← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Fooling Yourself
00:57:14
Host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about self-deception. In “Participation Trophy,” by Simon Rich, the author is taken to task by a discarded relic of childhood triumphs. The reader is Colton Dunn. Japanese playwright and novelist Betsuyaku Minoru creates an Industrial Age fable in “Factory Town.” The story was translated by Royall Tyler and is read by Suzy Nakamura. And a college student falls in love with the idea of love in Lauren Pruneski’s “Mama, Mama,” read by Kirsten Vangsness.
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- [00:01]
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- [01:04]
Meg Wolitzer
Remember participation trophies, the little token given to every child involved in various kinds of school competitions? This week on Selected Shorts, that little plastic talisman comes to life to interrogate all of us. Thanks to funny writer Simon Rich. Hello, I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay with me for this story and more. Coming right up. You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. There's an old saying often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Seems true and applicable to many different kinds of situations, or it wouldn't have remained in our cultural memory bank. But there's one idea that quote doesn't address. What if you, the person doing the fooling, are trying to fool just one person yourself? I definitely try to fool myself sometimes when it comes to eating crap. I mean food. Dubious food. If I buy an item at the supermarket that I know is bad for me, but I feel like giving myself a treat anyway. I'm well aware that if I looked at the nutrition facts on the label, I would keel over right there in the aisle. So it bothers me a little when I'm at home eating this thing and I see my husband peering at the back of the box with curiosity and I know he's thinking, wow, interesting. And even though he has no idea, he is inadvertently ruining my fun because he's keeping me from being able to fool myself. And when it comes to individually wrapped devil's food, cupcake pies. The fun is all in the self deception. On this episode of Selected Shorts, we're going to consider all kinds of different ways to fool yourself. And not just the how, but why you'd want to fool yourself in the first place. In one story, an inanimate object demands its due. In a second, a town learns about the price of progress, and in a third, a young woman tests out versions of love and motherhood. First up, a story by Simon Rich. Chances are Rich has entered your consciousness somehow. Whether as a writer on snl, a committed short story writer with collections such as Glory Days, or the creative engine behind series such as Miracle Workers, we at Shorts love his work. It's extremely funny and so easy to relate to, as you're about to hear in this story of a forgotten object finding its voice. Performing this story is Colton Dunn. He's a funny writer and actor who was a regular on series including Superstore and the Recruit and provides voiceover for animated shows such as Big City Greens. In this, his selected shorts debut, Colton Dunn performs Participation Trophy by Simon Richard.
- [04:10]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
Dear Simon, I'll never forget the day we met. You were dressed boldly in orthopedic Velcros, yellow sweatpants and an oversized far side T shirt. You completed your ensemble with a mesh green penny which you debonairly or mistakenly wore as a necklace, your head thrust fetchingly through one of the armholes. I was young then, fresh out of my bulk order box. I could see myself now as I must have looked to you on that warm spring day, a gleaming figurine of indeterminate age and gender gazing alluringly from my plastic podium, perhaps running, perhaps swimming, or maybe even doing some other non sports thing like debate or drama. In any case, my body glinted in the sun like gold. Now, although you had signed up for only one event that field day, a relay race in which you ran in the wrong direction, you never questioned my presence in your life. When Mrs. Musgrove handed me to you and said you tried your best, you pumped both fists in triumph. I'll never forget how you caressed me with your gentle, yoo hoo scented hands. When you held me to your chest, I could feel your heart pounding, and though I knew it was partly because your body was so unused to exercise, I sensed that there was also something more powerful at play. On the bus ride back from Randall's island, you held me on your lap, completely smitten. You carefully sounded out my engraving. If you had fun, you won. And while your reaction was muted at first, you eventually figured out that the sentence rhymed, which thrilled you to your core. I remember how you laughed hysterically, tears streaming down your face as you repeated the rhyme to yourself over and over again, and then to the other children on the bus to make sure they also knew about the rhyme. When you got home, you whisked me to your room and put me on a place of honor next to your mad magazines, on the highest bookshelf you could reach. And then your brother got home from his bar mitzvah lessons, and in between bites of his intimidatingly sour candy, he told you that our love was a lie. It's not a real trophy, he said. They give it to everyone, whether they're good at sports or not. They even give it to kids who are. And then he said a word that isn't said anymore, but you both used to say it constantly. He told you I was cheap and made in China and not, as you assumed, made out of real gold. You defended me the best you could, but when he left, I could tell something had changed between us. Your brother had taken me off your shelf for demonstration purposes. Now that he was gone, you did not put me back. Years passed, and with the exception of one afternoon during puberty when you became very curious about my butt, you moved on. I was banished to a crate inside your closet. Meanwhile, you went off to prep school in search of more glamorous conquests. First came those waifish science fair certificates dressed up in their showy gilded borders. Then that buxom chest cup with its obscenely leering mouth. By the time you graduated high school, there were Latin plaques and honor pins and a