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Selected Shorts
Reality Checks
00:59:05
Host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories in which reality contrasts with the dreams, perceptions, and actions of the characters. In “The Leap,” by Louise Erdrich, a mother’s unusual skill set changes the outcome of events. The reader is Elizabeth Reaser. In “Death and the Lady,” by Ben Loory, even the Grim Reaper harbors illusions. And his parents’ damaged marriage haunts an adult child in Delmore Schwartz’s “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” Both the Loory and the Schwartz are read by multi-talented actor Denis O’Hare, and Wolitzer talks to him about his craft.
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- [00:01]
Narrator/Reader
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Host Meg Wolitzer
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Narrator/Reader
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Host Meg Wolitzer
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Narrator/Reader
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Host Meg Wolitzer
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Narrator/Reader
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- [01:08]
Host Meg Wolitzer
A Death Defying Story by Louise Erdrich and we meet Death himself on the next Selected Shorts. I'm Meg Wolitzer at the edge of my seat. Join me. You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction. We one short story at a time. Reality. What does it actually mean? The actual world we live in, a kind of truth against which we measure dreams and misperceptions. Something like Plato's idea that our world is fabricated and that an ideal version exists somewhere else. Take your pick. But no matter what, playing with the idea of reality is one of the functions of fiction. And on this program, three different stories with three very different ideas about reality. In one story, a mother's unusual skill set changes the outcome of events. In another, death takes a holiday, and in the third, a damaged marriage haunts an adult child. Our first work, the Leap, is by the contemporary master Louise Erdrich, whose many published works include the novels Love Medicine, the Night Watchman, and the Roundhouse. The Leap is grounded in a reality so nuanced and surprising that it takes your breath away. There may be no more powerful instinct than a mother rushing to the aid of an imperiled child, but Erdrich shapes the story around a compelling overlap of the past and the present. Reader Elizabeth Reaser's credits include Grey's Anatomy, the Twilight Trilogy, and the Haunting of Hill House. There are chills of a different sort in Louise Erdrich's the Leap, and here is Reeser to deliver them.
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Narrator/Reader
My mother is the surviving half of A blindfold trapeze act. Not a fact I think about much, even now that she is sightless, the result of encroaching and stubborn cataracts. She walks slowly through our house here in New Hampshire, lightly touching her way along walls and running her hands over shelves, books, the drift of a grown child's belongings and cast offs. She has never upset an object or so much as brushed a magazine onto the floor. She has never lost her balance or bumped into a closet door left carelessly open. The cat like precision of her movements in old age might be the result of her early training, but. But she shows so little of the drama or flair one might expect from a performer that I tend to forget the Flying Avalons. She has kept no sequined costume, no photographs, no flyers or posters from that part of her youth. I would in fact tend to think that all memory of double somersaults and heart stopping catches has left her arms and legs were it not for the fact that sometimes, as I sit sewing in the room of the rebuilt house that I slept in as a child, I hear the crackle, catch a whiff of smoke from the stove downstairs. Suddenly the room goes dark, the stitches burn beneath my fingers, and I am sewing with a needle of hot silver, a thread of fire. I owe her my existence three times. The first was when she saved herself. In the town square. A replica tent pole, cracked and splintered, now stands cast in concrete. It commemorates the disaster that put the town on the front page of the Boston and New York tabloids. It is from those old newspapers, now historical records, that I get my information. Not from Anna of the Flying Avalons, nor from any of her relatives now dead, or certainly from the other half of her particular act, Harold Avalon, her first husband. In one news account it says the day was mildly overcast, but nothing in the air or temperature, and gave any hint of the sudden force with which the deadly gale would strike. I have lived in the west, where you can see the weather coming for miles, and it is true that in town we are at something of a disadvantage. When extremes of temperatures collide. A hot and cold front winds generate instantaneously behind a hill and crash upon you without warning. That, I think, was the likely situation. On that day in June. People probably commented on the pleasant air. Grateful that no hot sun beat upon the striped tent that stretched over the entire center green, they bought their tickets and surrendered them in anticipation. They sat. They ate caramelized popcorn and roasted peanuts. There was time before the storm for three acts. The White Arabians of Ali Khazar rose on their hind legs and waltzed. The mysterious Bernie folded himself into a painted cracker tin and the lady of the Mists made herself appear and disappear in surprising places as the clouds gathered outside unnoticed. The ringmaster cracked his whip, shouted his introduction, and pointed to the ceiling of the tent where the flying Avalons were perched. They loved to drop gracefully from nowhere like two sparkling birds and blow kisses as they doffed their glittering plumed helmets and high collared capes. They laughed and flirted openly as they beat their way up again on the trapeze bars. In the final vignette of their act, they would actually kiss in midair, pausing, almost hovering as they swooped past each other on the ground between boughs. Harry Avalon would skip lightly to the front rows and point out the smear of Anna's lipstick just off the edge of his mouth. They made a romantic pair, all right, especially in the blindfold sequence that afternoon, as the anticipation increased, as Mr. And Mrs. Avalon tied sparkling strips of cloth onto