← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
To the Rescue
01:01:41
Host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about characters who try an end run around trouble, sometimes doing more harm than good. In Joe Meno’s “Animal Hospital” a well-meaning father is surprised by his kids response to “let’s play doctor.” The reader is Becky Anne Baker, and an interview with Meno is featured in the show. In “The Silk Handkerchief,” by Sait Faik Abasiyanik, a thief and a night watchman have a moment of rapport. It’s read by Amir Arison. And Margaret Atwood’s recurring couple Tig and Nell try to stave off the inevitable by taking a “First Aid” class. The reader is Maggie Siff.
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Announcer
Honey, do not make plans. Saturday, January 24th, okay?
- [00:04]
Meg Wolitzer
Why?
- [00:04]
Commercial Voice
What's happening?
- [00:05]
Narrator/Announcer
The Walmart Wellness event. Flu shots, health screenings, free samples from those brands you like.
- [00:09]
Commercial Voice
All that at Walmart?
- [00:10]
Narrator/Announcer
We can just walk right in, no appointment needed. Who knew we could cover our health and wellness needs at Walmart?
- [00:15]
Commercial Voice
Check the calendar. Saturday, January 24th.
- [00:17]
Narrator/Announcer
Walmart wellness event. You knew?
- [00:20]
Commercial Voice
I knew.
- [00:21]
Check in on your health at the.
- [00:22]
Same place you already shop. Visit Walmart, Saturday, January 24th for our.
- [00:25]
Semi annual wellness event Flu Shot.
- [00:27]
Subject to availability and applicable state law.
- [00:28]
Age restrictions apply.
- [00:29]
Free samples while supplies last.
- [00:32]
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- [01:08]
Meg Wolitzer
Prepare yourself. No, you don't have to go on one of those wilderness survival shows. But it's never a bad idea to expect the unexpected. I'm Meg Wolitzer, and this week on Selected Shorts, writers including Margaret Atwood help us get ready to save one another and ourselves. Stay tuned. You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That quote, often attributed to but probably not originated by Benjamin Franklin, is just one of those old saws that a buzzkill parent or some other boring adult intoned at you when you had some big test or another challenge looming on the horizon. And as much as I hate to say those boring adults and Benjamin Franklin and whoever else were right, they kinda were. Maybe the only way to really be prepared is to follow the lead of a great fictional character, Mary Poppins, whose carpet bag seemed to contain everything. But I could never be prepared like that. Clearly, I'm not practically perfect in every way. It's true that we can't plan for some of life's less than pleasant surprises. But let's take some direction from the school principal who made us do fire drills often in winter, and from your mother who always wanted you to take a rainbonnet with you. Can I just ask two questions before getting back to the power of literature? Has anyone, anywhere, ever voluntarily worn a rainbonnet? And why is it called a bonnet? That little piece of accordion folded plastic with the single metal snap is surely not a 19th century invention, and yet your mother might tell you that if you have a rainbonnet with you at all times, you will be able to face obstacles that come your way, at least those of the inclement kind. The stories on this show all feature characters who see some kind of obstacle up in front of them, and they either rehearse for that future emergency or at least make sense of the possibility in order to render it less scary. In one story, a father starts a game of doctor with his children that goes way beyond tonsillitis. In another, a night watchman ignores one small injury and inadvertently invites a much more serious one. And in a third, the great Margaret Atwood tells a tale of love wounds and resuscitation. Annie let's begin our tales of rescue with a piece by writer Joe Meno. Mino is a fiction writer and playwright whose many novels include Hairstyles of the Damned and his recent book of Extraordinary Tragedies. He's got a very playful way of looking at dark subjects, which is in part why we asked him to be in our anthology, Small Odysseys. Reading this story about the perils of imaginary medicine is Becky Ann Baker. She's a dedicated thespian who's been on Broadway multiple times, appeared in films such as A Simple Plan and on many series, including Girls. Now here's Becky Ann Baker with Joe Minos. Animal Hospital.
- [04:37]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. The children would shout. We want to play Animal Hospital together. The brother and sister sounded like kooks, like bedlamites, like unchristened savages. Animal Hospital was a game the father had invented one day while the mother was away. It was only ever played in her absence. No one needed to say this directly, as it was something both the boy and the girl intuitively understood, because there was something about the game that was troubling, not quite right. It began soon after their pet cat, a Russian blue, had been put to sleep, after which the children fell into an adult grief that lasted several weeks. During this time, the children lay on the floor beside bowls of stale milk, sadly meowing. It went on like this until one Saturday a month later, when the father said, enough. He had been lying unhappily on the floor, allowing his children to whine and pelt him with toys. He sat up and adjusted his glasses and said, okay, let's find something else to do, something fun. What's fun? The children asked. I know, the father said. Let's play a game. No. The children cried as if they had been scalded.
- [06:02]
Meg Wolitzer
Come on.
- [06:03]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
Let's make something up.
- [06:05]
Meg Wolitzer
No.
- [06:05]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
They cried again, rolling around on the floor like lepers. The father tried to conjure up the last interesting game he could think of, something that would keep the children busy but would require almost no effort from him. I know, he said. Let's pretend to be Lutheran.
- [06:27]
Meg Wolitzer
No.
- [06:28]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
The children shouted in protest. Let's pretend to work for the irs.
- [06:34]
Meg Wolitzer
No.
