#OCEAN STATE HOW TO#

“Yeah,” one of them said, “that’s why we’re here at one in the morning, cause we got nothing better to do.” We were living Neither of them was bleeding, so the cops didn’t charge anyone. The last had been a deckhand named Wes who brought home lobsters and called her “Care” and took us to Block Island to ride bikes, until one night he smashed her phone when she She lost weight and kissed us too much and made promises she couldn’t keep. They seemed to be getting younger and scruffier, which Angel thought was a bad sign. “I swear this is the last time,” she’d say, dead sober, and a month later she’d bring home another loser. Our father was gone, and our mother couldn’t stop wanting to be in love.

Like her, we were always rooting for things to work out, far beyond where we should have. When they broke up with my mother-suddenly, drunkenly, their shouting jerking us from sleep-we would have to move again. Sometimes they paid our rent and sometimes we split it. My mother’s boyfriends tried to be sweet, but they were strangers. I wanted to do spins and be graceful like her, but I was chubby and a klutz and when She could do spins like an iceskater, her hands making shapes in the air.

#OCEAN STATE HOW TO#

We used to roller-skate up and down the aisles between the dusty looms, Angel weaving, teaching me how to do crossovers and go backwards. NO TRESPASSING signs, but just above the dam someone had snipped a hole in the fence with bolt cutters so you could sneak in the back. The Line & Twine was closed, posted with rusty That fall we lived in a house by the river, across the road from the mill where my grandmother had met my grandfather. This was in Ashaway, Rhode Island, outside Westerly, down along the shore. I had never been in love then, not really, so I didn’t know what my mother meant, but I do now.

She was in love, my mother said, like it was an excuse. When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize. O'Nan is the author of numerous books, including Wish You Were Here, Everyday People, In the Walled City, The Speed Queen, and Emily, Alone. The following is excerpted from Stewart O'Nan's new novel Ocean State.

Ocean state