David Wright Faladé Reads Madeleine Thien

Summary

The New Yorker: Fiction - Episode Summary

Title: David Wright Falladay Reads Madeleine Tien
Release Date: April 1, 2025
Host/Author: Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor at The New Yorker; Guest: David Wright Falladay

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Introduction

In this episode of The New Yorker: Fiction, host Deborah Treisman engages in an in-depth conversation with author David Wright Falladay about Madeleine Tien's short story "Reshaping," which originally appeared in The New Yorker in December 2021. David Wright Falladay, known for his novels Black Cloud Rising and The New Internationals, provides his insightful analysis of the story, exploring its themes, character dynamics, and underlying symbols.

Reading of "Reshaping"

David Wright Falladay delivers a compelling and emotionally charged reading of Madeleine Tien's "Reshaping." The story centers around Lou, a dedicated procurement professional navigating the complexities of her personal and professional life as an immigrant woman in Canada. Themes of identity, control, and the struggle against societal stereotypes permeate the narrative, painting a nuanced portrait of Lou's internal and external conflicts.

Discussion Highlights

1. Subtlety and Emotional Depth

David Wright Falladay emphasizes the story's subtlety, noting, “...the things she's not saying sort of come off the page in these really subtle ways that sort of aggregate cumulate so that by the end, the sort of depth of feeling just pops.” This understated narrative style allows readers to feel the profound emotional undercurrents without overt declarations.

Deborah Treisman concurs, highlighting how "quiet stories" can evoke powerful emotions: “They're quiet stories, but they're so felt to me as a reader.”

2. Character Analysis: Lou

Lou, the protagonist, is portrayed as a complex individual striving to assert her identity amidst cultural and professional constraints. David observes, “...Lou's deliberate attempt to try to manage that and maybe control that,” referring to her desire to change how she is perceived.

Lou's multifaceted relationships, including her marriages and affairs, reveal her quest for agency and personal fulfillment outside the defined roles imposed by society.

3. Themes of Control and Agency

A central theme is Lou's struggle for control over her own image and life. David Wright Falladay interprets the title and opening lines as indicative of Lou’s desire to change her "shapes" and "skins" to better manage how others perceive her: “...the notion of changing skins or changing shapes seems to have to do with that."

4. Symbolism: Ball of Wax and Balloon

The story employs rich symbolism to convey Lou's internal turmoil:

• Ball of Wax: Represents the panic attacks Lou experiences, symbolizing the pressure and constraints she feels. David remarks, “...the ball of wax and the string... pulls it out,” suggesting an attempt to extract and confront her fears.
• Balloon Tied to a Wrist: Symbolizes Lou's roles and responsibilities that tether her, preventing her from "floating away freely." Deborah interprets this as Lou being tied to her roles as a mother and wife, while David views it as a metaphor for the balance between her responsibilities and her desire for freedom.

5. Interaction with Colleagues and Societal Stereotypes

Lou's interactions at work reveal underlying racial and gendered stereotypes. David points out, “...they're seeing her. They want to imagine from the stereotype, submissive Asian woman,” highlighting how Lou is pigeonholed by her colleagues, affecting her professional growth.

Despite her competence, Lou remains overlooked for promotions, primarily due to these biased perceptions. Her relationship with John Sadler, marked by an affair, further complicates her professional standing, showcasing the intersection of personal vulnerabilities with workplace dynamics.

6. Familial Relationships and Legacy

Lou’s relationships with her daughters reflect her struggle to provide a better life while grappling with her own unfulfilled dreams. The regret she feels over her inability to live freely is mirrored in her interactions with her children, who represent both her legacy and the hope for her descendants to transcend her limitations.

Notable Quotes

• Lou's Desire for Transformation:
  “If I could give you a pill that would change your whole life, let you go back in time and fix things and maybe be a whole other person, would you take it? Of course. Seriously, all my life I've wanted to change shapes, change skins. That was my dream when I was your age.”
  (00:01:39)

• David on Lou's Assertiveness:
  “Despite feeling vulnerable, she then asserts she acts. And so the way you're reading it resonates. It resonates with me.”
  (04:34)

• Lou's Reflection on Shame:
  “She laughs until her eyes become watery, thinking of the sea. She must have muttered some of this aloud because her small daughter giggled, shouting, I’m ballooning.”
  (07:15)

Concluding Insights

David Wright Falladay lauds Madeleine Tien’s ability to craft a story that is both immediate and deeply layered, appreciating how Tien leaves much unsaid, allowing readers to engage actively with the narrative. He commends Lou as a heroic figure, adeptly navigating societal constraints while maintaining her sense of self and agency.