- [06:35]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
The children said again. I know, I know. How about animal doctors? Let's pretend to be animal doctors. He picked up a stuffed animal, a furry white rabbit, and said, look, this animal seems to be sick. Who can help? The daughter looked down at the stuffed rabbit and said, he looks fine. The father adjusted his glasses again and then leaned over, poking the animal's fluffy side. No, its belly looks a little swollen, he said. And I'm not getting much of a pulse. Maybe it has a tumor, the boy said. Six years old. Maybe it has a heart defect, the girl. Four years old, replied. The father raised his eyebrows, thinking it over. Maybe, he said. Should we operate? The children nodded seriously. Their operating tools were a plastic toy telephone, a child sized flashlight that was missing its batteries, and broken doll's arm. The children held the instruments aloft and tried not to be invasive. He mimed removing an important organ and then held it up proudly. I think its kidney is infected, he said. Let's put in a new one. Hurry. The patient's blood is beginning to coagulate, the boy said. Really? The father asked.
- [08:03]
Commercial Voice
Hurry.
- [08:04]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
Its eyeballs are starting to pop out, the girl said. Hold on, the father said. Here, look, a brand new kidney, the father said, holding up a piece of red felt. I've attached it just in time. No, the boy said. It's dying. Really? The father asked. We just put a new kidney in. The kidney didn't work, the girl said. Look, it's shaky. Its heart is beating too hard. Then here, the father said. Let's give it a new heart. No, the boy said. It's too late. It's dying. Really? The father asked again. Because I feel like we should get another doctor in here. Maybe someone with more experience. No, the girl said. Each dying, we're going to have to put it to sleep. Really? The father asked, more than a little incredulous. The children both nodded grimly. It felt like they were trespassing. Then, stepping beyond some age old boundary, like the room itself had suddenly fallen into shadows, the father looked at them and said, we only put them to sleep if there's no other way. There's no other way, the children both agreed. But this too was part of life. And so the father sighed and picked up a broken plastic pen, using it as a syringe. Any last words? The father asked. Say hi to Jesus, the girl said. The father blinked and then inserted the imaginary dose of in a barbital. The children looked down at what they had done. There was a gruesome pleasure, an odd freedom to the proceedings. The father was sure he had allowed the children to do something they weren't supposed to, but he felt he lacked the mother's resources, the affectionate, irrational instinct to prevent them from what they had done. The stuffed bunny, now looking limp, now properly euthanized, was left in a corner of the basement, never to be played with again. Two days later the children began to plead Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. Demanding to play the game again. The father felt uncertain about this. As he did most things. He was glad they were doing something other than lying on the floor throwing things at him. He was also happy he could for once give the children something they wanted, as this was usually the position most often held by their darling mother. But it felt a little wrong. Finally, seeing their round, cartoon shaped faces, he agreed. The boy presented a rotund polar bear, placing it on the floor before them. What seems to be the trouble with this fellow? The father asked. The girl turned the polar bear on its back and said, it's got hettles. Heddles? The father asked. It's like a rash, the girl announced, but on the inside. Is that even possible? The father asked. But the girl only shrugged her shoulders. The father tried a false smile. Well, that sounds easy enough. Here. And he pretended to feed the bear a large capsule. One of these and he'll be good as new. No, the boy said. Look, he's choking. He's not choking. Look at his eyes. He is, the girl said. The heddles are on the inside of his throat. The father held the polar bear close and then gave it an injection from a disposable pen. Here, he said. The antidote. I just discovered it. We'll save this patient. No, the boy said. Now it's got heart failure. Its heart is bad, the girl added. We have to put it to sleep. But look, the father said. Look, it's moving. Those are worms from the infection. They only make it look like they're moving. Really? The father murmured.
- [12:19]
Joe Meno (Author)
Worms.
- [12:21]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
We had better put it to sleep, the girl said again. The father looked up at the serious expressions on their faces. Our mortality rate around here, guys, is. It's not good. Let's try something else. But both children had already made up Their minds. The father sighed a deep sigh, wishing he had some sort of secret, abiding strength, but found there was none. Defeated, he slid the imaginary needle in and then set the instruments down. The children's faces looked eerie and pleased. They said they wanted to put on a funeral for the bear, but the father waved them away, saying he suddenly had a headache. The following Saturday, while the father and mother were laying in bed, the children began to shout, Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. We want to play Animal Hospital. No way, the father said. You guys. No way. But the children would not relent. Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. Finally the father crawled from bed and fixed some instant coffee. The girl placed the patient, a sad eyed elephant, down on the glass table. The father stared at the animal, poking it impersonally with his pinky. What's wrong with Mr. Floppy? He asked. Lice, the boy said. Lice. That's it. That shouldn't be too hard. Lice, the boy said. They've burrowed into his heart. Jesus, you guys, he said. You have to. The father paused, running a hand over his tired face. Will, what do you want to do about it? We have to shave it, they said. The father sucked in a breath and looked around the floor for something to use. He found a broken meat thermometer and prodded it into the elephant's side. There, he said. A dose of penicillin. All better. No, the boy said. Now it's got gangrene. No, the girl said. Now it's got polio. Polio? The father asked. What the. You guys, your mom is trying to sleep in there. Let's play this game later. No, they said. You have to shave it. Jesus, the father grumbled. Just Jesus. He pulled a corkscrew out of a drawer and inserted it into one of the patient's floppy ears. There, he said. This is an inoculation against both gangrene and polio. Now he's fine. No, the girl said. Now it doesn't want to live. Come on, the father said, a little too excited. You guys here, he said again. I just gave him some antidepressants. Now he's feeling better. No, now he's overweight, the boy said. Now he's got diabetes. No way, the father said.
- [15:26]
Commercial Voice
No way.
