← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Slippery Roads and Fancy Shorts
00:58:16
Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories in which some things are saved and some are left behind. In Haruki Murakami’s “Lederhosen,” performed by Aasif Mandvi, the traditional German shorts become a singular obsession for one half of a married couple. In Elizabeth McCracken’s “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark,” a couple and their son find themselves in over their heads. Mike Doyle is the reader.
Loading summary
Transcript10 lines
- [00:08]
Meg Wolitzer
If you know our show, you know selected shorts mean strictly short stories. Usually on today's show, selected shorts also refers to a particularly coveted pair of lederhosen. So hey, grab some schnitzel with noodles and join me, Meg Wolitzer for some of our favorite German things. You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. When we put together Selected Shorts programs, we choose themes to tie together the author's stories or the ideas in those stories. Because we record these shows live, arranging stories together into an hour long show can be a fun sort of puzzle. We hope to come up with a brilliant new way of looking at the stories and to help you, our listeners, hear new dimensions of the stories. You might not notice if they were presented on their own. But sometimes we do what sounds fun. Maybe we just like two stories and we want to hear them back to back. And rather than looking for the profound resonance that unites the two tales, we we hook into some subtle motif and we exploit that for all it's worth. In the case of today's show, we notice that both stories had a connection to the German language. In these stories, some things are saved and some are left behind. Each story also has big moments when everything changes. In our first story, traditional German leather lederhosen become a singular obsession for one half of a married couple. And in our second, a couple and their son find themselves in over their heads at a water park. If you live in Texas, you probably know the Americanized German theme park in question, Schlitterbahn. Our first piece is by writer and translator Haruki Murakami. He's known for creating wonderfully strange worlds in novels such as the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. He's also written a number of affecting short stories collected in the Elephant Vanishes and other volumes. The piece we'll hear was published in 1985 and is in Murakami's more realistic register, though the later Hozen do play an outsized role in one couple's relationship. The story is read by Asif Manvi. He's known for his years as a correspondent on the Daily show as well as his work on new series including Evil. And here is Manvi performing Lederhosen by Haruki Murakami.
- [02:41]
Asif Manvi
Mother dumped my father, a friend of my wife's was saying one day. All because of a pair of shorts. I've got to ask. A pair of shorts? I know it sounds strange, she says, because it is a strange story. A large woman her height and build are almost the same as mine. She tutors electric organ, but most of her free time she divides among swimming and skiing and tennis. So she's trim and always tanned. You might call her a sports fanatic. On days off, she puts in a morning run before heading to the local pool to do laps. Then at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, it's tennis followed by aerobics. Now, I like my sports, but I'm nowhere near her league. I don't mean to suggest she's aggressive or obsessive about things. Quite the contrary. She's really rather retiring. She'd never dream of putting emotional pressure on anyone. Only she's driven her. Her body and very likely the spirit attached to that body, craves after vigorous activity, relentless as a comet. Which may have something to do. Why, she's unmarried. Oh, she's had affairs. The woman may be a little on the large side, but she is beautiful. She's been proposed to, even agreed to take the plunge. But inevitably, whenever it's gotten to the wedding stage, some problem has come up and everything falls through. Like my wife says, she's just unlucky. Well, I guess I sympathize. I'm not in total agreement with my wife on this. True luck may rule over parts of a person's life, and luck may cast patches of shadow across the ground of our being. But where there's a will, much less a strong will to swim 30 laps or run 20km, there's a way to overcome most any trouble with whatever step ladders you have around. No, her heart was never set on marrying, is how I see it. Marriage just doesn't fall within the sweep of her comet, at least not entirely. And so she keeps on tutoring electric organ, devoting every free moment to sports, falling regularly in and out of unlucky love. It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and she's come two hours earlier than expected, while my wife is still out shopping. Forgive me, she apologizes. I took a rain check on today's tennis, which left me two hours to spare. I'd have been bored out of my mind being alone at home. So I just thought. Am I interrupting anything? Not at all, I say. I didn't feel quite in the mood to work and was just sitting around, cat on my lap, watching a video. I show her in, go to the kitchen and make coffee. Two cups for watching the last 20 minutes of Jaws. Of course, we've both seen the movie before, probably more than once, so neither of us is particularly riveted to the tube. But anyway, we're watching it because it's there in front of our eyes. It's the end. The credits roll up. No sign of my wife, so we chat a bit. Sharks, Seaside, Swimming. Still no wife. We go on talking now. I suppose I like the woman well enough, but after an hour of this, our lack of things in common becomes obvious, even in a word, she's my wife's friend, not mine. Short of what else to do. I'm already thinking about popping in the next video when she suddenly brings up the story of her parents divorce. I can't fathom the connection, at least to my mind. There's no link between swimming and her folks splitting up, but I guess a reason is where you find it. They weren't really shorts, she says. They were lederhosen. You mean those hiking pants the Germans wear? The ones with the shoulder straps? You got it. Father wanted a pair of lederhosen as a souvenir gift. Well, Father's pretty tall for his generation. He might even look good in them, which could be why he wanted them. But can you picture a Japanese wearing lederhosen? I guess it takes all kinds. I'm still not any closer to the story. I have to ask, what were the circumstances behind her father's request, and of whom for these souvenir lederhosen? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm always telling things out of order. Stop me if things don't make sense, she says. Okay, I say. Mother's sister was living in Germany, and she invited Mother for a visit, something she'd always been meaning to do. Of course Mother can't speak German. She'd never even been abroad, but having been an English teacher for so long, she'd have that overseas B in her bonnet. It had been ages since she'd seen my aunt, so Mother approached Father. How about taking 10 days off and going to Germany, the two of us? Father's work couldn't allow it, and Mother ended up going alone. That's when your father asks for the lederhosen, I take it? Right, she says. Mother asked what he wanted her to bring back, and Father said lederhosen. Okay, so far her parents were reasonably close. They didn't argue until all hours of the night. Her father didn't storm out of the house and not come home for days on end. At least not then, though apparently there had been rows more than once over him and other women. Not a bad man, a hard worker, but kind of a skirt chaser. She tosses that off. Matter of Factly, no relation of hers. The way she's talking for a second, I almost think her father is deceased. But no, I'm told he's alive and well. Father was already up there in years, and by then those troubles were all behind them. They seemed to be getting along just fine. Things, however, didn't go without incident. Her mother extended the 10 days in Germany to nearly a month and a half, with hardly a word back to Tokyo. And when she finally did return to Japan, she stayed with another sister of hers in Osaka. She never did come back home. Neither she, the daughter, nor her father could understand what was going on until then, when there'd been marital difficulties, her mother had always been the patient one. So ploddingly patient, in fact, that she sometimes wondered if the woman had no imagination. Family always came first, and the mother was selflessly devoted to her daughter. So when the mother didn't come around, didn't even make the effort to call, it was beyond their comprehension. They made phone calls to the aunt's house in Osaka repeatedly. But they could hardly get her to come to the phone, much less admit what her intentions were.
- [08:59]
Mike Doyle
Were.
- [09:00]
Asif Manvi
In mid September, two months after returning to Japan, her mother made her intentions known. One day, out of the blue, she called home and told her husband, you'll be receiving the necessary papers for divorce. Please sign, seal and send back. Would she care to explain? Her husband asked what was the reason? I've lost all love for you in any way, shape or form. Oh, said her husband. Was there no room for discussion? Sorry, none. Absolutely none. Telephone negotiations dragged on for the next two or three months, but her mother did not back down an inch. And finally her father consented to the divorce. He was in no position to force the issue, his own track record being what it was. And anyway, he always tended to give in. All this came as a big shock, she tells me. But it wasn't just the divorce. I'd imagined my parents splitting up many times, so I was already prepared for it psychologically. If the two of them had just plain divorce, without all that funny business, I wouldn't have gotten so upset. The problem wasn't Mother dumping Father. Mother was dumping me, too. That's what hurt. I nod. Up to that point, I'd always taken Mother's side, and Mother would always stand by me. And yet, here was Mother throwing me out with Father like so much garbage, and not a word of explanation. It hit me so hard I wasn't able to forgive Mother for the longest time. I wrote her who knows how many letters asking her to set things straight. But she never answered my questions, never even said she wanted to see me. It wasn't until three years later that she actually saw her mother at a family funeral, of all places. By then the daughter was living on her own. She'd moved out in her sophomore year when her parents divorced, and now she'd graduated and was tutoring electric organ. Meanwhile, her mother was teaching English at a prep school. Her mother confessed that she hadn't been able to talk to her own daughter because she hadn't known what to say. I myself couldn't tell where things were going, the mother said, but the whole thing started over that pair of shorts. Shorts. She'd been as startled as I was. She'd never wanted to speak to her mother ever again. But curiosity got the better of her. In their morning dress, mother and daughter went into a nearby coffee shop and ordered iced tea. She had to hear this, pardon the expression, this short story. The shop that sold the lederhosen was in a small town an hour away by train from Hamburg. Her mother's sister looked it up for her. All the Germans I know say, if you're going to buy lederhosen, this is the place. The craftsmanship is good and the prices aren't so expensive, said her sister. So the mother boarded a train to buy her husband his souvenir lederhosen. In her train compartment sat a middle aged German couple who conversed with her in halting English. I go now to buy lederhosen for souvenir, the mother said. What shop you go to? The couple asked. The mother named the name of the shop and the middle aged German couple chimed in together. Zat is ze place? Ja, it is ze best. Hearing this, the mother felt very confident. It was a delightful early summer afternoon in a quaint old fashioned town. Through the middle of the town flowed a babbling brook, its banks lush and green. Cobblestone streets led in all directions and cats were everywhere. The mother stepped into a cafe for a bite of kazakuchen and coffee. She was on her last sip of coffee and playing with the shop cat when the owner came over to ask her what brought her to their little town. She said lederhosen, whereupon the owner pulled out a pad of paper and drew a map to the shop. Thank you very much, the mother said. How wonderful