Persistence

Excerpt

The first betrayal, a trifling one, occurred at the schoolhouse on the day I performed for Honey Smyth, the girl I claimed as my truest friend. It was Ms. Adams, my piano teacher and determining force, the woman whose every directive compelled me toward resolution, who stood on the schoolhouse steps and told me I was finally ready for an audience.

Maxie, we should begin, she said. Honor will listen.

This afternoon in March 1960, Honor Smyth—only I called her Honey—should have been standing at the edge of the playground awaiting her brother Hubert’s pickup truck, which would soon rumble down the dusty road that hooked around the schoolhouse like a bracing arm. Instead, she was seated in the front row of the classroom where Ms. Adams conducted my daily piano lesson. My etude was in A minor, and I felt a familiar calm upon reaching the page, which was dog-eared and covered in Ms. Adams’s scrawls. The melody, with its halting ascents into the highest keys, evinced the desperation of straining for something just out of reach. I pinched my mother’s necklace between my thumb and forefinger for good luck. It was the only piece of her jewelry Father hadn’t sold: a silver chain on which hung a cross adorned with a tiny glass bubble that, if squinted into, revealed a minuscule rendering of a prayer I cannot recall. With a lift of my wrists, time passed unnoticed. After the final cadence, Ms. Adams applauded, but Honey was silent, her eyes sparking with excitement.

I want to learn, she said. Maxie can teach me.

Christopher Santantasio

Christopher Santantasio’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Lake Effect, decomP magazinE, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in the Hudson Valley and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he is an MFA candidate in fiction at The Ohio State University. You can find him on Twitter @CRSantantasio.

Will Allison on “Persistence”

The first time I read “Persistence,” by Christopher Santantasio, I was reminded of one of my favorite novels, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, in which the narrator is guilt-ridden over his failure to help a childhood friend fifty years earlier. As a reader, I have rarely encountered such a profound sense of regret on the page, and as a writer, I continue to be inspired by it.

Maxie, the narrator of “Persistence,” is haunted by a similarly powerful guilt. In 1960, when Maxie was twelve, her mother died, and she moved with her father to a small town in upstate New York. Maxie’s life in Clyde’s Creek was not a happy one. The only bright spots were the piano lessons she received from her teacher and time spent with her sole friend, Honey.

Honey’s life was no picnic either. As Maxie came to learn, Honey suffered severe abuse at the hands of her domineering older brother, Hubert. And as the only person who knew Honey’s secret, Maxie was the only person who could help. However, exposing Honey’s secret threatened to upend Maxie’s life as well. Suffice it to say that the choices Maxie made failed Honey entirely.

Like the narrator of So Long, See You Tomorrow, Maxie understands that her childhood actions were driven not by malice or heartlessness so much as by fear, confusion, and a child’s limited understanding of the world. Even so, Maxie struggles to come to terms with her behavior. In reading about this struggle, I found myself haunted by some of my own childhood mistakes, and I bet you will too. I also hope you’ll agree that Santantasio, despite being new on the literary scene, captures Maxie’s guilt with a sensitivity and depth that would make William Maxwell proud.