← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Uprooted
00:58:15
On this SELECTED SHORTS, host Meg Wolitzer presents three stories about moving out of familiar territory into new spaces and new understanding. In Meron Hadero’s “The Thief’s Tale,” read by Teagle F. Bougere, an émigré can’t leave some of his old ways behind. “The Tallest Doll in New York City,” by Maria Dahvana Headley, imagines what happens when two iconic skyscrapers fall in love. It’s read by Becca Blackwell. And summer trip yields unexpected treasures in Anne Tyler’s “The Feather Behind the Rock,” read by Jane Curtin.
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- [00:00]
CDC Public Health Announcer
Here's a question. How can you keep from getting sick with a respiratory illness this season? The good news is everyday actions can help you stay well and stop the spread. Wash your hands, take steps for cleaner air, and try to avoid close contact with people who are sick. And talk to your doctor about what vaccines may be right for you so you can help keep yourself and your loved ones healthy. Learn more@cdc.gov respiratory illnesses a message from.
- [00:29]
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- [01:06]
Meg Wolitzer
Usually, people encourage you to put down roots or maybe return to those roots. But on this edition of Selected Shorts, stories that find delight in being uprooted, including a piece by the beloved author Anne Tyler, performed by the great Jane Curtin. Hi, I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay where you are. Or if you need to wander off, take your headphones. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. For many of us, home isn't just the place where we hang our hat. It's where we hope to stay for the long run. And that's a comforting idea. We know our houses, our apartments, and all their little quirks. We know our neighbors, our communities, our cities and countries. And this isn't just about familiarity. It's also about ease. There's no need to expend excess energy in the business of daily living. I remember being a kid, and suddenly another kid in school announced they were moving away. That was huge news. They might have only been moving to the next suburb, but I often felt bereft. And more than that, I felt sorry for them. And because I got to stay put in the place I knew best, moving up in the school that was familiar to me and returning at the end of the school day to my same familiar house. But sometimes we're the one who gets uprooted. As you can hear, the idea of being uprooted sounded scary to me. Getting removed from the patch of land in which you have grown roots and displaced from the soil that literally or figuratively feeds you. But sometimes removing yourself from a place in which you're entrenched can be liberating to be clear, this week's show is not about forced migration. As important a topic as that is, this show is about protagonists who have agency in their travel. So in this week's selected shorts, stories about discomfort and discovery in the act of leaving home. In one tale, an elderly man abandons the habits of life in his home country, almost in another, Love calls an architectural marvel's answer. And in a third are a road trip brings a grandson lessons about listening. Our first story is by writer Maron Hedero. This piece, the Thief's Tale, is featured in Hedero's first collection, titled A Down Home Meal for these Difficult Times. We featured the title story on another selected shorts program. If you heard it, you know that Hadro's portraits of people rediscovering and redefining home are touching and bittersweet, too. This piece is performed by Tegel F. Bougeth. He's a Broadway regular who has been recently seen in a touring production of Debate, Baldwin versus Buckley, as well as the series Queen America. And now Tegel F. Bouget reads Maroon Hadero's the Thief's Tale.
- [04:08]
Tegele F. Bougeth
He didn't think it was possible to get lost in America, especially not in the late aughts, not in a city like New York, with all these named streets, big arteries and huge landmarks, all the pins in this expanse. But yet he found himself in Prospect park at dusk with no idea where he was or how to get back to his daughter's apartment. She would be so upset at him, wandering off alone, without any money or a map or compass or knowledge of the language or culture or any other means to return home once again in this strange country. He felt old. Old and not admired like he did back in Ethiopia. Not an elder to seek out for guidance, not a wise man who would draw in pilgrims from miles away for advice, not a sage of a family who would approve of marriages and other contract. Just plain old. He felt old and even rather helpless, a little pathetic, which was a new feeling and one he didn't care for. He sat down on a park bench, the lamp light flickering above. There was nothing much to see anyway. The nightfall dimmed the quiet scene much slower than it would be in his more equatorial home, and it was a chilly early autumn evening and there were no more joggers on the path, no more bikers getting home, no kids out playing. He sat alone in the darkness for, he guessed, an hour on an unpainted bench beneath a yellow street light, and then a man walked over and took a seat next to him. The stranger was dressed in jeans and sneakers and a bomber jacket. The old man wanted to speak to the stranger, asked how to find his way to the subway from where he figured he could retrace his steps and take the green line five steps back. The old man motioned to the ground, pointing down at the green grass, then moved his flattened hand out and thrust it forward, trying to signal the underground train moving ahead. The stranger nodded a little and said, you no talk. The old man spoke quickly, explaining he could speak very well, but as could be expected, the stranger didn't understand a