The Hare Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR MELANIE FINN’S THE HARE

  “This resilient heroine embodies the evolution of feminism in a male-dominant society, making this a poignant story for our time.” —EMILY PARK, BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW

  “A novel that soars whimsically and lands with an unexpected stab in the palm of your hand; like a paper crane with a razor blade folded into its belly.” —ANDREA DREILING, PAPERBACK PARIS

  “Daring and unputdownable.” —JENNY HOLLANDER, MARIE CLAIRE

  “Finn’s propulsive latest tackles power dynamics shaped by gender, age, and class… This lurid tale will keep readers turning the pages.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “First must-read of 2021! Melanie Finn’s The Hare is just the right blend of suspense and literary prowess… an unflinchingly honest portrayal of a woman who was denied the chance to become the woman she imagined in her youth, but thirty years later, is finally ready to try again.” —MARGARET LEONARD, DOTTERS BOOKS

  “A beautiful and powerful book—literature that reads like a thriller… It tackles big issues in an original way.” —ALANA HALEY, SCHULER BOOKS

  “Rosie Monroe, the protagonist of The Hare, is every woman and Everywoman… this is a powerful book and a powerful character.” —KIM CRADY-SMITH, GREEN MOUNTAIN BOOKS AND PRINTS

  “A powerful story of female perseverance, strength, and resilience. This book has rare qualities: beautiful writing while being absolutely unputdownable…” —CLAIRE FULLER, AUTHOR OF BITTER ORANGE

  “The Hare is a brilliant, unflinching tale of gender, power, and entrapment.” —MARIA HUMMEL, AUTHOR OF STILL LIVES

  PRAISE FOR MELANIE FINN’S THE GLOAMING

  * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF 2016

  * THE GUARDIAN’S “NOT THE BOOKER PRIZE” SHORTLIST

  * VERMONT BOOK AWARD FINALIST

  “Deeply satisfying. Finn is a remarkably confident and supple storyteller.” —JOHN WILLIAMS, NEW YORK TIMES

  “In this richly textured, intricately plotted novel, [Finn] assures us that heartbreak has the same shape everywhere.” —LISA ZEIDNER, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, EDITORS’ CHOICE

  “A propulsive literary thriller… Don’t expect to be able to set this book down or forget its haunted characters.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

  “A psychologically astute thriller that belongs on the shelf with the work of Patricia Highsmith… Here is a page-turner that leaves its reader wiser.” —KAREN R. LONG, NEWSDAY

  “Excellent. A wonderful book.” —BRADLEY BABENDIR, THE RUMPUS

  “Intense, impressive.” —SAM JORDISON, THE GUARDIAN

  “Masterfully timed, frightening in its precision and delivery.” —MAGGIE GRIMASON, ALIBI

  “An immersive, atmospheric read that is difficult to shake.” —MARGOT HARRISON, SEVEN DAYS

  “Finn’s sure-footed prose, an intricate, clever plot, and the novel’s powerful examination of cultural divides enrich this story, leading up to its shocking, brilliant conclusion.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Brilliant… [The Gloaming] is a pure example of a literary page-turner.” —BENJAMIN WOODARD, ELECTRIC LITERATURE

  “An intense and clever literary thriller.” —LARGEHEARTED BOY

  PRAISE FOR MELANIE FINN’S THE UNDERNEATH

  “A musk of sex and menace soaks three narrative strands, expertly braided… Finn writes with a phrasing flare on par with Lauren Groff’s… Her curiosity and dread drive the novel and move her toward a terrifying denouement… Finn puts her readers on the knife’s edge.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

  “The Underneath is an excellent thriller… Finn’s third novel proves that she’s deeply original, a writer who’s not content with rehashing old tropes that have become overly familiar in some thrillers.” —MICHAEL SCHAUB, STAR TRIBUNE

  “One of the best novels I’ve read in recent memory.” —MITCH WERTLIEB, VERMONT PUBLIC RADIO

  “Unputdownable.” —AMY LILLY, SEVEN DAYS

  “[The Underneath] offers glimpses of redemption, hope, and at every turn, natural beauty… a gripping, detailed, satisfying read, a hard, unsparing look at human nature.” —KATHARINE COLDIRON, SINKHOLE MAG

