← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Modest Expectations
00:59:36
Host Meg Wolitzer presents four stories, recorded at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, in which characters shape their expectations and dreams to a manageable size. So if you’re “Medusa,” as in our first story, by Tania James, you try to figure out how to live in the world instead of turning it to stone. The reader is Constance Zimmer. Parents in our second story, “We Only Wanted Their Happiness,” by Alexander Weinstein, make a tactical choice about technology. It’s performed by Randall Park. The narrator of Honor Levy’s “Good Boys,” read by Annie Hamilton, understands that infatuation is a phase. And a man and a woman sidestep romance in “Arrangements” by Charlie Watts, performed by Laura Harrier and Will Harrison. The program was created in cooperation with Belletrist, an online book club created by Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss.
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- [00:01]
Narrator/Announcer
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Narrator/Announcer
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Emma Roberts
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Laura Harrier
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Emma Roberts
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Laura Harrier
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- [01:08]
Meg Wolitzer
Charles Dickens brought us that little scamp Pip with all of his great expectations. But what if you don't have the loyal chums or a mysterious benefactor and you happen to have a head full of snakes instead of hair? Hello, I'm Meg Wolitzer. And coming up, twisty tales told by characters with modest expectations. Stay with us. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. As a human, it's hard not to get your hopes up. We're hardwired to get them way up, really, Whether it's imagining what treasures are hidden in that bin at the garage sale across the street, or dreaming about what our lives might be like by the time we're 40, we don't really limit ourselves. If we didn't dream big dreams, it'd make the future seem a lot less bright. The problem is disappointment, and what to do with it if things don't quite turn out how we imagined well. So let's try something. In the next hour, we're going to hear stories that present a kind of thought experiment. And that experiment is what if we kept our outsized optimism in a more reasonable place? What if, unlike Pip in the Dickens classic, we had less than great, even modest expectations? Today's program explores the pros and cons of carefully tempered expectations. In one story, a mythological monster ages into her resting witch face. In another, hesitant parents Consider upgrading their kids online lives. In a third, a young woman aims for cool around the boys of summer. And in the final piece, two strangers let dreams blossom and wither during a chance meeting at a flower shop. This program was also co curated by our friends in the online collective Belletrist and the Belletrist Book Club. For those who don't know it well, first, belletrist is a French word for a writer whose work is beautiful or artistic or rather than academic. The Belletrist Book Club is the vibrant online community built by two longtime friends, actor Emma Roberts and producer Cara Price. As bookworms, they regularly shared recommendations and wanted to expand their circle as they passed their favorite new reads back and forth. As big admirers of the Belletrist community and their incredible author picks, we asked Price and Roberts to help us curate and host two shows at the Getty, and they said yes. Today's show, the stories and the actors you'll hear are a direct result of our collaboration with Belletrist. Here are Price and Roberts having a bit of fun prepping the audience on how to listen to selected shorts.
- [03:53]
Cara Price
Here's a little bit of an intro. Selected shorts is literature performed live.
- [03:58]
Emma Roberts
And because actors rehearse, we are going to rehearse with you before we start.
- [04:05]
Cara Price
Okay, so what this means is
- [04:08]
Constance Zimmer
you
- [04:09]
Cara Price
are also being recorded, so we want the mic to be able to also recognize your gorgeous voices. So we're going to start with you just giving us a. Will you as an actor, just give us a little bit of an example of what I'm talking about?
- [04:23]
Emma Roberts
Yeah, so we just want, you know, a little gasp, you know, like, okay, so on the count of 1, 2, 3.
- [04:31]
Cara Price
I mean, stunning, gorgeous. Now we're going to give what we call the Robert's belly laugh.
- [04:39]
Constance Zimmer
It sounds.
- [04:41]
Randall Park
Do it.
- [04:41]
Emma Roberts
It's loud. Well, I'll do it with them. Okay.
- [04:43]
Will Harrison
One, two, three.
- [04:47]
Laura Harrier
Okay.
- [04:50]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Emma Roberts and Cara Price, co founders of the Belletrist Book Club. From the stage at the Getty center in Los Angeles, our first story is from writer Tanya James. She is the author of books including the Tusk that Did the Damage, Atlas of Unknowns, and her latest work, Lute, which was a recent Belletrist Book Club pick. Now to take us into the mind of the modern Gorgon with Tanya James Story, Medusa is Constance Zimmer. In her shorts debut, Zimmer is a sharp actor who knows her way around a cutting remark, as evidenced by roles in series such as Unreal and and House of Cards.
