Andrew Sean Greer (2:45)

I am delighted to be here because I bought this suit in February 2020, and I thought, I'm gonna be in New York all the time. It's gonna be great. So it's its first outing and I'm so pleased to show it to you and that it still fits. My good news is that storytelling in America is as vibrant as ever. The difficulties we've all lived through and are still living through. The suits we bought and didn't wear have not squashed writers into cliched old tropes. They've unleashed them, which is exactly what we need. We need new ways of looking at the world because our old ways have betrayed us, as they always do. And that's why we need this anthology every year. And I should say something else I didn't write down here, which is that I knew when I was choosing these stories that if I chose someone, it might change their life. Not because they could buy a brownstone or that it meant their story would be published. It's just that I think all of us sit there, writers, and we think, am I any good? And you never know. Even if a book comes out and it's sold and people read it, you don't know, you don't hear from the world. And I think this collection is away from hearing from the world that you are good. And I think that's invaluable.

Johanca Delgado (4:11)

That was Andrew Sean Grier, editor of the 2022 Best American Short Story collection. As a writer, I can tell you that validation can be a boost, so it was great that I got the chance to offer some when I myself edited Best American back in 2017. My favorite aspect of being the guest editor that year was reading all the stories over the months leading up to the actual decision making. When you see that much seriously good fiction arrayed all around you in your home, covering every tabletop and in some cases, every inch of floor space, becoming your temporary decor. Let's call it early 21st century literate modern. You feel a bit overstimulated, but also kind of hopeful about the world, at least the inner worlds of writers you know and love and those whose work is new to you. Making final choices about what goes into the anthology can be a hazy process at first, but after a while, at least in my case, I could see the whole volume and a rhythm set in as I started leafing rapidly through piles, trying to find a particular story that had stayed with me throughout the whole journey for its originality, its strangeness, its radiant language, or maybe all of the above. The stories that lay in drifts around my apartment were all different from one another. But like the stories in any of the best American series, they all ended up belonging together. Our first piece, the Little Widow from the Capitol, is by author Johanca Delgado. She's a National Endowment for the Arts fellow whose fiction has been published in one story and whose essays have appeared in venues including the New York Times Magazine. While this piece might be considered magical realism, it's about an awful lot immigration, chauvinism, gossip, revisionism, compassion, and more. It was performed by the multi talented Christina Alabado, who is featured on Broadway in shows including Mean Girls and in films such as Better Nate Than Ever. Now Christina Alabado reads the Little Widow from the Capitol By Johanca Delgado.

Meg Wolitzer (6:16)