Deborah Treisman echoes this sentiment, praising the rich characterization and symbolic depth that make "Reshaping" a standout piece in Tien's repertoire. The conversation underscores the power of short fiction to encapsulate complex emotional landscapes through nuanced storytelling.

Conclusion

This episode offers a profound exploration of Madeleine Tien's "Reshaping," enriched by David Wright Falladay's thoughtful analysis. Listeners gain a deeper understanding of the story's themes, character motivations, and the intricate balance between personal desires and societal expectations. The discussion highlights the enduring relevance of Tien's work in portraying the immigrant experience and the universal quest for identity and autonomy.

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Notable Time Stamps:

• Introduction to the Episode: 01:06
• David's First Impressions of "Reshaping": 02:03
• Reading Begins: 05:37
• Discussion on Themes and Symbolism: 44:13 - 78:58
• Conclusion of Discussion: 79:33 - 80:54

Transcript

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[Deborah Treisman]

This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear Reshaping by Madeleine Tien, which appeared in the New Yorker in December of 2021.

[David Wright Falladay]

If I could give you a pill that would change your whole life, let you go back in time and fix things and maybe be a whole other person, would you take it? Of course. Seriously, all my life I've wanted to change shapes, change skins. That was my dream when I was your age.

[Deborah Treisman]

The story was chosen by David Wright Falladay, the author of the novels Black Cloud Rising and the New Internationals, which came out earlier this year. Hi David.

[David Wright Falladay]

Hey.

[Deborah Treisman]

So I know that you and Madeline Tien were colleagues at the Cullman center at the New York Public Library a few years ago. Was that what made you think of talking about this story today? Or had you been a fan of her work before that?

[David Wright Falladay]

I didn't know Maddie's work before then. And then I remember getting to know her that fall and then the story came out and I was so happy for her to see the story in the magazine. And then as soon as I read it, I was just awed. I remember going into her office and just being like, you are awesome. You know, this is great. I remember I was intimidated at first. Like my first thought when I find a story that I'm drawn to is I think, can I teach it? And with her it was like, I would love to teach this, but I don't think I could teach it. It was just so subtle and there was so much going on.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, did you then go back and read her other work?

[David Wright Falladay]

I did, and I came back to it then. I come back to the story periodically. And I actually tried to teach it this fall, but I went safe. I did it with grad students who are all super enthusiastic. I figured they'd teach me. So.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. How did they react to it?

[David Wright Falladay]

They loved it. They really loved it.

[Deborah Treisman]

What would you say are the most sort of salient qualities of her writing?

[David Wright Falladay]

I think I used the word subtlety a second ago. But it's that, like, you know, it's fully dramatized, but the things she's not saying sort of come off the page in these really subtle ways that sort of aggregate cumulate so that by the end, you know, the sort of depth of feeling just pops. Really, in this quiet way, though they're not loud stories, they're quiet stories. But they're so felt to me as a reader.

[Deborah Treisman]

So do you feel that Lou reshaping is typical of that subtlety of that style of writing? Do you feel it stands out from the rest of her work?

[David Wright Falladay]

It stood out to me in particular because of the access we're given to Lou, the character. And the difference between what we're seeing Lou experience from the inside and then how she's being seen feels different to me in that way. In the novel form, you just have more room and space. Whereas here she's doing so much in such a small space. To me, it feels different.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. Do you feel that that is, in general, something one can do with stories that one can't do with novels?

[David Wright Falladay]

That's a great question. I find that I'm a little bit of a traditional reader. And so I think I gravitate towards those stories more that are doing that. That are much more deliberately using the compressed form. And so, yeah, I think that short fiction is gonna work in that way more generally. In part, I'm stating the obvious, but it's so much more akin to poetry in some ways. What's suggested, what's not said, plays such a stronger role in the evocation of emotion. And again, I find it really true in Lou reshaping. Whereas in a novel you're gonna give yourself space, either in that moment or at some place, to develop that thing, to explore it in a different way. Here it's the evocation of it, sometimes without the exploration, that really, for me, creates the depth of emotion.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, I think there's an extra level in this story because we're dealing with a character who isn't fluent in the current language. So there are things that go unsaid or that are expressed oddly, which adds another layer of sort of linguistic distance. Yeah.

