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Selected Shorts
Better with You?
00:59:32
On this Selected Shorts, host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about the risks and rewards of making things “better.” In Kim Fu’s “Fair,” a Selected Shorts commission, a woman’s envy of her neighbors takes a dramatic turn. The reader is Julie Benko. In Kristen Iskandrian’s “Quantum Voicemail,” a long-distance friendship is tested by a bold move. The reader is Lauren Ambrose.
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- [00:02]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:22]
Meg Wolitzer
T Mobile has the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by Ookla of speed test intelligence data 1H2025CT.
- [00:28]
Narrator/Reader
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- [00:47]
Meg Wolitzer
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- [00:55]
Narrator/Reader
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- [00:56]
Meg Wolitzer
Com Commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC Even if our lives are basically okay, it's human nature to imagine how they might be better. We might covet someone else's happiness or possessions, but would your life be better or worse if a friend decides to explode the perfect long distance relationship on this week's Selected Shorts, we encounter that tricky concept better in two very different types of relationships. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay with me. You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Humans are aspirational by nature. We reach upward, outward, and sometimes inward, chasing ideals that often contradict each other. We want companionship, the warmth of being seen and understood. Yet we also crave solitude, a kind that's quiet enough to hear ourselves think. We seek status, the validation that we matter in the eyes of others. We want love, yes, but love on our terms. Not messy, not inconvenient, not something that asks too much of us until we discover that the real thing always does. And even when we do get what we thought we wanted, when the job comes through, the relationship holds. The plan goes right. Why does it so rarely feel like the dream we imagined when social media first arrived on the scene? We all had a chance to see what had become of the people we hadn't seen in years or even decades. Which also meant we had a chance to compare ourselves with them, the way we lived versus the way they did, our success, or lack of it versus theirs. And maybe nostalgia clicked in and we considered renewing the relationship, taking the leap and getting together in real life, or even just starting a meaningful conversation, just like the old days. And that could sometimes beg a deeper question. Could we still matter in each other's lives? Or was it way too late for that? And all that was left was to like a picture of an occasional family vacation or kids graduation, and once in a while to offer up a heart emoji. Or if we were feeling really effusive, three heart emojis and a little trumpet. Every time we're faced with the past, we need to consider how it might or might not fit into the future. The two stories on this program explore the idea of our need to shape our own lives in very different ways. In one, a woman snatches something from someone else's life, and in the other, a trusty ritual is discarded with surprising results. Our first story Fair is by Kim Fu. Fu is the author of two novels, a collection of poetry, and most recently a story collection with the intriguing title Lesser Known monsters of the 21st century. Fair was a selected shorts commission, and reading it is Julie Benko, a prolific artist in all mediums. She's a playwright, filmmaker, and musician, but perhaps best known for her breakout role as Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of Funny Girl. Here's Benko reading Fair by Kim Fu.
- [04:32]
Narrator/Reader
Fair.
- [04:35]
Julie Benko
They were beautiful. That was the first unfairness. They lived in the only single family home on the block, which had a wide front yard with a low fence such that Jo had no choice but to stare down into it when she sat on her balcony. A stately oak tree shaded the south side of the lawn where they'd hung bird feeders and lanterns for the summer. Joe's balcony was the size of a small desk, a wooden platform with a metal rail that sagged off the front of the building like a hangnail ready to be torn free. A young couple, their young daughter, and a sable colored dog with a drape of white fur about its neck, all four of them beautiful. All four, including the dog, had thick, lustrous hair that gleamed in the sunlight. They appeared in the yard in various combinations throughout the day and all together in the evenings, eating dinner at a picnic table set up near the tree. A citronella candle burned by the mother's feet in a glossy red metal bucket. Joe envied them equally, depending on the day. She longed to be the husband, to wrap her arms around his wife as they squeezed together in a single Adirondack chair. She longed to be the child, safe and naive enough to fall asleep in the grass on a hot night, knowing she'll be carried to bed. She longed to be the wife, have the husband bring her a milky coffee on a rare cool morning, to be kissed tenderly on the back of her ear. She even longed to be the dog, to be stroked across her neck and flank, reassured of her goodness. Jo had not been touched by another human being since March, her last haircut. The stylist bent over Jo as she washed her hair, her cleavage close to Jo's cheek, the crucifix on her long dangling necklace coming to rest against Jo's chin. Jo could feel the metal on her lower incisors through her skin. She couldn't speak for fear of taking the pendant into her mouth. She thought often of the stylist's perfume, like apples cut grass, and her nails digging into Jo's scalp, the friendly parting squeeze at the back of her neck, the unknowing finality. And then you know what happened? The family across the street went to the same grocery store as Joe close by, but along a straight, busy stretch of four lane road, trucks throwing exhaust in Joe's face at 50 miles an hour. It was her sole outing, and perhaps theirs as well. Joe went early in the morning, ahead of the heat and the line that formed later in the day when the store felt most normal, when an empty shelf felt less potent with meaning. She ran into the family, often moving as a unit through the aisles. The little girl's masks were hand sewn in whimsical fabrics patterned with ducks, donuts, daisies. One morning Jo arrived at the store and saw their dog tied to the bike rack outside. Her neighbors had never acknowledged her, but the dog seemed to know her, perked up as she approached, tail swishing low. She went to pet it, hesitated, petted it anyway, defiantly. The fur around his ears was ethereally soft. His dark eyes were wonderfully unhuman, absent of judgment, of knowing. She knelt on the asphalt and threw her arms around his neck. The dog's tail stilled in surprise, but he did not resist or pull away. It wasn't a decision. She didn't decide. They had so much and she had nothing. Her hands were undoing the knotted leash before she knew what she was doing, and once the looped handle was around her wrist, it was too late. If anyone saw her, there could be no explanation, no defense. She ran. The dog bounded alongside her most of the way, accepting this adventure, but stopped dead when she started up the walk to her apartment building.
