← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Picture Perfect
01:01:30
Host Meg Wolitzer presents three works about idealized lives, and ideas about what constitutes an ideal life. “Boy Meets Girl” is Jen Kim’s humorous version of a Hollywood love story. It’s read by Tony Hale. In the John Cheever classic “The Worm in the Apple” a couple have the perfect life—but no one can believe it. It’s read by Anne Meara. And a harried mother fantasizes about a brand new life in Vanessa Cuti’s “Our Children,” performed by Claire Danes, followed by an interview with Danes. .
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Meg Wolitzer
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- [01:04]
Meg Wolitzer
The old American dream was all about the house and the car and the picket fence. The new dream? Well, maybe you can manifest it with your vision board. I'm Meg Wolitzer, and on this selected Shorts, stepping into idealized lives and what it costs us. Stay tuned for Claire Danes, Tony Hale and Ann Mera reading stories about supposedly perfect lives. You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. You're a Selected Shorts listener, which means you love stories. I'm going to go one step further to say that each and every one of you is also a storyteller with a powerful imagination. No, no, no. I hear you saying I'm not a storyteller. I can never make anything up. I'm much too literal for that. I'm a tax lawyer. I'm a dermatologist. I'm a cater waiter. What stories do I have? But listen, you tell your own story and the stories of those around you all the time. Think about it. You probably create any number of wild possible futures for yourself. Often idealized hopes and dreams come true every day. And at the same time, you might well let your mind drift off into little imaginary scenarios about the people you interact with at your job or the ones you see waiting online at the dmv. I bet you try and conjure up entire stories involving the amazing, perfect lives of the people you envy or the terrible lives of the people who slighted you even years ago. You know that kid in fifth grade who said your arms were scrawny? You might have a whole story about what became of that person. Nothing good, I'm afraid. And it doesn't even matter if the story you tell is true. What matters is that it's yours. We're people, and it's hard to keep ourselves from conceiving better futures for ourselves or comparing ourselves to others. I don't think we can help it. So let's dig into these ideas in today's selected shorts. Our fiction is about the stories we dream up about ourselves and others, and how the reality may or may not match up. One piece traps its narrator inside a worn Hollywood cliche. One challenges a happy family to reveal its flaws, and a third lets a harried mother fantasize about a brand new life. Our first piece is by writer Jen Kim. She's published humor pieces in the New Yorker and McSweeneys, and has written for shows including History of the World Part 2. Reading her story about how one's own life might fit into prototypical movie plots is Tony Hale. He's the funny actor known for playing stunted, neurotic and entirely relatable human beings, among them Gary on Veep and Buster on Arrested Development. But he can also do drama, as he does in the Netflix series the Decameron. Now performing Boy Meets Girl by Jen Kim. This is Tony Hill.
- [04:07]
Tony Hale
Okay, Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Boy sees Girl posted a picture of new boy on Instagram. Boy immediately starts spinning out. Boy zooms in on the picture, careful to not accidentally like it to see if boy knows who new boy is. Boy stares at the picture for a really, really long time, then concludes that boy can't tell who new boy is because the picture is taken from too far away and it's also kind of blurry. Boy is confused because girl and boy broke up like only a week ago. So how has girl already found new boy? Boy is also shocked because girl posted new boy on girl's grid and not even on girl's story. Boy is like girl totally sees a future with new boy, otherwise girl would not post on grid. Boy screams loudly. Boy cannot believe girl clearly has new relationship that is serious and definitely not casual. Boy starts spinning out in an even crazier way. Boy calls up boy's friend and asks what boy's friend thinks about the situation. Boy's friend reminds boy that it's literally 4am and boy's friend has to get up two hours for boy's friend's shift at the hospital Boy apologizes, but is also like, can't Boy's friend just really quickly tell a boy what Boy's friend thinks this means? Boy's friend listens to the situation but doesn't give boy a definitive answer. Boy asks boy's friend to give a definitive answer. Boy's friend again does not give a definitive answer, but rather a diplomatic one, saying that nobody knows what is going on in anyone's life really. Boy gets frustrated at boy's friend asking boy's friend to just lie to boy. When boy is clearly in a paranoid state like this, Boy's friend gets angry and tells Boy that there are more serious things happening in life, like going to work and saving lives. Boy yells that Boy is experiencing an emotional death, which is equally as important. And then Boy very immaturely hangs up. Boy sits for a minute. Boy instantly regrets saying that Boy's emotional death is equivalent to death. Boy calls boy's friend back, but is sent straight to voicemail. Boy panics because obviously boy's friend is mad at Boy now. Boy leaves a lengthy apologetic message about how boy's friend is such a good friend to Boy and how Boy actually really appreciates the way Boy's friend is always honest and doesn't just tell boy what boy wants to hear and how Boy is sorry for acting all insane and hopes that none of boy's friend's patients die tomorrow. Boy also asked if boy's friend still wants to watch Oppenheimer this weekend because, you know, Boy was looking forward to that. Boy ends. Boy sits in silence, left to boy's own thoughts. Boy hates boy's own thoughts. Boy decides to watch the King's Speech because it's free on Amazon and sad but not too sad. Boy checks how old Colin Firth is because Colin Firth looks really old in the King's Speech for some reason. Boy finds out that Colin Firth is 61. Boy freaks out because last time boy saw Colin Firth and something was what