#236 Under No Moon- Amy Hempel
The narrator and her parents are on a cruise to the mouth of
the Amazon to see Halley’s comet. The mother believes upon seeing this sight,
she will die.
“This was not superstition; it was sixth sense, or second
sight. Clairvoyance. It was something she said she knew the way she said she
knew the moment her children were conceived. It was how she said she knew which
song would be played on the radio next, how she knew to circle one more time
around the block before a parking space would open.”
She never got to see the comet due to sickness, but then, or
because of that she didn’t die either. The viewing for the other passengers
were said to be the worst visibility of the comet in 2,000 years. However, even
after trekking into the jungle with tri-pods, and heavy gear, nobody left
disappointed.
It’s funny. Sometimes you read something and can imagine it
in another voice. Hempel always reads to me as genuine, and straight forward.
Even when she’s writing something funny or ironic, it doesn’t have a biting
edge. That’s hers style and it’s wonderful. However, reading this story about
45 taxis (out of the whole country’s 47) taking old people into the interior of
a tropical island to barely see a comet--one whole taxi used to carry a
portable toilet—I imagine the buffoonery that would spew out of the pen of
someone like T.C Boyle or better yet, Hunter S. Thompson.
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