#426 What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers- Edith Pearlman

#426 What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers- Edith Pearlman

The title of this one alone blows me away. Too often we hear the opinions of those giving offense or those doing damage explaining how that offense or damage isn’t that bad.

“For a half century Gabrielle had avoided good causes as if they might defile her. Efficiency and orderliness were what she cared about, and her own lively good looks.”

Now inspired to do good things, she is taken to work for The Society Against Female Mutilation. However, like many people who suddenly “wake up” and want to help the world, they still cling to their vanity and the viewpoints of their privileged experience. Just because you are not the AX, doesn’t mean you can understand what a tree goes through.

When Gabrielle’s normal speaker gets ill, she employs a stand in for a fundraising event. The stand in gives strong opinions that seem to be against their work. But truth is truth and hearing it may change the way you think, if you are open to it of course.

There is a nice thread through this piece about intimacy and acceptance. I’m not sure I agree with how the group dealt with the two divergent testimonies. With such a short story, I’m not sure there was enough space to give adequate discussing.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#221 Planning the Perfect Evening- Jabari Asim

#221 Planning the Perfect Evening- Jabari Asim

We learned from previous stories that Paul Whittier is a drunken abusive husband. We learn here that part of his anger stems from his money problems. He owes the wrong people, the wrong amount of money. That is not excuse his behavior at all, abusing people is abusing people and no amount of excuses will make up for the pain they cause. Here is one abusive husband’s sorry reasoning behind his disgusting behavior:

“She hardly moved when he came in, her relaxed, splendidly indifferent posture practically begging him to slap some sense into her, as if that was possible. He rolled up his sleeves and stepped towards her without so much as a ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Time was, a woman hopped up and made herself busy when her man came through the door. Time was, insolence didn’t go steaming out of a woman like sewer gas. Where was she getting this new, foul attitude?”

Pretty hard to look inside such anger and violence, but luckily there may be relief on the horizon. The heavy lifting men he owes money to are on there way to pay him a visit. In extreme irony, these violent men, killers and knee-cap crackers are very nice to their woman, and nice to his as well.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total=29

#207 The Wheat from the Tares- Jabari Asim

#207 The Wheat from the Tares- Jabari Asim

Rose is Pristine’s next door neighbor. She has had a rough winter, sick and friendless. Her husband is abusive, physically and verbally and doesn’t like her going outside the house for any reason. The whole neighborhood knows about the situation, but what does one do? Her meekness aside, her one defining trait is her singing voice.

“Roses voice was an extraordinary thing, an effortless blend of longing, power, and love.”

“When the feeling overtook Rose, she’s shuck her customary shyness, stand an grab the porch railings. Her voice would pour out over the garage roofs, garbage cans, and backyards of Sullivan Avenue. Pristine would later swear that the entire neighborhood grew quiet to give Rose center stage. Gone was the sound of trucks and buses belching exhaust…Into thin air went the leonine roars of the Dobermans standing guard behind Hudson’s Package Liquor. Everything that had made the world teeming with noise just moments before vanished.”

“She sang only when her husband wasn’t home. The silence that followed his arrival was not a kind that encouraged peaceful contemplation; it was troubling and electric, like calm before a storm.”

There are few secrets in communities that live so close, pretenses maybe, but there is nowhere to hide, even if you sit inside and close the blinds. People will see, and people will talk. Friends are good to have if you are just willing to come outside.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total=31

#47 How to Tell Stories to Children- Miranda July

#47 How to Tell Stories to Children- Miranda July

We meet Deb in her late 30’s, she harbors an open crush on her high school friend Tom, who himself is in a loveless, failed marriage. He and his wife Sarah are about to have a daughter Lyon. Despite the dis-function they stay together, and whenever Deb comes over to help with the baby, they pass her off and fight…“They were in a wilderness that was too wild for me.”

This assistance with the baby becomes a permanent situation, and like the divorced parents she has unofficial partial custody throughout Lyon’s childhood. Naturally (i say sarcastically), the crush she had on Tom is transferred to Lyon:

 “Now he was Lyon’s father, and she possessed the daring, the warmth, the wicked charm I once thought I would find in him.” Or: “I looked at him and his child, and for a fraction of a second I cold see the spell that bound me, like a silvery spider thread catching the light. Cast upon me long ago at an age when I longed to be ensnared, it now spanned generations.”

It’s a very odd arraignment that doesn’t work in any way.  They are “four people alone with all wrong feelings for each other.” The dis-function , and oddities continue with the family therapist who seems to have no moral code (and weird thoughts on men crying).

This is an utterly sad and depressing story about loneliness, and wasted lives. I’m not sure exactly what should be taken from this story except if you live a loveless life within loveless relationships…don’t have children.

Notable Passage: “Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed.”

Rating: 7-5-5-4 Total=21

#31 Runaway- Alice Munro

#31 Runaway (2004)- Alice Munro

“It was as if she had a murderous needle somewhere in her lungs, and by breathing carefully, she could avoid feeling it. But every once in a while she had to take a deep breath, and it was still there”

Of all the beautiful writing in this piece, this passage stuck with me.  I’ve never read a more poignant description about what its like to be in an emotionally abusing relationship, painfully breathtaking.

And with that, I am introduced to Alice Munro.  A legendary Canadian author, her name is at the top of nearly every list of best short fiction writers, and for good reason.  Runaway, the title story of this collection I cant wait to read more of, is a seamless literary tapestry, emotional but not pushy, grand but no flamboyant.  It’s a piece that stays with you.

Life is hard.  Changing that life, no matter how uncomfortable, unfulfilling, oppressive it may be, is possible the hardest thing we can do.  Carla is the victim of just such a life, but she like many, can’t see the world beyond. She’s poor and lives in a trailer which she philosophically thinks:

“Some people live in trailers and there’s nothing more to it.”

That’s her feeling on most of her life. This is just how it is.  When they were first married and starting a horse farm, she not unhappily saw herself as one of her husbands horses as “a captive, her submission both proper and exquisite.”

The pastoral nature of this piece softens the level of angst for the reader, as her own pastoral setting probably softened her own suffering sometimes.  Their lost goat, Flora, who was put in the stables to calm the hoses was very much representative of Carla, there to calm her angry husband.  But to her husband, Flora was a symbol of freedom he didn’t want Carla to see.  Carla even dreamed about Flora with an enticing Eden-like red apple in its mouth.

There is a lot to this story, themes about anger, about family, about freedom.  Great, great short story!

Notable Passage: *see above

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total =38