Introduction

Denny Roman at twelve: a midwestern girl with a clueless family, a bit part in the school play, a crush on the drama teacher, and concerns about frontal development. Her mother and father, divorced neuroscientists, are raising her with benign neglect. The family is virtually run by an agoraphobe named Maureen, who has a taxi fleet and a superorganized and compassionate method of managing other people’s lives, especially Denny’s.

Denny Roman at twenty-six: jets home from Hollywood for the weekend and lands in the marital minefield of her mother and stepfather’s imminent relocation to New York. She has to pack up her childhood possessions in forty-eight hours before returning to L.A. for a big audition with Robert Altman. She’s supposed to be deciding what to keep, but she’s worried about what to wear. In a deranged moment, she kisses her stepfather. On the lips.

Denny Roman at thirty-six: A playwright on the eve of her first Off-Broadway production and once again living within sparring distance of her mother, she comes home from rehearsal one afternoon and finds a thirteen-year- old boy on her doorstep: Luke, the son of Maureen and a Mauritanian refugee cabdriver. Bewildered by his mother’s recent death, Luke is looking for a place where he might fit. Will Denny keep him in New York? Will she get any help from Sean—an actor whose good looks may be all there is to him? Will she be reconciled with her mother at long last?

What to Keep looks into the lives of Denny Roman, her mother, her father, her stepfather, and her surrogate mother—all practicing variations on the theme “parent” but none of them quite done being children themselves. Bubbling with sly humor and psychological insight, their story holds out a refreshingly flexible and realistic model of what a good family—whether created by nature or chance or both—can consist of.