- [15:28]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
We're going to have to amputate the girl's shed. We're going to have to cut off its legs. The father put down the imaginary needle and said, okay, we're done here. We're done playing this game. The children said.
- [15:40]
Meg Wolitzer
No.
- [15:40]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
We have to put it to sleep. No way, the father said. We're not putting anything in this house to sleep. But the children would not concede. The father thought that if he could only convince them of something, to get them to see that death was not the only answer, that they would come to understand something important, something necessary, something fiercely beautiful. But he did not know how to put any of these things into words. He thought about waking his wife, thought about asking her what he should do. But he knew she would only give him that look of familiar disappointment. Animal Hospital. Animal Hospital. Animal hospital. The children were now chanting, animal hospital. Animal hospital. Animal Hospital. He held the imaginary needle aloft, doing his best to think once again, not knowing what to do.
- [16:45]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Animal Hospital by Joe Mino, read by Becky Ann Baker. Presumably, those kids will be mentally prepared for any medical emergency that comes their way or collapse when they get a hangnail. Mortality is part of what inspired Animal Hospital. I spoke to author Joe Meno about.
- [17:03]
Joe Meno (Author)
Fiction and writing when I was putting the story together. My wife's father and then stepfather had passed away over the period of a year, and we had younger children at the time. And so we were struggling to talk about this idea of death. Like, my children were three years or four years old, and we had all these books to talk about it. And there was this moment of, like, trying to describe this idea that, you know, after someone passes away, there might not be anything, or some cultures believe in this idea of heaven.
- [17:39]
Commercial Voice
And.
- [17:40]
Joe Meno (Author)
And this, like, look of astonishment just came over my daughter's face. And it was such an interesting moment where, as I was describing this concept of death, like, there was this sense of, like, magic impossibility that, you know, in dealing with the funerals for my. My wife's father, stepfather, that sense of possibility had all disappeared. And so as I was writing this story, I was trying to figure out this. This notion of death, instead of it being the end of all things, having this dramatic, even, like, exaggerated sense of possibility, magic in the way that I saw in my. In my daughter's eyes, this. This sense that, well, anything could happen then. And so the story really started kind of unfolding out of this game from really based on my own experience of trying to explain this thing that happens to all of us.
- [18:37]
Meg Wolitzer
The story is hilariously funny while having this theme. And I was reminded, of course, like I think probably most listeners will be of games that I played as a child. And also the game Operation, I mean, that became so big. And I think the idea of exploring the body, which you're not really allowed to do, was such a novel thing for Kids of that era.
- [19:03]
Joe Meno (Author)
Well, and I, and I feel like as we get older we tend to think of death in one way, in kind of one tone, one note. And to see it through my kids eyes as this kind of strange, capacious, like doorway into possibility. They suddenly started bringing it into their games. And whether it was like resuscitating stuffed animals or like suddenly like all of the Playmo people had to be like buried and they like had all died mysteriously and it was their way through games of making sense of these like real events that had happened to them. And I forgot that that feeling. And I feel like as a father I am constantly struggling between explaining something and failing to explain it properly. I always end up being taught the by my kids.
- [20:03]
Meg Wolitzer
Yeah, no, that was my experience too as a parent, without a doubt. And the sort of very vivid names of things Heddles, I mean, just like killed me and was so perfect. Have you had the heddles, Jo?
- [20:15]
Joe Meno (Author)
I hope not and I hope I never do. And again, it's the way that like a child's imagination takes one concept and then uses it in exponential way to go from 0 to 5 to like 25. That, that kind of outlandish sense of escalation as they're really there. You can see these children in the story like they're trying to almost like make a map or trace the boundaries of what death is, what it isn't, what's possible. How do we face these things in our own lives? And I think they end up doing a much better job of it than I do in my own life.
- [20:53]
Meg Wolitzer
But it's also similar to me, as you describe it, to the openness that a writer needs when they're writing. Right?
- [21:01]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
Yes.
- [21:01]
Joe Meno (Author)
It's a sense of discovery. Right. And that's like terrifying, I think the older you get to recognize, oh, I had a certain way of thinking about this and now I actually turns out maybe I don't actually know the answers.
- [21:15]
Meg Wolitzer
You have in your stories a sort of sense of that something is ordinary and then suddenly it isn't. Is that the way you see the world? Do you think so therefore it goes into your work?
- [21:25]
Joe Meno (Author)
Well, you know, there's a lot of writers that I admire, from Kafka to Amy Bender to George Saunders, Toni Morrison, who employ some otherworldly, magical, surrealist ideas to help us tackle some questions that deal with the ordinariness of life. But I gotta be honest, like Meg, over the last, say, I don't know, six, seven years, it's not been difficult to imagine something more outlandish, magical, strange. We have been hit with a series of unprecedented moments. And so, like, I feel like it's my job as a writer to try and balance what feels outlandish or exaggerated or mythological or just simply strange with these small moments of change that all of us are forced to confront.
- [22:20]
Meg Wolitzer
That was my conversation with author Joe Mino. Next, let's hear a piece from 20th century Turkish poet and short story writer Saeed Faye Abbasiyanek. His collections include the Company and A Useless man, the latter of which is currently available in translation from Archipelago Books. This piece about minor injuries and major consequences is performed by Amir Arison. While he's best known for his long run on NBC series the Blacklist, he's appeared in many other notable TV projects, including the Dropout and Rami. And now Amir Arison brings us the tough and tender story the Silk Handkerchief by Saeed Faig Abbasianik.
