#852 Dedicated- David Leavitt

#852 Dedicated- David Leavitt

Celia has two best friends, Nathan and Andrew. They are really her only two friends. The three of them have known each other since college. They were both, independently friends with her at first, but later things got a bit more complicated.

“Publicly, they are ex-lovers and enemies: privately (but everyone guesses) current lovers and (occasional) friends.”

She is the woman in the middle, always keeping them together or apart. As they bicker and deal with the problems of their own relationship, she wonders why the only men she has ever cared for, will never care for her that way.

“When all the men you love can only love each other…you can’t help but begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with being a woman.”

Friendship is wonderful, anyway you can get it.

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

#823 Out Here- David Leavitt

#823 Out Here- David Leavitt

Three sisters have gathered at the house of their parent’s after the death of their father. Their mother has also died recently so they are there now without parents. Gretchen is the oldest and she is there with her husband. He sees now first hand how resentful and judgmental the siblings are with each other. He doesn’t understand this negative family dynamic.

“In this strange house, Leonard is awed by the woman who surround him—woman who paint their fingernails, wear tiger-striped under-wear, were once track stars. Woman who run in circles pretending that they are horses…Because his own family is so close knit, he is puzzled buy Gretchen’s sisters, and wonders how they could have splintered so easily.”

He tries to help bridge family gaps, but it doesn’t work. The mood of this story makes me feel like I’m eavesdropping on something I shouldn’t. There is an uncomfortable uneasiness in this family that makes me want to shut the door and pretend it’s not happening. Maybe that says more about me than the story.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#795 Radiation- David Leavitt

#795 Radiation- David Leavitt

This story opens up referencing a TV soap opera. After that the whole thing read like that to me, a soap opera. I’m not entirely sure that was supposed to be the effect, but for me it was. Two children accompany their mother to a cancer radiation treatment. It’s their first time there and they watch and talk and get distracted and talk some more. I can’t tell exactly how old the children are, which is the second problem I have with this story. From one sentence to the next, they seem or act like drastically different ages. That caused a major disconnect for me.

Rating: 6-7-5-6 Total= 24

#767 Family Dancing- David Leavitt

#767 Family Dancing- David Leavitt

Half of this story is a ho-hum tale about a couple of failed marriages. Suzanne is married to a new man, Bruce. She has a new house, new kids, lost thirty pounds and these status symbols are the focus of her life. The other part of this story is about the family secrets she fails to see while too involved in her own dramas. Her son is graduating prep school and hasn’t told her yet that he is gay. It’s not clear whether she is the only one that doesn’t know yet.

Notable Passage: “On those rare occasions—like today—the power of alcohol impresses her tremendously, and she wants to recommend it, like a wonder drug.”

Rating: 7-5-6-5 Total= 23

#738 Danny In Transit- David Leavitt

#738 Danny In Transit- David Leavitt

This is a study in psychology. A man demanding to have a “proper” marriage with defined male/female roles comes to the realization after having a child that he is homosexual. The wife, already a little in need of mental therapy, loses it. She has a nervous breakdown and literally tears her own hair out. Danny, the only child, normally very self-reliant turns into a high maintenance situation with a hair-trigger reaction to tantrum.

The author does a great job flushing out each persons psychological tendencies in such a traumatic family break-up. It is also a test for the reader in which character you feel more sympathy for. Clearly none of this is the child’s fault so he had automatic sympathy. But what about the mother who is another clear victim, trying her best to be a mother in the face of her breakdown and being honest about not being able to handle life? Or perhaps the father, who is forced by a patriarchal expectation and an uber-machismo career to be something he is not, and then when he finds a road to freedom it causes so much harm to others. Stay in a cage and try to hold together a lie, or be honest and hope to weather the chaos?

Children are the only ones here that have carte blanche excuse for being selfish, but they are also the most resilient. Good story.

Notable Passage: “Just never trust cleanliness. All the bad stuff—the really bad stuff—happens in clean houses, where everything’s tidy and nobody says anything more than good morning.”

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

#710 Aliens- David Leavitt

#710 Aliens- David Leavitt

Imagine an argument between husband and wife. He argues that seat belts are more dangerous than they are safe. She asserts the opposite. They drive off in anger, she in a safety belt and him driving free to jostle about. Predictably their argument gets an immediate test as they get into an awful accident. She wins. Her husband is crippled and is now living in an assisted nursing home trying to recover some of his mental and physical faculties.

Back home, she has to deal with this new reality. Change can be jarring, especially for a child already going through adolescence. Their daughter Nina is now claiming to her family and to her school that she is an alien brought to earth to study humans. She has rejected her reality and crated a new origin story. A very creative way to disown yourself of your family. The oldest son, is also creating his own independence by raising his own college tuition. 

This is a family full of selfishness, ironically it’s a trait that connects all humans.

Notable Passage: “ It’s one thing to look ugly, another to act it.” 

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

#682 The Lost Cottage- David Leavitt

#682 The Lost Cottage- David Leavitt

Sometimes traditions are meant to die. The Dempson family is in a bit of upheaval. All three children are now grown and the parents have decided that it is time to separate. For twenty-five years during the end of June, the Dempson’s have vacationed in the same Cape Cod cottage. Six months after the divorce, the mother insists that they keep the tradition alive, for the sake of tradition.

“Tradition can become repatition…when you end up holding on to something because you’re afraid to let it go.”

As you can imagine, this leads to a stressful weekend, filled with pent up emotions that are bound to explode in unpleasant ways. I didn’t really enjoy reading this—not because it was badly written—but because who wants to witness a family going through such angst and bitterness?

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

#654 Counting Months- David Leavitt

#654 Counting Months- David Leavitt

Mrs. Harrington is in a doctor’s office waiting room, lost in her thoughts until she sees today is December 17^th. Why should she remember that date? 

“Then, through some untraceable process, that date—December 17^th—infected her with all the horror of memory and death. For today was the day she was supposed to be dead by.”

She was suffering from cancer. It was terminal, but luckily she had survived quite well past the initial date she expected to live. She goes home after her appointment to her children. She worries about them, about what they will do when she dies. But she is proud of them and happy for the time she has left with her family.

Notable Passage: “You had to lie to live through death, or else you die through what’s left of your life.”

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

626.) Territory- David Leavitt

626.) Territory- David Leavitt

Neil’s mother is a strong independent woman. His father is never around, so his mother seems like a single mom. It’s the eighties and she he is also a kind of lefty activist, standing out front with placards and petitions railing against nukes:

“In the age of Reagan, she has declared, keeping up the causes of peace and justice is a futile, tiresome, and unrewarding effort; it is therefore an effort fit only for mothers to keep up.”

Neil is homosexual and has known since he was about twelve. Now past college age he is bringing a lover home for the first time. Mom is trying hard to be welcoming and act normal, but she is finding it difficult. It’s one thing to say you support something, believe you support something and see it up close. Those reactions and nervousness are hard to cover up.

“I wanted you to be happy. And I’m very tolerant, very understanding, but I can only take so much.”

It’s a touching mother/son story, very well done.

Rating: 8-8-8-8=32