#99 Me and My Enemy- Karen Heuler
For O.Henry Friday I read Karen Heuler’s prize story Me and
My Enemy. Heuler herself says the story can be read on two levels “…on the
literal level the story illustrates the triumph of good over evil, while on the
symbolic level it cunningly confirms the victory of evil over good.” Well, now
that she’s covered all her basis, lets judge for ourselves.
The narrator is a woman who has an easy welcoming demeanor
and a look that makes people want to confess to. She is constantly listening to
strangers most intimate problems, mostly she doesn’t mind:
“[people are] treated unkindly and that’s where the cycle
must be broken: by those who can be kind. That’s all I intended—to be kind.”
When her Boss becomes overwhelming with his attachment to
her it gets serious:
“Within two weeks of
our first conversation he had taken over my life.”
Then in a typical aggressive stalker cycle of jealousy and
rational and abuse, she realized she has a problem:
“Where had I gone wrong? I believed, I truly believed, that
I had a gift for listening—and yet it had gone wrong, terribly wrong.”
In the end a bad, delusional, confused man dies, but I don’t
believe, like Heuler says, that good triumphs over evil. One evil dies, but her
innocence dies with it, and all those other evils still follow her around.
“Well damn their sins.
And Damn their sorrows.
Damn them all.”
Notable Passage: “It’s amazing how misfortune sometimes
chooses one special person, so the burdens pile on top of burdens, until a last
small scrap brings it all crashing to a halt.”
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