- [23:12]
Narrator/Announcer
The Silk Handkerchief moonlight shimmered across the silk factory's long facade. Here and there I could see people hurrying alongside it, but there was nowhere I wished to go. I was making my way out very slowly when I heard the watchman call out to me. Where are you off to? I'm just going for a stroll, I said. Don't you want to see the acrobat? I hesitated, so he went on.
- [23:41]
Meg Wolitzer
Everyone is going.
- [23:43]
Narrator/Announcer
This is the first time anyone like him has ever come to Barsa. I am not interested, I said. He begged and groveled until I agreed to take his shift. For a while I just sat there. I smoked a cigarette. I sang an old folk song. But soon I was bored. I might as well stretch my legs, I thought. So I picked up the watchman's studded nightstick and went off to do the rounds. I had just passed the girls workshop when I heard a noise. Taking out my flashlight, I made a sweep of the room, and there, racing along the carpet of light, were two naked feet. After I had caught the thief, I took him to the watchman's room to get a good look at him and the lamp's yellow glow. How tiny he was. When I squeezed his small hand in mine. I thought it might break. But his eyes, how they flashed. I laughed so hard I let go of his hand. Then he lunged at me with a pocket knife, slicing my pinky. So I got a tight grip on the little devil and went through his pockets. Some contraband tobacco and a few papers of the same sort of, and a handkerchief that was almost clean. I dabbed some of his tobacco on the wound, tore a strip from the handkerchief and wrapped it around my finger with the remaining tobacco. We rolled two fat cigarettes and then sat down like two old friends and talked. He was just 15, from which I was to understand that he was new to this business. He was just a boy. You know the story. Someone had asked him for a silk handkerchief, a girl he loved, girl he had his eye on, the girl next door. He couldn't just go out and buy one, he had no money. So after thinking the matter through, he decided on this. That is fine and good, I said, but the workshops are on this side of the building. What was it that took you to the other side? He smiled. How could he have known which side the workshops were on? We lit up two of my village cigarettes. By now we were good friends. He was Bursa, born and raised. He had never been to Istanbul. Only once in his life had he ever been as far as Mudanya. And oh, to see the look on his face when he told me all this. As a boy in Amir Sultan I would often go sledding on moonlit nights, and this boy reminded me of the friends I had made there. I could imagine his skin going as dark as theirs in the summer, as dark as the water in Gokdere pools we could hear bubbling in the distance, as dark as the pits of summer fruit. I looked at him more closely. His olive skin was as dark as a walnut fresh from its green shell. His teeth were as fine and white as the flesh inside in summer and right through to the end of walnut season. Boy's hands smell only of peaches and plums in this place, and and their chests give off an aroma of hazel leaves as they roamed the streets half naked in their buttonless striped shirts. Just then the watchman's clock struck 12. The acrobat show was nearly over. I should get going, the boy said. I was just regretting having him, sent him on his way without a silk handkerchief when I heard a commotion right outside the door and the watchman came in muttering under his breath, dragging the thief back in with him. This time I held him by the ears while the watchman whacked the soles of his feet with a willow switch. Good thing the boss wasn't there. I swear he would have called the police. Thieving at this age. He'd have cried. Well, the boy can smarten up in jail. He looked scared by the time we were through with him, as if at any moment he might start crying, but he didn't shed a tear, his lips didn't tremble and his eyebrows hardly moved. There was only a faint fluttering of eyelashes. When we let him go, he took off like a swallow, vanishing, as if he were soaring over a moonlit cornfield. In those days I slept in the storeroom on the floor above the workshop. How beautiful that room was, and never more so than on moonlit nights. Just outside my window was a mulberry tree. Moonlight would come cascading down through its leaves, throwing flecks of light across the floor. Summer and winter. I left the window open. The wind was never too rough or cold. I had worked on a ferry boat, and I knew the different winds from their smells. The lodos, the Poiraz, the Carayam, and the gun Batise. So many winds swept over me as I lay on that blanket, each one bringing its own strange dreams. I'm a light sleeper. It was just before daybreak when I heard a noise outside. Someone was in the tree, but I was too afraid to get up or cry out. A shadow appeared in the window. It was the boy. Slowly he dropped down into the room, and when he passed me, I shut my eyes. First he went through my cupboard. Then, very slowly, he went through the stockpile. I didn't say a word. The truth is, even if he'd made off with everything, I could never have said a word in the face of such boldness. In the morning, the boss would beat the truth out of me. Take that, you dog, he'd say. He'd tell me a dead man could have done a better job. And then he'd fire me. See, I knew all this. But still I didn't say a word. He slipped out through the window as quietly as he had come. Then I heard a snap. I rushed downstairs and found him lying in the moonlight while the watchman and a few others looked on. He was dying. His fist was clenched. When the watchman pried it open, a silk handkerchief shot up from his hand like water from a spring. That's right. That is what happens if a handkerchief is pure silk. You crumple it up as tight as you can, but open your hand and it shoots right up like water from a spring.
- [30:30]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Amir Erison with the silk handkerchief. By Saeed Faik Abbasiyanik Translated by Alexander Dawe and Maureen Frehley and my question who is this man, this nameless narrator, the somehow stranded between the gentle thief desperate to please his love and the punitive watchman dedicated to pleasing his boss? The narrator isn't responsible for the infraction or the punitive response, but in his attempt to forgive the Thief's initial infraction, he sets the stage for something much scarier. When we return, a story by the great Margaret Atwood about living your best life while remaining dimly aware of of a possible bear attack. 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.
- [31:22]
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- [31:52]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
Gas, snacks, tolls this trip is draining my wallet.
