Ann Napolitano - Within Arms Reach: A Novel

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to my parents,
CATHARINE MCNAMARA NAPOLITANO and JAMES ROMEO NAPOLITANO,
for giving me every opportunity.

Praise for WITHIN ARMS REACH

A stunning first novel... This exquisite, skillfully written gem addresses serious issuese.g., guilt vs. loyalty, the past vs. the present while the narrative remains hopeful and includes ample doses of humor and wit.

Library Journal (starred review)

Within Arms Reach explores this fertile territory... an Irish-American Catholic family living in New Jersey. We view this clans unfolding problems... without which family lifeor at least family reunionswould be unbearably dull.

New York Times Book Review

A mosaic of the past intersecting with the present and a reminder that what we most love is what can do us the most damage.

Dallas Morning News

Every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way, Tolstoy once wrotesort of. And he had not even read about the McLaughlin clan of Ann Napolitanos interesting debut novel, Within Arms Reach.

Miami Herald

Shows the promise of a very talented writer.

Sun-Sentinel

Napolitano draws us in.... Gracies pregnancy and Catherines response to it is the catalyst that unfreezes [an] unhappy tableau and demands that truths long hidden be spoken and confronted.

Tallahassee Democrat

A wonderful first novel... Napolitano gracefully and honestly charts the tensions as the various family members come together.

Publishers Weekly

A fresh and exceptionally strong family portrait, mercifully free of the sentimentality that could easily have turned the proceedings into a soap opera.

Kirkus Reviews

Graceful and fluidly written... Napolitanos clear-eyed narrative allows us to see the ghosts and desires along with the ties that bind.

Booklist

Ann Napolitano has one of the most natural talents I have seen in a long time.... Within Arms Reach is for anyone who has ever had family difficulties, been in love or wanted to be in love, felt lonely or troubled, which, of course, makes it a book for just about everyone.

Craig Nova, author of Cruisers

Ann Napolitano has written beautifully and wisely, and the product is a stunning and lasting story.

Robert Inman, author of Dairy Queen Days and Captain Saturday

Within Arms Reach is, plainly stated, a beautiful story. Napolitano accomplishes the difficult task of interweaving multiple voices into a strong, subtle narrative that engages to the very end.

Martha Witt, author of Broken As Things Are

Acknowledgments

Helen Ellis and Hannah Tinti have read nearly every word Ive written for the last eight years. Thanks isnt a strong enough word, but it will have to do.

For their constant support Id like to thank: Stacey Bosworth, Lauren Strobeck, Michael Napolitano, Leah Napolitano Ortiz, Peggy Kesslar, Kristen Fair, Suzanne Klotz, Dan Levine, Mrs. Ronning, Dr. and Mrs. Nap, Carol Fishbone and Toby Hilgendorff, Dina Pimentel, Jen Efferen, Chelsea BaileyShea, Joshan Martin, Theresa Lowrey, and the Sumner family.

Thanks to my editor, Shaye Areheart, and my agent, Elaine Koster, for loving this book and giving it life.

For inspiration and instruction I thank my teachers: David Boorstin, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Paule Marshall, and Dani Shapiro.

My love and gratitude to Dan Wilde, who holds my hand.

And I thank the McNamaras for their storiesboth the ones they reluctantly told and the ones I made up.

Part One

GRACIE

My grandmother gave birth often, which I suppose increased her odds for tragedy. Her firstborn, a sweet, chatty daughter, died when she was three years old from dehydration and the flu. My mother had become the oldest McLaughlin child by default, and three more of my five aunts and uncles were already walking or crawling, climbing over furniture, and driving my grandfather, whose heart had broken with the death of his first baby, crazy when my grandmother became pregnant with twins.

Today twins are considered a high-risk pregnancy. Im sure they were then, too, but my grandmother had four kids under the age of six to clean, dress, feed, and teach manners to with the help of Willie, the live-in black maid. My grandfather was a lawyer and on the weekends he played golf and in the evenings he drank scotch. This was long before the days of coparenting, long before it was even a word.

My grandmother had to get my mother and Pat into neatly pressed uniforms and off to single-sex Catholic schools every morning. She had to keep the two youngest home with her while she and Willie split the cleaning, laundry, and cooking. She had to write letters to her mother and her husbands mother each week, updating them on the familys life. On Sundays, out of respect for the Lord, she met the challenge of keeping all of the children quiet and prayerful in their bedrooms without toys or any books other than the Bible.

Pregnancy, even of twins, did not get in the way of the daily routines. It couldnt, really, since my grandmother was, for the first eleven years of her marriage, more often pregnant than not. So she picked up toys and assigned the children chores and shushed them around their father and kept an eagle eye on their manners at the dinner table and supervised prayers before bedtime as her five-foot-two, petite body swelled. She occasionally allowed herself a small nap while she sat upright at the kitchen table, a bowl of peas waiting to be shelled under her fingertips. But that was it. Birthing children, making a big family, raising it up right was her main job. She ignored all sharp pains, any warning signs that something might be wrong. She was never one to complain. Even now, at the age of seventy-eight, she refuses novocaine at the dentists office. She lies perfectly still, hands folded on her waist, while the dentist, shaking his head in amazement, drills into her teeth.

My grandmother went into labor very suddenly one night after she and Willie had finished serving the evening meal. She set down a bowl of broccoli and pressed the heels of her hands hard against the edge of the table. Children, she said. Meggy, elbows off the table. Your father and I will be eating later tonight. Kellyher sharp blue eyes on my mother, the oldest now that the true oldest was goneyoure in charge here, understood?

She walked carefully out of the dining room, aware of the childrens eyes on her, turned the corner, and collapsed. The doctor didnt make it in time. Willie boiled water and carried a stack of clean towels to the bedroom and wept while my grandfather, scared and therefore annoyed, stood by the head of my grandmothers single bed and told her to keep it down. He cursed the doctor for his slowness. He cursed Willie for moaning under her breath at the sight of blood. He cursed his pipe for not lighting on the first try. He cursed the children in the other room for their existence. He cursed his first child, his sweet baby girl, for dying on him and leaving him here like this. Shipwrecked and lonely. Useless.