Invisible as Air: A Novel

By Zoe Fishman

Winner of the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year Award!

One of Booklist's Top 10 Books of the Year!

A provocative and timely new novel by the author of Inheriting Edith, one that will haunt you long after the final page is turned…

Sylvie Snow knows the pressures of expectations: a woman is supposed to work hard, but never be tired; age gracefully, but always be beautiful; fix the family problems, but always be carefree. Sylvie does the grocery shopping, the laundry, the scheduling, the schlepping and the PTA-ing, while planning her son’s Bar Mitzvah and cheerfully tending her husband, Paul, who’s been lying on the sofa with a broken ankle.  She’s also secretly addicted to the Oxycontin intended for her husband.

For three years, Sylvie has repressed her grief about the heartbreaking stillbirth of her newborn daughter, Delilah. On the morning of the anniversary of her death, when she just can’t face doing one…more…thing: she takes one—just one—of her husband’s discarded pain pills. And suddenly she feels patient, kinder, and miraculously relaxed. She tells herself that the pills are temporary, just a gift, and that when the supply runs out she’ll go back to her regularly scheduled programming.

But days turn into weeks, and Sylvie slips slowly into a nightmare. At first, Paul and Teddy are completely unaware, but this changes quickly as her desperate choices reveal her desperate state. As the Bar Mitzvah nears, all three of them must face the void within themselves, both alone and together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062838254

Zoe Fishman

Zoe Fishman is the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year. She is the bestselling author of five previous novels and several awards including Booklist’s “Top 10 Books of the Year” and an IndieNext Pick.  She’s been featured on “City Lights” with Lois Reitzes, and in Publisher’s Weekly and The Atlanta Jewish Times among others. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and Modern Loss.   Zoe was the Director of The Decatur Writers Studio and a visiting writer at SCAD Atlanta. She lives in Decatur with her two sons.

Book preview

Chapter One

Sylvie

Sylvie opened her bleary eyes and stared at the ceiling. Beside her, her husband, Paul, snored intermittently, his broken ankle wrapped in its dirty, beige cast. It was still dark outside, but a lone bird had begun to tweet, signaling morning’s imminent arrival.

She dreaded this day every year because of the memories that arrived alongside it, landing with an ominous thud right in the center of her chest. Three years out, and it didn’t get any easier to see it approaching on Teddy’s school calendar, which hung lopsided on the side of the stainless-steel fridge.

Gingerly, Sylvie sat up and swung her legs over the side of their king-size bed, pausing for a moment to look at the clock. Five thirteen. Great. There were approximately fifteen hours left to endure, give or take.

In the bathroom, she ran a washcloth under ice-cold water and plunged her face inside its folds, relishing the shock of its impact. Holding her breath, she held it there for a few seconds, imagining that when she removed it, her face would be young again. Her left eyelid, with its startling new Silly Putty consistency, would regain its elasticity; the permanent brow furrow her cynicism had cost her would smooth. She removed the cloth, hopeful for just a moment. Instead, her forty-six-year-old self stared back at her.

No, that wasn’t fair, she thought next, grabbing her moisturizer from the shelf. She unscrewed its cap and took a generous scoop, massaging it vigorously into her cheeks, down over her chin, and back up over her closed eyes and forehead before finishing with the sides, careful not to smudge it into her hairline. It wasn’t all bad.

She still had her big brown eyes and even bigger eyebrows, full lips and relatively lustrous head of black hair. She had never colored or straightened it, had barely blown it dry, and so she liked to think it was thanking her by staying shiny, with only the occasional gray surprising her. It hung in a wave against the faint outline of her collarbone beneath her olive, slightly rosy skin. Sylvie tried to smile at herself, but it felt too difficult, like the corners of her mouth were stapled to her chin.

She sighed, pulling open the immense drawer of their marble-topped vanity to retrieve her eye cream. An orange bottle inside rolled toward her, click-clacking its way to the inside edge. She picked it up, considering its contents. Paul’s pain pills. Say that three times fast. Paul’s pain pills, Paul’s pain pills, Pops paint pits.

He had fallen from his bike, her triathlete husband, and broken his ankle just two weeks before, although it seemed like two years. Sylvie had discovered that it was one thing to mother your son but quite another to mother your mate. She did not enjoy it, not one bit.

Several times a day she had to remind herself that this invalid version of Paul, this person who moaned and groaned through even the slightest shift of the pillow beneath his foot and frowned at the grilled cheese sandwich she made him for lunch claiming too many carbs, was not the real Paul. He was in pain, it was true, largely because he refused to take the pills she now held in her hand.

I don’t like the way they make me feel, he had said to Sylvie, handing the bottle over to her. And anyway, you’ve seen the news. Oxycodone. What do they call it? Hillbilly heroin? He shook his head, handing her the bottle. Just give me some ibuprofen.

How do they make you feel? Sylvie had asked.

What? Those? Paul nodded toward the bottle in her hand. Groggy. Out of it. He wrinkled his nose. Not good.