[David Wright Falladay]

And then the way that Luth was so aware of how people are misperceiving her in that way, and she comes to a place where she's always, on some level, aware of manipulating it. But as she's sort of accounting for the way that this has not benefited her in this workspace, maybe in her life, she not manipulates in a bad way, but manipulates it more to arrive at the epiphany that she comes to, you know, quietly. But an epiphany all the same.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, we'll talk some more after the reading. And now here's David Wright Valladay reading Lou Reshaping by Madeline Tien Liu Reshaping.

[David Wright Falladay]

There were three pages to go, and it was already past midnight. Lou had asked her big daughter to edit her report for tomorrow's purchasing meeting. This daughter, who was 11, excelled at things like that. Mom, the girl said, why did you ask if a ghost hit the back of my head? Because you told your father I was home late, and I specifically told you not to do that. So why did you? Did a ghost hit the back of your head? Oh. Ha. They were whispering back and forth in two languages, the girl in English and Lou in Cantonese. Tomorrow was a school day, and Lou could guess what husband would say if he woke up and found them still working. The girl yawned and made further corrections to the page. This part here where you say 10 teapots and nine lids. That's funny, and I get what you mean. But I think you should just say supply doesn't equal demand. You know way too much about sales tax. And now I do, too. Don't be sarcastic. Like you? Me? I'm not sarcastic. Life is sarcastic. We're almost done. The English is all okay now talk. Talk. Just finished my work already, Mom. Would this girl never be quiet? What's good about being my age? This particular daughter already seemed to be bending under life's troubles. And it might be Lou's fault. All these late nights the girl had spent helping her find the right words, regret washed over Lou. You tell me. If I knew, I'd be happy. Lou rubbed her eyes, reached for the teapot, and refilled both their cups. You'll have to pee all night, she said apologetically. I hate people. The girl burst out, her eyes reddening. What happened? Who's bothering you? Can't I just stay home and read books and learn about the world that way? In books, things happen for a reason and everything ends as it should. Lou smacked the table. Should? What is should? If I could give you a pill that would change your whole life, let you go back in time and fix things and maybe be a whole other person, would you take it? Of course. Seriously. All my life I've wanted to change shapes, change skins. That was my dream when I was your age. Brightening now, her daughter said, oh my God, mom, you're so weird. You're the one who just said you want to learn about life from books. I wanted to learn from living life. But then I got married and had you. So thanks a lot. The girl giggled. Look, 1am Lu said. Stop kicking tangerines around. What? You know exactly what I mean. Stop wasting time. The next morning Lou was late for the department meeting. She hurried through the swinging glass doors, an apology on her tongue. Her coat was wet with rain. Copies of the report slid from her arm, and the donut box was crushed on one side. But the conference room was empty. A fountain pen gleamed at the head of the table, Sheila's expensive Parker with its marbled green shell. It was Tuesday. Lou checked her watch. 8:43. Not a single soul. Bewildered, she placed the Duffins box on the table, turning the mangled side to the wall. After a moment she put the reports down, pulled off her coat. A seaplane was descending toward Burrard Inlet, seeming to accelerate even as it slowed. This view from the 29th floor could hardly be believed. The plane's nose was tilted up very slightly, as if it disliked getting its face wet. Down it went, hurrying to meet the water. Liu felt as though someone had punched her in the chest. Really? She wondered. That old panic here now. Big ball of wax. Messed up string. Crushed lungs. Sweat matted her forehead. She slid into the nearest chair, and just as she settled, the seaplane touched down. It seemed to rush effortlessly forward, the curl of dark sea in its wake reminding her of the fold of an ankle. The white walls, the massive table, the 12 swivel chairs. Her two hands seemed like objects recovered by someone else's memory. As unexpectedly as the panic had arrived, it fled. She breathed, breathed again without pain. Neither wax nor string. No explanation. It felt strange to be alone in the conference room. Two walls, from floor to ceiling, were entirely glass. Liu gazed out at Stanley park in the North Shore mountains, at the morning sky reflecting in the water. A thread of traffic, no more than a series of tiny lights, crossed the Lionsgate Bridge. Yellow sulfur hills glowed on a distant dock. On her first day at the Company, she'd felt the unstoppable joy of rising past floor after