  “Finn vividly captures the ugliness of opioid addiction and its profound impact on children.” —EMMAJEAN HOLLEY, VALLEY NEWS

  “The minute you open this book, you will be sucked into a liminal space… Finn’s newest is strange and compelling, a haunting reminder that it’s not just the violence on the surface we need fear, it’s what’s underneath.” —LAUREN PEUGH AT POWELL’S BOOKS, PORTLAND, OR

  “Finn has written a fine piece of fiction.” —MICHAEL F. EPSTEIN, BENNINGTON BANNER

  “Tense and atmospheric. Finn’s dark and gripping meditation depicts how violence can warp a person’s character, and whether, having experienced it, there is any coming back.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  Also by Melanie Finn

  Away from You

  The Gloaming

  The Underneath

  For Kate

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Boathouse 1983

  Miranda 1985

  The Woodstove 1985–1986

  The Cemetery 1991

  The Cellar 1993

  Hook 1993

  The Hare 2019

  Acknowledgments

  THE BOATHOUSE

  1983

  Bennett was a slow driver. He peered through the windshield. The BMW was missing a headlight, and the single beam, alone on this dark road, meandered like a shy child, head down. There were no houses, just dark, dark woods over flat ground. In the passenger seat, Rosie was trying to read Bennett’s handwriting with a lighter, as the interior lights did not work. She didn’t want to be lost. She wanted to be at the party.

  “It says three miles past Hayley Road.” Rosie’s thumb was burning from the flame. “Have we passed Hayley Road?”

  “Jesus, I hate the countryside.” Bennett lit up another cigarette, an expert choreography with one hand: the car lighter, the cigarette, never taking his eyes off the road, his other hand on the wheel. His hands were beautiful, Rosie thought, large, strong, smooth-skinned, and it was absolutely true what was said about hands.

  “Birds,” Bennett exhaled the smoke. “Cow shit. Farmers.”

  The party was at an old millhouse way out here in Meriden, four turns off the Merritt Parkway according to the directions. Mick and Keith might be there, Bennett had told her, and Rosie played it cool by not asking the Mick, the Keith? She wondered what they were like, and if she’d get to talk to them, even a few words, “Is there any more ice?”

  “Can you stop,” she said. “I think I need to be sick.”

  Pulling over, Bennett rushed around to open her car door. He was insistent in this way, his old-world manners — doors, chairs, drinks, pulled open, back, delivered. He took her arm, as if she were an invalid, she pushed him away so he wouldn’t get hit with the splatter.

  Her stomach heaved and released. “It must have been that chicken salad.”

  When she was back in the car, Bennett offered to open the wine they’d brought, if she needed to rinse her mouth out. She had some gum somewhere in her purse. Bennett hated gum, he’d told her she looked like a cheap hooker. Secretly, she slipped a piece into her mouth now, letting it dissolve, allowing only the most furtive chew. He was pulling back onto the road: “It must be up here. He said there’s a red barn with a big hex painted on the side.”

  He? Someone interesting, cultured, traveled, rich. Someone who might look at Rosie and wonder why Bennett was with her. At such a party with Mick and Keith, there would be beautiful girls — women who wore backless red dresses and spoke fluent French and modeled in Milan. Don’t ever order maraschino cherries, Bennett had told her, not with ice cream, not with cock
tails.

  The only cocktails to drink are gin martinis or greyhounds.

  They drove on. Sure enough, within five minutes, there was the barn. Bennett turned up the long, narrow drive, winding through pines. Eventually, they arrived at the house, on a river — a millhouse; but it was completely dark.

  Rosie glanced at the napkin as if this might suddenly reveal new information: “Did we get the wrong night?”

  “I guess the party was canceled.” Bennett got out, stretched. He was a big man, tall and bulky with muscle, for he’d been a star athlete some years ago — lacrosse, Rosie recalled — and his frame held the shape. He got cramped in the small car. Ambling off toward the house, he peered in through the dark windows, then disappeared around the back. She saw his figure crossing the moonlit lawn to a barn tucked up against the trees. Briefly, there was the flare of a flashlight, and then he reappeared. He was carrying a small package.

