#338 Eleanor’s Music- Mary Gordon

#338 Eleanor’s Music- Mary Gordon

I guess you could call Eleanor old-fashioned. Perhaps stubbornly complacent is a better term. It’s not that she is happy or content with her life, as much as she doesn’t want anything to change.

She had a husband, but they divorced when he admitted his homosexuality. They are still friends now, and for the last 18 years, she has lived with her parents, a situation to all of them that seems normal.

“She knew that many people thought it odd, to say nothing of unhealthy, for her to be living with her parents at age fifty-one…She had long ago given up that last residue of her embarrassment, which at one time, like a pile of dried leaves, could be set adrift by the slightest wind, and would flutter inside her, cause her to put her hand splayed out flat against her chest.”

“She considered the shape of her life not peculiar, but original; she lived as she liked; real courage, she believed, was doing what you believe in, however it appeared.”

Like her parents who never leave the house without impeccable dress, Eleanor believes the details of her life should be kept from everyone, including her family. She lives with small enjoyments. These will rarely change, and anything ugly or new should be avoided or hidden.

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#153 Tonight is a Favor to Holly- Amy Hempel

#153 Tonight is a Favor to Holly- Amy Hempel

This story is about complacency, indifference, and apathy. As the narrator prepares for a blind date she does not want to go on, she wonders about her directionless life:

“It takes me fifty-five minutes to drive one way, and I wish the commute was longer. I like radio personalities and I like to change lanes. And losing yourself on the freeway is like living at the beach—you’re not aware of lapsed time, and suddenly you’re there, where it was you were going.”

“My job fits right in, I do nothing, it pays nothing, but—you guessed it—it’s better than nothing. A sense of humor helps.”

She ponders the slow, lack of ambition life of living on a west coat beach. The fickle, flaky, shallow musings of someone trapped by the luring effects of the beauty and vastness of the ocean view.

“The people who live here, what you here them say is I’m supposed to, I’ll try, I would have.

There is no friction here.

It’s kind of a buoyant place.

What you forget, living here, is that just because you have stopped sinking doesn’t mean you’re not still underwater.”

But she has tried moving away, tried other lives, tried switching lanes. Only to move back west. Like the many who die each falling off the cliffs of Highway One, she continues to move West until it’s too late.

“The truth is, the beach is like excess weight. If we lost it, what would the excuse be then?"

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30