Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
By Ann Patchett
4/5
()
About this ebook
"A loving testament to the work and reward of the best friendships, the kind where your arms can’t distinguish burden from embrace.” — People
New York Times Bestselling author Ann Patchett’s first work of nonfiction chronicling her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed and recently deceased author, Lucy Grealy.
Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Gealy's critically acclaimed and hugely successful memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined...and what happens when one is left behind.
This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and being uplifted by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.
Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is the author of novels, most recently the #1 New York Times bestselling Tom Lake, works of nonfiction, and children's books. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Faulkner, the Women's Prize for Fiction in the UK, and the Book Sense Book of the Year. Her novel The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and Time magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. President Biden awarded her the National Humanities Medal in recognition of her contributions to American culture. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is the owner of Parnassus Books.
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Reviews for Truth & Beauty
849 ratings60 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I first learned about the friendship of Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy, in Patchett's excellent essay collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, so I knew I wanted to read the full story in this moving and unflinching memoir.Ann and Lucy met in college. Lucy had a bout of childhood cancer, leaving her with a serious facial disfigurement, that wasted away her lower jaw. She ended up having nearly 40 surgeries, up until her premature death at age 39. Lucy dealt with self-esteem issues her entire life, which led her to substance abuse problems and suicidal tendencies. This is the story of their unique friendship, which had plenty of bumps along the way, as Ann tried to help Lucy deal with her multitude of issues. The prose is strong, all along the way, with a staunch sense of honesty, that is sometimes hard to bear. Now, I want to read, Autobiography of a Face, which is Lucy's own story. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ann Patchett met Lucy Grealy in college, but their friendship blossomed during graduate school at the Iowa Writers Workshop. The two complemented one another: Lucy was a free spirit, Ann was organized and practical. But Lucy’s life was complicated by childhood cancer which left her with virtually no jaw, and all of the self-esteem issues that can arise from looking different. As an adult, Lucy had several reconstructive surgeries, but none were successful. The two women supported each other as they encountered personal and professional challenges; Ann was always quick to hop on a plane to New York to visit Lucy any time she was needed, and especially after surgery. Lucy died young (not a spoiler, it’s evident in the dedication), but she left an impact on everyone who knew her.Both Ann and Lucy ultimately experienced literary success and fame, Ann as the author of several novels and Lucy through her memoir, Autobiography of a Face which now I simply MUST read. Truth and Beauty is Ann’s tribute to their intensely close friendship, and a very moving tribute it is.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whether "Truth & Beauty," Ann Patchett's memoir of her friendship with Lucy Grealy, another writer, makes her look like a saint or a fool readers must decide for themselves. But then saints often look like fools, and fools, if you watch the movie "Being There," sometimes look like saints.Patchett and Grealy went to college together but didn't actually become friends until they both showed up at the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1985, Patchett an aspiring novelist, Grealy an aspiring poet. They ended up sharing an apartment together and becoming devoted friends. The friendship continued for nearly two decades, even after Patchett settled in Nashville and Grealy, an Ireland native, moved to New York City.Yet it was never an equal friendship. From the beginning Patchett was the giver and Grealy the taker.Grealy, who died from a drug overdose at the age of 39, underwent nearly 40 operations in her short life because of a facial disfigurement caused by cancer of the jaw. Even though her vibrant personality resulted in more friends and lovers than most other women could imagine, she became dependent upon Patchett to reassure her constantly that, yes, she was loved and, however her ever-changing face happened to look at the moment, she would have sex again.At one time Grealy was the more famous of the pair. "I was famous for being with her," Patchett writes. Her friend wrote a fictionalized memoir called "Autobiography of a Face," which became a best seller and led to television interviews in which she wowed audiences. But then, despite a handsome book contract, she could write nothing, while Patchett began turning out one novel after another, beginning with "The Patron Saint of Liars."Never able to manage money, nor anything else, Grealy gave no thought to paying her mounting medical bills, and she would just move to another apartment whenever her landlord became too demanding. Patchett, or some other friend, was always there to help her out and take care of her after those frequent surgeries. At one point Patchett even offered to write her novel for her.Eventually Grealy became addicted to painkillers, then resorted to harder drugs, all the while insisting she was not an addict. She died in 2002, and Patchett's book came out in 2004.I vote for saint.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This memoir is a great testament to true friendship. Being a true friend is not always easy, but we do it because of the deep love we have for that person. Ann and Lucy's relationship was filled with love through some truly tumultuous times and events. We all want to be able to save the ones we love, but sometimes they can not be saved or may not want to be saved. I will suggest this book to many. A perfect book for book clubs.