- [08:54]
Narrator/Reader
He strained in the direction of his.
- [08:56]
Julie Benko
Owner'S beautiful house, their beautiful yard. Come on, Jill pleaded. She was out of breath, drenched in sweat. She hadn't known she could run that fast. The unblinking windows of all the other buildings gazed down as she dragged this beautiful dog into her ugly complex with its yellowed siding and cheap, hollow doors as he bore down on his paws on the rough concrete.
- [09:21]
Narrator/Reader
Please.
- [09:23]
Julie Benko
He didn't stop pulling until they were inside her apartment. The door closed. He sat up very straight on her doormat, gazing at Jo with an unmistakable expression of betrayal. She could give the dog more attention than they could undivided by a child or a lover.
- [09:43]
Narrator/Reader
You'll like it here, she said.
- [09:45]
Julie Benko
She heard the desperation in her voice. She thought of her final morning with a college boyfriend 20 years ago, when she begged him not to leave, bawled and clutched at his shirt sleeves as her embarrassed roommates listened from behind their bedroom doors. She took some chicken from the freezer and boiled it on the stove. The dog turned away, faced the door, still sitting in an alert, anticipatory pose. She put a bowl of chicken on the floor beside him. He glanced back at her, then faced the door once more, breathing a soft, snuffling sigh of disdain. Hours passed. The chicken cooled untouched. The dog's posture stayed rigid, his back to the room. The grocery store, she realized, probably had a security camera near the door. She could never go back. She would have to shop elsewhere. She had no outdoor space other than the rickety balcony, and it wasn't like she could walk him in the neighborhood. She imagined taking him out only in the dead of night, her new nocturnal life skulking around the deserted streets by starlight. It wouldn't be that different, she knew. She would have to bring him back. Evening came. The dog finally lay down in a tight spiral, pressed against the door. She lay beside him on the floor, curled her body around his back, felt his warmth, the thump of another living heart. At 2 in the morning, all the lights on the block extinguished, Jo let the dog lead her outside and across the street, pulling so hard the taut leash tore at her hands. She reached over their gate to unlatch it, and the dog barked with impatience. She meant to leave him there, release him to scratch and howl at the front door. Like a miracle, a mystery, he came.
- [11:45]
Narrator/Reader
Home on his own.
- [11:46]
Julie Benko
Another happy ending in their beautiful lives. She pushed open the gate. The dog lunged at full speed. Jo was yanked forward, the leash still looped around her wrist. She hit the ground face first on the stone walkway. The yard blurred around her as she fell, the vague shapes of the Adirondack chairs the picnic table, the oak tree with its ghostly lanterns. The dog's barks grew louder and more frantic as she tried to detangle the lead that bound them together. A light went on behind the front door. The porch light lit as she freed the dog, and it leapt up the steps. As she pushed herself to her feet, she saw the whole family gathered at the open door, the child propped on her mother's hip in footed pajamas, golden lamplight filling the space. If Jo turned and ran, they would see where she lived, the perch from which she'd watched. She held up her hands in the universal gesture of surrender, appealing for mercy.
- [12:53]
Meg Wolitzer
Julie Benko Performed Fair By Kim Fu I'm Meg Wolitzer Envy is a common topic in drama and fiction. We see it in Othello's Iago, in Jane Austen's shallow socialites, in films like Black Swan. But Foo does two brilliant things to pull this idea out of its conventional shape. She locates us immediately and directly inside the source of longing. Jo can see the better life right across the street, and Fu chooses to focus her character's heartbreaking impulse to get what she needs on a dog. If she'd stolen her neighbor's car or their fine china, there would just be some dumb object failing her. But instead there is active rejection. Literature is filled with money, artwork, jewelry, property, all of which serve as vessels for characters envy, pride, inadequacy, rage. But a dog in literature is different from a coveted inanimate object. A dog, unlike say, a painting, has feelings and allegiances. The dog in Foo's story is a valuable member of the family who is loved and loves back, and the protagonist, lacking that relationship, decides to deprive them of it. There's a well known website about movies called does the Dog Die? Maybe there also ought to be one called Is the Dog Dognapped? Because most of us find it too painful to imagine a dog being separated from its people. Luckily, the protagonist of Foo's story ultimately does too. When we return a long distance relationship on your doorstep. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
- [14:39]
Commercial Narrator
For years, everyone thought Verizon had the best network because they did. But now the best mobile network in the US is T Mobile. T Mobile's network has the most advanced 5G, with more towers, and their signal reaches further than ever. So you can text an Insta talk and say, you won't believe where I am.
