Woman No. 17 - Couverture rigide

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2017 Edan Lepucki

LADY

Chapter 1

It was the end of summer, the heat had arrived harsh and bright, bleaching the sidewalks and choking the flowers before they had a chance to wilt. The freeways shimmered, any hotter and they might crack, might explode, and the poor cars would confetti into the air. People were complaining, they were moving slowly. They were swarming the beaches like tiny bugs upon the backs of dead animals. I preferred to stay home: ice cubes in the dog bowl, Riesling in the freezer. The air conditioner was broken. I had taken to sitting in the living room with the curtains drawn, my body edged with sweat like frosting on a cake, daring to see how hot it could get. I ate salad for dinner every night and had almost checked myself and the boys into a hotel. I’d refrained because of the babysitter search. What would applicants think if I requested they meet me poolside at the Roosevelt? Instead I waited. It didn’t take long for the job hunters to come calling.

The doorbell rang eight minutes ahead of schedule and I jumped. This was the first interview. I’d been fluffing and re-fluffing the couch pillows, adjusting my ponytail.

When I opened the front door, a gust of gritty air came rushing at me and I felt its particulates dirtying my lungs. A young woman stood on the welcome mat, smiling so wide I could see where her gums webbed into her mouth.

I’d expected her to be pretty, almost all young women in L.A. are, especially those raised here, the beauty’s in the tap water, but she was plain-looking, her wide, hazel eyes too far apart, her dark blond hair thin and flat.

“Esther?” I finally said.

I knew she didn’t go by her full name, but “S” felt so pretentious, as if she’d rebranded herself at sleep-away camp.

“Please,” she said. “Call me S.”

I admired her assertiveness. “S it is then. Come in.”

She was wearing a cheap floral-print dress and leather sandals. The dress was loose where it should have been fitted and it accentuated her wide hips. As my mother might have said, the poor girl doesn’t know how to dress her own body. Know thy size and shape. Being female is a lifelong lesson that starts with how to wipe (front to back), and ends only with death, graceless always. Clearly, this young woman hadn’t been properly instructed.

With another gummy smile she stepped into the house. There was no hesitation.

“Sorry it’s so stuffy in here,” I said. “The air conditioning isn’t working—something’s wrong with the ventilation system. It needs to be completely rehabbed. I keep hoping the heat will break, but it just gets hotter and hotter. I’m sure there’s a wildfire or two in our future. Maybe the whole city will just burst into flames. That might be kind of fun, actually.”

I realized I was babbling and shut my mouth. S still hadn’t said any- thing, she was too busy taking in the high-beamed ceiling of the living room and the framed prints on the wall: the antique circus poster, the black-and-white photograph of a Pizza Hut that my sister-in-law Kit had taken and given to me and Karl as a wedding gift. I wondered if she’d ask for it back.

S walked closer to the photo and I recalled that she had graduated with a minor (a minor!) in art. In an email she’d written that she loved the Pre-Raphaelites.

“Was there traffic coming up the hill?” I said.

“Not too bad,” she replied, not looking away from the photo. And then, “This is rad.”

When she finally turned back to me with her big, pretty eyes I said, “Thank you,” as if I’d taken it.

 

S looked so young standing there. She was young, she couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. I remembered myself at that age: my pure, unlined face; my brain-dead roommates and our giant glass ashtray; my potential—that feeling I could apply to graduate school whenever I was ready and all would be solved. I’d been beautiful. The past tense was like a shove to the chest.

“Did you study photography in any of your classes?” I asked. “Nah. Mostly your standard paintings by Dead Guys.”

In the photograph a man leaned sullenly against the glass doors of the Pizza Hut. Big clouds ballooned across the sky.

S finally turned from the picture. Beyond the ghost of gloss on her lips she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She hadn’t even put on mascara for this interview.

“My mom calls it Pizza Slut,” she said, and laughed.

I laughed too, mostly out of confusion. S didn’t seem nervous enough—or at all. Maybe she didn’t really want the job.

“Shall we go into the kitchen to talk?” I asked. “We can discuss your qualifications.”

She nodded and smiled again. “Sure thing.”

“Devin’s asleep,” I said as I led her through the dining room. “In case you’re wondering.”

“I was, actually.” She widened her eyes, goofy. “What if you’d lied about having a kid? What if you were really a murderer? Wasn’t there a Craigslist killer?”

