Saturn's Return to New York: A Novel

By Sara Gran

From the author of the Claire DeWitt series: This “witty and poignant” novel of a woman moving on to a new stage of life, as her mother does the same (Rocky Mountain News).
 
Mary Forrest is in her late twenties and comes from a literary family—her widowed mother still runs a prominent journal and shows up at Manhattan book parties packed with writers and intellectuals. Decades ago, Evelyn Forrest faced the kind of harassment that would make headlines in later times, but now her daughter works in publishing in an era that’s a little easier for women. Yet, young Mary is about to face some challenges of her own.
 
Evelyn’s memory has been giving her problems—like “going home” to the place on Twelfth Street where she hasn’t lived since 1977. As Mary tries to support her mother, she struggles with personal relationships, and discovers that a coworker is brazenly trying to steal her job. At an astrological reading that she got as a birthday gift, a psychic explained that this is Mary’s Saturn Return year, her twenty-ninth; the year that the planet Saturn returns to exact spot it was in when she was born. It presages a time of change, and the last painful struggle before finally entering genuine adulthood. So far, it appears to be an accurate prediction . . .
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781569479247

Sara Gran

Sara Gran is the author of Saturn’s Return to New York, Come Closer, Dope, as well as two previous novels featuring Claire DeWitt. Her work has been published in more than a dozen countries. Born in Brooklyn, Sara lived in New York City until 2004. She now lives in Los Angeles and has a successful career writing for television.

Book preview

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Also by Sara Gran

Come Closer

Dope

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

The Infinite Blacktop

Thank you to Mark Levine.

Copyright © 2001 by Sara Gran

All rights reserved.

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gran, Sara.

Saturn’s return to New York / Sara Gran.

ISBN 978-1-64129-040-1

eISBN 978-1-56947-924-7

1. Young women—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

3. Astrology—Fiction.I. Title.

PS3607.R42 S28 2001

813’.6—dc21 2001020627

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Bobby

Introduction

All of my books are about tough women. Often, my books are about tough women who need to be a little less tough, as is true of the two women in this book, Mary and Evelyn, and was maybe true about me and the brilliant, generous editor of this book, Laura Hruska.

When I first spoke to Laura, I’d wanted to be a writer for a long time (or what seemed like a long time to a young person), and had never published anything. No one dug my work, and few people seemed to dig me. I was twenty-eight, and I felt like I was getting old. Now, from the view of forty-six, twenty-eight looks young. It didn’t feel young. I didn’t have a job. I couldn’t get a job. I’d quit my last bookstore gig out of boredom, thinking I’d pick up another one no problem. But the economy was starting to change and the world was starting to change and I couldn’t find another job. I was too young to know that everything changes, all the time, and the future is never to be counted on, only worried about or not. My father offered to support me for three months while I finished my book. I’d written another book, before, and it was okay but not great. I’d sent it to a couple of people, and that lack of greatness was verified for me by the rejections it got. But a few of the rejections were friendly; most notably, one from Laura Hruska at Soho Press. My heart thrilled at the handwritten note on the manuscript. Something like great writing, not for us. Great writing was better than I’d gotten in about seven years. (I also got a kind note from the late, great editor and publisher Barney Rosset, who at the time was trying to get another small press off the ground. I don’t remember all of what his three-line rejection note said, but I remember he used the word lovely to describe my writing. I don’t boast often; I will boast about Barney Rosset calling my writing lovely.)

It was early in the year 2000. I was looking for work and not finding any. My three-month father-sponsored sabbatical was not going well. My mother and father were the oddest combination of generous and cheap I’ve ever met, and my father’s generous offer to support me ended up being a couple of bucks here and there. It was still better than working, and better than what most people get, but I wasn’t making my rent or my bills.

