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'Coming Back To Me' by Caroline Leavitt

Three's a crowd when it comes to lonely hearts

Sunday, May 06, 2001

By Rebecca Sodergren, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

	Coming Back To Me By Caroline Leavitt St. Martin’s Press $24.95

Gary Breyer meets the love of his life over spicy fries at the Tastee diner.

In her new novel, Caroline Leavitt, a former Pittsburgher who now lives in New Jersey, invokes a familiar theme that undergirds much of her other work: isolation. And she does it while bringing people together.

Eating alone at the diner, Gary, who is both single and an orphan, glances up and spots a woman with tangled red hair and a hole in the elbow of her sweater, and he’s drawn to her instantly.

Molly Goldman lives alone in the home where she used to live with her mother and sister. Her mother has died, and Molly refuses to discuss her sister.

Gary and Molly fall head-over-heels and marry soon after. They can hardly believe that, once lonely, they now have each other. It gets even better when Molly becomes pregnant. Now they’ll be able to call themselves a real family. Their joy transcends even the disappointment of being mysteriously rebuffed by their neighbors.

During their courtship, we learn through flashbacks about Molly’s relationship with her sister. Leavitt’s fans will recognize a familiar combination -- the responsible Ugly Duckling with unruly red hair and the undependable boy-magnet with raven-black hair. Leavitt originally used that combination in her first novel, “Meeting Rozzy Halfway.” In that book, the black-haired beauty was Rozzy, who suffered from mental illness, and the Ugly Duckling was Bess, who clung to helping her older sister in order to give her own life definition.

But here, the combination is turned on its head. Molly and her beautiful sister, Suzanne, are close during childhood, running wild around the neighborhood together. But when their mother’s work takes up all her time, the sisters -- especially Suzanne, the older -- are left with impossible amounts of responsibility.

Suzanne feels stifled and resents her mother. She runs off to California with Ivan, a singer in a local rock band, leaving Molly hurt and rejected. When Ivan dumps Suzanne, she starts calling Molly, now a teacher, for loans. When Molly’s bank account finally runs dry and she has to refuse her sister, Suzanne hangs up angrily and never calls again. Molly tries to banish Suzanne from her thoughts.

Now, Gary and Molly’s happy home is shattered. Three days after giving birth to their son, Otis, Molly develops internal bleeding and falls into a coma. Doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong.

To make matters worse, Gary loses his job because he’s been spending so much time at the hospital with Molly. He can no longer afford to pay for a baby nurse. He decides his only hope is to call Suzanne and ask her to come take care of the baby.

She arrives with all her belongings in a few suitcases -- she’s been evicted and needs shelter anyway. Sucking on a cigarette and looking bored, she seems no caretaker for a newborn, but what can Gary do?

Molly lies inert on her hospital bed; Gary’s nerves are frayed; Suzanne is emotionally needy. Gary and Suzanne are now inhabiting the same house, and the old raven-haired beauty still exudes her charms. Will Gary succumb? When Molly awakes, how will she relate to this sister she has tried to forget?

The book’s greatest strength is the well-drawn characters. Readers’ sympathies are tugged in different directions -- even, at times, toward Suzanne, who behaves irresponsibly but genuinely tries to get her life together. Like Leavitt’s characters in other books, Molly, Gary and Suzanne all have plausible insecurities that lead them to alternately cling to and repel each other. This is another installment of Leavitt’s consistently strong work.