a girl wants when Colin Firth was like 30 or whatever, you know. Boy spirals about calling first wrinkles, but if boy is being honest with boy's self, boy is really spiraling about how fast the general passage of time feels. Boy realizes Boy met girl two years ago. Boy and girl were together for two whole years. Boy and girl played Galaga late at night at the small arcade around the corner from Boy's apartment. Boy and girl drove to Costco just to eat cheap hot dogs. Boy and girl accidentally went to Marseille because boy and girl thought Amelie was set in Marseille, but it wasn't it was set in Paris. Boy is now in Boy's late twenties. Boy's friends are all getting married. Boy's friends are maybe even having kids. Boy is depressed because Boy is going to die alone with no children. Watching the King's Speech in Boy's studio apartment forever, Boy looks at girl's Instagram picture again and sees there's a caption. Boy reads caption which says that new boy in picture is girl's second cousin from out of town. Boy squints at picture and realizes girl's second cousin kind of looks like a younger Mark Ruffalo, which boy thinks is kind of cool. Boy calms down. Boy's completely fine now. Boy's happy even. Boy turns on what a girl wants and laughs really hard at the part where Colin Firth tries on leather pants.
- [09:48]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Tony Hale reading Jen Kim's Boy Meets Girl. So if Kim's story is what might happen if you try to fit yourself into a Hollywood narrative, let's hear something about trying to fit others into an entirely different sort of story. This one is by John Cheever. He's a late 20th century master best known for his short stories, including classics like the Swimmer and the Enormous Radio. I grew up in a suburban house with a collection of John Cheever stories on the shelf in the den, and while I'd always been curious about what was going on in the house next door, in his stories Cheever takes that idea to a much deeper level. I'm happy to bring you this inimitable glimpse into another family, another home, in search of the truth that can sometimes remain maddeningly hidden no matter how hard you press your face against the window. The Worm in the Apple is a story of obsession that, like many of Cheever's stories, go searching for suburban discontent. Our reading of the story is an encore by lifelong actor Anne Mearra. Meara appeared in beloved TV series including Rhoda, as well as memorable features including Night at the Museum, alongside her son Ben Stiller. Now performing John Cheever's the Worm in the Apple, here's Anne Meara.
- [11:08]
Anne Meara
The Crutchmans were so very, very happy and so temperate in all their habits and so pleased with everything that came their way that one was bound to suspect a worm in their rosy apple, and that the extraordinary rosiness of the fruit was only meant to conceal the gravity and the depth of the infection. Their house, for instance, on Hill street, with all those big glass windows. Who but someone suffering from a guilt complex would want so much light to pour into their rooms and all the wall to wall carpeting, as if an inch of bare floor there was none would touch on some deep memory of unrequition and loneliness. And there was a certain necrophilic ardor to their gardening. Why be so intense about digging holes and planting seeds and watching them come up? Why this morbid concern with the earth? She was a pretty woman, with that striking pallor you so often find in nymphomaniacs. Larry was a big man who used to garden without a shirt, which may have shown a tendency to infantile excess, exhibitionism. They moved happily out to Shady Hill after the war. Larry had served in the navy. They had two happy children, Rachel and Tom. But there were already some clouds on their horizon. Larry's ship had been sunk in the war and he had spent four days adrift on a raft in the Mediterranean. And surely this experience would make him skeptical about the comforts and songbirds of Shady Hill and leave him with racking nightmares. But what was perhaps more serious was the fact that Helen was rich. She was the only daughter of old Charlie Simpson, one of the last of the industrial buccaneers who had left her with a larger income than Larry would ever take away from his job at Melcher and Thaw. The dangers in this situation are well known since Larry did not have to make a living. Since he lacked any incentive, he might take it easy, spend too much time on the golf links and always have a glass in his hand. Helen would confuse financial with emotional independence and damage the delicate balance within their marriage. But Larry seemed to have no nightmares. And Helen spread her income among the charities and lived a comfortable but modest life. Larry went to his job each morning with such enthusiasm that you might think he was trying to escape from something. His participation in the life of the community was so vigorous that he must have been left with almost no time for self examination. He was everywhere. He was at the communion rail, the 50 yard line. He played the oboe with the chamber music club, drove the fire truck, served on the school board and rode the 803 into New York every morning. What was the sorrow that drove him? Well, he may have wanted a larger family. Why did they only have two children? Why not three or four? Was there perhaps some breakdown in their relationship after the birth of Tom? Rachel, the oldest, was terribly fat when she was a girl and quite aggressive in a mercenary way. Every spring she would drag an old dressing table out of the garage and set it up on the sidewalk with a sign saying fresh lemonade 15 cents. Tom had pneumonia when he was six and nearly died. But he recovered and there were no visible complications. The children may have felt rebellious about the conformity of their parents, for they were exacting conformists. Two cars. Yes. Did they go to church? Every single Sunday. They got to their knees and prayed with ardor clothing. They couldn't have been more punctilious in their observance of the sumptuary laws, book clubs, local art and music lover associations, athletics and cards. They were up to to their neck in everything. But if the children were rebellious, they concealed their rebellion and seemed happily to love their parents and happily to