Okay, three ibuprofen coming up, Sylvie had replied, turning on her heel and walking toward the bathroom to retrieve them.

What was wrong with feeling groggy and out of it if all you were doing was sitting on the couch and telling people to bring you things? Sylvie wondered. You had to be cognizant for that?

She looked at the bottle now in her hand, the house as silent as a tomb around her. Her heartbeat sped up as she thought about how not being cognizant on this day, especially this day, might be nice.

Paul would approach her with sad, cartoon-character eyes, looking at her with the kind of manufactured sympathy she had always hated, even before she’d lost the baby. He’d put his hand on her shoulder, squeeze it ever so slightly and ask, How are you today, honey?, adding insult to injury.

She hated it when Paul called her honey—it felt so false, so pat. He couldn’t come up with a better nickname? One that possessed a shred of originality? She supposed things could be worse—he could have been the kind of husband who called her babe—but still. Just use her own damn name.

It had been a loss for Paul too, she knew that, but the pain belonged to her. He shouldn’t be allowed to access it. She had carried the baby, after all. She had had to feel her breasts fill with milk, engorged to the point of bursting, only to deflate in defeat a week later, with no baby to feed. What had Paul had to do? Sell the crib? Come on. She knew it wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t the same.

Sylvie hated today. Being out of it seemed like the perfect remedy. She touched the bottle tentatively. She had refused them after the birth of her children, the first time because she was lucky enough to not be in that much actual pain and the second time because she was on enough anxiety medication to tranquilize a horse afterward.

Now, Sylvie held up this new orange bottle to the light carefully, like it was an ancient Egyptian artifact. She had seen the shows about addiction, with people shooting up inside their cars in abandoned parking lots, nodding off midsentence and smacking their faces against their steering wheels. She had seen the same news Paul had, with the segments about entire towns turning into zombie villages on this stuff.

Sylvie put the pills back inside the drawer and closed it. She dutifully applied her eye cream, patting it gently into her skin. She opened the drawer again, replaced her cream and picked the bottle back up, the plastic warm from her incessant fondling.

No, this was different, she told herself. She was not going to be nodding off in her car anytime soon; she was just cutting herself a break on a tough morning in the middle of a tough month at the end of a tough three years.

She unscrewed the cap, took out one of the tiny, white discs and placed it on her tongue. With a grimace, she swallowed it whole, turned off the light and began her day.

* * *

PANCAKES? ASKED TEDDY, approaching the table with a bewildered look on his face.

A face that had just recently begun its maturing transformation from circle to square. Teddy was his father in miniature: same blue-gray eyes, same sandy blond straight hair, same button nose. The least Jewish-looking Jewish boy in the world, she had thought to herself from the moment she’d held his tiny, naked body against her chest.

Why not? Sylvie answered, smiling slightly at her son as he shuffled toward the table.

The morning light filtered in through the wall of windows overlooking their deck, and below that the yard, which had burst forth with its green, purple, pink and yellow bounty months ahead of schedule thanks to the seventy-something-degree temperatures in February. Now, in April, dead petals littered the yard like confetti.

It had been almost two hours since she had swallowed the pill. Inside, Sylvie was an undulating ripple of goodwill, despite the fact that she was steeled for Paul’s unwelcome reverence and splattered with batter. It was a miracle, truly.

Teddy dropped his backpack on the floor with a loud thud and scrambled over and onto the bench lining one side of the enormous wood table that Paul had repurposed. Once upon a time, it had been a barn door in rural Georgia. Now they ate pancakes on it.

She sat down in a chair across from Teddy, watching him eat like he always ate, as though he hadn’t been fed in months. His hair flopped in front of his eyes slightly, and in the back, his cowlick stuck up and out, the same way it always had. If she squinted, he was four years old again, in matching pajama top and bottoms, the last of his adorable toddler tummy pressing against the patterned blue-and-green cotton of his shirt; his boneless feet swinging happily, nowhere near the floor.

To Sylvie’s horror, tears welled up in her eyes. She pretended to cough and covered her face with one of the blue-and-white-striped cloth napkins she had tossed onto the table, wiping them away as she stood again.

Teddy looked up, chewing.

These are good, he offered, as he forked three more onto his plate from the white platter in front of him. Thanks, Mom.

Sylvie nodded and placed her open palm atop his very warm head as she made her way back to the kitchen. She had forgotten her coffee. Sipping from her mug, she leaned against the enormous white apron sink, surveying the messy marble countertops covered with the remnants of her labor—a pancake-mix-covered yellow bowl and spatula, the still-slick griddle, an open carton of eggs.

Syl? Paul called from the top of the stairs.

For the first time in a long time, Sylvie did not cringe at the sound of his voice. And for the first time since he had broken his ankle, helping her husband down the stairs did not include a fantasy about accidentally pushing him instead. It was the pill, making her kinder, softer, more fluid. Bubbles of goodwill coursed through her bloodstream. It was a relief, to not quite be herself.