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Excerpt

Lily wakes up with a cupcake hovering before her eyes. Denny holds it there, has held it
there for a while in fact, waiting for her mother to (1) wake up, (2) make a wish, and (3)
blow out the candle. Not so hard, you would think, but it is for Lily. She stares blankly at
the tiny flame, and Denny, who at twelve and a half is nearly too old for this sort of thing,
is forced to intervene. “Mom,” she says, dropping the word into a second, disappointed
syllable as Lily's eyes blink, again. “Mom, make a wish. Happy birthday.”
Ordinarily, Lily would be the one waking Denny up, so Denny is surprised to find her
mother as hard to retrieve from sleep as she is. But that's just how it is. Since her parents'
split two years ago, Denny has been in charge of their domestic reality-the here and now
of social perception: what other kids' parents are worrying about, what's worth watching
on TV (Little House), whether or not there is lipstick on Lily's teeth, and when it's safe to
turn left on Broad Street. In return, Lily makes money, buys groceries (by proxy, but
more on that later), drives the car, and tells Denny whe n to turn off the TV.
Lily and Denny Roman live in Bexley, an amiable suburb of Columbus. Unlike the way
most suburbs relate to their cities, Columbus has grown around Bexley in concentric
rings of shopping centers, parks, hospitals, universities, institutes, and bedroom
communities. Every ten years or so, the latest ring seems to degrade into slum. Bexley
itself is only a mile or so from the old, original downtown (and state capitol), but it
somehow retains its beauty and its property values. Its houses are large, its schools are
excellent, and its trees are immense, forming a canopy over the broad streets. Some of the
streets are so wide they have their own grassy median. It's a very old suburb but it has a
faint theme: the street names have a Brittanic sound, and many of the houses are
distinctly manorial. The Romans' house at 2424 Sherwood Road-just two blocks from
Main Street- lacks cupolas and sleeping porches and isn't as large as many in the
neighborhood, but it isn't small, either. It is built of gray clapboard with white trim, black
shutters, and one little dormer window, on the third floor, looking out at the vast Ohio
buckeye tree in the front yard. It is a fine house, built in 1907, and has never needed
major repairs.
As Lily rubs her eyes and fumbles for her glasses, Denny nibbles at the pink-frosted
cupcake. It's a Hostess Sno Ball, a coconut-flecked demi-globe of pink marshmallow that
surrounds a wad of chocolate cake. Inside the cake is a tiny inner bolus of something
called “creme.” In short, it's a food that would give pause to almost anyone over the age
of sixteen.
“Perhaps a Sno Ball is not the perfect breakfast food?” asks Lily.
Denny shrugs but halts her attempt to tear off a flag of marshmallow flesh. She stares at
the cupcake, replacing it on the plate with its twin as Lily blunders into the bathroom,
now awake to the day.
“They're like tits,” says Denny, though Lily can't hear her with the shower running. It's
not a remark likely to reach Lily's sense of humor, anyway. Denny picks up the two
cupcakes and holds them, breastwise, up to her own largely featureless chest. She steps to
the mirror as Lily sticks her head out of the bathroom to ask something that she instantly
forgets at the sight of Denny's pantomime.
“Look, I developed!” says her daughter, slyly.
“I see that,” Lily replies with a nod. The doorbell rings.
Denny raises her eyebrows.
“I have no idea,” says Lily.
Denny goes to the bedroom window and looks down. “It's Dad.” She's still holding her
cupcakes at the ready.
“Go offer him a Sno Ball,” says Lily. “And, for God's sake, don't tell him where it's
been.” This cracks Denny up. Lily returns to the bathroom, not sure she was making a
joke. She looks at herself in the steaming mirror and remembers that she has a nine a.m.
haircut appointment at Lazarus, downtown. For most of her life, Lily has studiously
ignored her appearance-she was pretty enough in her teenage years to take it for granted
that she didn't have to fuss. However, since turning forty she finds herself taking a more
careful look: She is far too pale, and verging on bony; her wispy blond hair is neither
long nor short, and the layered cut that- if properly blown dry-was supposed to look like a
less trashy version of Farrah Fawcett's has never been, and will never be, properly blown
dry. Moreover, her eyeglasses have worn a pair of purple indentations into the sides of
her nose and a formerly inoffensive beauty mark on her cheek has become, decisively
and seemingly overnight, a mole.
Denny opens the front door for her father, who looms in the doorway. Charles is tall and
slender and mostly bald, prematurely so. His eyes are light brown and crinkly but so far
above Denny most of the time that she feels like she never sees them. He wears wirerimmed
glasses but not the John Lennon kind. His are rectangular. Usually he wears
turtlenecks under his tweeds, but today he is wearing a shirt and tie. Denny knows he was
once physically close to her, she even vaguely remembers it. Now he looks down at her
and forgets to smile.
“Mom's in the shower,” says Denny. “Want a Sno Ball?”
“Isn't she going to Chicago today?” asks her father.
What Denny doesn't know, and Lily doesn't remember, is that Lily is supposed to go to
Chicago today, on her birthday, because it's also the annual meeting of the AAN
(American Academy of Neurology) and Maureen paid Lily's $500 deposit long ago. The
whole point of having someone else manage this type of thing for you is so that you don't
forget, even if it is your forty- first birthday and you are feeling strangely petulant and
vulnerable. Unfortunately, sometimes even Maureen's systems break down.
Maureen is Lily's gateway to the world. In some respects, Maureen is Denny's erstwhile
Dad-the second opinion that makes being a single mother bearable for Lily. Maureen is a
small business that began four years ago as an answering service and grew with the times.
Mostly, she works for doctors (her father was an endocrinologist). Now she not only
fields calls but acts as a travel agent, bookkeeper, personal shopper, UPS drop and pickup
site, contract post office, appointment secretary, and dispatcher of taxis, ambulances, and
messengers. Maureen does not do pet care. Maureen and Lily sometimes speak several
times a day, as do Maureen and Denny, as do Maureen and Charles (another client). No
one really grasps the full extent of Maureen's involvement in this stubby little former
family, except Maureen and, maybe, Denny.
“No one else in my class has a Maureen. Why not?” Denny asked, when she was eight.
“Well, there is no one else like Maureen, Denny. Just like there's no one else like you. Put
your shoes on.”
“You're not answering my question. Does it have something to do with religion?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“I don't know. Sometimes that's why people's families are different.”
“Well, we're not that different. Come on, let me tie that. Lots of the other people in the
neighborhood use Maureen.”
Denny retrieved her sneakered foot from her mother's busy hands, wanting to tie her own
damn shoe, though that is not what she said. She simply performed the task, somewhat
laboriously, while formulating her response to her mother's statement, which was:
“We don't 'use' Maureen. We 'have' Maureen. That's what you always say. I think it's
different.”
Lily didn't know what to say to that observation, and anyway, it was time for school.
And it is time for school, again.
Charles stands awkwardly in the kitchen that used to be his, waiting for Lily to finish her
shower and for his suddenly alarmingly chic-looking daughter to go upstairs and get
dressed. Denny is a little bit short for her age and has enormous black-brown eyes. When
she flips her long blondish hair back from a fully bent-over position, it transforms her
into a sex goddess for about forty seconds. Then the hair flattens back down and she is a
small girl with big eyes, weird coloring, and a defensive stance. The sight of her in her
nightgown (a worn black J.Geils Band T-shirt that clearly never belonged to either of her
parents) reminds him that Dolores Haze-a.k.a. Lolita-was also about twelve.
Coincidentally, on the way over, he had just been thinking with relief that his daughter
was finally old enough to be left alone in the house for one night, adequately provisioned
with foodstuffs and phone numbers. Now he is thinking she might also be too old for any
such thing.
“How's work?” asks Denny, swirling her orange juice.
“Fine,” says Charles. “How's school?”
“Fine, too. We're doing dissection this year in biology.”
“What are you dissecting?”
“Well, first we did a clam. I think next we get an earthworm.”
“Not much to see in a clam.”
“No kidding.”
“Do they give you a cat eventually?”
“Dad!”
“Some kind of mammal?”
“Is a pig a mammal?”
“Of course. You know that.”
“At the end of the year we get a fetal pig.”
“That's good. Pigs are much closer to humans than you might think.”
Denny's not sure that closer to human is good, in her book, but that's how things are
talking to Charles. “Yeah, I guess so.” She washes her orange juice glass and puts it in
the drainer. “I better get ready for school.”
Denny's room still harbors most of the toys, games, and books of her early childhood, a
condition that she is on the verge of doing something about. Returning to this domain
after that typically unsatisfying excha nge with her father, she sees it anew as the room of
a child. Even the collection of clippings from the Dispatch that are taped to the wall over
her desk, which only recently seemed to her to lend that corner a serious, newsroom
quality, now seem to broadcast the childishness of their subject matter: the fate of the
Columbus Zoo's orphan polar bear, Otto. Today, the headline can otto survive
adolescence alone? sounds as dopey to her as before it had sounded antic and clever.
Denny can't yet deep-six Otto, but, possessed of a ruthless new attitude toward childish
things, she instead collects the row of trolls that are lined up on her windowsill and drops
them individually into the bottom drawer of her desk (“Good-bye, Lolly; sorry, Skeezix;
see you later, Lance”). She scans the room for more victims, but can't figure out what to
do with all those picture books about talking animals beside her bed. Among those books,
however, is the white leatherette diary that Maureen gave Denny on her last birthday.
Denny takes the diary from the shelf and opens it, using the little brass key that is tied to
the lock with a matching white grosgrain ribbon. The pages are blank. When Denny
received this gift, she had more or less ignored it, but suddenly it has appeal. The idea of
the lock is particularly compelling, although she doesn't know from whose eyes she'd be
locking it, really. She selects a purple Flair pen from the collection of markers in a mug
on her desk and sits down on her bed to write.
She rejects the convention of beginning “Dear Diary”; diary sounds too much like diaper.
Her book will be more like an official record, like the Captain's Log on Star Trek. She
writes the date at the top of the page, then:
Today is Mom's birthday but I'm not sure she cares. I care, though. I got cupcakes but she
didn't eat them. Then Dad came over. He was dressed up for something. We talked about
dissecting mammals. Yuck.
Lily comes downstairs and finds Charles standing in the middle of the kitchen doing
absolutely nothing.
“Do you want some tea? We have Earl Grey.”
“Oh-”
“Oh?”
She measures two spoonfuls of loose tea into the pot without waiting for his answer.
Charles doesn't usually stop by at this hour, but when he does stop by it is always without
prior warning-there are still some joint investments that need her signature or a book
that's his but still on her, formerly their, shelves.
“I thought I could read your paper on the way to Chicago.”
Lily's brain swims to the surface: paper, airport, Chicago! She feels as though she's been
kicked-and, in a way, Charles looks like he has kicked her.
“It's at the lab.”
“Aren't you coming on the same plane?”
“No.”
“Isn't your talk at three?”
She turns off the soon-to-scream kettle and empties it into the teapot. She thinks, He has
no idea it's my birthday and that I've suddenly gotten old- he can't know how humiliated I
feel to have forgotten this conference. As though she believes that “forget? is what she
did.
Charles does know it's Lily's birthday, but that's not what's on his mind. Someone he
knows reviewed Lily's paper and told someone else he knows that she was on to
something interesting, possibly even big. Her research is about the events that finally
differentiate brain cells from other cells as they develop in the embryo; it's long been
established that neurons are the only cells the body never makes more of and Charles
assumes Lily's analysis will help explain why.
Lily did not completely forget the conference or the paper, she just ignored them so
furiously that it had almost the same effect. She doesn't want to stand in front of all those
smug, bespectacled men and feel her face turning red with the effort of not weeping.
Though she has spent the past two years fantasizing about how one day she would
triumphantly present this research, her calm certainty has now deserted her. Lily suspects
this is because she's pregnant. She didn't expect to be, she's not sure she wants to be, but
she is.
Charles has been watching her think, an old habit.
“So?” he now asks.
“Excuse me?”
“So what's in your paper?”
“It moves,” she says.
The fetus is not old enough to move. This is a reference to Galileo's supposed last words
about the earth relative to the sun. Back then, the idea that the earth could move was
heresy. Charles resists the reference because he, himself, is too mired in the current
orthodoxy of no new brain cells, ever.
“What moves?”
“Nothing.”
“I hope you're not talking about neuronal reproduction.”
“Don't you have a plane to catch?”
“Because that would be career suicide, Lily.”
If Charles wasn't so substantial visually (he's not just tall, he's dark and handsome), you
might have to call him an enigma. Lily, of course, knows Charles intimately, but she's not
convinced that that ever did her any good. Most of the time, the part of her brain that
deals with Charles supplies the message Oh, that's just Charles to any and all behavior the
man enacts and that's the end of it.
“No, trying to be a neurosurgeon and a mother at the same time-that was suicide. This is
just research.”
Excerpted from What to Keep by Rachel Cline Copyright© 2004 by Rachel Cline.
Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
©2004 Rachel Cline
... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the Author:

