← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Secret Spaces
00:58:53
Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about secret spaces and what they represent. In N. K. Jemisin’s speculative fantasy “Elevator Dancer,” a security guard in a totalitarian regime is beguiled by an act of freedom. The reader is Laura Gómez. And Hugh Dancy reads Greg Jackson’s “The Hollow,” about a secret room, a purposeless life, and a guy who can’t stop talking about Vincent Van Gogh.
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- [00:02]
Meg Wolitzer
We love our home. New York City. In March, not so much. So we're taking the show all the way to sunny Los Angeles, and we hope you'll join us. We're doing two shows at the Getty center on March 29th with a terrific lineup of actors. We've got Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, Brendan Hunt from Ted Lasso, Michael Urie from Shrinking, Melora Hardin from the Office, and more. For all the details, including how to buy tickets, go to the calendar page at getty. Edu and look for solutions. Selected shorts. I'll be your host for both shows. Now, where did I put my sunglasses in the future? Big Brother is watching, but he misses a private rebellion in the elevator. And in the present, Hugh Dancy reads a story about a secret room and that weird guy from college who can't stop talking about Vincent van Gogh. Join me, Meg Wolitzer, for stories about secret spaces and what they hold. Stay with me for a look inside. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time.
- [01:22]
Laura Gomez
Shh.
- [01:23]
Meg Wolitzer
I'm your host, Meg Wallitzer. I'm talking to you from an unknown location. The Fortress of Solitude, the Secret Garden. Or it might just be my closet. But wherever I am, it's a secret space. And that's the theme of this week's selected shorts. The stories in this hour each feature some kind of private or outright hidden area. What the characters hide in that space or what the space might be hiding from them is the crux here. Geo tracking makes disappearing pretty difficult these days. And even from my Fortress of Solitude, I still might be tweeting about my breakfast of overnight oats. So it's tantalizing to imagine there are still real hidden places in which mysterious things happen. I've often had that dream about finding a wing in my apartment that I never knew about. Have you had that dream? I think it's right up there with the being on stage and not knowing your lines dream. In the dream, I'll be at home and I'll see a door I never saw before, and it leads to an enormous wing with lots of cool new rooms. I had this as a kid growing up in a suburban ranch house, and I have it now in a New York City apartment. So what does it mean, this dream? I guess it means that I want there to be more where that came from. Isn't that what we all want? And as for our show, at the very end, when we play the closing theme music and say goodbye, don't go away after about three seconds of dead air, there's going to be another secret show waiting, one that's so much bigger and better, with huge stars and a much spiffier host. Nah, none of this is true, but when you listen to selected shorts, it's sort of like going into your own secret space, though, just for an hour. Our first Secret Space was created by the Hugo Award winning author of speculative fiction N.K. jemisin, the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. She's the creator of novels including the Great Cities series and short story collections including How Long till Black Future Month and Shades in Shadow. We read this story at an Evening Hosted by LeVar Burton when we did a program of some of his favorite stories in the world, Jemison offers, In the Elevator Dancer everything is controlled and constrained. Until it isn't. And a note to parents of younger children, there's a brief mention of adult behavior. The Elevator Dancer is performed by Laura Gomez. She's best known for her work in Orange Is the New Black and has also directed and starred in films including Hallelujah and Here's the Elevator Dancer.