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ann and Lucy attended Sarah Lawrence at the same time. Ann had noticed Lucy because of her vibrant personality and her many friends, but was sure Lucy didn’t know who Ann was. However, after a summer absence Lucy sees Ann and flies into her arms in greeting. From that point on they were devoted friends throughout their lives. They lived in poverty while Ann pursues her dream of becoming a novelist and Lucy a poet. Ann understands early on how needy Lucy is and determines not to let that rule her life, but Lucy also lives with great abandon and loves to dance, party, and spend her time surrounded by others, and shares those joys with Ann. They often spend evenings dancing in their kitchen until they're exhausted. As Ann spends years working in a restaurant while pursuing her writing, Lucy is in and out of hospitals having surgeries to correct her jaw, all of which ultimately fail. Each eventually become recognized as writers, but the real story is the enduring and passionate friendship. They communicate daily most of their lives, sharing everything and making each other a priority. While the road is sometimes rocky, their love for one another endures throughout. This is an honest portrayal of a flawed but wonderful friendship.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm sending this to my life-long writing partner, so that we both know that no matter how dramatic we tend to make of the writing (or non-writing writing life) seem, there are others that can outdo us. A tragic story, but resuscitated by its beauty and the love these two women had for each other, and of course, Ann Patchett's writing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Given to me by a close friend after we parted ways post-Peace Corps, this is my favorite book about friendship. I've read plenty of reviews that fault Patchett for letting herself be "used" by Lucy Grealy, but I applaud Patchett for this honest portrayal of a friendship that was not always easy. Despite the difficulties Lucy and Ann sometimes faced--loss, disease, drug addiction, success--their friendship remained strong and became the net that caught both of them each time they felt they were losing their grip on life. Beautifully written.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Patchett's nonfiction account of her friendship with Lucy Grealy, who worries repeatedly that she's not pretty & that she will never find love & compensates with lots of sex & drugs. It's a story that's a dime a dozen these days and gets really tedious.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I think ann put up w/ a lot of immature behavior from lucy. She was possessive, jeaous, and didn’t cope w/rejection. Ann stated frequently that she couldn’t live w/o lucy, but I didn’t see lucy’s love toward ann, only selfishness. It brought me back to my college days. I didn’t realize there were so many fellowships & workshops for writers. It was interesting to see that behind-the-scenes look.Group comments: similar. Anne f thought that author didn’t portray lucy in a very positive light. We commented on since this was a memoir, the author had more liberty with the portrayal than a biography.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very unusual autobiography, in which we learn much more about the author's friend than about her. Real masterpiece and beautifully read by the author.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"I have the most extraordinary friends. I've never really understood why everyone has been so good to me, and now I can interview them, talk to them and see." Then she added as a gift, "I'll write a whole chapter about you.""I could write a whole book about you," I said, and laughed.I really enjoyed this book. Ann Patchett writes beautifully, and I often found myself wanting to slow down my reading to enjoy the writing more fully. Patchett does a fine job of rendering Lucy's big personality, her huge emotional presence (as opposed to her small physical one), and her tendency to pursue things both good and bad with a reckless passion. While it's true that many elements of Lucy's behavior are downright selfish and irritating...Patchett manages to show Lucy in a positive light that captures the great things that Lucy brought into Ann's life along with the not so great things. In some sense, everybody needs a spontaeous, passionate friend who will jolt them out of their comfort zone and help them live their life more fully, but as Patchett shows, having a friend like this, in Lucy, was certainly not all fun and games as Lucy was nearly as passionate about feeling bad as she was about feeling good. There were so many things in this book I felt like I could relate to - for example being the one who is the ant to a friend's grasshopper. She also describes the feeling of that lull between being a success at school and being a success in the "real world" where you're wondering if you'll ever get to that place where you're a successful somebody. All in all, this was a fine read, I was completely caught up in the story of Ann and Lucy's friendship, and Ann's love for Lucy permeates the story...it's an honest tribute to their friendship that encompasses both its good and bad moments. Patchett shows us that friendship can be messy and can easily fall apart, but love is the glue that holds it all together.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I want Ann Patchett to be my friend! Great book....touching.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was brilliant. After reading Autobiography of a Face, I thought it only appropriate that I read this as a follow up. I am glad I did. It really brought everything home. I think I actually enjoyed this book even more. I think it shows the power of friendship. Maybe I am a bit biased, because I have had a lot of emotional relationships with friends that many people never understood. I admire Ann for being Lucy's friend through everything. Lucy really put her through a lot, yet she stood by her no matter what. I admire that and I strive for that in my own life. She was not judgemental (for the most part) and really understood what it meant to be a friend. I think that is one of life's most important and hardest things. This book was beautiful. I plan to send it to two of my friends who I think it was also hit home with. Some people may wonder why Ann stood by Lucy the way she did, but I never questioned it while reading this book. Lucy's life was an amazing one, but I think this story of their friendship is even more amazing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5i enjoyed this book immensely, in a way that i have been unable to enjoy patchett's fiction...not sure why...but anyhow, i loved the friendship between ann and lucy and thought it was a very true picture of the special relationship that can exist between two women.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5About her weird friendship with Lucy Grealy, the Girl Without a Face. I read and liked the latter a lot; but the Lucy portrayed in this book is an insufferable needy narcissist, forever needing to be loved and the center of attention. She finally dies of a heroin overdose, Ann Patchett enabling her all the way. Why she loved her so much I never understood.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm struggling to verbalize why I gave this book three stars, considering the fact that I didn't like it very much.