- [05:33]
Constance Zimmer
In public, she wore head wraps so tight they gave her headaches. Nevertheless, at some point the hissing caused people to stop what they were doing and squint all around in search of the sound that happened to be coming from her scalp. It was awkward and also dangerous, for she was being hunted. Her assassin was said to be handsome and strong, armed with the sickle of Zeus and the winged sandals of Hermes, but so stupid he couldn't pour piss out of a boot. That she'd eluded him this long seemed a testament to his stupidity. Her last refuge had been a northern city. The city had provided her with the anonymity she desired, but the numerous people provided opportunities for numerous mistakes. Every face was a face. She might turn to stone the second she was pushed from behind at the deli counter or cut off on the expressway. Her ire would rise and the snakes would writhe, blood cool and lovely against her skull. To manage her anger, she had a mantra. I am not a monster. After the incident with the plumber, she wasn't so sure. One minute he was demanding twice his quoted fee, the next minute he was statuary. She was left heaving in the aftermath, dizzied, horrified, as if the crime had been committed by someone else. There was nothing to do but jump in her car and follow the roadmap to a southern hamlet where there would be fewer faces and everything was fine for a while. In a corner of her yard she grew her own tomatoes, string beans, and squash, and had the rest of her groceries delivered by one of the young store clerks. It was quiet out there, deathly quiet. She'd heard that people slept more soundly in the country, but the isolation made her wake up in a sweat, risen by dreams of sickles slicing her throat. At such times the snakes massaged her scalp. She loved their gentle pressure, their nighttime fizzing, a lullaby that sent her off to sleep. Out of loneliness, she struck up a courtship with the delivery guy. He wasn't exactly her type, with his rangy, ruddy farm boy looks and the mesh jerseys he wore with nothing beneath. But she was bored out in the country, and it was nice to feel wanted. On their second date they were necking on her couch when one of the snakes slid out of her head wrap. The delivery guy jolted away and asked as calmly as he could why her hair was moving. With a sigh she unwrapped the fabric, letting the snake spring to life, 37 tongues snapping at air. And oh, there was that look on his face, that crude, doltish look that always provoked a tingling in the tip of her nose, a heat in her cheeks, the beginning of something dangerous, something she could not control. One wrong word and she wouldn't be able to stop herself. Just one wrong word and wow, he said. He reached out a hand and let a tongue flicker over his fingertip. She slept with him that night on the couch, amazed by the prospect that she was taking a lover. He was a good listener, and he didn't take it personally when she said that the sex was good, not great. It wasn't his fault. I mean, really. The snakes were to blame, the way they watched and whispered encouragingly, looping around each other as if charmed by flute song. She didn't know how to ignore them. But her lover had an idea. The following week, when he dropped off her groceries, he also delivered a bath bomb. He crafted it himself, he said, using homegrown herbal remedies as directed. She dropped the bomb into her bathwater. The salts crumbled and hissed and the snakes hissed back. Gradually the steam mixed with a muddy vegetal smell. She lay down in the water and propped her head against the tub, the snakes spreading and sipping until they fell asleep. When she stepped out of the tub, the snakes didn't lift away from her scalp. They didn't pull and writhe in 37 directions, didn't fill her head with their sound. They lay limp as 37 braids, but heavier, the way children are heavier when they sleep. There followed a blissful period of lovemaking and spooning and driving through the countryside with the windows down, the snakes draped over her headrest to give her hairline a break. With her lover's encouragement, she put away her head wraps and entered a new phase of freedom and self discovery. As she grew infatuated with him, the snakes grew infatuated with the bath bombs. She convinced herself that this was for the good. I mean, weren't they always trying to escape the head wrap? Especially Hector, her favorite, who was always futzing through a gap in the fabric, the first to wake in the mornings, nuzzling her eyebrow in an effort to wake her too. These days, upon waking, the snakes were miserably hungover, hissing like 37 fuses until she took a very long bath. In time, she and her lover developed an ease between them. Occasionally he got on her nerves, like when he wiped his face sweat on her bath towel and talked about fake news, or when he bought her a pull up bar as a spontaneous gift, even though she'd never shown interest in doing a pull up. Sometimes she considered relocating to another town, eluding her lover and her assassin at once One evening, as she and her lover were watching a movie at her place, Hector fell out of her head. He lay stiffening in her lap, his eyes tight as stitches. She touched the stretch of skin he'd left behind on her scalp, smooth as if he'd never been. The others went on sleeping. She looked at her lover. What have you done? What you wanted, he said, shrinking into the couch. Right. She closed her eyes and felt the ancient trembling in her chest, the blood ticking in her ears, the living snakes beginning to stir. Get out, she said. Her lover left in a hurry, taking the pull up bar with him. For a long time she did not move, only held the snake in her upturned palms. In the morning, the snakes that remained jerked her toward the tub, uninterested in the pain they caused her, selfish in their dying. If they had to die, they wanted to die in the tub. By the third day, all the snakes had fallen out and turned to bone. She buried the bone snakes in her garden. In the night wind, her head felt cold and exposed, and though the snakes were gone, she could feel a twitching from the inside of her scalp, a phantom warning to flee. But what was the point? Her power had fizzled out, her scream gone silent. So she began to leave her doors unlocked and windows open day and night, waiting for the end. Years or months later, she'd lost track of time. She was lying in the tub when her assassin edged his way past the bathroom door, his sickle raised, careful not to look her in the eye. You don't have to do that, she said. Her eyes dimmed to slits. You can look. He squinted at her reflection in his shield, then dropped his arms and stared at her. What happened to you? He said. She shook her head. Just make it quick. The longer he looked, the deeper his dismay. He'd imagined marble statues carved in his image, his fist gripping her head by the snakes. How would he hold a bald head? What kind of trophy would that make? She looked like not a monster, but a beautiful baby. Dazed and defeated, the hero departed the way he came, through the window she'd left open for him. Where are you going? She said frantically. Sitting up in the tub, she realized that he was never coming back. Just like her lover. Just like her 37 loves. In his absence, the bathroom felt terribly empty. Her hand drifted over her scalp and down to her soft, bare throat. She could slay herself, or she could go make hot chocolate or watch tv. As she spent another hour in the tub doing none of these things, it seemed as though the emptiness gave her space to breathe. To fill however she wanted to fill it. And so eventually, she pulled herself together, making a kind of life for herself in that small town. She missed the snakes, especially Hector. Though she had to admit it was easier to move freely without them. Buying groceries, attending protests, playing mahjong with some of the older women down the street. Everyone had stories about the girls. They'd been bright, impulsive, sexy, adventurous. When it was her turn to tell, she only said with a hint of pride, oh, me. I had a temper.