Her usual self was tired. Her usual self was complacent about what their marriage had become; what they had become: roommates with the shared responsibility of a child and a mortgage, not to mention the emotional baggage of a death. Her usual self was resentful about the fact that she worked full time, was the chief of Teddy operations and now nursemaid to a husband who shouldn’t have been on that goddamn twenty-five-mile bike ride on a Saturday in the first place. A husband who should have been hanging out with his son instead.

She hadn’t always claimed this as her usual demeanor toward Paul. When she had met him, she had fallen almost instantaneously head over rumpled bedsheets in love with him. He’d been fixing the sink of her then friend Ramona when she’d walked into Ramona’s kitchen, his denim-clad legs and gray sweatshirt comically splayed out on the floor; his head hidden in the dark recesses of the cabinet as he did whatever it was one did to fix a sink.

This is him, Ramona had whispered conspiratorially when Sylvie had arrived, wet and cold from the rain. The two of them were supposed to be going to brunch; this new boyfriend of Ramona’s was not supposed to be part of the equation. Sylvie had almost faked a stomachache and left—third wheel had not been on her agenda—but then of course Paul had squirreled out from his precarious position, victorious with wrench in hand, boy-like charm radiating from every one of his invisible pores. Sylvie had gone weak in the knees, had actually had to brace herself against Ramona’s IKEA kitchen table. She’d gone to brunch. A week later, Paul had broken up with Ramona. Three weeks later he had moved in with Sylvie and Ramona had never spoken to her again. The rest, as they say, was history.

Teddy turned around, looking at Sylvie now with the same wry smile of his father’s. Was that a smile of commiseration? Of empathy? Sylvie wasn’t sure, but she would pretend it was. She and her son hadn’t discussed Paul’s neediness since his accident, only because they didn’t discuss much of anything these days. Sylvie did a lot of talking at her son, but to call it conversation would have been delusional. To think that she had an ally in Teddy, that she wasn’t a horrible person and maybe Paul had indeed become a pain in the ass, that was something to hold on to.

Coming, she called, smiling back at Teddy.

She placed her mug on the counter and strode along the wood floors to the staircase, which wound up to the second floor like a giant corkscrew. Theirs was a house without any rooms downstairs, open concept before it was a bona fide concept since Paul was a contractor.

Vision Contracting, his business card read, a name they had worked on together so many years before. Paul had balked at it at first, saying it was too corny, but Sylvie had held her ground. She’d been right too. With every job he had taken, Paul’s confidence in his instincts had grown, and not without good reason. He was very good at what he did. So was she.

Built-in bookshelves lined some of the gray walls of their downstairs, filled to bursting with books, myriad tokens from their travels and the occasional treasure that looked as though it came from somewhere exotic instead of the HomeGoods down the street. Paul called it cheating; Sylvie called it shopping.

An L-shaped, tan corduroy sofa with cushions like toasted marshmallows faced away from her, toward a television that took up almost the entire wall on which it hung. Flung about haphazardly over the painstakingly sanded and oiled wood floor were Persian rugs. Paul was in charge of their home’s design, but he let Sylvie handle its wardrobe, albeit begrudgingly. Had it been up to him, they would have been living in a post-apocalyptic bunker.

Sylvie climbed up the stairs in her gray-and-pink-striped socks, to her husband.

Good morning, P, she said, looking at his cast, and then his red plaid pajama pants, then his navy-blue T-shirt and finally his face, as she stood before him.

His face. Salt-and-pepper stubble along his square jawline and around his lips, which were a little on the thin side, Sylvie had always thought, but not weird Muppet thin, just thin. Hers were rather plush, so maybe her judgment was off. No one else had ever mentioned Paul’s lips, not even her mother, who mentioned everything.

His nose was the same button nose as Teddy’s, small and perfect. And his eyes—a blue-gray hybrid that could have been scooped out of a summer sky right before a rain. And lashes as thick as canopies; the same sandy blond as his hair, which was thinning now, around his temples and at the back of his head, a bull’s-eye of age. For the first time in a very long time, Sylvie felt a swell of affection toward him.

P? Paul asked, taken aback. You haven’t called me that in years.

I haven’t? asked Sylvie, snaking her arm around his waist to help him down the stairs. His impossibly slim triathlete waist.

Paul gave her a sideways glance.

What? she asked. I’m feeling nice today.

I like nice, replied Paul. He squeezed her shoulder as they began their slow descent. Thanks. I know I’m a terrible patient, he added quietly. I’m sorry.

Paul had always been an overapologizer, in Sylvie’s opinion, but with his injury had come a sense of entitlement rocketing into the stratosphere. Or maybe she was just a terrible nurse. Either way, it was good to hear.

Thank you for saying that, she said.

You know what today is, right? Paul asked, catching her off guard as they took the last step down.

Sylvie grabbed his crutches, which were leaning on the banister. Oh, come on, Paul, she answered, shoving them toward him. Ah, there it was, her anger. Still there. Still Sylvie.