The story is interesting, sure. Lucy Grealy had cancer as a child, and as a result, had her jawbone removed and endured many, many reconstructive surgeries. I guess that's what kept me reading the whole time - wondering what would happen to her. I had never heard of Lucy before reading this book, so I didn't know what her cause of death would be. I assumed it would be somehow related to the cancer, or that there would be complications during one of her many surgeries.
I don't know how much of this book really was true. I hope that most of it was, because honestly, Lucy Grealy did not come across as a likable person. So either she really was that awful, or Patchett spent an entire book making her best friend sound a whole lot worse than she really was. I hope it's the former. It seemed obvious to me that Lucy had numerous psychological issues; I am not a doctor, but she should have been in therapy at a very, very young age. Her clinginess and neediness were off the charts, and she engaged in self-destructive behavior constantly.
But then you have to ask yourself how anyone could have gone through what Lucy did and not be completely screwed up.
I guess that after reading this book, I feel torn and worn out. I feel so sorry for Lucy because of what she went through, and I feel sorry for the friends that she seemed to have taken advantage of. I'm sorry that her family had to see Lucy's life end the way it did, and that they had to deal with the publication of this book.
And like, seriously though, Lucy seemed REALLY messed up. Like, to a ridiculous degree. She just seemed awful. I was so angry at her during most of the book. As I've said before, I think I should probably just stay away from memoirs. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After I heard that Lucy Grealy's family objected to the publication of this memoir, I wasn't certain whether I should read it. Eventually, curiosity trumped my ethical concerns, and I opened the book. I loved Lucy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face, and watching her from another perspective is fascinating. While she is relentlessly self-critical in her own writing, Truth and Beauty depicts her as an intelligent, compelling modern-day Holly Golightly. I was fascinated that such a person could really exist, and I felt privileged by the rare opportunity to read about a real person from two very different points of view. As a bonus, the book also delivered an intriguing glimpse at the world of professional fiction writing. Though I respect the Grealy family's views about the book, I found it to be an overall flattering portrait of a deeply troubled woman, and the Lucy I got to know in Autobiography of a Face would have liked this book very much. I would definitely recommend reading Lucy's book first, and if you like it, don't miss this one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This memoir is a chronicle of the long-term friendship between writer, Ann Patchett, and the late Lucy Grealy (author of "The Autobiography of a Face"). They first met early on at Sarah Lawrence College and both continued on to the Iowa Writers Workshop, where they became roomates and best friends. Ann likened their relationship to the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant, where the Grasshopper spends the warm summer months singing and playing and the Ant is busy saving up food for the long winter months. Lucy lived life spontaneously and joyfully, avoiding writing and going to parties to find whatever fun she could. Ann, the ant, toiled daily at her writing, diligently producing articles and eventually novels that gradually started to reap awards and financial success. Lucy's life was one of feast or famine, as her "Autobiography of a Face" suddenly catapults her into fame on every major talk show. However, she produced few works prior to or after that. A primary theme of the novel is Lucy's significant facial deformity, the result of surviving a deadly form of cancer as a young girl. As a result, Lucy was left without a jaw or teeth, and over the course of her life, she submitted to 38 surgeries to try and obtain the best jaw and facial structure that she could. Her chronic medical issues drew the tiny bird-like Lucy into a dependent role with Ann and her other friends, who frequently rearranged their lives to care for her, and at times, come to Lucy's rescue. Ann's relationship with Lucy was remarkable to me as Lucy was extremely dependent on her, needed constant reassurance, and was child-like and needy with her (literally sitting in her lap and eating off her plate, throwing herself in Ann's arms so she would carry her, etc.). Lucy's emotions were extremely unstable throughout her life and she appeared to suffer from Borderline personality traits. It was hard for me to understand how patient Ann could be with Lucy, as Lucy was constantly in crisis and in need of being cared for. Lucy's chronic surgeries and medical problems eventually led to her dependency on opiates and heroin, which in turn, led to suicide attempts and a fatal overdose. I really enjoyed reading this memoir, as it was exceedingly well written and described the intricate details of an intense and complicated female friendship, which lasted for many years. As a new fan of Ann Patchett's work (I loved "State of Wonder"), I am now much more interested in reading all of her works, the creation of each of which were described in this memoir. Though I picked up this novel on a whim, I was very absorbed in this book from the beginning and all the way through. I strongly recommend this work for anyone who is interested in the evolution and psychology of female friendships.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm struggling to verbalize why I gave this book three stars, considering the fact that I didn't like it very much.
The story is interesting, sure. Lucy Grealy had cancer as a child, and as a result, had her jawbone removed and endured many, many reconstructive surgeries. I guess that's what kept me reading the whole time - wondering what would happen to her. I had never heard of Lucy before reading this book, so I didn't know what her cause of death would be. I assumed it would be somehow related to the cancer, or that there would be complications during one of her many surgeries.