word. It didn't stop the stranger from asking the old man a question, but he could only make out the words the and have. Have, the old man repeated. The stranger pointed at his wrist and the old man shook his head, remembering. He took off his watch when he'd arrived a few days ago, and though he'd meant to put it back on after adjusting the time, there was so much to do when he landed, so much his daughter had wanted him to see, so much shock, so many sites, so many buildings and elevators to scale. Then the stranger asked another question, and again the old man could only make out the words the and have. Have, the old man repeated. The stranger took out his wallet and pointed at the old man. The old man shook his head. He'd left his wallet by his watch, full as it was, of useless currency. The stranger asked another question, and again the old man could only make out the words the and give. Give. The stranger took out a knife and held up his own wallet. The old man said, give and pointed at the stranger's wallet, then made the sign of a telephone. The stranger was confused at first, not least of all at the lack of fear in the old man. Then he seemed to take pity on him, another experience the old man was not used to and didn't much like, but the stranger led him to a neglected payphone. Under a humming light. The stranger found some change and waited as the old man dialed his daughter's number. She immediately started screaming on the other end, yelling at her father, stirring up another unwanted feeling that he was not accustomed to and could not name before she asked him finally where he was. The old man didn't know, but gave the phone to the stranger, who said something the old man couldn't understand, which he figured was directions. As they waited for the old man's daughter to arrive, the stranger took out a deck of cards and they started to build a house. As the two spoke over each other, understanding nothing more than the music of untranslated unfamiliar language. In his quick, tense staccato, the stranger told the old man about how much he missed his own grandfather on his end. In a slow and languid vibrato, the old man told the stranger about the last time he'd had a knife pulled on him, and how the old man had walked away with that poor knife wielder's ear, literally, and his car and his daughter's dowry. The house of cards between them fell, and the stranger started a new story about how he gambled too much and got himself lost all the time now that his wife left him. The old man, meanwhile, told a story about the last time he himself held a man up with just a menacing threat as a weapon, and how in this way he was able to secure a new apartment, a beautiful little studio that the old man's estranged mistress still, he assumed, enjoys very much to this day. Their house of cards folded over, and the old man confessed that he'd trade all the treasure in the world to begin over again. And the stranger confessed that he'd trade all the treasure in the world to begin over again. Their house of cards collapsed once more and the stories restarted about longing and trickery and twists of fortune. The stranger gestured like he was searching with the flashlight, which the old man took for swordplay. The old man moved his arm like an asp, recoiling, which the stranger mistook for an ebbing tide. When the old man's daughter drove up in her Volvo and frantically rushed to her father, she immediately started shouting and the old man was glad that the stranger couldn't understand. The old man silently nodded at the stranger before slinking towards her, and she embraced him lovingly. His daughter gave the stranger a twenty dollar bill for his help, but the stranger politely refused. The daughter tried to insist, but the old man stopped her, so she simply thanked the stranger as she got into the car. The stranger tipped his hat at the old man, then walked off beyond the yellow glow of the streetlight and into the darkness. The old man was about to tell his daughter a passing thought, but the sound of the engine cut him off. He began again and explained, sometimes one gets lost in the dark, but if you have some tricks up your sleeve, you can end up the better for it. By which he meant he'd witnessed the small miracle of good timing and also, without knowing the same language, managed to turn the table such that, despite his empty pockets, he scored a bit of money from an armed robber with nothing more than a modest sleight of hand. He marveled at the vitality of this feat, but his daughter was already rushing towards the parkway, rattling off a list of groceries she'd forgotten to get on her last trip to the store.
- [11:57]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Tegele F. Bouget performing the Thief's Tale by Marone Hadero. It's fun, right? Finding out that the seemingly frail and helpless party secretly has the upper hand. And even more interesting, the old man's victory is morally dubious. He can't help himself from falling back on his challenging former existence. The story plays tricks on the reader's expectations much the way that the old man plays tricks on the thief. Hedero uses the idea of comprehension as a way in we're often trying hard to be understood, but in this story the absence of understanding turns out to be a secret weapon. Our next story comes from Maria Davana Headley, a Hugo Award winning author of fantastical works including Queen of Kings and the Mere Wife. This playful story of being uprooted is more about longing than conflict, a longing pushed to new heights, literally, as it involves the personification of iconic buildings in the New York skyline. Reading the story is actor Becca Blackwell. They have appeared on Broadway in the play Is this a Room? And in series including Rami. Here, Blackwell brings their verve and sense of humor to Maria Devana Headley's the Tallest Doll in New York City.
