Opening on the tragic traffic death of his wife while they are vacationing in Ireland, Nick Nacht, the narrator of Skylighting, is essentially on a quest for his own identity over the course of Charles Hansmann’s lyrical new novel. Nick and Erin met in law school in New York City, and if ever there were “soulmates,” it was Nick and Erin. “The Merge,” she called it, alluding to their oneness together. “Erin and I were orphaned adults, we were twinned that way,” When Nick was eleven years old, his mother abandoned him and his father, and then when Nick’s father died, cancer, he told Nick that he was not Nick’s actual father, leaving a huge hole in his sense of self. Erin’s parents were likewise dead when she met Nick. “Her feelings were mine, and mine hers. We entered each other’s memories and assumed those memories as our own.” Her death is devastating.
The novel starts in 2008, eight years after Nick and Erin met, and continues for several years. When Erin dies, Nick at the wheel of the car, they had been married for five years. They were both lawyers for firms in New York. He feels guilty. After Nick deposits Erin’s ashes in a NYC columbarium (“like the mailbox wall in a post office lobby”), his grief continues to overwhelm him. “The conditions are perfect for suffering.” He gets an infinity tattoo on his chest (“a sort of...together forever symbol”), like the one his father had. Finally, he ditches his job and flees to Florida to start a new life, where he sits for the bar and sets himself up as a freelance lawyer. “I’m resigned and resolved. Mine will be a subpar life...”
But his is not to be a monk’s life, not by a long shot. He meets a girl at a party, and they have sex. “It is my first time since Erin. I have found a new way to be alone.” It turns out the girl is underage, or claims to be, and she starts sending him threatening letters, hinting that she is pregnant. Meanwhile, a woman in his apartment building, Irma, asks him to take care of her cockatiel while she takes a trip out west.
After work, Nick goes down to the esplanade for his lonely guy routine, dinner and a drink. There he meets a woman named Louise, who quickly latches onto him. Turns out Louise is fleeing from her husband. She insinuates herself into Nick’s life, even borrows his spare key to let herself into his apartment. Her husband has followed her to the town and creepily follows them around in his car. When Louise sees the postcards from Irma, she becomes jealous, but Nick calms her suspicions. There is also a German woman named Erika with a son named Klaus that he encounters. Nick’s mother was German, so he finds her interesting. We can feel problems looming, but nothing actually happens between them.
One morning, after having sex with Louise, they go to an art exhibit called BOOK BY THE COVER, book covers with their contents removed and cards with clues on how the viewer should respond. “‘Nostalgia,’ one of the cards reads, ‘from the Greek words nostos, meaning home, and algos, meaning pain. We ache for what we once knew.’” This pinpoints Nick’s problem, his yearning for Erin, for a past that never existed, a fantasy he’s created. “Another card reads: ‘But what we once knew is missing even when it is here. Basho writes that in his hometown, a bird’s call makes him miss his hometown.’” Nick in a niutshell.
Finally, when the girl sending the threatening notes confronts him with the ultimatum to leave or face the law, Nick leaves all of those complications behind. He books a flight to an “arid and coastal” city. Up in the air, the clouds below him, he starts to feel the tension melt away.
“Troposphere of dreams,” Erin would say as wisps of cloud scattered about us.
“The skylight zone,” is what I still answer, embraced once again in the floating bliss.
But back on earth, the complications return. He ditches the law and decides to work in a juice bar squeezing lemons in this new unnamed city. This time it’s two other women, Selena and Jaci, who complicate his solitude. He meets Selena at the Museum of Indigenous Peoples, where she works unlocking the mysteries of dead languages. Jaci, a college student eleven years younger than he, is an aspiring poet; she takes him to meet her father, and she also sublets a closet in his apartment, where she writes poetry. Nick has fantasies about both women, but the reality is never as satisfying.
Nick remembers the romantic fantasy he and Erin had of moving to Havana and bitterly realizes it will never happen. But then, it turns out that back in the Florida town he fled, another man – “Pastor Lorthew Lake” – has been arrested for having sex with the minor, and not only that, but the evening Nick had sex with her she had just turned eighteen! So he books a flight to Tampa and leaves his new set of complications behind. Or rather, he has decided to take the original complication of his parents’ failed marriage head on. “Sarasota is where my father met my mother. And that’s where she went when she left us. The man who’d been her lover still lived there.” His name is Clayton Kydd. This is Nick’s destination.
Nick stalls for time, going to Busch Gardens to see the giraffes, the Dali Museum for the eerie artwork, Steinbrenner Field for a pre-season game between the Yankees and the Braves. But finally, “I set out to pay homage to the place where I was born.” At Lido Beach he tracks down Clay Kydd in a bar drinking margaritas.
Does Nick Nacht finally solve the mystery of his identity after all? Kidd offers to take Nick to see his mother, who’d deserted him two decades earlier. They are still married. He tells Nick, “‘To understand is to be free.’ I read that once.” To which Nick replies: “Spinoza. Nice motto, but I’ve been free of this a long time.”
Instead, he leaves Clayton Kidd in the bar, negotiates the purchase of a sailboat. With the German passport his mother gave him years before, he has no fear that the Coast Guard will turn him around if he goes to Cuba. At last he will fulfill that fantasy he and Erin had.
Erin and I eloped in a sultry dream. Our marriage gave me
confidence. But since her death I have lived like a coward, I’ve
been clouded by hopelessness, unfaithful to both of us. The
marriage vow that must not be broken is the promise to live without fear.
In Cuba, living the fantasy he and Erin had had together, he may finally resolve the questions about his identity, his purpose in life. Or...?
Charles Hansmann’s poetic novel, full of insights into the philosophical conundrums of destiny and intention, is a thought-provoking read about an intriguing character. Indeed, many of the characters we encounter are fascinating, and the plot is unique in its picaresque storyline, with more than a dash of noir. Regal House, offers a number of titles in the noir genre, including Martin Ott’s Shadow Dance and Mark Wish’s Necessary Deeds. Skylighting is in good company.