Authors Interviewing Characters: Linda Dahl
TINY VOICES
For fans of Anne Tyler and Jojo Moyes, a tartly compassionate and contemporary tale of sibling love and conflict, marital challenges, and what personal fulfillment looks like—or doesn’t—in middle age.
Mid-life: Its obligations and demands, its petty foibles and evasions. And sometimes, its crises. Dreams are deferred, shortcomings rationalized. Like favorite old clothes, petty misdemeanors may feel comfortable, but they’re not a good look.
The Talley siblings are planning a family beach vacation—all four of them together for the first time in years. They suspect it will be their last. And God knows they all need a vacation. But wait, is it really such a good idea? Corina, with her recently diagnosed Alzheimer’s, can hardly manage to get through a day without a debacle. Pete is a just-barely-walking catalog of medical calamities stemming from his longtime addictions. Becca is reeling from her teenage son’s latest misadventure. And then there is Kathy, the eldest. After firmly avoiding going back to Rincón Bay, the beach town just a few hours south of the Arizona–Mexico border that has haunted her since a college spring break trip three decades ago, she’s determined to go back and face her ghosts—though she might be better off facing the fact that her marriage is in serious trouble.
When the Talley siblings and their entourage (two spouses, added on at the last minute, and Corina’s Mexican housekeeper/caregiver) finally land in Rincón Bay, they all encounter unexpected consequences from the wounds inflicted by careless loving—but maybe, too, the seeds of healing and hope.
Linda Dahl Interviews Kathy Talley
“Thanks for doing this,” I begin, placing my tiny tape recorder on the table. (Okay, I’m old school. I like flip phones too. What can I say?)
Kathy Talley Barris (though it’s just Kathy Talley now, I guess) ducks her head. “You’re welcome.”
After a bit of small talk, I start, avoiding the elephant in the room – her brother, poor Pete Talley. “For this piece, people will really want to know how you, the three sisters, are doing. It hasn’t been easy for any of you, I’m sure.”
“No. But when is it ever easy?” Her smile is bittersweet, as in way more bitter than sweet.
I murmur agreement, thinking, “Well, not often.” The sudden glare of sun blinds me for a moment. We’re sitting on her patio outside her condo in Tucson, Arizona. Nothing special about it – except for the view, which really is spectacular: the desert plain spread before us with those signature saguaro cacti standing like sentries. Just beyond that lies a mountain ridge of the Santa Catalina Mountains, cast today in hues of grey, blue and red-brown. It’s August, so of course it’s beastly hot here, the ceiling fan whirring above us fruitlessly. And worse, it’s also damp, as we’re in the middle of the short rainy season. But the desert has exploded with lush green.
Kathy passes me a plate of Mexican wedding cookies and I help myself to a tall glass of iced tea. “Delicious,” I say, munching, and mean it.
“The cookies? I got them from Norima’s – that café that Imalia and Nora opened downtown? It’s doing really well.”
Ah yes, Imalia had been Kathy’s sister Corina’s caregiver in Tiny Vices. Which reminds me to get back to work.
“So Imalia’s doing well then. And how are your sisters?”
“Well, Becca’s cut back on her hours at the store and she’s writing poetry again. A lot. I mean, her first chapbook will be out soon! She’s giving a reading at that bookstore near the univeristy in October.”
I smile, but I’m wondering. Becca had had so much to deal with – her husband Toby, and her problematic son. Especially her son. I decide I’ll circle back to them later. It’s really Corina I want to talk about and we both know it. And Kathy probably doesn’t want to talk about her. What was it she called Alzheimer’s in the book? The God Almighty of diseases, that was it. But it’s my job to prod.
“And…Corina?” I try for a light tone.
Kathy runs a hand through her greying bob. She’s overdue for a cut. She’s attractive but she clearly doesn’t care: no makeup, those old jeans with paint stains on them – and that overlarge grey t-shirt that’s not quite clean. When I’d arrived, she did say she was working on “something” for a group art show coming up. As she’d ushered me past the living room to the patio, I noticed that the room had been taken over by easels, a whiteboard, a card table stacked with paints and brushes, canvases stacked against the walls. It smells of cleaning fluid and the indefinable scents of oil and watercolor and who knows what other tools of the painting trade. Just one corner of the space is left over now for “living,” a loveseat and a tv, some books piled on a side table.
She sighs. “I’ve got to go over there to see her. I’ve been so busy, it’s been three or four days.”
“So, is she still living at home?”
“Oh yeah. She has round-the-clock care, of course. A fortune, but she has all her familiar things around her. Though I don’t know how much she knows that now.” Kathy puts her hands to her face. I wonder if she’s going to start crying. But, as if she’s made some kind of decision, she slaps her palms down – lightly – on the glass-fronted table with the tray of cookies and the pitcher of iced tea. “It’s late stage now. But she still has moments of – oh not clarity, exactly, but something. When it’s her. And she loves to be touched. She always relaxes if I stroke her arm. Like a pet. Oh, God.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, sniffing. “Thanks. Well, it happens to millions of people. Corina and dementia, Pete and addiction. Beth and I are the lucky ones. And both of us artists! It’s strange, when the four of us were little, we were just kids, you know? Riding our bikes, grumbling about homework, avoiding it completely in Pete’s case, going to Scouts and ball games and becoming awkward teenagers…” She sighs. “I never would have imagined how the four of us would turn out. Silly me, that’s the way it is for everyone, isn’t it, or most people?”
Is she asking me a question? I think briefly about my own family, but file that one away. I’m the interviewer and this is the Talley kids’ story, theirs and their loved ones’. Well, I’ve got a job to do, and I’ve got the advantage here. I know Kathy’s story and she doesn’t know mine. Not unless she’s done some deep googling. From Tiny Vices, I know her strengths and I certainly know her vulnerabilities.
Kathy is looking away now at the darkening sky. The mountains are sheathed now in mist. It’s raining out there, I realize. I look at her and wonder how to broach the subject of her divorce. Everything she’s been through – poor maddening Pete and that last vacation together to the place Kathy had avoided going back to all those years. But she was right to do it, I think. There’s a strength about her, it shows in her face, she looks you in the eye. I wonder if she knows this about herself. And now she and Becca, too, who couldn’t make it today but I’m sure about this, are in a better place. And there for Corina, the sister who no longer knows who she is.
Time to move on, to now. I gesture behind us to the living room/studio. “You’ve been doing a lot of painting, I can see that. Will you tell your readers what you’ve been working on?”
—
BUY HERE
Linda Dahl began her career as a travel journalist and college teacher before turning to writing full time. An award-winning author, she has written groundbreaking books about women in jazz and women’s needs in recovery from addiction, as well as six works of fiction.
She has been widely interviewed in print, at conferences, and on many NPR and BBC programs and other radio stations (including a 2023 3-hour presentation on WKCR about women in jazz.) She has also co-produced several New York jazz concerts. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Jazz Studies. Soul on Soul, her screenplay about legendary pianist Mary Lou Williams, was a finalist for the Sundance Episodic Lab in 2020.
Her novel, Tiny Vices, is out now from She Writes Press.
She lives in New York City.
Category: Interviews, On Writing
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