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I'm Meg Wolitzer and on this Selected shorts How far will you go to support your loved ones? Would you attend a thousand track meets, lie to them about how good they were in their school, play cats? Or consider haunting them at the supermarket? This week, stories about parental figures doing the right thing for from some unusual perspectives. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. There's a reason why families find their way into fiction so often. They offer up everything a writer needs plot, character, drama, surprise. We can explore how love does not preclude mystification or exasperation, and how we can live with people day after day and still have no real idea what they are thinking or feeling. We can look at the generational aspect of family. Everyone is someone's child, parent or grandparent or was on this program Two stories that explore family from unusual perspectives. In the first, the Mother Daughter bond becomes a whole history of women. In the second, we skip a generation to explore the bond between a grandparent and grandchild. In real life, it's often true that family can overstay its welcome. But that's less true in fiction, where we seem to only want to hear more about characters who are related to one another, regardless of their personalities. Some of the best fiction ever written is about family. Maybe it's because the reader knows there's going to be conflict, or maybe it's because there's an opportunity to get perspectives from different generations. Or maybe it's simply a relief that it's an imaginary family and not yours. And I should add that there's also a relief for a fiction writer whose subject is family. As long as that writer doesn't get dangerously close to the hot stove of nonfiction, he or she will still get invited to Thanksgiving. The protean author Zadie Smith is beyond category, a term first used to describe jazz legend Duke Ellington. She's explored race and culture and upbringing in such ambitious works as White Teeth and Swing Time. Her style ranges from naturalism to magical realism, but she's also interested in generations. The story we're featuring here participates in both, as the narrator confronts her formidable mother under unusual conditions. Reader Kaneza Schall is a selected shorts regular and performance artist whose other works include Go Forth and Jack and here she is with Grand Union.
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Grand Union Having screamed at my 6 year old to the point that she threw herself down on her bed and wept, I felt the need to get out of the house and see my mother. She was dead and in heaven. But for convenience sake, we met outside the chicken spot at the top of Landbrick Grove. It was in the moment, the blackest place I could think of. We sat together on the steps of the Golden Dragon. Mandam and Galdom passed us by, heading inside for their stir fry and their Sichuan mother and I regarded each other. For being dead she looked pretty fantastic. Death could not wither her. It was merely one of a long line of things that could not wither her. She wore her dreads wrapped just right, high and impressive, never ashy. Her darkness shone. She looked the spit of Queen Nanny on the five hundred dollar bill. That is not a coincidence, she said when I mentioned the resemblance. In death I have become Nanny of the Maroons. That is, I have always been she, but now it is revealed. Figures, I said, and she admonished me for using an Americanism and asked if I was still living in those devilish parts. I had to confess I was, but had come all this way across an ocean just to converse with her spirit. Well, you're Asante now, she said, and I was glad to hear it, having always suspected as much. Still, I kissed my teeth to make clear that like all warrior daughters, I wanted more from my warrior mother, much more, and would never get enough. My mother kissed her teeth in turn, signifying that she understood. Together we surveyed the scene. All around us was carnival detritus, red Stripe cans and abandoned yellow crusts of lamb patty and broken whistles and glittering press on face jewelry and filthy feathers and friendly cards from the police describing proper stop and search procedure, informing us of the limits of their powers. Oh, Carnival. While we dance in the August sun. It's wonderful, it's sticky with joy. It's the sweet flypaper of life. But then night arrives. The police hurry us home. We survey the devastated streets. We think surely we're not going to put ourselves through all this shit again next year. Nanny has gone to Carnival every year since 1972. Or maybe only I think that the borders between me and everybody else have never been clear to me. Maybe all cycles must be respected. The women in our family, announced my mother, do not recognize the women in our family. Well, that seemed cheap and tautological to me, so I went inside to get some chicken. Though it's a Chinese place, it empathizes with its clientele, and that day they were offering inauthentic jerk rice and pee and two plastic forks. I watched the daughter of the establishment sigh as the mother of the establishment critiqued her Styrofoam box, closing technique in rapid Cantonese, and I once knew a girl called Hermione whose mother would never sit down to eat. She went straight from cooking to cleaning, and if anyone tried to get her to the table, she said, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm fine with my little plate here. And then she'd clean up after everybody and picket the plate like a bird, one bite every half hour or so till it was stone cold and a skin had grown over it, at which point she'd scrape whatever was left into the bin and wash up the little plate too. It was her way of showing love, and it was so exotic to me I was in awe of it. I went to her funeral. 