The Dive from Clausen’s Pier

I rarely have to rethink a book I’ve just finished, but my outsized disappointment at the way this one ended forced me to reflect. Packer’s novel covers a year in the life of 23-year-old Carrie Bell of Madison, Wisconsin, and begins on the day her fiance, Mike, recklessly dives into too-shallow water and is left a quadriplegic. Their relationship, which began when they were 14 years old, was noticeably fraying before the accident, but Carrie’s unhappiness grows as the pressure on her to be there for Mike keeps ratcheting up as he finally wakes from a head injury, undergoes surgery, begins to come to terms with his changed life, and embarks on grueling rehabilitation. Carrie feels that pressure from Mike’s family, her mother, her best friend, and Mike’s friends, even though all of them must be silently wondering — as anyone in that situation would — whether Mike’s changed circumstances might change Carrie’s feelings and responsibility to him. As that problem is unfolding, Carrie becomes reacquainted with a boy she went to high school with who now lives in New York and meets and at a dinner party meets another man from New York City who intrigues her. As the pressures on Carrie mount, she withdraws from her job and her friends, finding solace in sewing, a talent that has been a hobby but, from the tasks she undertakes, is clearly one for which she has a special talent.

SPOILER ALERT

About four months after Mike’s accident, Carrie packs up her clothes and her sewing machine and, without telling anyone, drives away from Madison and winds up in New York. She looks up her high school friend, who fortuitously has a cheap place for her to stay, and she tracks down Kilroy, the much-older man who intrigued her, and they become lovers. Over the next few months, Carrie’s life unfolds pretty predictably: lots of walking around New York, lots of oohing and aahing over hip New York fashion, lots of dating/job angst with her gay friend and their roommates, and lots of unrequited desire for emotional intimacy with moody Kilroy, who has many secrets, no friends, and an austere lifestyle. Of course Carrie falls in love with him, and as winter turns to spring, he begins planning a trip with her to France. Although she has no pretensions to art, she is captured by the paradoxical view of family offered by one of her roommates: “Miss Wolf is always telling me that the family is the enemy of the artist. Well, I think the family is the artist. Just like the sky is, or all the books you’ve ever read.” But Carrie has no family — her father abandoned her and her mother when she was three — and that’s one of the reasons she latched on to her fiance: she wanted his family. Eventually, Carrie whips out her sewing machine, which causes one of her roommates to drag her down to Parsons fashion school, where she signs up for courses and really impresses her professors. And that’s when her best friend calls in the midst of a family crisis, asking Carrie to return to Madison to support her. After initially refusing, Carrie’s stung into action by her friend’s bitter words: “I don’t know why I even asked/ Someone who dumps her boyfriend right after he breaks his neck? Forget it, of course you wouldn’t come.”

Except for her continued rejection by the bitter best friend, Carrie’s return to Madison goes far more smoothly than I expected. There’s plenty of coolness but little outright hostility, and she finds her way back to friendship with everyone in the end. Although she expects to be disappointed at the fabrics at the Madison shop she frequented before moving to the more glamorous offerings in New York fabric shops, Carrie finds that is not the case. In addition, although she misses her classes at Parsons, she actually lines up a paying design job in Madison. And however much she misses Kilroy, she can’t seem to actually get on a plane because she’s really interested in finding out how Mike’s going to turn out. When Kilroy ships her the sewing machine she left in his apartment, that seals the deal: She’s staying in Madison.

I found the ending of this novel a huge disappointment, which caused me to wonder first, why did Packer go with such a disappointing ending? The answer seems pretty obvious: She didn’t view it as a disappointment. That left me wondering what I had missed? Upon reflection, the answer to that seemed pretty obvious as well. The Carrie who left Madison knew what she didn’t want, and the Carrie who returned to Madison was primed to finally understand what she did want. She wanted a friend like Mike, who is forced to grow and adapt to his terrible fate, instead a lover like Kilroy, who is stuck in his austere world. She wanted to work with fabric, joining the pieces with her own hands, rather than become a fashion designer who sketches instead of sews. For Packer, the point of Carrie’s surprising choice to stay in Madison is just that: her choice. In the year since Mike’s accident, she’s succeeded in taking command of her own life.