floor and stepping out into a floating world. The purchasing department. She'd entered another life. That was 14 years ago. The door opened. Lou? She turned. Antoinette peered at her lovely thick hair tousled on top of her head, gray jacket and slacks, soft pink blouse. Lou said, hello, relieved that there was a meeting after all. I saw you rush by, antoinette said. Didn't you hear? What do you mean? Everyone got a call this morning. There's no meeting because of the investigation. Lou, uncomprehending, said. Oh, I mean, you won't be surprised, I guess. Antoinette was still holding the glass door, which caught the light with each small movement she made. Are you surprised? Lou looked at her and wondered what this meant for her report. Oh, well, she said. And then here are the donuts. My turn this week. Antoinette studied her curiously, impatience, amusement, and also derision passing across her face. Or that was what Lu sensed. Sheila was looking for. You, antoinette said. You should probably go to your office, not wait around here. Such was life, Lou thought, standing in her windowless office, or at least her current life, waiting in line for the dangled carrot of understanding. She watered her three plants. They had been bequeathed to her when Bob Jarvis retired in 1980. Lou had been promoted to his position, senior purchaser, the same title she held now, almost a decade later. At the time, Bob told her, if the plants keel over, let them die. Got it? Stand up to the team or they'll fritter your time away with pointless work. Conquer that exam and get PMAC certified. None of them bother. So if you excel, sky's the limit. Got it, Lu? Sky's the limit. Ten years was a long time for plants to stay alive in a windowless room. They must have been living off their memories of the sun. All three were snake plants, otherwise known as mother in law's tongue. She thought of the plants always as the mothers in law. Lu had warned the three of them that they all had to share this space. Everyone's leaves would be cut back so that no one keeled over. Light and air were precious. Supply chain management was crucial. And if all goes well, you will outlive me. Maybe you will be promoted to the corner office or even the atrium. Lou had a habit of keeping her car keys in the soil. She stuck them in the pot on arrival, fished them out at day's end. Those keys gave her a rush of happiness whenever she handled them. Husband called the car her second home, but she called it Mrs. Benchy, hands down. The only thing she'd ever Bought that gave her pleasure every day. Mrs. Benchy was an emerald green Mercedes, used but dignified. She'd bought it for $6,000. Big improvement on the rattling copper colored van she had when her side job was as a delivery driver. That had started about a year after she joined the purchasing team. Her friend Ardruis Wu, a florist, had given her the extra work and paid her cash. Ardruis father had swum from China to Hong Kong in 1957. Wu father had told his wife, we've got no future here. You know what that means, don't you? It's like dying before you're born. Eight hours in Deep Bay, then crawling on hands and knees over oyster beds to freedom. Wu father survived, but his wife did not. Broken, he adopted the son of a distant relative, adding an English name, Arduous, to the baby's Chinese one, Qin Hay. Ardruis grew up working in his father's plastic flower business. Wu father sold the business sometime in the 70s and he and Arduous immigrated to Canada. Arduous started his own fresh flower emporium and swam regularly at the Hastings community pool. He had attractive shoulders and hands that smelled of lilies. When Arduous died suddenly four years ago, Lou, in her copper colored van, what was it her big daughter called it? The flower coffin, made their final delivery to his funeral. First stop, St. Francis Xavier Church. Last stop, Oceanview Cemetery, where she arranged the flower stands and rings around his grave. Argos wife and small children held Wu father tightly in the rain. Lu returned a week later to collect the flower stands. The wind had toppled them. So many flowers face down in the dirt. She cried despite herself, pouring Arduous three shots of cognac straight into the soil. Arduous. Woo, you old playboy. See your broken hearted lilies. You're a wrapped candy. Ardrus had liked to tell her when they lay naked in bed. Occasionally happy, there's something sweet and all too soft in your center. Take your time, she would encourage him. Good things want to last. Bless you, Hwang. Look. You're that kind of pleasure. He was married. She had husband and two girls. She was a mother. What kind of thing was a mother? A balloon tied to her wrist. If too much time passed, the balloon would lose pressure. Descend the way you watch men, Ardruis had once said playfully. I see what you're looking for. Life doesn't ask us to pay a debt of shame, Wang Luk. I see everything you feel. Liu enjoyed the feel of different lovers, the newness of strangers, her present