I don't know how much of this book really was true. I hope that most of it was, because honestly, Lucy Grealy did not come across as a likable person. So either she really was that awful, or Patchett spent an entire book making her best friend sound a whole lot worse than she really was. I hope it's the former. It seemed obvious to me that Lucy had numerous psychological issues; I am not a doctor, but she should have been in therapy at a very, very young age. Her clinginess and neediness were off the charts, and she engaged in self-destructive behavior constantly.
But then you have to ask yourself how anyone could have gone through what Lucy did and not be completely screwed up.
I guess that after reading this book, I feel torn and worn out. I feel so sorry for Lucy because of what she went through, and I feel sorry for the friends that she seemed to have taken advantage of. I'm sorry that her family had to see Lucy's life end the way it did, and that they had to deal with the publication of this book.
And like, seriously though, Lucy seemed REALLY messed up. Like, to a ridiculous degree. She just seemed awful. I was so angry at her during most of the book. As I've said before, I think I should probably just stay away from memoirs. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's a fast read and an affecting account of an odd relationship. Much about Lucy was hard to like, yet Patchett manages to make the reader see how so many people cared so deeply about her. I honestly didn't think I'd like this book (it was a gift) but it pulled me in.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Truth & Beauty is Patchett's book about her relationship with Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face. Like all the Patchett books I've read so far, it's very well written and compelling to read. Lucy was a charismatic but very troubled young woman, and her friendship with Ann often crosses the line from being something beautiful to being something dysfunctional.I read the book in a day and a half. I'm usually a fast reader, but I was so caught up in the story of this unique and obsessive relationship, that I found it hard to put the book down. I did think it was an excellent book, but it's one that I'd recommend cautiously as Lucy and Ann's story is often a painful one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful writing and a beautiful story about the authors friendship with Lucy Grealy, another author who had had a horrible cancer as a child that deformed her face).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is my kind of book;a memoir, great writing and people you like
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Loved this book. I thought the portrait of friendship and of the discovery of one's own self in contrast and in the context of someone else were wonderful. (Plus, it has the distinction of being my very first Kindle book, so it bears a shine of magic from that.)
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Well done. A portrait of the poet Lucy Grealy. The family was up in arms on this one, I can see why, but I feel like this comes acfos fondly and accurately.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I just finished reading Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, which chronicles the relationship of the author with the late Lucy Grealy. This book has been on my must-read list ever since I read Patchett's account of Clemson's attempt to censor it from their incoming freshman class. Based upon the brouhaha the book the book created, I expected something in the book that would have earned it the label certain members of the Clemson community gave it: pornographic. Of course I read it more because I enjoy Patchett's ability to engage in lyric reminiscence than because I was expecting to read steamy love scenes between the two girls. In that regard, I was left scratching my head and uttering a bemused, “huh?” for this decidedly PG-rated book. It turns out the relationship between Ann and Lucy was more mother-daughter than loverly (with Ann decidedly taking on the maternal role most of the time). Truth and Beauty is decidedly not about sex. It’s about the love of two writers who found each other in college and maintained a friendship through thick and thin. Most of the “thin” revolved around Lucy. Patchett paints Lucy as a dynamic human, the type of girl that couldn’t be ignored, a troubled woman whom everyone seemed to love but who, paradoxically, felt perpetually alone. Lucy was plagued by depression and insecurity, which seemed to be the natural outflow of living life with a face that had been stolen from her in childhood through the violent cancer treatments she underwent for Ewing’s sarcoma (a rare cancer of the jaw). She survived the treatments, but they left her with little lower jaw and no teeth. The fallout from her chemo and radiation also left Lucy with invisible scars that marred her ability to believe that she was lovable. Yet, Ann and countless others DID love Lucy. That’s because Lucy Grealy was, among many things, lovable immeasurable it seemed, creative, and full of candor. Lucy Grealy was stunning writer. And she was honest, whimsical and a force to be reckoned with. Ann’s depiction of their friendship paints not the sad tale of a manic-depressive, self-centered girl, but of a woman who was nuanced and vivacious. Though Lucy would never paint herself as a hero, I believe that Patchett saw her as one, though perhaps of a different sort than the “triumph over tragedy” trope. Patchett shares her perspective on Lucy, and it’s clear that this perspective is one of love, though not the rose-colored glasses kind. Lucy was needy, but this need tapped into something maternal in Ann. So while some would argue that Anne pandered to Lucy’s temperament, I would argue that these two girls loved each other fiercely and that they just enjoyed each other. Lucy cheered Ann. Ann’s practicality balanced Lucy’s more flighty tendency. And Lucy Grealy was self-deprecatingly FUNNY. The nature of their relationship is revealed through vignettes and letters written by Lucy during the many years in which they lived apart pursuing fellowships, teaching at different colleges, or while Lucy (Scottish by birth) spent a year abroad undergoing facial reconstructive surgeries.Whoever Lucy Grealy was, she was a complex woman who had dreams, spunk and talent in spades. I believe this account honors her life, though, like Lucy’s sister who lambasted Patchett for writing Truth and Beauty so soon after Lucy’s death, I wonder if Patchett should have waited a bit to publish the book. I understand her need to memorialize her friend, but I do question the wisdom of her timing. While I can see her sister’s point, the work itself still stands as a narrative that shines a light on what was one of the greatest loves of Patchett’s life. Sorry Clemson, the love between two women IS normal (even though this one was decidedly of the amicable-not-amorous, variety after all).