each other's faces, and as they puckered their lips in mock kisses, lips destined never again to meet, as one long, breathless article put it. The wind rose only miles off river, wrapped itself into a cone and howled. There came a rumble of electrical energy, drowned out by the sudden roll of drums. One detail not mentioned by the press, perhaps unknown. Anna was pregnant at the time, seven months and hardly showing. Her stomach muscles were that strong. It seems incredible that she would work high above the ground when any fall could be so dangerous. But the explanation I know from watching her go blind is that my mother lives comfortably in extreme elements. She is one with the constant dark now, just as the air was her home, familiar to her, safe before the storm. That afternoon, from opposite ends of the tent, they waved, blind and smiling, to the crowd below. The ringmaster removed his hat and called for silence so that the two above could concentrate. They rubbed their hands in chalky powder. Then Harry launched himself and swung once, twice in huge calibrated beats across space. He hung from his knees and on the third swing stretched wide his arms, held his hands out to receive his pregnant wife as she dove from her shining bar. It was while the two were in midair, their hands about to meet, that lightning struck the main pole and sizzled down the guy wires, filling the air with a blue radiance that Harry Avalon must certainly have seen even through the cloth of his blindfold. As the tent buckled and the edifice toppled him forward. The swing continued and did not return in its sweep, and Harry went down, down into the crowd with his last thought, perhaps just a prickle of surprise at his empty hands. My mother once told me that I'd be amazed at how many things a person can do in the act of falling. Perhaps at the time she was teaching me to dive off a board at the town pool, for I associate the idea with midair somersaults, but I also think she meant that even in that awful doomed second, one could think she certainly did. When her hands did not meet her husband's, my mother tore her blindfold away as he swept past her on the wrong side. She could have grasped his ankle or the toe end of his tights and gone down clutching him. Instead she changed direction. Her body twisted toward a heavy wire and she managed to hang on to the braided metal, still hot from the lightning strike. Her palms were burned so terribly that once healed they bore no lines, only the blank scar tissue of a quieter future. She was lowered gently to the sawdust ring just underneath the dome of the canvas roof, which did not entirely settle but was held up on one end and jabbed through, torn and even on fire in places from the giant spark, though rain in men's jackets soon put that out. Three people died, but except for her hands my mother was not seriously harmed until an over eager rescuer broke her arm in extricating her and also in the process collapsed a portion of the tent bearing a huge buckle that knocked her unconscious. She was taken to the hospital and there she must have hemorrhaged, for they kept her confined to her bed a month and a half before her baby was born without life. Harry Avalon had always wanted to be buried in the circus cemetery next to the original Avalon, his uncle, and so she sent him back with his brothers. The child, however, is buried around the corner beyond this house and just down the highway. Sometimes I used to walk there just to sit. She was a girl, but I never thought of her as a sister or even as a separate person really. I suppose you could call it the egocentrism of a child, of all young children, but I always considered her a less finished version of myself. When the snow falls, throwing shadows among the stones, I could pick hers out easily from the road, for hers is bigger than the others and is the shape of. Of an actual lamb at rest, its legs curled beneath the carved lamb, looms larger in my thoughts as the years pass, though it is probably just my eyes, the vision dimming them the way it has for my mother as what is close to me, blurs and distances sharpen in odd moments, I think it is the edge drawing near, the edge of everything, the horizon we do not really speak of in the eastern woods. And it also seems to me, although this is probably an idle fantasy, that somewhere the statue is growing more sharply etched, as if instead of weathering itself into a porous mass, it is hardening on the hillside with each snowfall, perfecting itself. It was during her confinement in the hospital that my mother met my father. He was called in to look at the set of her arm, which was complicated. He stayed sitting at her bedside, for he was something of an armchair traveler and had spent his war quietly at an Air Force training grounds where he became a specialist in arms and legs broken during parachute training exercises. Anna Avalon had been to many of the places he longed to visit. Venice, Rome, Mexico, all through France and Spain. She had no family of her own and had been taken in by the Avalons, trained to perform from a very young age. They toured Europe before the war, then based themselves in New York. She was illiterate. It was in the hospital that she learned to read and write as a way of overcoming the boredom and depression of those months, and it was my father who insisted on teaching her in return for stories of her adventures. He graded her first exercises. He brought her first book to her, and over her bold letters which the pale guides of the penmanship pads could not contain, they fell in love. I wonder whether my father calculated the exchange. He offered one form of flight for another. For after that, and for as long as I can remember, my mother was never without a book. Until now, that is, and it remains the greatest difficulty of her blindness. Since my father's recent death, there is no one to read to her. Which is why I returned, in fact, from my failed life where the land is flat. I came home to read to my mother. To read out loud, to read long into the dark if I must, to read all night. Once my father and mother married, they moved onto the old farm he had inherited but didn't care much, for though he'd been thinking of moving to a larger city, he settled down and broadened his practice in this valley. Still seems odd to me that they chose to stay in the town where the disaster occurred and which my father in the first place had found so constricting. It was my mother who insisted upon it after her child did not survive, and then, too, she