What? he asked.

She shook her head and turned away from him, back toward the kitchen. Did she know what today was? Unreal.

After the first few months following Delilah’s stillbirth, Sylvie could not pretend her sadness away. The three of them had holed up together in a fortress of grief and shock, Sylvie and Paul doing their best to explain away the terrible unfairness of life to a nine-year-old but failing miserably under Teddy’s wise gaze. He was too smart, too present, too invested in who he thought would be his little sister, to buy it.

They were all in it together. Until they weren’t. At the three-month mark almost exactly, Paul had exited stage left, taking Teddy with him. Getting on with their lives as though her pregnancy—their almost family of four—had never happened. At least that’s how it had felt to Sylvie, although she knew Paul would argue otherwise.

A beat later, Sylvie had moved on too, because what else was she going to do? But moving on for her was a commitment, full stop. She did not talk about Delilah, not ever, which Paul considered unfair. Sylvie didn’t care if it was fair.

Back in the kitchen, she steadied herself against the counter and took a deep breath, her back to her family. She wanted the bubbles back.

Hey, T, greeted Paul behind her. Pancakes!

Err, Teddy grunted back, his mouth full.

Sylvie turned around, calmed by another wave of magic. Ask and ye shall receive, she thought, as it undulated throughout her body, unclenching her muscles one by one.

Wow, Sylvie, thanks. Paul looked at her, his eyes pleading with her not to be angry with him. She gave him a small smile, indicating that the moment had passed. I shouldn’t, but I’m going to eat a million of these. He laid his crutches on the floor and sat down.

Dad, they’re pancakes, not meth.

Meth! What do you know about meth, young man? I’ll show you meth; give me those flapjacks. He speared three on his fork and plunked them onto his plate.

Relax, nobody is doing meth.

The thing was, Sylvie had come close to talking about Delilah, almost always on this day. But then Paul would inevitably say something ridiculous, as he had just now, and the door inside Sylvie, the one that led to Delilah, would slam and lock all over again.

But what if today was different? Paul didn’t mean to be insensitive; she knew that deep down, even as her anger still simmered from before. He just didn’t know what else to say. And she was so sensitive. Too sensitive. Which for Sylvie manifested itself as defensive, angry, immovable. Until today. With this pill.

She whispered Delilah’s name, testing it on her tongue. Each syllable was a relief, like loosening a too-tight belt. She would do it. She would commemorate the significance of the day. She would say Delilah’s name out loud, not just whisper it. But how? When?

Sylvie considered her options as she watched Paul and Teddy eat, pleased to see Paul consuming gluten so voraciously. Since he’d started up with his running, biking and swimming nine gazillion miles—to nowhere, as far as Sylvie was concerned—few morsels of food passed his lips that hadn’t been analyzed by the nutritional lab that had become his brain. And since he had been knocked off his bike, forget it. Sylvie was surprised she hadn’t found him naked in front of the mirror, pinching his nonexistent muffin top like a teenage girl in trouble.

When Paul decided to become a triathlete, it was like he had invented exercise. On the rare occasions she wandered down into the basement that had been Teddy’s playroom but had morphed into Paul’s personal locker room and gym, she felt as though she couldn’t breathe, like the bikes and sneakers and gloves and free weights were suffocating her. There was no room for her to take anything up, because his hobby took up their whole lives, all three of theirs. She couldn’t so much as don a sports bra without Paul waxing poetic on the benefits of interval training. And don’t get her started on the money he spent in the name of his newfound hobby. Sylvie hated it. All of it.

Still thinking of Delilah, Sylvie searched the kitchen, settling on the cabinet above the refrigerator. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she walked over to the cavernous pantry off the side of the kitchen and pulled open its levered door. Grabbing the collapsible stepstool from inside it, she walked it over to the refrigerator and set it up to reach her target. She climbed its three steps—Teddy and Paul with their backs to her, feasting still—and opened it.

The JCC, she called it, because that’s where the yarmulkes and menorahs, challah covers and the Seder plate, kiddush cups and candlesticks lived. Mementos of a life they sometimes lived, or the life Sylvie had wanted them to live, anyway, in the beginning. She was Jewish, had grown up in a moderately religious home in New Jersey—synagogue on holidays and the occasional Shabbat, a disastrous summer at sleep-away camp, a Bat Mitzvah—and so even though she had fallen in love with an agnostic man who had no intention of ever converting, she had been determined to raise their children as such.

But something had happened to Sylvie’s fervor as the years had gone by, as life twisted and turned its way forward. And certainly her faith had been challenged by the death of Delilah. Even so, she dragged Teddy to Hebrew School every week, sometimes by the scruff of his neck since he was so uninterested.

She wanted Teddy to know he was Jewish, to feel it in his bones the way she did, but lately she had had to face the fact that he just didn’t. Whether it was his age or the impending Bar Mitzvah he made no secret about dreading, she wasn’t sure. But she knew she would rather it be that than her fault for marrying a goy, as her father had said so many years before. She hadn’t spoken to him for four months after he’d said that. Finally, he had called her to apologize, which was a very big deal. Max Schwartz didn’t apologize.