I finished the book (this book). I sent it to Laura and a few other people. I didn’t hear back. No surprise. As I said, I did not feel young, and I did not feel good. I felt like the life I wanted was passing me by. I felt like maybe I’d spend the rest of my life getting up early and squeezing myself onto the subway and trudging through snow to go to a job I hated (if I could find one) and maybe stealing some time for writing on the weekends. Better people than me had done it and are doing it right now. Nothing had ever made me as happy as writing had made me (and nothing ever has since). It was all I wanted to do. It didn’t seem like I’d ever get to do it full time.

I lived in Brooklyn, on the south side of Williamsburg. It was not a fashionable place to live. Brooklyn was still my ugly, rough, hometown, and not yet the suburban fantasy newcomers have warped it into. My boyfriend and I lived in a railroad apartment where the roof leaked and a ceiling fan collapsed and the toilet flushed about two times out of three. The morning of that day I walked a few miles to the Polish 99-cent grocery store in Greenpoint. Maybe it’s still there. Probably not. I could get food there that was cheap and slightly less depressing than the food from Walgreen’s on my corner. I walked to the Polish 99-cent store and bought cherry juice and crackers and I don’t remember what else and on the way back, arms sore from heavy bags, I cried, overwhelmed by self-pity, devoid of hope, furious at life and ashamed of my failures. I was not successful. I was on the road to being poor. I was not popular. My relationship was in a sour spot. My youth and my looks were slipping away like sand. So was my intelligence. Smart is as smart does, and I wasn’t doing much. I wanted to be anywhere but Brooklyn. Now, all this feeling of dread and doom at twenty-something seems dramatic and slightly ridiculous. At the time it all felt very important and very real.

When I got home, still crying, there was a message on my answering machine. It was Laura. She said she’d read the book and wanted me to call her. I stopped crying. I got it together. I called her. She wanted to publish my book. I was alone in my dirty kitchen in my shitty apartment and when we got off the phone I started crying all over again, from happiness and relief.

The year we took to publish this book started off with letters and ended with emails. The editorial process was an afternoon at Laura’s office. I couldn’t believe how easy it all was. Laura was smart and a square dealer. A friend of a friend who was an entertainment lawyer said she was famously tough, and she was. But she was also fair. She gave me a good contract to start with and told me I didn’t need a lawyer or agent (she was right) and compromised on my few minor negotiations. She loved the book. All was well. All was very, very well.

Until we got to bound galleys.

Books go through stages; one cocoon after another after another in between caterpillar and butterfly. You start with the author’s manuscript (author and maybe agent and maybe friends and family have likely given this manuscript a dozen or so reads, each leading to a new draft from the author). Then the editor edits (a process that might and probably will take multiple passes, may or may not involve crying, fighting, and moments of adoration). The copyeditor copyedits (this is not supposed to be a big deal; sometimes it is: on my second and sixth books I had copyeditors who, for mysterious reasons, decided to try some fairly fancy attempts to rewrite my books; they lost and I won; let this be a lesson to any aspiring copy-meddlers reading these pages). Next is the proofreader, who ideally causes no such strong emotions and no drama. From the copyedited or proofread manuscript the first set of bound galleys is created—this a roughly bound and printed copy of the book. Galleys are poorly made but expensive due to their short run. The book is well over 90 percent done by bound galleys. Ideally, it’s more like 99.9 percent done. Ideally, at bound galleys, you’re changing a few commas and catching a few typos and correcting a small handful of errors.

We were at bound galleys when Laura called and said she thought the book needed another chapter at the end.

Soho Press was the vanguard of publishing, and Soho Press was Laura. At least to me. Of course, to other people, Soho Press was also Juris Jurjevics and the other renowned and talented partners and staff who made it thrive. To other people, Laura was a mother, wife, friend, writer, and lawyer. To me, Laura was Soho and Soho was Laura. Laura occupied a place in my psyche I can’t imagine anyone occupying anymore. Now, as a middle-aged woman, I’m full of other people. At the time, as young woman, I had so much space inside, and Laura filled a nice big brick of it. No one else had ever given me what I wanted—a book deal and confirmation that I was not crazy and was, in fact, what I thought I was: a writer. (Now I know I am crazy—and also a writer, and I don’t need anyone’s approval of or agreement with either of those facts.)