700 people stood up as one to chant. She always thought of others, never of herself, but you can only really know the blood you're swimming in. When I got back outside, my mother had assumed the position of an old obeha woman, legs wide apart, skirt falling in between, toes splayed like a duck. Still, she looked fantastic. Many had been the times she'd eaten the food straight off my plate before I'd even raised my plastic fork. But I could see why the Arawaks once flocked to her. If you're on the edge of extinction, nothing less than Nanny will do. Yet you can't sing a note, I said to my mother. I was finally getting to the point. And the weird thing is, my daughter sings with soul, truly with soul, and I suppose I'm worried about what it all means here. My mother and all of the other obeha women in the neighborhood paused to laugh long and loud at the way worries will sprout on wet, fertile ground, yet rarely care to flower in the kind of drought conditions they themselves had known. Now if you ask Billie Holiday, my mother said with her eyes closed, she would tell you no one sings the word hunger like I do or the word love. That's not a defense of anything, clarified my mother. That's just a true fact. Although I'm not a billy fan myself, Daughter, as you know, Radigan is my musical love. Then, now and forever. I stood up. I told her I loved her. I wandered over to the Grand Union Canal, which may well be that river of milk which all the daughters of the world are looking for whenever they go to the hardware store for milk, even though they know full well there's no milk at the hardware store. Hardware, Americanisms everywhere, but also love and recognition of history and the inconceivably broad shadow cast by the Blue Mountains, on top of which you'll find my maroon grandfather never dying, undead, totally undead, living eternally among his chickens and goats, his parcels of contested land, his dozens and dozens and dozens of out the house children, among whom a few bold girls now make their way down the shady side of the mountain, following the tread of my mada and her mada and her Madha, moving with necessary speed, not always holding hands.
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That was Keneza Schaal performing Zadie Smith's Grand Union. I'm Meg Wolitzer. I love Smith's deft insistence that we should find nothing unusual in this cross dimensional relationship. And the truth is that in a way we don't. If you've ever had a mother, you probably understand maternal power. When Smith writes about that river of milk which all the daughters of the world are looking for, I think she's speaking about the impression that can happen early in life, the idea of the mother as sustenance, which later on becomes less of an impression and more of a dream. And so the dreamlike quality of the story makes sense because by the time you're grown, you and your mother are probably both different people and behave differently with each other both during life and even after life ends for one of you. And somewhere, though not in a hardware store, that river exists. And we keep searching for it. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide. We'll be right back with a tender story by Richard Bausch. Welcome back to Selected Shorts. I'm Meg Wallitzer. On today's show, stories about what constitutes family. I suspect whoever came up with the term extended family created it in order to reflect the increasingly complicated nature of family relationships. And this is certainly true of the story that follows what Feels like the World by Richard Bausch, whose deceptively plain writing reveals a subtle grasp of unspoken emotions and deflected actions. Bausch's many works include Rare and Endangered Species and a collection of short pieces entitled the Stories of Richard Bausch. It's classic. A family is cobbled together when the death of a parent changes the life of her father and daughter. We see them navigating new ideas of love, identity and belief in themselves and one another. To read it, we got one of our longtime leading men, James Naughton, and we don't have him exclusively. He's a two time Tony Award winner. Here he is with what Feels like the World by Richard Bausch.