slew of whorish Model UN gavels stacked up on the shelf I once called home. If you spoke of me at all, it was with ridicule. Remember participation trophies? You'd scoff, they were so. And then you would say that word that people don't say anymore, but you continued to say far longer than most people did. You went off to college, where your taste grew even more refined, and you were after high class trophies now, medals made of real metal whose names were at least searchable online. After graduation, you had your diploma framed and set it out lustfully to the world. Your 20s were a blur of striving writing for TV, and while the Daily show won pretty much every award, every year you managed to pick up a couple. But there were always bigger trophies to win, so you kept on pushing, even after your children were born, and sometimes they would run into your office in their Velcro shoes and oversized T shirts and try to play with your existing trophies by making them kiss each other. As you ushered your kids out of your office, you wondered if participation trophies still existed. You doubted it, but you couldn't be completely sure because you didn't attend any of their athletic events. The school was kind of far away and you were busy. And then one day you heard your children running down the hall and you sighed, dreading the inevitable interruption. But instead of barging into your office like always, they slipped by silently. You felt a sharp pang in your chest, like someone discovering in the middle of a relay race the that they'd been running in the wrong direction. And you thought about the picture books you flipped through two pages at a time in the half assed baths, the phoned in hokey pokies, the fake trip to the bathroom at the birthday parties, writing notes to yourself in a dark Chuck E. Cheese stall. And it wasn't just the kids. It was everything. Your offensively generic anniversary cards, your neglected text chain with your college friends, your disturbingly corporate guest list for your birthday party, the the sand in your laptop and the unpacked snorkel, the decades marked by milestones rather than memories. And it occurred to you that maybe all this time, instead of ignoring life or scavenging it for material, you should have. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah. Participated. Maybe what we had was real. Maybe it's the rest of your life that has been and I won't say the word, but you know the one I mean. And now you're not young anymore. Your surface is peeling, your figure is dropping. Unlike me, you're biodegradable. And here's the crazy thing. Even though you've spurned me, mocked me, and on that afternoon I mentioned during puberty confused the hell out of me. I haven't given up on you. I know we won't be reunited. You're in Los Angeles and I'm in a landfill, buried under hundreds of tons of wow potato chips. You could search a million years and never find me. But maybe you could find that part of yourself you left behind on Randall's Island. The part that was present and grounded and found joy in a rhyme that barely worked. Through your office door, you can hear the muffled tap of little feet. You're behind. But the race isn't over. For God's sakes, turn around. Pass the baton. Go out there and prove yourself worthy of my love.
- [12:17]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Participation Trophy by Simon Rich, read by Colton Dunn at the Getty center in Los Angeles. Hearing that story makes me remember how my older kid took his participation trophies when he moved out of the house. I feel a little guilty now because back when my son was young, I did not participate that much in the sports side of his life. During games, I sometimes stood on the side of the field saying, go, team. And then, you know, reading Middlemarch. Much as I might have fooled myself into believing I was a fervent sports mom back then, not quite. No trophy for me. Next up, a story by writer Betsuyaku Minoru. Betsuyaku was one of Japan's great post war playwrights who wrote more than 130 plays, as well as novels, essays and short stories. We found this gem about things lost and found in an industrial revolution in the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Reading this story is Suzy Nakamura. She's a comic and actor whose TV credits include Dead to Me, Curb youb Enthusiasm, and Exploding Kittens. She's also appeared on Broadway in POTUS and the recent Michael Keaton movie Knox Goes Away. As with our first performance, this one is also a shorts debut. Now here's Susie Nakamura reading. Factory Town by Betsuyaku Minoru Translated by Royal Tyler.
- [13:47]
Factory Town Narrator
One day, just like that, a small factory appeared on the outskirts of the town. Its chimney began puffing out great billows of black smoke. Goodness. Some townsfolk exclaimed when they happened by. What's going on here? Looks like a factory to me. With all that smoke coming out of the chimney. Fine, but what's it making, I wonder? So they stole up to the factory, and one man peeked through a knothole in the fence. What's that going? Thunka, Thunka, Thunka. Must be the machine. There's a huge black machine in there going round and round. But what can it be making? Come on now, give me a look. Yes, it's a machine, all right. A big one. Oh, I see some men working. What are they like? There are three of them. The older one must be the father, and the two younger ones his sons. So, a family. They're covered with grease and they're certainly going at it. Can you tell what they're making? Mm, I wish I could. Anyway, the news about the factory spread that day by word of mouth through the whole town. Mothers back from shopping, fathers strolling in the park, sisters and brothers sipping tea in the coffee shop. Everyone was talking about it. Pots and pans, that's what they're making. If you ask me, our town is a serious shortage of both. You know, I'll go for sickles and hoes. Tools that wear out right away. You keep needing new ones. I'd say they're baking bread. We do have a baker, but he's always so slow getting the bread out. The baker thought otherwise. No, it's not bread. Must be charcoal briquettes. That black smoke isn't from baking. It's from making briquettes. The briquette maker disagreed. Of course. No, not briquettes. The smell's wrong. That's a brick factory. They're making bricks.