loved the sagging farmhouse with its scrap of what was left of the vast acreage of woods and hidden hay fields that stretched to the game park. I owe my existence the second time, then to the two of them and the hospital that brought them together. That is the debt we take for granted. Since none of us asks for life, it is only once we have it that we hang on so dearly. I was seven the year that the house caught fire, probably from standing ash it can rekindle, and my father, forgetful around the house and perpetually exhausted from night hours on call, often emptied what he thought were ashes from cold stoves into wooden or cardboard containers. The fire could have started from a flaming box or perhaps a buildup of creosote inside. The chimney was the culprit. It started right around the stove, and the heart of the house was gutted. The babysitter, fallen asleep in my father's den on the first floor, woke to find the stairway to my upstairs room cut off by flames. She used the phone, then ran outside to stand beneath my window. When my parents arrived, the town volunteers had drawn water from the fire pond and were spraying the outside of the house, preparing to go inside after me, not knowing at the time that there was only one staircase and that it was lost on the other side of the house. The superannuated extension ladder broke in half. Perhaps the clatter of it falling against the walls woke me, for I'd been asleep up to that point. As soon as I awakened, I smelled the smoke. I did things by the letter then was good at memorizing instructions, and so I did exactly what was taught in the second grade home fire drill. I got up. I touched the back of my door without opening it. Finding it hot, I left it closed and stuffed my rolled up rug against the crack. I did not hide beneath my bed or crawl into a closet. I put on my flannel robe and then I sat down to wait outside. My mother stood below my dark window and saw clearly that there was no rescue. Flames had pierced one side wall, and the glare of the fire lighted the mammoth limbs and trunk of the vigorous old maple that had probably been planted the year the house was built. No leaf touched the wall, and just one thin limb scraped the roof. From below, it looked as though even a squirrel would have had trouble jumping from the tree onto the house, for the breadth of that small branch was no bigger than my mother's wrist. Standing there, my mother asked my father to unzip her dress. When he treated her too gently, as if she'd lost her mind, she made him understand he couldn't make his hands work, so she finally tore it off and stood there in her pearls and stockings. She directed one of the men to lean the broken half of the extension ladder up against the trunk of the tree. In surprise he complied. She ascended. She vanished. Then she could be seen easily among the leafless branches of late November as she made her way up and up and along her stomach inched the length of a bough that curved above the branch that brushed the roof. Once there, swaying, she stood and balanced. There were plenty of people in the crowd, and many who still remember or think they do. My mother's leap through the ice dark air toward that thinnest extension and how she broke the branch, falling so that it cracked in her hands, cracked louder than the flames as she vaulted with it toward the edge of the roof and how it hurtled down end over end without her, and their eyes went up again to see where she had flown. I didn't see her leap through air, only heard the sudden thump and looked out my window. She was hanging by her heels from the new gutter we had put in that year, and she was smiling. I was not surprised to see her, she was so matter of fact. She tapped on the window. I remember how she did it too. It was the friendliest tap, a bit tentative, as if she were afraid she had arrived too early at a friend's house. Then she gestured at the latch, and when I opened the window she told me to raise it wider and prop it up with the stick so it wouldn't crush her fingers. She swung down, caught the ledge, and crawled through the opening. Once she was in my room, I realized she had on only underclothing, a tight bra of the heavy circular stitched cotton women used to wear and step in lace trimmed drawers. I remember feeling lightheaded, of course, terribly relieved, and then embarrassed for her to be seen by the crowd undressed. I was still embarrassed as we flew out the window toward earth, me in her lap, her toes pointed as we skimmed toward the painted target of the firefighter's tarp held below. I know that she's right. I knew it even then. As you fall, there is time to think. Curled as I was against her stomach, I was not startled by the cries of the crowd or the looming faces. The wind roared and beat its hot breath at our back. The flames whistled. I slowly wondered what would happen if we missed the circle or bounced out of it. Then I forgot fear. I wrapped my hands around my mother's hands. I felt the brush of her lips and I heard the beat of her heart in my ears, loud as thunder, long as the roll of drum.
- [20:43]
Host Meg Wolitzer
That was Elizabeth Reaser's reading of the Leap by Louise Erdrich. This is a story that made me a little tense all the way through. Maybe it had that effect on you too. Every moment of suspense is earned, and it's not until her daughter is in her arms that even the mother knows that this is a story with a happy ending. This is such an adroit piece of writing, as graceful and full of spectacle as an acrobatic act. Also, there's a not quite realistic quality at work here, as Erdrich plays with the limits, or lack of them at times, of what a mother can do for her daughter. When we return, Meeting Death but not the Way youy Think, a masterpiece by Delmore Schwartz and an interview with Denis o'. Hare. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live and performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
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Actor Denis O'Hare
By order of the Peaky Blinders Academy Award winner Cillian Murphy returns alongside an all star cast including Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth, Sophie Rundle with Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan and Emmy Award winner Stephen Graham. In Netflix's upcoming film Peaky Blinders, the Immortal Man Tommy Shelby must face his own demons and choose whether to confront his legacy or burn it to the ground. Peaky Blinders the Immortal man is in select theaters March 6 and on Netflix March 20.