it was to travel by oneself, she thought as she walked along the cobblestones. In fact, this was the first time in her 55 years that she had traveled alone. During the whole trip she had not been once lonely or afraid or bored. Every scene that met her eyes was fresh and new. Everyone she met was friendly. Each experience called forth emotions that had been slumbering in her untouched and unused. What she had held near and dear until then, husband and home and daughter, was on the other side of the earth. She felt no need to trouble herself over them. She found the lederhosen shop without problem. It was a tiny old guild shop. It didn't have a big sign for tourists, but inside she could see scores of lederhosen. She opened the door and walked in. Two old men worked in the shop. They spoke in a whisper as they took down measurements and scribbled them into a notebook. Behind the curtain divider was a larger workspace. The monotone of sewing machines could be heard. Darf ich inen helfen, Madame. The larger of the two old men addressed the mother. I want to buy lederhosen, she responded in English. This make problem. The old man chose his words with care. We do not make article for customer who not exist or my husband exists, the mother said with confidence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your husband exists. Of course, of course, the old man responded hastily. Excuse my not good English. What I won't say if your husband not exist here, we cannot sell the lederhosen. Why? The mother asked, perplexed. Ist store policy ist un se princip. We must see the lederhosen how it fit customer. We alter very nice. Only zen Wiessell over 100 years. We are in business. We build reputation on this policy. But I spent half a day to come from Hamburg to buy your lederhosen. Very sorry, madam, said the old man, looking very sorry indeed. We make no exception. This world is very uncertain world. Trust is difficult thing to earn, but easy thing to lose. The mother sighed and stood in the doorway. She racked her brain for some way to break the impasse. The larger old man explained the situation to the smaller old man, who nodded sadly. Ya, ya. Despite their great difference in size, the two old men wore identical expressions. Well, perhaps we can do this, the mother proposed. I find a man just like my husband and bring him here. That man puts on lederhosen. You altar. Very nice. You sell lederhosen to me. The first old man looked her in the face, aghast. But madam, that is against rule. It's not same man who tries to lederhosen on your husband. And we know this. We cannot do this. Pretend you do not know you sell lederhosen to that man and that man sell lederhosen to me. That way there's no shame to your policy. Please, I beg you. I may never come back to Germany. If I do not buy lederhosen now. I will never buy lederhosen. Huh? The old man pouted. He thought for a few seconds, then turned to the other old man and spoke a stream of German. They spoke back and forth several times. Then finally the large man turned back to the mother and said, very well, madam, as exception, very exception, you please understand, we will know nothing of this matter. Not so many come from Japan to buy lederhosen. And we Germans, not so slow in the head. Please find man very like your husband. My brother, he says this. Thank you, she said. Then she managed to thank the other brother in German, Dasi so net von inen. She, the daughter who's telling me this story, folds her hands on the table and sighs. I drink the last of my coffee, long since cold. The rain keeps coming down. Still no sign of my wife. Who'd ever have thought the conversation would take this turn? So then, I interject, eager to hear the conclusion, did your mother end up finding someone with the same build as your father? Yes, she says, utterly without expression. Mother sat on a bench looking for someone who matched Father's size, and along came a man who fit the part. Without asking his permission, it seems the man couldn't speak a word of English. She dragged him to the lederhosen shop. Well, the hands on approach. I joke. I don't know. At home Mother was always a normal, sensible shoes woman, she said with another sigh. The shopkeepers explained the situation to the man, and the man gladly consented to stand in for Father. He puts the lederhosen on and they're pulling here and tucking there, the three of them chortling away in German. In 30 minutes the job was done, during which time Mother made up her mind to divorce Father. Wait, I say. I don't get it. Did something happen during those 30 minutes? Nothing at all, only those three German men. Ha ha ha. Ing like bellows. But what made your mother do it? That's something Mother herself even doesn't understand. At the time, it made her defensive and confused. All she knew was looking at that man in the lederhosen. She felt an unbearable disgust rising in her, directed toward Father, and she could not hold it back. Mother's lederhosen man, apart from the color of his skin, was exactly like Father. The shape of the legs, the belly, the thinning hair, the way he was so happy Trying on those new lederhosen, all prancy and cocky like a little boy. As Mother stood there looking at this man, so many things she'd been uncertain of about herself slowly shifted together into something very clear. That's when she realized she hated Father. My wife gets home from shopping and the two of them commence their woman talk. But I'm still thinking about the lederhosen. The three of us eat an early dinner and have a few drinks. I keep turning the story over in my mind. So you don't hate your mother anymore? I asked when my wife leaves the room. No, not really. We're not close at all. But I don't hold anything against her. Because she told you about the lederhosen? I think so. After she explained things to me, I couldn't go on hating her. I can't say why it makes any difference. I certainly don't know how to explain it. But it may have something to do with us being women. Still, if you leave the lederhosen out of it, supposing it was just the story of a woman taking a trip and finding herself, would you have been able to forgive her? Of course not, she says without hesitation. The whole point is the lederhosen. Right? A proxy pair of lederhosen. I'm thinking that her father never even received thank you.