- [16:52]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Medusa by Tanya James, read by Constance Zimmer. I'm Meg Wolitzer. With all the cheeky adaptations of myths and legends these days, this story stands out in that it really wrestles with the legacy of the character and in the end, makes a real person out of a legend created to be a monster. If you've ever taken a writing workshop, you will know that the word nuance comes up a lot. We want our characters to have nuance, even those characters who have a follicular reptilian situation going on. Though Medusa has modest expectations about what will become of her life, in some ways, over the course of the story, she gains an extra dimension. Next up, a story of technology and compromise. Here are Belletrist co founders Cara Price and Emma Roberts, introducing it from the stage.
- [17:38]
Emma Roberts
All right, well, next is a story from Andrew Weinstein. Kara and I are huge fans of Alexander's collection Children of a New World, and we wanted to find a way to incorporate him into this show. His story Saying Goodbye to Yang was turned into an A24 movie after Yang.
- [17:56]
Cara Price
So Weinstein's work has always kind of struck us as literary black mirror with a grounded soul. And this story is is no exception. Reading tonight's story is the wildly charming actor who you know from series including Fresh off the Boat, WandaVision, and movies such as Always Be My maybe. He also recently released his directorial debut, Shortcomings, which everybody should see now. Performing We Only Wanted Their Happiness. And I'm just gonna warn you, this story is gonna fuck with you. Now performing We Only Wanted Their Happiness by Alexander Weinstein. Please, please welcome Randall Park.
- [18:44]
Randall Park
We never should have opened our hearts to their tears. But how can you say no to your children? And when they asked why, we told them it was dangerous. They were only 5, 8, 10. They were kids. Wasn't it enough that they had their smartphones, their tablets, their. Their laptops, their virtual reality consoles, their screens upon screens upon screens? But our children kept asking. Every birthday, when they unwrapped their gifts full of more electronics, we saw their disappointment. Why can't they have it? They asked. Over breakfast, over lunch, over dinner. They asked when we picked them up from school or went grocery shopping, and we spent hours repeating our reasons, only to be asked again when we tucked them into bed at night. Maybe, in retrospect, we agreed simply to get them to stop asking. One could always have it removed, we reasoned, and we turned to our husbands and wives, our companions who should have stopped us, but they too were exhausted from all of the pleading. Most days were spent checking texts with the addiction of chain smokers, or searching for funny gifts as if seeking the Holy Grail. At the end of the day, all we wanted was a couple hours of uninterrupted scrolling, and so we printed out appointment confirmations and placed them inside gift boxes on our children's birthdays. Or the gifts were bought for our kids by grandparents. We know it's expensive, our parents told us, but we wanted to spoil them. And then what could we do? When our children unwrapped their presents, their faces were illuminated, as if discovering a kitten. The surgery was painless, as promised. A small handheld injector, no larger than a pocket flashlight, was pressed to our children's temples. Count to three, the technician instructed. One, two. Our children winced. A couple tears appeared in the corner of their eyes, and then it was done. They opened their eyes, looking slightly dazed, and we took them out for ice cream and told them they'd been brave and they'd done a good job at home. We let them rest in bed, watched for symptoms and feared the worst. But they just lay there in the dark rooms, their eyes shining, and finally they yawned, stretched their arms and blinked on their inner connections. They talked so much in those first few weeks we couldn't stop them. They talked upon waking, they talked in the shower, at breakfast, on the way to school, their small voices ringing out as if using their words for the last time. They gave non stop narration from backseats as they navigated the ethers between their brains and our world, interacting with the animated animals which floated invisibly in the air. We grew tired of their ongoing laughter, their joy, which excluded us. Please, we said, we just want a moment with you.
- [21:42]
Narrator/Announcer
Ha.