- [31:55]
Commercial Voice
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- [31:58]
Narrator/Announcer
You're in a good mood.
- [31:59]
Meg Wolitzer
What's your deal?
- [32:00]
Commercial Voice
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- [32:09]
Meg Wolitzer
Text and data detour to Metro.
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Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
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Meg Wolitzer
Just bring your number $30 first month.
- [32:16]
Commercial Voice
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- [32:19]
The past 180 days.
- [32:33]
Foreign.
- [32:39]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You too can be part of the Selected Shorts family and can see the actors and hear the gasps and laughter live in a theater near you. While most of our stories are recorded at our home theater of Symphony Space in New York City, every year we pack our bags and take the show on the road. We go coast to coast. This fall we will be at the Stissing center for Arts and Culture in Pine Plains, New York and we are heading back to Dartmouth College and the Bankhead Theater in Livermore, California to see the current lineup of selected shorts dates on the Road and at our home theater of Symphony space. Head to selectedshorts.org for the latest tour dates and ticket information. Oh, and while you're there, subscribe to our podcast where you'll also find bonus episodes and backstage conversations with actors who perform in the show. If you like what you hear, please write us a review and tell your friends how much you love selected Shorts on today's show, we're listening to stories about how we prepare for things beyond our control, and while I can't with confidence tell you that it will help you during a zombie attack, you never know. Our final story is by Margaret Atwood. For those of us who love speculative fiction or acutely perceptive contemporary fiction in general, Atwood needs no introduction. She is the author of Touchstones, including the Handmaid's Tale and its follow up the Testaments, as well as the Mad Adam trilogy and much more. In recent years, her fiction has often found her contemplating the world in a naturalistic way. Many of the stories in her recent collection Old Babes in the Wood settle Down with Nell and Tig, characters who feel like fictional stand ins for Atwood and her late husband. This piece, First Aid, is a Nell and Tig story about accidents and how this intrepid couple confronts the unexpected. Here's Margaret Atwood introducing the story at the live event at Symphony Space. Dedicated to the collection.
- [34:51]
Margaret Atwood
Yes, Graham and I really did take a first aid course, much as described. If you've run into medical difficulties, I really, really know how to dial 91 1. Yes, clear a space around them, give them room to breathe. Run away very fast.
- [35:18]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Margaret Atwood speaking from the stage at Symphony Space. First Aid is read by Maggie Siff, an actor with an impressive resume that includes long runs in series including Mad Men and Billions.
- [35:44]
Commercial Voice
First Aid Nell came home one day just before dinner time and found the front door open. The car was gone. There was a trail of blood splotches on the steps, and once she was inside the house she followed it along the hall carpet and into the kitchen. There was a knife on the cutting board, one of Tigg's favorites, Japanese steel, very sharp, and beside it a blood sea stained carrot, one end severed. Their daughter, nine at the time, was nowhere to be found. What were the possible scenarios? Desperados had broken in. Tig had tried to defend himself against them using the knife, though how to explain the carrot and had been wounded. The desperados had made off with him, their daughter and their car. Nell should call the police or else. Tig had been cooking, had sliced himself with the knife, had judged that he needed stitches and had driven himself to the hospital, taking their daughter with him to avoid leaving her by herself. This was more likely. He must have been in too much of a hurry to leave a note. Nell got out the bottle of carpet cleaner and sprayed the blood spots. They would be much harder to get out once they'd dried, then she wiped the blood off the kitchen floor and after a pause, off the carrot. It was a perfectly good carrot, no need for it to go to waste. Time passed, suspense built. She was on the point of phoning all the hospitals in the vicinity to see if Tig was there. When he came back, hand bandaged, he was in a jovial mood, as was their daughter. What an adventure they'd had. The blood was just pouring out, they'd reported. The tea towel Tig had used for wrapping the cut had been soaked. Yes, driving had been a challenge, said Tig. He didn't say dangerous, but who could wait for a taxi? And he'd managed all right with basically just one hand since he'd needed to keep the other one raised and the blood was trickling off his elbow and they'd sewn him up quickly at the hospital because he was dripping all over everything. And anyway, here they were. Luckily not an artery or it would have been a different it was indeed a different story. When Tig told it a little later to Nell, his bravado had been an act. He hadn't wanted to frighten their daughter and he'd been worried that he would pass out if the blood loss got out of control. And then what? I need a drink, said Tigg. So do I, said Nell. We can have scrambled eggs. Whatever Tig had been planning to do with the carrot was no longer on the agenda. The tea towel had been brought back in a plastic bag. It was bright red but beginning to brown at the edges. Nell put it to soak in cold water, which was the best way to deal with blood stained fabrics. But what would I have done if I'd been there? She wondered. Not a band aid insufficient a tourniquet. She'd had perfunctory instruction in those at Girl Guides. They'd done wrist sprains, too. Minor emergencies were her domain, but not major ones. Major ones were Tigs. That was some time ago, early autumn, as she recalls a year in the later 1980s. There were personal computers then, of a lumbering kind, and