- [13:18]
Becca Blackwell
On a particular snowy Monday in February at 5:02pm I'm 66 flights above the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street street, looking down at streets swarming with hats and jackets. All the guys who work in Midtown are spit into the frozen city, hunting sugar for the dolls. They're trying to muddle up from sour into sweet. From up here I can see legs fogged with cheap cologne, every citizen clutching his heart shaped box wrapped in cellophane, red as the devil's drawers. If you happen to be a waiter at the Cloud Club, you know five's the hour when a guy's nerves start to fray. This calendar square's worse than most. Every man on our member list is suffering the St. Valentine's cramp, and me and the crew up here are ready with a stocked bar. I'm in my Cloud Club uniform, the pocket embroidered with my name in the Chrysler's trademark typeface, swooping like a skid mark on a lonely road in Montana. Over my arm I've got a clean towel, and in my vest I have an assortment of aspirins and plasters in case a citizen shows up already bleeding or broken nose from an encounter with a lady Love knot Later tonight it'll be the Members Doll dinner, the one night a year we allow women into the private dining room. Valorous Victor, captain of the wait, pours us each a preparatory coupe. There are ice cream sculptures shaped like Cupid in the walk in, and each gal gets a corsage the moment she enters the roses from Valorous Victor's brother's hothouse in Jersey. At least two dolls are in line for a wife and we've got their guys rings here ready and waiting to drop into champagne in one case and wedge into an oyster in another. Odds in the kitchen have the diamond in that particular ring consisting of a pretty piece of paste. Down below. It's 1938 and things are not as prime as they are up here. Our members are the richest men left standing, their wives at home in Greenwich, their mistresses movie starlets with porcelain teeth. Me, I'm single. I've got a mother with rules strict to sing sing and a sister with a face pretty as the Sistine ceiling. My sister needs protecting from all the guys in the world. So I live in Brooklyn, man of my mother's house until I can find a wife or die trying. The members start coming in and each guy gets led to his locker. Our members are the rulers of the world. They make automobiles and build skyscrapers, but none as tall as the one we're standing in right now. The Cloud Club's open since before the building got her spine, and the wait staff and a member's own know things that even a man's miss doesn't. Back during Prohibition. We install each of the carved wood lockers at the Cloud Club with a hieroglyphic identification code straight out of ancient Egypt so our members can keep their bottles safe and sound. Valorous Victor dazzles the police more than once with his rambling explanation of cryptographic complexities. And finally, the boys in blue take a drink and just call it done. No copper's gonna rosetta our rigmarole. I'm at the bar mixing a horse's neck for Mr. Conde Nast, but I got my eye on the mass of members staggering out of the elevators with fur coats, necklaces and parcels of cling and linger when at 5:28pm precisely, the Chrysler Building steps off her fountain and goes for a walk. There is no warning. She just shakes the snow and pigeons loose from her spire and takes off, sashaying southwest. This is something even we waiters haven't experienced before. The Chrysler is 1046ft tall, and until now she seemed pretty stationary. She stood motionless on this corner for seven years, so far, the gleamiest gal in a million miles. None of the waitstaff lose their cool when things go wrong. Waiters, the good ones, adjust to the needs of both customers and clubs. In 1932, for example, valorous himself commences to travel from midtown to Ellis island in order to deliver a pistol to one of our members, a guy who happens to have a grievance against a brand new American in line for a name. Two slugs and a SNCC later, Victors in surgery beneath the gaze of Verdigius Virgin. Still, he returns to Manhattan in time for the evening napkin twist. The Chrysler's just taking a stroll, sirs, Valorous announces from the stage. No need to panic. This round is on me and the waiters of the Cloud Club. Foreseeably there is in fact, some panic. To some of our members, this event appears to be even more horrifying than Black Tuesday. Mr. Nast sprints to the men's room with motion sickness and the soother, our man on staff for problems of the heart and guts, tails him with a glass of ginger ale. I decide to drink Nast's horse's neck myself. Nerves on the mend, I consider whether any of our members on 67 and 68 might possibly need drinks. But I see Victor's already sending an expedition to the States. I take myself to the windows in the streets. People gawp and yawp and holler and taxis honk their horns. Gals pick up their way through icy puddles and guys stand in paralysis looking up. We joke about working in the body of the best broad in New York City, but no one on the waitstaff ever thinks that the Chrysler might have a will of her own. She she's beautiful, what with her multi story crown, her skin pale blue in daylight and rose colored with city lights at night. Her gown's printed with arcs and swoops and beaded with tiny drops of General Electric. We know her inside and out, or we think we do. We go up and down her stairs when the elevators are broken, looking out her triangular windows and the hottest days of summer, the ones at the top don't have pains because the wind up there can kick up a field goal even when it's breezeless down below and the updrafts can grab a bird and fling it through the building like it's nothing. The Chrysler is officially 77 floors, but she actually has 84 levels. They get smaller and smaller until at 83, there's only a platform the size of a picnic table surrounded by windows, and above that a trapdoor and a ladder into the spire where the lightning rod is. The top floors are tempting. Me and the Soother take ourselves up to the very top. One sultry August night, knees and the ropes, and she sways beneath us but holds steady. Inside the spire there's space for one guy to stand encased in metal, feeling the earth move. The Chrysler is a devastating dame and that's nothing new. I could assess her for years and never be done. At night we turn her on and she glows for miles. I'm saying the waiters of the Cloud Club should know what kind of doll she is. We work inside her brain. Our members retreat to the private dining room, the one with the etched glass working class figures on the wall. There they cower beneath the table, but the waitstaff hangs onto the velvet curtains and watches as the Chrysler walks by. She walks to 34th street, clicking and jingling all the way. We should have predicted this, boss, I say to Valorous. Ain't that the truth, he says, flicking a napkin over his forearm. Dames. The Chrysler's in love. For 11 months, from 1930 to 1931, the Chrysler the tallest doll in New York City. Then the Empire aspired to surpass her and winds up taller still. She has a view straight at him, but he ignores her. At last