be loved in return. But perhaps there was in this love the ruefulness of some deep disappoint. Perhaps he was impotent. Perhaps she was frigid, but hardly with that pallor. Everyone in the community with wandering hands had given them both a try, but they had all been put off. What was the source of this constancy? Were they frightened? Were they prudish? Were they monogamous? What was at the bottom of this appearance of happiness? As their children grew, one might look to them for the worm in the apple. They would be rich. They would inherit Helen's fortune. And we might see here, moving over them, the shadow that so often falls upon children. Who can count on a lifetime of financial security? And anyhow, Helen loved her son too much. She bought him everything he wanted, driving him to dancing school in his first blue serge suit. She was so entranced by the manly figure he cut as he climbed the stairs that she drove the car right into an elm tree. Such an infatuation was bound to lead to trouble. And if she favored her son, she was bound to discriminate against her daughter. Listen to her. Rachel's feet, she says, are immense, simply immense. I can never get shoes for her now. Perhaps we see the worm. Like most beautiful women, she is jealous of her own daughter. She cannot brook competition. She will dress the girl in hideous clothing, have her hair curled in some unbecoming way, and keep talking about the size of her feet until the poor girl will refuse to go to the dances. Or, if she is forced to go, will sulk in the ladies room staring at her monstrous feet. She'll become so wretched and so lonely that in order to express herself, she will fall in love with an unstable poet and fly with him to Rome, where they will live out a miserable and boozy exile. But when the girl enters the room, she is pretty and prettily dressed, and she smiles at her mother with perfect love. Her feet are quite large, to be sure, but so is her front. Perhaps we should look to the son for our trouble. And there is trouble. He fails his junior year in high school and has to repeat. And as a result of having to repeat, he feels alienated for from the members of his class and is put by chance at a desk next to Carrie Witchell, who is the most conspicuous dish in Shady Hill. Everyone knows about the Witchels and their pretty high spirited daughter. They drink too much and live in one of those frame houses in Mapledale. The girl is really beautiful and everyone knows how her shrewd old parents are planning to climb out of Mapledale on the strength of her white, white skin.
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What a perfect situation.
- [20:33]
Anne Meara
They will know about Helen's wealth. In the darkness of their bedroom they will calculate the settlement they can demand. And in the malodorous kitchen where they take all their meals, they will tell their pretty daughter to let the boy go as far as he wants. But Tom fell out of love with Carrie as swiftly as he fell into it. And after that he fell in love with Karen Strawbridge and Susie Morris and Anna Mekken. And you might think he was unstable. But in his second year in college he announced his engagement to Elizabeth Trustman and they were married after his graduation. And since he then had to serve his time in the army, she followed him to his post in Germany where they studied and learned the language and befriended the people and were a credit to their country. Rachel's way was not so easy. When she lost her fat, she became very pretty and quite fast. She smoked and drank and probably fornicated. And the abyss that opens up before a pretty and an intemperate young woman is unfathomable. What but chance was there to keep her from ending up as a hostess at a Times Square dance hall? And what would her poor fear father think, seeing the face of his daughter, her breasts lightly covered with gauze, gazing mutely at him on a rainy morning from one of those showcases. What she did was to fall in love with the son of the Farquharson's German gardener. He had come with his family to the United States on the distance placed persons quota after the war. His name was Erich Reiner, and to be fair about it, he was an exceptional young man who looked on the United States as a truly new world. The Kruchman's must have been sad about Rachel's choice, not to say heartbroken. But they concealed their feelings. The Reiners did not. This hard working German couple thought the marriage hopeless and improper. At one point the father beat his son over the head with A stick of firewood. But the children continued to see each other, and presently they eloped. They had to. Rachel was three months pregnant. Eric was then a freshman at Tufts, where he had a scholarship. Helen's money came in handy here, and she was able to rent an apartment in Boston for the young couple and pay their expenses. Expenses. That their first grandchild was premature did not seem to bother the Kretschmans. When Eric graduated from college, he got a fellowship at MIT and took his PhD in physics and was taken on as an associate in the department. He could have gone into industry at a higher salary, but he liked to teach, and Rachel was happy in Cambridge, where they remained with their own dear children gone away. The Crutchmans might be expected to suffer the celebrated spiritual destitution of their age and their kind. The Worm in the Apple would at last be laid bare. Although watching this charming couple as they entertained their friends or read the books they enjoyed, one might wonder if the worm was not in the eye of the observer, who, through timidity or moral cowardice, could not embrace the broad range of their natural enthusiasms and would not grant that while Larry played neither Bach nor football very well, his pleasure in both was genuine. You might at least expect to see in them the usual destructiveness of time. But either through luck or as a result of their temperate and healthy lives, they had lost neither their teeth nor their hair. The touchstone of their euphoria remained potent. And while Larry gave up the fire truck, he could still be seen at the communion rail, the 50 yard line, the 803 and the chamber music club. And through the prudence and shrewdness of Helen's broker, they got richer and richer and richer and lived happily, happily, happily, happily.