She and her father had resumed their relationship, he had paid for the wedding, he was even friendly to Paul. But there was a chasm there, always had been, between the two families: New Jersey Jews and Southern Baptists did not blend well no matter how many drinks you had, and Sylvie would know. She had done the research.

Sylvie rustled around in the cabinet, her hand searching for the small white candle encased in its glass votive. She found it, finally, her fingers closing around its circumference as she pulled it toward her. A thin layer of grime and dust had collected on its surface, a result of its two-year residency. Her mother had given it to Sylvie, on the first anniversary of Delilah’s death, but Sylvie had shoved it into the back of the cabinet, annoyed.

She blew on it now in an attempt to clear the accumulated dirt, but it had embedded itself in the wax. She closed the door, candle in hand, and climbed down the stepstool.

Mom, what are you doing? called Teddy from the table, having turned around to see her carefully placing the candle on the countertop.

Lighting a candle for Delilah, she answered, pulling open a drawer to retrieve a matchbook from a trendy, overpriced restaurant she and Paul had gone to on their last date night, a date so far in the past she couldn’t even remember which month it had taken place in.

What? asked Paul.

She would not be irritated by the eagerness in his voice, Sylvie told herself. She would not. A Yahrzeit candle, she answered.

Wait for me, said Teddy, jumping up.

What’s a Yahrzeit candle? asked Paul. Get me my crutches, will you, T?

Teddy held them out to Paul as he picked up his leg with both hands to forcibly move it over the bench, his cast landing on the other side with a slight thud.

It’s a candle you light to honor the dead, answered Teddy. Right, Mom?

He was beside her now, with Paul nipping at his heels. He looked up at her, just slightly since he was nearly her height, waiting for her affirmation.

That’s right, Teddy.

She squeezed his thin arm. Paul leaned forward on his crutches, eyeing the candle curiously and reminding her of a T. rex in the process.

Sylvie struck the match.

Wait, we need to say a prayer, Mom, said Teddy, blowing it out before she could make contact with the wick. Where are the yarmulkes?

I’ll get them. So he was Jewish, this Bar Mitzvah–dreading son of hers.

She reclimbed the stepstool and snagged two black discs from the cabinet.

Here, she offered.

Could you put it on my head for me? asked Paul, gesturing toward his crutches.

Sure.

He leaned forward, and she placed it atop the bald spot that had gone from marble- to golf-ball-size in the past year, despite his best efforts. She liked that bald spot a million times more than his six-pack; she wished he knew that.

Okay, T, do you want to start? asked Sylvie. He took a deep breath and began.

Sylvie closed her eyes and mouthed the words along with him, a kaleidoscope of painful memories resurfacing. There was her belly, as taut as a drum, and there was little Teddy, touching it tentatively. And there was the pale blue of her hospital gown, the tops of her knees, her whole body shaking in those ice-cold silver stirrups. And Paul’s face, his eyes as still as glass as he met her gaze.

Mom? asked Teddy. She opened her eyes, summoned. Mom, I’m done. Was that good? he asked, looking at her hopefully.

Beautiful, Teddy. Really beautiful. Thanks.

The three of them stared down into the flame, Sylvie feeling its faint heat against her cheeks.

Chapter Two

Teddy

Teddy emerged from his front door reluctantly, the morning soundtrack of his neighborhood—birds tweeting, garbage trucks sighing, the occasional pair of moms in those weird skirt/shorts things he could never figure out shrieking in commiseration as they power walked by—blaring.

Man, what he wouldn’t give for a phone to play music on, a pair of headphones to escape into, he thought as he began his walk to school. But his mom refused to buy him one, claiming he was too young even though every other kid in seventh grade had one. No wonder he didn’t have any friends; he may as well have time traveled from 1800.

Teddy considered the possibilities of that story arc. Why anyone would want to find themselves in seventh grade again was beyond him. But maybe that was the point? A lord or baron dressed like Christopher Columbus, just plopped behind him in Spanish, sent ahead in time to save the world from Donald Trump. Teddy pulled his green notepad and pencil out of the back pocket of his navy cargo shorts, making a note. He liked to jot down the ideas he had. You never knew.

He was going to be a screenwriter, maybe a director someday—he wasn’t sure. But he had ideas all the time, and sometimes they were decent. He had seen a lot of movies; he knew decent. He slid his notepad back into his pocket and continued on, pausing for a moment to face off with a squirrel, its entire body vibrating as it devoured the acorn it held in its front paws.

Hello, he said. The squirrel stared at him a moment longer, and then scampered away, its bounty stored for later consumption. Great, he was talking to squirrels now.

He rounded the block, stepping around bags upon brown bags of lawn clippings and leaves hugging the perimeter of the enormous brick house on the corner. His house was big, but this house, it was like something out of Gone with the Wind.

