Fall Contest Winners

Katherine Vaz, whose essay “Gone to Feed the Roses” won First Place in Narrative’s Fall 2013 Story Contest, is the author of the novel Saudade, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Mariana, one of the Top 30 International Books of 1998 chosen by the Library of Congress. Fado & Other Stories received the 1997 Drue Heinz Prize, and Our Lady of the Artichokes won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Prize. Her children’s stories have been included in several anthologies. Vaz lives in New York City.


FIRST PLACE WINNER


Gone to Feed the Roses

An Essay

by Katherine Vaz

The home I share with Christopher Cerf, on Gerard Drive in Springs, was not spared Hurricane Sandy. We were residing in our main residence in New York City when the water rose over the spindly mile-and-a-half-long cape bounded by Gardiners Bay and Accabonac Harbor. Police cars blocked the entrance to Gerard, we read in the Times. It was not safe to enter.

Aerial views made the spit of land look like the Loch Ness Monster surfacing—humps of spine, the creature mostly submerged. A friend reported that our yard and patio were ravaged, but our house was unharmed. After a spell came the news that my eighty-seven-year-old father had collapsed in Northern California. A day later, for the first time I entered my childhood home without him greeting me with a blessing and kiss. Content with his history books, his painting and gardening, he was a homebody; I sensed the vacancy as a prelude to loss. At Eden Hospital, he cried out my name when he saw me, the daughter from far away.

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