A Novel for Adults (2013)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the morning of the SAT. Will Westfield\u2019s mother finds his bed empty and still made, his muddy sneakers on the floor. Did this sardonic, seemingly well-adjusted teen run away with his disturbed ex-girlfriend, get in trouble with their drug-dealing neighbor, or flee from the pressure to succeed? His parents search frantically for answers, but the only way to understand Will\u2019s disappearance is to retrace the events and decisions that led him to this dangerous moment.<\/p>\n
Hidden Away <\/em>suspensefully records one family\u2019s disaster, and the parents\u2019 desperate struggle to bring Will back home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She taps on his door with one nail: \u201cIt\u2019s that time.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n No springs squeak, no sheets rustle. Knocking with her knuckles, \u201cYour muffin and apple are waiting downstairs.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Because Will has to take the SAT in an hour, she violates his privacy by opening the door, just an inch. Soft, unexpected light greets her. The bed is made, the blinds are raised, and the gray corduroys he wore last night straddle the back of his desk chair. Dried mud streaks the pants; his sneakers, also muddy, lie on their sides next to the stacked CDs, just beyond the tassels of the rug.<\/b><\/p>\n Her first thought is that the innocent explanations will prove wrong. He didn\u2019t just wake up early and go out for coffee. She knows this because he has never made his bed without prompting, not once in his life. No, this bed wasn\u2019t slept in last night.<\/b><\/p>\n Her face cold, she reconstructs. He left the block party with Shakti. Wherever they went, he got muddy. (The reservation?) He came home to change. And then? <\/b><\/p>\n In January, Shakti almost convinced him to run away with her, to some kind of abandoned building. She may have pressured him again. <\/b><\/p>\n There\u2019s no mud on the carpet, and none in the hallway. He took off his sneakers downstairs and carried them up. Considerate even when turning their lives upside down.<\/b><\/p>\n Did she feed him a drug? The witch. <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n On his wall, the president in his flight suit squints amid the young airmen on that carrier, all grinning like a bunch of drunken frat boys. Underneath, in Will\u2019s awkward handwriting, Mission Accomplished!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The adolescent scorn makes her uneasy. The word comeuppance<\/i> occurs to her: a habit of thought learned from her mother, beginning in infancy.<\/b><\/p>\n Today is MayFest. She needs to be at the VIPS table by ten\u2014it\u2019s the biggest recruiting day of the year. Will, Will, what did you do?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n Downstairs, in the kitchen, she dials his cell phone number. Above her, his ring tone plays in his room, an electric guitar solo.<\/b><\/p>\n To head off panic, she wakes Clark.<\/b><\/p>\n He snickers, dreaming.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cDid you see Will come in last night?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n He sits halfway up, leaning on two elbows. \u201cWhat\u2019s the rascal done now?\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t sleep in his bed. I have no idea where he is.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Clark pries sand from the corner of his eye. \u201cHe has to be with either Katrina or Shakti. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s Katrina.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Katrina\u2019s mother replies brightly to Adrienne\u2019s question, showing that the question doesn\u2019t offend her. \u201cNo, he\u2019s not here. We\u2019re eating breakfast.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n He may have stayed up late talking to Shakti, Clark thinks. Maybe they fell asleep on her living room couch, with their clothes on. Teenagers can surprise you, between the crises, with moments of unexpected innocence.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s supposed to be at the school in forty minutes,\u201d Adrienne says.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t have Shakti\u2019s phone number, and it\u2019s not listed. Clark volunteers to go over and see what\u2019s what. It\u2019s not a scene he looks forward to\u2014his son will resent him for this forever, he\u2019ll assume that his father stupidly failed to consider the humiliation\u2014but a certain amusement is operating here, too, as he clomps down the hill in his sneakers, because how often does a father catch his son in bed with a girl?<\/b><\/p>\n At the Asshole\u2019s house (or, the late <\/i>Asshole\u2019s house), the new owner is cutting a handful of daffodils while her baby totters around on the dewy grass. \u201cMorning,\u201d he says. <\/b><\/p>\n She raises the pruner with a skin-and-bone arm. \u201cHey.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Shakti and her mother live on the third floor of the Zitos\u2019 house, at the bottom of the block. Joey Zito stands on the porch, as always\u2014the Sentry, feet wide apart, baggy shorts pressed against the wrought-iron porchrail, keeping watch over the empty street. The stub of a cigarette protrudes from his fist like an obscene Italian gesture. Clark turns in at the driveway without acknowledging him, because Joey shoved Will at the block party the night before\u2014and then Clark rushed over, and they had that back and forth, and now here he is, on enemy property, trespassing.