- [15:51]
Mama, Mama Narrator
Bricks?
- [15:52]
Factory Town Narrator
Not a chance. The brickmaker roared, red in the face. I'm damned if I'll have them coming around here making bricks. No, no, it's something else. Must be glass. They're making bottles and glasses. Day after day the talk went on, but there was still no sign of the product. Not that the men at the factory were slacking off. Black smoke billowed daily from the chimney, and through the knothole you could see the two sons and the father, black with grease, working away like mad. You had only to stroll past the place to hear the machine's endless Thunka, thunka, Thunka. When do those people rest? The townspeople wondered whenever they peeked through the knothole. What incredible workers. I've never seen anyone work like that. I want my son to see this. I'm going to tell my husband. He needs to do better. All the people in this town much preferred relaxing to working. And why not? The crops in the fields grew by themselves. The sea yielded more fish than they could eat. And you could work hard and save all the money you liked. But there was still nothing to spend it on. Once the factory turned up, though, people's ideas began to change. That black smoke, billowing up so bravely from the little factory stirred everyone deeply. From the hilltop, you could see the whole town sleepily nestled in green. The factory alone looked sturdy, like a steam locomotive chugging through the fields. That's what I call bold. The boys, looking down from up there, exclaimed to one another. That's what I call macho. Meanwhile, their mothers and big sisters kept egging them on. The factory starts work at 7am you know they take only 10 minute breaks. They work with the lights on. After dark, the boys pulled themselves together and tried getting up early and going to bed late. They still had no work to do, though. They could only wander around town looking busy and end up at the factory fence. They took turns at the knothole, sighing with envy. Their eyes are so bright. Look at that sweat. He doesn't even wipe it off. And those arms he Picked up that heavy hammer like nothing. The factory kept at it, but there was still no sign of a product. They're really working, though. It'll be fantastic, whatever they're making. Absolutely. Look what a big machine they have. The townspeople kept picturing this product or that, and they could hardly wait for it to come on sale. Still, don't you think there's a little too much smoke coming from that chimney? Actually, yes, I suppose there is. The sky always seems kind of cloudy. The black smoke kept boiling up from the factory chimney day after day. The sky over the town, once blue, stayed gray. They can't help it, though. It's such a big machine. I just know they're racing to get the product out as soon as they can. It's got to be something good. Yes, indeed. One of the boys who got up early one morning let out a great shout in front of his house. Hey, look. The factory's got two chimneys. Everyone within earshot came out to see, rubbing their sleepy eyes. The sight was impressive. Two great smokestacks now towered over the little factory, spewing two thick columns of black smoke into the dawn sky. The smoke drifted heavily, lazily towards the town. You could just make out tiny black specks glittering down from it. That's awesome. That smoke makes me feel a sort of power rising up inside me. They must have reached the last stage. That's why they've added another stack. They know how much we look forward to what they're making, and they're rushing to get it done. What's it going to be? Something amazing. Something we could really use. I'm sure you're right. Every day after that, the twin stacks belched out twin columns of smoke. What with the soot, the people could no longer walk about with their eyes open. Their throats were so sore that they coughed every minute or two. Laundry hanging on the line, their clothing, even their faces turned black. Still, they put up with it all patiently, sure that the product would be something truly special at last. One day, though, they couldn't take it anymore. They went to talk things over with the mayor. We're wondering what to do. The smoke is so bad now. We hate to complain to such hard workers, but couldn't we at least get them to tell us when they'll have their product ready and what it'll be? I see what you mean. We can hold out a little longer if they're making something really good. All right. Let's go and hear what they have to say. The mayor and the townspeople trooped out to the factory, coughing and brushing off the soot as they went. Hello, gentlemen of the factory. Out came the hard working factory chief, his blackened face beaming. Hello. So it's you, Mr. Mayor. And everyone else too. What's up? You see, the people of the town would like to know when your product will be out. Oh, is that it? Then I have good news. It's finally ready. Really it is? Yes. Come right in. I'll show you. You will all be very pleased. Cheering, the townsfolk followed the chief inside.
- [22:02]
Meg Wolitzer
He.