- [15:00]
Meg Wolitzer
T Mobile has the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence data 1H2025CT mobile.comnetwork.
- [15:07]
Narrator/Reader
For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities, and expanding access to care. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org.
- [15:44]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us from through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Our second work, Quantum Voicemail, is by Kristen Iscandrian. Iscandrian's short fiction has been featured in Best American Short Stories, and she's the author of the novel Motherest. This piece about friendship and technology will be read by an actor whose distinguished resume includes starring roles in series such as Servant, Six Feet under and Yellowjackets. She also starred as Eliza Doolittle in the Lincoln center revival of My Fair Lady. Here is Lauren Ambrose performing Quantum Voicemail.
- [16:37]
Narrator/Reader
Quantum Voicemail the visit was proposed during a period in which I was suffering from the tyranny of time. Which isn't to say I was suffering because I was getting older. I didn't care about that. I was consistently underestimating how long it took to do a thing, to do anything, consistently believing that I could accomplish, say, five things in a given span of time, when really I could do just a single thing, maybe two. This disconnect began to emerge in my understanding as a failure, and through repetition, that is, over time, the failure became a pattern of failure, until the pattern of thick, intricate brocade became indistinguishable from me, from my life. There were books I knew to combat this, books in podcasts, TED talks, and seminars, all of which sought to solve the time problem. I didn't want to solve it. I didn't want to manage my expectations or be realistic. I simply wanted to believe that I could accomplish a certain number of goals in an arbitrarily delineated period of time, and then one day accomplish them, and then the next day do it again, until a new pattern could be created, one of success and satisfaction that would, with no effort, eradicate the previous pattern, unspool it, and until it was just a pile of thread that could be blown away on a stiff breeze. The issue, or at least a big part of the issue, was that I did not want to give anything up in order to meet my goals. I wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do for as long as I wanted to do it, and also do the things I needed to do, either for work or for my own personal prosperity. I was a bookseller, and a large part of my job was to read. Not every bookseller, believe it or not, reads, but I was a serious bookseller, and I wanted to be able to talk about the books on the shelves in order to better sell them. I would never run out of things to read, and while this fact may have agitated or overwhelmed certain kinds of readers, it brought me a lot of solace. There was so much I would never read it all, but for as long as I lived, there would be new things to read. Books were a kind of eternity to me, the fullest extent of time or the complete absence of it. In the end, it amounted to the same thing. What I liked to do every morning, without exception, was to sit in my big chair with a cup of coffee and my phone and do several word games. It was one of those rare practices that was both luxurious and practical, the way many people felt, not me, about having their hair done. I'd sit and sip and punch in letters and feel my brain slowly come awake, the fog of whatever weird dreams had decamped during the night starting to lift, the first birds airing their grievances outside the window. Sometimes the cat would sit on my lap, which would necessitate a pause, a recalibrating of coffee mug, and blanket an obligation to set my phone down in order to dispense the required pets. Ear, ear, neck, base of tail, never belly. After my daughter got up and off to school or to wherever she was going. If it was summertime, I'd finish the coffee, the word games, the tidying up. I'd review my list, which was rarely written down but always contained items like Finish X Book Start Y Book Start Submit Edits for Z I was a freelance editor and consultant and worked for different companies and the occasional writer hoping to land an agent with their novel or memoir. The only reason I was qualified to do this was because I had read so many books and knew grammar better than most. I made a website advertising my services, and for seven months nothing happened. Then someone asked to work with me and agreed to my rates, and after that it was steady going. That was 12 years ago, and I've rarely had less than three projects happening at once since. So I triangulated my life among the bookstore, my family, and my freelance work, not necessarily in that order, because a triangle has no order. I started each morning in my chair and also before either going to the store if it was a store day, or staying home to do freelance work if it was a home day, took long walks during which I'd alternate between listening to an audiobook and leaving voicemails for my best friend. My best friend and I had a decades long arrangement. We would never pick up when the other called. We hadn't seen or spoken directly to one another since we'd lived together in those punitively disorienting years after college, we moved to separate sides of the country so it was easy to never see one another. Not infrequently, we'd email, and over time there were enough emails between us to fill a book twice as long as Infinite Jest and three times as long as Ulysses. More or less. I felt bad for anyone who didn't have a best friend they never saw. I felt bad for anyone who thought voicemail was an outdated, annoying technology. The perfectly left voicemail could take up the cellular phone standard of 3 minutes, or it could span 9 minutes, 15 minutes, each voicemail a discreet chapter that tantalizingly flowed into the next with the hasty tap of your person's name. More than 15 minutes was a lot to ask. Six was the sweet spot. But when