This time I laughed for real. Who was this girl?

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Killers don’t post for nannies. They want personal assistants, and they would definitely ask to see a photo first.”

S looked down at herself. “So much for that,” she said.

I laughed again. She was so easy with me, as if we’d met dozens of times before. Of course, I’d never heard of her until she answered my ad, live in nanny wanted for bright and adorable toddler (Hollywood hills adjacent), with a sweet email that ad- vised me to “please peruse the attached curriculum vitae.” Her mother must have ghostwritten that.

“Dev should wake in about fifteen minutes,” I said.

I’d planned it this way. I had to make sure S wasn’t a weirdo before introducing her to my child. But I knew she’d be normal. She was a recent Berkeley grad, for God’s sake, and had been raised right down the hill. She may have dabbled in the Pre-Raphaelites but her senior honors thesis was on early childhood education.

We walked into the kitchen, which Karl and I had redone. The sink was wide as a pig’s trough and the chrome fridge hummed. Milk- shake, our old Maltese, lay in the corner, panting.

“He didn’t come running when the bell rang?” S asked, bending down to pet him.

“He’s so old he’s forgotten how to be a dog,” I said. “Would you like some water, or maybe some iced tea?”

I expected her to say no, but she took me up on the iced tea. I watched as she drank it down in one long gulp.

“The AC in the Camry’s busted,” she said when the glass was empty, as if we were sharing the car. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm.

Karl, who had moved out just a few weeks before, would have said that S lacked self-awareness, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t a deficit. S was comfortable with herself, with her average looks, her unflatter- ing clothing, her interest in art. Take it or leave it, she seemed to say. I only wished I had that kind of confidence. The bravado of someone younger, twenty years younger, cuts deep. And yet, I didn’t resent S. In fact, I liked her.

“You said you’re living with your mother?” I asked. “Staying, not living,” she replied. “On the couch.”

All this time I’d been imagining her mother in a condo in West- wood. She’d keep the treadmill in the guest room, next to a bed outfit- ted with brocade shams, and, in the corner, a big bag of wrapping-paper supplies. But apparently there was no guest room.

S held up her glass and gestured with her chin to the sink. She wanted to wash it, I realized.

“Go for it,” I said.

“I’m looking to get my own place as soon as possible,” she said, turning on the water. “It’s why this position is ideal. I also love the age Devin is—two, three years old is when a kid’s imagination really soars. If you take language development into consideration, you’re—”

“What did you say your thesis was on again?” I passed her a towel and we sat at the kitchen’s center island. Her résumé—her curriculum vitae—was printed out on the counter.

“Thesis is too strong a word,” she said. “It was my senior project. I wrote about the benefits of play for children aged eighteen months to four. How they use it to make sense of the world and themselves, to test limits and face their fears. It’s incredible, really.”

I nodded. This was the poised, studious S.

“Have you ever given Devin a big cardboard box to play with?” “I put him in one when he’s been bad,” I said.

She squinted at me. “I’m kidding.”

“Oh. Ha. Sorry. I’ve just read about stuff like that happening.” “Between that and the Internet murderers—what are you reading?”

“Mostly erotica.”

This time, I squinted.

“Kidding.” She smiled. “Anyway, if you give Devin a big empty cardboard box you’d be amazed by the things he comes up with. In two minutes it’ll be a car, or a spaceship.”

“Or a coffin.”

“Are you sure you’re a mother?” she said. “Maybe, maybe not.” I winked. “Follow me.”

On the back deck, the sun was so strong I closed my eyes. Even my lids were perspiring. A bead of sweat slid between my breasts. The sounds of wood sanders, buzz saws, and jackhammers rang out across the hill. Someone was always knocking down something old to build something new.

I opened my eyes and led S down the deck stairs.

“Devin still sleeps for over two hours every afternoon, thank goodness,” I was explaining. “And when he wakes up I try to get him to use the potty, even though he usually refuses.”

S was looking at the pool, glittering in the sunlight and circled with a border of Astroturf. (Karl’s idea—the drought and all that). Behind it towered a steep wall of canyon landscaped with chaparral and sage scrub. A line of houses looked down on us from above: one dilapidated shack, a couple of tasteful mansions, and a modern thing, all concrete, like a parking garage. Karl called these houses the Eavesdroppers.

“I didn’t mention the pool in the ad.” “Freeloaders need not apply?”