- [04:03]
Laura Gomez
Shift, change, change Shift. Humdrum and no Hum and on the little screen a woman dances. She is in the elevator. She is alone in the elevator and she's dancing because there is no one to see her but the security camera and the security guard who watches its output. On the little screen. She's dancing the mashed potatoes. He knows the name of the dance because he remembers his mother doing it in a silly moment of his childhood. It's a silly dance at the best of times, even for a good dancer, which this woman is not. Yet the guard does not press the button beside his workstation. He does not alert the police, who these days concern themselves with other things besides crime. He simply stares as she twists her feet and hips over and over, bopping her head too, in time to her own internal rhythm. Then the automated elevator voice says, you have reached your floor, and the woman stops. She's not breathing hard. Not a hair is out of place. No drop of sweat mars her modest gray skirt suit to suggest that here is a woman who cares only for her own pleasure. Here is a woman who has a life alone and worst of all, enjoys it. The doors open and she walks out. Several people walk in and the guard sits back in his chair, his every nerve and hair follicle a tingle. He wonders when they will come for him, but they do not. At the end of his shift he goes home to his modest house and the modest wife that the government assigned to him. And as he eats the dinner she has prepared, he thinks about the woman in the elevator. After dinner, he helps his wife clean up. That much is not prescribed as women's work. His hands are slick with grease and suds, and he thinks about the liquid movement of the elevator woman's hips. Later that evening, he and his wife watch TV together, and during the prayer and commercial break, he wonders what the elevator woman prays for. For that night. His wife sighs as usual while she does her wifely duty, and he sighs as usual and climbs on top of her. And as an otherwise lackluster orgasm passes through his flesh, his soul is consumed with the memory of the woman in the elevator. Change, shift, shift, change. And he watches the screens in the little dark room. His supervisors would think him very diligent, but he's watching just for her. He leans forward, his palms damp. When she gets into the elevator, the doors begin to close. Just before they do, a hand inserts itself. Another employee of the corporation, just in time to catch the elevator down to the lobby. The woman politely nods to him. They do not exchange small talk. She does not dance. She never dances when anyone is in the elevator with her. Does she know about the camera and the control panel? She must. Surveillance is everywhere, but every day he sees her, sometimes alone and sometimes amid her fellow office drones. And it is only alone that she suddenly begins pirouetting over and over and over until the elevator stops. And she's not dizzy because she used the door seam to spot herself, or swaying in a circle, her hips gyrating in a way that would make the Concerned Women for America much more concerned. But as the guard watches her, he thinks, maybe this is how Salome made John the Baptist lose his head. This is why dancing is illegal. This will send me to hell, he tells himself. Hell in a handbasket in a government detention camp. She cannot be married or she wouldn't be employed. No one then has been assigned her as a wife. Does that mean no divorce is illegal? And she would be bored with him, he feels, if he were hers. She does not do it for him. Still, he cannot tear his eyes away. She's changed, change shift, day in and day out. And finally he can no longer bear the torment. He looks at her in the lunchroom cafeteria. She's not there. He contrived to take his break, standing near her favorite elevator, but she does not come. He skims the employee directory, hoping, hoping, but he does not see her. He wonders why they have not yet come for him, but they do not come. Maybe they are busy. And as the shift change, he begins to believe that God has sent her to teach him. The pastor's words from Wednesday night Bible study and Sunday afternoon service suddenly make sense. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear, makes a sound, if God wills, the elevator woman is that sound. She exalts him and inspires him. She fills him with a fervor he believes is holy. To dance with her is to embody prayer. He weeps as he tries to find her and fails. Finally he loses control. He's overwhelmed by the fundamental emptiness of his life he needs. On the little monitor screen she dances, this time something most definitely prescribed because it is foreign and heathen. He thinks maybe it is Thai. She weaves her head from side to side like a snake. And maybe she means to evoke Eve or even Lilith's most evil. Or maybe it just feels good. Either way, he is bewitched. He leaps up from his chair and tears through the hallways and does not care that he's frightening everyone, that the cameras will catch his strange behavior and some more diligent security guard will report him. He tears through the walls, fluorescent change, corridor shift, and suddenly he is at the elevator. He has beaten the elevator. There he will meet her. At last the doors open. She's not there. He's helped. He has been a good American all his life, obedient and steadfast. And this is a minor setback in the camp. He learns that it was all a hallucination caused by not lack of faith, but misplaced faith. The elevator woman may well have been there, but if so, she was sent to tempt him. How foolish was he to fall prey? Now he sits again in the dark little room with the monitors and resolutely tells himself that he does not see the woman dancing. She is not there. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear, makes a sound, if God wills. But that is a tree, not a woman, and God does not will a woman to dance. It is shameful and sinful to question the will of God. Still the guard cannot help wondering. He does not want to think this thought, but sly, like temptation, it comes anyhow. And well, if a tree falls, if a tree falls and there's no one around to hear it but God, would it really bother with anything so mundane as making a sound? Or would it dance?