He hadn’t cared for that movie. It was too much for him, all the sighing and the way the actors spoke, like their noses were held together by chip clips. High up on a green hill this house sat, its redbrick exterior flanked by two concrete lions at the bottom of a staircase leading to its expansive porch and incredibly tall, like tall enough to imply that a giant lived inside, white door.

There were a lot of big houses in his neighborhood, but this one was the biggest. And as far as Teddy could tell, just an old couple lived there. What did they need all those rooms for, anyway? It had to be lonely, all that extra space, filled with what he imagined to be dark, heavy furniture no one was allowed to touch. What if they were vampires? Interesting. He pulled out his notepad again, making a note.

At the intersection, he pushed the Walk button. There was one four-lane road between his house and his school, but other than that, it was a fairly uneventful journey. He could do it with his eyes closed, which he knew, because he had

Reviews for Invisible as Air

[kbranfield-837433 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Invisible as Air by Zoe Fishman is a poignant portrait of a family struggling with grief over their stillborn baby.

Forty-six year old Sylvie Snow is not an easy woman to like. She makes no effort to hide her irritation and resentment of her husband, Paul.  His broken ankle is just her latest frustration with his Triathlon training.  On the third anniversary on the loss of their stillborn daughter, Delilah, Sylvie's slippery slope of opioid dependency begins.  Her curiosity over Paul's description of how oxycontin makes him feel results with her taking the first pill.  But the drug's effects on her grief and negative emotions are why she continues taking them. Before long, Sylvie's need for more pills leads to poor decisions that could have devastating effects on her life and marriage.

In the three years since their heartrending loss, Sylvie's and Mark's marriage has been on a downward spiral. Sylvie has closed herself off emotionally and seethes with anger over Mark's ability to move on after losing Delilah.  She is distant, bitter and clings tightly to the grief she believes only she is entitled to feel. Mark is dealing with his feelings of loss and emptiness by throwing himself into Triathlon training and online shopping.  Their twelve year old son Teddy also deeply feels the loss of his sister but he is left to mourn on his own.

With chapters alternating between Sylvie's, Mark's and Teddy's points of view, Invisible as Air is an engrossing novel with a topical storyline. Mark and Sylvie are not particularly likable characters but it is easy to feel empathy for their heartbreaking loss. Teddy is surprisingly mature for his age but he is shouldering burdens that no child should ever bear. Sylvie's descent into addiction is an all too real problem in today's world.  Zoe Fishman brings the novel to a realistic conclusion that will leave readers pondering the Snow family's future.  An emotionally compelling novel that I truly enjoyed and highly recommend.

[bettytaylor56 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The story of the Snow family could be your neighbors’ story or the story of your friends, or even that of your own family. Sylvie Snow has not been same since the stillbirth of her daughter Delilah three years previously. Now she is preparing for her son Teddy’s upcoming bar mitzvah. On top of this her husband Paul has broken his ankle and his whining and neediness is grating on her nerves. Finally one day Sylvie just can’t take it anymore and takes one of Paul’s Hydrocodone pills. Under the influence of the pills she is calmer and kinder to her family. She likes how they make her feel so begins taking them just to get her through the bar mitzvah. She knows Paul will never notice as he refused to take any of the pills and had told her to throw them out. Thus starts her desperate cycle of addiction. Paul has his own issues dealing with the emptiness he has felt since the loss of his daughter. Teddy discovers the secrets his parents are hiding and is conflicted as to what to do.Using alternating perspectives of Sylvie, Paul, and Teddy the reader is drawn into the story and becomes invested in the lives of the Snow family. I liked the character of Sylvie. I could relate to the stress she was dealing with on top of the grieving she never fully allowed herself to embrace. Having worked with some gang member kids previously I could understand Teddy’s position in the family – feeling he had to be the parent to his parents. It was a really heavy load for a young teen to bear.A hauntingly realistic story relevant to today’s social environment. I highly recommend it.Thank you to LibraryThing and William Morrow Books for the advance reading copy. All views expressed are my honest opinion.

[susan0316 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

46 year old Sylvie Snow is a person that we all know. She could be your neighbor, your best friend or a family member. She is a hardworking wife and mother with a career and a myriad of stresses on her every day. As the novel begins, it's the three year anniversary of her daughter's stillbirth - something that she feels her husband doesn't care about even though it's a very painful day for her. On top of that, her husband is recuperating from a broken ankle and isn't able to help at all with cleaning or shopping plus she has to take care of him, along with everyone and everything else. When she is getting ready to start her day, she finds the bottle of pain pills that were prescribed for her husband that he had never taken and after mentally reviewing her life, she decides that she'll take one pill - just one and then she'll quit - to make this day more bearable. She tells herself that one pill won't matter and that she needs help getting through this day. But one pill quickly becomes two and then even more until she realizes that she needs the pills to survive. As she is heading for the bottom of her family life, her job and basically her sanity, she realizes that she has become addicted and the pills have become the only important thing in her life.This family could be any family in upper class America. Addicts aren't just young people but the drug epidemic is rampant at all ages and all classes - it is happening everywhere. I found this book interesting because it looked at addiction in a 40 something female who appeared to have the good life before addiction changed everything for her and her family.This was an interesting well written book about a family in trouble who don't share their thoughts and feelings with each other. Will they be able to learn to trust each other and become a family again?Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