The little Widow from the capital the widow arrived at LaGuardia on a Sunday, but the rumors about the woman who had rented a big apartment sight unseen, had taken an earlier flight. We had already reviewed on many occasions, and in hushed tones, in the quiet that comes after long hours of visiting what little we knew about the widow and her dead husband, about her life in the old country, we asked the obvious questions. Were there children? Cheryl heard from a friend who still lived in the Dominican Republic that they had only been married a year when he died. Had her husband been rich? No, our sources in the old country said poor as a church mouse with a big family to support out in El Campo. Had the husband been handsome? Yes, in a rackish sort of way, and with what we knew, we created him in our minds, medium height with a mop of curly hair and an easy laugh, walking down Sanoa beach in a white linen guayabera, dropping suddenly to one knee, we ourselves felt a flutter in our hearts. On the day the widow finally arrived in New York, the rain came in fast, heavy drops that sounded like tiny birds slamming into our windows. She emerged from the taxi with a single battered suitcase and little girl, small, stared up at our building as the rain pelted her face behind us. Our men and children called out for their dinners, but we ignored them. We would wonder later if she had seen our faces pressed up against the windows on all six floors, peering out over flower pots full of barren dirt. We watched her until she made her way out of the rain and into the lobby. Those of us lucky enough to live on the fourth floor squinted through our peepholes or cracked open our doors as the super carried her suitcase to the three bedroom apartment she was renting. How could she afford it? The little widow walked behind the super, her gait slow and steady on the black and white tiles of the hallway. He was rambling about garbage pickup and the rent. She was younger than we expected her to be. 30 maybe. The amber outfit was all wrong for the chilly autumn weather. She was from Santo Domingo, but she looked like a campesina visiting the city for the first time, everything hand sewn and outdated by decades. She wore an old fashioned skirt suit tailored and nipped at her round waist, and a pair of low heeled black leather pumps. Seeing them made us glance down at our own scuffed sneakers and leggings. On her head she wore a pillbox hat in matching yellow wool, sculpted butter smooth. She dressed her short, plump body as though she adored it. Instantly we took a dislike. We ourselves had been raised on a diet of telenovelas and American magazines, and we knew what beauty was. We gathered after dinner to laugh at her peculiar clothes. We murmured with fake sympathy about her loneliness and joked that she might turn our husband's heads. When we ran into her, though, we smiled and asked her how she was finding New York. We began to invent stories about the little widow's life, torrid affairs that had driven her husband to die of heartbreak, a refusal to give him children, a penchant for hoarding money. We repeated the tales until we half believed them. The drama of the little widow's previous life became richer and denser like a thicket of fast growing ivy. Who did she think she was anyway, living alone in that big apartment? The little widow seemed to understand what we expected of her. She murmured only quiet thank yous when we held the door open as she struggled with her groceries, or when we helped her up after she slipped on a patch of ice in front of the building and landed flat on her back. As briskly as she could, she composed herself and disappeared, her head bowed low into the collar of her quaint amber coat. When we heard that the little widow could sew, we started bringing her dresses and pants to him, mostly because we wanted to know how she lived. The little widow's three bedroom apartment was laid out like the others, but as she worked, our eyes darted hungrily between her and the contents of her sewing room. Her hair was curly, dyed reddish brown, and cut short around a pointed chin. When we got to see her up close, we noted that though she did have deep creases at the corner of her eyes, she did not have a widow's peak. Her eyes were a dark hazel and her pupils so small they looked like pinpricks. The little widow had wallpapered her sewing room with a cheap burlap when one of Us slipped a fingernail underneath a panel and discovered that the rough cloth was glued on. We crossed ourselves and said a quick prayer for the little widow's security deposit. On that burlap, the little widow had embroidered massive swaying palm trees so finely detailed that we could almost feel a salty breeze warm our faces as we stood on her tailor's pedestal, running our fingertips across the embroidered walls, we could feel the braille of her labor. The grains of sand were individually stitched as if the little widow knew each one. The ocean seemed to ripple and surge as the little widow worked around us in meditative silence, kneeling near our ankles with pins between her lips. She was so gentle and fluid in her movements, her soft skin creasing like a plump baby's around the pin cushion she wore on her wrist. We liked her in those moments, but even so we didn't invite her to our birthday parties or gatherings. At Christmas, though we knew she was alone in that large apartment, watching the passing of the seasons just as we did through black barred windows. We imagined she would soon have to take a subletter to make ends meet. We mentioned that a cousin was coming to work at a coffee filter factory and needed a place to live. She didn't have a lot of money yet, we explained, but she would be able to pay back rent on a room when she started collecting paychecks and and that could be a good source of extra income. The little widow tilted her head to one side and appeared to think about it. She said yes, and Lucy, a single girl from Yi Wei, moved into the little widow's spare bedroom. The goodwill the little widow won among us was short lived. On a visit to get a skirt hemmed, Sonia asked to use the restroom and snuck into the little widow's bedroom. Like the wall of her sewing room, the wall across from her bed was covered with burlap, and on that canvas the little widow had hand stitched tidy rows of lime dolls. The faceless dolls looked just like the clay figurines tourists bought as souvenirs. They varied in hair and clothing. Some wore their hair in a single thick plate draped down the side of their necks, and some wore it down around their shoulders. Their dresses were every color of the rainbow, and some wore Sunday hats and carried baskets of flowers. But rendered in the little widow's