- [12:55]
Meg Wolitzer
Laura Gomez performed the elevator dancer by N.K. jemisin yes, there's a hint of Orwell's 1984 here, but Jemison imparts a yearning and sensuality to the traditional dystopian narrative. It's unusual to find a tantalizing, hypnotic moment in the midst of what appears to be life in a totalitarian state, and unusual to be let in on longing that accompanies a state of low level fear. But emotions do coexist. Sometimes I notice in a story when a character says the kitchen smelled like cinnamon and garlic and cloves and cardamom, and I think, wow, I don't think my nose is sensitive enough to pick up all those different notes. It certainly takes a writer as sensitive and innovative as NK Jemisin to express the different notes of feeling that appear in Elevator Dancer. Although the security guard's behavior is voyeuristic, there's less of a sense of the unknown woman being objectified. Instead, she comes to represent temptations that he finds within himself, and it's interesting that we hear this entirely from his point of view. The woman herself doesn't know she's being watched and has no idea that she's an emotional catalyst. She lives outside the frame of the story in another type of space. The secret space of the elevator becomes a symbol of joyous freedom that exists only within its boundaries. When we return, a home with a hole in it and what might be found there. Meg 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. Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. On this show, we're invading secret spaces where characters reveal themselves or hide. And if you ever want to just tuck yourself away somewhere, there's nothing like a good short story. Visit us on our website selectedshorts.org for information about our shows, our podcast, and our anthology, Small Odysseys. You already know Selected Shorts is a radio show and podcast, but did you know it starts with a real live show? Join us at Symphony Space in New York City, on tour across the country or as part of our livestream audience. As an audience member, you will be part of what makes Selected Shorts, broadcasts and Podcasts so special, and you can listen to your favorite stories again on your local public radio station or on our podcast. To find out more about where to be part of the action, visit selectedshorts.org Our second story, exploring the idea of secret spaces is Greg Jackson's the Hollow. Jackson is the author of the short story collection Prodigals, and his latest novel is the Dimensions of a Cave on the Surface. The Hollow, first published in the New Yorker, is a straightforward story of post collegiate life and the not always easy path to maturity, a path many of us are still on. But the story radiates like the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh that are part of the narrative, combining exciting imagery and frank emotion. Andrew Sean Grier talked about why this story was one of his picks for Best American Short Stories 2022.
- [16:22]
Hugh Dancy
He starts the story with these long, lyrical sentences that you'll hear, and he ends it with these sharp short ones. And that skillful control of language is something that I'm still trying to get ahold of and that I admire so much, and it's the control of sentence length to jolt the emotion from the reader. And if you listen carefully to the beginning and the end of the story, it's a sort of masterclass in bending words to tell a story.
- [16:47]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Andrew Sean Grier speaking from the stage at Symphony Space. The Hollow features old friends, famous painters and several big life decisions. While the title refers to a specific secret space, it also resonates with just about every other element of the story. To read it, we got the deft Hugh Dancy, a multi talented actor whose work on stage, screen and television includes Venus in Fur, Hannibal and Law and Order. Here he is with the Hollow.
- [17:27]
Hugh Dancy
Jonah Valenti had been an object of amusement to Jack and his college classmates. An awkward, intense, muscle bound young man, the sort you could imagine crashing through a wall accidentally, he had had the dim, muddled quality of students recruited to play football at the school who either didn't measure up academically or didn't believe they did. Valenti's claim to fame came from his having abruptly quit football during sophomore year to take up painting, a passion he had developed apparently out of the blue and with a single minded earnestness that embarrassed his more sophisticated classmates. When Valenti left the football team, changed his major and began hanging out with a group of druggie slackers who loitered around the visual arts department. The school paper ran a feature on his unusual transformation and he acquired the nickname Beaux Arthur. This got shortened to BA and then Balenti Balentino, the Baleen Whale. Simply the Whale, and by a different route altogether, Picasso. A year later, after spending the summer in Florence on a painting scholarship, Valenti got kicked out of school. According to rumors at the time, his expulsion had to do with drugs, but Valenti maintained among his friends that it was the school's way of punishing him for quitting football. Jack had no basis for judgment, nor did he really care. In the indolent halcyon days before graduation, Jack had thought about Valenti exactly once. He'd been lying completely stoned in a friend's common room, gazing up at the crown moldings, when he realized that people called Valenti the Whale, not simply because of the association pattern in certain words, but in reference to the story of Jonah. When this insight lit up within him, it seemed to glow for a minute with a profound and inarticulable meaning. Then he forgot it. And he probably would have