#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

Sharon has a hard time with the changes around her. The neighborhood has changed and her husband, a friendly neighborly man, has fallen in with the bad elements of the changing neighborhood. She thinks he is using drugs again, but she is afraid to ask.

“She should have examined whether his eyes were more than tired, and asked if someone else’s cigarette smoke was in his hair. She should have asked. Or she should have known and done something…Instead, she gardened.”

Her fig tree is the symbol to her of everything that’s wrong. It grows lopsided and most of the fruit falls into the next yard over. Instead of going over there and gathering them up, or doing something else proactive, she laments the injustice. New people now occupy that house, and they never stay that long, she has no desire to learn their names. She is more upset at the dying figs.

 “What a waste…She had meant the figs, the children, and the dysfunctional families.”

When her husband dies of an overdose, her agoraphobia reaches new levels. Without help it is unlikely she will be able to live a normal life. She desperately needs help.

“And she stayed on her knees and begged as the sun fell and the figs fell and the juice seeped from the rotting fruit like the very nature of injustice.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#668 Bird Whistle- Fatima Shaik

#668 Bird Whistle- Fatima Shaik

This could be a beautiful New Orleans Love story, or this story could be a love letter to New Orleans—like most of the stories in this collection, What Went Missing and What Got Found. A recent Widower, a local neighborhood doctor, deals with life without his wife. The neighborhood is changing and he tries his best to hold onto what he remembers of the good times.

Once a day at dawn, a woman comes by his fence and whistles to the birds. She was his wife’s lifelong friend and she is mute, perhaps by choice. They would spend morning coffee together. The whistling would get louder the more days that would pass without seeing each other. Now she still comes by, and he waves out the window.

In the refrigerator are a few meals left that his wife had prepared. He has been eating them slowly, but now with only one left, he is afraid to heat it up. Because of his reputation, and a chance earlier meeting outside, three local criminals come barging in one evening, one with a bullet wound. They demand medical attention and food. One of them heats up his wife’s last dish over the Doctor’s resistance. Before the meal is consumed, the warbling of the bird whistler comes ringing through the house, scaring off the hoodlums. He brings the meal out to her, and she in turn feeds it to the birds.

I don’t know exactly how she does it, but like Anthony Doerr stories read earlier, Shaik infuses a subtle but permeating spirit in her stories, making them float in your consciousness slowing everything down and blowing a warm New Orleans breeze over everything she writes. Stunning!

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

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

Walt and Eunice are old and living out their retired lives in their old house. They had a dog, but at this moment Walt didn’t know where it had gone to.

“He didn’t know where the dog was, though he knew where his first bourbon and water of the day was—right there on the TV tray in front of him—and it was 11:00 a.m. and plenty late enough for it.”

He went outside to the yard—a place he hadn’t been in years—to find the dog. He falls, and is unable to move. He calls out for his wife, but there is no answer. His hearing isn’t all that good and she’s been drinking as well. She’s probably just sitting in front of the TV.

“…where time was meaningless, a series of half-hour slices carved out of the program guide, day melding into night, breakfast into dinner, the bright electrons dancing eternally across the screen.”

By nighttime, she finally goes looking for him, and by the time, she sees him, she has already tripped over his fallen body and she joins him on the grass—her hip now broken. Depending on how you look at this story, it’s either very funny, or extremely depressing. Old age like this is not exactly something to look forward to.

Notable Passage: “You measure your life in dogs, if you’re lucky you’ll get five or six of them.”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#475 House of Grass- Lucia Perillo

#475 House of Grass- Lucia Perillo

This is a pretty morbid story about an old woman who commits suicide to save herself the pain of her advanced years. Apparently a lot of the elderly around here commit suicide. They are in a retirement community near the Puget Sound called Infinite Vistas (I-V for an unfortunately honest Acronym). Because of this deadly phenomenon, its joked motto is:“A place where you can be on death’s door and still get it open yourself.”

Dr, Henry is the local Physician and has seen many of these suicides, and probably assisted in his own wife’s while she was suffering from cancer. Like I said, this is all extremely morbid, and not at all insightful. This doesn’t look deep into the psyche of a suffering soul, or have a political point about the failures of healthcare to deal with the inevitable pain that befalls us when we get older. It’s just a story about one woman who decides to kill herself and throws her own goodbye party, and the blasé manner in which her doctor deals with it.

Rating: 7-6-4-5 Total= 22

#399 Assisted Living- Edith Pearlman

#399 Assisted Living- Edith Pearlman

This has some of the same settings and characters from the last Pearlman story we saw, Puck. We are in the Forget-Me-Not antique shop with it’s proprietor, Rennie. This time we learn about some of her regular costumers, in particular an old couple, Muffy and Stu.

“Muffy and Stu Willis slid into the store at least twice a week. Like many long-married people they looked like siblings.”

They have spent their older years purchasing the nice things they see, they have amassed quite a collection. When Muffy falls and injures herself, they begin to auction off their belongings to pay for her treatment. Life is slowly coming to a close.

Pearlman’s style didn’t immediately grab me, although I am warming to it. At times her writing is just a little too delicate for my taste, as it is here. Of course, it is beautiful and hits the mark it aims for…which is a mark a little far off from where I generally like it.

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

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

Looks make the man, or the boy too, I guess. Avinash hated getting haircuts, sitting outside his house for his neighbor friends to watch, afraid the barber was going to cut his ear. So when he turned seven his mother allowed him to go to a proper barber, thinking that the act of independence would make his feel older and not mind so much.

When he began attending private school, long hair was forbidden, it was for slobs, slackers and movie stars (meant as a negative). His short hair became a kind of status symbol he didn’t want:

“In his clean white school uniform with his striped school tie, Avinash felt like a creature from another planet. He was a mother’s boy without his mother to protect him.”

The story is about coming of age, or Avinash not quite being ready to come of age. The haircuts, drinking milk instead of tea, being scared by sudden sexual desire. There is also a theme of class and generation gaps.

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