hand, these familiar dolls looked on an eerie quality. Sonia studied the wall for a long time and became convinced that the dolls represented us. She took a picture and texted it to the group. We looked at the faceless dolls with their caramel skin and their ink black hair styled into bouffants and braids and pigtails. And then we looked at each other with our jeans and winter boots and blonde highlights. The resemblances are uncanny, we said. And so a rumor spread that the little widow was a witch come from Santo Domingo to ensorcel us and steal our husbands. We rummaged in our drawers for our old evil eye bracelets. We started going to the dry cleaners down on Broadway to get our clothes hemmed. When we ran into the little widow in the hall, she smiled at us sadly but said nothing. To this day we do not know how Andres and the little widow met, but the rumor is that it happened through mutual relations from the capital. Unlike the little widow, Andres was a New Yorker born and bred, and he spoke in a brambly chaotic Spanish that she seemed to find charming. On their first date, the little widow wore a silk slip dress hand embroidered with small delicate birds. He wore a blazer, jeans and dress shoes. They stayed out until 2 in the morning, and when they came home we heard her laugh ringing in the halls, a lovely alien sound. The next day he delivered to her a bouquet of radiant limp necked sunflowers. She arranged them in a giant vase by the window in her sewing room. Then, in the weeks that followed, he could be heard in the small hours of the morning serenading her on his guitar. He wrote her poetry, and according to Gladys, who took to pressing a glass against the wall she shared with the little widow. It wasn't half bad. He was about 30, like the little widow, but unlike her, he wore his age gaily. He was boyish and relaxed, and we often spied him leaning on doors and smoking cigarettes near near the trash cans. He kept his hair cut in a neat fade that he refreshed Every two weeks. He used the creaky metal ladder on the fire escape to do pull ups until the super told him to stop. We decided that we liked him, tsked that he was too good for the little widow with her opaque melancholy and insufferable pride. It is said that he proposed to her right in her sewing room. Ugh. Relieved that she was finally on the right track, heading toward a life we understood, we flocked in a squealing air kissing mob to her apartment to admire the ring, a small round diamond on a simple gold band. The way she wore it made it look like something Elizabeth Taylor would have been proud to own. There was a new lightness in the little widow that we like to see in spite of ourselves. She smiled often, sometimes for no Apparent reason, and it was strange, unfamiliar smile that made us think of sunlight bursting through a cloud choked sky. The wedding was set for the following month and the weeks flitted by. Lucy told us the little widow was hard at at work on a wedding dress and that she mooned around the house, dreamy, distracted and in love. It all fell apart as quickly as it had come together. Five days before the wedding, Lucy woke up in the middle of the night to find Andres standing at the foot of her bed. He had come in with the little widow's key, he said, and and he had come in to see her. Lucy leaped up and, assuming he was drunk, tried to walk him back to the door. But he refused to go and instead pinned her against the wall, which the little widow had recently embroidered with sunflowers. Now, scared in earnest, Lucy screamed and shoved him to the floor. The little widow appeared quickly and without sound, like a ghost. She had been working. She had a needle pressed between her lips and one lip was bleeding. She looked from Andres to Lucy and understood everything. Without a word, the little widow took Lucy by the hand and led her into her own bedroom until Andres was gone, and then she deadbolted them into the apartment for safety. The little widow kept vigil by Lucy's bed until she fell asleep and then locked herself in her own room. For two days the little widow didn't speak or eat or sleep. She subsisted on a nightly glass of morir sognano, which she drank to appease Lucy. The girl blamed herself for everything and thought it was a small penance to squeeze the orange juice for the little widow's drink. Because we didn't know yet that the little widow was rich, we assumed Andres returned two nights later because he loved her. Florencia spotted him from her window on the first floor and it only took a few minutes on the phone to spread the news. By the time he was at the little widow's door, we all hovered at ours, swatting away needy children and chatty husbands. On every floor we cracked our doors. His pleas reverberated through the tiled hallways, filling even the central stairwell. Our hungry ears consumed every sound. The wet, racking sobs, the thud of his knees dropping onto her welcome mat, the wailing against the hard wood of the little widow's door. He was sorry, he insisted it hadn't meant anything. Who was Lucy to him? After nearly an hour, it seemed to us that he planned to spend the night there, performing this noisy contrition. Then the little widow flung open her door with a whip sharp Bang. That sent an echo all the way down to the first floor. What? She said, her voice a small, cold blow. Do you think is going to happen next? All through the building, our ears pricked up. You're the love of my life, he moaned. Cheryl, watching from her apartment across the hall, could attest to the fact that he was still, at this point, on his knees. And are you mine? The little widow crossed her arms over her chest. She wore a silk dressing gown embroidered with human hearts the size of silver dollars. Yes, yes. He cried, pressing his face to her bare feet. The little widow stepped back to free her feet and then stepped around him out into the hallway. Let these busybodies witness, she said, and now we could see that her eyes were red and her curls ravaged by nights of insomnia. Andres hobbled after her on his knees, making mournful sounds. Let these chismosas be my witnesses, she said again, waving her hand and locking eyes with Cheryl, who later told us that she had nearly died of shame. If you bother me again, you will not live to tell about it. Andres clasped his hands together in a prayer motion and mutely held them up to her. The little widow looked at him as if he were a turd on the sidewalk. She shoved him aside, walked back to her door. You heard me, she said, one hand on her doorknob. Not a single knock. She closed the door and left Andres to gather himself off the floor and wipe the snot from his face. We thought we'd never seen a man renounce his dignity quite