  Taking his place again behind the wheel, he tossed the package on the back seat, and opened the wine with the corkscrew on his key ring. This had belonged to his father, who’d brought it back from Berlin right after the war. Bennett was proud of its provenance: stolen from Himmler’s private bar.

  For several minutes, they sat in the car while Bennett drank and Rosie wondered about the package and if she could ask him about it. The river, visible through a stand of trees, toppled down a series of rapids, inky dark, the foam silvery in the moonlight. “It’s beautiful here,” she observed.

  “It is bumfuck.” He took another drink.

  “Maybe they write sitting by the river.”

  “Who?”

  “Mick, Keith.”

  Bennett snorted. “Whoever lives here crochets antimacassars.”

  “What is an anti-massacre?”

  “Maccass-ar. Little doily thing you put on the arm rest and the back of the chair to prevent soiling of the chair’s fabric.”

  Yet the image held in her mind of a bit of lace waving in the wind, so pretty and delicate that soldiers stopped killing women and children. “Why would anyone want a doily on a chair?”

  “In ye olde days, middle-class people —” he said middle-class with a fancy English accent clahs — “middle-clahs people wanted to keep things nice in the parlor.” Pah-luh. “They had all kinds of shit in their hair including grease and lice and didn’t want the whole couch ruined.”

  Bennett was a trove of such information. He was an appraiser of fine art for a select few and spent his days steeped in paintings, jewelry, porcelain figurines. He knew what a soup spoon was — and that “one” must scoop the soup away from “one.” Never slurp. He knew about shoe-horns, French cuffs, fish forks, Windsor knots, and the best bistro in Cap d’Antibes, France. Rosie assumed he came from money, but she didn’t know where or how much; money, to her, was Gran at the table with a stack of bills, her lips set as she wrote out checks and put them in envelopes. Gran did not talk about money.

  Rosie swallowed another bout of nausea. She was disappointed about the party and felt foolish for having had all the conversations with Mick and Keith in her head. The very notion that they’d even notice her to offer her a drink or ask her to pass the olives was absurd — a girl who had nothing to offer, not even beauty. At this very moment, they were at another party with famous actors. Had there even been a party here? Possibly, Bennett had been joking when he said, “Mick and Keith might be there.” Probably, now that she thought about it; Bennett’s humor came around blind corners.

  “What is that?” She tilted her head to indicate the packet in the back seat.

  “Jewels. Including a small, delicate piece from Tsarist Russia. The owner is a dear lady requiring a divorce. She has no money, only the family jewels, and she needs to procure the finest lawyer. So she’s cashing in.” He handed her the bottle, started the car.

  They were on the road again, Rosie was drinking, too. It was good wine. Bennett knew his wine, a robust Bordeaux in this instance. She had found a Steely Dan tape and slipped it in the deck. Rikki Don’t Lose That Number. Even if this wasn’t the night they’d planned, at least she wasn’t in her dorm room. She drank, she sang a few bars, she imagined the jewels — the rubies, sapphires, diamonds nestled casually in the box in the back. Bennett might let her see them.

  “Roll me one,” he said and put his hand on her thigh, possessive, and she was possessed. She rolled him a smoke, adding in the tiniest bit of Mary Jane, just like he’d taught her, scooching the contents in, pulling the paper tight, then a firm roll, a twist of the ends. She didn’t like either kind of smoke herself. She had the roll-up in her mouth, she was lighting it for him, when she saw a dark shape across the road in front of them. Bennett’s hand lifted off her lap, she could feel his body begin to react, but as they were rushing toward the object — an old carpet? — and the road was ribboning it toward them, there was no time to react, he could not have swerved. He had both hands on the wheel.

  The car lumped up and then down and Bennett kept going.

  “Bennett —” she said.

  Because something in the motion of the car going over the carpet, the lifting and descending of the wheels, the unexpected resistance, the carpet being more solid than she’d expected — this troubled her, she felt a tickling in her lower gut.

  “Shouldn’t we —”

  “No,” Bennett replied simply. He was hunched like a bear, both hands on the steering wheel.