you were on a roll describing, for example, the way your 14 year old daughter still wrapped herself in a towel when she got out of the shower in the exact way she used to when she was 5 and had just climbed out of the public pool, Superman cape style, with the same far flung look she got back then from the cold, the abject stillness, the slightly pushed out bottom lip, the inability to do the precise thing that would make her warmer, faster, dry herself vigorously, rub the towel up and down and all over. I didn't routinely spy on my daughter during her showers or anything, but we had a stubborn bathroom door that wouldn't close all the way. And once in a while, if I was walking down the hallway at the precise moment she was pushing aside the shower curtain, I could see her stark still towel around her shoulders, that middle distance stare. These were the moments worth transmitting to my best friend, the precise snapshots that would tell her both who my daughter was and who I was for taking notice. A friendship isn't based on shared interests or sheer enjoyment of one another's company. It's based on time, pressure and voicemails. He thought he felt better, but then he started feeling worse. So I took him off it completely and the doctor got mad at me. But what was I supposed to do? What are you supposed to do when your child is beside himself with rage one minute and then the next hysterically crying, saying that he wants to die? Wait till Monday? Anyway, I hope you're all doing better than we are over here. It just feels like it's been one disaster up into the next. I want to hear how it went with the volunteer thing. I never saved her voicemails, even though there were more than a few over the years that deserved their place in the voicemail hall of fame. You could never plan them, but you knew when they were happening. Just the right flow of language, zero stumbling or umming into the next topic. A bit of spontaneous humor that you laughed at right then while leaving the message, knowing that you, she listening on the other end, would be laughing too. That the past and present would be winnowed into the same instant, marked by your shared laughter. That was the whole magic of the voicemail. Like a photograph, it captured a moment of attention, of bringing to light out of infinite subjects and emotions that could be illuminated. The one or three that deserved preservation, an audience, the ones that merited the ear of your best friend. Nothing was off limits to the voicemail, but there were matters that rarely came up. Our jobs, for example. I wasn't entirely sure what she did something with numbers in an office, but that's about all I know. Our spouses didn't get much voicemail time either. Parenting, however, was a big one. The loneliness of disliking it sometimes, sometimes more than sometimes, the decision making fatigue. The constant worry about the encroachments of the Internet, social media and predatory accounts, and the loathsomeness of the phrase screen time. We weren't made for the digital age. We complain. We weren't made for this country, for this. Why did other parents seem tougher than us? Less phased than us? Happier than us? What would be the reward for our vigilance and hypersensitivity? Early death? A heart attack? Laughter. We also volleyed a fair amount about books we'd read, movies or TV we'd seen, articles we'd come across. We'd talk about our other friends, friends that the other would never know, good ones and bad ones, school friends and work friends. Appalling behaviors at the neighborhood potluck. She didn't bring anything, which was fine, but then she took home someone else's casserole dish. Like the dish was empty and she'd come empty handed. So what the hell happened there? Was it brazen stealing? Or did she somehow convince herself that she'd brought the seven layer dip herself? Oh crap. This is work calling. I have to go. The arcane idea of the voicemail, its original purpose via the answering machine, was to simply let someone know they'd missed a call from you and to leave the barest information necessary to get a call back. Name, time of day, phone number. Once in a while a doctor's office or other such service related entity might confirm an appointment such that no callback was necessary. Static data as a note scrawled on a while you were out pad. The new voicemail was a conversation, an art form. In all the years of perfecting our craft, we never mentioned it, never alluded to the fact that it was not merely holding our friendship together. It was our friendship, the body and blood of it, the currency and the sale. Without our five day a week, weekends were, for, it would seem, our lived lives, our families, our shifted routines. Without our five day a week dialogue, we would not know one another at all, to say nothing of our most intimate details. If I was honest, and why wouldn't I be? I adored the arrangement because I found conversations in real time to be, more often than not, dreadful. The way I had to make sure my face was doing something neutral or appropriately reactive. The way I had to wait for my turn to speak, meanwhile enduring someone's half baked wisdom or boring anecdote or, God forbid, dream. The voicemail distance dispensed with all that. It was a monologue, no, a sterling three minute soliloquy. It floated between communication and rumination, letter and diary, a podcast for one, a very short play, a stand up routine, a confession. We were so good at it, and it was ours. You can maybe imagine where this was going. I had my big chair, my word games, my voicemail and audio book walks, my job and my other job. I was chronically late for nearly everything I needed to show up for, though I never missed a deadline. I punished myself by going to bed too late and waking up too early and being always more exhausted than I needed to be. And I talked about this a lot on my voicemails to my best friend. This issue I had with time, something between denial and rebellion. Every single day I imagine that I will get faster, that I'll solve my puzzles faster