Advance Praise
“Cumberland is a richly imagined tale of family secrets, lies, and unspoken truths that threaten the lives of two sisters. The writing is lyrical and funny in the voice of Ansel whose coming-of-age could bring down the entire family and the town around them. This novel has a mythic undertone that moves the layers of the story with the rush of an incoming tide carrying deeper revelations than the characters are quite able to bear.
Gannon writes with a painter’s eye and a poet’s ear, and there’s no denying that she is bringing an original vision to her readers.”
—Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife and The Weight of Dreams
“Haunting, sensual, and captivating, Cumberland reminds me of Joy Williams’ work; its story of twin sisters—one of them reaching out toward life while the other struggles with illness—is as poetic and moody as adolescence itself. Cumberland is about the restorative powers of art and the sea, and I longed to linger in this world and to learn more from these wise and intuitive girls.”
—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope and The Swan Gondola
“Cumberland is a remarkable novel that draws us into the intensely physical mystery of twinness. Fifteen-year-old Ansel comes into the urgency of her adolescent body while her paralyzed sister Isabel floats in an increasingly mystical world of art and longing. In vivid and musical prose, author Megan Gannon delivers mystery, suspense, a most unusual love triangle, and surprises that keep the pages turning as the twins’ embattled connection appears to reach the breaking point.”
—Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Turk and My Mother and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
“Cumberland tells the story of twin sisters inhabiting two vastly different worlds. One comes of age, finding her way in love and in her relationship with the world, while the other, trapped in both body and circumstance, finally discovers a way to break the silence that seems to imprison her. In a pitch-perfect duet, Gannon illuminates the place their worlds overlap, how the sisters imagine and intuit their way into the other’s inner workings with unbearable intimacy. It’s a beautifully wrought tale about how the intricacies of our bonds can lead to the most specific betrayals and how the burden of familial wreckage can play out in our lives whether or not we fully understand it. And it’s a story about love and survival in the interdependent dynamic of two souls who were once one.
The story moves in a poet’s carriage. Gannon’s sentences are so full you’ll want to say them out loud just to feel them in your mouth; her poetry is at times nothing short of arresting. Cumberland is haunting and surprising. You will miss these girls when the book is done.”
—Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel
Cumberland
a novel
Cumberland
a novel
Megan Gannon
Apprentice House
Loyola University Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland
Copyright © 2014 by Megan Gannon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62720-000-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62720-001-1
Design by Kimberly Babin
Cover photo by Mike Gannon
Published by Apprentice House
For Leigh
acombren “obstructing progress,” from O.Fr. encombrer, from combre “obstruction, barrier,” from V.L. *comboros “that which is carried together.”
One
Friday, July 5, 1974
33 days
If Izzy sends me, I don’t feel guilty loving every step away from the house and down into town: the sandy road sliding in and out of my flip-flops, the wide-open ocean-side light, and air so sharp with salt it stings to breathe. Then saltbush, tang of scrubby shrubs, musty bark and the flickering of live oaks as the sand picks up gravel and hard earth along the curve downhill. The long turn of the road gathering green and shade, then the paved road and Red’s garage with its smell of crude and sun-warmed metal, the door into Pauline’s diner that jingles and sticks three-quarters closed. The barber-shop-turned-library with heavy curtains in the tall windows where still the spines closest to the glass are brittle, sun-bleached. The Stop ‘n’ Shop with its low metal shelves of dusty cans and detergent and the cooler in the back that smells of milk-soured ice.
The sunlight gathers dust by passing between sagging storefronts. Two peeling antique stores hold half the old toys of Cumberland, Georgia. Down the street, the wide windows of Demeers’ department store display a chalky mannequin with tapered fingers and blue eyelids. Today she’s wearing a blond bob and tennis skirt, Keds and red sweatbands, her gaze cast over my reflection of skinny arms and eyes that don’t blink in the bright street where a car pulls past. It’s a station wagon full of kids in new sandals and a mom with sunglasses and trim hips. They buy three bags of groceries from the Stop ‘n’ Shop, slam the doors and shut their noise in with them, then turn onto the road that leads to the C. Grand Hotel for the few weeks the kids can stand. It’s summer, so all my days are half Izzy’s. This is my half of the errand.
For Izzy’s half, I head to the back of the pharmacy. There’s a book on crochet in the crafts section and some soft cotton yarn that fades from sea green to sky blue and back. She’s already exhausted Blooming Beads, Cross-Stitch the Proverbs, Advanced Needlework, and many others that used to fill the empty slots in the rack. Every so often Mr. Jorgen lets me look over his catalogues and pick a new craft project to order in. Sometimes it’s half a year before I buy a new one; sometimes I need two in one month. And always inside the big bag is a smaller bag of gauze and gloves and tubing.
At the library I try to memorize everything, knowing Izzy will ask something I haven’t noticed. The pattern of book-spines preceding the one I pick out for her: brown, green, blue, green, red. The sounds from this shelf: sniffle. Cough. The flap, stamp, flap, stamp, of the librarian checking out books. Rustle of a plastic bag, clip clop of hard-soled shoes on the floor. Just once I’d like to trump her or pull off a lie, but she always knows when I’m bluffing. Today she insisted I follow her instructions: the biggest book on art I can find, then the eighth section, eighth row, eighth shelf, eighth book. It turns out to be The Poems of Emily Dickinson. I’m counting again to double-check when I feel someone standing behind