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Narrator/Reader
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Host Meg Wolitzer
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Narrator/Reader
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- [22:51]
Host 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. Meg I'm Meg Wolitzer. On today's show, Reality Checks, there's one reality you can accept at face value. We have great fiction on offer. Just go to selectedshorts.org or search for us wherever you get podcasts. And while you're there, subscribe to the show so you'll never miss another episode. Our second story about the seam between the real and the not quite real is by skillful fantasist Ben Laurie. Laurie is the Author of the book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and Tales of Falling and Flying. This work is almost a comedy of manners as Death meets his match in a resilient woman who may be impervious not only to his charms but to his power. Our reader is Dennis o', Hare, no stranger to the supernatural. His television credits include True Blood, An American Horror Story, and here he is with Ben Lurie's Death and the Lady.
- [23:59]
Actor Denis O'Hare
Death and the Lady A lady goes to church one Sunday morning and notices Death sitting beside her in the pew. Oh, Death, she says, very much surprised. Why, hello. I didn't see you. Hello to you too, Miss, Death says with a smile. And what are we praying for today? Oh, says the lady. Long life and happiness. Ah, says Death. Sounds nice. When the service is over, the lady gets up to leave. I'll see you later, Death, she says. Indeed, says Death. I certainly hope so. And he smiles and watches her walk away. The next week the lady returns to church and Death is sitting there again. Afternoon, Miss, he says with a smile. If you don't mind, she says. I'm actually a ma'. Am. Oh, says Death. He looks a bit surprised. I know. Isn't it strange? The lady says. She raises her hand and wiggles her wedding ring. Well, says Death. Lucky man. Are you all right? The lady says after a moment. You're looking a little pale, you know. Working hard, says Death. Just working hard is all. Well, let's get some lunch, the lady says. But, says Death, motioning to the service. Oh, don't worry about that, the lady says. She rises from the pew and motions for Death to follow. They have those all the time, she says. The lady takes Death to a nearby cafe. They sit at a table and eat bread and sausage. Feel better? Says the lady. Oh, yes, says Death. In fact, I do. Very much. For a moment the two of them just sit there and smile. Do you have any children? The lady says. Oh, no, says Death. Marriage is not for me. My career has to come first, you know. I understand, the lady says with her best understanding nod. I have a cousin like that. Wait, I think I have a picture in here. She rummages around in her purse. That's my husband, she says, passing Death a photo. And that's my sister and my cousin, and that's my daughter. And those are the twins. Handsome boys, says Death. You must be proud. Just then a bell tolls in the distance. Goodness, says the Lady. I have to go. We're having a dinner party to night and I still have so much to do. Quite all right, says Death. I hope it goes well. And don't worry, I'll get the bill. Are you sure? Says the Lady. I had a wonderful time. Absolutely, says Death. I did, too. The next week, the lady arrives at church to find Death sitting out front in a convertible. I thought we might go for a drive, he says. After all, the weather's beautiful. What a marvelous idea, the lady says, climbing in. Is this yours? She says. The car. Oh, no, says Death. I took a vow of poverty. My uncle let me borrow it for the day. Ah, says the Lady. That's very nice of him. Well, on with it, Jeeves. Let's go. And Death laughs and puts the car into gear, and onward the two of them roll. Death drives the lady up into the hills that stand overlooking the city. They park by a cliff and spread out a blanket and open up Death's picnic basket. They unpack a feast and lay it all out. And then they drink a toast. To you, says Death. No, you, says the Lady. Well, then, says Death to us both. The two lie on the blanket and laugh and talk. Death tells the lady about his job. It's okay, he says, but sometimes I get lonely. I know how you feel, the lady says. You do? Says Death. I always thought you were happy. Dinner parties and photographs and all. Well, says the lady, things are different now, what with everyone gone. Gone? Says Death. But where did they go? Well, my husband, you know, the lady says. And my daughter's married and in Sweden now, and the twins have moved to Maine. Maine? Death says. But last week there were four. Oh, that wasn't last week, the lady says. Maybe time moves differently for you. But I haven't seen you in ages. But, Says Death, gazing at her in awe. But you look exactly the same. But even as he says that, he sees the old woman like a ghost there, moving beneath the skin. Well, Says Death. He blinks and looks away. You look the same to me, he says. It's nice of you to say, the lady says with a smile. And I still feel the same on most days. And what have you been up to? She suddenly says brightly, as if to change the subject. Me? Says Death. Oh, well, not too much running up and down upon the earth. Well, tell me all about it, the lady says. I've never been anywhere in my life. Nowhere? Says Death. Just here, the lady says. Is the rest of the world as nice? Nice? Death says. I never thought of it that way. I like it best in Asia, I guess. Did you see the Great Wall of China? The lady says. Oh, yes, says Death. Of course. So he tells her about his time there, about the houses and the domes, about the sunsets and the spires, and he tells her about Egypt and Iceland and Norway and Antarctica and everywhere else. It all sounds so nice, the lady says with a sigh. I always meant to see the world, but there wasn't time. Well, says Death, it's never too late. We can go, and if you want, you can drive. He raises a hand and motions to the car. Oh, I couldn't, the lady says. And besides, don't you have a job to be at? I could take some time off, death says. The lady looks at Death, and Death looks back. Then with a smile she starts to nod. All right, she says. You've got yourself a deal. Now please help an old lady up. So Death stands up and takes the lady's arm and he walks her slowly to the car. He helps her in and then climbs in himself. She turns the key and the engine roars. Okay now, says Death. Are you sure you want to do this? I do, says the lady. But first a kiss. So Death leans in and they close their eyes and they kiss. Then she floors it off the cliff.