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What feels like the world. Very early in the morning, too early, he hears her trying to jump rope out on the sidewalk below his bedroom window. He wakes to the sound of her shoes on the concrete, her breathless counting as she jumps, never more than three times in succession, and fails again to find the right rhythm, the proper spring in her legs to achieve the thing to be a girl jumping rope. He gets up and moves to the window and parting the curtain only slightly, peers out at her. For some reason he feels he must be stealthy, must not let her see him gazing at her from this window. He thinks of the heartless way children tease the imperfect among them. And then he closes the curtain. She is his only granddaughter, the unfortunate inheritor of his big boned genes, his tendency toward bulk, and she is on a self induced program of exercise and dieting to lose weight. This is in preparation for the last meeting of the pta, during which children from the fifth and sixth grades will put on a gymnastics demonstration. There will be a vaulting horse and a mini trampoline and everyone is to participate. She wants to be able to do at least as well as the other children in her class. And so she has been trying exercises to improve her coordination and lose the weight that keeps her rooted to the ground. For the past two weeks she's been eating only one meal a day, usually lunch, since that's the meal she eats at school and swallowing cans of juice at other meal times. He's afraid of anorexia, but trusts her calm determination to get ready for the event. There seems no desperation, none of the classic symptoms of the disease. Indeed, this project she set for herself seems quite sane to lose 10 pounds and to be able to get over the vaulting horse. In fact, she hopes that she'll be able to do a handstand on it and curling her head and shoulders, flip over to stand upright on the other side. This, she has told him, is the outside hope. And in two weeks of very grown up discipline and single minded effort, that hope has mostly disappeared. She's still the only child in the fifth grade who has not even been able to propel herself over the horse. And this is the day of the event. She will have one last chance to practice at school today, and so she's up this early, out on the lawn, straining, pushing herself. He dresses quickly and heads downstairs. The ritual in the mornings is simplified by the fact that neither of them is eating breakfast. He makes the orange juice, puts vitamins on a saucer for them both. When he glances out the living room window, he sees that she is now doing somersaults in the dewy grass. She does three of them while he watches, and he isn't stealthy this time but stands in the window with what he hopes is an approving, unworried look on his face. After each somersault, she pulls her sweatshirt down, takes a deep breath, and begins again, the arms coming down slowly, the head ducking slowly under. It's as if she falls on her back, sits up, and then stands up. Her cheeks are ruddy with effort. The moistness of the grass is on the sweatshirt and in the ends of her hair. It will rain this morning. There's thunder beyond the trees at the end of the street. He taps on the window, gestures, smiling for her to come in. She waves at him, indicates that she wants him to watch her. So he watches her. He applauds when she's finished, three hard, slow tumbles. She claps her hands together as if to remove dust from them and comes trotting to the door. As she moves by him, he tells her she's asking for a bad cold, letting herself get wet so early in the morning. It's his place to nag. Her glance at him acknowledges this. I can't get the rest of me to follow my head, she says about the somersaults. They go into the kitchen and she sits down, pops a vitamin into her mouth, and takes a swallow of the orange juice. I guess I'm not going to make it over that vaulting horse after all, she says suddenly. Sure you will. I don't care. She seems to pout. This is the first sign of true discouragement she's shown. He's been waiting for it. Brenda, honey, sometimes people aren't good at these things. I mean, I was never any good at it. I bet you were, she says. I bet you're just saying that to make me feel better. No, he says. Really. He's been keeping to the diet with her, though there have been times during the day when he's cheated. He no longer has a job and the days are long. He's hungry all the time. He pretends to her that he's still going on to work in the mornings after he walks her to school, because he wants to keep her sense of the daily balance of things, of a predictable and orderly routine, intact. He believes this is the best way to deal with grief, simply to go on with things, to keep them as much as possible as they have always been. Being out of work doesn't worry him, really. He has enough money in savings to last a while. At 61, he's almost eligible for Social Security, and he gets monthly checks from the girl's father, who lives with another woman and other children in Oregon. The father has been very good about keeping up the payments, though he never visits or calls. Probably he thinks the money buys him the privilege of remaining aloof now that Brenda's mother is gone. Brenda's mother used to say he was the type of man who learned early that there was nothing of substance anywhere in his soul and spent the rest of his life trying to hide this fact from himself. No one was more uptight, she would say, no one more honorable, and God help you if you ever had to live with him. Brenda's father was the subject of bitter sarcasm and scorn, and yet, perhaps not so surprisingly, Brenda's mother would call him in those months just after the divorce, when perhaps Brenda was still only a toddler and she would try to get the baby to say things to him over the phone, and she would sit there with Brenda on her lap and cry after she'd hung up. I had a doughnut yesterday at school, brenda says. Now that's lunch. You're supposed to eat lunch. I had spaghetti, too, and three pieces of garlic bread and pie and a big salad. What's one donut? Well, and I didn't eat anything the rest of the day. I know, her grandfather says. See? They sit quiet for a