Laura was whip-smart and as kind as she was strong-willed. She was, and is, a model for me of how to work. I had not known many strong, successful women. I might not have become one without Laura’s influence.

But I didn’t think the book needed another chapter. I was, like most authors when they get to bound galleys, convinced the book was a shameful pile of trash that should probably be at best forgotten about or maybe burned (this is a normal phase in the publishing process—if you’re publishing a book, expect it). But I didn’t think it needed another chapter. Brevity was the best thing about it.

We went back and forth. Laura felt very, very strongly about this new chapter. She felt like the book didn’t work without it. The reader’s heart was with the relationship in the story, she said, and we needed another chapter or two on it.

The relationship was the least interesting part of the book to me. But I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t write the extra chapter—that she wouldn’t like the book as much and wouldn’t promote it as much or maybe even wouldn’t publish it at all. I was tough. Laura was tougher.

I didn’t know that I should be more scared of fucking up my book than pissing off my editor. I wrote the extra chapter. I hated it. I’d been, despite my loathing and terror, very proud of the book. I was never as proud after I added that chapter. I learned one of the best things I ever learned: better to fuck up my own way than fuck up someone else’s way. When you fuck up your own way, you can learn something and have some pride in your work. Fucking up someone else’s way leaves you with nothing but a scratchy little blanket of shame. Don’t do it. I fucked up someone else’s way with this book, regretted it, and have rarely done it since. Commit to your work. Commit to your vision. Commit to yourself. Commit to fucking up your own way.

A commitment to making my own mistakes has served me well: here I am at almost fifty, my sixth book coming out shortly as I write this, a couple of screenplays, and a few bags of fan mail under my belt. My books have taken me across the country and across Europe. People take me out to expensive dinners and write me love letters and fly to me to strange places to talk about my books. People write me things about my books that make me cry. Most of my friends are people who read my writing and loved it enough to put up with the author and her many moods and whims. Who else would? It’s a pretty great life. In a sense I owe it all to Laura, both for giving me that deal, and for teaching me never to betray my work again. Other people have winning personalities and money and luck: I have this. It’s been enough.

So I’m very happy now to present you with this new-old version of the book: the book I wrote without the extra chapter and without the extra bits around it I had to shove in to make the extra chapter work. I like this version much better, and I feel like a minor wrong in my life has been set right.

Laura is gone now, and I lost my own mother last year. Laura’s capable and smart and kind daughter, Bronwen, now runs Soho Press. Who would have foreseen Bronwen and I working together, nearly twenty years later, a whole other generation of tough women? Thank you, Laura. We miss you.

Sara Gran, April 2018

Chapter 1

When I was seven, my father killed himself. He woke up one morning in 1977 and swallowed a bottle of Valium that my mother’s doctor, ironically, had prescribed to help her cope with the stress of my father’s depression. Well, the Valium helped with the stress, all right. You could almost say those pills solved the whole problem.

No one had told my mother that the pills could be fatal (although someone, obviously, had told my father), and as a result she hasn’t trusted doctors since. So it was a few months after she started losing her memory before she re­lented and made an appointment with Dr. Snyder on Park Avenue. It’s nothing, Dr. Snyder assured her. You’re not young anymore, and this is what we expect to see at your age, a little memory loss. Everyone takes it hard.

She tried not to take it hard. Two months later she came home from work to 105 East Twelfth Street and her house key wouldn’t work. She tried another key. Stuck. It wasn’t until she tried every key on her ring, twice, that she remembered she hadn’t lived on Twelfth Street since 1977. She went back up to Dr. Snyder on Park Avenue. Now, Dr. Snyder said, we’ll run some tests. It’s normal, it’s natural, it’s just a smid­gen more than we expect to see at this age, it’s progressing a little more rapidly than we would like and so we’ll run some tests, we’ll run some very expensive tests and we’ll see.