printers. The paper for them came with the pages joined together at top and bottom and had holes along the sides and perforated strip strips that you had to tear off. No cell phones, though, which was why Nell hadn't been able to text or call Tig and ask him where he was. And also what had caused the blood. How much waiting we used to do, she thinks. Waiting without knowing. So many blanks we couldn't fill in. So many mysteries, so little information. Now it's the first decade of the 21st century. Space time is denser. It's crowded. You can barely move because the air is so packed with this and that. You can't get away from people. They're in touch, they're touching. They're only a touch away. Was that better or worse? She switches her attention to the room the two of them are in right at this moment. It's a nondescript high rise on Bloor street near the viaduct. She and Tig are sitting in chairs that are something like schoolroom chairs. There is in fact a whiteboard at the front and a man called Mr. Foote is talking. The people in the other chairs who are also listening to Mr. Foote, are at least 30 years younger than Tig and Mel, some of them 40 years younger. Just kids. If it's a motorcycle crash, says Mr. Foote, you don't want to take off the helmet, do you? Because you don't know what's going to be in there, eh? He moves his hand in front of him circularly as if cleaning a window. Good point, thinks Nell. She imagines a glass of helmet smeared inside a face that is no longer a face, a face of mush. Mr. Foote has a talent for conjuring up such images. He has a graphic way of speaking. Being from Newfoundland, he doesn't tiptoe around. He's built on a square plan. Wide torso, thick legs, a short distance between ear and shoulders. It's a balanced shape with a low center of gravity. Mr. Foote would not be easy to upend. Nell expects that's been tried in bars. He looks as if he'd know his way around a bar fight, but also as if he wouldn't get into any of those. He couldn't win if pushed too hard. He'd throw the Chance Challenger through a window calmly. You needs to keep calm, he's already said twice. Then check to make sure there's no bones broken. If there were, he'd splint them and treat the victim for cuts and abrasions. Mr. Foote is an all in one package. In fact he's a paramedic, but that doesn't come out until later in the day. He's carrying a black leather binder and wearing a long sleeve zip fronted sweatshirt with St. John's Ambulance logo on it, as if he's a team coach, which in a way he is. He's teaching them first aid. At the end of the day there will be a test and they will each get a certificate. All of them are in this room because they need this certificate their companies have sent them. Nell and Tig are the same, thanks to a family connection of Tig's. They're giving talks on a nature tour cruise ship. Birds for him, butterflies for her. Their hobbies. So they are technically staff. And staff on this ship have to get the certificate. It's mandatory. Their ship contact has told them. What hasn't been said is that the majority of the passengers, the guests, the clientele will not be young, to put it mildly. Some of them will be older than Nell and Tig. Truly ancient. Such people can be expected to topple over at any minute, and then it will be certificates to the rescue. Nell and Tig are unlikely to be doing any actual rescuing. Younger people will leap in. Nell's counting on that. In a pinch, Nell will dither and claim she's forgotten what to do, which will be true. What will Tig do? He will say stand back. Give him a room. Something like that. It's known, it's been rumored, that these ships have extra freezers in them, just in case. Nell pictures the distress of a server who opens the wrong freezer by mistake to be confronted by the appalled, congealed stare of some unlucky passenger for whom the certificate has not proved sufficient. Mr. Foote stands in the front of the room, running his gaze over today's crop of students. His expression is possibly neutral or faintly amused. Bunch of know nothing softies, he's most likely thinking. City people. There's what to do and there's what not to do, he says. I'll be telling you both first, you don't go screaming around like a headless chicken, even if buddies minus his own head. But headless chickens can't scream, Nell thinks, or she assumes they can't, but she takes the meaning. Keep your head in an emergency, they say, Mr. Foote would add, if you can. He would definitely want them to keep their heads. You can fix a lot of things, Mr. Foote is saying, but not if there's no head. That's one thing I can't teach you. It's a joke, nell guesses, but Mr. Foote does not signal jokes. He is deadpan. Say you're in a restaurant. Mr. Foot, having dealt with motorcycle crashes, has moved on to asphyxiation and Buzzy starts choking. The question you need to ask is, can they talk? Ask them if they can talk and then you can hit them on the back. If they say yes in words, it's not too bad because they can still breathe, eh? But what's Likely a lot of people are embarrassed. They stand up and what do they do? They go to the washroom because they don't want to be making a fuss, calling attention. But you got to go in there with them. You got to follow them, because they can die right on the floor before you even notice they're gone. He gives a meaningful nod. He's known instances. The nod says, he's been there, he's seen it happen. But he got there too late. Mr. Foote knows his stuff, Nell thinks. The exact same thing almost happened to her. The choking, the going to the washroom, the not wanting to make a fuss. Embarrassment can be lethal, she sees. Now Mr. Foot has nailed it. Then you got to bend them forward, Mr. Foote continues. Five whacks on De back, de glob of meat or the dumpling or the fishbone or whatever can shoot out of them right then and there. But if not, you got to do the Heimlich maneuver. Thing is, if they can't talk, they can't exactly give you permission. Plus they might be turning blue and passing out. You just got to do it. Maybe you break a rib, but at least they'll be alive, eh? He grins a little. Ornell assumes it's a grin, a sort of mouth twitch. That's the end game, eh?
- [46:03]
Meg Wolitzer
Alive.