while. Sometimes they're shy with each other, more so lately. They're used to the absence of her mother by now it's been almost a year, but they still find themselves missing a beat now and then, like a heart with a valve almost closed. She swallows the last of her juice and then gets up and moves to the living room to stand gazing out at the yard. Big drops have begun to fall. It's a storm with rising wind and now very loud thunder, Lightning. Branches across the sky and the trees in the yard disappear in sheets of rain. He has come to her side and he pretends an interest in the details of the weather, remarking on the heaviness of the rain, the strength of the wind. Some storm, he says finally. I'm glad we're not out in it. He wishes he could tell what she's thinking, where the pain is. He wishes he could be certain of the harmlessness of his every word. Honey, he ventures, we could play hooky today if you want to. Do you think I can do it? She says. I know you can. She stares at him a moment, then looks away, out at the storm. It's terrible out there, isn't it? He says. Look at that Lightning. You don't think I can do it? She says. No, I know you can. Really. Well, I probably can't. Even if you can't, lots of people. Lots of people never do anything like that. I'm the only one who can't. That I know. Well, there's lots of people. The whole thing is silly, Brenda. A year from now it won't mean anything at all. You'll see. She says nothing. Is there some pressure at school to do it? No. Her tone is simple, matter of fact, and she looks directly at him. You're sure? She's sure. And of course he realizes there is pressure. There's the pressure of being one among other children and being the only one among them who can't do a thing. Honey, he says lamely, it's not that important. When she looks at him this time, he sees something scarily unchildlike in her expression, some perplexity that she seems to pull down into herself. It is too important, she says. He drives her to school. The rain is still being blown along the street and above the low roofs of the houses. By the time they arrive, no more than five minutes from the house, it's begun to let up. If it's completely stopped after school, she says, can we walk home? Of course, he says. Why wouldn't we? She gives him a quick wet kiss on the cheek. Bye, Pops. He knows she doesn't like it when he waits for her to get inside, and still he hesitates. There's always the apprehension that he'll look away or drive off just as she thinks of something she needs from him or that she'll wave to him and he won't see her. So he sits here with the car engine idling, and she walks quickly up the sidewalk and into the building. In a few seconds, before the door swings shut, she turns and gives him a wave, and he waves back. The door is closed now. Slowly he lets the car glide forward, still watching the door. Then he's down the driveway and he heads back to the house. It's hard to decide what to do with his time. Mostly he stays in the house, watches television, reads the newspapers. There are household tasks, but he can't do anything she might notice, since he's supposed to be at work during these hours. Sometimes, just to please himself, he drives over to the bank and visits his old co workers, though there doesn't seem to be much to talk about anymore, and he senses that he makes them all uneasy. Today he lies down on the sofa in the living room and rests a while at the windows. The sun begins to show and he thinks of driving into town, maybe stopping somewhere to eat a light breakfast. He accuses himself with the thought and then gets up and turns on the television. There isn't anything of interest to watch, but he watches anyway. The sun is bright now out on the lawn, and the wind is the same, gusting and shaking the window frames. On television he sees feasts of incredible sumptuousness, almost nauseating in the impossible brightness and succulence of the food advertisements from cheese companies, dairy associations, the makers of cookies and pizza, the sellers of seafood and steaks. He's angry with himself for wanting to cheat on the diet. He thinks of Brenda at school, thinks of crowds of children, and it comes to him more painfully than ever that he can't protect her, not any more than he could ever protect her mother. He goes outside and walks up the drying sidewalk to the end of the block. The sun has already dried most of the morning's rain, and the wind is warm. In the sky are great stormy matterhorns of cumulus and wide patches of the deepest blue. It's a beautiful day and he decides to walk over to the school. Nothing in him voices this decision. He just simply begins to walk. He knows, without having to think about it, that he can't allow her to see him, yet he feels compelled to take the risk that she might. He feels a helpless wish to watch over her, and beyond this he entertains the vague notion that by seeing her in her world he might be better able to be what she needs in his. So he walks the four blocks to the school and stands just beyond the playground in a group of shading maples that whisper and sigh in the wind. The playground is empty. A bell rings somewhere in the building, but no one comes out. It's not even 11 o' clock in the morning. He's too late for morning recess and too early for the afternoon one. He feels as though she watches him make his way back down the street. His neighbor, Mrs. Eberhard, comes over for lunch. It's