<\/b><\/p>\n A snap of Joey\u2019s fingers sends ash flurrying down on the white azalea below. <\/b><\/p>\n The scents of cantaloupe and old incense accompany Shakti\u2019s mother. There\u2019s no landing at the top of these stairs; Clark stays two steps down, and she towers over him, barefoot in Indian-print drawstring pants. Vertical lines connect the corners of her mouth to her jaw, as on a ventriloquist\u2019s dummy. When they first moved in, ten or fifteen years ago, she had the delicate features and flawless skin of a young model.<\/b><\/p>\n Patiently, placidly, with the smallest condescending smile, she waits for him to explain his business. He hasn\u2019t been sized up and dismissed this quickly since high school.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cMy son didn\u2019t come home last night,\u201d he says, more wry than accusing.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter didn\u2019t either.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n Her expression remains the same, imperturbable. If Will isn\u2019t here, where could he be? A motel? No, he didn\u2019t take the car. In some park\u2014on the morning of the SAT? There is no innocent explanation.<\/b><\/p>\n Behind her in the dark hallway, a folding bicycle leans against the wall. He\u2019s seen her riding it around town, tall and erect, with a rolled-up yoga mat slung across her back in a sack. He\u2019s also seen her behind the circulation desk at the library. In the past, she struck him as idiosyncratic and appealing; now she just seems irresponsible.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cWas she supposed to take the SAT today?\u201d he asks.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n In his gut, something slides sideways. <\/b><\/p>\n A window scrapes open above them. Chris Zito\u2019s head appears, a cuckoo popping out of a clock. Her hair, an unnatural auburn this year, hangs around her face, dead as straw, unbrushed. She shouts at her brother, \u201cJoey, get in here, you left your damn paint and rollers in the bathtub, I have to take a shower. You\u2019re making me late!\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Seeing Clark on the steps below, she turns her head away. Clark averts his eyes too, and watches the flag hang limply on the Zitos\u2019 tall pole. Chris ducks back inside. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cDo you have any idea where they might be?\u201d he asks Shakti\u2019s mother. <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n She says it calmly, gloating over her superior power of acceptance.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cHas she stayed out all night before?\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n \u201cA few times. I wish she wouldn\u2019t. But that doesn\u2019t matter to her.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n He can\u2019t understand why Will spent any time at all with Shakti, who has nothing to offer but sullen anger and overdone eye-shadow. He wishes, fervently, that his son had more sense.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cSooner or later,\u201d the mother says, \u201cthey leave our sphere of control. It\u2019s hard to adjust.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Right, Clark thinks: you made every possible mistake, you never paid attention, you raised a dangerous kid who goes around fucking up other people\u2019s lives, and now you call it Inevitable Fate. I read you, yoga woman.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cIf they come back here, please tell us,\u201d he says.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cI will.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When my wife and I first moved from Manhattan to Montclair, New Jersey, just before our first child was born, I felt as if I\u2019d fallen out of my densely fascinating, beloved world, into a charming but empty suburban Siberia. (The massive snowfalls of that February contributed to the impression.) It took about seven years for me to grow accustomed to our new home, i.e., not to feel as if I were in exile. The dual experiences of parenthood and suburban life came together in the stew that became Hidden Away.<\/em><\/p>\n But before I decided to tell the story of a teen who disappeared, I wanted to write a book called Three Houses, <\/em>about a social microcosm on one short, hilly block: a wealthy family in a Tudor mansion at the top of the hill, new arrivals from the city renovating an old Victorian next door, and a blue-collar family at the bottom of the hill, in a house with aluminum siding. (That, too, reflects the impression Montclair made on me when we first arrived.)<\/p>\n The book needed a plot, though, and I found it in the nightmare fantasy of a new parent.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n A note about history: When I began this book, I thought I was writing news. Readers will notice many references to President Bush, Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and so on. Part of my aim was to report on a liberal town\u2019s response to living under a conservative president. I write very slowly, though, and by the time I finished, Bush was no longer in the White House. My up-to-the-minute reflections have now become a record of a moment in history.<\/p>\n \u2022<\/p>\n Trivia: On the Garden State Parkway, you\u2019ll find my protagonist\u2019s father\u2019s name on signs announcing Exit 135: Clark Westfield<\/em>. Even though the name came from the sign, I still get a kick out of it every time I drive by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the morning of the SAT, Will Westfield disappears. His parents search for him frantically\u2014but the only way to understand Will\u2019s disappearance is to retrace the events that led to this disastrous moment.Excerpt:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Comments:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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