One Minus One (Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries) Read online

  Also by Ruth Doan MacDougall:

  The Lilting House

  The Cost of Living

  Wife and Mother

  Aunt Pleasantine

  The Flowers of the Forest

  A Lovely Time Was Had by All

  A Woman Who Loved Lindbergh

  Mutual Aid

  The Snowy Series:

  The Cheerleader

  Snowy

  Henrietta Snow

  The Husband Bench, or Bev’s Book

  A Born Maniac, or Puddles’s Progress

  With Daniel Doan:

  50 Hikes in the White Mountains

  50 More Hikes in New Hampshire

  As Editor:

  Indian Stream Republic: Settling a New England Frontier, 1785–1842, by Daniel Doan

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 1971 Ruth Doan MacDougall

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612183220

  ISBN-10: 1612183220

  TO PENELOPE DOAN

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  PART ONE: THE MORNING MAN

  PART TWO: THE ROOMMATES

  PART THREE: THE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

  Readers’ Guide for One Minus One

  Discussion Questions

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  About the Author

  About Nancy Pearl

  About Book Lust Rediscoveries

  Introduction

  I FIRST discovered Ruth Doan MacDougall in 1965 when I was a junior English major at the University of Michigan. At the time (and for many years before and after, although no longer) Redbook magazine would include a complete novel in the back pages of each issue, and it was there that I came across MacDougall’s first novel, The Lilting House. The pages of these novels in Redbook were always both darker in color and heavier than the other pages of the magazine. Perhaps for that reason, and because Redbook was explicitly a magazine for adult women, and I didn’t quite feel like a woman yet (these were the years when “don’t trust anyone over thirty” was the prevailing ethic in my sociopolitical circle, and none of us was in any hurry to grow up), reading those novels (and I always read them) felt to me daringly illicit.

  I adored The Lilting House when I read it, but didn’t pay particular attention to the author’s name, so I never connected it with three other novels by MacDougall that I greatly enjoyed over the next eight or ten years: The Cost of Living, One Minus One, and The Cheerleader. After reading those, I was always on the lookout for any new novels by her. I especially hoped, as I’m sure all of us who read the story of Henrietta “Snowy” Snow in The Cheerleader did, for a sequel to that particular book. Although that was not to be until Snowy was published in 1993, in the meantime MacDougall wrote a number of other novels that I enjoyed, including Wife and Mother and Aunt Pleasantine. But, to close the circle of this reminiscence, around 1990, while I was working at the Tulsa City-County Library as the head of the Collection Development Department, I found an “ex-library” copy of The Lilting House at the library book sale. Remembering how much I had enjoyed it, I purchased the copy and then discovered, to my amazement, that it was written by one of my now favorite writers, Ruth Doan MacDougall! I was so thrilled to connect The Lilting House with some of my current favorites that I went on a reference search for her address (no small feat in those days) and wrote her a fan letter. (I hadn’t written to a writer since I was twelve or thirteen years old and sent a poem of mine—inspired by his novel Street Rod—to Henry Gregor Felsen.)

  So when I was thinking about what novels I’d like to include in the Book Lust Rediscoveries series, it was almost a forgone conclusion that at least one of them had to be by Ruth Doan MacDougall. After much mulling, I decided to begin with One Minus One (the first section of which, I just discovered, also appeared in Redbook, although I hadn’t read it there).

  When I talk to librarians (and librarians-to-be, in the Reader’s Advisory classes that I teach at the University of Washington), I like to say that there are four main doorways through which one can enter (or be drawn into) a work of fiction: story, character, setting, and language. My “dominant doorway,” so to speak, tends to be character (second is language). So it’s not surprising that what most draws me to MacDougall’s novels are the characters she creates. For me (and I know that this isn’t the case for all or even most readers), plot is far less important. In fact, the plot of the novels I’m most taken with almost always seems to grow out of the nature of its characters: it’s who they are that seems to determine what happens in the story. These are novels in which the characters are three-dimensional, can’t be summed up in a sentence or two, and are much more than a type or an archetype. They have a body and blood, bones, and brains.

  Such characters aren’t simply slotted into the story, like cogs in a machine, to serve the process of the story’s unfolding. Examples of this might include the wizard who the story’s protagonist depends on for guidance and strategic aid (e.g., Gandalf, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy); the noble cowboy/gunfighter who rides into town, helps the overmatched family man in his battle with the bad guys, and then rides out again (e.g., Shane, in Jack Schaefer’s novel of the same name); or the brilliant detective who is characterized by his numerous eccentricities (e.g., Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe). Now, as much as I’ve loved reading these books, their biggest doorway is story. And although I’m a huge fan of these three authors, it’s not the depth of the characters that draws me into them the way it does with other novels. In character-driven novels, I can easily imagine them walking down the street, sitting next to them in a coffee shop, or standing behind them in line at the grocery store. They’re not necessarily like anyone I know (or, for that matter, not necessarily like me), but they do seem familiar in a reassuring way.

  Unlike a lot of readers of character-driven fiction whom I’ve talked to, I don’t necessarily have to like these people (or approve of their decisions or support their choices), but I do have to be able to understand why they do what they do. In Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods, for example, I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for John Wade, the main character, but I believe I know exactly why he did what he did. (And, by the way, for curious readers, yes, I do have some sympathy for him.) Similarly, I defy any reader to admire the way the eponymous main character in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning collection of linked short stories Olive Kitteridge behaves, but I totally get the reasons why she acts out her toxic unhappiness. (Incidentally, I was one of the judges for the Pulitzers the year Strout won, and it was certainly one of my top three books of the year.)

  Another indication that a novel’s characters are three-dimensional is that upon finishing the book I can’t help but wonder what might have happened to them next. I’m left not just with a sense of regret that an engrossing and enjoyable reading experience has come to an end (and now I’ll have to find something else to read) as I might be with, say, a good, plot-driven thriller, but with a sense that I’ve been hanging out with a group of interesting people that I’ve grown to know well, and I’ll miss them.

  Our choice for Seattle
Public Library’s very first “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book” was Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, which is divided into four parts, each of which is narrated by a different character. Always, when Banks spoke to audiences in Seattle, one of the first questions he was asked (and it was my question, too, the first time I read the novel) was “What happened to Billy Ansel [one of four main characters] after the book ended?” Now that’s the sign of a writer who has created a character that’s become part of a reader’s life. I can’t imagine a higher compliment to give a writer.

  And that’s exactly what Ruth Doan MacDougall does in each of her novels. The characters are recognizable, familiar (sometimes uncomfortably so), and alive in my mind. I want to know more about them. I want to know how their lives turn out after the end of the book. Especially Emily, the narrator and central figure in One Minus One. Since 1971, when I first read One Minus One, I’ve thought about Emily a lot. Without giving too much of the plot away, I’ll simply say that MacDougall sets up a dilemma for this divorced woman who’s making her way through her fourth decade: How do you go on with your life when everything that you counted on (love, a husband, a way of life) has been willfully annihilated by the very person you most trusted? Do you listen to your heart or your head?

  I’m sure that some readers will become impatient with Emily’s behavior; they’ll feel that she’s wallowing in her sorrow, that she should put the past behind her, move on. There were times during rereadings of One Minus One that I felt this way—I’ve wanted to (gently) shake Emily and tell her to stop behaving like a child, to grow up and pay attention to the opportunities the future holds. Other times, though, I understand completely why her heart can’t let go of a love that’s now doing her no good at all, and I can’t bring myself to fault her for it. And, really, in the end, who’s to say which offers the best guide to how to live your life, your heart or your head?

  I hope you enjoy One Minus One as much as I did.

  Nancy Pearl

  PART ONE: THE MORNING MAN

  I SAID to the cocktail waitress, “Is there any way to get to Hull without going around that damn traffic circle?”

  “Well, miss, there’s the old way through Portsmouth.”

  I peered at my map in the gloom. “I know, Route One-A, but is it marked or does it let you end up lost in the middle of downtown?”

  “Sorry, I guess I never noticed,” she said, and picked up my empty glass she’d replaced with a new gin and tonic, and moved briskly off.

  In the bar, it seemed that outdoors didn’t exist, although I knew that outdoors it was afternoon, and hot, and the sun sizzled on the blue ocean. Labor Day.

  I had wanted a long drink when I’d left the beach, but I didn’t want one alone in my attic apartment, and as I drove down the road I saw that a big old camp had been made into a restaurant. SEASIDE RESTAURANT, its sign said, though it was not on the seaside of the road; COCKTAIL LOUNGE, it said. The place looked clumsily friendly. I’d hesitated, for this would be another ordeal, like driving distances and going to the beach alone. I never in my life had gone into a restaurant alone, much less a bar. You have got to do it, I told myself, there are hundreds of things you have got to learn to do now and not all of them are mechanical things like driving a car and sharpening knives and adjusting a TV picture. My hands had begun to sweat as I turned and drove toward the restaurant.

  Inside, in the pine booths with red-checked tablecloths, many people were eating whatever meal people eat mid-afternoon in restaurants, and the smell of fried seafood was hot and thick. Waitresses galloped. Everyone, it seemed, looked up at me as I came in, a lone woman wearing an old cotton skirt and blouse, and I nearly fled, but that would have been even more embarrassing. A little sign said LOBSTER BUOY LOUNGE, and I stepped through the doorway into a darkness so sudden I had to wait moments until I could see the people on the red-cushioned benches behind small tables, the people on the high stools at the bar. Where did a woman alone sit, at a table or at the bar? The women here were no help; they were all with men. But the bar might be a vaguely disreputable choice (memories of peroxide blondes in gangster movies), so I slid behind a table and sat down on the bench and ordered my drink. Feeling very brave, sipping the drink rather too fast, I studied the map I’d brought in to have something to do.

  Now, with my second drink, I was brave enough to look around. There were indeed a great many lobster buoys hanging from the ceiling, and clamshells and starfish were arranged in the mesh of the fishnets on the walls. The jukebox was singing “Galveston.”

  The man at the next table said, “Route One-A is marked pretty clearly, and anyway, all you have to do is follow the signs for the Spaulding Turnpike.”

  Oh, my God, I thought. This was something else I’d never had to cope with, unless you counted guys saying “Hi there, baby” to you in the street, or guys in cars honking their horns and yelling at you out the window. And then there was that time in Boston when I was walking alone to Jordan Marsh while David, who hated shopping, was exploring Beacon Hill, and a guy grabbed one of my breasts. Not that there’s much to grab, but he did, and twisted, let go, and kept on walking. Despite my panic, my first worry was that somebody had seen, yet no one had.

  I ignored this man and looked at the map again.

  He said, “That traffic circle is a nightmare today, isn’t it?”

  And my feelings about the traffic circle were so intense I forgot to maintain silence and said, “I honestly didn’t think I’d make it around it alive.” It had been much worse than I remembered. At all four entrances cars from Maine and Massachusetts and New Hampshire were backed up as far as I could see, we New Hampshire cars, we natives, waiting at the western entrance to try to creep through to get to our bit of coast. The circle was a spinning madhouse.

  He said, “They’re building an overpass, that’ll siphon off some of the traffic.”

  “It used to be awful, but not so bad as now. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Then you’re from around here?” he said.

  “No,” I said abruptly, trying to repair the situation.

  But he said, “I’m Warren Goodwin, I work at WHNH.” Which was Hull’s radio station; I’d seen a billboard that told me to tune in. He said, “What do you do?”

  Self-conscious about calling myself a writer, I’d always called myself a housewife. I remembered what I was now. “I’m an English teacher.”

  “Where?”

  So he was the kind who kept asking question after question. I disliked the type, yet admired it because I wished that when I wanted to know something personal I too could ask right out, but I didn’t dare because it wasn’t polite and instead I waited for the information to be volunteered; sometimes it never was, so I never knew.

  “In Millbridge,” I said.

  “Been there long?”

  “This will be my first year.”

  “Where’d you teach before?”

  “No place.”

  I could see that now in the dimness he was trying to judge my age. Once in a while when I was with David I’d had to show my driver’s license to get a drink, and although I didn’t believe I really looked under twenty-one, apparently I didn’t look so old as I was, either. At least not in the dark of a bar. Did I now, alone? Was I beginning to look no age, the way most women did between twenty-five and thirty-five?

  He said, “This your first year out of school?”

  “Good God, no,” I said, but pleased. I was thirty. I began to feel somewhat friendlier. I glanced at him. He seemed tall, and he had long sideburns.

  He said, “I thought you said you didn’t live around here. You don’t live in Millbridge?”

  “It’s probably the most hideous town in New Hampshire, I can’t imagine who does. Though I expect I’ll find out.”

  “Then you must live in Hull.”

  “Well. Yes.”

  “So do I. How about another drink?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, yet the reason was I’d just
remembered I had to drive home. How easy, how lovely, it’d be to be a passenger once more.

  He said, “What’s your name?”

  It hadn’t been so hard to learn to say my maiden name again; it was when signing my name I forgot and wrote “Emily B. Lewis.” I said, “Emily Bean,” and picked up my pocketbook.

  “Well, Miss Emily Bean, since I don’t use the traffic circle on weekends or holidays, I’ll be going back through Portsmouth, so why don’t you follow me and we’ll see you don’t get lost.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then, “Thank you.” I looked at the map. “After Portsmouth, it’s got to be the Spaulding Turnpike, has it? There’s no old road?”

  “The turnpike’s the only way nowadays. Hell of a situation, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” I said, and, remembering the check, reached for it just as he took it off my table. “Hey—”

  But he was at the bar, paying the bartender. Below fishnet bunting, bottles glowed, opal and emerald.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We went out through the restaurant. I’d come in alone; now there was a man walking behind me. Had I got picked up?

  Outdoors, the shock of light and heat was like a blow. We squinted at each other.

  “You won’t lose me,” he said. “I’m the bus.”

  It was an old blue Volkswagen bus with bright decals of flowers stuck all over it, and WHNH was painted on one door.

  I said, “This is mine,” and he opened the door of the middle-aged Falcon for me and I got in. But I didn’t really think of it as mine; it still seemed David’s, and I hadn’t wanted it, although at last I took it because this was most sensible since Ann Turner had a car herself. Sensible swap. And now I didn’t have to move the seat up as I always used to the one time a week I did the grocery shopping and the laundry; now it was always in the right position for me.

  “By tomorrow,” he said, looking at the cars streaming along the narrow coastal road, “they’ll all be gone. The place’ll be deserted.”