it seems she's done with his silence. It's Valentine's Day. I pass Victor a cigarette. He acts like a Potemkin village, I say, like he's got nothing inside him but empty floors. I get a chance at a doll like that. I give up everything, move to a two bedroom or out of the city, even. Just walk my way out. What have I got waiting for me at home? My mother and my sister. He's got royalty, no accountant for it, says Valorist, and refills my coupe. But I hear he doesn't go in for company. He won't even look at her. At 34th and 5th, the Chrysler stops, holds up the edge of her skirt and taps her high heel. She waits for some time as sirens blare beneath her. Some of our fellow citizens, I am ashamed to report, don't notice anything out of place at all. They just go around her, cussing and hissing at the traffic. The Empire State Building stands on his corner, shaking in his boots. We can all see his spire trembling. Some of the waitstaff and members sympathize with his wobble, but not me. The Chrysler is a class act and he's a shack, a shamble if he doesn't want to go out with her tonight. At 6:03pm pedestrians on Fifth Avenue shriek in terror as the Chrysler gives up and taps the Empire hard on the shoulder. He's gonna move, valorous says. He's got to move. I don't think he is, says the Soother, back from comforting the members in the lounge. I think he's scared. Look at her. The Soother's an expert in both Chinese herbal medicine and psychoanalysis. He makes our life as waiters easier. He can tell what everyone at a table's waiting for. With one quick look in their direction, she reflects everything. Poor guy sees all his flaws done up, shiny. For years now he feels naked. Can't be healthy to see all that reflected. The kitchen starts taking bets. She won't wait for him for long. I say I have concerns for the big guy in spite of myself. She knows her worth. She heads uptown to the Metropolitan or to the library, says the Soother. I go there if I'm her. The Chrysler's not a doll to trifle with. They're a little short, I venture, those two. I think she's more interested in something with a spire. Radio City the Empire is having a difficult time. His spire is supposedly built for Zeppelin docking, but then the Hindenburg explodes and now no zeppelin will ever moor there. His purpose is moot. He slumps slightly. Our Chrysler taps him again and holds out her steel glove. Beside me, Valorous pours another round of champagne. I hear money changing hands all over the club. Slowly, slowly, the Empire edges off his corner, the floor. 66 waitstaff cheers for the other building, though I hear Mr. Nass commencing to groan again, but this time for his lost bet. Both buildings allow their elevators to resume operations, spilling torrents of shouters from lobbies into the street, and by the time the Chrysler and the Empire start walking east, most of the members are gone and I'm drinking a bottle of bourbon with Valorous and the Soother. We've got no dolls on the premises, and the members still here declare formal dining dead and done until the Chrysler decides to walk back to Lex. There's a palpable relief the citizens of the Cloud Club avoid their responsibilities for the evening as the Empire wades into the east river hand in hand with the Chrysler. Another love struck structures begin to talk. We're watching from the windows as apartment towers lean into gossip, stretching laundry lines finger to finger. Grand Central Station, as stout and elegant as a survivor of the Titanic, stands up, shakes her skirts and pins, pays a visit to Pennsylvania Station that Beaux arts bangle the flatiron and Cleopatra's needles shiver with sudden proximity, and within moments they're all over one another. Between 59th street and the Williamsburg Bridge, the Empire and the Chrysler tripped shyly through the surf. We can see New Yorkers tumbling out of their taxicabs and buses, staring up at the sunset, reflecting in our doll's eyes. The Empire has an awkward heart shaped light appended to his skull, which Valorous and I do some snickering over. The Chrysler glitters in her dignified silver spangles. Her windows shimmy as the pedestrians of the three boroughs watch. The two tallest buildings in New York City press against one another, window to window and waltz and ankle deep water. I look over at the Empire's window where I could see a girl standing quite close now and looking back at me. Victor? I say. Yes, he replies. He's eating vichyswaves beside a green gilled tycoon. The boxer Gene Tunney is opposite him, smoking a cigar. I press a cool cloth to the tycoon's temples and accept the fighter's offer of a Monte Cristo. Do you see that doll? I ask them. I do, yes, victor replies, and Tuning nods. There's definitely Dolly Bird over there, he says. The girl on the left eye of the Empire state, a good 30ft above where we sit, is wearing red sequins and a magnolia in her hair. She sidles up to the microphone. One of her backup boys has a horn and I hear him start to play. Our buildings sway tight against each other as the band in the Empire's eye plays in the still of the night. I watch her, that doll a dazzling dull as the Chrysler and the Empire kiss for the first time at 9:16pm I watch her for hours as the Chrysler blushes and the Empire whispers, as the Chrysler coos and the Empire laughs. The riverboats circle in shock as at 11:54pm the two at last walk south toward the harbor, steep, stepping over bridges into deeper water, her eagle ornaments laced together with his girders. The Chrysler steps delicately over the Wonder Wheel at Coney island, and he leans down and plucks it up for her. We watch it pass our windows as she inhales its electric fragrance. Only one way to get to her, Valorous tells me, passing me a rope made of tablecloths. All the waitstaff of the Cloud Club nod at me. You're a champ, I tell them. You're all champs. I am too, says Tuni, drunk as a knockout punch. He's sitting in a heap of roses and negligees eating bonbons. The doll sings only to me as I climb up through the tiny ladders and trap doors to the 83rd where the temperature drops below ice cream Cupid. I inch out the window and onto the ledge, my rope gathered in my arms as the Chrysler lays her gleaming cheek against the Empire's shoulder as he runs his hand up her beaded knee. As the two tallest buildings in New York City begin to make love in the Atlantic, I fling my rope across the divide and the doll in the Empire's eye ties a tail to her grand piano. At 11:57pm I walk out across the tightrope and at 12am I hold her in my arms. I'm still hearing the applause from the Cloud Club, all of them raising their coupes to the windows, their bourbons and their soup spoons. As through the Chrysler's eye I see the boxer plant his lips on valorous Victor out the windows of the Empire State, the Cyclone wraps herself up in the Brooklyn Bridge. The Staten island fairy rises up and dances for Lady Liberty. At 12:16am The Chrysler and the Empire call down the lightning to their spires and all of us dolls and guys, waiters and chanteuses, buildings and citizens kiss like fools. And in the icy ocean off the amusement park in the pale orange dark of New York City.