- [20:29]
Meg Wolitzer
Bat was Later Hosen by Haruki Murakami, read by Asif Manvi. Now I know that's an extreme example, a long time relationship ending because of a pair of fancy pants. But I guess everyone has their deal breakers. Sometimes you don't know what yours is until you find it. Murakami takes the longest, most non linear path for a wife to travel in order to realize she is no longer in love. Later Hosen do by nature get our attention. The word itself immediately and vividly conjures up the outfit, which for Americans we've seen maybe in a pavilion at Epcot or during a big folk dance number at Oktoberfest. But Murakami minds the absurdity in the image of a proxy man being fitted for breeches, and he pairs it, surprisingly, with something serious. The uneasiness that sometimes lives between men and women is, depending on how you look at it, deadly serious, ridiculous, or possibly an ordinary part of life. When we return, water parks, weddings, drunks and swim trunks. I'm Meg Walitzer. 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. In today's program, our stories play around with foreign languages and while Selected Shorts is performed in English, we do import stories from all over the world and read English versions from the hard working translators out there. If you want to hear some of these stories, head to selectedshorts.org all of our current shows are streaming there, plus you can subscribe to the podcast while you're there. Calling all writers Submissions are now open for the 2025 selected short story Prize, judged by writer Otessa Moshfegh. The winning work will be performed by an actor in spring 2025 and published on Electric Literature. And the winning writer will receive a cool $1,000 and a free 10 week course with Gotham Writers Workshop. We know if you're listening to Selected Shorts, you love a great story, so why not tell us yours? Go to selectedshorts.org to find out more. Our second story is by Elizabeth McCracken. Her funny and moving story collections include the Souvenir Museum and here's yous Hat, what's yous Hurry? Her latest novel, the Hero of this Book, was published in 2022. It's a thrilling, intimate book about a mother, really about a mother and daughter that plays at the slippery border of memoir and fiction. This piece, Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark, tackles parenting, aging, relationships and water slides pretty much all at the same time. It'll be read by a performer we've turned to many times in recent years. Mike Doyle Doyle has been featured in series including New Amsterdam and City on a Hill. He also wrote and directed the feature films Almost Love and Passing Through. And now Mike Doyle reads Elizabeth McCracken's story Robinson Crusoe at the water park.
- [23:59]
Mike Doyle
They had come to Galveston, the boy and his fathers, to look at the ocean and chaw on saltwater taffy. But Galveston was solid November fog. As they drove down Seawall Boulevard, the Pleasure pier emerged from the mist like a ghost ship. First the multicolored lights of the roller coaster and Ferris wheel than a billboard for a restaurant. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Good God, said Bruno, the older father, the old one. The sky was mild as a milk glass rabbit. He would have said this aloud, but nobody else in the car would know what milk glass was. Instead he tried I hate the seaside. Where are we going? You know where, said Ernest, the young father who was driving. Bruno had understood when he fell in love with a young man when they bought a house together. When he agreed Two children, one at least, that his life would become narrower and deeper. Fewer trips to Europe, more moments of surprising headlong love. He never imagined that family life would mean this. A visit to an indoor German themed water park in Galveston, Texas. The fog had done it. They were headed to a location called Schlitterbahn, where there was an artificial river for their river obsessed son. You'll feel at home, said Ernest consolingly, being German themed yourself, darling. I'm German flavored German scented only my mother. A mother counts double, said Ernest. Bruno inclined his head toward their son, born to a surrogate with an anonymous donor egg in the back seat. They had forbidden him video games, so the boy had fallen in thrall to a pocket calculator which he carried everywhere, calculating nothing. He could count reliably to six. Well, bruno said. I mean your mother, ernest said. Your particular mother. But that was something Bruno and their son had in common. Bruno had an adoptive German born mother and a presumably English biological mother who had left him at a public library in Nottingham, England, not in the book deposit, as he liked to claim, but in the ladies room. In this way Bruno and the boy had the same mother, anonymous as in the anthologies of poetry she was the most prolific in human history. This particular anonymous, anonymous Nottingham had left him behind like a beseeching letter to strangers. His parents had adopted him, his parents had divorced, his mother had brought him to America. That was his provenance. He catalogued manuscripts for an auction house in Houston. Other people's beseeching letters, other people's diaries. Provenance was everything and nothing. The point was not to stay from whence you came, but to move along spectacularly and record every stop. Still, he did hate the seaside. His beloved worked as a PR person for a technology company that specialized in something called cloud services. But Bruno was a person of paper, and the ocean was his enemy. The seaside turned books blousy and loose. It threw sand everywhere. Its trashy restaurants left you blemished oil spotted it drowned children, according to Bruno's mother. She had few fears, but drowning was one, and she had handed it down to her only son like an ancestral christening gown that every generation must be photographed in. The three people in the car looked nothing alike, though strangers could tell that they belonged together. Strangers were always trying to perform the spiritual arithmetic, the tall, paunchy goatee near senior citizen, the short, hirsute, broad shouldered young man, the otherworldly child who called now from the back seat in his thrillingly husky voice. His dreams filled with artificial rivers, schlitterbaum Bon, said Ernest, and Bruno said, that's right, darling. Schlitter bomb. Ernest and Bruno had not married, not legally and not as Ernest would have liked, in a church or in a friend's backyard or on a beach. Bruno did not believe in weddings, though he'd been married once, once for 15 years to a woman. He'd been the young husband then. Now, when Ernest brought marriage up, Bruno said, I'm an old hippie. Which was true insofar that he, unlike Ernest, had been alive in the 1960s and had done some drugs. Why marry, after all? The boy sitting in the back seat was their marriage, even though from the start it was Ernest who had summoned him up, first as a dream, then as a plan, then as a to do list. It was Ernest who had wanted a child and then specified a biological one, who'd found the donor egg and the surrogate and then offered what he thought was a compromise. They could mix their sperm together. Oh God, how revolting, said Bruno, who ordinarily was the one with a sense of humor. And so the boy was Ernest's child by blood and Bruno's by legal adoption. Ernest was Daddy and Bruno was Pop. Ernest believed in vows, Bruno in facts and deeds. The important fact was four years old, the fact was named Cody. The fact had never cut red hair that hung to his shoulders and was so fair skinned as to be combustible. Every day he was slathered in sunscreen. The first freckle would be a tragedy Ernest might never recover from. God knew when they'd manage a first haircut. When Cody and Bruno were out in the world together, they were generally taken for grandfather and granddaughter, and this thorough wrongness incensed Ernest, though Bruno had learned over the years not to take the mistakes of others too seriously, not when his own mistakes required so much analysis. He couldn't explain to Ernest the real trouble with a wedding. Ernest's shocking taste, which he, Bruno, would have to go along with and smile and declare himself happy. I like peach, ernest would say, displaying an apt in or my family loves disco music. Or we could have beef Wellington. Once upon a time, Bruno had had opinions about everything. The politics of Eastern Europe, baby clothes, how airline stewardesses should comport themselves, interior decoration. Then Ernest, Ernest, from a happy Cuban American family, had grown up going to Disney World for vacations and watching sports on television and buying clothing in actual shopping malls. Ernest had quite the worst taste Bruno had ever encountered up to date. American taste, for instance. Bruno had never imagined that a person he loved could admire, never mind long for the abomination. That was an open plan house. Proper houses had doors, had walls, had secrets. But as they watched real estate programs for tips on buying, neither had owned property. Ernest because he was young, and Bruno because he was lazy. He was horrified to hear Ernest say, now see, that's perfect. You can see everything from the kitchen. Do you know who else likes to see everything from the kitchen? Bruno asked the devil. Hell is entirely without doors. Heaven doesn't need doors, said Ernest. Then Bruno had to remind himself that Ernest actually believed in heaven and hell, at least a little. And so Bruno decided to treat his opinions like a childhood collection. Decorative spoons, matchbooks, something comprehensive and useless. Put it all away beneath the bed. Let Ernest decide. Let Bruno feel superior. Bruno had given up a lot for Ernest. He would not tolerate a wedding. Schlitterbahn was an enormous medical, military, arachnoid construction, candy colored tube slides corkscrewing out of barracks. In the summer, it was open to the air. In November, half the park was closed and half was covered against the weather. Bruno had looked up details on his phone. Now he said aloud the fake German names in the most authentic German accent he could conjure the voice of his mother. Blastenhof, he said. Wasserfest, Surfenburg. No matter what you renounced in this life, fate would provide the parody. At the Schlitterbahn box office they had to offer their wrists, and in a quiet ceremony, they were braceleted married to the park. The outdoor attractions, that was the word, attractions were closed. But there were plenty of indoor attractions. Most of my own attractions have been indoors, said Bruno to the young officiant, a plump woman with calligraphed eyebrows, who brandished another bracelet and asked if they wanted Splash cash. Do we? Asked Bruno. Yes, said Ernest. He shifted Cody on his hip. The boy had already put on his orange goggles, and he rubbed like a robot cat against Ernest's ear. Honey. Ouch, said Ernest. You take it, Gravy. He stepped aside so Bruno could offer his wrist to the young woman a second time. I'm a good swimmer, the boy told her. Are you? That's great. Well, said Bruno, I am. The boy insisted the rule of the household was to encourage. But Bruno wanted to say no. Sweetheart, you're an awful swimmer. You suck. One of the things he hadn't realized before having a child was how many ways there were to die of self confidence. In the locker room, they crammed their clothing into a minuscule coat cubby. Only in a bathing suit did Ernest seem un American. Dark furred in a pair of unfashionably short but devastating red swim trunks. A 1960s movie idol from another country. Not a Frankie or a Bobby, a Francesco, a Roberto. Handsome, said Bruno accusingly, but Ernest shook his head. Ah, well, said Bruno and started to pull on his navy swimming shirt. You don't need that, said Ernest. It's all inside. I need it, said Bruno, touching his stomach. What's so German about this place, apart from the nonsensical names? I want a river, said Cody, shivering in his lime green tights, ankle length to protect him from the sun and cold both. And so you shall have one, said Bruno. Bruno took one hand, Ernest the other. They could feel the current flow through their little conductor, the boy and his rivers. At this and only this, he was a prodigy. He was slow to walk, to talk, to eat solid food. He still wore a diaper at night, requested another diaper once a day to move his bowels, which he would only do in the kitchen next to the cupboard with the lazy Susan. Bruno, according to his mother, had been entirely toilet trained at one and a half, but Cody could be a kindergartner before the process would be done. It's the sign of a genius, said one of the mothers at preschool. Coincidentally, Bruno had answered, also the sign of an idiot. They wandered down a Plexiglas corridor in and out of the warmth that fell from the overhead heat lamps. At a dead end, a gothic Y arrow captioned with gothic Y letters pointed right to something called Faust und Furius. He was German, wasn't he? Ernest asked Faust. After a moment, Bruno said, technically. Eventually they found a room filled with children and their parents, a pirate ship run aground in a shallow pool, hordes of insufficiently dressed mortals, the variety of swimming costumes, chubby women in two piece suits, middle aged women in waterproof dresses, men in flowered trunks, Speedos, ankle length pants. Children flew down slides and splash landed. Parents stood watching or walked babies through the water, or lay on deck chairs as though sunbathing beneath the corrugated roof. Two lifeguards in pointless sunglasses wandered around mid shin in the water, clutching long foam rescue devices to their abdomens. The boys started to run in walking feet, called Ernest. Careful, honey. He turned to Bruno. Was this a terrible idea? This was your idea. We should get him a life jacket. It's one foot of water. You can drown at three inches. I know all the ways you can drown, said Bruno. Yes, said Ernest. I'm sorry. They looked back. The boy was already gone. Dead. Bruno decided he felt this anytime. He couldn't locate Cody for more than A minute. Even in games of hide and go seek, when the boy wouldn't answer his name in absolute conviction that he was now looking for a corpse. This was something he had never told Ernest, who believed Bruno too laissez faire to do any real parenting. Ernest was reasonable, logical in his worry. He had a sense of proportion. For Bruno, there was nothing between uncertainty and catastrophe. That that was his secret. Where is he? He asked Ernest now. He's somewhere. They ran sloshily through the water. Behind the pirate ship was a smaller slide shaped like a madcap gape mouth frog. And here they found the boy sliding down the frog's great tongue. The goggles gave him the look of a scientist testing gravity. Then Cody was at their knees. I want my river, he said. I want a tube on my river. Of course, said Bruno, and Cody smiled again. His teeth were even loosely strung. Bruno had always been appalled by parents who lamented the passing of their children's youth. If you could just keep them this age. And what would be the result? A child like a bound foot, a bonsai tree. Oh, Cody and his milk teeth. Just a little longer, please. The fact was, Bruno was no better than anyone he knew. They'd gotten the best one, the best child, the most beautiful and distinct. The red hair out of nowhere, the ability to hail a waitress across a restaurant, the love of maps and of birds, the obsession with Charlie Chaplin, the native slapstick, the way he liked to caress with his shoulders and the side of his head, his animal nature. Yes, he loved birds, but he wanted to take them out of the sky too. Sometimes Bruno worried that this was an inheritance from him, how they both wanted everything they loved, twitching under the weight of one big paw. A pair of double doors took them outside into the chill, where a heated pool spun steam from its surface as though it were the source of Galveston's fog. On one side, a swim up bar advertising Bud Light. A middle aged woman sat on a half sunk bar stool and tipped blue fluid into her mouth from a statuesque glass. A bar? Said Ernest in a voice of wonder. He who had given up bars for parenthood. Bruno had given up them longer ago for other reasons. Have a drink, Bruno said. Really? Why not? We're on vacation. They stepped, the three of them, into the slapping heat of the pool. The bartender was a young man with dark skin and dreadlocks, perhaps hired to match the island theme. He was dry. The bar itself, a dam that kept back the water under 18, has got to be on the other side, he said in a Texan accent. He indicated a beaded rope stretched across the middle of the pool. I'm sorry, y'all, he said. Oh, well, said Ernest, turning around. Sit, said Bruno. Shall we find the river, Cody, while Daddy rests and has a drink? Yes, said Cody seriously, as though he'd been arguing this for hours. No, said Ernest. Have a margarita, said Bruno, who knew that to be granted permission was a kind of love for the long partnered. Nothing major. Not quitting your job to be an artist, not traveling solo for six months. A drink, another slice of cake, an hour of foolish pleasure in bed with somebody else. Are you sure? Ah, what a nice grandpa, said the lady at the bar. Her sun hat appeared like its owner, intoxicated but doing its best. Not really, said Bruno. I'm just being friendly, the woman said in a menacing voice. Me too, said Bruno to Ernest. He said, sit. Have a drink. For God's sake. When were you last alone? Ernest took a seat around the corner from the woman, who swiveled on her stool to watch him pass. I won't know what to do with myself, he said, and then, shyly gesturing at Bruno's wrist, You've got the money? Ah, of course. He waded back into the pool. Stay there, Cody. Cold, said Cody, and shivered dramatically. Let's go to the river. You're doing great, Bruno said warmly. Now, how does this work? The bartender took his wrist with a tender familiarity, a secret handshake, a pulse taking. Just in case Bruno hadn't caught his meaning, the bartender winked in a cousinly way. He moved Bruno's wrist past the register, which beeped. You can buy me a drink, said the woman.
- [43:43]
Asif Manvi
Her.
- [43:43]
Mike Doyle
Her glass was empty. Her teeth were blue. It's Thanksgiving. No, it's Thanksgiving tomorrow. I'm drunk. I know, said Bruno. Really, said the woman. This isn't, as I believe we say, my first rodeo. And for the lady. He nodded at the bartender. But perhaps he only longed for another gentle handling of his wrist, the beep that acknowledged a transaction there. It was. Magic. Back inside, around the corner, some poor soul in a dachshund costume talked no, silently communed with a tube top woman and her crew cutted preteen son. The dachshund costume wore a collar with a large round tag that said Shotzi. Bruno and Cody turned onto a bridge and looked over. And there it was. The river. Families floated along on singular inner tubes, or on figure 8 shaped inner tubes built for two. In Texas. Tube was a verb meaning to ride upon one. The chlorinated air smelled of infection being held just at bay river, said Cody. The bridge led eventually to an artificial beach. The river was circular. Bruno found a double inner tube from a stack near the water. A donut on one side and on the other a ring with a plastic floor that said baby seat max weight 25 pounds. He had no idea how much the boy weighed. That was Ernest's department. Look at him. Skinny thing, his ribcage and upturned rowboat. They waded in and Bruno lifted Cody into the baby seat so he faced forward, could hold on to the handles on either side. They pushed out and the current took them. Bruno heaved his torso up and grabbed the tube on either side of the boy. They went around a corner, past a palm tree and a flotilla of fully dressed women in hijabs floating together. He had the panicky recurring feeling that he had forgotten to remove his watch. But it was only the shackles of the water park around his wrists. Half the people in the artificial river were swimming in it. A whirl of limbs, no vessels. Boys mostly, of all ethnicities. Pink and umber and tawny and brown and sienna. It seemed as though there'd been a shipment of boys and their boat had crashed. And he Here were the survivors, the raft of the Medusa. At the water park. There were a lot of them, shouting in petrifying pleasure at one another. The water got rougher. Bruno tightened his grip on the rings. Are you all right? No answer. He realized with alarm that this had been a rotten idea. Impossible to know how deep the water was. Deep enough to buffet them along. A baby seat. Who would take a baby on something like this? They ran over one of the swimming boys, who popped up choking, laughing. Bruno knew all the ways you could drown, because his mother had told him, and because of Eleanor, now 10 years dead, his wife for 15 years. Eleanor of the psychiatrist and misdiagnoses. Eleanor, whom he loved as well as he'd ever imagined loving and anyone until he met Ernest, when he realized his essential trouble might also have been a question of extraordinary misdiagnosis. Though he only had himself to blame. Eleanor, had she been alive, would have made fun of Ernest. Not because he was a man, which might have thrilled her, but because he was conventional. A terrible insult from Eleanor to not know Father Faust was the fiction and Goethe the German. They had never had children because she had a horror of a living thing inside her body. She said she couldn't believe that modern science hadn't figured out a less barbaric way to reproduce, one that might allow you to drink as much as you like for Instance, the studies were just coming out then, suggesting in utero, alcohol was a bad idea. So why, he imagined her saying now, surveying the Schlitterbahn crowds, did children ever since seem to be getting stupider? She was the author of most of Bruno's opinions. Holding them was his way of keeping her alive. Not insisting on them was his way of doing the same for himself. She had started to lose her memory. Could be early Alzheimer's, her doctor said, or arteriosclerosis. Or more likely, alcoholic insult to the brain. And Bruno hadn't cared. You don't worry about arson or faulty wiring till after the structure has fully burned to the ground. She died in the swimming pool at their apartment complex. Drowned, full of vodka and Valium. She, who'd once swum laps for an hour every morning. Maybe she'd forgotten how many pills she'd taken. Maybe she'd merely remembered the full measure of what she'd lost. You must have known, said Ernest, when they fell in love a year later. You knew all along about yourself. You liked men. Bruno could only say, I was waiting for you. He and Eleanor had been married in a sad ritual. Her parents were dead. His mother, who was only 10 years older than Eleanor, had hated her immediately. Eleanor had bought a white dress because Bruno had told her that his mother cared about such things. His mother laughed in her face. Well, said Eleanor afterwards, we'll never have to do that again. Thank God. The current picked up. The banks of the river were made of tile. The Palisades were tiled as well, and studded with more bored lifeguards standing like unemployed goats. His biceps ached from holding on. He couldn't see Cody's face. At the next turn, a young park employee stood up to his waist in the crashing water. His job was to catch inner tubes as they threatened to bash into a wall to send them in the right direction. How could so badly designed a thing exist at a place meant for children? Children. Bruno paddled his feet. He wanted to avoid the guy, but instead they knocked right into him. Sorry. He shouted. And then they were shoved away in the opposite direction, in front