Mary and O'Neil: A Novel in Stories
Justin Cronin
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0385333595
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Mary and O’Neil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where they’d come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again?
Justin Cronin’s poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and O’Neil Burke, two vulnerable young teachers who rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope. From the formative experiences of their early adulthood to marriage, parenthood, and beyond, this novel in stories illuminates the moments of grace that enable Mary and O’Neil to make peace with the deep emotional legacies that haunt them: the sudden, mysterious death of O’Neil’s parents, Mary’s long-ago decision to end a pregnancy, O’Neil’s sister’s battle with illness and a troubled marriage. Alive with magical nuance and unexpected encounters, Mary and O’Neil celebrates the uncommon in common lives, and the redemptive power of love.
with a firm grip. “You mind that leg, now,” Donnelle said. When they had pulled out of the lot, Kay lifted her eyes at O'Neil through the rearview mirror. “Please don't pout, honey. I didn't even get the message until forty minutes ago. I came as soon as I could.” He had left messages for her everywhere: her office, the house, even the restaurant where she sometimes met Jack after work for dinner. “Oh, it's all right,” O'Neil said after a moment. “Donnelle was good company.” “I can stop
had begun to snow; the falling flakes had tripped the motion sensors over the back door, bathing the yard with cones of snowy light. By the next morning a foot of snow had fallen, and a cold wind blew. School was still closed for Christmas break, and Mary and O'Neil passed the day baking pointlessly enormous batches of tollhouse cookies and watching movies on cable television. Late in the afternoon, when the storm had ended, they bundled up and walked the streets of their neighborhood. They
under elevated domes of glass, seemed somehow inevitable, like a figure from a dream she'd once had years ago. The druggist handed the prescription to her in a stapled package, his face broadening with a smile. “Congratulations,” he said. Mary thanked him, bought a carton of milk at the lunch counter, and stepped outside. O'Neil would be back at the motel, pacing with worry. Where had she gone off to? Had she gotten so sick she couldn't wait for the muffins and the tea? Why hadn't she left him
her, a lone figure humping her way along a country lane in her purple sweatshirt and pants); holder of degrees in literature (Barnard) and library science (NYU); daughter of the late Daniel Chaim Braverman and his beloved Alicia; sister and trusted counsel to siblings Monica (fifty) and Abraham (fifty-seven); a woman lately described by a man she met at a party as “a gal who did good and still looked it”—Miriam Patricia, Mimi to her friends, stands in the foyer of the Vinegar County Library and
terrible fate that awaited them all. The Odyssey! they cried. All of it! It's, like, a thousand pages long! And yet most of them came to like it, even as they refused to admit this. War, magic, adultery, ruination, betrayal; nymphs and cyclopses and men turned into pigs; a long trip and the yearning for home. What was it, in the end, but a metaphor for the trials of growing up? They had read to Book Eleven, “A Gathering of Shades,” in which Odysseus and his men, blown to a dark and nameless shore