interest was a former prosecutor from Shanghai, now working in a warehouse in Port Moody. He had a disrespectful look in his eyes. His skin, the softest she had ever touched, had an addictive fragrance, but he was not what she'd hoped he'd be dissatisfied with other aspects of his life. He needed to control everything in bed. Which was why she already knew it would have to end. Sheila was in the doorway, watching her. Here you are, Lou. I called this morning, but you'd already left. Lou nodded, holding up the Duffins box. Sheila chose the honey dip, a popular option, resting it on a square white napkin. So, she said, nudging the door closed behind her. How are things, Lou? Not too bad. There's something we need to talk about. In a roundabout way, as if sewing on a button, her boss disclosed the situation. Expense reporting, Campbell river and dinners. Dinners. Lou did not follow. Then complaints against the senior manager. Financial irregularities on the Campbell river file. Inappropriate behavior. A matter for personnel. They had brought in an external investigator. All members of the purchasing team, plus clerical support would have to be interviewed. The mothers in law were doing something strange, as if their leaves had glimpsed something. The door had slid open and the hallway lights beckoned nutrients. Their stems swiveled almost imperceptibly toward the opening. The investigator will likely want to see you this afternoon, but things could move faster or slower. I understand. Thank you. I know this will be a difficult process. You were well friendly with John Sadler. Yes, he is everyone's friend. The leaves fluttered, wriggling as if they were wearing something itchy, but it was only a draft from the vent. Sheila cast her eyes over Lou's office, the stack of reports, the frame PMAC certificate on the wall, the Archos flowers desk calendar beside the beige phone. She paused, seemingly nostalgic. You're an invaluable member of our team, Lou. You were hired the year before me, right? Right? She nodded. In 75, most of the team had been together for more than a decade. Sheila shifted the honey dip to her other hand. Even when we care about him, or hope he cares about us, we have to act in a principled way when he does wrong. Especially if there's a pattern to this kind of thing now. Got a mess on our hands. She reached for the door and hesitated, surprised to see it already open. I am not sure I know anything. Sheila turned back to her, and Lou felt as if Sheila were laying a hand on her cheek the way one might caress a child's face with a mix of wonder and benevolence but she was actually standing three feet away, her gaze radiating understanding. You feel as I do. I know, as we all do. Wishing neither to agree nor to disagree, Lou tilted her head to indicate, I'd rather not get involved, or I prefer to eat peanuts while watching the movie. But she didn't think Sheila would understand this idiom. I'm relying on everyone to pull together. Especially you, Lou. Sheila smiled gently before turning and going out. Late afternoon and Lou still hadn't been summoned. While waiting, she'd updated the preferred vendor list and readied herself for Wednesday's operational efficiency briefing. Spreadsheets sat freshly printed on her desk. She called home. Her two daughters had a new game, making Holy Communion by crushing circles of Wonder Bread between a Bible and a dictionary. That was probably what they were doing now, and why it was taking them so long to answer. At last they picked up. The big one told her they were just reading. Just reading? Lu said doubtfully. Oh, mom, they were snickering. How's tricks, Ma? The small one said, her voice garbled. Liu knew the child was squishing her face into the germ laden phone. Pull your face back. She cried. How troublesome they were, huh? Liu sighed. Stop with the tricks. They bounced her words around for fun. Mom doesn't miss a trick there. She goes up to her old tricks. The big one shouted. Something about their father, about ordering Hawaiian pizza. It was two for one Tuesday, and Dad said it was cool. Fine, lu agreed. Okay. Must go. Okay. Wake me up before you go. Go. Lu hung up. Her daughters were mystified by her English. It was the one thing about her that seemed to both entertain and perturb them. They deployed her expressions to taunt her and the world at large. I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice. They shouted at each other, at their dolls, at strangers on the street. Would it be improper to leave early? She could take Mrs. Benchy for a spin to Spanish banks, where she might do what others throw rocks repeatedly at the water the Mothers in Law counseled against. Her liaison with John Sadler had lasted three months. If lightheartedness were a species of happiness, those final months in 1988 had perhaps been her happiest and recent memory. Sadler had been a confident lover. He had wanted to luxuriate while she, always behind schedule with something professional or personal, felt pressed for