- [21:43]
Randall Park
They laughed and told us they'd placed filters over our faces. We suddenly had giraffe ossicones, cat ears, and dog noses. Now we had horse teeth. Now fish lips. Speech bubbles emerged from our mouths when we told our kids to please turn off their browsers. It was time for dinner. They couldn't even hear what we were saying. They turn our voices into bird chirps. Please, we asked them again, aware of the helplessness in our voices. We need you to turn off your connections. And finally they blinked their eyes and told us they had. But when they giggled during dinner, how could we be sure they closed anything down? Then, all of a sudden, our children fell silent. We watched as they crouched in the middle of the carpeting for hours, entertained by nothing, it seemed. Seemed they sat alone in their rooms, their hands building invisible castles. When we asked them once, twice, three times what they were doing, they told us with frustration, please be quiet. We are trying to concentrate. Our houses became silent again, and our children stopped asking for things, only for our credit cards, which they needed to purchase upgrades. No, we we said. Please? They asked. No, we repeated. We weren't about to put our credit card numbers into the ether. But they cried and they yelled at us, and when they wouldn't relent, we finally read the numbers off our cards and gave them expiration dates. We tried to tell our children about the benefits of having at least some offline time. An hour or two, even a couple minutes, just to take a walk, to ride a bicycle, to play in the snow or watch springtime lightning storms. We printed up contracts with consequences for spending too long online, had our children sign on dotted lines, force them to make promises which were never fulfilled. We begged, we pleaded. They told us they understood, and then they went back into their rooms to build invisible cities. Their grades plummeted, all their homework was in the ether, and we watched them moving their hands in the air, looking no different than than when they were playing online games. It sure didn't seem like math, but it was impossible to check. We petitioned the school. Could we go back to pen and paper? Stay with tablets and laptops? We were patiently listened to by their kindly educators, who all nodded with their implanted heads. They smiled at us with illuminated eyes and shared the good news. Our school STEM program had just received a grant for low income implantation. Philanthropically minded tech foundations would be offering free online textbooks. Soon our district would be completely implanted, the libraries of the world as near to our children's brains as the backsides of their eyes. But though we wrote letters to the Board of Education and launched minor but vocal resistances at PTA meetings, our newspapers were awash with the future of implanted education. Why didn't anyone understand our children needed sleep? Late at night they lay in the darkness of their bedrooms, wide eyed and grinning. Go to sleep, we told them. They needed rest. They were children, and yet were they Their minds now accessed. Every history lesson, every blog, every Googled answer to any argument we had. They'd long ago surpassed us. Go to sleep. We yelled, and immediately felt horrible about our parenting. Later, we'd peek into their room, see their eyes closed, their faces resembling the toddlers we once knew, and we'd sigh. Yet behind their closed eyelids, how could we be sure they were ever sleeping? We decided to have the chips removed. We returned to the store and waded through endless lines only to have a young technician hand us a pamphlet portraying two sad looking teenagers. Yes, we could have the chips removed, but it came with disastrous side effects. Anxiety, social isolation, Depression. Suicide. We were reminded about our service contracts, the ones we'd signed but never had actually read. Are you kidding? We asked when the young salesperson showed us the contract. Would we really be paying this off for the next five years? Yes, the boy said. Even if the chip was removed? Yes, he said. What if we canceled our plan? We'd still be paying it off, he told us again, smiling gently. We searched online and found blogs by parents explaining the tedious process of creating parental blocks. All we had to do was sync our accounts by left blinking and scrolling right with our eyes. We stopped reading and typed parental blocks for parents without implants. We searched. We googled, navigated dead hyperlinks called toll free numbers, and sat on hold for hours simply to ask about setting up a password to our children's accounts. And at long last, a few of us succeeded in placing blocks on our children's usage. Our children found ways around them easily. We became vigilant. We canceled the connection to our apartments, opened our fuse boxes, shut off the electricity, and sat in candlelight with our furious children. They yelled at us, but we informed them we weren't going to relent. This was for their own good. We were their parents, we said, and we stood strong against them. It was only then, once we mounted our counteroffensive and held our ground, that our children retaliated. How they gained access to our passwords, we have no clue. But here was a list of our past search histories, the emails we sent when we complained about bosses or neighbors or parents or friends. Here were the porn sites we visited, the sexts we sent to our partners. Here were the databases upon databases of our most shameful secrets, tallied and collated. Our children stood in our living room. Did we understand how easy it would be for them to share this with the world? They asked. They could make our private lives public with nothing more than WI fi and a single blink of an eye. You can't do this, we told them. Of course we can, they said, looking at us as if we were toddlers. Please don't do this, we said, and they smiled.
- [28:49]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Randall park performing We Only Wanted Their Happiness By Alexander Weinstein I'm Meg Wolitzer. While we're not yet installing chips in our kids brains, I'm sure many parents could identify with that moment of compromise. Maybe your compromise was about access to sugar or an iPhone. Whatever the case, you gave them a taste and hoped it wouldn't turn them into someone you didn't recognize. I'm reminded of an anecdote a friend once told me. She and the writer Jane Smiley and Jane's kids were in a store and one of the kids was haranguing her mother about candy. Jane Smiley plucked up a lollipop and handed it to the kid. Then she turned to our mutual friend and explained her actions. She said, never make them crave the mediocre. I love that. As a philosophy of child rearing. You see, selected shorts isn't just about stories. Oh no. Sometimes we offer actual useful advice. Next we'll hear something from the writer Honor Levy. She's a young writer with a powerful voice whose debut collection is titled My First Book. She's also published stories in the New Yorker and New York Tyrant. The story was read by Annie Hamilton and she's a writer and actor who has appeared in series including Dickinson and Inventing Anna. Also, she has performed her funny one woman show Looking for Papa at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. And now Annie Hamilton performs Good Boys by Honor Levy.
- [30:19]
Annie Hamilton
We are on the rooftop with the boys. The boys are calling girls dogs like she's a dog. She's a total dog. They don't mean bitches, they just mean dogs. If they wanted to tell us that a girl was a bitch, they would just say she's a bitch. She's a total bitch. When the boys say something, they mean it. That's why we like them. We are not dogs. That's why they like us. That's why we're on the rooftop. The house has three floors. The ceilings are high. I know that if one of the boys fell off the rooftop, he'd just die. I know that none of the boys will fall off. Not tonight at least. Tonight they're not roughhousing or drinking tequila or even annoying me. They've left the tennis rackets on the second floor and they want to tell us about their trip to Greece. In Greece, the cigarettes are cheap. They filled an entire Suitcase with little yellow boxes of George Corellius and Sons. They say we can smoke as many as we want. They're proud the cigarettes are so cheap. The boys are so proud. We laugh. Zoe laughs like Tinkerbell, the air whistling between the gaps in her teeth. She's definitely not a dog. I know we're high up and I know our lives would be ruined if one of the boys fell. But tall plants are growing on the edge of the rooftop and I can't see the cobblestones anymore. If I could see that little cobblestone street in the boy's little Smart car, it would be easier to imagine them falling. It would be easier to remember that I'm in Paris. It would be easier to laugh like Zoe, like Tinkerbell, like a real girl, a girl who is not a dog. I can't see the Pantheon or the observatory or the park. I can see only the boys and their tanned stomachs and the scrapes they got from falling off the moped. We could be anywhere. We could be back in New York or near my house in la or at some Airbnb in Berlin. I'd like to go to Berlin, to dance with the boys at Bergain, to eat knafe with Zoe, to see the Reichstag or whatever. But the boys don't want to go. Athens is the new Berlin. In Athens, the cigarettes are cheap. I thought Krakow was the new Berlin. The boys laugh and they shake their heads and I can smell their wet puppy dog hair. The sun is setting and the sky is so pink. Pink like the canopy bed I never got. Like Kirby, like peonies, like the cheeks of a girl who the boys have just called a dog. I stand at the edge of the rooftop, holding my phone just above the plants, trying to take a photo, trying not to drop it. The boys tell me that if I want to post something on Instagram, they'll text me A Greek sunset. I'm not going to post anything. It's just for my grandma. They want me to show her a Greek sunset. All their grandmas are dead. In Greece, the sky gets even pinker. Like, way pinker. The Greeks have four words for sunset, one for each of the boys. Tomorrow they leave to work on their barbed wire sculptures at some studio space in Normandy. But tonight we're in Paris, but all they want to talk about is Greece. They wish they could have stayed, stayed away from Paris, from Normandy, from Bennington and Bard, from the rooftop, from all this. Their moms have ovarian cancer. Their girlfriends are pregnant again. They're sure to fail a class next semester. But in Greece, none of that matters. In Greece they sail on boats and they make sketches of naked marble women and they all sleep in one king sized bed. In Greece, they touched sculptures of gods. In Greece, they put their art history education to good use. In Greece, they were happy. We want them to be happy. We let them tell us about the olives and the stray cats and the monks and the night they crashed, the moped and the windmills and the dead dolphin and the economy. I want to ask them how many dogs they saw. But then again, I don't really care. Dogs are girls who care. Girls who ask too many questions are dogs. Dogs comment on how high the ceilings are. Dogs want to know who this rooftop really belongs to. Dogs ask what your dads do for work. Dogs post sunsets on Instagram. Dogs throw up when they drink tequila. Dogs beg for games of rooftop tennis. Dogs ask where the Eiffel Tower is. Dogs wear too much perfume because dogs stink. Dogs get mad when the boys kiss me or Zoe. Dogs don't know how to keep it casual. Dogs whine. Dogs don't want the boys to be happy. Dogs want to be held after sex, to be petted, to be taken care of. Dogs make a big deal when you get them pregnant. Dogs don't know how to just take care of it while you're with your boys and grace. Dogs are too loud. Dogs get excited too fast. Dogs need you. Dogs just don't get it. Dogs don't get to hang out on the roof. It's too high, they're too wild, they might fall. And then we'd actually have to catch them or something.
- [36:12]
Meg Wolitzer
That was good. Boys by Honor Levy, performed by Annie Hamilton. While Levy's language becomes a kind of heightened refrain, she hits on a feeling I think we can all relate to. That time you tried to be cool around those people you wanted to impress and only ended up disappointing yourself. Still, I sense that the narrator won't remain on the rooftop for long. She's too thoughtful, too energetic, too ready to become her own person. When we return. Strangers in a flower shop let their relationship bloom, each on their own terms. 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.
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Meg Wolitzer
Brass happens.
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- [38:43]
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. Me, I'm Meg Wolitzer. This week, our stories are about modest expectations, that is the perks and pitfalls of keeping your hopes at a manageable level. Our final story in this program, Arrangements, is by writer Charlie Watts. Watts has been publishing in journals including the Drum and Narrative, while the story itself won Carve magazine's Raymond Carver contest in 2015. Arrangements is told from two distinct perspectives, so it felt right to invite two actors to read it. Laura Harrier has featured in films including Homecoming and White Men Can't Jump, and Will Harrison has appeared in movies such as this Is a Film About My Mother and series including Daisy Jones and the Six. And together, Harrier and Harrison make a terrific pair in arrangements by Charlie Watts. Just a heads up, for parents of younger children, there is a brief instance of adult behavior.