- [31:53]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Becca Blackwell reading the tallest doll in New York City by Maria Devana Headley. So it's true. Love has the power to uproot and transplant us. Sure, the Empire State and Chrysler buildings are now in their usual expected locations in midtown Manhattan. But who knows when that longing to twirl and tango might strike? When we return, big screen villains and the little lies we tell ourselves. 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.
- [32:26]
Tide Commercial Voice
Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep, chocolate ice cream. Sure thing, barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be Tide.
- [33:14]
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. This week we find discovery in stories of dislocation. If you like finding new things in far off places. Visit us@pledshorts.org There you can stream current episodes of the show and subscribe to the podcast too. That way you'll never miss a chance to be transported, but not uproot it, even if you're just sitting quietly at home. You've just heard some great short fiction and now we want you Submissions are now open for the 2026 selected short story Prize, judged by writer Simon Rich. The winning work will be performed by an actor in spring 2026 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. The final story of this program is by the prolific Ann Tyler. Three of her novels have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and one, breathing Lessons, won it back in 1989. Several of her works, including the Accidental Tourist, have been adapted into film. Tyler has published so many novels, which means that there are tons to choose from. When picking a favorite, I highly recommend an early one from 1970 that you might not know called A Slipping Down Life. Running through the various books in her long and formidable career are a cast of vivid and beautifully delineated characters. We really come to know them, maybe almost as deeply as she does. This tale of family, travel and things we pretend not to see is read by Jane Curtin. Curtin is the funny and effervescent performer who made her name in the original cast of Saturday Night Live and who continues to make her mark today in films such as Queen Bees. Now Jane Curtin reads the Feather behind the Rock by Anne Tyler.
- [35:28]
Jane Curtin
In movies they still held hands, although Mrs. Hopper had arthritis by then and her hand would rest in her husband's without moving, swollen and lumpy. When something important happened on the screen, her fingers tightened one by one in slow motion. Look, she would say to Mr. Hopper. There, above that ridge, do you see that pony? Yes, the Indians are there. They've been watching all along. Now that first one is coming down to parley. I told you this would happen to Joshua, their grandson, who sat on his spine in the seat beside her, sounded as if Mrs. Hopper thought her husband was blind or worse than that, feeble minded. He felt heads turning in the dark toward the sound of her voice as she went on describing what was there for all to see. He's carrying a white flag. You notice a sign of peace. I don't know how much faith I would put in it, though. Do you see the yellow marks painted round his cheekbones? The more she talked, the harder Joshua ground his teeth until the hinges of his jaw were sore and a headache had sprung up from the back of his neck. But Mr. Hopper only said, yes, that's so. They're bent on war. Not just pretending patience but really interested considering her words in his mind. The leader of the wagon train looks tired, Mrs. Hopper said. I wouldn't like his job. Not at all. Then there was a silence. Joshua turned and found them both smiling at each other, ignoring the screen altogether, although it was they who had wanted to come here. He sighed and slid down further in his seat. They were traveling the width of the United States that summer, going from east to west. The point they had started from was Wilmington, North Carolina. The point they were headed for was San Francisco. There was no reason for the trip. The first Joshua had heard of it was in April, when he came home from school one day to find his grandfather drinking iced tea with his mother. Mr. Hopper was a small, round man in his 70s, as exactly matched to his small, round wife as if they had been a couple of gingerbread cookies. Ordinarily they visited on weekends. They lived In Dapleton, about 70 miles inland, and they had a standing invitation for Sunday dinner with their only daughter. But this was Wednesday, and Joshua's first thought was that something was wrong. Where's Grandmother? He asked. Oh, she's at home, his mother told him. Grandfather's got something to show you, Joshua. Joshua was puzzled by her eyes, which looked as if she had just asked a favor of him, although she hadn't. He said, what is it? But Mr. Hopper only shook his head and went on drinking iced tea, meaning that this would have to be seen to be believed. When the tea was gone, the three of them rode in Mr. Hopper's rickety old Pontiac to the outskirts of town to a trailer camp. Women in dungarees and metal curlers swept their tiny dirt yards, and children chased in and out of grocery stores that was covered with metal soft drink signs. At the far end of the camp was an unpainted aluminum trailer so short that it seemed almost round. An old man sat on its doorstep, smoking a pipe. When he saw Joshua's grandfather, he rose and said, well, hey there, hey. And Joshua's mother got the favor asking look in her eyes again. Joshua still didn't know why. He understood from what followed that Mr. Hopper was going to buy the trailer and make a tour across the continent with his wife, and that Joshua was invited to come along, but when he said, oh, sure, I'd like that, and saw his mother silently thanking him, he didn't feel he was doing anyone any special favors. That summer would be his last one before college, and he had been wondering what he would do to fill it. They started out on 16 June, Mr. Hopper and Joshua in the front seat, Mrs. Hopper in the back with a sweater handy in her lap, although the temperature was in the high 80s. That was the seating arrangement throughout the trip. Mrs. Hopper got