- [31:54]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Denis o' Hare performed Ben Laurie's Death and the Lady. I'm Meg Walitzer. Our third and final story about reality checks is by the literary trailblazer Delmore Schwartz, a poet, fiction writer, and sometime teacher at Syracuse University. His students included godfather of punk Lou Reed. I didn't know that fact until very recently. And wow. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities is probably Schwartz's most famous work, a phantasmagoric exploration of his parents, catastrophic marriage, and Lucky Us, we get a Denis o' Hare doubleheader in this show. This is a story that just killed me when I first read it long ago, and hearing Denis o' Hare read it aloud so dramatically, I was reminded of how daring and fresh it is, how it plunges us right into something both disorienting and yet throwing thrilling to imagine. Here he is, to be sure you never forget that in dreams begin responsibilities,
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Announcer/Advertiser
In dreams begin responsibilities. 1 I think it is the year 1909. I feel as if I were in a motion picture theater, the long arm of light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen. This is a silent picture, as if an old biograph, one in which the actors are dressed in ridiculously old fashioned clothes and one flash succeeds another with sudden jumps. The actors too seem to jump about and walk too fast. The shots themselves are full of dots and rays, as if it were raining when the picture was photographed the light is bad. It is Sunday afternoon, June 12, 1909, and my father is walking down the quiet streets of Brooklyn on his way to visit my mother. His clothes are newly pressed and his tie is too tight in his high collar. He jingles the coins in his pockets, thinking of the witty things he will say. I feel as if I had now relaxed entirely. In the soft darkness of the theater, the organist peels out the obvious and approximate emotions on which the audience rocks. Unknowingly, I am anonymous and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies. It is, as they say, a drug. My father walks from street to street of trees, lawns, and houses. Once in a while coming to an avenue on which a streetcar skates and gnaws, slowly progressing. The conductor, who has a handlebar mustache, helps a young lady wearing a hat like a bull with feathers onto the car. She lifts her long skirts slightly as she mounts the steps. He leisurely makes change and rings his bell. It is obviously Sunday, for everyone is wearing Sunday clothes, and the streetcars noises emphasize the quiet of the holiday is not Brooklyn the city of churches. The shops are closed and the shades drawn, but for an occasional stationery store or drug store with great green balls in the window. My father has chosen to take this long walk because he likes to walk and think. He thinks about himself in the future and so arrives at the place he used to visit in a state of mild exaltation. He pays no attention to the houses he is passing in which the Sunday dinner is being eaten, nor to the many trees which patrol each street now coming to their full leafage, and the time when they will room the whole street in cool shadows. An occasional carriage passes, the horses hooves falling like stones in the quiet afternoon, and once in a while an automobile looking like an enormous upholstered sofa puffs and passes. My father thinks of my mother, of how nice it will be to introduce her to his family, but he is not yet sure that he wants to marry her, and once in a while he becomes panicky about the bond already established. He reassures himself by thinking of the big men he admires who are married William Randolph Hearst and William Howard Taft, who has just become President of the United States. My father arrives at my mother's house. He has come too early and is so suddenly embarrassed. My aunt, my mother's sister, answers a loud bell with her napkin in her hand, for the family is still at dinner. As my father enters, my grandfather rises from the table and shakes hands with him. My mother has run upstairs to tidy herself. My grandmother asks my father if he has had dinner and tells him that Rose will be downstairs soon. My grandfather opens the conversation by remarking on the mild June weather. My father sits uncomfortably near the table, holding his hat in his hand. My grandmother tells my aunt to take my father's hat. My uncle, 12 years old, runs into the house, his hair tousled. He shouts a greeting to my father, who has often given him a nickel, and then runs upstairs. It is evident that the respect in which my father is held in this household is tempered by a good deal of mirth. He is impressive, yet he is very awkward. 2 Finally, my mother comes downstairs all dressed up, and my father, being engaged in conversation with my grandfather, becomes uneasy. Not knowing whether to greet my mother or continue the conversation, he gets up from the chair clumsily and says hello gruffly. My grandfather watches, examining their congruence, such as it is, with a critical eye, and meanwhile rubbing his bearded cheek roughly, as he always does when he reflects. He is worried. He's afraid that my father will not make a good husband for his oldest daughter. At this point, something happens to the film. Just as my father is saying something funny to my mother, I am awakened to myself and my unhappiness. Just as my interest was rising. The audience begins to clap impatiently and the trouble is cared for. But the film is in return to the portion just shown, and once more I see my grandfather rubbing his bearded cheek and pondering my father's character. It is difficult to get back into the picture once more and forget myself. But as my mother giggles at my father's words, the darkness drowns me. My father and mother depart from the house, my father shaking hands with my mother once more out of some unknown uneasiness. I stir uneasily, also slouched in the hard chair of the theater. Where is the older uncle, my mother's older brother? He is studying in his bedroom upstairs, studying for his final examination at the College of the City of New York. Having been dead of rapid pneumonia for the last 21 years, my mother and father walk down the same quiet streets once more. My mother is holding my father's arm and telling him of the novel which she has been reading. And my father utters judgments of the characters as the plot is made clear to him. This is a habit which he very much enjoys, for he feels the utmost superiority and confidence when he