[fastforward-46127 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story really grew on me. I think what hit close to home was the fact Sylvie could easily be your next door neighbor, or co-worker, or even your family member. She starts taking her husband's pain pills to cope with her grief over the death of her baby a few years ago and becomes addicted. She has a nice job, lives in a beautiful home, and even is a PTA member, but she is an addict. And I appreciate that the author chose to feature her as a character because her story is one that is playing out in countless homes across America. The book alternates between the perspectives of Sylvie, her husband Paul, and her teenage son, Teddy. For much of the story I felt the most invested in what was going on with Sylvie rather than her family members. However, as the story unfolded I came to appreciate the unique perspectives the other two brought to the table. Surprisingly I have not come across many fiction books featuring a middle aged, upper middle class, suburban mother type character like Sylvie with an opioid addiction. I'm not sure why that's the case because by now we know that this epidemic has hit all social classes, races, big cities, rural communities, you name it. A story worth reading in my opinion. It's not a perfect book, but it's pretty darn realistic.

[jeanie0510 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as an early reviewer copy through Library Thing. I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end. The plot revolves around the way that a husband, wife, and their son deal with a stillborn daughter, each in their own way. The mother turns to drugs to forget her unhappiness and guilt regarding the baby, while the father turns to excessive spending to drown his sorrow. But until the mother begins taking the opioids, she and the rest of the family are unable to talk about the baby. After beginning taking the drugs and becomes an addict, her personality blossoms and she becomes an extrovert, which includes honoring her daughter and discussing the birth with the family. As expected, the drugs cause her to spiral down to a life of addiction and promiscuity. The mother's addiction opens doors to keep the family together, but brings her addiction out in the open leading to her recovery. Characters are developed extremely well.

[myrnagottlieb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Invisible as Air by Zoe FishmanI won a free uncorrected proof of this novel from Library Thing in exchange for an honest review, I enjoyed reading this tale about a wife, Sylvie, now in her mid-40s, who for years had dedicated her life to pleasing her handsome husband Paul - working at being a perfect wife and a perfect mother for their quirky 12-year-old son, Teddy. Sylvie kept herself beautiful, moisturized daily, bought expensive clothes, perfumes, luggage; she had expensive manicures and pedicures at the best salon, drove a beautiful expensive car, and kept their lives meticulously organized in a beautiful home designed and built by her contractor husband and decorated by herself. But she is falling apart. As the novel opens, Sylvie is exhausted by the effort; she hates and resents her life- the grocery shopping, the laundry, the schlepping, the car pools, the PTA. The honeymoon is over; sex, once spectacular, is routine or non-existent. And she has a job which she hates but brings in much needed money to support their expensive lifestyle. What has changed is that three years ago, tragedy had struck. A much anticipated second child- a miracle girl who they’d named Delilah, had been born dead- a month premature and stillborn. The three of them grieved, but after three months of mourning, father and son tried to move on with their lives. Sylvie, holding fast onto her grief resented them for it , but would not discuss it,. After the baby’s death and Sylvie’s estrangement, Paul, had become a health and exercise nut. As the novel begins, he had just fallen during his daily team bike ride and broken his ankle. Sylvie resented his neediness, which made even more work for her- helping him shower, dress, etc. before she left for work. The son Teddy was also a problem. He was a nerdy kid, not popular at school, a bookworm who spent hours in front of the TV watching and re-watching his collection of classic movies. Sylvie had insisted he become bar mitzvah (she’d raised him Jewish in a mixed marriage- Paul’s family was southern Baptist; Paul was agnostic) So another chore to add to Sylvie’s overfilled plate- planning a bar mitzvah for a disinterested boy..How did Sylvie cope? On the 3-year anniversary of Delilah’s death, when she felt she couldn’t face even one more day, she tried just one of her husband’s unused prescription pain pills. And another. And another. The description of opioid addiction is believable and powerful.I would rate this novel 3 out of 5 stars. I enjoyed Ms Fishman’s lively writing- many sentences made me laugh out loud. But I didn’t believe in or like her characters. The son Teddy’s relationship with Phoebe, a taller cooler non-conformist girlfriend- done better by Nick Hornby in “About A Boy.” Teddy’s philosophic conversations re becoming a man and pubic hairs with Morty, his elderly male best friend in an assisted living facility- not believable and boring. The husband Paul cried too much and insisted that even though he had carried on a brief email flirtation with a younger woman, he would never ever be unfaithful to his wife no matter what -I don’t buy it. And the main character, Sylvie, was so self-involved that I didn’t much like her, wasn’t rooting for her the way I did for Nora Ephron’s aggrieved yuppie wife Rachel in “Heartburn.”