forgotten Valenti too, if, years later he hadn't moved to the rural area where, according to their mutual friend Daniel Valenti lived at home with his mother. Jack had moved there with Sophie. Sophie's choice, he jokingly told people. Really, they had both made the choice. But then, shortly after buying the house and leaving the city, he had in quick succession lost his new job and lost Sophie. Sometimes Sophie called herself a journalist, but that wasn't quite right. She wrote, although she picked up magazine assignments infrequently and had trouble finishing pieces. She bit off more than she could chew, spent months diving deeply into projects, then found herself paralyzed, unable to write a word. Jack had long ago stopped giving her advice. He simply assumed that he would earn the money and she would figure out how she wanted to spend her time, and either way they would have kids in a home, a garden, friends, vacations, and so on. Buying the house had taken the better part of a year. Then in the space of four weeks, everything had collapsed. Sophie said that her feelings for him hadn't changed, but she now understood that something was wrong with the life they had laid out before them, and if she didn't get out now, she never would. Jack pointed out that their new life had hardly begun, but she was unshakable. I know myself, once I settle in, once we have a kid, and the rest I'll never leave. Please. She touched his forearm and he didn't argue. Better to give people space, he thought. Either they came back to you, or they disappeared into their own confusion and misery. The house was in Trevi, a small hamlet upriver from the city, out past the suburbs, picturesque and quaint, with Bradford pear trees all along the main street, which in spring so filled the roadway with petals that it resembled a snow scene. A water tower bearing the town's name and stilted up on arachnid legs with water stains rusting its gray. Blue paint dwarfed the two story houses and brick storefronts and shops. A local wag had christened this Trevi Fountain. Trevi sat on the train line north of the city and laid claim to the only stop for 20 miles in either direction. And naturally this brought a certain wealth and cosmopolitanism you did not find everywhere in the region, and certainly not in Rock Basin, where Joan of Valenti lived with his mother. Mother Initially, Jack had planned to take the train to work. He'd been at Tabor Investments only a short time when he was fired. Before that he'd spent half a decade in the DA's office and seemed in line for a political career. But he had burned out on that life, or that's what he told people, and in anticipation of starting a family, he signed on for what he believed would be a cushier position all round. Perhaps his new employer didn't agree with this interpretation of his job, because as soon as he gave his bosses a chance by making an impolitic remark on a business news show, they had wasted little time firing him. No, they had dangled the threat. He could have fought to stay, but instead, haughty and superior, he had called their bluff and forced them to follow through. The house was an early 19th century farmhouse, fixed up and expanded over the years, painted charcoal following the new style, a color like smoke against the pitch dark sky. It had clapboard siding and a metal roof. A mostly private small field with an old stone wall and a falling down chicken coop. Jag, who had been so invested in settling, in furnishing, repainting, talking to contractors and arborists about what to do with the chicken coop, the silver maples, the pin oaks, found himself overcome with apathy. He could hardly bring himself to wash the dishes or take out the trash. Not long before he'd been a dynamo on the phone with lawyers and water treatment specialists. He'd learned about ground wells and leech fields, sump pumps, pipe fittings, the lifespan of roofing shingles, and septic tank baffles. Baffles. He liked that. That just about said it. Daniel, Jack's friend from school, said that Jack's state of mind made a lot of fucking sense. Jesus, considering everything. Get drunk, get laid, he said. The French would go out whoring. Daniel was a successful magazine writer and someone Sophie often turned to for professional advice. Any word from Sophie? Jack asked. Soph. She's all right. She's staying at her parents, but I guess you know that. Daniel laughed suddenly. The last time I saw her she was hanging out in bars, writing in a notebook, waiting for guys to text her. Jack responded stoically. What guys? Dates? I don't know. I think she was writing a book about contemporary dating or dating apps, something like that. I see. So she's the one out whoring? Jack said. Yeah. You're the only one not having any fun. Jack could picture her sitting at the bar, her black hair unfurling about her face as she bent over her journal, pensive and daydreaming. It surprised him to find this thought poignant rather than upsetting. Still, when he reached her on the phone, he said, so I hear you've been out whoring. She didn't laugh at this, but made a noise that suggested fatigue or annoyance. What did Daniel tell you? Jack gave an inaccurate, largely imaginative account of the conversation. When he finished, Sophie was quiet for a moment and then said, I don't want to get in the habit of explaining myself to you, so I guess I'm not going to. If it's freedom, it has to feel like freedom. He suggested something like that. Later, with nothing to do, he telephoned Valenti. Holy shit, Jack Francis. Boy, was it Valenti. That same deep, excitable voice. Dude, am I glad you called, Valenti said. My mom is driving me crazy. It was Valenti who noticed the Hollow. This was not during his first visit, which he and Jack spent getting very drunk. Jack told him about