carsick if she sat in the front, and Joshua couldn't shift over to the driver's seat because he had had his license suspended after a minor accident. He had asked his grandfather before they started if he remembered that, in case they had invited him to help with the driving, and his grandfather had said, yes, boy, yes, impatiently waving the subject away with his small veined hand. It was too great a distance for one man to drive, Joshua thought, but his grandfather sat behind the wheel day after day, his shoulders very straight, making a steady 35 miles an hour. It felt like three times that with all the racket they made and Joshua's name. A narrow side window, half covered over with masking tape to mend a crack, framed such tiny parts of the landscape at a time that everything seemed to be whipping along too fast to be seen, fields, towns, and fields again, leaving him with a sense of tremendous wasteful speed. They whirred and sputtered and choked their way along with scarcely a stop from morning to night. Yet his grandfather never mentioned feeling tired, and he never complained about Joshua's not being able to spell him. Nor could they have invited Joshua because they wanted new conversation. His grandparents did all the talking. They flooded him with words from both sides at once. They interrupted each other without noticing, and sometimes they talked simultaneously, their voices keyed to a crisp factual tone that Joshua had never heard them use before. Subjects seemed to come to their minds so fast, comments on the countryside, street, stray memories, unrelated facts, that they would leave one subject in mid sentence and dart onto the next without pausing. Joshua listened, nodding, lulled nearly to sleep by the flow of words and by the broken lines down the center of the highway, which stretched long and then were swallowed by the car over and over again all through the day. He liked the trailer, which smelled like a rusty tin can and rang hollow whenever you wrapped it. He liked stopping in the camps every night, pacing out the barren, bottle littered ground that reminded him of circuses and county fairs, and then returning to the trailer where his grandmother would be frying food on the tiny gas stove. He didn't even mind the endless riding or all that talking. But he did hate the movies. It never failed. After supper, his grandfather would say, well, now I think I'll take a stroll. But he only strolled as far as the camp's grocery store. And then he bought a newspaper and strolled back. Apache warriors on tonight, he would tell them, we saw that in Emmaville. How about Hondo? Didn't you enjoy that? Shall we see that again? Sometimes there were good movies playing. Not often, because the towns they chose to stop at were small. But his grandparents ignored those. They liked westerns and occasionally a war movie. They liked plots where the villain was obvious, though they never seemed to realize he was obvious. And Mrs. Hopper would point him out with pride right at the start of the movie. Do you see that man with a cigar? Oh, he has a mean face. Look, he's yanking the horse's straps too tight. He's gonna cause trouble, Charles, I can tell you. Do you see him? Joshua. At the beginning of the trip, she told Joshua everything. She told her husband all through the movie. She would tell Joshua first, usually, and then she would nudge her husband and say, I was just pointing out to Joshua here. But gradually she stopped, because Joshua never answered her in the first place. He didn't know where they were at at all. They had started out to see the country, but all they saw were highways and then at night, the insides of movie theaters and the half familiar faces of heroes drawing six guns. They marked towns by the Indian battles they had watched there, and almost the only people they saw were the shadowy forms in the rows of seats ahead of them. It was true that Joshua didn't have to go where his grandparents did. Some sense of responsibility that he couldn't explain seemed to drag him along, even after he told them he wasn't interested. Why don't we take a look at where we're at? He would ask. And his grandfather always said, oh, we will. We've plenty of time for that. But they never had any time at all. In the morning, when Joshua's head was still not cleared from last night's movie, they rose out of mildewed blankets and munched cold rolls and took to the road again. They never stopped for anything. They traveled steadily all day, calling out for Joshua the sights of historical interest, along with the printing on the marquees of Drive in theaters. And then in the evening, it was time for supper and tall in the saddle. One night in Kansas, his grandmother said, I don't like that man's face, Charles. Her voice carried clearly to the farthest rows. I don't trust the look in his eyes. Joshua sat up straighter in his seat. They always sat too close to the front, so that he had to crane his neck back and squint and said, that's Jack Palance, who's the villain in every other picture any fool can see. Then he got up and walked out. This as soon as he reached the sidewalk. He was sorry. He had had all during this trip a sort of protective feeling towards his grandparents, and now he felt as if he had ruined the summer for them. All those movies, all that flood of words entrusted to him. Instead of looking around the town, he went back to the trailer, and when they returned he was fast asleep on the couch with moths circling the table lamp. In the morning neither of the Hoppers mentioned what had happened. There was even a chance that they hadn't understood, or that they had passed it off as something he had eaten. Mr. Hopper said, Today we'll cover more ground than usual, Joshua. We'll have lunch in the car. No dawdling on the way. Oh, fine, joshua said, for he had the feeling that this was some kind of gift to him, although the lunch stops were what he looked forward to all morning. He helped his grandmother wash up the breakfast dishes and put everything away so that it wouldn't rattle around on the road. Then they climbed into the car and set off with Mrs. Ferrari Hopper beginning the day's conversation before she had even gotten well settled in school. They called the Midwest the Breadbasket of