a thing they planned and he's forgotten about it. She knocks on the door and when he opens it she smiles and said, I knew you'd forget. She's on a diet too, and is carrying what they'll eat, two apples, some celery, and carrots. It's all in a clear plastic bag, and she holds it toward him in the palms of her hands as though it were piping hot from an oven. Jane Eberhard is relatively new in the neighborhood. When Brenda's mother died. Jane offered to cook meals and regulate things, and for a while she was like another member of the family. She's moved into their lives now, and sometimes they all forget the circumstances under which the friendship began. She's a solid, large hipped woman of 58, with clear young blue eyes and gray hair. The thing she's good at is. Is sympathy. There's something oddly unspecific about it, as if it were a beam she simply radiates. You look so worried, she says Now. I think you should be proud of her. They're sitting in the living room with the plastic bag on the coffee table before them. She's eating a stick of celery. I've never seen a child that age put such demands on herself, she says. I don't know what it's going to do to her if she doesn't make it over the damn thing, he says. It'll disappoint her, but she'll get over it. I don't guess you can make it tonight, can't, she says. Really? I promised my mother I'd take her to the ocean this weekend. I have to go pick her up tonight. I walked over to the school a little while ago. Are you sure you're not putting more into this than she is? She was up at dawn this morning, Jane. Didn't you see her? Mrs. Eberhardt nods. I saw her. Well, he says. She pats his wrist. I'm sure it won't matter a month from now. No, he says. That's not true. I mean, I wish I could believe you, but I've never seen a kid work so hard. Maybe she'll make it. Yes, he says. Maybe. Mrs. Eberhard sits considering for a minute, tapping the stick of celery against her lower lips. You think it's tied to the accident in some way, don't you? I don't know, he says, standing, moving across the room. I can't get through. Somehow it's been all this time and I still don't know. She keeps it all to herself, all of it. All I can do is try to be there when she wants me to be there. I don't know. I don't even know what to say to her. You're doing all you can do. Then her mother and I, he begins, we never got along that well. You can't worry about that now. Mrs. Eberhardt's advice is always the kind of practical, good advice that's impossible to follow. He comes back to the sofa and tries to eat one of the apples. But his appetite is gone. This seems ironic to him. I'm not hungry now, he says. Sometimes worry is the best thing for a diet. I've always worried. It never did me any good, but I worried. I'll tell you, Mrs. Eberhardt says it's a terrific misfortune to have to be raised by a human being. He doesn't feel like listening to this sort of thing, so he asks her about her husband, who's with the government in some capacity that requires him to be both secretive and mobile. He's always off to one country or another, and this week he's in India. It's strange to think of someone traveling as much as he does without getting hurt or killed. Mrs. Eberhardt says she's so used to his being gone all the time that next year when he retires, it'll take a while to get used to having him under. In fact, he's not a very likable man. There's something murky and unpleasant about him. The one time Mrs. Eberhard brought him to visit, he sat in the living room and seemed to regard everyone with detached curiosity, as if they were all specimens on a dish under a lens. Brenda's grandfather had invited some old friends over from the bank. Everyone was being careful not to let on that he wasn't still going there every day. It was an awkward two hours and Mrs. Eberhard's husband sat with his hands folded over his rounded belly. His eyebrows arched when he spoke. His voice was cultivated and quiet, full of self satisfaction and haughtiness. They had been speaking in low tones about how Jane Eberhardt had moved in to take over after the accident and Mrs. Everhart's husband cleared his throat, held his fist gingerly to his mouth, pursed his lips and began a soft spoken lecture like monologue about his belief that there's no such thing as an accident. His considered opinion was that there are subconscious explanations for everything. Apparently he thought he was entertaining everyone. He sat with one leg crossed over the other and held forth in his calm magisterial voice explaining how everything can be reduced to a matter of conscious or subconscious will. Finally, his wife asked him to let it alone. Please drop the subject. For example, he went on, there are many collisions on the highway in which no one appears to have applied brakes before impact, as if something in the victims had decided on death. And of course there are the well known cases of people stopped on railroad tracks with plenty of time to get off who simply do not move. Perhaps it isn't being frozen by the perception of one's fate, but a matter of decision making, of will. The victim decides on his fate. I think we've had enough now, jane Eberhardt said. The inappropriateness of what he had said seemed to dawn on him then. He shifted in his seat and grew very quiet, and when the evening was over he took Brenda's grandfather by the elbow and apologized. But even in the apology there seemed to be a species of