat, and the girl brings her a green chile cheeseburger and a mint chocolate chip milk shake. This is the best meal I’ve ever had, Marilyn thinks, and she eats it all, down to the last french fry. “My Girl” plays on the jukebox. A little boy with his mother devouring a sundae at the counter sends her a grin. A young couple nods to her on their way out the door. The kindness of strangers means everything now.
Manny, the midtwenties junior manager (so says his name tag) cashes her out at the register. She notices the help wanted sign beside the vintage Coke ads, the jar of Bazooka bubble gum on the counter.
“You have a nice evening.” He smiles, and he has a wonderful smile—the kind that belongs to someone who believes the world is good.
When she steps outside, the sky has turned into an unbelievable riot of color: purples you could swim in, oranges you could eat, distant, streaking rain lit pink. This sunset is the first beautiful thing she has seen—actually seen, really taken in—since James’s death. She feels her chest tear open where it had closed, compelled to let such beauty inside. It is painful. It is necessary.
She rests her hand on her stomach and she swears, for the first time, she can feel the baby move. Maybe it’s a sign, she thinks, and turns to go back into the diner. Manny is still standing behind the register.
“Did you forget something?” he asks.
“Um. No. I was just—I noticed you guys are looking for help? I wondered if I could apply?” She wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans.
The restaurant is beginning to fill up with a dinner rush. A man with two young kids waits behind her.
“Take a seat at the counter,” Manny says. “I’ll be right over.”
Marilyn spins subtly back and forth on the stool until he returns.
“You have any restaurant experience?” he asks.
“No, but I promise I’m a hard worker. I had a 4.0 GPA in school, and…” Marilyn feels stupid. Who quotes their grades? “Well, I’ve had other jobs.”
“Okay, what did you do?”
Marilyn’s cheeks grow hot. She unconsciously reaches her hand to her stomach. “Modeling stuff. I was in a few commercials. I’ve come from LA.” As soon as the words leave her mouth, she realizes she could have lied. Why not say she’d worked in a clothing store?
Manny stu
dies her. “We can start you as a hostess,” he says, finally. “It’s five fifteen an hour, plus the waiters will tip you out. Can you come back tomorrow at noon?”
“Yes, of course,” Marilyn says. “Thank you so much.” Her first real job, on her own in the world.
When she steps out and turns to walk back to the hotel, she sees the Sandia Mountains glowing an impossible pink, the colors of the sunset softening but holding on, a streak of heat lightning flashing ahead. The air smells as promising as electricity. She makes a wish, that her and James’s baby will live a life full of this much beauty.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my editor, Joy Peskin, thank you for pushing me and for trusting me, for your sensitivity and your insight, for your clear eyes and sharp mind. In Search of Us wouldn’t be itself without you. Thank you to Richard Florest, my stellar agent, for helping me create the space to bring this book into the world, and for seeing the girls of the golden west so clearly. And a huge thank-you to Nicholas Henderson, Molly Ellis, Lauren Festa, Brittany Pearlman, Kristin Dulaney, and the amazing team at Macmillan: I feel so lucky to work with such lovely, smart, passionate people.
I’m grateful to have wonderful friends who’ve supported me in big and small ways through the writing process: thank you to you all. Thank you, especially, to Heather Quinn, who knows how to nurture newborn stories, and to Hannah Davey, my day one, whose brilliant brain helped shape this book from beginning to end. Thank you to Stephen Chbosky, who suggested I write my first novel and has been an incredible support ever since. To Lianne Halfon, who sees poetically and incisively at once, thank you for always reading every sentence. To Khamil Riley, a hugely talented reader and writer, thank you for lending your smarts to this story.
A monumental thank-you to my family, who are all part of this book in both visible and invisible ways. To my dad, Tom Dellaira, thank you for your memoir that gave me such a poignant a picture of your past, and of the love you and Mom shared before we were ever there. Thank you for reading, for listening, for your encouragement and your counsel. Laura, my beautiful, brilliant sister-pie, my bestie, my bipster, thank you for your insight, and, as always, for your love and support. Denise Hope Hall, my little sister-in-law, thank you for Citizen, for Christine and the Queens, and especially for you: you are an inspiration in so many ways. Thank you to my stepmom, Jamie Wells, for your compassion and care. To Tammi and Gloria, thank you for welcoming me into your family with open arms from the very beginning. I am so lucky that I have such an amazing new momma and granny.
Thank you to my mother, Mary, who showed me what a mother’s love can mean. Who taught me to chase my dreams. Who dedicated herself to my sister and me. Whom I would give anything to meet at seventeen. I miss you every day.
And thank you to my husband, Doug, for more than I can say. I didn’t know there was love like this until I found you.
Finally, a humble thank-you to several authors whom I deeply admire, whose brilliant work taught and inspired me as I was writing this story: to Ta-Nehisi Coates for his incisive journalism in The Atlantic, to Joan Didion for Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, to Claudia Rankine for Citizen, to James Baldwin for The Fire Next Time, and to Jesmyn Ward and the contributing authors of The Fire This Time. Thank you to Wesley Stephenson, who wrote a BBC News article titled “Do the Dead Outnumber the Living?” published February 4, 2012, which formed the original inspiration for Angie’s ghosts.
* * *
In support of the ongoing fight for racial justice, a portion of the author’s proceeds from this book will be donated directly to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ava Dellaira is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago. Love Letters to the Dead is her debut novel. She currently lives in Santa Monica. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue: Angie
Epigraph
Marilyn
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Angie
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Marilyn
21
22
23
24
25
Angie
26
27
28
29
30
31
Marilyn
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Angie
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Marilyn
50
Angie
51
Marilyn
52
Angie
53
54
55
56
57
Epilogue: Marilyn
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Text copyright © 2018 by Ava Dellaira
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2018
eBook edition, March 2018
fiercereads.com
Jacket design by Elizabeth H. Clark
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Dellaira, Ava, author.
Title: In Search Of / by Ava Dellaira.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2018. | Summary: Relates the stories of Marilyn who, at age seventeen, fell in love with James, left her stage-mother, and set out on her own and Angie, her now seventeen-year-old daughter, who returns to Hollywood seeking her father.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019595 (print) | ISBN 9780374305314 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Racially mixed people—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.D3847 At 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019595
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at
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eISBN 9780374305338
Ava Dellaira, In Search of Us
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