- [25:39]
Meg Wolitzer
That was the Worm in the Apple by John Cheever, as performed by Ann Meara. When we return, Claire Danes does the one thing a mother is for forbidden to do. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live and performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide. If you your parent or spouse served
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Meg Wolitzer
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Tony Hale
Contestant.
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- [27:30]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transpire through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. The final story of this hour is by writer Vanessa Cutie. Her work has been featured in publications including the Kenyan Review, and her debut novel, the Tip Line, was published in 2023. This piece, which explodes the line between expectation and reality, was chosen for the Best American Short stories collection of 2021. It's particularly satisfying for me to introduce this story because Cutie is a graduate of Bookends, the program for emerging no novelists that I run, and it's been exciting to see her work expand and I guess also contract because, hey, this is a short story. The reader is Claire Danes. She's had a slew of memorable roles in films including Temple Grandin and the recent series Fleischman Is in Trouble, and she seems to dig into selected short's characters with as much commitment as she does her roles on screen. Now Claire Danes performs Our Children by Vanessa Cutie.
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Our Children I was once married to a man. He was tall and burly, with fat, heavy hands and too many calluses to count. Peter. Weekends he worked on vintage sports cars for fun. He lifted weights in our home gym, Blasting Journey or the Ramones or Best of Classic Rock Mixes, you know, the ones from movies and commercials and the like. He sometimes did this naked. I'd accidentally catch him, but then stay to watch, pressing myself flat on the outside of the door, peeking while he posed and flexed and turned to get a good look at himself, sometimes half hard, sometimes more than half. He kissed his fingers in front of food. He used pet names for me. Baby Pie was one tt legs, Little Doe, short for donut, Doughnut hole, he later explained during an argument. You follow? He said, making sure I was properly insulted. I thought this was normal. Peter made his money in construction, licked his lips a lot. I didn't know what marriage was supposed to be. I had no idea what I was expecting. We had two children together and they both looked vaguely of him. But I love them regardless, and that's what's important. I met Dan at the grocery store, in the produce section. Feeling sweet potatoes. I don't know that many people think to feel sweet potatoes, but I do. And so did Dan that day, luckily enough. When I went for a plastic bag, he was just right there, watching things. I noticed a chipped or strangely shaped cuspid, the pleat in the front of his suit pants. I must have looked down, blushing. It's something that happens to me. There was no way to ignore him. It would not have been polite. Later I thought to ask him why he was doing his own grocery shopping. Where's your wife? Or your housekeeper? This after I knew more about him, but by then it was pointless, inconsequential. Everything that was to happen had already begun to happen. Peter was easy. Let go of me. Just like that. Said okay to the money, the house, whichever of the cars I wanted. He must have had something else cooking by then. I refuse to believe he just hated me that much. He called Dan lover boy. In our emails with lawyers, he said he wanted custody split right in half. He moved to a three bedroom condo on the water. A magical tower, our daughter called it. For the longest time, every other weekend, our house swelled with them, a new population. They congregated, they organized. They became fresh in the breakfast nook when I said we had pancakes but not waffles. They sat for hours in the living room, bare feet leaving heat marks on the glass of the coffee table, juice pooling crumbs everywhere you could imagine. They hooted at the chug of machine guns and grenades and the games they played. I knew they pointed their controllers at my back when I turned to walk out, arms full of plates, crumpled napkins. Anything else, guys? I asked over my shoulder. Anyway, when I sliced a thumb cutting strawberries for their sundaes and screamed darn it. They chuckled under their breath. What, you think I won't say Fuck, I said, getting into their faces. Fuck, I said, cupping the blood. I let some drip onto the table and to the sprinkles. Fuck these sprinkles too. I upended the bowl. They stared. That got them. They were seven. Seven, six, five. Three older boys, the youngest by eight months. The girl when they left, when the house was empty again, even the fabric of the area rugs became cooler to the touch. I heard the high frequency hum of