condescension, as if he were really only sorry for the harsh truth of what he had wrongly deemed it necessary to say. When everyone was gone, Brenda said, I don't like that man. Is it because of what he said about accidents? Her grandfather asked. She shook her head. I just don't like him. It's not true what he said. Honey, an accident is an accident, she said. I know. But she would not return his gaze. Your mother wasn't very happy here, but she didn't want to leave us, not even, you know, without knowing it or anything. He wears perfume, she said, still not looking at him. It's cologne. Yes. He does too much of smells, she said. In the afternoon he walks over to the school. The sidewalks are crowded with children and they all seem to recognize him. They carry their books and papers and their hair is windblown, and they run and wrestle with each other in the yards. The sun's high and very hot, and most of the clouds have broken apart and scattered. There's still a fairly steady wind, but it's gentler now, and there's no coolness in it. Brenda is standing at the first crossing street down the hill from the school. She's surrounded by other children, yet seems separate from them somehow. She sees him and smiles. He waits on his side of the intersection for her to cross, and when she reaches him he's careful not to show any obvious affection, knowing it embarrasses her. How was your day? He begins. Mr. Clayton tried to make me quit today. He waits. I didn't get over, she says. I didn't even get close. What did Mr. Clayton say? Oh, you know, that it's not important, that kind of stuff. Well, he says gently, is it so important? I don't know. She kicks at something in the grass along the edge of the sidewalk, a piece of a pencil someone else had discarded. She bends, picks it up, examines it, then drops it. This is exactly the kind of slow daydreaming behavior that used to make him angry and impatient with her mother. They walk on. She's concentrating on the sidewalk before them, and they walk almost in step. I'm sure I could never do a thing like going over a vaulting horse when I was in school, he says. Did they have that when you were in school? He smiles. It was hard getting everything into the caves, but sure, we had that sort of thing. We were an advanced tribe. We had fire, too. Okay, she's saying. Okay, okay. Actually, with me it was pull ups. We all had to do pull ups, and I just couldn't do them. I don't think I ever accomplished a single one in my life. I can't do pull ups, she said. They're hard to do. Everybody in the fifth and sixth grades can get over the vaulting horse, she said. How much she reminds him of her mother. There's a certain mobility in her face, a certain willingness to assert herself in the smallest gesture of the eyes and mouth. She has her mother's green eyes. And now he tells her this. He's decided to try this. He's standing quite shy in her doorway, feeling like an intruder. She's sitting on the floor, one leg outstretched, the other bent at the knee. She tries to touch her forehead to the knee of the outstretch leg, straining, and he looks away. You know, he says, they're just the same color, just that shade of green. What was my grandmother like? She asks, still straining. She was a lot like your mother. I'm never going to get married. Of course you will. I mean, well, I mean, if you want to, you will. How come you didn't ever get married again? Oh, he says. I had a daughter to raise, you know. She changes position, tries to touch her forehead to the other knee. I'll tell you, that mother of yours was enough to keep me busy. I mean, I called her double trouble, you know, because I always said she was double the trouble a son would have been. That was a regular joke around here. Mom was skinny and pretty. He says nothing. Am I double trouble? No, he says. Is that really why you never got married again? Well, no one would have me either. Mom said you like it. Like what? Being a widow? Yes. Well, he says. Did you? All these questions, he says. Do you think about Grandmom a lot? Yes, he says. That's, you know, we remember our loved ones. She stands and tries to touch her toes without bending her legs. Sometimes I dream that Mom's yelling at you and you're yelling back. Oh, well, he says, hearing himself say it, feeling himself back down from something. That's just a dream, you know. It's nothing to think about at all. People who love each other don't agree. Sometimes it's nothing, and I'll bet these exercises are going to do the trick. I'm very smart, aren't I? He feels sick very deep down. You're the smartest little girl I ever saw. You don't have to come tonight if you don't want to, she says. You can drop me off if you want and come get me when it's over. Why would I do that? She mutters. I would. Then why don't we skip it? A lot of good that would do, she says. For dinner they drink apple juice and he gets her to eat two slices of dry toast. The apple juice is for energy. She drinks it slowly and then goes into her room to lie down. To conserve her strength, she uses the word conserve and he tells her he's so proud of her vocabulary. She thanks him. While she rests, he does a few household chores, trying really just to keep busy. The week's newspapers have been piling up on the coffee table in the living room. The carpets need to be vacuumed and the whole house needs dusting. None of it takes long enough. None of it quite distracts him. For a while he sits in the