has fluttered from our faces.
And on that afternoon,
our hearts and our minds
will finally be old enough
and wise enough—
not to give
a flying fuck.
WHAT I AM GOING TO DO
Yesterday,
I read a very funny book
about how not to act old.
But I have made an executive decision
to go right ahead and act old—
old and hip.
On the day I turn seventy,
I will not be dying my hair powder blue.
I will be dying it magenta.
(That is,
if I have any hair left
on the day I turn seventy.)
I am never going to wear
a pair of old lady shoes.
No matter how thick my ankles get.
I am going to flirt
till I’m too weak
to wink.
I am going to become the old woman
who all the young women hope they’ll be like
when they get old.
I am not
going to grow old
gracefully.
I
am going to grow old
disgracefully!
SPANX?
No,
thanx!
IT’S A PERFECT CALIFORNIA FALL DAY
I hop onto
my bike,
ride down
walk across the sand,
and climb onto lifeguard station #3.
I pull up the hood
on my new sweatshirt,
rest my back
against the faded blue boards,
and watch the waves curling onto the shore,
shedding their misty coats as they crash.
Then I reach into my bag
and pull out
my completed
manuscript.
I CLEAR MY THROAT
And begin
reading my work aloud,
listening to the rhythm of the poems
mingling with the rhythm of the waves…
And most of what I hear,
I like.
Then, when I’ve finished,
I close my eyes,
letting the astonishing doneness of it
wash over me like a salty breeze.
And when I open my eyes again,
and look out at the ocean,
I see
a whole family of dolphins—
spinning on their tails
just for me.
A WEEK LATER–ROXIE CALLS
She says that she thinks
my manuscript is amazing—
and that is was totally worth waiting for.
She says she’s talking
to her publisher about positioning it
as the lead title on their fall list.
She says she’s pushing
to have it featured
on the cover of the catalog.
She says she’s trying
to get the marketing department
I always knew Roxie was a good kid.
A RECIPE FOR BUTTERSCOTCH BROWNIES
If reading about Samantha’s butterscotch brownies has left you with an insatiable craving, here is our family’s favorite recipe:
1 cup salted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butterscotch chips
¾ cup coarsely chopped walnuts
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt the butter in a sauce pan over low heat, and stir in the light and dark brown sugar until a lovely deep-caramel-colored goo forms. Pour the goo into a large bowl, and while it is cooling, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, butterscotch chips, and walnuts together in a medium-sized bowl.
Next, add the vanilla to the cooled goo, and beat in the eggs—one at a time. Then, pour in all the premixed dry ingredients, and stir well.
Coat a 9"×12" pan with cooking spray. Spread the batter in the pan, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Be careful not to over-bake. You’ll know the brownies are done when you can stick a toothpick into the center and it comes up dry.
Cool the brownies in the pan, on a wire rack. They’ll be easier to cut if you refrigerate them first. But will you be able to wait till then? A frosty glass of milk beckons….
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Dr. Paul Crane for delivering my babies so well (back when I could have babies). And I’d like to thank my husband, Bennett Tramer, for helping me make my babies. I’d also like to thank my babies: thank you, Jeremy, for being funny with a plunger and for leading me to Eastern Gabon; and thank you, Ava, for asking “Is my whole body three?” and for turning me on to Ellen Langer’s study. And thank you, Ellen Langer, for doing that study—I can feel my fingers growing longer even as I type this.
My deepest gratitude to the awesome Ladies of the Pink Kitchen—Ann Wagner, Betsy Rosenthal, April Halprin Way-land, Ruth Bornstein, and Peg Leavitt—for your wisdom, support, and expert critiquing. I literally couldn’t have done it without you. And here are some deep curtsies for Linda Sue Park, Sara Pennypacker, Debbie Wiles, and Amy Goldman Koss, for reading early drafts and tugging me out of various quagmires. And thanks to you too, my darling Rosie Brock, for your thought-provoking reading guide, which can be found on my website (www.sonyasones.com) and on the HarperCollins website (www.harpercollins.com/readers/browseguides.aspx).
A doff of my hat to Dr. Richard Gold (who is neither short nor round nor bald nor seventy) for loaning me his patter, to Amy and Mitch Koss for their pinecone trick, and to Andrew Roth for answering that age-old question, “What do girls have that boys don’t have?” And let us not forget Becky Evans, general manager of the Cambria Pines Lodge, whose kind hospitality made it possible for me to lock myself into the loveliest of cottages (913!) until I finally finished this manuscript.
I’m indebted to my agent Steven Malk, for never once pressuring me, always inspiring me, and continuing to work his considerable magic. And here’s a round of heartfelt applause and a wow-that-was-fun! for my brilliant editor Sally Kim, upon whom Roxie was not based. Although they are both great kids. And hugs to my hunchie, Maya Ziv, who held down the fort exquisitely.
And, of course, I am grateful to Myra Cohn Livingston for teaching me to write poetry, and to you, gentle reader, for staying in the theater till the very end of the credits.
About the Author
SONYA SONES was born in Boston and overprotected in the nearby suburb of Newton. Before becoming a poet, Sonya was a struggling poet. She was also an animator, a baby clothes mogul, a photographer, a film teacher, a production assistant on a Woody Allen movie, and a film editor.
Sonya went on to write four young adult novels in verse: Stop Pretending, What My Mother Doesn’t Know,w One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, and What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know. Her books have received a Christopher Award, the Myra Cohn Livingston Poetry Award, the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, and a Cuffie Award from Publisher’s Weekly for the Best Book Title of the year. But the coolest honor she ever received was when the American Library Association included What My Mother Doesn’t Know on its list of the “Top 50 Most Challenged Books of the Decade.” (To find out why, please see NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION.)
Sonya lives with her husband, and the occasional child, near the beach in Southern California. You can find out way more than you ever wanted to know about her at www.sonyasones.com, and if you’d like her to visit your book club via phone or Skype, she would be delighted. Contact her at sonyasones@gmail.com.
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OTHER BOOKS BY SONYA SONES
What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know
One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
What My Mother Doesn’t Know
Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy
Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover illustrations by Marika Kandelaki
Copyright
The poems titled “Michael Says We Need to Have Some Fun Together” (originally titled “Three Hours Before the Dance”) and “Double Date” were adapted and reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, from What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones. Text copyright © 2001 by Sonya Sones.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NEIMAN MARCUS. Copyright © 2011 by Sonya Sones. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sones, Sonya.
The hunchback of Neiman Marcus: a novel about marriage, motherhood, and mayhem / Sonya Sones.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-202467-1
1. Middle-aged women—Poetry. 2. Self-realization in women—Poetry. 3. Novels in verse. I. Title.
PS3619.O53H86 2011
811'.6—dc22 2010038039
11 12 13 14 15
EPub Edition © MARCH 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-207908-4
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