electronics and the tumble of the dryer the soft lap lap of hand towels, one onto the other floors down. I stood in the doorway to the living room and it appeared to me as a glacier, cold and empty and white. Dan's wife was basically just me with brown hair. She stayed in his five bedroom Federal Colonial across town and drove the SUV he paid for. She hosted wine nights on his dime and cried to her guests, mothers of children who went to school with my children. In random text messages she needled him about leaving her hope it was worth it. She wrote a lot tearing our family apart. Then she wised up and started writing your family tearing your family apart. She changed the verb here and there. She used splitting, ripping, breaking. Once she wrote exploding and it evoked something and I was impressed for a second, at least the things she must have said about me. What kind of wicked thing I became in her eyes Sometimes I asked Dan. Nothing, hun, he would say, lifting a pot top on the stove, looking into the fridge, slicing open envelopes. None of it matters. No, I'm just wondering. I tried to make it buttoned up, but there's no way to remove the wine from that once I got it out of him. Threatened to withhold his favorite position, but just before, seconds before, she said, you're aging in the face that you've seen better days. Rode hard and put away wet, sagging in the ass. Okay. Is this what you want? I swear he was panting. Okay, I said. Okay. I felt bad. I did. I wouldn't have chosen it this way. The moms at school knew me as a home wrecker, but I didn't set out to wreck anything. Two people fell in love. Rings from other people can't see.
- [35:36]
Anne Meara
Stop that.
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I'm not innocent, but I did not intend for this to happen. I dreamt of texting her myself. I'm so sorry for everything. I didn't mean for you to be hurt. There was a glitch. He and I should have met years ago and then you would have been spared all of this. Why couldn't we have met before? Everything I said to Dan in bed one night when we were young, he was still inside. He liked when I was wistful. I think I felt a change. Tell me about when you were young. His face was buried somewhere near my shoulder. I had to guess that this is what he said. I was a cheerleader, I said lie. I was on yearbook. I wore glasses and twirled my ponytail with a pencil and sat on the edge of the teacher's desk. I got in trouble for being mean, I said and let a pout change my voice. I stole another girl's boyfriend and I made her cry in the bathroom. Jesus, he said, rearing. I did sometimes wonder, wish that we had met when we were young, before everything, before we made our lives. But the children, your children. Something always chided this thing. That chided, by the way, was not my best self, not my voice. It was coral, all altos, the moan of disappointed mothers. Then you would not have your beautiful children, the mother said, and this is true. But I would have made and met other children. I would have loved these other children just the same because I am capable of so much love. Dan's wife liked to us late changes to the dates of his weekends, taking one of their kids instead of both conjuring appointments and meetings that she expected us to to believe more than once we had to cancel plans. Deep breath, dan said. One of these nights. She had just dropped them off. I was wearing the dress I would have worn to the opera. We'll make another plan, I swear. His son, one of his sons, eyed me from behind him, his big glassy pupils celebrating. On this night I'd had it. I took off the dress, my makeup. I slammed and smashed so many things in our bathroom. I came downstairs, changed, sat on the bottom of the step, tying and retying a sneaker, waiting for him to see. So, I said when his shadow darkened me, finally, I'm going for a run. I need to let off some steam. This is insane. Okay, sweets, he said. I heard loud cartoon music from the living room. His socks were pilled and too fuzzy. The way he stood, I saw a gut. All decency had gone out the window. But it's not. It's actually not. Okay. I stood up and pushed past him, my shoulder in his chest, and usually he would grab me somewhere, my hand, my elbow, the back of my neck if it was like that. A handful of hair even. He just let me pass. I did run sometimes, so it was believable. But. But that night I walked to Dan's old house. Of course her car was there, same Suburban as mine, same midnight package even. I looked in its window. I knew she'd be filthy. Wrappers, Tic Tacs, pretzel ends, open sodas, a splayed magazine on the passenger seat. I couldn't imagine what she had let the children do to the back. She was on her couch, feet on an ottoman, I think, something I couldn't see beneath the line of the coffee table. Her hair was up. She was eating something out of a cup, TV going in front of her. I thought to knock on the door and start something. Why not? Why the hell not? But I didn't. I just watched her and judged her and