living room with a newspaper in his lap and pretends to be reading it. She's restless too. She comes back through the kitchen, drinks another glass of apple juice, and then joins him in the living room, turns the television on. The news is full of traffic deaths, and she turns to one of the local stations that shows reruns of old situation comedies. They both watch MASH without really taking it in. She bites the cuticles of her nails and her gaze wanders around the room. It comes to him that he could speak to her now, could make his way through to her grief, and yet he knows that he will do no such thing. He can't even bring himself to speak at all. There are regions of his own sorrow that he simply lacks the strength to explore. And so he sits there watching her, watching her restlessness, and at last it's time to go over to the school. Jane Eberhard makes a surprise visit, bearing a handsome good luck card she's fashioned herself. She kisses Brenda, behaves exactly as if Brenda were going off to some dangerous, faraway place. She stands in the street and waves at them as they pull away, and Brenda leans out the window to shout goodbye. A moment later, sitting back and staring out at the dusky light, she says she feels a surge of energy and he tells her she's way ahead of all the others in her class, knowing words like conserve and search I've always known them, she says. It's beginning to rain again. Clouds have been rolling in from the east and the wind shakes the trees. Lightning flickers on the other side of the clouds. Everything seems threatening, relentless. He slows down. There are many cars parked along both sides of the street. Quite a turnout, he manages. Don't worry, she tells him brightly. I still feel my surge of energy. It begins to rain as they get out of the car, and he holds his sport coat like a cape to shield her from it. By the time they get to the open front doors, it's raining very hard. People are crowding into the cafeteria, which has been transformed into an arena for the event, chairs set up on four sides of the room as though for a wrestling match. In the center, at the end of the long, bright red mat, are the vaulting horse and the mini trampoline. The physical education teacher, Mr. Clayton, stands at the entrance. He's tall, thin, scraggly looking, a boy really, no older than 25. There's Mr. Clayton, Brenda says. I see him. Hello, Mr. Clayton. Mr. Clayton is quite distracted, and he nods quickly, leans toward Brenda, and points to a doorway across the hall. Go on ahead, he says. Then he nods at her grandfather. This is it, brenda says. Her grandfather squeezes her shoulder, means to find the best thing to tell her, but in the next confusing minute he's lost her. She's gone among the others, and he's being swept along with the crowd. Entering the cafeteria, he makes his way along the walls behind the chairs, where a few other people have already gathered understanding. At the other end of the room, a man is speaking from a lectern about old business, new officers for the fall. Brenda's grandfather recognizes some of the people in the crowd. A woman looks at him and nods, a familiar face. He quite place. She turns to look at the speaker. She's holding a baby and the baby's staring at him over her shoulder. A moment later she steps back to stand beside him, hefting the baby higher and patting its bottom. What a crowd, she says. He nods. It's not usually this crowded. Again he nods. The baby protests, and he touches the miniature fingers of one hand. Just a baby, he thinks, and everything still to go through. How is Brenda? She says. Oh, he says. Fine, and he remembers that she was Brenda's kindergarten teacher. She's heavier than she was then and her hair is darker. She has a baby now. I don't remember all my students, she says, shifting the baby to the other shoulder. I've been home now for 18 months. And I'll tell you, it's being at the PTA meeting that makes me see how much I don't miss teaching. He smiles at her and nods again. He's beginning to feel awkward. The man is still speaking from the lectern. A meeting is going on and this woman's voice is carrying beyond them, though she says everything out of the side of her mouth. I remember the way you used to walk Brenda to school every morning. Do you still walk her to school? Yes. That's so nice. He pretends an interest in what the speaker is saying. I always thought it was so nice to see how you two got along together. I mean, these days it's really rare for the kids even to know who their grandparents are, much less have one to walk them to school in the morning. I always thought it was really something. She seems to watch the lectern for a moment and then speaks to him again, this time in a near whisper. I hope you won't take this the wrong way or anything, but I just wanted to say how sorry I was about your daughter. I saw it in the paper when Brenda's mother. Well, you know, I just wanted to tell you how sorry. When I saw it in the paper, I thought of Brenda and how you used to walk her to school. I lost my sister in an automobile accident, so I know how you feel. It's a terrible thing. Terrible. An awful thing to have happen. I mean, it's much too sudden and final and everything. I'm afraid now every time I get into a car. She pauses, pats the baby's back, then takes something off its ear. Anyway, I just wanted to say how sorry I was. You're very kind, he says. It seems so senseless, she murmurs. There's