“Exactly. I also didn’t mention that I’m separated from Devin’s dad.”

S nodded.

“And . . .” I turned around and pointed at Seth’s window on the second floor. “I have another son, from a previous relationship. He’s eighteen. Seth. That’s his room.”

It had only taken me twenty minutes to come clean: Seth was holed up in his room, and Devin was asleep in his new big-boy bed, and I was a soon-to-be divorcee like so many other women in the neighbor- hood. That my sons were fathered by two different men, almost two decades apart, made me slightly more interesting. That was my theory anyway. Before this interview, I thought my situation might impress or intimidate a young woman who wanted a job in childcare. At the very least, it might give me an excuse to offer her less money. But it all seemed so silly now. S couldn’t be ruffled.

“He’s nonverbal,” I said finally. “Who?”

“Seth. He doesn’t speak, never has.” “Has he—”

“Is he autistic? No. Is that what you were going to ask? He’s also not deaf.” I lowered my voice. “And he isn’t a genius either.”

This was what I always said to people. My script. My shtick. It made it easier.

“No,” she said. “I was going to ask if he’d ever done speech therapy. I’ve read about children with language disabilities.”

She’d read about them?

“He was treated by quite a few doctors when he was younger,” I said.

We were steps from the pool and I imagined pushing S into the deep end. Her horrible dress would bunch around her waist and I’d see her blurry cream-cheese-white thighs. I was diligent about cleaning the pool every morning, for myself and for the Eavesdroppers, and so there’d be no plant debris or floating bees to wreck my view of a sub- merged S. She most definitely wore sensible underwear.

Instead I said, “I couldn’t send him to speech therapy because he couldn’t speak.”

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. For a second I’d shaken her up. But if she was worried that the interview had gone south, she didn’t show it. She seemed concerned only for my feelings.

I smiled at her and put a hand on her arm. Just a nudge and she’d be in the pool. “It’s totally fine,” I said. I cocked my ear. “I think Devin’s awake.”

As we headed into the house, I wondered whether she was still thinking about Seth. People were always curious about him. Eager, even, as though he were a rare animal you could pet.

I thought of the Hottentot Venus. Seth and I had read about her: sold into slavery over two centuries earlier and made into an attraction, to be ogled and inspected, laughed and gasped at. It was no doubt what the Man in the Yellow Hat had initially planned to do with Curious George: lock him up, make money off of him. That was Devin’s hero—the man, not the monkey. Just the other day, Seth had typed to me on his iPad: Doesn’t he know the guy’s an animal poacher? I told him to give Devin a break, he wasn’t even three yet.

For his final high school paper, Seth had written about the Hottentot Venus. I’ve forgotten her real name, though I’m sure Seth re- members it.

“Mommy! Mommy!” Devin yelled from his room. He’d say it until I came to rescue him.

He was sitting up in his little toddler bed when we got to his room, and when he saw we had a visitor he grinned and then covered his face with Bucky, his stuffed rabbit.

“Did you sleep well, baby?” I asked.

I took his hand and helped him out of bed. S was already kneeling down to his level.

After I’d introduced them, I stepped back. Devin didn’t care where I was; he wanted to show S his truck collection. I watched from the doorway as they pushed them back and forth across the rug, talking about the colors, both of them making engine noises with their mouths. When Devin moved to sit on her lap, S didn’t make note of it, as another adult might. She taught him a song about fish, and together they sang it, my son’s big blue eyes widening with delight. His cheeks were still pillow-creased from his nap, and his hair, knot- ted and sweaty, stuck up in tufts. Placed thusly in this nanny tableau, Devin looked perfect.

He was perfect. A billion traumas would be upon him someday. But not yet. And if they didn’t come to him, he’d seek them out. We all do—look for pain I mean. Until then, my baby was a beloved fool, not a mark on him.

Then Devin did the unthinkable. He looked up at S and said, “I need water.”

I gasped, I couldn’t help it.

S looked up at me, puzzled.

“The prince usually doesn’t let anyone else but me wait on him.” S bowed her head to Devin. “I’d be honored to be your servant.” “Uh-oh,” I told her, “now you’re in trouble. He’s very literal.” “Please?” Devin said. “Please!”

I hired her. Someone else, someone like Karl, would have checked S’s references first, but the thought only flitted across my brain before I dismissed it. Devin had chosen this girl, in his way, and I liked her too. I could fictionalize a background check for Karl. If I said, “I had a good feeling about her,” he’d insist on vetting S himself, and that would take forever.