Sophie, the DA's office, and his brief foray into the private sector. Mostly, though, he listened to Valenti talk about the years he had spent trying to get his artistic career off the ground, keeping body and soul together on part time work. Valenti had been employed by a house painting crew, but something had happened and now he coached women's rugby at a Catholic school across the river. They discussed college, of course, and Jack was taken aback to find that their memories of this time did not align. He shouldn't have been surprised by this. Valenti had many strange notions, but it was vaguely unnerving to see that two people could live through the same experience and understand it so differently. Jack said that at first he found everyone at college interesting, but they'd all turned out to be dull and conventional, and he increasingly saw himself as dull and conventional too. Valenti disagreed. He thought that their classmates had been deeply weird and had clung to the idea that they were dull and conventional to keep from sliding off the face of the earth. He and Valenti remember the aftermath of Jonah's expulsion differently as well. Valenti seemed to believe that some sort of popular movement had arisen to reinstate him. Jack recalled nothing of the sort. He remembered jokes about Valenti and the sense, if not the outright suggestion, that it was just as well what had happened, since there was clearly something off about their former classmate. Jack and Valenti were sitting outside under a pergola heavy with potato vine and clematis. Jack had built a fire in the fire pit and the wood crackled and sparked, dashing the flowers and vines in a shifting light. Valenti said that he was rereading his favorite biography of van Gogh and that the artist, who claimed to find the darkness more colorful and vivid than the day, had painted at night with lighted candles in the brim of his straw hat. A great fire burns in me, but no one stops to warm himself, he recited. They pass by and see only the wisps of smoke. Valenti leaned back and tilted his head to the sky. The light and shadow accentuated the bones and hollows of his face. He told Jack he was saving up for a summer program in France, a painting course. Not the usual bullshit. He said. You studied with some real masters and they took you to all the famous spots, Auvers, Arles, St. Remy. But it was expensive and he couldn't save enough unless he lived with his mom. Was he showing work? Jack wanted to know. There was a cafe in Rock Basin, Valenti said. It wasn't much, but it had a little gallery and he had some work up there. He told Jack that Van Gogh's first public exhibition had been in the window of an art supplier, a man he owed money to in the Hague. Van Gogh talked the guy into putting up a few of his paintings. If they sold, he said, he'd use the money to pay off the debt. Well, they didn't sell, and the dealers who saw them in the window didn't like them either. Valenti laughed. It just shows you, he said, smiling at nothing but the dark. Everyone has to start somewhere, dude. What's in the middle of your house? This was how Valenti greeted Jack on his third visit. Jack handed him a beer and retrieved another from the fridge. What do you mean, the middle? Valenti explained that he'd awoken in the night with a strange intuition that there was something wrong with Jack's house. I keep walking around it in my head, and then I realized there's an area that's not part of any room. Jack didn't understand, and Valenti led him to the closed off section of the house, demonstrating how approaching it from any of the six adjoining rooms you wouldn't notice anything odd and might even confuse it for part of the stair column. It was smaller than a room and could, he conjecture, be a sealed in linen closet or pantry or perhaps a disused chimney shaft, Though when they walked above and below the area on the second floor and in the basement, no vertical element carried through. Valenti asked Jack for a tape measure and a pen and paper and set about sketching a rough floor plan. He drew with surprising efficiency and ease. The low sun barreled through the west facing windows, penetrating the colored glass jars along the windowsill and painting forms like watercolor blotches on the wall. Valenti guessed that the sealed off area wasn't much bigger than 3ft by 6. To know more he'd have to go through the wall, but Jack had just finished repainting the walls. So there was a hollow. So what? They moved out into the warm silken dusk. A golden light crested the hill and Valenti gazed into the setting sun. When you said moving here was Sophie's Choice, were you quoting that movie? He asked. It's a book, jack said. Or it was a book first about the Holocaust. So they say. Valenti squinted in perplexity. What does the Holocaust have to do with moving here? Nothing. It's just a bad joke. Valenti paused and frowned like a mime, feigning from thought. When the Gestapo came to Picasso's studio during the Occupation, there was a photo of Guernica lying around. They asked him, did you do this? And he said, no, you did. Jack looked at him. Is that true? Valenti shrugged. I don't know. That's what they say. Picasso said. Art is a lie that makes us see the truth. Jack didn't respond, and Valenti closed his eyes. In the distance the sunlight caught a window on the tool shed and burned a liquid blinding gold. There's a water tower in Rock Basin, valenti said. Just like in Trevi. His eyes were still closed as he spoke. For years Rope man and I talked about climbing up one night and painting it. Rope man, jack said. Friend from high school. Valenti opened his eyes. We called him Rope man because no one could pronounce his last name. What's Rope man up to now? He's dead. Valenti's voice was flat and he stared straight