something so senseless about when it happens. My sister went through a stop sign. She just didn't see it, I guess. But it wasn't a busy road or anything. If she'd come along one second later, or sooner, nothing would have happened. So senseless. Two people driving two different cars coming along on two roads on a sunny afternoon. And they come together like that. I mean, what are the chances, really? He doesn't say anything. How's Brenda handling it? She's strong, he says. I would have said that, the woman tells him. Sometimes I think the children take these things better than the adults do. I remember when she first came to my class, she told everyone in the first minute that she'd come from Oregon, that she was living with their grandfather and her mother was divorced. She was a baby when the divorce, when she moved here from Oregon. This seems to surprise the woman. Really, she says low. I got the impression it was recent for her, I mean, you know, that she had just come from it all. It was all very vivid for her. I remember that she was a baby, he says. It's almost as if he were insisting on it. He's heard this in his voice, and he wonders if she has too. Well, she says, I always had a special place for Brenda. I always thought she was very special. A very special little girl. The PTA meeting is over, and Mr. Clayton is now standing at the far door with the first of his charges. They're all lining up outside the door, and Mr. Clayton walks to the microphone to announce the program. The demonstration will commence with the mini trampoline and the vaulting horse, a performance by the fifth and sixth graders. There will also be a breakdancing demonstration by the fourth grade class. Here we go, the woman says. My nephew's afraid of the mini tramp. They shouldn't make them do these things, brenda's grandfather says with a passion that surprises him. He draws in a breath. It's too hard, he says loudly. He can't believe himself. They shouldn't have to go through a thing like this. I don't know, she says vaguely, turning from him a little. He has drawn attention to himself. Others in the crowd are regarding him now, one, a man with a sparse red beard and wild red hair, looking at him with something he takes for agreement. It's too much, he says, still louder. Too much to put on a child. There's just so much a child can take? Someone asks gently for quiet. The first child is running down the long mat to the mini trampoline. It's a girl, and she times her jump perfectly, soars over the horse one by one. Other children follow. Mr. Clayton and another man stand on either side of the horse and help those who go over on their hands. Two or three go over without any assistance at all, with remarkable effortlessness and grace. Well, brenda's kindergarten teacher says, there's my nephew. The boy hits the mini tramp and does a perfect forward flip in the air over the horse, landing upright and then rolling forward in a somersault. Yay, Jack. She cheers. No sweat. Yay, Jackie Boy. The boy trots to the other end of the room and stands with the others. The crowd is applauding. The last of the sixth graders goes over the horse, and Mr. Clayton says into the microphone that the fifth graders are next. It's Brenda who's next. She stands in the doorway, her cheeks flushed, her legs looking too heavy in the tights. She's rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, getting ready. It grows quiet. Her arms swing slightly back and forth, and now, just for a moment, she's looking at the crowd, her face hiding whatever she's feeling. It's as if she were merely curious as to who was out there. But he knows she's looking for him, searching the crowd for her grandfather, who stands on his toes, unseen against the far wall, stands there, thinking his heart might break, lifting his hand to wa.
- [54:20]
B
James Naughton performed what Feels like the World by Richard Bausch. This quietly devastating work shows a mastery of one of the hardest things to do in fiction blend the inner world of one character with the outer world of the other. The characters are working toward trust, but neither is sure what the other wants or needs, or what each of them wants or needs. This story is beautiful and painful. I love how Bausch telescopes in on the big event in the granddaughter's life. It reminded me of all the times in my own early life when something small felt so important and there was no one who could say to me, this really isn't going to matter in the long run, but for children there only seems to be a short run. I think anyone listening to this story can recognize the power of a child wanting something so badly, and also the power, mostly unspoken in what has been lost, the shared desire of these two people brought together through tragedy and love. I was holding my breath at the very end of the story, and maybe you were too. I think these two works by contemporary masters successfully move our idea of the extended family beyond the realm of census taking or head counts. In Smith's piece, family extends beyond the grave and becomes part of a larger cycle. In Bausch's, we're shown a glimpse of a family unit that is still in the making. Its eventual shape may or may not hinge on the outcome of the small drama we're asked to witness. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montec. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Me A. White. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.