and drink my coffee faster, and take my walk faster, and create with my own efficiency additional hours in the day, hours during which I could finish the two books I'm reading as well as the manuscript I've been editing for weeks now. I just keep believing that there's a state of being finished that will last longer than it lasts, that can be permanent, that I can somehow fit all of my tasks and goals into a single day and then be done forever. It makes no sense. I love what I do, but I seem to be striving for an endless nothing, the other side of whatever this side is, where time no longer exists and I can be in my chair or take a walk for as long as I want to with no regard for whatever comes next. An eternal present, maybe. Do you ever feel this way? Early one morning in February, after my word games and coffee but before my walk, I sat down to send an email that I'd meant to send the night before. I didn't like opening my email before going for my walk. I didn't like the reminders that awaited me there, crowding my thinking. Before the day was adequately underway. With some trepidation, I opened an email from my best friend with the subject line April. For over a year we'd used the same thread to write back and forth whose subject line was for reasons I eventually forgot, I give up. Lol. This was a fresh standalone email and its subject was the name of a specific month a little over a month away. Jay has a billion frequent flyer miles and as I keep rambling about, I really need to get away. What do you think? I could take a Friday and a Monday off, say the 29th? I suppose I should be here for Passover. Not that we'd do much, but Jay's family would be disappointed. I don't think this conflicts with Easter. Let me know. Gah. So excited to maybe see you for real. Would the universe even be able to handle it, or would we burst into flame? My bowels churned. I felt as if I'd just read about a death. In a way, I had. I read the email three more times, but before starring it, my fingers on the trackpad of my laptop shaking and slamming the machine shut, I used the bathroom like someone in the throes of food poisoning, the coffee and water I had had earlier coursing out of me along with what felt like the past three days worth of nourishment. I was sweating. I was cold. My body seemed to be in possession of a knowledge that my brain was felt too slow and curdled to grasp. Hurriedly, I put my sneakers on and my AirPods in and left for my walk. Ordinarily, I would have immediately listened to my best friend's voicemail from the day before and proceeded to leave her a voicemail in reply. But my finger hovered over her name for a full two blocks while I listened to silence. Why would she do this to me? To our perfect friendship? A visit? The disappointment I felt was catastrophic, the panic annihilating. Would she stay in My house amongst my things. The dream of being in the school hallway in your underwear. This was worse. The phone had always been our medium, our chaperone, our interlocutor. Without it, we'd be as gross to one another as everyone else was to us. Finally, I pressed play. Hey, I just sent you an email about this, but I'm so excited I had to call. Let me know. It's the first non work trip in ages and I feel zero guilt. I want to think of some fun stuff that we could do together. A spa day, a hike. I know you've talked about how there are some trails climbing close by and I can't wait to meet all your people. Ah, okay, I'm spinning out. Call me soon. I'll actually pick up for the first time, maybe ever. Or send me an email or text or whatever. I remembered with shocking clarity my mother's cancer diagnosis from 20 years ago. The way my father told me that even with the most aggressive treatment, recovery was not possible, that she would die soon, within the year maybe. And how for weeks afterward and really until her death, her death slingshotting me into some other, less chaotic realm of grief. I walked around feeling like a new person because the news had changed me, had sliced my life across a perforation that I hadn't known existed. Now I leapt over a puddle and cursed myself for comparing a friend's would be visit to my mother's illness. What's wrong with you? What truly is wrong with you? But undeniably I felt a similar level of disbelief and horror and a sort of suctioning out of my good functioning self and a taxidermizing of whatever was left. I looked at my watch and noted where I was on my route and realized that I was, for the first time ever, perhaps ahead of schedule, that walking while listening or leaving voicemails had for years without my fully knowing it slowed my gait. It's hard to leave a voicemail of the caliber I was used to while walking quickly. One is much more likely to amble. I arrived home and took a shower and sat at my desk with the morning's editing tasks and somehow completed all of them with enough time to wash the breakfast dishes and still be at work 10 minutes early. Alongside my deep dread over the visit, voicemail and email, I felt a triumph akin to a scientific breakthrough, as though I had, by knocking over beakers and mixing forbidden agents, stumbled into the very solution I'd been seeking. I had discovered time itself. From work I googled getting a new cell phone number Reddit boards teemed with stockees as well as regular folk who simply wanted to feel like they belonged in their new city by adopting their new area code. One person was hell bent on getting 69 and 420 in their new number, and Sprint, apparently had made it. I could do this. It would be a pain, but it wouldn't kill me. Driving home, I imagined calling my best friend and talking to her in real time. I imagined first telling her, I'm sorry, no, a visit just isn't possible right now. We have far too much going on. And I tried to imagine her accepting this, just this, with no further explanation. I couldn't see it. We explained everything to one another. The most miniscule decisions of our lives, and the big decisions, too. Anything I'd ever done, with few exceptions, had been sussed out via voicemail or a volley of voicemails. Becoming a vegetarian, creating my website, changing my children's schools, investing in crypto. My best friend was privy to all manner of decisions. How could I get away with just simply no? I imagined saying yes and then calling her two days before she was due to arrive and inventing an emergency child in the ER flooding in the basement. But I was far too superstitious, so I imagined the conversation during which I said, I can't wait to see you. This is too good to be true. Please come whenever it works for you and stay as long as you like, and my stupid eyes filled with tears at a red light because of course this was the right, true, correct thing. This was the spirit of yes. We were always mooning about, opening ourselves, grabbing the conch from the hecatoncheries of no that lived in our hearts and placing it in the hands of our better angels, that slim margin of self that desperately wanted more playing time. Then I imagined her showing up at my door with her doubtless fashionable suitcase and traveling outfit, and my stomach lurched, as it had earlier that day. In the months after my mother died, all I'd wanted was to call my mother, to talk to her about how my mother had died. Turning onto my street, I was seized with the desire to leave a message for my best friend, detailing the acute anxiety brought on by the prospect of my best friend's visit. Now I needed another best friend that I could leave voicemails about this best friend to. I pulled into my driveway and pressed my forehead gently against the top of the steering wheel. I'd hand sold two copies of Moby Dick that day, a book about someone who got what they thought they wanted and died. Life was rife with contradiction. When the doorbell rang, the house was pristine. I'd hired someone to come and clean not just the regular parts of the house, but the ceiling fans and baseboards and air vents. I'd taken the day Friday off of work and cleared the weekend. The store was closed on Mondays, the day she would be leaving. She'd insisted on taking an Uber from the airport to my house, even though we lived less than 15 minutes away. It's fine. It'll give me a little time to calm down from the flight. Flying makes me so nervous. We still hadn't spoken in real time. I'd set out a carafe of ice water with lemon and a modest cheese board and a bottle of I put a kettle on in case she wanted coffee or tea. The bunch of ranunculus I'd bought the day before was drooping prettily in its vase, the cat asleep on a shaft of sunlight on the rug. For a moment I allowed myself to enjoy the tidiness of my home, which too often felt threadbare and hodgepodge stuck in the thrift store sensibility we kept meaning to leave behind us, periodically sizing up matching end tables and lamps online before abandoning our cart and using the money for something else we apparently cared about more. But today the house shone cozy and inviting, more ready for company than I felt myself to be. I opened the door and my brain surged ad hoc into problem solving mode, nimbly leaping from my retinas to my photoreceptors to my optic nerve. The signals translated. Who is this? This is not my friend. Where is my friend? We spoke at the same time. Can I help you? Ah, I'm here. I don't have the words to describe how not my friend. This person was. My friend was petite. The woman before me was close to 6ft. My friend was a brunette. This person was a redhead. She wore a long dress and a denim jacket, and her sneakers were nondescript, nothing like the designer clothes my friend wore and had worn since I knew her. Her outfits on social media, regularly garnering comments like you are so stylish, with six to ten heart eye emojis. You look like you've seen a ghost. I'm sorry. You just. I'm. You look so different than I remember, I stammered. My stupid stomach started hurting. Nothing kept more reliable time than my oversensitive gut. She laughed. It has been so long. You look exactly the same. Are you going to invite me in or. With clumsy words and gestures, I let her in. This stranger who was my best friend. Your house. I love it. It's so you. Can I use your bathroom? I showed her to the bathroom, where I'd put out fresh hand towels and placed a single ranunculus in a bud vase on the sink. My heart raced. I worried about my brain, convinced something had happened to it, the onset of the rotating possibility. I had always feared Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or schizophrenia or something not yet named. At the kitchen table, my friend ate hungrily, pouring water, pouring wine. I almost took a Xanax before I boarded the flight, but I didn't want to be spaced out when I got here. I downloaded this meditation app for nervous flyers, and I think it worked. A soothing British male voice repeatedly telling me to pluck a blow ball and blow the seeds, which I did, over and over. She laughs. It took me a minute to figure out that he was talking about dandelions. My seatmate must have thought I was nuts. I nodded. Even her voice was different than the one I knew so intimately from 20 years of voicemails, its pitch higher and more spirited. I just learned this year from my son that the yellow dandelion and the wishy puff thing are the same flower. Did you know this? She smeared goat cheese on a cracker and shoved it in her mouth. Yes, I said distractedly. They're both dandelions, just at different stages. First they're yellow and then they turn into the puffs. My daughter told me that, too. It's weird that we never learned it in school, she said. I think this generation is going to be so much smarter. I thought of the many voicemails we'd left each other, about how worried we were about our children, technology, climate change, about how burdened young people often seemed. The woman at my table seemed to have a rosier view. How's it going for Alex? Being off the meds? I ventured. She frowned. Who's Alex? Oh, do you mean Adam? He was never on meds. I felt dizzy. Not figuratively. The floor seemed to be moving. I swear on the voicemails. Here, do you want some water? You just got super pale. She handed me a glass. I took a sip, the slightest bit relieved that the water was water tasted like water. You were saying about a voicemail? Her intensely blue eyes focused on me. The eyes of a stranger, but a stranger filled with concern for me, who was not a stranger to her. I felt terrified of trying to explain and being told that she'd never left anything other than a perfunctory voicemail in her life. If she'd ever left Me one at all. I was just remembering a voicemail you'd left about Adam, whose name I thought was Alex. And ADD medication, I mumbled. Weird. You must be thinking of someone else. I am thinking of someone else, I wanted to say. My daughter arrived home a short while later, pink cheeked from her walk from the bus stop, and accepted a big hug from my friend along with a set of fancy soap and lotion. My boys don't get excited about stuff like this, she said conspiratorially, and my daughter laughed and thanked her, giving me a look as if to say, she's great. When my husband got home, I relaxed a little. Maybe in his infinite reasonableness he could make this make sense. He was so likable, so good with people. After a round of warm hellos, he grabbed a beer and began prepping hamburgers for the grill. I left my friend playing rummy with our daughter at the table and joined him in the backyard. I mean, what the hell is going on, right? I asked him. It was a beautiful evening. He looked at me quizzically. With what? With Are you kidding? That's not her. It doesn't look anything like her. I can't figure it out. What do you mean that's not her? Of course it's her. He started scrubbing the grill grate with the steel brush. I mean, she looks a little different, but we all do. It's called aging. I felt my insides collapsing like icicles in a thaw. Hadn't eaten much all day. It was the familiar burn of exhaustion that always plagued me when we hosted anyone at the house, the odious part of my personality that turned every fun low key hang into a a strenuous big deal. What's wrong with me? I managed to say before the tears came. Hey, it's okay. It's probably overwhelming to see her after all these years. Of course you're emotional. He stopped scrubbing and hugged me and I felt more angry than soothed. But I did feel slightly soothed. It's not her, I muttered into his good smelling shirt. Well, her you. Doesn't matter. Reunions can be a lot, he said gently. No, I mean it's literally not her, I said, pulling away. My husband turned his attention back to the grill, a disturbed look on his face. I felt the claustrophobia of having nowhere to go, a terrible fate in one's own home. I remembered the feeling from childhood, laying on the ugly rug in my parents den, concentrating on the individual fibers, believing on some level that I could hypnotize myself out of it disappear from my own prying brain. The ability, the will to cope with my current situation seemed to slough from my body like dead skin, all at once, dramatically, all the cells that make a person calm and reasonable just gone. The weekend stretched before me as an endless, odious task, and I wanted my chair, my privacy, my swathes of time to use and misuse as I wished. I wanted now nothing more than to throw a tantrum, stiff backed on the grass, wailing a single syllable. No. Instead, somehow, I set the table. To an outsider, I may have looked like someone who'd never set a table before, so slow and pronounced were my movements, tiny mental calisthenics. By the time I finish folding this napkin, something will make sense. From the kitchen I heard easy laughter, my daughter's voice free from the strain she often bore in adult company. She wasn't accustomed to visitors. We didn't get a lot of them. Our families of origin, my husband's and mine, were small and far away, real see you when we see you types, a trait we'd both perhaps inherited. It felt ridiculous to me to get on an airplane to stay in someone else's house when we had technology to keep us both in touch, whatever that meant, and comfortable, to keep us crucially apart. My problem, I realized as I carried condiments out to the table, was that I didn't consider missing a person a problem to be solved. The burgers were good, but I had to keep reminding myself to pick mine up, take a bite, keep my face from going slack, participate in the conversation. During my husband's story about the time a tree fell on our house, I excused myself. My friend's purse was on a chair in the living room, her phone nearby on the coffee table. I touched her name on the favorites list of my phone. After three seconds, her phone lit up and started buzzing. I let it ring until it went to voicemail. A recorded voice said, the voicemail box you have called is full. Goodbye. I missed a call from you, she said. Later, when I was making sure she had what she needed for bed, she was scrolling through her phone and her face looked happy. Weird, I said. Must have been by accident. In bed with my husband, I feigned sleep because I did not want to talk about my friend. I was relieved that she hadn't wanted to stay up late. She had, in fact, after we'd cleared the dessert dishes, asked if it would be rude for her to retire early. My husband squeezed my hand gently before rolling over, and I was left with a solitude that felt precarious surveilled, I calculated the number of hours left in the weekend. I interrogated my memory as if it were on trial. The simple truth, though, was that everyone loved my friend. In the history of houseguests, a better one did not exist. My daughter asked repeatedly when we could go visit her, when she would be coming back. The irresistible charm that my husband emanated whenever he was around people he genuinely liked was emanating in full force. At some point late on the second day, I felt myself giving over to the allure of this person, this new old friend. It was a loosening of some central scaffolding within myself that seemed to happen without me and without any warning. Suddenly I wanted her here. I wanted the now that she was in, I felt like she had become the familiar and I had become a stranger in the best possible way. We went out to dinner that night, just the two of us, and laughed until people turned around to stare. Should we order dessert? She giggled, dividing the remainder of the bottle of wine between our two glasses. I'm so full, I said, wiping tears from my eyes. But yes, we did all the things my friend had hoped to do. Visited the Helen Frankenthalers at the museum, hiked along the river, went to the bookstore where I showed her around, and she bought all six books I recommended. We spent a half day at the fancy spa that I'd never been to, sipping herbal tea before and after our hour long facials in a heavily bambooed room redolent with mint and sandalwood. Sighing in our plush robes, we loafed in the living room and backyard, drinking coffee and paging through magazines. We took my daughter to the record store and out for ice cream. The weather was a triumph, like no spring before or since. An incandescent ease had settled over my home, and I started to feel that I'd been given more than companionship, more than fun. Rather, I was in a revised relationship with time, a romance with the present moment. For the first time, perhaps in my whole life, I wasn't concerned about what came next or how long anything took. We did more in one weekend than seemed strictly possible, as though the rules of time had changed, as though we were changing them with our very togetherness, like being restored to health when I hadn't known I was sick, like being given new lungs or better eyes, a completely different personality. You seem so happy, my husband said as we were getting ready for bed on her last night with us. I am happy, I said. She's better than and I wanted to say my other friend, but I didn't want to go back there, back to the self that refused. Weird, good, minor miracles. She's better than I remember. Still, I was me, and I knew I was me and that I'd eventually return to myself, my baseline of trenchant narrowness, knowing exactly how I got in my own way and yet refusing to go around to clear a path. Before long I'd be back in my chair, convinced I could get it right, knowing I would get it wrong. My life and how to order it, how much to exert on what and when. On the morning of my friend's departure, I woke up before the sun and went for a walk. I needed some way to say goodbye to her that would take into account my own experience of her having been there, having been real despite everything I knew, understood, remembered. I had to tell her about her time here and about me. I said a prayer that her phone was on silent and pressed her name.
- [57:03]
Meg Wolitzer
Lauren Ambrose Read Quantum Voicemail By Kristen Iskandrian I'm Meg Wolitzer. I play a lot of online Scrabble. It'll be a bright sunny morning, and then what do you know, it's suddenly dark outside. And yeah, I lost the entire day, but at least I won 60% of my games, so it was worth it. But if you're a novelist who plays these games with strangers, you start making up images of your opponent. You're there in your Upper west side New York City apartment, and there on a dude ranch in Montana or a high rise in Chicago. Sometimes they will even come out and tell you where they are. So suddenly I've got a place in my mind. But in the if you give a mouse a cookie school of thinking, I will now want an image of a person to fill out that place. Who exactly, is my opponent? I feel a burning desire to know. And then I imagine that I get my wish and my opponent shows up at my door, fresh off the plane from Montana or Chicago, and they're a person with facial features and everything. And once they've become real, well, that's no fun. Fierce competition against an anonymous opponent is apparently the way I like it. But still, if I face you across a virtual Scrabble board, I'm always going to wonder, who are you? Two things I love about Iskandrian's story the way it tests, the pleasure and perils of a long friendship, and the imaginative way the author freely adopts an outmoded technology to make her point. It's something a lot of writers do. For example, the late mystery novelist Sue Grafton who wrote well into the age of the Internet, deliberately kept her novels and her detective Kinsey Milhone in the 1980s because Grafton wanted her to be an old fashioned gumshoe reliant on written records and the dogged following of cold trails. Kristin is Candrian has used the same tactic here. Otherwise this carefully maintained long distance friendship would become a flurry of texts and social media posts. Friendship rituals can help keep the flame of a relationship alive. In the case of old friends who don't live near each other and who see each other infrequently, one element that helps is that they may have a limited number of shared references other than the state of the world, of course, which you could talk to a total stranger about for hours. So usually when you and your friend get together, those shared references get emphasized. The small number of people you have in common, the rehashing of an old anecdote from 20 years ago, which you rehashed the last time you saw each other. There's something comforting in that. You may never think about any of this when you aren't with your old friend, but when you are, these stories and these people belong to both of you. What this week's works of fiction have in common is their exploration of what it takes to achieve better. In the first, a woman is cut off from any kind of joy by her conviction that her material circumstances define her and that only a desperate act will make things better. And in the second, the narrator is afraid that a long friendship won't weather change, but will in fact become worse. So maybe the question we're posing is what is better and why are we so driven to seek it? 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 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 Joe Plord. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [61:20]
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