America, she said, or the world. I forgot the world, said Mr. Hopper. Was that it? Oh, they told us how much grain they produced, and it was staggering, more than I could imagine. And think what it is nowadays. Twice that I should think, maybe more. What was science about? In the summer of 1913, when I was in college, I roomed with a boy who came right from in this area somewhere, said Mr. Hopper, a farm boy, Joshua, you should be interested in this. In his school they had a project, each of them a piece of livestock to raise or an acre of land to cultivate, which they would follow from beginning to his name was Harvey Stample. One hot afternoon I should tell you this. Just before exams, we were sitting on the dormitory lawn, not a penny to our names in all this world, Harvey said, if I could wish for just one thing, I'd wish for a man to drive up right this minute and unload a case of beer on the lawn. Well, Joshua, no sooner than he had said that, than up drove A man in one of those unpainted wagons they use for the delivering and unloaded a case of beer on our lawn. I'll never forget that. Turned out it was the rain. Wrong address. But by then we had drunk it all and we were not made to pay. I think that might have been the happiest day of my life, all in all. Why, Charles, Mrs. Hopper said. Mr. Hopper turned to smile at her, and then he winked at Joshua. Oh, there's some close seconds, he said. Oh, now, Charles, don't you tease Joshua, Mrs. Hopper said. But it was she who was being teased, and the conversation was between the two of them alone. Joshua felt as if the shift had given him a breath of fresh air. The talk seemed to be flying faster than usual this morning, so that words were all run together, and the car was going faster too, telegraph poles whipping by, fields gone almost before they appeared, all of them directed somehow at Joshua. We surely are making time, he told his grandfather. Well, we don't want this trip to get boring. It's what I told your grandmother. Keep things flying along, I said. The happiest day of your life, Joshua, Mrs. Hopper said, is your wedding day. Don't you forget I told you that. Lucy, your mind is failing, Mr. Hopper said. That's what your mother said to you 50 years ago. I heard her. This is the happiest day of your life, she told you. And then when Charlotte was born, she you turned around and said, no, this is, isn't it? Mama was wrong, you said. Did I say that? Well, maybe so. Charles. We seem to be coming in on real interesting old house up here. Will you slow down a bit? Should have spoke sooner, Mr. Hopper said, and then the house whizzed by behind them. The trailer bumped and bounced, sounding as if it was surely going faster than trailers were allowed. What if they really were speeding and a policeman ordered them to pull over? Can't stop now, Mr. Hopper would say, and he would rush towards San Francisco, where they were only going to turn around and head back again. There was something I was going to say, Mrs. Hopper said. I'll think of it in a minute. Oh, yes, that house reminded me of my aunt's where I was raised. Joshua, that house was just covered with wisteria. You should have seen it. If I smell wisteria now, I can close my eyes and go back, oh, so long ago, I'm ashamed to tell you. She stopped, apparently out of breath, and Mr. Hopper said there were bees buzzing around it, millions of them, every year. Joshua took his eyes from the road with an effort. His lids were getting heavy and the heat had grown stifling. Oh, around the wisteria, he said. Did you know Grandmother back then? Know her? Why, Joshua. I was my childhood sweetheart, said Mrs. Hopper, still getting her breath. The words, which reminded Joshua of a lacy old valentine, sounded strange when they were gasped out in the stuffiness of the Pontiac. The first boy who ever came to call on me, only not the last, because I went to New York later on. Jilted me, Mr. Hopper said, smiling. She got engaged to a fella up north while she was taking voice lessons. Oh, I didn't know that, joshua said. His grandmother sat forward and touched his shoulder with one finger. When I came home, Joshua, she said, who do you think was the first person I saw as I was getting off the train? Your grandfather carrying flowers to some other girl. I called out, why, Charles Hopper, is that you? And he turned right around without seeing, seemed to look, and handed over the flowers to me instead. These were going to marry Abbott, he told me, but I reckon you can have them. Thank you kindly, I said, acting cool, since it was my own wedding I was coming home for. But I must say, when I saw him, I had the strangest feeling. I was almost scared of him. I didn't look him in the eye. I have always said, Mr. Hopper said, that it's a shame we lost all that time, two whole years, when we could have gotten married right off and saved all that hide and seek. But Lucy says. I say it's a good thing I did jilt him, said Mrs. Hopper. Joshua, that boy I nearly married, was as handsome as they come. Oh, no, no handsomer than your grandfather, but in a different sort of way. Dark when Charles was blond, blue, black hair, but light gray eyes. If I had married Charles right off and then seen Edwin some other way, I would have thought, oh my, what am I missing? What have I given up? But as it was, I had my pick of both and chose with a clear head, and I chose Charles. They seem to have laid some case before Joshua speaking his name so often, setting out the facts so clearly, Joshua cleared his throat and said, well, I didn't know all that. It's very, very interesting, and I've never regretted it. Mrs. Hopper told him those two years were the best thing that could have. Then she stopped, out of breath again, and when she resumed speaking, her voice was more ordinary, like the days before this trip had begun. Charles, I think I'll have to stop for a glass of ice water, she said. Oh my, this heat. Mr. Hopper glanced back at his wife and nodded yes. You're looking pale, Lucy, he said. Then he turned to Joshua and said, mary Abbott was a girl. We had gone to school with Joshua. I never took a flower to her in my life and never planned to, but I wanted to keep face in front of your grandmother and in the backseat. Mrs. Hopper gave a little