approves and condemns the behavior of other people. At times he feels moved to utter a brief ugh. Whenever the story becomes what he would call Sugary. This tribute is paid to his manliness. My mother feels satisfied by the interest she has awakened. She is showing my father how intelligent she is and how interesting. They reach the avenue and the streetcar leisurely arrives. They are going to Coney island this afternoon. Although my mother considers that such places are inferior, she has made up her mind to indulge only in a walk on the boardwalk and a pleasant dinner, avoiding the riotous amusements as being beneath the dignity of such a dignified couple. My father tells my mother how much money he has made in the past week, exaggerating an amount which need not have been exaggerated. But my father has always felt that actualities somehow fall short. Suddenly I begin to weep. The determined old lady who sits next to me in the theater is annoyed and looks at me with an angry face and, being intimidated, I stop. I drag out my handkerchief and dry my face, licking the drop which has fallen near my lips. Meanwhile, I have missed something, for here are my father and mother, alighting at the last stop, Coney Island 3. They walk toward the boardwalk, and my father commands my mother to inhale the pungent air from the sea. They both breathe in deeply, both of them laughing as they do so. They have in common a great interest in health. Although my father is strong and husky, my mother frail, their minds are full of theories of what is good to eat and what is not good to eat, and sometimes they engage in heated discussions of the subject, the whole matter ending in my father's announcement and made with a scornful bluster, that you have to die sooner or later anyway. On the boardwalk's flagpole, the American flag is pulsing in an intermittent wind from the sea. My father and mother go to the rail of the boardwalk and look down on the beach, where a good many bathers are casually walking about. A few are in the surf. A peanut whistle pierces the air with its pleasant and active wine, and my father goes to buy peanuts. My mother remains at the rail and stares at the ocean. The ocean seems merry to her. It pointedly sparkles, and again and again the pony waves are released. She notices the children digging in the wet sand and the bathing costumes of the girls who are her own age. My father returns with the peanuts. Overhead, the sun's lightning strikes and strikes, but neither of them are at all aware of it. The boardwalk is full of people dressed in their Sunday clothes and idly strolling. The tide does not reach as far as the boardwalk, and the strollers would feel no danger if it did. My mother and father lean on the rail of the boardwalk and absently stare at the ocean. The ocean is becoming rough. The waves come in slowly, tugging strength from far back. The moment before they somersault, the moment when they arch their backs so beautifully, showing green and white veins amid the black, that moment is intolerable. They finally crack, dashing fiercely upon the sand, actually driving full force downward against the sand, bouncing upward and forward, and at last petering out in a small stream which races up the beach and then is recalled. My parents gaze absentmindedly at the ocean, scarcely interested in the harshness. The sun overhead does not disturb them. But I stare at the terrible sun which breaks up sight in the fatal, merciless, passionate ocean. I forget my parents. I stare for. Fascinated and finally shocked by the indifference of my father and my mother, I burst out weeping once more. The old lady next to me pats me on the shoulder and says, there, there. All of this is only a movie, young man, only a movie. But I look up once more at the terrifying sun and the terrifying ocean, and being unable to control my tears, I. I get up and go to the men's room, stumbling over the feet of the other people seated in my row four. When I return, feeling as if I had awakened in the morning sick for lack of sleep, several hours have apparently passed and my parents are riding on the Merry Go Round. My father is on a black horse, my mother on a white one, and they seem to be making an eternal circuit for the single purpose of snatching the nickel rings which are attached to the arm of one of the posts. A hand organ is playing. It is one with a ceaseless circling of the Merry Go Round. For a moment it seems that they will never get off the Merry Go round because it will never stop. I feel like one who looks down on the avenue from the 50th story of a building. But at length they do get off. Even the music of the hand organ has ceased for a moment. My father has acquired 10 rings, my mother only two, although it was my mother who really wanted them. They walk along the boardwalk as the afternoon descends by imperceptible degrees into the incredible violet of dusk. Everything fades into a relaxed glow, even the ceaseless murmuring from the beach and the revolutions of the merry Go round. They look for a place to have dinner. My father suggests the best one on the boardwalk, and my mother demures in accordance with her principles. However, they do go to the best place, asking for a table near the window so they can look out on the boardwalk in the mobile ocean. My father feels omnipotent as he places a quarter in the waiter's hand as he asks for a table. The place is crowded, and here too there is music, this time from a kind of string trio. My father orders dinner with a fine confidence. As the dinner is eaten, my father tells of his plans for the future, and my mother shows with expressive face how interested she is and how impressed. My father becomes exultant. He is lifted up by the waltz that is being played, and his own future begins to intoxicate him. My father tells my mother that he is going to expand his business to for there is a great deal of money to be made. He wants to settle down. After all, he is 29 and he has lived by himself since he was 13. He is making more money, and he is envious of his married friends when he visits them in the cozy security of their home, surrounded, it seems, by the calm domestic pleasures and by delightful children. And then, as the waltz reaches the moment when all the dancers swing madly around, then, with awful daring, the then he asks my mother to marry him, although awkwardly enough and puzzled even in his excitement at how he had arrived at the proposal. And she, to make the whole matter worse, begins to cry. And my father, looking nervously about not knowing at all what to do. My mother says, it's all I've wanted from the moment I saw you sobbing. And he finds all of this very difficult, scarcely to his taste, scarcely as he had thought it would be on his long walks over the Brooklyn Bridge in the reverie of a fine cigar. And it was then that I stood up in the theater and shouted, don't do it. It's not too late to change your minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous. The whole audience turned to look at me, annoyed. The usher came hurrying down the aisle, flashing a searchlight, and the old lady next to me tugged me down into her seat, saying, be quiet, you'll be put out. You paid 35 cents to come in. And so I shut my eyes because I could not bear to see what was happening. I sat there quietly. 