  He should though. He should stop, he should just check. She looked over at him, his gaze was straight ahead. Maybe she should insist, but how? Her voice would be strong and shrill in the dark car — her voice would be loud. Already they were moving away, they were scrolling forward through time, and the distance and the minutes made her doubt herself, so she listened to the scratchy groove of Steely Dan and she handed Bennett his smoke and she sipped the Bordeaux. Any Major Dude Will Tell You. Further and further on, the road rolled them casually homeward. If she’d checked her watch she’d have known only five minutes had passed. Her emotions were like a tide turning slowly and gently out on the reef, her agitation ebbing as the stronger conviction rolled neatly in: it was only a piece of carpet, of course it was, if there was any chance, any chance at all, that it wasn’t, Bennett would have stopped, he was 38, he knew things, he knew how to navigate the Metro in Paris, the autobahn in Germany.

  “Did I tell you about the time I got drunk with Truman Capote?” Bennett began. He and Capote had been the only ones in first class on a flight from London to Helsinki. Capote, wearing a large coat and long red scarf, had taken a shine to Bennett, slim and young in tight jeans and a tee-shirt — “Oh, I was pretty back then” — on his way to visit an Oxford classmate who happened to be Finnish royalty. They’d had a layover in Berlin and the stewardesses all disappeared. “Let’s go and get a drink,” Capote commanded, even though they were both already quite drunk. He and Bennett trotted down the metal stairs and onto the tarmac, no one seemed to notice them. They saw a bar on the other side of a chainlink fence, lit up “like Jesus in the manger,” Capote said. When they climbed the fence, Truman’s scarf got caught and he was almost strangled. He was hung there like a fat fly in a web and Bennett had just managed to set him free when airport security arrived. But because they were first class passengers, no one said anything, just ushered them back on the plane and a crew of fresh stewardesses brought them champagne.

  Back at the boathouse, Bennett fell asleep cocooning Rosie’s body, his semi hard-on pressing leisurely against her lower back. They had not yet used the word love, but surely she did love him. He filled up the lonely places of her life, the empty Sunday mornings, the yearning Saturday nights; he filled the hollows of her childhood and made her grown-up. Every day she was with him was one more away from her grandmother and the Sunday-brown house in Lowell. He was her direction into the world. His un-shaven chin grazed her shoulder. Again, she felt the car jolt over the carpet, the single headlight rise and dip then flatten out again. Yet, it was nothing more than the flick
ering of an old film, and though she wondered briefly about the package on the back seat, she fell asleep.

  Bennett woke her with sleepy sex in the morning. He had this amazing technique which always made her come moments before he did. He liked to watch her roil under him and then pound into her. The light from the sea glittered on the ceiling above them and she could hear the water gently lapping. He rolled over and lit his first cigarette of the day and the smell of the tobacco layered with salt and seaweed. On this particular morning, there was also the scent of cut grass, as the gardener was again mowing the vast lawn, the burr of the machine entering her consciousness from the obscure shed near the greenhouses where such implements were kept and perhaps where the gardener even lived. She had never seen the gardener close up, she had never seen the owners of the main house — Bennett told her they were away in Lake Comma, Italy. Every day, people came and went from their house, delivering, cleaning, repairing. “Tradesmen.”

  “We have to go into town,” he said, even though it was barely seven and he seldom used the imperative. She flung her arm over him, made a sulky face, “Want to stay in bed all day.”

  He rose up and away from her in one move so that she was tossed aside like a small boat in his wake. “Get up,” he said and she was a child.

  They drove down from Sasco Hill to the scrubbier end of Fairfield, where buildings were squat and square and telephone and electricity wires crisscrossed the streets. Edges were hard and sharp or prickly with antennae, and the road tar was already softening and off-gassing. The air was gooey with heat, it felt not like air but cake batter. Carly Simon took the place of conversation, a relief to Rosie, because when Bennett entered these moods he did not want her bright, inane chatter, he did not want her voice at all. Her voice seemed to hurt him. She was glad of the practice she had of silence, the years and years of not bothering Gran. The Carly Simon cassette was a live recording Bennett had made on Martha’s Vineyard a few years ago, and it was gritty and uneven, people could be heard coughing and chatting. Carly and James — James Taylor — had an impromptu gig one night at a bar on the island and Bennett had been there. He used to sail with James.