1) Lily set out to be a pediatric neurosurgeon but shifted her focus to research when Denny was
young, in part because the schedule was more flexible. Later, Lily has an impressive career in scientific
research. Is Lily a good scientist? Does it matter that research wasn't her first choice of career? Did her
change of careers make her a better mother? Might her life have been more satisfying if she'd stayed with
surgery? What about if she'd stayed married to Charles?

2) When we first meet Maureen she is suffering from severe agoraphobia—she's afraid to go outside.
She isn't married or apparently close to her own family, nor does she have children of her own. Why does
Denny get along so much better with Maureen than she does with Lily?

3) Is Maureen crazy at first or just depressed? What's the difference? Did her sexual encounter with
Jamie (the guy from the record store) cause her agoraphobia or did her emotional problems make her
particularly susceptible to the type of experience she had with Jamie?

4) Lily has a car accident that leaves her with a mild concussion and temporary amnesia. What, if
anything, does Lily learn from her accident and its aftermath? In the long run, does it matter that she misses
Denny's performance in Damn Yankees?

5) In Book Two, Lily calls Denny home to help her pack up their house in Bexley—the house where
Denny grew up and where she lived with her mother and father before the divorce. Lily expects Denny to
stay for a week, and to make an effort to get to know her new stepfather; Phil. Why is Denny so impatient
with her mother in this section of the book? Does Lily deserve it? How could Denny be doing a better job
of living her own life?

6) At the end of Book Two, after Lily and Phil have been fighting and Denny has been reunited with
Maureen, Denny and Phil go out for ice cream and wind up kissing each other, briefly. Phil is actually
closer to Denny in age than he is to Lily. How do you feel about Phil and Denny's kiss? Is it wrong? Should
one of them have stopped it? Who? What do you think was really going on, there?

7) In Book Three, Lily and Phil are living together in New York City and trying to imagine what it
will be like to retire. Why does Lily and Phil's relationship last? What's in it for each of them?

8) The director of Denny's play is an extremely handsome former film actor named Sean. He's a
divorced father and comes from what sounds like a privileged background. Initially, Denny mistrusts him
and it seems as if her reason for this is simply because he's so good looking. Are her instincts right or
wrong? Where do you think those instincts come from?

9) At the end of the book, thirteen-year old Luke has come to stay with Denny in New York. Will
Denny be a good parent for Luke? Does it make sense for Luke to stay in New York? What will Denny
have to change about her life that she hasn't foreseen?

10) This book is full of families of various kinds—some makeshift, some formal, some functional,
some less so. Who are the best parents in this story and why? Discuss some of the minor characters who
sometimes act like parents—people like Denny's drama teacher and her school principal in the early part of
the story, and later, her agent, Luke's grandmother, Sean, and even Simon (the guy at the library). What are
some of the qualities that do and don't make a good parent, in this story?

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