ahead at the chicken Cooper buried in honeysuckle. What happened? For a second Jack thought he saw a savage fire in Valenti's eyes. When Van Gogh's cousin wouldn't marry him, he put his hand in a lamp flame. Valenti said her family wouldn't let him see her, and he said, let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame, I guess it was something like that. With rope, man. What does that mean? Valenti picked at the grass. Nobody noticed he was burning up. And what happened with Van Gogh? They blew out the lamp, Valenti said. The sun had gone mostly behind the hill. A single ray wavered above the ridge like a filament of glass. Van Gogh didn't kill himself, you know. Everyone thinks he did. But it was some teenagers that liked to prank him. They shot him, probably by accident. I never heard that. Look it up. Jack closed his eyes. A faint residue of red or orange seeped through his eyelids. Tell me more about Van Gogh, he said. And Valenti spoke of wheat fields and flowers and crows and turbulent skies. Of painting loneliness and sorrow and anguish. Of moments when the veil of time and of inevitability seems to open for the blink of an eye. Of boats in storms and boats pulling other boats, towing them, tugging them, and how one boat sometimes pulls another while that second helpless boat prepares to reverse roles someday and pull the first boat through a storm or a time of special need. Valenti described an impossible person, a scoundrel, a tramp, difficult and gruff, prone to fighting, taking up with prostitutes, rejected by everyone, repulsive even to his parents, unlovable, homeless, driven by inexpressible love or love that was expressible only in a particular form, that did not allow it to be shared between two people and that was therefore cursed. A love that was refused while he was alive. And only when this cretin, this parasite, offensive to every standard of good taste, was gone did everyone see how much they did want his peculiar, displaced and overripe love. And the same respectable people who had found him so revolting now clutched him to their breast with the fiercest longing because a certain intention, intensity of color reminded them. Or so Valenti said, in his own way of intimations, of such intensity in moments of their own that they had forgotten or suppressed. Jack had intended to get past the hollow, but he found that he couldn't. At night he felt the eerie, mystical nearness of it. He started to orient himself in the house and on the property in relation to the hollow. Inspecting the walls, he found no crack or crease. The paint and plaster ran flawlessly to the corners, the ceiling, the baseboards. There was no easy way in. Spring break ended and Valenti returned to coaching. Jack did not miss seeing him, but not seeing anyone presented its own problem. Namely, what to do with himself. He felt a great restlessness growing inside him, something vast and formless. And he lay in the sunlit grass on the hill, watching the leaves migrate in the breeze. When Valenti came over one Friday evening, his long hair hung in greasy locks and his face was patched with dirt. We had a match today, he explained, and took the beer Jack offered. I thought you were the coach, jack said. Valenti drank deeply. Yeah, but when we win, I let the girls tackle me. He coughed to clear his throat. Blood in, blood out. You know, like the military. Blood in, blood out. How many girls tackle you? I don't know. 15. You should see me, valenti said. I'm like Girl Gulliver. A silence fell and they briefly regarded the birds streaking through the backlit trees. Jack coughed lightly in his fist. So what should we do about this hollow? Hollow? The chamber in the wall. Valenti seemed not to understand. Oh, that, he said after a minute. Who cares about that? Who cares? Jack thought you were the one who brought it up. Here's what you do. Drill a hole in the wall and run a fiber optic spy camera through it. I don't have a fiber optic spy camera, jack said. Yeah. Valenti nodded. Too bad. In the creek at their feet, tiny fish idled and darted in the current. Valenti finished his beer, crushing the can between his strong, heavy hands, and grinned. Jack grinned back. Hey, why do you get kicked out of school? He asked. Until that moment, Jack had felt indifferent to this question, or worse than indifferent. He felt the answer would disappoint him, but a sudden annoyance at Valenti had overcome him, a sense of some insuperable grossness in Valenti's character that would never, even with boundless fellowship and care, settle into sufficient self awareness. The former football player kicked at tufts of moss. He smiled without turning, as if at the little swimming fish. I wasn't, you know, kicked out, he said. You weren't? I could have come back. Valenti gazed at the trees. Didn't want to. Why was that? Valenti squinted inquisitively as the leaves above shook like silver green sequins. I was doing so much acid that summer. Summer, he said after a minute. Summer after they told me to take a year off. I don't remember why, but I had keys to George Deal's apartment. You remember Deal? I never liked that kid, but he was always down to get high. Well, George was away for some reason, and I'd been tripping all night. I couldn't come down. I remember it was sunrise when I got to his place and I lay down in his bed. But I couldn't sleep, so I started pacing from room to room for like Hours. And there were just four rooms. But I couldn't stop. I was getting spooked. So I decided to watch something. George had this projector hooked up to a DVD player, but I couldn't find any DVDs, so I just pressed play to see what was in there. And all of a sudden there were these people dancing and singing. Tons of them in matching costumes, doing elaborate routines. They made shapes