EarlyMorning: переводы

→“Nick? Hello? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Just thinking.”
“About what? The trip?”
“No,” I said. “I was thinking about the adventures we had when we were little kids.”
“In Minnesota?”
“No,” I said. “In Los Angeles.”
“What made you think of that?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. “Sometimes it just happens.”

→The day that I received the brochure in the mail was a day like any other. Lexie, who was six
months old, had a cold and refused to let my wife put her down; Miles had painted the dog’s tail
with fluorescent paint and was proudly showing it off; Ryan needed to study for a test but forgot
the textbook at school and had decided to “solve” the problem by seeing how much toilet paper
could be flushed down the toilet; Landon was coloring on the walls-again-and I can’t remember
what Savannah was doing, but no doubt it was something distressing, since at six months old she
was already learning from her siblings. Add to that the television blaring, dinner cooking, dogs
barking, a ringing phone, and the chaotic roar seemed to be reaching a fever pitch. I suspected
that even my saintly wife might be nearing the end of her rope. Pushing away from the computer,
I took a deep breath and stood from my desk. Marching into the living room, I took one look
around at the world gone crazy, and-with instincts only men seem to possess-I knew exactly
what to do. I cleared my throat, felt everyone’s attention momentarily swing to me, and calmly
announced:
“I’m going to see if the mail’s come in yet.”

→After Cat and I returned from our walk-and still in a state of partial disbelief-I went to my
office to call my brother in California.
I could hear the phone ringing, the sound more distant than that on a landline. Micah never
answered his home phone; if I wanted to talk to him, I had to dial his cellular.
“Hey Nicky,” he chirped. “What’s going on?”
My brother has caller ID, and still tends to call me by my childhood name. I was, in fact, called
Nicky until the fifth grade.
“I have something I think you’ll be interested in.”
“Do tell.”
“I got this brochure in the mail and . . . anyway, to make a long story short, I was wondering if
you want to go with me on a trip around the world. In January.”
“What kind of trip?”

→“Is it really that important to you?” she finally asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t. But I’d like to.”
“And you’d go alone?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I was thinking about going with Micah,” I said, referring to my
brother.
We walked in silence for a few moments before she caught my eye. “I think,” she said, “that
would be a wonderful idea.”

→Two days later, my wife and I were walking through the neighborhood. Our oldest sons were
ahead of us, the other three kids were in strollers, when I brought the subject up again.
“I was thinking about that trip,” I said, oh-so-casually.
“What trip?”
“The one that goes around the world. The one in the brochure that I showed you.”
“Why?”
“Well . . .” I took a deep breath. “Would you like to go?”
She took a few steps before answering. “Of course I’d like to go,” she said. “It looks amazing,
but it’s impossible. I can’t leave the kids for three weeks. What if something happened? There’s
not a chance that we could get back in an emergency. How many flights even go to a place like
Easter Island? Lexie and Savannah are still babies, and they need me. All of them need me . . .”
She trailed off. “Maybe other mothers could go, but not me.”
I nodded. I already knew what her answer would be.
“Would you mind if I went?”

→Impossible. It was ridiculous, so I might as well forget about it. I shoved the brochure to the
bottom of the pile.

→Right now, I just didn’t have the time. Three weeks away from the kids? From my wife? From
my work?

→In our house, it’s my job to handle the mail. It has to be done, after all, and in the course of our
marriage, this is one of those little responsibilities that has fallen in my lap.

→My wife accepts all of this activity in the house as normal. She’s patient and seldom gets
flustered. My wife seems to actually enjoy it most of the time. My wife, I might add, is a saint.
Either that, or maybe she is insane.

→A typical day includes: at least one sick child, toys
strewn from one end of the living room to the other that magically reappear the moment after
they’ve been put away, dogs barking, kids laughing, the phone ringing off the hook, FedEx and
UPS deliveries coming and going, kids whining, lost homework, appliances breaking, school
projects due tomorrow that our children somehow forget to tell us about until the last minute,
baseball practice, gymnastics practice, football practice, Tae Kwon Do practice, repairmen
coming and going, doors slamming, kids running down the hallway, kids throwing things, kids
teasing each other, kids asking for snacks, kids crying because they fell, kids cuddling up on
your lap, or kids crying because they need you RIGHT THIS MINUTE! When my in-laws leave
after visiting for a week, they can’t get to the airport soon enough. There are deep bags under
their eyes and they carry the dazed, shell-shocked expression of veterans who just survived the
landing on Omaha Beach. Instead of saying good-bye, my father-in-law shakes his head and
whispers, “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