- [22:03]
Factory Town Narrator
He and his sons welcomed them with smiles. Now, have a look at this. He pointed to a shiny little machine next to the great big one they'd seen through the knothole. Pearl, like beads were popping out one end and dropping into a hopper. The chief handed the mayor a bead. The mayor stared at it in his hand. Um, what is this? Put it in your mouth. It's a cough drop. A cough drop? The people cheered loudly again. Just then, you see, they were coughing so much that they could hardly breathe. Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, our product is cough drops. They are a little expensive, but they really work. So you have been making something wonderful. It's exactly what we need right now. I'll take one this minute. They bought the drops straight from the hands of the smiling chief and his sons and began taking them right there in the factory. Meanwhile, the mayor asked his burning question. Excuse me, Mr. Factory Chief. I. I understand that the little machine makes cough drops, but what does the big one make? He gestured towards the big machine that the townsfolk had seen through the knothole. It has two smokestacks after all. It must make something even better. Oh, that one? The chief asked, still beaming. That one doesn't make anything. It doesn't make anything? No, just smoke. We had quite a time, you know, putting up that second stack. Still, when you get right down to it, two stacks put out a lot more smoke than one.
- [24:18]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Suzy Nakamura performing Factory Town by Betsuyako Minoru. Translated by Royal Tyler. I'm Meg Wolitzer. I like the feeling of this piece. Somewhere between an old fable and an episode of the Twilight Zone. The moral which connects directly to our theme about the lies we tell ourselves isn't clear until the last line. By then, the title Factory Town hits in a very different way. Maybe some of our listeners remember or know about the legendary Twilight Zone episode in which aliens who've come down to earth seem to be friendly and only want to help people solve their crises. The aliens bring what appears to be a well intentioned book whose translated title is revealed to be To Serve man and which at the end turns out to be a cookbook. What a punchline. Susie Nakamura reveals the story's punchline with a perfect casualness. Just right for this era in which misplaced optimism sometimes meets brazen cynicism. When we return, a young woman gets a crash course in love and parenting, even though she has no children. You'll see. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
- [25:32]
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- [26:00]
Mama, Mama Narrator
91 1, what is your emergency?
- [26:01]
Factory Town Narrator
Get.
- [26:05]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
911 has faced nearly every emergency on earth. ABC Thursdays. They will go where no first responders have gone before.
- [26:14]
Meg Wolitzer
Five everyday heroes were launched into space.
- [26:17]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
All contact with the spacecraft was lost due to a sudden geomagnetic storm.
- [26:22]
Mama, Mama Narrator
Mission control, dude, you copy?
- [26:24]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
91 1. All new Thursdays, 8, 7 Central on NBC and stream on Hulu.
- [26:49]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Hi, I'm Meg Wolitzer. Today's stories are about the lengths we go to in order to keep ourselves from the truth. But when it comes to you, dear listener, we'd never hide. In fact, if you want to see us up close and in person, just go to the Selected Shorts tour page. We crisscross the country every year with new stories and cast members at every show. To find out how close we come to your house, go to selectedshorts.org and and click on tour. Our final piece comes from Lauren Pruneski. She's a graduate of the University of Michigan. This story was published in the Southern Review. It's got some interesting ideas about infatuation, parenthood and self delusion. We hope you'll find yourself as wrapped up in it as we were. The story is read by a longtime friend of the show, Kirsten Vangsness, who is even hosted for us on the road. She's recognized most for the long running series Criminal Minds. But she's also a theater stalwart who writes her own solo shows and hosts a podcast, Kirsten's Agenda, and now performing Mama, Mama. By Lauren PRUNESKI Here's Kirsten Vangsness.
- [28:13]
Mama, Mama Narrator
In the summer of 2001, when I lived in San Francisco, I thought I was in love with a man named Paul. He had a son. One time, when we were in Paul's car, I found an unopened pack of baseball cards. I said, do people even collect these anymore? He said, my son is into them. At first that was the only way he spoke of his son carefully, as if the boy had died. We worked together at a restaurant off the Embarcadero. The food was sculptural, precise, and I remember being astonished by its smallness. Paul sold it well. He was good at his job. I was terrible at mine. I was forgetful and unfocused, and I didn't try. I had just finished my junior year of college, and I had a shameful sort of pride about being bad at service. As if to prove I I was capable of some other, better work, we connected after the restaurant closed down. One night we had a drink together at the bar, and he asked me what I knew about California wine. Nothing, I said. Tell me. Paul had spent a year working at a winery in Sonoma, and he knew quite a bit about the grapes, the kind of care they needed, the way the wine tasted depending on the growing season, the peculiarities of aging. I thought this all wonderful and romantic and most of all real. He reminded me, in his own way, of men I'd been around growing up, the ones who could fix their own