like flowers, geometric shapes, all this stuff. At first I thought, this is cool. But then I started to get a bad feeling. They were like aliens. Like they were on a different planet, dancing in outer space. Somewhere you could never get to, you know? And then I thought, no, I was wrong. It was our world, the dancing planet, and I was the one who couldn't get there. Jack stared at him. What the fuck are you talking about? What? I asked why you didn't go back to school. Oh, yeah. Shit. Valenti laughed. I guess that's when I knew I'd never go back. I was covered in dust. Jack shook his head. Dust? Valenti nodded. Picasso said, art washes the dust of the everyday from the soul. You get it? A splitting pressure had arisen in Jack's head. Dude, you gotta get off this Picasso and Van Gogh thing. What do you mean? No one's ever gonna take you seriously. Going on about Picasso and Van Gogh and wildflowers and shit. Jack said. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. I find some obscure artist to talk about. Or better yet, shut up, don't say anything. Christ, he burst out. You have to show people you can play the game. What game? Jack massaged his forehead with his hands. Don't be obtuse. But they're the best, valenti said quietly. And you know, jack continued without really hearing him, it's not like because some artist was poor or misunderstood and. And you're poor and misunderstood. Things are going to work out for you. Millions of people fail. Millions for every Picasso. It's not like failing means you're the next Van Gogh. I don't think that, valenti said, good baby steps towards sanity. But don't think the people who succeed don't play the game. They all do. Picasso. Did they. Dance the goddamn dance. Jack, shut up. Valenti looked so dirty and bedraggled. Leaves and twigs feathered in his hair and something fierce and sad in his look. Jack could only say more softly, look, kemo sabe, tell me, where does it go from here? Valenti didn't respond. That haunted, confused kid they'd once called Picasso. As if in affection, with no affection, walked off. After maybe 10 paces he stopped as if about to turn, but then continued on to his car. Jack watched him go. The ignition sounded, and from the open window of his Toyota, Valenti shouted, you're covered in dust. So what? Jack said. You covered me in your dust. Valenti yelled at him, putting the car in gear and lurching forward. I didn't do it. Jack shouted back. It was those fucking rugby girls. But Valenti was already speeding down the drive. We've got a hollow, jack told Sophie on the phone. Am I supposed to know what that means? Between the walls there's an empty space. She spoke with a certain circumspection. Isn't that normal? Not like this. It's a big hollow. Not as big as a room, maybe, but close. A longer pause accreted on the line. Jack, what's this about? It's your house, too, he said. I thought you'd like to know there's an unexplained cavity in the wall. Is everything all right? Besides the unexplained cavity in the wall? Yeah. Yeah, everything's awesome. You sound. I don't know. Is everything really all right? Jack soothed his hot cheeks and brow against the cool wood of the door frame. He no longer knew what he meant to say. The scope of something inexpressible, a mammoth, ungraspable intimation, had overtaken him. Jack called Valenti to apologize. He'd heard nothing from him in a week. To his surprise, Valenti's mother answered the phone. Jonah's in the hospital, she said. He's all right. Don't worry. But he's not supposed to see anyone yet. What happened? There was a pause. How do you know Jonah? Jack told her they were old college friends and that he'd recently moved to the area. Maybe Jonah would like to tell you himself when he's feeling better, his mother said. Jack pondered this briefly, but soon turned his attention to other things. A week later, unexpectedly, he received a letter from Valenti in the mail. It was written on brown card stock in a large, handsome hand. Hey, Jack. First off, don't feel bad when you hear what happened. Or like you owe me an apology or whatever. We argued. So what? I don't take it personally. But don't add this to your list of reasons I'm crazy. I'm not that crazy, just a little crazier than you. Or maybe not. I never told you this, but sometimes I get pretty low. Van Gogh's last words were La tristesse dure Ra toujour, which in French means, the sadness shall last forever. But he died with a smile on his face, they say. And sometimes I think about that and think life isn't so bad. You're right. I talk about Van Gogh and Picasso a lot. What can I say? They're my heroes, and it gives me comfort to keep them close. It isn't cool, but I guess I'm not cool when I try to be. I feel like I'm suffocating, you know? I told myself I'll just say what's on my mind and people can think what they want. Dumb, huh? I don't think I'll ever learn to play the game you were talking about. But maybe that's okay, too. Do you think? The doctors say my main issue is a lack of proportion. Well, I can't argue with that. I get strange notions, and it's like I can't resist. After our argument, I was thinking about Ropeman, and I got it in my head I was going to climb the water tower and paint it like Ropeman and I always talked about. I guess I was pretty drunk. Everyone says I'm lucky I didn't hurt myself worse. One more Van Gogh story, if you won't chop my head off for telling it. I don't have my books here, so it's from memory. In a letter to Theo Van Gogh says he knows he's a non entity. A bum, basically, in the eyes of the world. And despite that, he says he'd like to show in his work what's in the heart of such a nobody. I think that's pretty cool. The Rugby girls came to see me the other day. Six or seven of them. They're crazy, those girls. They brought