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ann Patchett is a fantastic writer and this memior / biography is a page turner as the story unfolds over the years (NOT typically the type of story that is a page turner!). Filled with descriptive language and the author's unique perspective. This is ultimately a sad story of artistic talent that is mired in personal problems and demons. But supported by friends to the end.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A mix between memoir and biography, with Patchett recounting her friendship with Lucy Grealy. It's a lovely read, touching on writing, illness and love, but really all about the bonds of friendship.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An elegy for Lucy Grealy, Patchett's talented, troubled friend and boon companion, "Truth and Beauty" is an uncommonly effective example of a memoir written by a younger person. Lucy, to Patchett's great credit, shines through as a character -- she's funny, magnetic, maddeningly complex and, as the title suggests, serious about the business of writing, a star in both the personal and professional sense. A lot of movies and books have dealt with female friendships in the past couple of decades, and while Patchett and Grealy had as intense a friendship as I've ever heard of and were constantly in touch, Patchett also uses their relationship to trace her own development as a writer and as a person. In a sense, "Truth and Beauty" is an autobiography told through a friendship, and it turns out to be a pretty effective device. The author seems quite aware that it isn't just Lucy she's memorializing here; she's also commemorating her own formative years, a time when she made the emotional and professional sacrifices necessary to become a writer. The book's level of emotional disclosure can sometimes be startling: Patchett includes several of Grealy's letters in their entirety, and descriptions of how her friend's disfiguring illness -- and the extreme steps she took to deal with it -- affected her life and molded her personality seem both sympathetic and unerringly clear-eyed, as are her descriptions of the disappointment she felt during the difficult years she spent working in a chain restaurant in Nashville. The book's closing chapters, which describe how Lucy's own frustrations and insecurities overwhelmed her and pushed her into drug use, are almost unbearably sad. Patchett freely admits that her friend's emotional insecurities could sometimes be trying, though she wisely rather to show, rather than spell out, the cracks that appeared in their friendship as Lucy became an addict. "Truth and Beauty" feels like a gift in a lot of ways: Patchett wants us to get to know her friend, and to fall in love with her in the same way she did. Still, it also serves as a lasting reminder of her immense talent and tremendous potential, and just how much of it was left unfulfilled. "Truth and Beauty" is also the sort of book powerful enough to haunt its readers.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Patchett's tribute to her friend, Lucy Grealy - a monumental story of love, grief, and self exploration
Book preview
Truth & Beauty - Ann Patchett
Chapter One
THE THING YOU CAN COUNT ON IN LIFE IS THAT Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August. In 1985 you could also pretty much count on the fact that the U-Haul truck you rented to drive from Tennessee to Iowa, cutting up through Missouri, would have no air-conditioning or that the air-conditioning would be broken. These are the things I knew for sure when I left home to start graduate school. The windows were down in the truck and my stepsister, Tina, was driving. We sat on towels to keep our bare legs from adhering to the black vinyl seats and licked melted M&Ms off our fingers. My feet were on the dashboard and we were singing because the radio had gone the way of the air conditioner. Going to the chap-el and we’re—gonna get mar-ar-aried.
We knew all the words to that one. Tina had the better voice, one more reason I was grateful she had agreed to come along for the ride. I was twenty-one and on my way to be a fiction writer. The whole prospect seemed as simple as that: rent a truck, take a few leftover pots and pans and a single bed mattress from the basement of my mother’s house, pack up my typewriter. The hills of the Tennessee Valley flattened out before we got to Memphis and as we headed north the landscape covered over with corn. The blue sky blanched white in the heat. I leaned out the window and thought, Good, no distractions.
I had been to Iowa City once before in June to find a place to live. I was looking for two apartments then, one for myself and one for Lucy Grealy, who I had gone to college with. I got a note from Lucy not long after receiving my acceptance letter from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She said that initially when she heard I had gotten into the workshop she was sorry, because she had wanted to be the only student there from Sarah Lawrence. But then our mutual friend Jono Wilks had told her that I was going up early to find housing and if this was the case, would I find a place for her as well? She couldn’t afford to make the trip to look herself and so it went without saying that she was on a very tight budget. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at her handwriting, which seemed oddly scrawny and uncertain, like a note on a birthday card from an elderly aunt. I had never seen her writing before, and certainly these were the only words she had ever addressed to me. While Lucy and I would later revise our personal history to say we had been friends since we met as freshmen, just for the pleasure of adding a few more years to the tally, the truth was we did not know each other at all in college. Or the truth was that I knew her and she did not know me. Even at Sarah Lawrence, a school full of models and actresses and millionaire daughters of industry, everyone knew Lucy and everyone knew her story: she had had a Ewing’s sarcoma at the age of nine, had lived through five years of the most brutal radiation and chemotherapy, and then undergone a series of reconstructive surgeries that were largely unsuccessful. The drama of her life, combined with her reputation for being the smartest student in all of her classes, made her the campus mascot, the favorite pet in her dirty jeans and oversized Irish sweaters. She kept her head tipped down so that her long dark blond hair fell over her face to hide the fact that part of her lower jaw was missing. From a distance you would have thought she had lost something, money or keys, and that she was vigilantly searching the ground trying to find it.