cars, name all the trees. I knew I'd probably never live at home again, but I was always turning corners in the city and finding little things a battered stop sign, a porch with an American flag, a leaking garden hose that looked like my childhood, that carried me across space and time to a version of my life, maybe, in which I'd never gone away to college, never come to this coast, this city. I would see these things and feel a terrible, specific yearning, but I also had the frightful sense of being watched, as if tiny fissures had opened in the surface of my existence and that other alternate life was peeking through. Our second date was a walk through the Presidio, then down into Pacific Heights. I liked the old houses and their turrets, the furniture inside, the lit windows. I wanted the polished lamps, the fluffy sofas, the bright, unguarded rooms. Do you want Mr. Capitalism, too? Paul asked, pointing to a man pacing around his living room in a suit because he comes with the house. I was surprised and a little embarrassed. I laughed, of course I didn't want that man. But what did I really know about what I wanted? I mostly listened when Paul talked about politics, art, America. He had specific, incisive ideas. If we watched a film, for example, he might object to a director's stylistic decision. He might have a comment on the texture of the editing. I had studied film the previous semester, and I didn't have opinions like this. Most of our evenings in the beginning were spent talking this way. Which is to say that he talked and I listened. He knew exactly enough about everything, including what he wanted and didn't. He thought I was beautiful, and he told me so often I liked the person he thought I was. I never used the word love with Paul. I thought it was love, but I didn't know for certain. I was content to let it exist, unnamed and enigmatic, like a rumored continent. In the simplest of terms, we had a physical connection. When I was working at the restaurant, I'd catch him watching me and I'd feel a sudden lurch in my insides like a door blown open by the wind. I'd excuse myself to go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my skin. But the yearning was not so easily quieted. I carried it with me around and around, like something I was afraid to lose. In July, Paul took me to Calistoga with some friends of his, to a cottage that belonged to someone's father. When we arrived, the sky was dark, the air cool. The stars were out in bold numbers. There were tomato plants everywhere, winding up and down makeshift trestles, sprouting their globular red fruit. I could see through the lit window that people were already gathered, and I was nervous, preparing to meet them. I'm not sure what kind of people they were or what they think of me. I waved shyly as he introduced me, then sat with the others on the floor. There was a record playing softly, a Malian guitarist. I had never heard that sound before. Lionel, who was a drummer, tapped along in a stack of magazines. He'd brought along a thin, olive skinned woman, Maisie, who was sitting now in a flannel shirt and underwear, her hair piled in a loose nest atop her head. They passed a small glass pipe. Lionel was in the kitchen washing tomatoes when I went in there for a glass of water. His eyes were glazed over and his lips were chapped. He licked them. Maisie isn't sure about you, he said, but I told her you're one of us. Maisie just met me, I said. Have you met Shiloh? He asked. Who's Shiloh? Lionel cackled. He went back to his tomato. I knew Paul had a son at that point, but I didn't yet know the son's name. In the middle of the night, Paul and I rode bikes to the Calistoga Geyser. The park was closed, but we sneaked to the fence and watched the spray of water. Paul held my hand. I wondered what he was like as a father. I tried to picture him holding the hand of a small boy instead of my own. But the leap was too vast even for my imagination, which had already stretched itself considerably just to locate me in this place and time with this person, in view of this natural wonder. It seemed impossible in that moment that the world could be anything other than what we made of it. I had not felt such a promise before. Then in the early morning, Paul got a phone call. I could hear him in the kitchen through the closed door of our bedroom. You can't do that, he was saying. You can't just decide to do that. He sounded agitated, angry. I forced myself back to sleep, but the sleep was restless. I kept opening my eyes, thinking Paul had returned to bed, but the space next to me stayed cold. Eventually I dressed and went to find him. Everything all right? I asked. He was sitting on the kitchen counter, reading an old Rolling Stone. Of course, he said with a smile. Everything's great. The sun is out. He held his arms wide. Come kiss me, beautiful. I didn't press for more about his phone call. I suppose on some level I didn't want to know. But later that week I found out anyway. Paul's ex wife, Jenny, wanted to move back to Idaho, where she was from. She was planning to take Shiloh with her. Paul had never gotten on with her parents, he said, and he didn't want the boy to grow up there. There weren't enough of his kind of people. That's why I like you, he said. You're like me. He said he admired me for working a real job that summer, putting money aside for school, not relying so much on my parents. I would like to meet him, I said. My boy. I nodded. He said he pushed his lips together. I'll need to think about the right way to do that. He didn't say he wanted me to or that he was happy to hear me ask. I was sorry I had. I wondered if I had been mistaken about what we meant to each other. But by that point I was spending most nights at his apartment in the sunset rising easily to the gray mornings. We began speaking of the