Payback

PART I

Brimston, Arizona

February 2018


The Arizona sun is strong this February afternoon, but all the women are quite cool and comfortable. You might think that they chose the colors of their shorts and sleeveless tops to match the colors of the fruits they are eating: cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew. Their fingernails and toenails are painted in various shades of opalescence: silver, rose, robin s-egg blue. This is their weekly ritual: water aerobics, a manicure, a pedicure, then lunch (raw fruits, raw vegetables, whey protein enriched smoothies) in front of one of their wall-sized TVs. Their children are grown; their husbands are somewhere.
 
They are waiting for the show that is their favorite, and for which they feel a proprietary pride because it started as a local cable show here in their own Brimston and has now gone national. But they knew it when.

I just love her. I always have.
 
I m crazy about everything about her.
 
When she goes after someone, I just feel good about things, like the world s on the right track.
 
Blah blah blah and boo hoo hoo, they say, imitating Quin s inflection, toasting each other with their pastel smoothies.
 
#
 
Good afternoon, lovers of justice. This is Quin Archer. And this is PAYBACK.

Today s show exposes a greedy dishonest father, Winston La Marr. He cheated his daughter Cindy of a legacy left by her grandmother and fled the country with a new woman. Cindy s loving grandmother, Thelma La Marr, Winston s mother, created a trust to ensure that her granddaughter would always be provided for . . . she particularly wanted Cindy to have a college education. But she was too trusting . . . perhaps not in her right mind . . . and the trust was set up with only herself and Winston as trustees, not Cindy. She felt secure giving Winston the money to invest, and he invested it in what were called bearer bonds. Bearer bonds, my

Mary Gordon is the author of nine novels, including Final Payments, The Love of My Youth, Pearl, and There Your Heart Lies; seven works of nonfiction, including the memoirs Circling My Mother and The Shadow Man; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Morally complex. The New York Times Book Review

Gordon has produced her most topical and propulsive novel to date. . . . What she has set up in this clash of cultures and values is the heroism of good manners versus the brutality of a world in which the president, setting a coarse new tone, has poisoned the air. Gordon makes it clear how high the stakes are in this battle for decency. Los Angeles Times

[Gordon] is expert at creating characters of clear moral, intellectual and what might be called aesthetic goodness then testing that goodness in a clarifying, often life-altering way. In some ways, Gordon s familiar conception of the novel is the real character being tested in Payback, as a sensibility attuned to the nuances of truth and beauty finds itself in the harsh, ugly light of the reality TV show that our world is inexorably becoming. The Washington Post

Excellent. . . . Gordon nails period details and vividly describes her characters worlds, whether they are restoring a work of art or raising a daughter. This mesmerizing novel hits hard. Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
Nuanced where it could be sensational, the novel explores how one moment can completely change the trajectory of two women s lives forever. In Payback, Gordon s understated and beautiful prose reveals the murkiness of victimhood, forgiveness, and redemption. Chronogram
 
Payback resists categorization; it s part satire and part meditative character study. . . . [The novel] offers many pleasures, not only the range in voices but also the evocation of two eras, the early 1970s and the current decade, with the right amount of period detail. BookPage
 
Virtuoso Gordon creates finely nuanced moral quandaries and explores the deep toxicity of sexism with scintillating energy and piercing inquisitiveness. . . . Every facet of this psychologically and sensuously lush novel about damage and nurture, altruism and selfishness, disorder and art, privacy and