Tuesday, January 7, 2020

#119 Inside the Emotion of Fiction "THE FACE TELLS THE SECRET" by Jane Bernstein



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***The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished fiction genre writers for INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION.  Contact CRC Blog via email at
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****Jane Bernstein’s THE FACE TELLS THE SECRET is #119 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt.  All INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece. 

Has this been published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes, what publisher and what publication date? Yes.  The publication date was October 18, 2019.  Regal House Publishing. 

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I started this novel about ten years ago, but there was a long stretch when I lost confidence and put the manuscript aside to work on something else.  Usually, it’s hard to reenter work that’s been abandoned.  But in this case, as soon as I picked up the pages, I knew I had to keep going.


Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. I no longer write in my office, a bright, beautiful space with a sitting and standing desk.  
     
     Too many distractions, too many reminders of all the tasks I should be completing, the bills I need to pay, the student papers I need to read, etc.  Instead, I sit in a chair (Above Left) in the corner of my bedroom, the least interesting and least distracting spot in my house. 
Summers, when I’m in Maine, I sit on the dock and write on sunny days. (Right)

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I’m a morning person, not one of those super-efficient, waking up at 5:00 AM writers, but someone who tries to write before plugging into a world of tasks and responsibilities.  
On a good day, I’m in my writing chair by 9:00.  The only time I sit in my “sacred chair” is to write. I don’t talk on the phone, use the internet, or do email when I’m in my chair.  That keeps my relationship with this space pure.  I write in long hand, with a stubby old Pelikan fountain pen.  I do all of my early drafts in longhand.  Writing longhand keeps me in dreamland, thinking of nothing except what’s happening on the page.  Once I print what I’ve drafted, I become an editor, which is a really different stage in the process. 

What excerpt of the book was the most emotional for you to write? This excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
 I followed her down a long corridor that led to an annex.  First there was the pungent smell of chlorine, then air that thickened from humidity.  From outside the closed doors to the natatorium I could hear the echoes of conversation.  Mrs. Silk opened the door a crack and peered inside.  “Shall I give the two of you some time alone?”
“Okay,” I said. “Where will I find you?”
She touched my arm.  “I’ll be in my office all day.  Stay as long as you like.”
            I stepped inside.  It was a large pool, the size of the one at my gym.  No lanes or diving boards. A hydraulic lift to lower swimmers into the water.  Fiber optic tails sparkling on the tiled walls.   A man was in the pool, cradling a limp woman, and he was moving, swirling, dancing with her in his arms. The woman was so skinny and pale in a stretched-out red swimsuit, broad shoulders, small breasts, long salt and pepper braid.  He bounced over to the end of the pool and said, “You’re Aviva’s sister?  Come in!”  
The tile floor was wet.  I took off my shoes and walked slowly toward the water.  And the woman, my sister, her jaw slack, mouth hanging open as if she were asleep.  Long white limbs.  Hands fisted, feet turned in at the ankles.  A being.  The shock of seeing her breasts.  A woman, the body perfectly formed, for what?  The face, her face, like mine, the fluttering eyes and crowded teeth, a being, a woman, a sister, separate from me, part of me.  I had yearned for a sister, but not this, not her.  The air was so thick I could hardly breathe.
The man, now that I was closer, had a puff of white chest hair.  His eyes, too big and blue for his narrow face, were downturned, as if in sadness, in opposition to his cheerful demeanor.  An aide, I thought. A therapist who enjoyed his job, though what kind of person would do this, I could not imagine.  I watched while they danced, and realized there was noise in the room, like the sound in an aquarium where dolphins splashed and played; aquatic sounds that echoed as he sang and twirled in the water.  I wanted to go home.  Away.  Anywhere else. 
The man danced his way closer to me again, Aviva limp in his arms, before I realized that the echo had distorted his words, and he was speaking to me. “Come in.  The water is something else.”
I said, “Another time.”  I couldn’t imagine another time. “I don’t have a bathing suit.” 
The man called out in Hebrew to the lift operator, and a few minutes later, he handed me a blue one-piece swimsuit and pointed. 
The locker room was empty.  Even so, I pulled the curtain shut before I slipped into the well-worn suit.  When I stepped out, I caught sight of my whole self in the mirror.  At first there was a shock of recognition -- I know her!  -- as if I was seeing a long lost relative from afar.  Then, taking a step back -- she’s small! -- another surprise, since living with Harley had given me the illusion that I was a big truck-like woman, a Hummer of a human being, driving over curbs and flattening everyone in my path.  I put my arms on my hips and scrutinized my flattened image.  From a distance I looked like a paper doll.
Someone needs to clothe her, I thought.  A pretty tunic and flowing pants, with tabs to keep the garments in place.  Someone needs to give her a name and a history and imagine a life for her.
Why don’t we call her Vered?
How about if we give her a career. Have her be a maker of pretty things. Beautiful containers.  Nesting boxes.
I imagined myself the second doll of three nesting dolls.  Vered.
This time pushing the “r” to the back of my throat, so the name sounded as it might in Hebrew. 
Aviva was the smallest doll, the one inside me.


Why is this excerpt so emotional for you to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific scene/excerpt? The Face Tells the Secret is a novel about a woman named Roxanne who knows absolutely nothing about her own history.  She learns that she has a profoundly disabled sister only weeks before this scene takes place, and now she stands before this sister, this twin, who has been negated by the family, forgotten, as if she’d never been born.  I can’t really express in a few words what this scene felt like when I wrote it and the effect it still has on me.  It’s a major part of the story and it takes my protagonist time to get to some place of accommodation. 
I am not my protagonist, but it took me a long time to get there, too.

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. I scribble up my drafts in crazy ways with letters and numbers and arrows.  Alas, I don’t think I have any existing versions of this scene.


Other works you have published?
Gina From Siberia, Animal Media, Pittsburgh.  With Charlotte Glynn. Illustrated by Anya Desnitskaya, Animal Media. 
Rachel in the World – University of Illinois Press.

Bereft – A Sister’s Story.  North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Loving Rachel Little, Brown and Co., Boston, MA..
Seven Minutes in Heaven. Fawcett, New York, NY, 1986. 
Departures. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, NY, 1979.

Anything you would like to add? Thank you for keeping this site going and for being a reader.

          Jane Bernstein is the author of two novels, three memoirs, and a children’s book she cowrote with her daughter. She is a lapsed screenwriter, and an essayist, whose stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, and many other journals, and have been anthologized in such places as True Stories Well Told, Love You to Pieces, and Best American Sports Writing 2018. A Brooklyn native, she is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Fulbright Fellowship and is a member of the Creative Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
janebernstein7517@gmail.com





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“The Face Tells the Secret”