fall, how I might ride the Caltrain to see him on weekends, take some extra shifts at the restaurant. I believed then that I would. But you'll have parties, he said. Papers to write. And I told him not to worry. I could write my papers in his room, that I didn't need parties when I had this city. I liked hearing him this way, a little insecure, being the comforter rather than the comforted. Because most of the time it was Paul who held me, who made me feel secure. Eventually, people at the restaurant learned that we were together. One of the managers, Vanessa, told me to be careful. I know about the sun, I said, if that's where this is going. I was tired of everyone thinking I was naive. Well, then I guess you know everything, don't you? I realized that she was not being kind. Sometimes I went out with other servers after close. Sometimes Paul was there, sometimes not. They all knew the bartenders around town, and we were always getting free drinks. We were the loud ones in the corner, having more fun than everyone else. I remember these times fondly. I felt grounded, finally, in a way that I had never felt in college. I began to question my academic pursuits, their utility. I wondered if I could really go back to school in the fall, to my senior year, to read books, write papers while everyone else here was living, in other words. There were nights when I thought I'd trade that for this. But I kept those sort of thoughts to myself. I think if I'd said such a thing out loud, they would have laughed. They would have said, oh, believe me, you don't want this. You don't know how it used to be here before all the rich people moved in. They were always living in the past this way. Pointing out the daycare that used to be a nightclub, the bank that used to be a bodega. The present was never good enough. It was too shiny, too unscarred. In my own way, I envied their yearning, the way they carried around their history like a privileged secret, something they could draw on whenever they needed to be reminded of who they were, even while the world changed around them. I think the restaurant still exists. I don't know if any of the bars do. I'm not sure I remember how to find them. I don't even remember their names. In late August, Paul asked to sleep at my place. He'd never been over before. I'd never invited him. I met him at the front door, which was around the back of the house. Away from the street. He didn't make eye contact. My boy's in the car, he said. Can he come in? I think. Shiloh was five then, maybe six. His hair was long like a girl's and shiny blonde like a coin. He wore a giant's cap that fell over his eyes. His hands look like they might be sticky. Nice to meet you, I said, smiling. Shiloh smiled back, then turned and pressed his face into his father's leg. I was nervous, finally meeting his son. I asked if we should go out somewhere, maybe for ice cream, I suppose. I wanted to do something special, but Paul said they were tired, so we went inside, turned on the television. I didn't have a sofa or chairs, so we crowded together on the narrow bed in a pile. Thanks a million, said Paul after some time had passed. I owe you one. It's nothing, I said. I squeezed his hand out of sight of Shiloh. It hadn't occurred to me yet that I was doing him any favors. Eventually Shiloh fell asleep on the bed, and I put a blanket over his leg. I thought this was very motherly of me. I tried to do this with tenderness. While Paul was watching, I turned off the light. I guess we'll sleep on the floor, I whispered. He was seated on the floor, cracking his knuckles. Look, he said, I don't want you to be upset with me. I paused. I looked down at him. I'm just. I'm sorry to show up like this to surprise you. It's okay, I said. Really. I'm happy to meet your son. He ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head. When he picked his face up, his eyes were glassy and wet. Jenny's leaving next week for Idaho, he said, taking Shiloh. I was supposed to bring him back to her tonight, but I couldn't make myself do it. Alice, I'm freaking out. I don't know what to do. I sat down on the floor next to him, took his hands. I'm sorry, I said. I tried to hold him, but his body was chilly, rigid. Can she really do that? He didn't answer, which led me to believe that she could. There has to be something you can do, I said, but I didn't really know what I was saying or how to help. I had the sensation of watching myself on television, trying to plot out the twists and turns of someone else's life. What about a lawyer? I said, maybe stupidly, and Paul just nodded, because of course he must have thought of such an obvious solution before. Well, anyway, he said, we'll just stay here for a little, if that's all right. Of course it is, I said. And then I realized, maybe too late, what I might be allowing. Jenny didn't know where I lived. She'd never find Paul and Shiloh here. Still, I said nothing. I let him stay. I wanted to give him something of what he'd given me, which was a comfortable spot to rest, to feel at home. I opened my eyes sometime after midnight and forgot briefly where I was. My right hip hurt from sleeping on the floor. I rolled to my back, looked at the ceiling. Paul was standing near the door, pulling on a shirt. Seeing him this way in the dark, half dressed, I felt a tug at my insides. I wanted him. I reached out a hand, but he put a finger to his lips. I need some air, he whispered. Clear my head a little. I nodded. He closed the door carefully. The boy didn't even start. I drifted back to sleep. I woke in the morning to the feeling of something cold on my leg. Shiloh had placed a small race car on my thigh, just above my knee. He began running it down toward my ankle. We made eye contact. He smiled. Hi, he said softly, a whisper. Hi, I mouthed back to him.
- [44:01]
Meg Wolitzer
Hi.