so definitively, and that realization seemed to hit him at the same time. Grimacing, he wiped his mouth and cursed under his breath. He kicked the door as hard as he could once, twice. You think you can control me? He said. I'll show you control. And Lucy, too. He slammed the heel of his hand on the door, only Cheryl, who slowly and silently slipped the chain lock back into place, all while holding her door ajar and keeping one eye firmly on Andres, can describe what happened next, and only you can decide if you believe it. Andres raised his arm again, and as he drew it back for another blow, it froze. The arm appeared to be stuck to his head, as if glued there, his back still to Cheryl. Andres shook himself and tried to use his other hand to pry it loose, but that one became attached too, and then it looked like he was holding his hands to his head, the way men do when their baseball team is losing. He began to make a frantic humming sound when he turned to Cheryl with the purest, most desperate panic she had ever seen blazing in his eyes. She discovered that his lips had been sewn shut with large, sloppy stitches. He dropped to his knees with a grunt and then bent in half at the waist. He kept folding in on himself, over and over, becoming smaller and smaller, his moans of distress more and more distant until he was just a small scrap of cream fabric that fluttered to the floor in front of apartment 4E. No one knocked on the little widow's door after that. Three days passed in shallow breaths in our apartments, huddled together over coffee, we discussed what we knew and filled in what we didn't. We imagined the little widow, dead eyed and small in her cavernous apartment, punching a threaded needle through cloth until she folded the entire building in on itself, apartment after apartment, life after life collapsing together until she could tuck it all into her little silk coin purse and carry us away forever inside her handbag. We pretended we were innocent. Weren't we? Like an old fan just moving the air around, we tipped over our coffee cups and saw in our fortunes an angry darkness that threatened to swallow us. And hadn't we sensed it from the beginning? For the first time, it occurred to us to call our families the ones back in the old country, to find out the full story. We pooled our facts together. We knew the story people liked to tell, but now we were detectives. We dug deeper and asked our distant aunts to ask their cousins what they knew and were stunned at how shallowly buried the truth was. The little widow had married for love right out of high school, to a man who was primarily interested in her family's money but liked her well enough besides. When the new couple said they wanted to move from the capital to the beach, her parents bought them a big sprawling house on the coast near Bavaro and hired three live in servants to work there. And the little widow was happy. She loved the beach. It was said that she went swimming twice a day, that she walked up and down the shore as if she wanted to memorize every gull, every seashell, every grain of sand. It was at this time that the little widow began to embroider seascapes and mermaids, her head bent low over her needle and hoop. But middling affection does not a good man make. The husband began to throw his weight around the house, speaking cruelly to the servants, punching walls, breaking things. The little widow miscarried their first child under mysterious circumstances and mourned the loss in private. She focused more than ever on her work. Sometimes the light in her sewing room burned through the night. Less than a year later, A servant filed a police report against the husband, saying that he had forced himself on her and that she had become pregnant. The husband's proximity to the little widow's influential family allowed him to avoid serious charges, but he did not live to see another year. The servant's husband shot him point blank as he walked down the beach near the house. The little widow's parents swiftly stepped in at their daughter's request, to scatter the tragedies of the story in the wind. They paid the hefty bribes required to free the servant's husband and sold the beach house to American tourists. The little widow quietly went away. Her wedding to Andres had been scheduled to take place at Our lady of Lourdes, the crumbling, majestic old church we attended, and on that day we dressed for Sunday mass. Someone's mother in law in Queens said she spotted someone who looked like Andres slinking out of a bodega, but who could be sure? The tiny scrap of cream fabric had long since disappeared in the building's hustle and bustle. We knew for certain that the wedding was canceled, but for reasons we still can't explain, we sent our husbands and kids ahead to Sunday school and lingered in the building. The wedding had been scheduled for four in the afternoon, and when the time came we opened our doors and, like little cuckoos from their clocks, stepped out of our apartments and crowded into the narrow fourth floor hallway. By then we knew her name and we started calling it in unison. Lucy came out first, dressed in sweatpants and looking like a rung out dishcloth. When we asked her if the little widow had spoken to her, she shook her head sadly. A thud inside, the sound of footsteps and our murmurs dissipated into a tense silence. When the little widow opened her door, she wore an enormous white silk wedding dress. On her head. She had crowned herself with a ring of white silk flowers embroidered with red drops of blood, delicate as anything we'd ever seen. Her face seemed younger than we remembered, though her under eyes were bruised blue from lack of sleep. She maneuvered the seemingly boundless skirts of her dress through the tight door frame and began making her way to the elevator. With a gasp. We parted like a sea to let her pass. At least six feet of heavy layered skirt, embroidered to the last inch with small, careful cursive letters, trailed behind her. Unfamiliar yet familiar names were scattered densely across the silk like polka dots. Women's names from the old country, the Dominican Y's, the florid, delirious layering of syllables. We knew our people. We did not recognize these specific names and we did not dare ask anything of the little widow. Instead, and without thinking, we formed two lines and picked up the train of the dress to keep it from getting soiled. As the little widow walked slowly down the long corridor with her head bowed and her hands clasped mutely, we helped her enter the elevator, passing her, the skirts which foamed up around her, rising well past her shoulders. As the heavy door slid closed, she gave us the broken hearted smile we had come to recognize.

Maya Dillon (31:50)

Up.

Meg Wolitzer (31:51)

We half whispered, half barked. After pressing our ears to the door, we ran towards the stairs, taking them two at a time to keep up with the old elevator, jostling one another at each landing until we saw that the little widow was going up to the roof. She walked out onto the silver painted cement with us trailing behind her. The air was cold, but we hardly noticed. We elbowed each other and pushed to get close enough to see her without touching her. Though when one of us shoved through and blurted, don't jump, Violita, don't do it, she spoke for all of us. The little widow turned to look at us like a somnambulist, shaken, brutally awake. Then, before anyone had a chance to stop her, she sprinted across the silver roof, clutching her frothing skirts to her sides. She climbed onto the ledge and we saw, or thought we saw the cream soles of her naked feet. She turned to face us. Behind her, the sun had begun its plunge to earth, the sky ripe mango orange behind needle sharp skyscrapers. The little widow's dress lathered all around her, making her look 10ft tall. Why hadn't we seen before how beautiful she was? The little widow's eyes shone. It was as if she were recognizing us, each of us across a crowded room, afraid to approach. We formed a semicircle around her, willing her to stay for a long moment. We were mesmerized, frozen where we stood in our regret, when we came to our senses and reached for her, surging forward together to grab hold of her dress, at least to keep her from falling the seven stories to the street below. We didn't move fast enough. She took up her dress again, great big fistfuls of it, and with her back to the sky, let herself fall. The whine of a car alarm below halted our hearts. We rushed to the edge and peered over. And what we saw. How to even describe it? The dress dissolved into a thousand pigeons and they filled the space between our building and the next with brown and gray and white, with the sound of wings flapping. The air was thick with the feathery thrum of their wings as they flew away in different directions, towards downtown, toward the river, toward the Bronx, and skyward toward heaven. The little widow was gone. All we had left as we huddled together for warmth on that silver roof and watched the sky deepen to the bruised plum of Manhattan night, was the story. And so we told it again and again and again until we had stitched the details into our memory. We carried the story back to the patios of Santo Domingo, where we sat at dusk with the yellow light of our old family homes behind us, listening to the crickets and the slow creak of our wicker rocking chairs, and told the tale again. Except this time it ended like this in some far flung town, maybe here in the old country, maybe back in the new. The little widow appeared with a small suitcase in hand. Here our eyes brightened and we leaned forward. This time she arrived without fanfare, we said, and her neighbors liked her right away. The little widow wore an amber colored dress, hand sewn, perhaps a little older than we remembered, but still recognizable with her full cheeks and shiny curls. She signed a lease for a house by the beach. She was already picturing the magic she would create on these new walls, and we, too thrilled to imagine it.

Johanca Delgado (36:29)

That was Johanca Delgado's the Little Widow from the Capitol, read by Christina Alabado. I'm Meg Wolitzer. This is fine storytelling with strong use of the we voice, which hypnotically and critically introduces our title character. The use of the we voice is really interesting here in part because it's a critical voice, observing and judging the title character and drawing us into that judgment. But then the actual storytelling becomes bigger than the voice and it expands, it opens outward, flowers unpredictably, until that knockout ending. Here's Best American Short Story's guest editor for 2022, Andrew Shawn Greer, talking about why he chose her story for Best American and confessing a secret too.

Andrew Sean Greer (37:13)

I was teaching at Stanford in the spring and I taught a short story writing section, and I have to say this was one of their favorite stories, the students. And they're super fussy students who are not here tonight. They loved it for the same reason I love it. The energy of expression, the fascinating point of view, and the extraordinary that is taken for granted is ordinary. It inspired my students into far more imaginative writing. Delgado gave them the license to play, which is really what every writer needs.

Johanca Delgado (37:47)

That was Andrew Sean Grier on stage at Symphony Space. When we return, wild plums will set you free. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.

Meg Wolitzer (38:02)

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Maya Dillon (38:05)

Amazing.

Meg Wolitzer (38:06)

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Andrew Sean Greer (38:09)

They dramatically reduce redness in one minute.

Meg Wolitzer (38:12)

I love how my eyes look whiter.

Christina Alabado (38:14)

And brighter and it lasts for up to eight hours.

Andrew Sean Greer (38:17)

They make my eyes look refreshed.