→I work out of the house as many authors do, but that’s where the resemblance ends. My office
isn’t some upstairs, out-of-the-way sanctuary; instead, the door opens directly onto the living
room. While I’ve read that some authors must have a quiet house in order to concentrate, I’m
fortunate that I’ve never needed silence to work. It’s a good thing, I suppose, or I never would
have ever written at all. Our house, you have to understand, is a whirlwind of activity literally
from the moment my wife and I get out of bed until the moment we collapse back into it at the
end of the day. Spending the day at our home is enough to exhaust just about anyone. First off,
our kids have energy. Lots and lots of energy. Ridiculous amounts of energy. Multiplied by five,
it’s enough energy to power the city of Cleveland. And the kids somehow magically feed off
each other’s energy, each consuming and mirroring the other’s. Then our three dogs feed off it,
and then the house itself seems to feed on it.

→“You have five kids?” the woman finally asked.
“Yes.”
She laid a sympathetic hand on my wife’s shoulder.
“Are you insane?”
Our sons are twelve, ten, and four; our twin daughters are coming up on three, and while there’s
a lot that I don’t know about the world, I do know that kids have a funny way of helping you
keep things in perspective. The older ones know that I write novels for a living, though I
sometimes doubt that either of them understands what it means to create a work of fiction. For
instance, when my ten-year-old was asked during a class presentation what his father did for a
living, he puffed his chest out and proudly declared, “My daddy plays on the computer all day!”
My oldest son, on the other hand, often tells me-with utter solemnity-that, “Writing is easy. It’s
just the typing that’s hard.”

→In reality, our lives aren’t much different from that of your average middle-class family. We
don’t have a staff of servants or travel extensively, and while we do have a pool in the backyard
surrounded by pool chairs, I can’t remember a time that the chairs have ever been used, simply
because neither my wife nor I have much time during the day to sit around doing nothing. For
me, the reason is my work. For my wife, the reason is family. Or more specifically, kids.
We have five children, you see. Not a big number if we were pioneers, but these days it’s
enough to raise a few eyebrows. Last year, when my wife and I were on a trip, we happened to
strike up a conversation with another young couple. One topic led to another, and finally the
subject of kids came up. That couple had two kids and mentioned their names; my wife rattled
off the names of ours.
For a moment, the conversation ground to a halt while the other woman tried to figure out
whether she’d heard us correctly.

→Prologue
This book came about because of a brochure I received in the mail in the spring of 2002.
It was a typical day in the Sparks household. I’d spent a good part of the morning and early
afternoon working on my novel Nights in Rodanthe, but it hadn’t gone well and I was struggling
to put the day behind me. I hadn’t written as much as I’d intended nor did I have any idea what I
would write the following day, so I wasn’t in the best of moods when I finally turned off the
computer and called it quits for the afternoon.
It isn’t easy living with an author. I know this because my wife has informed me of this fact,
and she did so again that day. To be honest, it’s not the most pleasant thing to hear, and while it
would be easy to get defensive, I’ve come to understand that arguing with her about it has never
solved anything. So instead of denying it, I’ve learned to take her hands, look her in the eyes,
and respond with those three magic words that every woman wants to hear:
“You’re right, sweetheart.”
Some people believe that because I’ve been relatively successful as an author, writing must
come effortlessly to me. Many people imagine that I “jot down ideas as they come to me” for a
few hours each day, then spend the rest of my time relaxing by the pool with my wife while we
discuss our next exotic vacation.

→THREE WEEKS WITH MY BROTHER
bу
Nicholas and Micah Sparks

For our family, with love

Acknowledgments
There are always so many people to thank when it comes to writing a book, and as always, the
names are much the same.
First, we have to thank our wives, Cathy and Christine, without whom this book never would
have been possible.
And our children-Miles, Ryan, Landon, Lexie, and Savannah (Nicholas’s) and Alli and Peyton
(Micah’s). Life without them is impossible to imagine.
Also no less gratitude goes to Theresa Park of Sanford Greenburger and Jamie Raab of Warner
Books, our agent and editor respectively. It’s been a dream working with them.
Larry Kirshbaum and Maureen Egen, the CEO and president of Warner Books, were kind
enough to believe in the project, and deserve our thanks as well.
Jennifer Romanello, Edna Farley, Emi Battaglia, Julie Barer, Shannon O’Keefe, Peter
McGuigan, Scott Schwimer, Howie Sanders, Richard Green, Flag, Denise DiNovi, Lynn Harris,
Mark Johnson, Courtenay Valenti, and all the rest deserve our thanks as well for various roles
they played in the project.
And finally, thanks to the staff and crew of TCS, as well as our fellow traveling companions,
including the wonderful Bob and Kate Devlin. It was wonderful traveling with all of you.

A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in the time of need.
Proverbs 17:17