me brownies they baked. I wish I'd known they were pot brownies before I ate so many. But it cheered me up to see the girls. Hey, don't worry about me. In no time at all, I'll be back out there painting with birthday candles burning in my hat. Your bro, Jonah. It was two years before Jack saw Valenti again. On the day in question, he and Sophie were across the river, poking around in antique shops and cafes while their infant daughter napped in her papoose. In a town just north of Rock Basin, Jack found Valenti at a craft fair working one of the stalls. All around him were small, garish canvases showing still lives and cottages and bright flowering bushes. Jack. Francis Valenti bellowed when Jack approached. Hi, Jonah. Sophie was in a different part of the fair, looking at jewelry or Reason retailered vintage dresses. What's crackin'valenti? Appeared genuinely pleased to see him. Jack at least read no trace of their last encounter or the intervening years in his look, just that restive quality, as if every instant teetered on an uneasy precipice. Nothing, jack said, driving around. I'm here with Sophie and a little human that popped out of her. Valenti grinned. Sophie finally made her choice. Yeah, I guess Jack had forgotten his old joke. These yours? He said, and pointed to the paintings. These? Valenti's face went blank and a sudden, humorless fire appeared on it. The shift was so precipitate that Jack wondered for a second whether he had in fact said something different and unforgivable. What? Jack asked. Valenti threw his head back and laughed. Man, you must really think I suck at painting this shit. He cast a hand about. I'm just doing my friend Raj a favor. I wouldn't be caught dead painting this bullshit. I see, jack said, not entirely sure that he did. How's your stuff going? Valenti shrugged. I'm not in the Louvre yet. No? Jack picked up and put down a canvas that seems to show a strangely colored child or doll, or possibly a clown. Valenti was asking him a question. It took Jack a moment to realize that he was asking about the Hollow. What had happened with it? Hollow, Jack repeated. The word triggered something in him, a sense of deja vu, but he couldn't quite catch the recollection. He hadn't thought about the Hollow in months, years. It seemed much longer ago than it could have been that Valenti had brought it to his attention, a memory far more deeply buried in the past than the facts allowed. He stared at Valenti impassively, although some slight mirth may have danced in his eyes. What Hollow? Valenti narrowed his eyes, trying to assess what was taking place. He held Jack's gaze. Then he smiled. A snort erupted from him, a laugh. And then Jack was laughing too. They laughed with a gathering force, truly cracking up. What's so funny? Sophie was tapping Jack on the shoulder. What are you laughing at? Jack turned, grinning, and was about to shrug when Valenti cut in and in his loud, abrupt voice, answered sadness. The laughter petered out. Jack studied the thinning, wrinkled skin around Valenti's eyes, waiting for something to happen. Valenti was smiling broadly, entirely in earnest. It was the earnestness of a large, clumsy person crashing through a world of glass doors and gossamer screens. Jack realized that he was waiting for Sophie to suggest she had misheard, but she said nothing, only pursed her lips. He breathed quietly. The day was crystalline blue, touched by clouds, cool, a light breeze. The market hummed. A burble of chatter, dogs, barks, the smell of cut flowers, of burning colours, crushed leaves, exhaust, a chime tinkling, a yellow shawl, time pooling, opening a moment before anyone's perfect folk.
- [55:29]
Meg Wolitzer
Hugh Dancy performed the Hollow by Greg Jackson. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Jackson approaches this with such naturalness. I was reminded in the story of the way a young, aimless person can get an idea and follow through, at least for a while. But the idea itself is really maybe a placeholder for what's missing that can't be filled. Not yet anyway. We caught up with Nancy backstage and asked him to share his thoughts about the story.
- [55:54]
Hugh Dancy
I recognize the feeling, which for me probably came through in adolescence. You'd latch onto these great painters and then you move past that into a feeling of quote unquote, greater sophistication. And the character in this has held onto it. He straightforwardly idolizes Van Gogh and Picasso and is affronted ultimately when that's questioned. I thought that was an interesting way to look at it. I love being here. I love reading aloud and I particularly love reading aloud to an audience that isn't my two children.
- [56:24]
Meg Wolitzer
That was actor Hugh Dancy. I love Jackson's control of his material, giving us time to bore into the narrative, using both the flagrant life and work of Van Gogh and the mysterious hole in the house as ways to explore what's absent in the characters and what it takes for us to see what's hidden. In the first story. On this show, the secret space offers a way out of a dreary life. In the second, it's waiting to be filled by a life not yet lived. There's a sense that things are secret until they are ready to be revealed, that we emerge from these spaces with something new to share with the world. As for me, I'm just going to disappear for a little bit into MySpace. No, not that. MySpace, the social networking site that no one I know uses. I mean, my very own space, which is in a secret location. But don't worry, I'll be back next week. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for selected shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward and Magdalene Wrobleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our 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.