chuckle that sounded whispery on her indrawn breath. Within the next mile they came upon a drive in restaurant, hardly more than a shack, with two teenage boys in white working behind the long, low window. I'll just run on in myself, Mr. Hopper said. Will you be all right, Lucy? Why, of course, said Mrs. Hopper. I have Joshua here, don't I? She smiled, but her face was still pale and filmed with sweat. When Mr. Hopper had started towards the shack, she said, joshua, it might do us good to stretch our legs a little. Yes, ma', am, joshua said. He opened his own door and came around to help her out. The ground beneath them was cracked and dry, the air shimmering with heat. For a moment he thought of home, where there was always water nearby, and where people he knew, people his own age, would be lounging on the sparkling beach beside him. His grandmother said, your grandfather wanted us to live in Kansas at one time, Joshua. Did he tell you that? No, he didn't, Joshua said. Oh, yes. Not that there was any practical reason, just, you know, a whim he had. Joshua felt a sudden weight upon his arm near his shoulder. He turned and saw that his grandmother was leaning her head there. Loose strands of her gray hair floated near enough to his face to tickle him. But just as he was explaining this to himself, she seldom touched people, even her own relatives. He saw that she had merely slumped sideways as she stood beside him. In the next instant she slid on down and away from him until she landed on the ground with her face twisted to one side and her hands outspread and slightly curled, like the hands of someone sleeping. He looked around frantically for his grandfather and saw him just advancing carefully, bearing three paper cones of water. Grandfather, something's happened, he called. If he hadn't called himself in time, he would have added, I didn't do it, I swear. I was just standing here minding my own business. But his grandfather came on as calmly and steadily as before, with his eyes fixed on the paper cones. I saw from over yonder, he said, take the water, Joshua. I thought I'd use some of it to revive her. He handed two of the cones to Joshua and then bent down with the third one, dipping his fingers into it and patting cold water onto Mrs. Hopper's cheekbones. It's the heat, he told Joshua. A muscle in Mrs. Hopper's eyelid fluttered. By now other people had started gathering around one of the boys from the drive in, a couple from the parked car at the other end of the lot. They stood looking at Joshua's grandmother, who'd taken on the dry, papery look of a stranger and seemed not to be any relation to Joshua at all. Can't we get her out of here? Joshua asked his grandfather. Can't we take her away? Mr. Hopper only went on patting water, saying little soothing remarks in a single singsong voice. There now, Lucy. You can come round now. Come on now, Lucy. Then a man said, let me see her. I'm a doctor. He had stopped by the side of the highway, apparently when he saw what had happened behind him. His car door was still swung open when he bent down, already unlatching his black bag. Bystanders moved a little further away, but Mr. Hopper stayed where he was, hunched over his wife. Thank you, but she's coming round now. Doctor, Doctor, he said, and sure enough Mrs. Hopper's eyes flew wide open. Round glass blue eyes and very deep sockets. She looked at Mr. Hopper a minute and then shook her head and began trying to sit up. Now, now, take it nice and slow, said Mr. Hopper. Thank you anyway, Doctor. The doctor nodded and put one hand beneath Mrs. Hopper's elbow to help her up. I would get her examined right away, though, he said. How long has it been since she had a checkup? Oh, only last April, Mr. Hopper said. She's got a special doctor at home, you know. He said he thought this trip might be all right. Well, maybe so, said the doctor, but Joshua saw his frown. And later, when they had refused the restaurant's offer of a free meal and had walked Mrs. Hopper gently to the car, holding her under the arms, he said, look, Grandfather, we should be turning back. No, I want to go on, Mrs. Hopper said. We should even fly back, pay someone else to drive the car. We can't go on driving. I want to go on, Mrs. Hopper said. She settled herself in her seat with a little flounce. Start the car, Charles. Joshua looked at his grandfather, but Mr. Hopper only nodded and turned the key in the ignition. She's made up her mind, he said. Nothing I can do about it. Your grandmother, Joshua, is as stubborn as they come. I don't think you ever heard about this, but in the summer of 1916, when your mother was only so high, Joshua gave up. He relaxed against the sun warmed seat cover and drifted away on the tide of his grandfather's words. And he didn't try after that to change their minds. Not all that day, when they sped along straight, unchanging roads that always sloped downward at the horizon, rounding the curve of the globe they traveled. Not even in the evening when Mrs. Hopper sat holding her husband's hand in the darkened theater and said, the last wagon is dropping too far behind. Yes, there. I see a pony on the ridge. I see a feather behind the rock. I expect the Apaches are lining up now, Charles, I can hear war cries.
- [57:58]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Jane Curtin performing Ann Tyler's story the Feather behind the Rock. Here, our narrator Joshua's interest in being uprooted barely counts as an interest. Truthfully, he doesn't have anything better to do. But what he comes to realize that summer, about family and love, about words said or left unsaid, could never have been learned if he'd stayed home. And I think we could all keep something of Joshua's journey in mind. When we get uprooted, it's important to keep our eyes open and take in everything that we can, because maybe later on in life we'll want to return to these memories. And the act of remembering can be its own powerful journey. 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 Shimpkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Ruplesky. 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 Peterson 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.
- [59:42]
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