She would move into the Cottage the following Monday. She’d work four days and one evening a week.

When I handed her the key, she hugged me and Devin, who was slung on my hip...

Named one of the Best Books of 2017 by:  
* Boston Globe * Washington Post * San Francisco Chronicle * New York Observer * Huffington Post * The Millions * Nylon * Vulture * Bustle *

Praise for Woman No. 17:

“Woman No. 17 is propulsive and moving, and considers vital questions with empathy and sly intelligence...[A] winning novel.”
— New York Times Book Review

"A story packed with such wicked and wickedly funny confessions about a host of hallowed subjects...Woman No. 17 tastes like a juice box of suburban satire laced with Alfred Hitchcock. Lepucki’s witty lines arrive as dependably as afternoon playtime, but her reflection on motherhood and women’s friendships is deadly serious...The disclosures that Lepucki engineers in this smart novel are sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, always irresistible."
— Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Lepucki’s exploration of personal relationships takes on an increasingly noirish tone: Much like Chekhov’s gun, a swimming pool introduced early in the book takes on the shadows of a floating body long before the reader realizes this might be a possibility.”
— Elle

"Edan Lepucki's Woman No. 17 is part family melodrama, part twisty self-reflection... very funny."
— GQ

"While Woman No. 17 does possess all the trappings of a frothy page-turner — stormy arguments, showy melodrama, and (oops!) an affair, there are some quiet, serious moments, too. It’s the intersection between the two that makes this read both scintillating and thought-provoking.”
— San Francisco Chronicle

"A sexy family drama featuring dual protagonists as well as sex, art, mothers and mutism."
— Los Angeles Daily News

"Following the success of her debut novel, California, author Edan Lepucki returns with a dark and clever tale about motherhood and the complexity of friendships."
— SFWeekly

 “Woman No. 17 reads like a Hollywood Hills film noir... the dialogue is sharp, the fragrance of the wilting air palpable."
— Seattle Times

"With Woman No. 17, Lepucki has succeeded in revealing a simple truth: mothers are human—flawed and difficult and impossible to hold at arm’s length."
— Paste

"Female friendships, artists, twisted secrets, motherhood, and the posh and drama-filled hills of Los Angeles — if that doesn't sound like a novel your mom will literally gobble up in a day or two, we give up. This risqué and mesmerizing read by New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki will make your mom race through the addictive pages of Woman No. 17 in no time (and we wouldn't be surprised if she rereads it again and again)."
— PopSugar

"Tensions are expertly spun by Edan Lepucki through the heat of the end of summer in LA... Woman No. 17 starts and finishes in the here and now, and shows up the fragility of the facade of civilization that we all in the Western world, be it in American or Europe, like to think we hold up."
— Electric Literature

"Woman No. 17 offers not only a propulsive plot but also important reflections on artistic creation, the lingering effects of bad mothers on their adult children, and the thorny question of how friends and family relate to their loved ones with disabilities."
— Bookreporter.com

"Both fun to read and asks serious questions about identity, art and motherhood."
— Berkleyside

"Edan Lepucki’s second novel an exceptional offering... a sleek, perspective-shifting tale driven by the complexities of relationship dynamics, the notion of identity and the importance/absurdity of modern art and its impact... a taut tightrope walk of a novel."
— Maine Edge

“[A] Hollywood noir about the electric bonds between women... this one is a safe bet for beach season.” 
– The Week

“Woman No. 17 is a novel about motherhood, an impossible game to win...The parallel stories of Lady and S speeding toward disaster keep the pages turning, but the primary pleasure of Woman No. 17 comes from Lepucki’s wit... This novel, coming on the heels of the dystopian California, suggests that Lepucki is an author with a diverse palate and talent to burn.”
– Chapter16.org

“Lepucki’s brisk style and arresting characterizations make for a compelling portrait of womanhood in the present moment, right down to its intriguing integration of social media.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“An acidly inquisitive domestic drama set in the Hollywood Hills and anchored to depthless questions of identity, family, and art... Lepucki’s arch and provocative tale of elaborate and privileged dysfunction poses sharp questions about inheritance, self-expression, and love.”
—Booklist
 
“Always enjoyable...this novel succeeds by staying light on its feet.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In Woman No. 17, Lepucki has crafted an intricate, gripping story of people behaving very badly. You will want to race to the end to see what happens, but don’t cheat yourself. This book deserves to be savored –gorgeously written, darkly comic, smart and thrilling.”