5 But after a while I begin to take brief glimpses, and at length I watch again with thirsty interest, like a child who wants to maintain his sulk, although offered his bribe of candy. My parents are now having their picture taken in a photographer's booth along the boardwalk. The place is shadowed in the maw of light, which is apparently necessary. The camera is set to one side on his tripod and looks like a Martian MAN. The photographer is instructing my parents on how to pose. My father has his arm over my mother's shoulder, and both of them smile emphatically. The photographer brings my mother a bouquet of flowers to hold in her hand, but she holds it at the wrong angle. Then the photographer covers himself with the black cloth which drapes the camera, and all that one sees of him is one protruding arm and his hand which clutches the rubber ball which he will squeeze when the picture is finally taken. But he is not satisfied with their appearance. He feels with certainty that somehow there is something wrong in their pose. Again and again he issues from his hidden place with new directions, each suggestion merely making matters worse. My father is becoming impatient. They try a seated pose. The photographer explains that he has pride. He is not interested in all of this for money. He wants to make beautiful pictures. My father says, hurry up, will you? We haven't got all night. But the photographer only scurries about apologetically and issues new directions. The photographer charms me. I approve of him with all my heart, for I know just how he feels. And as he criticizes each revised pose according to some unknown idea of rightness, I become quite hopeful. But then my father says angrily, come on, you've had enough time. We're not going to wait any longer. And the photographer, sighing unhappily, goes back under his black covering, holds out his hand, says, 1, 2, 3, now. And the picture is taken with my father's smile turned to a grimace, and my mother is bright and false. It takes a few minutes for the picture to become developed, and as my parents sit in the curious light, they become quite depressed. 6 they have passed a fortune teller's booth, and my mother wishes to go in, but my father does not. They begin to argue about it. My mother becomes stubborn, my father wants more impatient, and they begin to quarrel. And what my father would like to do is to walk off and leave my mother there, but he knows that would never do. My mother refuses to budge. She is near to tears, but she feels an uncontrollable desire to hear what the palm reader will say. My father consents angrily, and they both go into a booth, which in a way is like the photographers, since it is draped in black cloth and its light is shadowed. The place, too is warm, and my father keeps saying that it is all nonsense, pointing to the crystal ball on the table. The fortune teller, a fat, short woman garbed in what is supposed to be Oriental robes, comes into the room from the back and greets them, speaking with an accent. But Suddenly my father feels that the whole thing is intolerable and tugs at my mother's arm, but my mother refuses to budge. And then, in terrible anger, my father lets go of my mother's arm and strides out, leaving my mother stunned. She moves to go after my father, but the fortune teller holds her arm tightly and begs her not to do so. And I, in my seat, am shocked more than can ever be said, for I feel as if I were walking a tightrope a hundred feet over a circus audience. And suddenly the rope is showing signs of breaking, and I get up from my seat and begin to shout once more the first words I can think of to communicate my terrible fear. And once more the usher comes hurrying down the aisle, flashing a searchlight, and the old lady pleads with me, and the shocked audience has turned to stare at me, and I keep shouting, what are they doing? Don't they know what they are doing? Why doesn't my mother go after my father? If she does not do that, what will she do? Doesn't she know my father, what he is doing? But the usher has seized my arm and is dragging me away. And as he does so, he says, what are you doing? Don't you know that you can't do whatever you want to do? Why should a young man like you, with your whole life, before you get hysterical like this, why don't you think of what you're doing? You can't act like this even if other people aren't around. You will be sorry if you do not do what you should do. You can't carry on like this. It is not right. You will find that out soon enough. Everything you do matters too much. And he said that, dragging me through the lobby of the theater into the cold light, and I woke up into the bleak winter morning of my 21st birthday, the windowsill shining with his lip of snow and the morning already begun.
- [53:48]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Denis o' Hare performed in Dreams Begin Responsibilities by Delmore Schwartz. For all that, it's rooted in the traditional Jewish community in the early part of this century. I'm reminded of Stephen Sondheim's into the Woods. Careful before you say, listen to me. Children will listen. I'm always fascinated by how actors make their choices. And after hearing that performance, I really wanted to talk with o'. Hare. He's a selected Shorts regular, known for his sensitive and captivating readings. Here's part of our conversation. It's always so interesting to hear a wonderful actor read aloud, because if I were reading aloud, it wouldn't sound good. And I just love what you do. Can you talk about that with regard to these stories?
- [54:32]
Actor Denis O'Hare
First of all, I'll say that reading aloud to an audience is different than reading aloud to a microphone. And the weird thing about reading aloud on a microphone, knowing you're being taped with a live audience, is that you have two constituencies.
- [54:45]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Right.
- [54:46]
Actor Denis O'Hare
And for me, as a live performer, a theater performer, I tend to privilege the live constituency over the microphone. Constituency. This is all about the microphone. And I can hear my voice in my head, so I'm very aware of shaping sound in a very different way for this microphone. That makes a huge difference in a symphony space. The audiences move and shift and groan and laugh and sigh. It's a process. We take in what they do, and
- [55:11]
Host Meg Wolitzer
you then maybe change the way you're going to read. Like the next line.
- [55:14]
Actor Denis O'Hare
Yeah. They help you understand.
- [55:16]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Are you ever surprised by something an audience laughs at or doesn't?
- [55:20]
Actor Denis O'Hare
Yeah, totally surprised. And again, it can feed you. Or their absolute silence inspires you because you can feel the weight of the story hitting them. And also, you know, the thing about the written word is that you sometimes can't get something across that's on the page. The way the line breaks are. You know, the way the story is. Very small sentences in paragraphs that have breaks. How do you value that for the audience's ear?
- [55:47]
Host Meg Wolitzer
I also was struck by the changes in the voice. And can you talk about that modulation in the Ben Laurie story?
- [55:54]
Actor Denis O'Hare
I read it several times. You read it to yourself at first and see what happens. And then you have to read it out loud. The idea in your head is gonna be different than when it comes out of your mouth.
- [56:03]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Mm.
- [56:03]
Actor Denis O'Hare
So I tried on different voices for Death and for the lady, but for me, it was about keeping it just a little above my narrative voice and a little below my narrative voice. They're almost literary, but they're pushed toward character.
- [56:16]
Host Meg Wolitzer
It's so interesting because it creates a uniformity. It honors the sensibility of the story. Rather than you doing funny voices.
- [56:24]
Announcer/Advertiser
Exactly.
- [56:25]
Host Meg Wolitzer
I'm not at all about that.
- [56:26]
Actor Denis O'Hare
I mean, I know some actors, and they do things. They never do voices. They just always stay in one voice. And that's completely legitimate. God knows, when you get too many characters, it's a minefield.
- [56:35]
Host Meg Wolitzer
But you have access to these options. See, most of us do not.
- [56:40]
Actor Denis O'Hare
Just before I came here, I was thinking about how to explain what we do. And part of it is, I've been doing this for so long, the answer is, I don't know how I do it.
- [56:48]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Right.
- [56:49]
Actor Denis O'Hare
You know, when I started studying acting, when I was 18, one of my first lessons from my acting teacher was go out and bring back observations, bring back five walks, bring back three gestures, bring back a couple of voices, bring back a couple noses, go out into
- [57:03]
Announcer/Advertiser
the world and look.
- [57:04]
Actor Denis O'Hare
And as actors, that's now part of my body. I mean, every day as I'm walking around, I'm collecting things, I'm collecting people. You can't help it. And same with technique. When we read a play, I just did a reading of Sam Shepard's True West. You read that play, and you have to figure out how to speak the way Sam Shepard wants you to speak. That's different than the way that Ibsen wants you to speak. Who's in translation? That's already a problem. Who's different than the way that Neil Simon wants you to speak? Who's different than the way Chekhov wanted to speak? So you have to find the style. We approach a text and you look at it and you kind of go, what's the world of the text? What's the style of the text? In this particular story, for instance, it's short sentences. You automatically kind of go, oh, we're in a different world. We're in a world of kind of fairytale. It's not really a real world, so it's already given me permission to do things. The Delmore Schwartz story that I read is very different world. Long sentences, really long sentences. Super complicated sense of place. Where are we? He's in a movie theater watching his parents. Is this really happening? Whereas this is as mythical as it is, it's also concrete. They're in a church now. They're in a cafe now. They're in a car. You have to find the style, I suppose, is what I'm saying. There's no right answer. No, there's just taste. My taste, your taste, the director's taste, the audience's taste, and everyone's taste is different. And all you can do is make a guess.
- [58:28]
Host Meg Wolitzer
Well, I really liked it, so thank you. And it was so great to talk to you. That was actor Denis o'. Hare, and you can hear a longer version in our podcast. So three stories in which ideas of reality are tested. It's something that happens when there's a disjunction between what is hoped for, like a safe family life, enduring love, or time standing still, and what is really going on. I'm Meg Wolitzer, Keeping it real. Thanks for joining me. For Selected shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward and Magdalene Wrobleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our 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. If you think people go crazy for basketball every spring, you should see what happens on the west coast when Selected Shorts comes to la. It's not just March Madness, it's Middle March Madness. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Okay, George Eliot was not a huge short story writer, but the ones we've got in our celebration of great fiction are pretty incredible, too. Please join Jason Ritter, Wendy Malik, Liza Weil, Chris Sullivan, Sashir Zamahta and more for two shows Saturday, March 14th at the fabulous Getty center in Los Angeles. They'll bring to life humorous and poignant tales of saints, sinners and everyone in between. Go to Getty. Edu for tickets or visit the tour page of selectedshorts.org for more information. I'm your host, Meg Wolitzer, and I'll see you there, because spending any more time in New York City this winter is literally driving me mad.
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