savored the taste of that judgment. Peter. Peter was still Peter. Should I have stayed with you, Peter? I thought when he came to pick up our children. Then there would only be two of them and two of us. We wouldn't be outnumbered. He looked fitter, different clothes. He patted me on the back when I walked them to the car, like we were old chums, classmates, colleagues. He didn't spring the kids on us to punish me. He loved our children and looked forward to them and greeted them with zest and his real smile, and this made me feel very, very guilty. We made a plan, something fun for me and Dan, the kids. A weekend in the woods. A stream, a cabin, a tame campfire out front, its very top spinning a line of black into the evening sky, the sunset. We'll be on one side of the house, they'll be on the other, dan said, showing me with his hands how much room we'd have. It's a beautiful place. You'll love it, he said the last part like he actually believed was sweet to watch them pack their things when what they thought they'd need, my two wouldn't leave for a day, not to mention a weekend without books, three apiece, weighing down their backpacks. The other two brought handheld video games and charger cables, disconnected phones that they could use with WI fi. What can I say? They are not mine. Nothing about them is from me. Wait, I said in the front hallway, the kids, their luggage sitting around my feet like an audience. Does everyone have a toothbrush? I watched them all run back up, listened to the drawers and the bathroom slide open and closed, all the things within shifting, and I thought, this is going to be a lovely time. We're going to make a memory with our children that we will cherish forever. I'm going to be calm and easy and light. I pictured myself on a glacier, the sun warming my front, my back cool and wet, quiet everywhere. The cabin was smaller than I thought, but it was far from the road and a stream ran right by it and round white rocks lined its base like the fruit gemmed hedge of a gingerbread house. Immediately I imagined standing in its kitchen stirring cocoa, looking out the window at the expense expanse of land, the thick weave of the woods, the mountains behind, everything. It was true, I did feel calm, I felt just fine. But it turns out there was no WI Fi and Dan's kids were livid. Let's run them ragged, dan said. I brought stuff. I'll play with them outside and they'll be so tired they'll collapse. He had his hand in a baseball glove and punched its palm with the other fist. You go inside, shave, take a bath, get ready for me for later. I rolled my eyes at his wink and turned away. But I tried to walk back to the house as sexily as I could. It was not easy. The ground was uneven with rocks and roots. I couldn't roll my hips. A chipmunk, unafraid, darted just in front of my foot. Behind me I heard them screaming, the thwack of a ball, the sound of the wind moving over its stitches. And he was right. They passed out before I was able to even feed them. We left them all where they were. I covered them with blankets, his two on the larger couch, foot to foot, one of mine on each armchair. I looked at their dirty little faces, the way the dried sweat stuck their hair to their heads. I turned off the television and the lights and left the room across the house. Moments later, Dan held a hand over my mouth to keep me quiet, and I was relieved. For the first time in a long time. It felt like the beginning again. But when I woke up in the night, something had happened. It was that black tail of smoke from the fire. It was the rot from between the beams and the walls seeping. It was that chipmunk being eaten limb by limb by a raccoon under the deck. I heard the chew and crunch. I didn't know what to do. I lifted my hands to brush back my hair, but they were heavy, too heavy, laden with hate, anger, sleep, something. I sat up slow, slow. A puppet waking someone's hand in my back. I heard Dan breathing his back to me. I didn't crane to see his face. My movement would wake him. It could have been anyone, anything lying there. Oh, I said out loud. It was smooth and deep and greasy, this voice. It was not me, and it was not the mothers chiding me. It was a dawning. It was a crack. Dan, I said, and put my hand on the being next to me. What is it? Dan said, jumping awake. What? He sat up, looked around, the whites of his eyes darting, leaving streaks in my slow vision. Dan, I said, and patted him once, twice, three times. In the space between his shoulders my hand tapped like something mechanical. He didn't feel warm to the touch. Oh, I said again. Then, because the sludge inside me was beginning to thin and redden, I imagined effervescence. I imagined light and heat and a great sound be booming, rattling. We have to leave these children here.
- [46:25]
Chase Credit Journey Advertiser
What?
- [46:26]
Commercial Announcer
He said, and the white shrunk as he squinted at me, and the change in his voice told me he was cocking his head. Jesus.
- [46:33]
Anne Meara
What?