- [44:03]
Mama, Mama Narrator
He said again, this time louder, a drawl. I sat up. A small trapezoid of sunlight had fallen onto the kitchen. Illuminated this way, the room looked emptier, spotlight on a blank stage. Where's your father? I asked. The boy's gaze was focused on the car. He was imitating engine sounds, pushing his lips into a tight line. I left him briefly. I walked out the door to the street. The car was gone, too. I looked up and down the block, as if I might see Paul walking there, taking the air, clearing his head. I guess he's running errands, I said to Shiloh when I went back inside to reassure the both of us. We found cartoons on the television, repositioned the antennas. I poured us each a bowl of raisin bran with rice milk. I gave Shiloh the bowl with more raisins. I checked the time and decided that in one hour if Paul didn't show up, I would call around for him. It's funny now, trying to remember what I did to find him. We didn't have cell phones then, the way we do now. We didn't have social media. I called Paul's house. No one answered. I called the restaurant. He wasn't on the schedule, but I asked about him anyway. Vanessa was gruff when she answered. Did you have a fight or something? I wasn't particularly close with Lionel, Maisie, or the Others. And anyway I didn't have phone numbers for them. I didn't know where they lived. I don't know at what point I became worried, if I even was. I had a general optimism about the world then, and for a while I stayed put, assuming Paul would come back any moment, that there had just been some big misunderstanding. I might even say we had a nice morning, Shiloh and me, snacking and watching the television. I was relieved by the boy's contentment, an easy way about him, perhaps used to strange people, strange places. By noon he wanted to go outside. He asked if there was a playground. I don't know, I said, because I didn't. There's one by Anna's house. Who's Anna? My dad's friend, he said. I felt my stomach turn, the familiar coil of jealousy. What kind of a friend? She has a big tv, he said. She lives by the playground. Uh huh. I debated pressing for more. So can we go? He asked. Outside, to the playground? He went over to the door and began putting on his shoes. We can't, I said. We have to wait for your dad. When's he coming back? Soon, I said. We can go without him, he said, reaching for the doorknob. Shiloh, we can't. Why not? Because we promised your dad we'd wait for him here. But I hate it here, he said, and crossed his arms. I sighed. Of course he hated it here. I'd never made much of a home of it. Four months sublet. I never planned to stay here long. I want to go home, he yelled. I reminded him in my calmest voice that we had to wait for his dad. Then I want my mom, he said, and he began to cry. I tried to hug him, to comfort him, but he twisted away from me. With surprising strength. He began banging on my front door, his tiny fists furious. I was panicking, sweaty. I was worried my landlady would come down and I'd have to try to explain this all to her. But what would I say? What would I say? What was this boy doing here anyway? What did he have to do with me? I put an arm on his shoulder and I yelled at him to stop, but he reached back, swung at me. I felt a sharp burn on my left eye, a shocking, blinding pain. I covered my face and I sat back against the wall, felt water rushing in behind my lid. Shiloh was crying, still screaming now, but the sound seemed to be coming from far away. Another house, another city. I slid down the wall and I laid back on the cool linoleum, my palm cupped over my eye, I tried to breathe. I kept breathing, slowly and deeply as I could, feeling the gift of oxygen in my lungs. Some time passed, I don't know how much. Eventually I noticed that the room was quiet. Shiloh, too, had caught his breath, and with my right eye I could see that he was lying on his stomach, his cheek pressed to the floor, his thumb in his mouth, his tiny cheeks puffing in and out as he sucked on it. Every so often he whispered, mama, Mama. A prayer, an incantation, a call for someone who wasn't me. Shiloh, I said as steadily as I could, listen to me. Do you know your mother's phone number? Do you know how to call her? He nodded. He pushed himself up and retrieved his backpack, where a phone number had been scrawled on the inner flap in black permanent marker. Perhaps I should have waited longer, given Paul a chance to return. But I showed Shiloh where the phone was and we called. We waited for Jenny at a diner down the street. I didn't want to know where I lived. I left a note on my door in case Paul came by, but then I hoped he wouldn't. I wasn't ready to be confronted with what I'd done. Shiloh had calmed. He raced his little cars down the length of the Formica table while we picked at french fries, watched the door. My left eye felt scratchy and watered whenever I opened it. I held a tissue to my cheek. I must look sad, I thought. Sad and a little overwhelmed. I wondered if I looked like the boy's mother. I wanted people to know I wasn't. Eventually the door opened to reveal a woman in a long coat, wire rimmed glasses. She seemed too old to be Shiloh's mother, but when she spotted us, she hurried over. Oh, thank God, she said. Why were you hiding from me? The boy laughed. Happy. She kissed him on both of his cheeks, then rubbed noses. You're his mother? I said, surprised.
- [50:24]
Factory Town Narrator
Jenny.