- [39:54]
Laura Harrier
To her, the man standing in the center of her flower shop resembled a brightly painted pinata. She had the immediate sense that if she were to beat him open with a small bat, there would be nothing inside but strips of Spanish language newspapers. His pants were cornflower blue, set off by a white shirt so crisp she thought it might be plastic. His skin was glazed.
- [40:18]
Will Harrison
Hello to him. The woman tending the store seemed angry. She was jamming big headed flowers into a metal vase as if they had mistreated her. Her eyes were dark and set closely together. Her gaze was like a punch. She was wearing a sleeveless denim shirt, and on the top of her left shoulder was a tattoo. He could tell it was fresh because the blues and yellows were backlit by swelling. It was either the head of a cougar or motor gears that didn't mesh. Either way, it looked like a shape that was about to change.
- [40:53]
Randall Park
Hello?
- [40:55]
Laura Harrier
The woman turned away and went back into the cooler to bring out another tall bucket of flowers. They were plain purple asters, but her husband had convinced her to label them Monte Cassandra so she could charge a dollar more a stem. As she placed the bucket in its stand, she saw the man running a finger over the thick border of Queen's Anne's lace she included in the center display. He looked to her like the tiny man who might run his finger under the waistband of her underwear while they were walking in public, as if it were a gift. Can I help you?
- [41:29]
Will Harrison
The man looked away from the woman because he felt he might answer incorrectly. He wished again that the office manager had not asked him to get the flowers. Why were they the ones arranging this anyway? He remembered a film from his 10th grade biology class showing the vibration of bees on flowers and the blizzard of pollen, stamens and pistils. Now he felt anxious about all the living things around him, as if somehow all these delicate natural miracles were at risk because of the woman's negative energy. He dug his hands into his front pockets and scratched the top of his thighs. It's a funeral.
- [42:07]
Laura Harrier
She had to revise her assessment of this man, looking at him again as he stood before her, bent forward slightly, hands in his pockets. He was not a pinata. He was a Russian Easter egg, elaborate and shiny on the outside, but then on the inside blown out and dangerously hollow. She guessed him to be like her, in his mid-30s. The funeral, then, would be for his mother or his sister. Perhaps it would be an exception, but perhaps it was for his wife. Yes, he was definitely brittle, like you are when the very thing you care for the most is plucked away. I see. I'm so sorry for your loss. Did you have anything specific in mind?
- [42:51]
Will Harrison
He considered again his sense of this woman. He was wrong about the anger. It was power she was pushing out, and now he could see that the tattoo was actually a group of five wasps headed from different directions at a disfiguration on her skin, a cigarette burn. He imagined that she had done it with another woman, her girlfriend, and this was a mark of solidarity. You do me and I'll do you, both of them silently crying as the cigarette coals wormed their way through the skin. Her girlfriend would have been pale as snow and the mark on her skin would have been a strawberry stain. I don't know much about flowers. I don't know what's the woman turned
- [43:31]
Laura Harrier
to the glass top counter and took up her order pad, wondering who let this guy out on his own. He was a walking coma. It had to be his wife. Had she just blinked out like a burst bulb in the bed next to him? And then he didn't know what to do, standing over the bed in his wrinkled underwear, talking to the 911 operator while the paramedics stormed through the apartment and slapped on the paddles, jumping her body off the bed six, seven, eight times before he finally threw the phone down and told him to stop. Tell me a little about the funeral.
- [44:08]
Will Harrison
The man shifted his hips a quarter turn and placed one hand on the counter to steady himself. This woman felt to him like a newly made island coming up out of the sea, all steam and explosions until the rocks begin to cool and collect seaweed and fish skeletons and shit from birds, and then a fragile new plant springs out of a swollen seed and makes the first moment of shade. Would her fingertips smell like iron and blood and roses? She liked those pots of wheat grass, you know, like you see at hotels. She was very organized.
- [44:45]
Laura Harrier
This man is completely disoriented, the woman thought, watching him shift his feet and grip the counter like a crutch. He's surprised. He feels betrayed. Were there any last words from his wife before her heart stopped? Did she just roll all of her warm weight over onto him just as for its light before real dawn, and pushed one or two last breaths of ecstasy over the edge of his ear, taking him into her before he even knew he was ready, so that it was not like two people moving together but instead just one person exploding. Had he been waiting for that? Always. And now she was cremated and sitting on a mint colored box in their kitchen table, a centerpiece and accusation. Of course it would be that way. Well, again, I'm sorry for your loss. I think I know what you mean. With the wheatgrass they use shallow planters and then trim it level, has a very striking green color. I've seen it done Nicely. With votive or pillar candles. That's something. We could do that. What about maybe also some roses?
- [45:52]
Will Harrison
This woman is so tired of staying strong, of keeping all her muscles at attention. She's heartbroken. Maybe because she made this store with her girlfriend. They were saving from their office jobs until they had the money to put down for rent and building permits, and then they spent months salvaging siding from old barns so they could make a warm hay smelling floor and they stained it with natural oil and bought high end cheese for the opening celebration. But then this other woman just decided to leave. She didn't say much, she just said her heart wasn't in it. No offense. And for the flower woman it was like getting her nerve endings extracted so that now everything and every day is just a dull thump. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Someone mentioned the color peach. That's appreciation, right? Gratitude.
- [46:51]
Laura Harrier
The woman felt warmth, as if in response the automatic plant misters her daughter had helped her install just two weeks prior came on all around them, creating instant cloud banks at all the windows. Yes, peach roses. Because his wife would have been encouraging him to live an authentic life. It would have been an extended project of her telling him that he wasn't being his own true self and he was too often fearful, and he in his ill fitting hipster blue pants would have been resistant, maybe even slamming his hand on the dining room table and going to the back porch to smoke if she pushed too hard. But then, and it would have been just before she died, just before he could tell her about it, a little boy at the mall, hearing a woman scream from the elevator, grabbed his hand because it was the nearest and closest thing to comfort. And it would have been at that moment, feeling the boy's soft damp skin, that the man would have understood his wife's message about being governed by fear. She had opened this window for him and then died so suddenly, so unexpectedly. That was it. That was the great volcanic blast that had left him as dry as an old locust husk under the picnic table. Yes, exactly. They certainly can be. Unfortunately, the businessmen around here send them when they close a deal if there's a woman involved. But that's not the real message. They're supposed to be a more real form of gratitude, More selfless. Have arrangements been made for a place to host the funeral?
- [48:24]
Will Harrison
The man sensed a decrease in the threat level. There was a high swivel chair next to the counter and he dragged it closer and sat down, grateful for a moment's rest. During tax season, about the best he could manage was a long nap and he was starting to feel that metal on metal grind in the back of his neck. The flower woman took a large sheet of white drawing paper and a set of pencils from under the counter and began sketching what the arrangements might look like. She was good at the office. They would be impressed that he took it to this level. But maybe this was it, the thing that ended it. Maybe the woman was doing portraits of her lover at night, here in the flower store, after hours under these full spectrum grow lights. Getting the woman to drop one strap of her camisole so she could work on the shading at the top of her breast and struggling to convey in just pencil the fine field of blonde hairs on the side of her neck. And then when her lover came around to look at the page, rearranging her clothes, she would see so clearly the sadness and more threatening, the lack of intelligence drawn into her face. And it changed something. It broke their connection. How could you see me this way? It was too honest. So she just left the next morning with a devastating lack of drama. Yes, it's actually going to be at. Well, it's just one room, but there's some space.
- [49:56]
Laura Harrier
The woman went to the back of the store again and opened the walk in cooler. She would show him the beach piece she had been cultivating in a tub of sand. Her husband had helped her steal the first plant directly off the dunes. They went at night in the Jeep and dug it up from a spot she had memorized near the boardwalk. He was drunk, but functional. They sat on the rear bumper and kissed for a long time before getting the shovel. Now she wrestled the bucket into the hand truck and wheeled the whole thing out to the man standing in her store. He would not know that only animals can eat the berries. And if humans chew them, they can become paralyzed and forget to keep breathing. You don't struggle. It's peaceful. But you can die. This would have been a better death for the man's wife. And he could have been there with her, curled next to her in the sand, watching the sun go horizontal out over the water while she let her cheek rest on the sand and he squeezed her shoulder, telling her that he was ready to be honest, that he would accept the things about himself that weren't so perfect, that were a little underdeveloped or unpleasant. I've been raising these in the back. They normally grow out on dunes. They have really deep roots, so that's good in that environment. Beach peas. They're more purple than peach, but maybe something like this would really make the arrangement, you know. In addition, one thing, it's odd, but you kind of have to be careful about these little berries. You see them, they have some sort of paralyzing agent that animals can stand but people can't. Some wackos make a drink with them to treat things like arthritis, but. But I certainly wouldn't.
- [51:39]
Will Harrison
The man got up from his stool and examined the blossoms more closely, running the tip of his finger under the leaves. An outdoor funeral would be nice, he thought. He and his wife had been married on a beach and their anniversary tradition each year was to wade out to their knees into whatever the nearest ocean might be and see how much of their original vows they could recite. And she wouldn't let them out of the water until they had muddled through the whole thing. The flower woman stood gazing at the beach peas like they were a child, and it struck him that the wasps on her arms suddenly seemed more like honeybees. They were fat enough, so maybe that's what she and her lover had been missing. A child, another human being between them to keep them honest and alert. The man could see now from the way she was smiling with just half of her mouth, her lips very red and balanced, that she might be waiting for her lover to return with the child they had adopted. It would have been too much for both of them to go, and they already knew that the flower woman would be the more natural mother. So she stayed home, minding the store while her lover spent all that time on planes and in dirty passport and immigration offices holding onto the hot sticky hand of their newly adopted friend four year old daughter. It's good, I like it. So maybe the lemongrass or. No, it's wheat grass. Right on the table where we'll have a guest book with candles and then some of those peach roses and this beach stuff up near the screen. I think there are going to be pictures.