- [46:34]
Commercial Announcer
You had a dream. Go back to sleep. He may have been right. I may have had a dream that pointed me in that direction. That's how it might have gotten in. He flopped back into his pillow and his hand found its way up the front of my T shirt. He tried to push me back. No, we do. We have to leave them here, I said. Not forever. Maybe we come back for them when they've grown a little, found their way. Do you understand what our lives will be like? This voice was a marvel. It would have sickened anyone. Maybe he had dreamt the same thing at the same time, or just after I did, the character in our minds miming deeds synchronous. Maybe whatever it was had started in on him too, because minutes later he sat up slow like I had. He sighed like he was waking up for a workday, and he moved his legs over the side of the bed and started to pull his pants on. It might have been any number of things, but I think it was the rot. We drove home with the windows open, August air coming in, the stereo on. He held my hand pressed into his thigh and tapped the tips of my fingers with his when it was a song that had specific meaning to him. The road was damp, the grass at its median had already dewed and glittering in our headlights, the moon, the sky, the smell of honeysuckle when he dipped too close to the shoulder. I wanted to say something about the stars and the night, how lucky we were. He wanted to say something too, I could see it, but we both knew what not to do to a good thing. We drank wine at the table, smoked a bowl, made no move to hide either, shed our clothes in the kitchen, fucked on the marble floor of the foyer, then went into the shower and did it there. We brought the wine bottle with us. It sloshed as we moved, spilling into the water we were sitting under. We were sitting at that point. We soaped each other, lubed and scrubbed, and then gave up and got out, went to the bedroom, leaving wet footprints, puddles and drips across the carpets and wood. Our hair soaked our pillows and we warmed quickly. We finished what was left in the bottle. We thought of more weed but didn't want to leave the bed. We did not touch but fell asleep separately, each breathing with a heaviness and A peace that had been, at that point, unknown to us. I did not dream at all of our children. I awoke well before dawn and I envisioned them. I knew what they were going to do, their future. They would awaken and start to work, make paint from the juice of wild blueberries, use it to dye linens and tiny frocks. For the littlest one, mine. They would make these frocks a loom, a needle and thread. They would weave mats from grasses they collected by the stream, char, fish and rodents over that very same campfire. They would ransack the kitchen, find the cookies, the cereal in the cupboard, try coffee for the first time, try on for size the shoes found in the closets, the shirts and the luggage I had left in our haste to get away. They would belt those shirts around their waists using tails from pelts of animals. That raccoon, mischievous, insatiable, dead. Finally, his family too. A band of them, these children in size order, maybe, marching across that expanse, hands on hips, singing a song they made up. It would be warm. Even up in the mountains it would be warm. The night had been warm. The day would be hot. There was electricity and food. They would be so busy. They would grow. Because if left alone and let to live, all things grow. The three boys have fashioned tools from sticks and rocks. They sharpen stones on other stones and affix them with rope. At first they ah at the sparks flying blue and orange. Then they get back to their work. They find an ax in the garage, a BB gun. They smear their faces with dirt and lie on their fronts, waiting for the rustle of a buck in the thicket. Soon they see one. No, a doe. Sight her big black eyes and hear her breath as if she's only inches away. Those eyes, they think, the hooves and tail. How does such a thing exist with us? The eldest takes it down with an arrow. Magic shot. Magic. A set they also found in the garage. The eldest wears a bandana around his head, red and knotted in the back. He's the pack leader. He runs to the deer and waits for it to die, watching blood pulse from the wound. Things die so slowly he thinks he's seven. And it takes much longer than the deaths in his game, where bodies fall and then disappear seconds later. So they leave the deer to die, play catch on the big lawn while the thing heaves its last breaths 100ft away. The girl. During all this, the girl mine has stayed in the house. She's pointing her way through a picture book. She's reaching for the second shelf of the fridge for a piece of plastic wrapped cheese. But she can't reach. So she gives up and takes a small cupcake she finds on the counter last from a box of a hardening dozen. Lucky. The eldest and the second eldest try to drag the dead thing back onto the expanse so they can prepare it. But it's too heavy. More than 100 pounds. The weight of all these children and then some. So the two send the third back to the house. Tell him to watch the girl, tell him he shouldn't see this, that they're seven and he's only six and he's not mature enough to see this, any of this, all of this. He cries on his way back to the house, swearing he hates the two, that he'll never play with them again. He kicks the baseball they were all playing with the day before. Hopes it rolls into a gully or a gulch or the stream at least. So no one has the pleasure of it again. Its skin is so thick it takes a few passes. But the tools they made are decent. Would impress an adult. And the white of the belly slit over and over. Finally gives an amateur cut. But it gives blood, more blood. The shining bend of an intestine. The puffed white of something else. A stomach maybe, they don't know. But there are flies starting to buzz. It smells and so, so much blood. And then they're afraid of eating the wrong thing, of getting sick and dying for such a stupid reason. The eldest calls it off and starts to walk away. But the other one stays behind for a minute. We killed her for no reason. He thinks he could cry. If he starts crying, who's to say when it'll stop? So then he thinks things die for no reason all the time. And he picks up a rock and smashes the doe's mouth. He takes a small front tooth that he knocks loose. He rubs it between his fingers and puts it in his pocket before he runs to meet the others. They teach the girl to read. They allot two hours a day for the studying of something. All of them. They estimate birthdays and they celebrate with singing