 – CYNTHIA D’APRIX SWEENEY, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest

"Woman No. 17 fizzes with references to contemporary culture and sparks with larger, timeless questions: Where is the line between performance and identity? What separates life from art? And can we ever escape the gravitational pull of our parents? Edan Lepucki shows herself to be a sharp-eyed chronicler of our modern world."
 – CELESTE NG, New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You

“Woman No. 17 is a provocative and timely meditation on art, authenticity and representation in a digital age. The increasingly gripping plot suggests the outcomes of a thriller, but at the crucial moment the novel swerves toward subtly profound truths about our capacity for self-sabotage and self-reinvention, the power of trauma to shape lives, and the inexorable gravity of family secrets. Lepucki’s smooth prose and deft handling of point of view reveal a writer fully in command.”
—MATTHEW THOMAS, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves

“Taut as a thriller (with plenty of sex and secrets), Woman No. 17 raises big questions about identity, art, ethics, parenthood, and more. In Edan Lepucki's hands, the philosophical is transformed into a page turner; I don't know how she does it.”
–RUMAAN ALAM, author of Rich & Pretty



 
Selected Praise for California: 

New York Times Bestseller
NPR best book of 2014
Los Angeles Times Bestseller
San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller
Indiebound Bestseller
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, 2014
 
"Rewarding....[One of] 30 books you NEED to read in 2014."
--Huffington Post
 
"Edan Lepucki's first novel comes steeped in Southern California literary tradition....One thinks of Steve Erickson or Cynthia Kadohata, or Carolyn See, whose 1987 novel Golden Days ends with the nuclear holocaust."
--David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
 
"Lepucki's debut is an inventive take on the post-apocalyptic novel, about a couple who moves from an isolated existence in the wilderness to a guarded community that, they soon realize, harbors terrifying secrets and unforseen dangers."
--Laura Pearson, Time Out Chicago
 
"In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeply disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities."
--Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
 
"An ambitious, powerful, frightening first novel...California shows the moment-by-moment reality of a painful possible future, the price we may have to pay for our passionate devotion to all the wrong things."
--Sarah Stone, San Francisco Chronicle
 
"Lepucki gives readers the most welcome surprise--in a dystopian novel, anyway--of flashes of humor. Many of her witty touches make reference to the familiar details of life in 2014, and what happens to them in the future."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
"An expansive, full-bodied and masterful narrative of humans caught in the most extreme situations, with all of our virtues and failings on full display: courage, cowardice, trust, betrayal, honor and expedience. The final eighty pages of this book gripped me as much as any fictional denouement I've encountered in recent years....I firmly believe that Edan Lepucki is on the cusp of a long, strong career in American letters."
--Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
 
"Edan Lepucki is the very best kind of writer: simultaneously generous and precise. I am long been an admirer of her prose, but this book---this book, this massive, brilliant book---is a four alarm fire, the ambitious and rich introduction that a writer of her caliber deserves. I can't wait for the world to know what I have known for so many years, that Edan Lepucki is the real thing, and that we will all be bowing at her feet before long."
--Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers and Modern Lovers
 
"It's tempting to call this novel post-apocalyptic, but really, it's about an apocalypse in progress, an apocalypse that might already be happening, one that doesn't so much break life into before and after as unravel it bit by bit. Edan Lepucki tells her tale with preternatural clarity and total believability, in large part by focusing on the relationships -- between husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child -- that are, it turns out, apocalypse-proof. Post-nothing. California is timeless."
--Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
 
"California is a wonder: a big, gripping and inventive story built on quiet, precise human moments. Edan Lepucki's eerie near future is vividly and persuasively imagined. She is a fierce new presence in American fiction."
--Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia
 
"Breathtakingly original, fearless and inventive, pitch perfect in its portrayal of the intimacies and tiny betrayals of marriage, so utterly gripping it demands to be read in one sitting: Edan Lepucki's California is the novel you have been waiting for, the novel that perfectly captures the hopes and anxieties of contemporary America. This is a novel that resonates on every level, a novel that stays with you for a lifetime. Read it now."
--Joanna Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age and My Salinger Year
 
"California is carefully drawn and beautifully textured. It's a pleasure to watch love and family transform in this dark, strange forest."
--Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty