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Coming Home for Good By Heather King '77

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When I first moved to L.A. and became a writer, I couldn't help fantasizing about the day when I arrived as a member of the literati. My hip, edgy writer friends would come out to hear me read. I'd wear black, with silver jewelry. I would have proved myself to the people who mattered. I would have made my mark on the world I'd left small-town New Hampshire to find.

Over the years, I came to see that my writing sprang from a yearning for connection. I wrote about the spiritual path, which I saw was strewn with years-long deserts through which we crawl, thirsting for love. I saw the ways that, since childhood, I'd kept love at bay.

I've had my share of Barnes & Noble appearances, radio interviews, even a few TV spots, but last August, on my annual trip home to New Hampshire, I found myself booked for a different kind of reading: at the Wiggin Memorial Library in Stratham. This was hardly the gig at, say, Manhattan's 92nd St. Y I'd once imagined as the pinnacle of literary success: the library was just past Old Man Sewell's Apple Orchard, Frying Pan Lane, and the farm stand where a young girl sold cartons of eggs that included a hand-lettered index card—collect all 12!—featuring a bio and pasted-on profile shot of the hen who'd laid them.

Maybe it was just because of that young girl, though, and the way she reminded me of my younger self, that the prospect of my night at the Wiggin seemed so precious to me. Maybe it was because in the next town over I'd gotten my first library card that it seemed so bittersweet to think of reading, among the vanishing apple orchards, from one of my own books. My six siblings and I had lost a sister earlier in the year, my mother had recently moved from her condo into an assisted living facility, and maybe it was because I was feeling extra fragile that I'd asked everyone I knew to come.

Mom's condo had been right down the street from the library—one of my brothers and his wife were now renting it—and the night of the reading, I fetched her from her new place and brought her down. A small crowd was gathering, and I told them I'd meet them at the library and drove there alone. In the parking lot I sat for several minutes, trying to gather myself. When I walked in, I saw the people I'd spent half my life trying to get closer to and half my life trying to run away from had all rallied round. I saw my mother, three brothers, a sister, a cousin, two nephews, two sisters-in-law, and more kids than I could count. I saw Mrs. Gilman, who'd lived three doors down from us when we were growing up; and my junior high English teacher Wayne Elliott and his wife Betty; and my old friends the Cushings, who I'd known since high school and now had a slew of teenagers of their own.

For a second, I panicked. What had I—the deserter—done to deserve such largesse? What did I have to say that was worthy of having brought out all these parents when the kids were starting school in a few days; when the old folks could have been sitting on their screened-in porches after supper? But the real reason I panicked was because, looking out at all those good New England faces, I was afraid I'd burst into tears.

Instead—all in black, my jewelry silver—I got to read pieces about some of the people who were in the audience. I read a piece about the thrill of seeing my brother Joe's punk band The Queers. I read a piece about my commercial fisherman brother Geordie, and the night he lost his boat in a storm. I read a piece about how Mr. Elliot, the junior high English teacher, kept archives on his students going back forty years.

As we segued into the Q and A, I glanced out the window and saw a maple beginning to turn. I thought of my father, who was buried a few miles away, and of how he would have appreciated the whole glorious, sorrowful event. I thought about the long New England winters that had taught me to cherish reading. I thought about how the pains and conflicts of my childhood had made me a writer. I wondered how I'd ever gotten so lucky as to gaze out at the folks who had formed me and say, "Thank you." I wondered if there could be a higher calling than to tell so many young people, "Books saved my life."

My old friend Richie asked the last question of the night. "Have you ever considered coming home for good?" "Ya never know," I hedged. But driving back to the condo, the stars burning above, I realized, I think I just did. ~

Heather King is the author of two memoirs: Parched (Penguin 2005), and Redeemed: Stumblings Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding (Viking 2008). She lives in Los Angeles.