- [53:18]
Laura Harrier
She came around from behind the counter and sat down on the stool next to the man, amused that in all her work with flowers she'd really never seen a blue as striking as the blue of the man's pants. And really good for him. Your wife dies, but you pull it together, you dress without apology and you go out and make sure you're the one who handles all the details, figure out the room, decides the time and picks the flowers. And a slideshow. Wow, this man was doing great. She wondered about her own husband, if it had been her that died. Would he remake himself into an adult in support of their daughter? Or would he just stay out there on his surfboard, floating by for Sunday dinners, his rough charm still in play but now undercut by a sour grief smell. She had the sense, in fact, that this man in her store would likely even set up a foundation in his wife's name, something about adult literacy or maybe guide animals. She could see him change into a smart gray suit, standing there among the roses and beach pea at the funeral, the arrangements she herself was going to put together and maybe, it occurred to her, even donate in support of the charity, and he would talk about the way he loved her for all the small things like the way she would lose her bracelets or how she could slice a lemon, and that she loved wheatgrass and was so kind, and that in the end she taught him what it really meant to take care of someone else, and that he was going to miss her. But it would be okay. Okay, yes, I think I've got it. I think this would be lovely. I really do. What's the timing?
- [55:08]
Will Harrison
He stood up to take his wallet from his back pocket. The front of his shirt brushed her elbow. She wrote out the order. At this range she smelled like sea salt, and he imagined the face of her newly adopted daughter buried in against her long neck, getting used to all the smells of a different country and to unfamiliar mothers and strange food. This woman would be a fantastic mother. She would have that effortless ability to lift a kid and set her up on the edge of her hip with just one arm, while with the other she held a phone and made a deal or stirred a pot of soup or picked up the cat from the front steps, rescuing it from the rain. His own wife had not wanted to have children, which was something he had known when they married. It was their arrangement. He just hadn't planned on his own feelings changing. Ten years later. The woman continued to write. She bit her lower lip. He imagined her and her wife moving around their apartment at night, visiting the child once after bedtime, but then after that having the firm resolve to answer only from the hall, teaching their daughter to believe in her own strength and to let go of the day the way you just can't when you are five years old and every fear has a shape. Well, they've set it for next Thursday. Can you make that work? We can do the pickup, I guess.
- [56:29]
Laura Harrier
To her, the man standing next to her at the center of the store, hands in the pockets of his summer day blue sky pants, would blossom despite his grief, or more accurately, because he was just now becoming himself because of his grief. She loved and hated the fact that her own husband had never really been scratched by any real way by his own life. Happy, well adjusted, birth, family, solid education early in life, financial windfall, never a fight with their daughter. When he took a grinding in the sand while surfing, he would come out and watch the blood running down the hairs on his legs, a big smile on his face as if it was happening to someone else entirely. But this man here in her store, scuffing his shoe gently across the wooden plank floor, this man knew genuine agony, the kind of loss that puts you dog face on your knees in a random motel room, crying from the very center of your gut and not stopping until you pass out and sleep there with the bed skirt brushing back and forth over your forehead like a prayer flag. He would carry that pain like it was a delicate little gift, nuclear in its power, and everyone he met, even the ones very close to him, even his lovers, would not be able to name the experience. Yes, absolutely, the timing is fine and we'll take care of the delivery that's part of it, so we can set the arrangement in the right way to
- [57:58]
Will Harrison
him, the woman standing in the middle of her store now seemed to be more of the flowers than apart from them, as if they, the flowers, had brought her with them to look after their feeding and cleaning while they got on with the taxing business of being beautiful. As she pulled together her papers, moving things around on the counter almost like a shy person, her tattoo flexed on her arm. It was like the bees were actually breathing, helping her along in caring for this sea of flowers. His wife was not a maker or a caretaker. She existed beautifully in the world of ideas. It was not that she couldn't feel things, she was very emotional, in fact. But she could be looking at you and talking to you and your hair might catch fire from the dinner candles. And she would be thinking about why that might have happened and what are the cultural norms relative to baldness and wigs and burn victims. Instead of thinking oh shit, what the hell, here's a wet napkin and are you okay? This woman who he believed was preparing now to welcome home her lover and their newly adopted child, a daughter he imagined gave him the sense of standing with an actual human representation of Mother Earth. Her skin seemed to throw heat. Everything about her was a round and welcoming curve. She would raise her daughter marsupial style, keeping her skin to skin so that the child's heart and mind would develop beyond all measure. That child would become extremely famous and the mother, along with her wide eyed partner, would be There, in the back corner of every photograph, she would die at age 93 in a big brass bed, dragged to the window of a wooden cabin on the coast, squeezing her great granddaughter's hand and talking about the essential connection between plants and sand, bees and the blossoms, lovers and their mates. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking me through this. Will I see you then on Thursday?
- [60:08]
Prolon Advertiser
Thank you.
- [60:11]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Laura Harrier and Will Harrison performing arrangements by Charlie Watts. One of the most durable themes in fiction is the discovery of who art other people really are. We often start off with some quick, preconceived idea and slowly it gets either built up or torn down. Arrangements is a nice place to end our exploration of modest expectations, isn't it? Two strangers giving each other the absolute bare minimum amount of care and compassion slowly discover their generosity. Funny, they're no more right in their assumptions about the other than when they started. Yet when they give one another the benefit of the doubt and invest a bit more in the other's potential for good, it means everything. I'm Meg Walitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montagu. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Joe Plourd. 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.
- [62:06]
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