It was Lucy’s work-study job to run the film series on Friday and Saturday nights, and before she would turn the projector on, it was up to her to walk in front of the screen and explain that in accordance with the New York State Fire Marshal, exits were located at either side of the theater. Only she couldn’t say it, because the crowd of students cheered her so wildly, screaming and applauding and chanting her name, LOO-cee, LOO-cee, LOO-cee!
She would wrap her arms around her head and twist from side to side, mortified, loving it. Her little body, the body of an underfed eleven-year-old, was visibly shaking inside her giant sweaters. Finally her embarrassment reached such proportions that the audience recognized it and settled down. She had to speak her lines. In accordance with the New York State Fire Marshal,
she would begin. She was shouting, but her voice was smaller than the tiny frame it came from. It was no more than a whisper once it passed the third row.
I watched this show almost every weekend. It was as great a part of the evening’s entertainment as seeing Jules et Jim. Being shy myself, I did not come to shout her name until our junior year. By then she would wave to the audience as they screamed for her. She would bow from the waist. She had cut off her hair so that it was now something floppy and boyish, a large cowlick sweeping up from her pale forehead. We could see her face clearly. It was always changing, swollen after a surgery or sinking in on itself after a surgery had failed. One year she walked with a cane and someone told me it was because they had taken a chunk of her hip to grind up and graft into her jaw.
We knew things about Lucy the way one knows things about the private lives of movie stars, by a kind of osmosis of information. I do not remember asking or being told. It was simply passed through the air. Not only did we know about Lucy’s childhood, her cancer, her bravery, everyone in school knew that Lucy was the poet. Better than a very good college poet, she was considered by both teachers and hipsters to be a serious talent. She was always picked to give readings in the coffee shop on Parents’ Weekend. People pressed into the little room to listen, her voice as small as it was when she directed us to the emergency exits on Friday nights, but more self-confident.
When I dream of fire,
she read, you’re still the one I’d save / though I’ve come to think of myself / as the flames, the splintering rafters.
As I sat in the audience, watching, I believed we had something in common even though I wrote short stories. People liked my work but had trouble remembering me. I was often confused with another writer named Anne who was in one of my classes, and with a girl named Corinna who lived downstairs from me. Unlike Lucy, I had a tendency to blur into other people. I had come to Sarah Lawrence from twelve years of Catholic school where we were not in the business of discovering our individuality. We dressed in identical plaid skirts, white blouses, saddle oxfords, and when we prayed, it was together and aloud. It was impossible to distinguish your voice from the crowd. There is an art to giving yourself over to someone else and as a group we mastered it. While Lucy had discovered that she was different from all the other children in her grade school because she was sick and was different from all the other children on the hospital’s cancer ward because she continued to survive, I had discovered I was so much like every other little girl in the world that it always took me a minute to identify my own face in our class photo. Still, I thought, in my shyness, my blurriness, it would not be so unreasonable to think that the famous Lucy Grealy and I could be friends. But when I waved to her in passing or said hello in the cafeteria, she would look at me blankly for a minute and then turn away as if we had never met. Once I stopped her at the window where we returned our trays and dirty dishes.
My father and stepmother live in Los Angeles,
I said. They invited a couple of the midshipmen from the Naval Academy over for Thanksgiving dinner and it turns out one of them went to high school with you. His name was Bobby something.
She stared at me as if she could not possibly imagine why I was speaking to her. I made another stab at my story. I guess Sarah Lawrence came up and they figured out we both went there, so he asked my parents to ask me to tell you hello.
I gave her a little smile but it went nowhere. So, hello.
Okay,
she said, and walked away.
Lucy Grealy was much too cool for the likes of me, a girl from Tennessee who did not go to clubs in the city.
I graduated from college early and went back home to Nashville. When I got Lucy’s letter, I never considered telling her no, she could find her own place to live. Lucy had the pull of celebrity, and while she had always ignored me, I was flattered to be asked for help. Besides, she would be the only person I knew in Iowa. I borrowed my mother’s car and drove up in June to look at the cut-up houses and makeshift rooms used to store graduate students through hard winters. I quickly found that there was not a single apartment Lucy could afford, nor was there a single apartment I could afford. There were very few that we could have managed if we pooled our resources, and so I rented the only practical thing I could find, half of a very ugly green duplex on Governor Street for $375 a month, where we could at least have our own bedrooms. When I got home, I wrote Lucy and told her we would be roommates. It was not one of the options she had given me, but the numbers spoke for themselves. Neither of us could manage more than $200 a month.