- [46:07]
Commercial Voice
They run through the Heimlich maneuver and the right way of hitting someone on the back. According to Mr. Foote, the combination of these two things would almost always work, but you had to get in there soon enough. In first aid, timing is everything. That's why it's called First A. It's not the effing tax department. Scuse my French. They can take all day, but you got maybe four minutes. Now he says they will have a coffee break and after that they will do drowning and mouth to mouth, followed by hypothermia and after lunch, heart attacks and defibrillators. That's a lot for one day. Drowning is fairly simple. First you need to get the water out. It'll pour out if you let gravity be your friend, eh? Turn them on the side, empty them out, but fast. Mr. Foote has dealt with numerous drownings. He's lived near water all his life. Turn them on their backs to clear the airways. Check for breathing, check for pulse. Make sure someone calls 911. If there's no breathing, you need to do the mouth to mouth. Now this gadget I'm showing you, it's a CPR barrier guard. It's for the mouth to mouth, because sometimes they'll throw up like. And you don't need to have that in your own mouth anyway. There's the germs, eh? You should carry one of these on you at all times. Mr. Foote has a supply of them. They can be purchased at the end of the day. Nell makes a mental note to get one. How has she managed to live without a mouth barrier guard until now? How feckless. In order to practice the mouth to mouth, the room is divided into pairs. Each pair is given a red plastic torso with a bald white tip back head and a yoga mat for kneeling on while they bring their shared torso back to life. Pinch the nose shut, cover the mouth with yours, give five rescue breaths, letting the chest rise each time. Then perform five chest compressions. Repeat. Meanwhile, the other person calls 911, after which they take over the chest compressions. These can get tiring. It's hard on the wrists. Mr. Foot stalks the room, checking everyone's technique. You're getting there, he says. Tig says now that he's down on the mat, Nell will have to call 911 to get someone to to lift him back up, considering the state of his knees. Nell giggles into the plastic mouth, sabotaging her rescue breath. I just hope nobody drowns on our watch, she says, because they'll probably stay drowned. Tig says he understands it's a relatively painless way to go. You are said to hear bells. When they've all brought their plastic torsos back to life, they move on to hypothermia and shock. Both involve blankets. Mr. Foote tells an amazing story about a man on a ski trip who went out the door of a cabin to take a leak without a flashlight through deep snow and fell into a mel welt around the base of a tree and couldn't get out. Wasn't found until morning. He was stiff as a board and cold as a mackerel, said Mr. Foote. Not a breath in him. And as for his heart, it was silent as the tomb. But someone else in that cabin had taken the CPR course and they worked on the possibly dead person for six hours. Six hours and brought him back to life.
- [49:25]
Becky Ann Baker (Reader)
You keep going.
- [49:27]
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You don't give up, says Mr. Foot. Because you never know. They break for lunch. Nell and Tig find a little Italian restaurant tucked into one of the soulless high rise buildings and order a glass of red wine each and eat quite a good pizza. Nell says she's going to have a wallet card made that says in case of accident, call Mr. Foot. And Tig says they should run Mr. Foote for prime Minister. He could give the whole country mouth to mouth. He thinks Mr. Foote has been in the Navy. Nell says no, he's a spy. Tigg says maybe he's been a pirate and Nell says no, he's definitely an alien from outer space. And being a first aid instructor called Mr. Foot is a perfect front. They're both feeling silly and also incompetent. Nell is sure that if confronted with any of these emergencies, the drowning person, the one in shock, the frozen one, she will panic and everything Mr. Foote has taught them will go right out of her head. I might do snake bites the though, she says. I learned a little about that in Girl Guides. I don't think Mr. Foot does snake bites, says Tig. Bet he does. But it's only in private. It's niche the afternoon is exciting. Real defibrillators are handed out and their paddles are applied with precision to the red plastic torsos. Everyone gets a turn. Mr. Foote tells them how to avoid defibrillating themselves by accident. Your heart could get confused and decide to stop. Nell murmurs to Tig that death by self defibrillation would be very undignified. Not as undignified as sticking a fork in a wall socket. Tig murmurs back. True, Nell thinks. You had to beware of that with small children. Then comes the test. Mr. Foote ensures they all pass. He broadly hints at the answers and instructs them to raise their hands if they don't understand a question. They will receive their certificates in the mail, he says, clothing his black leather binder with relief. Nell expects one more batch of no hopers off his hands and pray to God none of them is ever involved in a real emergency. Nell purchases one of the CPR mouthpieces, barrier guards. She wants to tell Mr. Foote that she has enjoyed his stories, but that might sound frivolous, as if this was merely entertainment, as if she doesn't take him seriously. He might be insulted. So she says a simple thank you and he nods. Once she and Tig are home, once it's the next day, or possibly the day after that, she totals up all the life threatening experiences the two of them have had, or experiences she's feared might have been life threatening. How prepared had she been for any of them the time the metal chimney set fire to the inside of the roof and Tig climbed up into the crawl space in clouds of choking smoke and poured buckets of water on the fire. What if he'd blacked out in there from smoke inhalation after that incident, Tig bought a fire blanket in every floor of any house they were living in. Had to have a floor fire extinguisher. He worried about hotels too, and always checked to make sure he knew where the stairs were, just in case. Also the windows. Did they open? Increasingly, windows in hotels were sealed shut, but you could break the glass, maybe by wrapping your arm in a towel first. That would be no use if the window was too high up. The time Tigg set off all the fire alarms in a 30 story hotel by smoking a cigar in the hall underneath one of the the sensors, and the two of them climbed down all the flights of stairs and exited through a lobby filled with firemen pretending they hadn't done it. That wasn't even life threatening. It wasn't even very embarrassing since they hadn't gotten caught. The time a lumber truck ahead of them on the highway lost its load, wooden boards peeled off, flying through the air and bouncing all over the asphalt, narrowly missing them. On top of that, it was a blizzard. Knowing CPR wouldn't have helped. The time they were canoeing on one of the Great Lakes and their canoe was tipped by a freak wave from a passing ocean steamer. Not life threatening. They were close to shore. The water was warm. They got wet. That was all the time Tig came roaring up on the atv, towing a trailer full of wood he'd been cutting with his chainsaw, blue