Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead Read Free Book Online Page A

mom’s house, but I don’t even know if you’re there. I hope you’re dancing, wherever you are. If you’re taking a typing class, please quit immediately .
Joan. About the day at the beach. I’m sorry. I was a jackass. I’m sorry for what I said and for acting like I had earned some sort of right to kiss you. My friendship isn’t contingent on kissing, I promise. But I’m not sorry for the actual kiss. I have always wanted to kiss you. Maybe you knew that. Maybe I should have told you sooner and not let it build up .
I think we might end up together, Joan. Do you think I’m insane? Does the idea horrify you? You kissed me back at first, for a second. You didn’t say why you stopped. Then I was a jackass. That day, before, I said you were lucky because you’d decided for yourself what you wanted out of life and I hadn’t. But that wasn’t true. I realized later I’d decided for myself that I want you. Will you please just consider that I’m the right one? Just consider it. Don’t decide now. Consider it, I don’t know, forever. Or at least until it happens .
I am going to have one more little bit of whiskey, and then I am going to mail this. And in the morning I’ll probably regret everything, but it’ll be too late .
Love,
Jacob
    January 20, 1971
Dear Jacob ,
I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. As you probably realized, I didn’t go home for Christmas. I’ve been in San Francisco—did my mother tell you? Madame Tchishkoff helped me get a spot as an apprentice here. I’m so relieved. My foot is basically better, and the city is beautiful. My dancing has improved a lot, I think. I hope. Anyway, I didn’t get your letter for a while, and then I didn’t know how to write back. I still don’t, but I am. The long and short of it is that I adore you. I told you I know you took care of me. I don’t know if I said that I was grateful, but I am. I’ve never really had romantic feelings for you, exactly, though. I knew you felt a little differently. Maybe it was selfish of me to just let things go on. I was afraid of you bringing it up or trying something, and when you did, I didn’t know what to do. You’d think I would have decided in advance, but I couldn’t decide. Then when it happened, it felt like too much. I think you want too much from me. Does that make sense? I can’t put things into words the way you can. Is it enough to say that I’m confused? Maybe things will change. Some people seem to know themselves. I don’t feel that I do .
But I would like us to write, even if it’s (still) selfish of me. I miss you. You are my best friend by miles and miles. Is that okay? I wish there were some way for people not to want things from each other. But now you have my address. Write me back and tell me about how brilliant everyone at Georgetown thinks you are. (Tell me about the girl, too.)
Much love,
Joan

JUNE 1982—SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
    A S THE PLANE DESCENDS , JOAN HOLDS THE CURTAIN TO ONE SIDE and peers out. Desert crinkles up into scrubby mountains topped with antennae; those drop away into low hills fringed with a terraced reef of neighborhoods. Then parking lots, electric blue swimming pools, golf courses, highways, and, just beyond the plane’s falling arc, the ocean. She fidgets, flipping the armrest ashtray open and closed. The smell of stale ash and sweet mint gum reminds her of touring with the company, everybody sleeping and stretching and getting up to smoke in the back, circulating up and down the aisle as though at a cocktail party.
    Jacob is already down there somewhere. A school district, flush with state money, has hired him to expand a program for gifted children. First the children are identified, then they are placed in small classes with specially trained teachers, and then they are tracked and studied over the long term. Jacob is enthusiastic, pleased to be regarded as a young hotshot, an innovator. He can build something here, he says. The system shouldn’t neglect the