I never thought that there was anything brave about moving to another state to live with someone I barely knew and yet suspected didn’t like me, any more than it would have seemed hard to be broke and in pursuit of such an unlikely profession. Because my life had no shape, I was willing to accept whatever happened. If Tina had turned to me in that scorching U-Haul and said, Let’s keep the truck, let’s drive though Canada and take the Alcan Highway to Alaska, I probably would have been thrilled. Tina was good company and I very much wanted her to stay with me, but she was planning on her own adventure, riding her bicycle across America as soon as she dropped me off. Besides, by the time we made it to Iowa City, we were tired of the truck. We were sticky from sweat and all the candy we had eaten on the way. As we turned onto Governor Street, Lucy pulled up in the passenger seat of a gorgeous antique convertible driven by a handsome man. She waved ecstatically. I’ll be right there!
she called, and then they zoomed away.
I thought that things must be going well for Lucy.
The front door of the house was open wide. The living room was completely empty and the linoleum floor was shining wet and smelled of Pine Sol. I walked into the room, leaving a trail of footprints behind me.
Did it look like this when you rented it?
Tina asked.
It looked like a storage unit. I think it got worse.
We weren’t there five minutes before Lucy was back. When I turned around to say hello, she shot through the door with a howl. In a second she was in my arms, leaping up onto me, her arms locked around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist, ninety-five pounds that felt no more than thirty. She was crying into my hair. She squeezed her legs tighter. It was not a greeting as much as it was a claim: she was staking out this spot on my chest as her own and I was to hold her for as long as she wanted to stay.
What happened?
I said, and I put my arms around her back. There was never such a little back, and I felt it heave and sob. A bird in the hand. I thought something horrible must have happened. Only something truly outside of my understanding of bad things could drive this girl into my arms.
She pulled back to look at me. She kissed me and smiled and cried again. I’m so glad you’re here,
she said.
I do not remember our love unfolding, that we got to know one another and in time became friends. I only remember that she came through the door and it was there, huge and permanent and first. I felt I had been chosen by Lucy and I was thrilled. I was twenty-one years old and very strong. She had a habit of pitching herself into my arms like a softball without any notice. She liked to be carried.
Dearest anvil [she would write to me six years later], dearest deposed president of some now defunct but lovingly remembered country, dearest to me, I can find no suitable words of affection for you, words that will contain the whole of your wonderfulness to me. You will have to make due with being my favorite bagel, my favorite blue awning above some great little café where the coffee is strong but milky and had real texture to it.
Lucy had mopped the floor three days before in honor of my impending arrival but the air in the duplex was so hot and humid and utterly motionless that the water and Pine Sol had simply puddled and stayed. For three days she had been waiting for me in the dampness.
I thought you were never going to get here,
she said. She was still holding on to my arm, even though her feet were now on the floor.
How long have you been here?
Weeks, years. This place is horrible.
She didn’t say it unkindly, just as a statement of fact.
Horrible,
Tina said, nodding in sympathy.
It was all I could find,
I said, but I still felt guilty. I’m going to get some things out of the truck.
No,
Lucy said. We have to talk. There’s too much I have to tell you.
It was as if I were her oldest friend in life, just stumbling in through the door after ten years lost in Borneo.
The three of us went and sat on her bed on the floor. This was the story she told: On her first night in town she had gone to the local auction, where farmers who were going bust came to sell whatever they had left. She bought a futon mattress, a rug, a rickety table with chairs for the kitchen, and a grocery sack full of Harlequin Romance novels from the fifties, whose covers she planned to tear off and use to paper the bathroom. Then she promptly ran out of money.
You’re going to paper the bathroom in romance novels?
No, no, listen to me,
she said, her voice high with excitement. I met somebody. The guy in the car. I had sex.
B——was twice her age and drove her home from the auction in his antique Jaguar convertible, whose turn indicators were two small flags that shot up from either side of the car and waved to establish the driver’s intentions. Such charming turn indicators, coupled with a little attention, was all the reason Lucy needed. After a brief courtship in which he lent her several interesting books, they had sex. She was twenty-two and thrilled to be relieved of the burden of her virginity. In fact, she told me and Tina, it hadn’t just been losing her virginity, it was solid experience. She had managed to sleep with him regularly since then.
We’ll go to the auction,
she said. I’ll introduce you.
We went in the U-Haul, which didn’t need to be turned in until the next day, and parked in the rutted grass. In a long barn there were cafeteria-style tables set out with boxes. One contained seven dolls with plastic heads and matted hair, four chipped cups, a coil of rope, pulleys, and two spades. The next had a toaster and a thick stack of record albums, half a dozen extension cords, several packs of playing cards, countless forks. Every box was an inexplicable collection of items that had to be purchased as a unit. There was no picking out what you wanted. Past the boxes were chairs and blankets and paintings of birds, an impressive assortment of Crock-Pots. Farmers and wives and children made slow loops around the tables, carefully studying what was available. They only raised their eyes from the merchandise to gawk at Lucy.
