Boris Fishman: Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

Maya opened her door. Obediently, the car started dinging. Snow slapped her face. She was ready to be swallowed by the interminable, graying whiteness around her, and actually felt herself falling, and closed her eyes in fright. But she remained in place, and opened them.

The wind was slight, and the temperature actually seemed well above freezing — the situation outside felt nothing like the unnavigable misery that had loomed from behind the windshield. The air was mellow, unconfrontational. Maya blinked rapidly as snowflakes settled on her shoulders, inside her collar, on her eyebrows, her nose. She stuck out her tongue and tasted the cold crystal. The view above her was vast. She had been shivering, but realized it had been in anticipation, not because the weather demanded it. This was the world she had been born to, snow from September through April. She had been on sabbatical for twenty-five years, but she had found it again. If it all did end here, there was no better place.

She looked into the car and waved to Alex and Max to come outside. A long moment passed during which she wondered whether Alex would attempt to coax the Escape into action so he could save himself and his son from the mad interloper among them. But after a long minute in her life, she heard one of the doors open. It was Max’s door. Then her husband emerged.

Through her parka, Maya felt her midsection, soft and sticky under her sweater, her T-shirt — she was supposed to have showered, but hadn’t; she was not supposed to have stolen a T-shirt out of Marion’s bag, and had. Down there, the last vanishing evidence of Marion Hostetler preserved just a little bit longer because of the cold. Or maybe not last. You just didn’t know. So much you just didn’t know. But it didn’t matter, if you were ready for all of it — if you were ready to call things by their name. It was comic to feel her belly three hours after he’d been inside her; this wasn’t a fairy tale, least of all her age; but she felt anyway; because she wanted, and could.

Maya had asked Alex and Max outside because she had wanted to show them that the wretched magnificence all around was innocent, and not what they thought. That they would make it: someway, somehow. They would lay down mats under the wheels, they would pirouette on the snow, they would coast back to the county road, they would inch forward. She took Alex’s hand, then her son’s, and stood with them staring at the brutal, mysterious splendor before them. She wanted them to see that it would take some doing to get out of this trouble, but the forecast was good, and the world full of wonder, and there was nothing to fear out there at all.

The original debt is to family: Anna Oder, Yakov Fishman, Arkady Oder, and in memory of Sofia Oder and Faina Fishman.

The contemporary debt is to friends and colleagues:

Alana Newhouse: I am so lucky to have your friendship.

Henry Dunow, Terry Karten, Elena Lappin: You are my golden triumvirate. Jane Beirn: You’re a miracle worker, and it’s been an honor to work with you. Special thanks also to Nikki Smith, Jillian Verrillo, and Stephanie Cooper: You’re so good at what you do.

The readers: Ben Holmes, Amy Bonnaffons, Ellen Sussman, Jules Lewis, Susan Jane Gilman. You carried me down the last leg.

Margot Knight and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, where this novel was begun, and Wayne Hoffman, Mark Sullivan, and the Horizontal Pines Artists + Writers Haven, where it was finished.

Those who took time to share their stories and educate me: David Politzer, Sari Siegel, Laura Summerhill, Mary Cherry, Laurence Sugarman, Kiro Ivanovski, Scott Summers, Susan Wise Bauer.

The Jewish Book Council, and especially Carolyn Hessel, which does so much for literature.

The evangelists, in no order: Joe Flaherty and everyone at Writers & Books, Bonnie Sumner, Miwa Messer, David and Sally Johnston, Bruce and Julie Blackwell, John King, Vanessa Blakeslee, Yossi Gremilion, Ida and Peter Sorensen, John and Joanne Gordon, Meredith Maran, Dan Speth and Cathy Clemens, Darlene Orlov, Juliette Ponce, Ellen Kaye and Seth Goldman, Carolyn Carr Hutton, Ella Shteingart, Stewart and Susan Kampel, and the many others who’ve gone out of their way to spread word. I wouldn’t be nearly as far without you.

BORIS FISHMANwas born in Belarus and has lived in the United States since the age of nine. He is the author of the novel A Replacement Life , which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and won the Sophie Brody Medal from the American Library Association and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker , the New York Times Magazine , the Wall Street Journal , the London Review of Books , the New Republic , and other publications. He lives in New York City.

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