- [50:25]
Mama, Mama Narrator
She was wearing little dainty shoes, creased trousers. She looked as though she might work in an office. She might have been pretty if she hadn't also seemed so conventional. I wondered if she looked like this when she and Paul were together. You should go, she said. I might say something I regret, though I suppose I should thank you for babysitting my son. Why are you taking him to Idaho? I asked. Is that what Paul told you? I nodded. No, I am not taking him to Idaho. We are moving to Ketchum, where my family lives and runs a very nice resort so that I can give Shiloh a good life away from his useless father. She began gathering Shiloh's cars into his backpack. I tried to help her. She gave me a look, then held his backpack open while I swept the cars inside. I have full custody, you know, she said. Anytime he spends with Shiloh is out of the goodness of my heart. She must have seen something on my face then, because she laughed a little, a cool, forced laugh. He's really fooled you, she said. Hasn't he? Have you considered, even for a minute, what it means that he left you with his son and you have no idea where he is? Have you thought about that at all? My face was suddenly hot, as though she slapped it, though of course she hadn't. She'd barely raised her voice. She took Shiloh by the hand and hurried him out of the diner, away from me. I watched them all the way to the door, wishing I'd hugged the boy goodbye. I wanted him to know that I was all right, I was not a terrible person, whatever his mother ended up taking, telling him. And then Shiloh, as if hearing my regret, turned back to wave at me. I think I even saw him smile. He looked like Paul hadn't really noticed it before, the way his eyes slanted into half moons when he smiled, the soft slope of his cheeks, the way that just a few minutes earlier he'd wrinkled his nose and leaned forward to touch his mother's face. This was Paul in the mornings, rolling over to nuzzle me awake. I felt my body stiffen with recognition, maybe even a little shame, for I suppose it hadn't been real to me until then, that Paul was a father, that eventually, if I continued loving him, I would need to become some kind of mother. And of course I didn't want this, not then. How could I have? I sat for another minute to catch my breath. I stacked the dirty plates. Out of habit. I left the diner, but I was afraid of going home. More than once I approached the end of my block, but I couldn't make the turn, convinced I would see Paul crumbled on my stoop, and I didn't yet know what to say to him, how to explain what I'd done. Pain in my eye had dulled, but I held a thin napkin to it as I walked, wandering vaguely in the direction of the restaurant. With my good eye I watched the buses empty, the bars fill. I ran headlong into a crowd of commuters coming off the Mooney, the kind of people Paul was always finding fault with, and I observed them as they rushed quickly, purposefully toward their destinations. The Women reminded me of Jenny in a way, with their long light coats and pointy feet. And I saw them the way Paul might have, with some kind of resentment, although I didn't know if I resented them out of envy or out of spite. I wondered if I would be like them someday or if I already was like them without realizing it. If they had ever loved men like Paul, if they had ever looked back and missed the men they loved but knew they shouldn't. Maybe they just made their choices, pressed forward, old love hidden in their hearts. Maybe they buried it deep until it became something else. Until eventually they remembered not the shame of it, but how happy they felt when they were living it and what it gave them. The way that Jenny had Shiloh now, the way she'd looked at him when she first walked into the diner. I had seen the relief on her face and then the happiness as she hurled herself toward him. Perhaps Jenny had been a fool once, but now she was a mother. As for me, I still didn't know what I wanted or where I was going. I was lost, quite literally on a block I had never seen before. I felt a quickness in my chest, a small pang of panic. The air cooled fast. There was a brief, eerie moment when the setting sun broke through the fog and the city appeared to be on fire. And then, just like that, the sky was cool again, the city saved. I wish I had paused there, stood still for a minute on the sidewalk, paid more attention. I didn't know then that I could choose this too, that Paul would fade faster than I could catch him, his face softening until I couldn't remember the shape of it or what I felt when he touched me, that I would barely think of him. That fall, as I studied the poets, went to parties, met new men, made my life, and that eventually I would tell people I spent the summer in San Francisco once. And I would smile, not for Paul, but for the summer, the last one I ever really had, which he had given me in a way and which finally, in my memory, replaced the man as the thing I really loved. But I didn't know any of this then, and so I turned around quickly and tried to go back the way I'd come.
- [56:37]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Mama. Mama. By Lauren Prineski, Read by Kirsten Vangsness. I'm Meg Wolitzer. It hurts a little hearing about our narrator's naivete, doesn't it? The saving grace, I think, is knowing that she's on the other side of it, wiser, if wounded. Maybe you heard it in these stories. Or maybe you quietly know the truth already. It just seems easier to identify someone else's foolishness than it is to detect our own. Fooling ourselves can feel very natural, and truth be told, we engage in comforting little delusions all the time. I, for one, am a person who, you may recall, fools herself into thinking she is not harming her one wild and precious life each time she bites into an individually wrapped devil's food cupcake pie. And I tell myself that you are still sobbing after that last story, swearing fealty to the Muse of Literature and planning the sight of your shorts tattoo. I suspect I'm fooling myself in this. And just this once, I'm okay with it. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts.
- [57:50]
Selected Shorts Production Announcer
Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our 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.
- [59:08]
Factory Town Narrator
Hi neighbor. Save up to 70% on classic furniture and decor at Birch Lane, a Wayfair specialty brand. The biggest sale on the block is happening October 26 through 29. Shop classic style for joyful living@birchlane.com this is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan, real United Airlines customers.
- [59:29]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.
- [59:35]
Mama, Mama Narrator
I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family.
- [59:38]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
And seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.
- [59:42]
Factory Town Narrator
That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
- [59:44]
Mama, Mama Narrator
These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain.
- [59:49]
Participation Trophy (Narrator/Character)
Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.