of the wave machine. Now they were surrounded by loose boys and empty, bobbing inner tubes. Hold tight, he commanded Cody as he heard a wave behind them. They hadn't seen this stretch of river from the bridge. Every few seconds some hidden mechanism slapped out a wave which lifted the flotsam people, tubes, goggles, swim shoes, and dropped the flotsam and smacked the flotsam on the head. Even artificial rivers are careless, Cody. Survivors of the whale Ship Essex at the water park. The Lusitania at the water park. The Poseidon Adventure at the water park. He thought he hadn't wanted children because Eleanor had him wanted them. He hadn't wanted them for that reason. Eleanor was already 40 when they'd married and she convinced herself she was too old. Perhaps he was too old too, but here was his heartbreaker, screaming as they bounced along. Are you all right? The boy nodded the back of his head. You could hear the waves from the wave machine behind you before they lifted you up. That was good. They were just one turn from the beach now. Bruno was holding Cody's right wrist to the starboard handle of the inner tube. Every wave threatened to scupper them. What would happen then? Would it jolt a lifeguard into action? Would the boy be picked up by the passengers of another tube, sucked into the filtration system? Bruno thought of Ernest drinking at the swim up bar. Ernest, who would never forgive himself, though he would forgive Bruno and. And that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to either one of them. No, not the worst thing. A bullying wave pushed the edge of their craft, tipped them over, rushed overhead and swept Cody away. Above the river, the burghers of Schlitterbahn saw the flash of pale flesh, the hair that streamed behind as though a cephalopodic defense. Stay away. The last inhabitant of the lost city of Atlantis washed into the waters of Torrent River. That was its name. A little boy surrounded and then eclipsed by bigger boys. The wild boys of the German themed water park. Look out. Shouted a blue tongued woman from the bridge. But she was drunk and already the other people doubted what they had seen. And besides, so what? Those feral boys would take him in. They never went home, those boys. They lived there. They circled and circled, howling and laughing and dreaming of home. Cody. Bruno. Shouted Cody. The boys found the body and lifted it up. And then there was his own child's stunned face. One hand out and Bruno snagged it and they were back in each other's arms, bumping up onto the incline of the concrete beach. Cody coughed. He was alive. Not a lifeguard had shifted. They were surrounded by wild delight. Shrieking flesh stove by a whale, but safe. When they had staggered out, not onto dry land, there was nothing, nothing, nothing dry in all of Schlitterbahn. Bruno realized that the water had stripped the swimming tights right off that Cody now stood naked, just as God had made him. Though God hadn't been anywhere near Cody's conception, an event Ernest called a miracle. Quite the opposite, Bruno had thought. Ordinarily, he hated God getting credit for science's good work. Yet here the boy was, the narrow, naked, awkward miracle. Jesus, said a voice, a man. This new model they now made tremendously fat from the hips up and epidermic barrel, skinny as a kid from the hips down. Such a precarious construction. It hurt Bruno to look at him. Cover that kid up. Their towels were back by the pirate ship. Bruno took off his shirt and draped it over his son to make him decent. At the Wasserfest bar, Ernest stirred the slush at the bottom of his drink. Oh, Schlitterbahn. The freckled, the fat, the hairy, the veiny, the chubby girls in bikinis, the umbilically pierced, the expertly tattooed, the amateurishly scrawled on the comely, the grotesque, all the boolean overlap. Ernest thought he'd never felt so tender to the variety. Human bodies. He loved them all. Every bathing suit was an act of bravery. Yes, he said to the bartender, whose name was Romeo, I'd like another. And there was his family. Bruno with water dripping from his beard, Cody wrapped in some black cape, which he now flung off, saying, daddy, Daddy. I capsized. I capsized. I was saved. You're naked. Naked, said Cody. Marry me, said Bruno, galumphing in.
- [55:55]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Mike Doyle performing Robinson Crusoe at the water park. By Elizabeth McCracken I just love this story. It's brilliant and achingly true and packs so much into a short period of time, not unlike a ride at a water park. You get your bracelet, you get on you go. And those screams, the ones we hear and the ones that come from our own mouths, do they signify danger or pleasure? Everything is on the verge in this story, almost tipping over from one thing to another, and the reader needs to hold on tight as we follow this family to the end of the ride. If you've been keeping score over the course of this show, that's one and one. One marriage, one divorce, one pair of trunks, lost one pair of trunks, never acquired one real German word. One totally made up German word. Though of course German has a long list of words that describe sensations that no other language can. What about the satisfaction of sitting still in an armchair after listening to a pair of satisfying stories? Is there a word in German for that? If you know of one or can credibly make up that word, we'd love to hear it. I'm Meg Wolitzer. For each of you who join me for Selected shorts. Danke schoen. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [58:10]
Mike Doyle
RA.