GAWKING IS A LOOK stronger than a stare. The gawk was full of brazen curiosity, pity, and fear, every unattractive human emotion rolled into one unflattering facial expression. If she saw them, and she must have since this was not a discreet spy job, she didn’t let on. She had on shorts and a little red bowling shirt, dingy Keds. Up and down the aisles she held my hand. She was happy to be in Iowa, happy that Tina and I had arrived, happy she had a lover, even if we saw no sign of him that night. But I couldn’t stop seeing those people. People who, had you set them down anywhere on the island of Manhattan, would have received some vicious gawking themselves. I would stop and stare at them until they noticed me. I would hold their eye for the seconds it took to make their faces warm and then watch as they scuttled outside to look at the heavy machinery. It was a trick I learned a long time ago, when I was nine years old, the year my sister and I were in the car accident. I remembered what it was like having people double back in the grocery store to get another look. Until the gawkers swung by for the third time, and then the fourth, I hadn’t really understood how badly I’d been hurt. My sister, Heather, had been seriously injured and stayed in the hospital for another month after I was wheeled out to the pickup area. My problems, I had been told by family and doctors, were mainly cosmetic. My nose was broken, my lower lip had been torn through and reattached, my long hair had been cut off because it was too matted with blood, my face and neck were solid purple and green. I had a fractured wrist and a fractured skull. Shards of glass worked their way out of my head and through my hair for months. I was forever pricking my finger when I reached up to scratch my scalp. But sharp sudden headaches could not compete with the people who were looking at me. When I went back to a plastic surgeon at nineteen to have my nose rebroken and set again and the lower half of my face dermabraded off to lessen the scars (a second accident had sliced open my right cheek), I had not accounted for the fact that the world’s tedious curiosity would be mine all over again, that it wasn’t only battered-looking children that gawkers settled on.
Oh, people like to say when they hear this part of the story, this is why you and Lucy are so close. You went through the same thing. But nothing could be farther from the truth. I read one slim volume of the available information. Lucy read the library. My experience only left me smart enough to comprehend my own stunning lack of comprehension. When, as a child, I returned to school after a two-week absence, one of the older nuns took me aside to tell me that they were still offering the mass for my sister every day. Her superior grades had merged with her superior injuries and while she was plugged into a respirator she seemed to be a candidate for beatification. God knew she was stronger than you,
the nun told me. That’s why she was in the front seat. Because she had more grace, she was allowed to endure more pain.
In short, it was God’s love that had crushed my sister’s larynx and His disappointment in my weakness that had let me off with comparatively so little damage. Even in the third grade I found this reasoning suspicious. I wasn’t in the front seat because my sister was three and a half years older and had never let me sit in the front seat, not once, when she was in the car. There was no lesson there about God’s love.
THE FIRST WEEK we were in Iowa, another student in the fiction program finally got up her nerve to ask me the question she had been wondering all along: How I could stand to look at Lucy every day? Lucy’s great,
she said, but I’d find it too upsetting. I’d always be thinking about her face.
I told her I had no idea what she was talking about and then I left abruptly, hoping she would feel horrible for having said it. But then I wasn’t a good person to ask. I had stopped noticing Lucy’s face years before, seeing her in the cafeteria or walking up the hill to class, always in the center of the most popular students. Or I saw her onstage, saying her lines, being cheered for her poetry or her introduction to The Wizard of Oz. And even though I didn’t know her then, I had seen her face change significantly over the years. I thought it had improved. Her lower jaw had been a ledge falling off just below her cheekbone when we started college, making her face a sharp triangle, but now the lines were softer. She couldn’t close her mouth all the way and her front teeth showed. Her jaw was irregular, as if one side had been collapsed by a brutal punch, and her neck was scarred and slightly twisted. She had a patch of paler skin running from ear to ear that had been grafted from her back and there were other bits of irregular patching and scars. But she also had lovely light eyes with damp dark lashes and a nose whose straightness implied aristocracy. Lucy had white Irish skin and dark blond hair and in the end that’s what you saw, the things that didn’t change: her eyes, the sweetness of her little ears. In Iowa she wore a four-by-four gauze pad, folded once and taped to the left side of her face, and while it was strange at first, it actually gave her a nice balance. It made it look like whatever was wrong was temporary, in the process of being fixed, when it was in fact part of a synthetic prosthesis that had worn a hole in her skin and was poking through. I asked Lucy countless times to let me see, but she wouldn’t. The pad stayed fixed in place.
Lucy always said it was better when people just came out and asked her what had happened. A straight question was preferable to the awkward avoidance. If they have the nerve to ask me, I’ll tell them the truth,
she said. Unless of course they asked her on a bus, in which case she would lean in close and whisper, Bus accident.
Or Plane crash
or Car wreck,
depending on the mode of transportation at the moment.
B——never seemed to mind Lucy’s face. He was giving her a chance she thought she was never going to get, and so she was committed to following his lead. The first lesson was obedience. She came home early most mornings looking rumpled and calm. She would pour a cup of coffee and sit down across from me at the table.
Bondage,
she would begin patiently, is not about a desire to be dominated.
And