Meg Wolitzer (38:18)

Lumify it's kind of amazing.

Christina Alabado (38:21)

It was love at first sight with Lumify. Try it for yourself.

Meg Wolitzer (38:26)

Learn more@lumify eyes.com.

Christina Alabado (38:33)

This is what you do when you have high standards and fancy all the fancy things like a Dior saddlebag or that diamond tennis bracelet. You go to ebay. There you'll find new loves that will never disappoint. Expertly authenticated. Whether it's that vintage pearl necklace or brand new ruby earrings, a Prada crossbody bag, or classic watches like that Rolex Oyster or that Cartier tank, on ebay, there are no limits to your high standards. Yeah, ebay the place for new, pre loved vintage and rare fashion. Ebay Things people love.

Johanca Delgado (39:21)

Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. This show is dedicated to the Best American Short Stories series. We hope these best of compilations do for you what they do for us. Excite us about all manner of stories. And there's a lot more@pledshorts.org there you can stream all of our current episodes, subscribe to the podcast and hear more stories from Best American on our sister podcast, Too Hot for Radio. You already know Selected Shorts is a radio show and podcast, but did you know it starts with a real live show? Join us at Symphony Space in New York City, on tour across the country or as part of our livestream audience. As an audience member, you will be part of what makes Selected Shorts, broadcasts and Podcasts so special, and you can listen to your favorite stories again on your local public radio station or on our podcast. To find out more about where to be part of the action, visit selectedshorts.org Our second story celebrating the long tradition of Best American Short Stories anthology is Wild Plums by Grace Stone Coates. Coates was born in 1881 and lived most of her life in the small town of Martinsdale, Montana, where she taught school, helped found a local magazine, and worked with the local WPA Project during the Depression. She was a prolific writer of short stories and poems, and her books include Black Cherries and Mead and Mangel Wurzel. This story, Wild Plums, was chosen by the late John Updike as one of the best American short stories of the century. For that 1999 volume, it reflects Coates's small world, but in her deft hands it's a miracle of oblique economy. She captures rural social snobbery, the architecture of a sad marriage, budding feminism and a small but important rite of passage in a story seemingly about nothing more than a treat offered and rejected. How does a writer do it? How did she do it? Until this week, I'd never heard of Grace Stonecoats, who died in 1976. But now I want to go out and pluck up more of her work. I know I'll savor it. Our reader is Maya Dillon. Her theater credits include Crimes of the Heart and Three Sisters on television. Like many of our readers, she did time on the Law and Order franchise and was also featured on the Money Pit and Gods and Generals, among other shows. Here's Maya Dillon reading Wild Plums by Grace Stone Coates.

Maya Dillon (42:09)