[mrstreme · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In Invisible As Air, we follow the woeful tales of the Snow family: Sylvie, who becomes an opioid addict; her husband, Paul, who has a shopping addiction; and their son, Teddy, who is trying to navigate the seas of puberty, while knowing secrets about his parents.To be honest, I didn't like the adult characters in this book, though I sympathized with their issues. They were unlikeable to me - maybe because I didn't know more about their backgrounds. It would have been interesting to read this story only from Teddy's perspective. I did appreciate Zoe Fishman's look into opioid addiction - an infliction that's affecting more and more Americans - and the perils of families who are trying hard to "keep up with the Joneses" (much to their own detriment). She showed how quickly one could become addicted - and why someone would "had everything" on the outside would turn to drugs to fix her life.If you like modern stories about family relationships, you may want to check out Invisible As Air.

[lissaj_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

To start with, contemporary domestic drama usually don’t work for me. They tend to just stress me out too much to enjoy. This book about a middle class family’s struggle with grief and addiction was a good story, just not for me. I won this through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review.

[bayleaf_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Zoe Fishman's novel, Invisible as Air, covers many worthy topics: grief, addiction, overspending, coming of age. The trouble I felt is that it didn't cover any of them particularly well. For me, Teddy's coming of age story hit the truest note and while Sylvie claims to feel as "invisible as air," it's Teddy who ultimately suffers this fate. Everything from the first page to the last seemed rushed. There was no building up to the issues facing the Snow family. And without the buildup, I was unable to feel the empathy for the characters I ordinarily would have, had she (the author) taken more time to develop the story. Yes, everyone handles tragedy and its accompanying grief differently, and certainly is the case with Sylvie, Paul, and Teddy, but too much was tackled and not enough adequately resolved for me to find this a satisfying book.

[dgmlrhodes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this book to be intriguing and read the entire thing in one sitting. The premise is really about how one family deals with grief and pain and highlights how everyone deals with it differently. Addiction comes out in different ways—from pills to spending to over scheduling to keep the mind busy. While I didn’t like the actions of the characters in this book, I found them to be very human. The author painted a believable story that keeps you hooked from the beginning. I will definitely be reading more by this author.

[mrsgrits · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I won an ARC through a LibraryThing giveaway.I could not put this one down once I got into the first chapter. I also really like books set in Georgia, especially Atlanta. I hadn't read any of Zoe Fishman's books before, but the premise was quite intriguing. After dealing with a horrific family trauma, Sylvie becomes addicted to her husband Paul's pain pills quite quickly. I found her character unlikeable sometimes and very relateable other times. Fishman has a great way of developing her characters. Teddy was my favorite, with Morty a close runner up. I also liked how Fishman explored all of the changes Teddy was going through because of his age, while still being respectful of the character. He was treated like the young sage he was. If you like dysfunctional family dramas you are sure to enjoy this one.

[pennyvert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's always exciting to find a new author and really enjoy her book. This story is a little slow getting going, but eventually finds it's way. The family of Sylvie, Paul and Teddy has suffered a devastating loss in which they have never really recovered. Paul has an injury with prescribed pain pills that he refuses to take, and on the anniversary of their family tragedy, Sylvia takes one to get through the day. Thus becomes the cycle of addiction. I liked the way the opoid crisis is examined here, since it is such a big issue these days. This story shows how an ordinary family can have it all on the outside but inside all are suffering and unable to discuss their feelings with each other. I am looking forward to reading her previous works, and would highly recommend this one.

[livelylady · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The story of Sylvia and Paul and their young son, Teddy, on the brink of manhood. On the third anniversary of their stillborn daughter, life falls apart. Sylvia and Paul seek solace in unhealthy ways; their son copes as best he knows can. The characters and their feelings are brought to life by the author’s description of conversation and her own use of her experience with grief. I didn’t know where she was taking us but it was good. The end was healing.

[lewislibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For the past 3 years, Sylvie has been running on auto-pilot, numbed by the grief of her stillborn daughter Delilah. On the third anniversary of her death, Sylvie takes one of her her husband's pain pills... just to get herself through the day. When she feels happiness for the first time in years, she doesn't want to let that feeling go. So she takes another. And another. Until one day she is stealing pills from friends and knows she is heading down a slope that she has no idea how to come back from.This timely book was very good. It is told in alternating chapters between Sylvie, her husband Paul and their son Teddy, so you get a 365 degree view of things. The characters seem so real you feel as if you might know them. The storyline kept me engaged from start to finish. I highly recommend it!

[kimaoverstreet · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am not a chick-lit fan, and this was a chick-lit book. I feel certain that Invisible as Air will be well received by the reading public at large, but it was just not my cup of tea. I found the main characters to be spoiled, snooty, and self-absorbed, and had a hard time caring what happened to them. I wanted more atmosphere, perhaps a more gritty look at opioid addiction. I do think the themes of grief after losing an unborn baby and opioid addiction will resonate with many readers.