pouring down his face from a scalp wound he didn't know he had that wasn't life threatening. He hadn't even noticed. There's blood pouring down his face, nell said to the children, as if they couldn't see. There's always blood pouring down his face, one of them replied with a shrug. As far as they were concerned, he was indestructible. I must have a lot of blood, tig said, grinning away. What did he skin his head on? Something unimportant. Next minute he was unloading the wood. The minute after that he was splitting it. It was already dry. He'd been harvesting dead trees. Then bang, he was filling up the wood box. In those days they lived in fast forward. The hikes they used to take before there were cell phones. They hadn't considered them risky. Had they even packed a first aid kit? Maybe some moleskin for blisters, antibiotic ointment, couple of painkillers? What would have happened if one of them had sprained an ankle? Broken a leg? Had they even told anyone where they were going? One autumn, for instance, in a national park. Rough weather. Early snow and ice, marching through the yellow and gold beech forest with their enormous pack sacks, poking iced over ponds with their hiking poles, consulting trail maps and having differences of opinion about them, eating squares of chocolate, then pausing for lunches, parking themselves on logs, devouring mini cheeses, hard boiled eggs, nuts and crackers, rum in a flask. Tig was already having trouble with his knees, but he went on the hikes anyway. He tied his knees up with bandanas, one above, one below. Why are you still walking? A doctor asked him. Basically you don't have a knee. But that was much later that year. There was an urban legend about hiker danger making the rounds to the effect that male moose, in season, the fall season the one they were in, were sexually attracted to Volkswagen beetles. They'd taken to leaping off cliffs on top of them, squashing both car and driver. Nellentig thought this this was bs, but they'd added, probably because strange things could happen. They set up their tent in a likely spot, made supper with their whisper light single element gas burner, slung their food packs into a tree at some distance in case of bears, and crawled into their gelid sleeping bags. Nell lay awake, reflecting on the fact that their dome shaped tent strongly resembled a Volkswagen beetle. Would a male moose come along in the middle of the night and jump on top of them? And once it had discovered its mistake, would it become enraged? Male moose were notorious for becoming enraged in mating season. They could be a serious hazard. In the clear light of morning, the moose squashing possibility seemed remote. Not a life threatening experience, therefore, except in Nell's head. The next year, a couple taking the exact same trail they'd been on had been killed in their tent by a bear and partly eaten. Tig liked to think of this as a narrow escape. He took to reading out loud to Nell at night from a book called Bear Attacks. There were two kinds of attacking bears, it claimed. Bears who were hungry and mother bears protecting their young. The way you should react was different for each, but there was no immediate method for telling the difference. Difference when to play dead, when to ease away sideways, when to fight back, and with what kind of bear, black or grizzly. The instructions were complex. I'm not sure we should be reading about this just before going to sleep, says Nell. They'd come to a story about a woman who got her arm chewed off, though she'd finally managed to deter the bear by hitting it on the nose. She must have had nerves of steel, said Tig. She must have been in shock, said Nell. It can give you superhuman powers. She survived anyway, said Tig. Just barely, said Nell. No pun intended. Did any of this stop them from going on more of their under equipped hikes? It did not. Tig bought some bear spray. However, most of the time they remembered to be packet revisiting all of this. Because revisiting sets in after a time. After many times, Nell is now wondering, would the instructions of Mr. Foote have made any difference in these situations? If push had come to shove, maybe with the chimney fire. If Nell had been able to haul an unconscious Tig out of the crawlspace, she could have given him some rescue breaths while the house was burning down. But eaten by a bear or squashed by a moose, no salvation there. Mr. Foote was right. No one can guess. No one knows the final outcome. The why is it called an outcome? No one comes out eventually. We aren't going to make it out of here alive, tig used to joke, although it wasn't one. And if you did guess, if you could foresee, would it be better? No. You'd live in grief all the time. You'd be mourning things that hadn't happened yet. Better to preserve the illusion of safety. Better to improvise. Better to march along through the golden autumn woods not very well prepared, poking icy ponds with your hiking pole, snacking on chocolate, sitting on frozen logs, peeling hard boiled eggs with cold fingers as the early snow sifts down and the day darkens, no one knows where you are. Had they really been that careless, that oblivious? They had. Obliviousness had served them.
- [60:25]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Maggie Siff performing First Aid by Margaret Atwood. And here's Margaret Atwood's reaction to the reading from the stage.
- [60:34]
Margaret Atwood
Thank you very much, Maggie. That was. That was wonderful. Even I was waiting to see what was going to happen. Maybe I should have warned you about the blood. Yes, there are always squeamish people out there. My old high school gym teacher, who also taught health to the Grade Niners, used to spell blood B L O O D because she thought we were too frail and delicate to hear the actual word.
- [61:12]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Margaret Atwood at Symphony Space talking about her story, First Aid. I think a good philosophy regarding unexpected scares is it's fine to think about these possibilities from time to time, but more importantly, live your life. The naturalistic, matter of fact style of writing that's in this story is different from, say, the fierce heightened parable, but not of the Handmaid's Tale. Still, the assured sensibility is there in all the work, regardless of its subject. And as for being prepared, it's one thing to be able to manage the possibilities of someone suddenly needing mouth to mouth, and quite another to manage the possibilities of life in Gilead women. There is not enough preparation on Earth for that. Okay, so the stories in this hour didn't teach you how to make a tourniquet, nor nor did they help you refresh your CPR technique. But there's something weirdly comforting about hearing even fictional characters prepare for and sometimes face their scariest moments. I mean, if things go wrong, we learn from their mistakes. And if they rise to the occasion, well, we can too. 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 Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Jennifer Nolsen. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Dierdorf 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.
- [63:42]
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- [64:07]
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- [64:12]
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