Wild plums I knew about wild plums twice before I tasted any. The first time was when the Sunday school women were going plumbing. Father hunched his shoulders and laughed without making any sound. He said wild plums were small and inferior and told us of fruits he had eaten in Italy. Mother and Father were surprised that Mrs. Guare and the schoolteacher would go with Mrs. Smith to gather plums. I knew it was not nice to go plumbing, but I didn't know why I wanted to go once, so that I would understand. The women stopped at the house to invite Mother. She explained that we did not care for wild plums, but Father said we feared to taste the sacred seed, lest we be constrained to dwell forever in the nether regions. Mrs. Slump said, huh? You don't eat the pits, you spit them out, And Father hunched his shoulders and laughed the noiseless laugh that bothered Mother. When Father talked to people he didn't like, he sorted his words and used only the smooth, best ones. Mother explained to me it was because he had spoken only German when he was little. After the women had gone, Mother and Father quarreled. They spoke low so I would not hear them. Just before Mother sent me out to play. She said that even wild plums might give savor to the dry bread of monotony. The second time I knew about plums was at Mrs. Slump's house when she was making plum butter. She said she couldn't ask us in because the floor was dirty from stirring jam. The Slumps didn't use chairs they had boxes to sit on, and the children sat on the floor with the dogs. They were the only people I knew who had hounds. I wanted to go in. We never had visited them. We were at their house now because Father needed to take home a plow they had borrowed. Father didn't like to have his machinery stand outdoors. He had a shed where he kept plows when he was not using them. But the Slumps left theirs where they unhitched. Mrs. Slump was standing in the door with her back toward us when we drove up. She was fat and wore wrappers. Her wrapper was torn down the back. Mr. Slump came out and Father talked to him. He was tall and lean. Mrs. Slump came and stood by the buggy, too. Mother and Father sat on the front seat of the buggy and Teressa and I on the back seat. Teressa was older than I and had longer legs. When she stretched her feet straight out, she could touch the front seat with her toes and I couldn't. She bumped the seat behind Mother and Mother turned around and told her to stop. My feet didn't touch Father's seat, so I wasn't doing anything and didn't have to stop it. Teresa pinched me. I climbed out of the buggy without asking if I might. Theresa started to tell Mother I was getting out but waited to see what I intended to do. I was going to walk around behind Mrs. Slump. She had no stockings on, and the Sunday school women said she didn't wear underclothes. I wanted to see if this was so. Mother called me back. Sometimes Mother knew what I was thinking without asking me. She took hold of my arm hard as I climbed onto the buggy step and said under her breath, I'd be ashamed. I'd be ashamed. Her face was twisted because she tried not to stop smiling at Mrs. Slump while she shook my arm. I kept trying to explain, but she wouldn't let me. Her stopping me made me want to say the thing. She thought I was going to, but I didn't dare. Mr. Slump said he would bring the plow back in the morning. Father wanted to take it home himself then, but Mr. Slump said he wouldn't hear to it, being as how he had borrowed it and all. He would bring it behind the lumber wagon the next day and leave it in the road. They were going after more plums and we'd be passing the house anyway. The next morning after breakfast, Father, Mother, and I were in the kitchen. Teresa had scraped the plates and gone to feed the chickens. She did not like to sit still while people talked. She liked to do things that made her move around Mother and Father were talking and I was looking out of the window. If I looked at the sun and then away, it made enormous morning glories float over the yard. Father had told me they were in my eyes and not in the air, so I didn't call him to look at them. While I was watching them, Clubby Slump came up the lane in the middle of a lavender one. Clubby was bigger than I and stupider. When anyone spoke to him, he stood with his mouth open and didn't answer. His hair needed combing and he didn't use a handkerchief. Mother said good morning to him. He pointed to a wagon at the end of the lane. He said, plums, and ran back down the path. Mother and Father started toward the road and I went ahead of them. The wagon had stopped at the foot of the Cottonwood Lane. Mr. Slump sat on the high board seat holding the reins. Mrs. Slump was beside him with the baby on her lap. Liney Slump was between them. On the seat behind were Mrs. Guare and two women I didn't know. The rest of the wagon was full of children. Mr. Slump had forgotten the plow. All you in's pile in. Mrs. Slump called to us. We're going plumbing on the Niniskaw and stay all night. The young un's can go wading. There ain't no work driving you this time of year, so just pile in. We got bedding for everybody. Mr. Slump sat looking at the horse's ears. Whenever Mrs. Slump stopped talking, he would say, I told you they all wouldn't go. But you would stop and Mrs. Slump would answer, There now, Pa, you hush. I had not known one could live so long without breathing as I lived. While Mrs. Slump was asking us to go, I could see my heartbeat shaking my collar, a lace collar that was hanging by one end down my chest. I had forgotten to put it on right. I waited for Mother to lift her foot and plant it on the wagon hub, ready for piling in, for Father to take her elbow and lift. Everyone would laugh a little and talk loud. They always did when women got into wagons. I had never seen Mother climb into a wagon, but I knew how it would be. I wondered if Father would jump in without tossing me up first. Father got into wagons quick, without laughing or joking. I wondered if he would forget me. The children would see me and lean over the end board and dangle me up by one arm. I thought frantically of Teresa. Then Father was speaking and my breath came back. He was saying, if you happen on a plum thicket an outcome Highly unlikely. You still face the uncertainty of finding plums. The season has been too dry, and should you find them, they will prove acrid and unfit for human consumption. My collar hung limp and motionless. My heart was dead. Father was spoiling things again. Mrs. Slump said, they make fine gel, and Mr. Slump repeated, I told you they all wouldn't go, but you would stop. He was gathering up the lines. I hated to see Mother's face feeling the stricken look it would have, but I knew I must smile at her, not to care. Strangely enough, she had a polite look on her face. It was the look that made my fingers think of glass. My mind slipped off from it without knowing what it meant. She was smiling. Really, it isn't possible for us to go with you today, she said. It was kind of you to ask us. I hope you will have a lovely outing and find lots of plums. As she spoke, she glanced at me. She moved closer and took my hand. Mrs. Slump looked down at me, too, and said, can't the kid go? Kids like being out. Mother's hand closed firmly on mine. I'm afraid not without me. Besides, with a severe look at my collar, she isn't properly dressed. Oh, we can wait while she takes off that Purdy dress, Mrs. Slump suggested comfortably. But Mother flushed and shook her head. Mr. Slump was twitching at the lines and clucking to the horses. His last I told you was drowned and shouted goodbyes, and the wagon clattered down the road. Mother walked back to the house, still holding my hand. Once inside, she turned me. Would you really have gone with those? She hesitated and finished with those persons. They were going to sleep outdoors all night, I said. Mother shuddered. Would you have gone with them? Mrs. Guare was with them. I parried, knowing all she did not say. Would you have gone? Yes. She stood for a long time, looking out of the window at the prairie horizon, then then searched my face curiously. It might have been as well, she said. It might be as well. And turning, she began to clear the breakfast table. The next day I played in the road. Usually I spent the afternoons under the box elder trees or by the ditch behind the machine sheds where dragonflies and pale blue moths circled just out of reach. But this day I spent beside the road. Mother called me to the house to bring cobs and called me again to gather eggs. In the middle of the afternoon she called me a third time. Her face looked uncomfortable. She said, if the Slumps go by, do not ask them for any plums. Mother knew I would not ask if they offer any do not take them. What shall I say? Say we do not care for them. If they make me take them, refuse them. When the Slumps came in sight, the horses were walking. The Niniskaw was 15 miles away, and the team was tired. I thought I could talk to the children as the wagon passed, but just before it reached me, Mr. Slump hit the horses twice with a willow branch. They trotted and the wagon rattled by. The children on the last seat were facing toward me. They laughed and waved their arms. Clubby leaned backward and caught up a handful of plums. The wagon bed must have been half filled. He flung them toward me, and then another handful. They fell, scattering in the thick dust which curled around them in little eddies, almost hiding them before I could catch them up. The plums were small and red. They felt warm to my fingers. I wiped them on the front of my dress and dropped them in my apron. I waited only for one secret. Right before I ran, heart pounding, to tell my mother what I had discovered. She interrupted me. Did they see you picking them up? I thought of myself standing like Clubby Slump, mouth open without moving. I laughed till two plums rolled out of my apron. Oh, yes. I had them picked up almost before the dust stopped wriggling. I called, thank you. Still, Mother was not pleased. Throw them away, she said. Surely you would not care to eat something flung to you in the road. It was hard to speak. I moved close to her and whispered, can't I keep them? Mother left the room. It seemed long before she came back. She put her arm around me and said, take them to the pump and wash them thoroughly. Eat them slowly and do not swallow the skins. You will not want many of them, for you will find them bitter and not fit to eat. I went out quietly, knowing I would never tell her that they were strange on my tongue as wild honey, holding the warmth of sand that sun had fingered and the mystery of water under leaning boughs. For I had eaten one at the road.

Johanca Delgado (56:13)

That was Maya Dillon performing Wild Plums by Grace Stone Coates, featured in the Best American Short Stories of the Century. As this hour winds down, we thought we'd give the mic back to Andrew Shawn Grier one more time. He summed up the value of the best American short stories collection from the stage at Symphony Space.

Andrew Sean Greer (56:32)

There is something I tell my students all the time, which is that one time they're going to turn in a story, and it's going to be about a marriage that's vaguely falling apart for reasons that are not clear. And then at the end of the story, there's going to be something like a mermaid, and the whole class will say, cut the mermaid, and it'll be great. And my advice is don't do that, because if you cut the mermaid, you have a story about a marriage vaguely falling apart. And we actually don't need very many more of those. And what you have to do is you have to commit to the mermaid and change the whole rest of the story, because then we have a story with a freaking mermaid in it. And I think I could use a ton of those. And actually, that's what these are. They're all stories with freaking mermaids in them, meaning some literally. Actually, there's one that has a mermaid most figuratively in the sense that they're stories where the author does something that I'd never seen before. They tell it out of order, or they tell it from an unusual point of view or from far in the future, or pretending something magical is perfectly ordinary, something, honestly, something that made me want to sit down and write a story.

Johanca Delgado (57:41)

That was Andrew Sean Grier of Best American Short Stories 2022. You never know when you're writing a story whether anyone is going to consider it best or whether you yourself will think it's half decent. But the outcome is different from the initial desire to write, which can feel like a longing or even like wanting to scratch, a sort of metaphorical itch. You're on a mission to search for the right words, the right feeling, but unfortunately, you can't have someone else do the scratching for you. Unless you're, I don't know, Prince Harry and you hire that great ghostwriter to make everything sound really good. Writing a story involves the resolution of a feeling, a problem, a question, one that's unique to you in that moment. So most people really need to do our own scratching and to keep doing it until we get it right, which is not the case, weirdly with tickling oneself, which is simply impossible to do right now. That is a weird fact. Which is perhaps best left for another far funnier episode of our show. Until then, 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 Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward and Magdalene Wrobleski. 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 Dennis Jacobson. 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 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.