Evelyn, my mother, mentioned the visits to Dr. Snyder offhandedly during one of our monthly phone calls, as reg­ular as the full moon. I didn’t know what to say so I asked, lamely, why she didn’t tell me earlier.

I didn’t want you to worry, she said. They said maybe it’s my circulation, so I’m taking some pills. Herbs. That should help. It’s probably nothing, I just—well, I thought I should tell you. I thought you should know what’s going on. It’s probably nothing.

It was definitely not nothing. If it was nothing she wouldn’t have told me about it. I asked if there was anything I could do.

Actually, she said, there is something I’d like you to do. The slight Brooklyn accent my mother had when I was a girl has, without my father’s WASPy Connecticut influence, thickened a little every year since he died. Now she speaks from her throat with drawn-out vowels and hard ts and you would never know, listening to her, that she moved to Man­hattan in 1961. She said: We’re having the holiday party at work in a few weeks and I’d like you to come. Just in case—well, you know. In case I need some help.

No, this is not nothing.

Dr. Snyder said, we’ll see. Now my mother tries to get a dead person on the phone once a week and has twice more tried to go home to Twelfth Street and we haven’t seen any­thing. Thousands of dollars worth of blood tests and neu­rological exams and we actually see less; one month ago we saw a world of possibilities: we saw vitamin deficiencies; Alzheimer’s; psychiatric disorders; alcohol abuse; drug abuse; blood-sugar conditions; brain tumors; head injury; encephal­itis. Now almost every diagnosis Dr. Snyder and his team can think of has been eliminated, and we see nothing at all.

Chapter 2

At eight o’clock on a Thursday night in December I’m in my office, changing from black slacks and a black sweater into a vintage black wool minidress when Crystal, the head cleaning woman on the night shift, comes into my office

Reviews for Saturn's Return to New York

[sengels_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A daughter deals with her mother's illness and life as a young single woman in New York. Sara Gran's novels are compelling and as with her others, you won't want to put it down. Intelligent literature is always welcome.

[bookczuk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Anyone who loves NYC would probably get a kick out of this book. I give it 4 stars because there were so many moments that I really enjoyed, where it really engaged me or where it called to mind my relationship with my mother, or my family's New York. And though the mother/daughter relationship was quite different from my own experience in many ways, there were many similarities, too. I think this is Gran's debut novel, but haven't checked it out thoroughly.Things I liked about this book:1. Descriptions of New York City. My bet is that if I went looking, I'd find most of the places or find that the old spots did exist -- even the leather store on Christopher Street.2. The New Yorkers in the book were true New Yorkers -- not the NYC people that seem to populate chick lit (which I wouldn't call this book). Near chick lit, maybe but not chick lit.3. Even though there's a magazine editor involved, it's a magazine of substance (literary review) vs fashion. 4. Beautiful portrayal of Evelyn, (the mother), both in back-story and in present, living with illness.5. Correct interpretations of astrological practice, straight from the get-go. In astrology, the 29th year is recognized as significant and as the year you become an adult. Mary's path to adult-hood was one that was realistic, and probably would only be recognized in hindsight. She grew as a character, but still carried some of her foibles with her (hence the last scene in the book.)6. Depiction of mother-daughter relationship. I appreciated it was not perfect, but that it continued to grow and develop, mostly as Evelyn stayed steady and Mary really became an adult.7. The loss, love and loyalty that was woven through the plot.8. Mary recognizing she had caught the "the" disease when they went back to Brooklyn: "She died because she had the congenital heart."9. Description of living with memory loss.10. Relationships (and characters) were not tied up with pretty bows, but were real, with their ups and downs. What I didn't like:The abruptness of the ending. It took us time to get into Mary's world -- I felt the author just dumped us out on the sidewalk very abruptly at the end. I do promise to go back and read the last bit again and see if I change my mind.

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved it. Beautifully rendered relationships and perhaps the truest rendering of modern New York I've read.