and games. They learn to cook, mend, make beds, become adults. When the girl is of natural reproductive age, she pairs up with the eldest boy, who is after all, unrelated to her. They wed. A ceremony in a clearing. Flower crowns a sunny day. A cake they make from woodland berries. They mate like bobcats on a flat rock in the sun. Or like humans in a room of the cabin. It's door locked. They have a child, a son. They name him something earthy leaf, stone, birch, blue. They name him something familial. Dan. I sucked down the smell of the same honeysuckle patch as I went back up. I prepared to stop when I passed a trooper. Prepared what? I would say I was doing 80, 85. He must have been sleeping, though, because he never came up behind me. It was just before dawn when I turned into the cabin's drive. I went slow, afraid to make a noise. The gravel, the pop of a branch. The lights were off. The front door and storm door shut, all windows in the front of the house down. I could hear the hum of the central air conditioning. The door was locked, thank God or not, but there was a key under the mat and it opened quietly enough and then I was inside. The counter was wiped clean, still stacked with snacks, juice packs, bags and bags of chips, cupcakes, paper napkins. I put my keys down and went in toward the living room, and that's when I could smell their bodies. Hot, sweet, sleeping children have a smell, especially when there are several of them together in one room. They hadn't moved much, the blanket kicked off the two boys on the couch. I fixed it. I patted their feet. I found my son, brushed his hair back from his face. His forehead was cool, cooler than what you would expect for a living thing, but he breathed and breathed, and I could almost feel him ticking under my palm. My daughter was curled up, small enough to fit on the seat of the armchair, a kitten, a mouse. She was silent and clean and young and unharmed. I sat on the floor in the middle of them, my back against the coffee table. I watched the sun come up and turn the walls blue, then pink, then gold, then dim down to the normal light of day. When they began to stir, when sleep had run its clear course, I stood up and went to the kitchen. I wanted them to find me there, bent over a cup of coffee, worrying at a crossword, the tails of my robe dragging on the floor. I'd forgotten my robe, but I was still in pajamas and everything else would be right. I would look like a mother. One of his sons was the first to come in. Good morning, sweetheart, I said. He was rubbing his eyes. Can I make you something to eat? Okay, he said, and sat. A bagel, maybe, or a cereal, anything. He picked up his handheld video game. Thank you, he said without looking up from it. The rest wandered in one at a time. I fed them. I asked them to finish their milk, almond milk for dance. I said yes when they asked if they could change and play outside. I washed the dishes by hand I folded the blankets, smacked the couch cushions flat, made the bed Dan and I had left during the night. And then I watched out the window. I watched the sun on their hair as they ran laughing. I watched the wind catch the hems of their shirts and the dirt come off their shoes. I watched them fall and roll and push each other and yell and cry and stop and get up again. I watched the sun get higher and higher in the sky. And when it was time, I opened the door and stood on the porch and I called to them.
- [59:08]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Claire Danes reading Vanessa Cutie's Our Children.
- [59:12]
Commercial Announcer
It's expensive.
- [59:13]
Meg Wolitzer
Explosive, isn't it? Our expectation of motherhood is absolutely violated by our narrator's choice to abandon her kids. Even if it is a fantasy, it feels shocking. We spoke to Danes backstage at Symphony Space about Cutie's powerful story.
- [59:29]
Commercial Announcer
I was very moved by it. I also have children. I have not experienced divorce exactly, but I've definitely experienced ambivalence about parenthood. And I am always really grateful for insight into the truest expression of what that is, because it's not always shared. We see it from a remove, and we have very romantic ideas about what it's meant to be. And it's often very different from the reality. And so I liked how dark it dared to be and cryptic even. I found it very stirring. I think she's learning how to embrace these new children as her own. And she's still making sense of the loss of the first family. And she's in process. None of it has settled, and I found that very exciting. I like how ruminative this is and how it is not a conventional structure or shape. It picks up midpoint and ends sort of midpoint. And it's almost like she's half asleep. And it's very poetic and also really pedestrian. So, yeah, it's a funny mix. She's definitely reflective and plain. You know, that's the tone. It's so much about the unconscious. That's always the key into any creative work, I think. But you can't be too literal about it. I mean, I love the concreteness of words, of language, of prose, because it allows the unconscious to come forward. Like it coaxes the unconscious into being.
- [61:23]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Claire Danes talking about Vanessa Cutie's story Our Children. There's a freedom in this story that is surprising and welcome. It speaks to that momentary thought we might have. What if I did what I really wanted to do, even if it's really transgressive and shocking? What if I just did it. Even reading about that decision in this story is pretty shocking and yet oh so familiar. Not that I've done what she does, of course. I basically kept my children attached to me like little marsupials. But every once in a while in life, there's a pang of what if? And Vanessa Cutie boldly explores it here. I think each of the stories on this show, in their way, hints at what can happen if we hold too tightly to what we imagine about other people or what we imagine ourselves to be. No, I don't think any of them tell us to stop our daydreaming, but it's a good reminder to temper those dreams with an occasional dose of reality. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimpkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Miles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Joe Plourd. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Dierdorf 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. Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent.
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Meg Wolitzer
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