time. Okay, okay, he'd said after locking the door of their hotel room and turning around to find her half undressed. Nobody's going to barge in. I get carried away. I need to act quickly. Come here we have all the time in the world. Sadler, in his smooth way, seemed to believe his own assurances. But he was wrong. There were spouses, bills, dishes, and in her life, the kids. Still, they agreed on other thingson the importance of seeking out risk and pleasure and the joy of a temporary room with its own evolving rules. I don't really know, lou tells the mothers in law, whose command of Cantonese is exemplary, why I rarely get attached to Saddler or someone else. To the very good sex, to tenderness. I always feel that pleasure shouldn't become habitual. By December she'd found his jokes less original. When they lay spent on top of the sheets, she thought of faraway people and things. What's up? He would ask when she drifted off. Lovely expression when it came from him, as if moments were an ascent, an unstoppable rise. Lou knew enough to end an affair when it was at its most satisfying, when it gave her new senses, a different body, a changed reality, and therefore courage. Only with arduous who had read her so effortlessly, could she have kept going forever. He was the lover she would never have turned away from. At her desk she clicked open the year end data sheet for Campbell River. Sheila had referenced financial irregularities. Lou began proofreading the document entry by entry. The jangling telephone made her jump. Lifting the receiver, she expected to hear the unhappy tones of the Shanghai man. But it was just husband fretting. Hwang Luc. You plan to sleep there? It's already 8:00. I promised to work Kun's shift tonight and now I'm late. You don't care enough to remember. She grabbed her bag and coat, shut the door, ran past the empty offices in the underground parcade, Mrs. Benchy clicked open to welcome her. The car was fragrant. The car was peaceful. Mrs. Benchy purred her way from P4 to the surface. Lou drove on quiet roads, rain needling down, the beat of the wipers calming her thoughts. She had found nothing questionable in the financial documents. She felt it was impossible for there to be irregularities that she had missed. So what was the true accusation and whose was the real guilt? A spreadsheet, she thought, was a set of conditions, with every cell holding a value, and each value recorded. Certain cells were products of formulas, of derivations upon derivations of knowledge pieced together across the whole. Those cells were recipients of data, single circles in an ever circling form. She felt tall in her car and drove with confidence. The truth was, even though she had reported to John Sadler for a time, even though Sadler had lobbied for her promotion when Bob Jarvis retired, he had barely entered Lou's thoughts. He was handsome, yes, but he was a regular sort of person. Most of his being, Lou thought, sat easily on his surface, open to view. At first, all of them, Lou, John, Antoinette, Miranda, and Billy had been a group. Friday drinks had been fun, but after a while Lou had felt herself to be, as her mother might say, unfit for the occasion. Something appeared on certain faces each time Lou spoke, an expression of forbearance, distasteful that was difficult to name. It appeared in their eyes so quickly that they could hardly be aware of it. Recalling Bob Jarvis's advice, she paid for PMAC courses out of her own pocket and studied ferociously. Certification would be indisputable proof of her expertise and fitness for the job. In fact, she loved the technicality of procurement in supply chains, where optimal efficiency depended on exacting details. She enjoyed seeing goods move swiftly, painlessly, to where they could be properly utilized. She thought of herself as reliable, a team player, but others mistook her for a natural subordinate. She didn't register the misconception until it was too late. As the others were all promoted, the years slipped away. The rest of the group was, as Lou's daughters would say, tight. Others came and went, but the core group held. They blurred the categories of their lives, mixing private and professional needs. It was their way of belonging wherever they went. On the positive side, Lou did not feel obligated to socialize with them on Friday nights anymore, without husbands knowing, the evenings could be put to better uses. A year ago, around the time of Campbell river, the team had settled on regular Friday night dinners, which Lou attended once in a while, reluctantly. It unsettled her to see how the group could twist the way a crowd does, turning on one person and then the next. After Antoinette returned from the Gulf of Thailand, where her favorite brother, Jared, had married a local woman, Miranda and Billy had teased her cruelly. Antoinette wanted to talk about snorkeling in tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands, but they wanted to discuss squat toilets. Also pedophilia. Thai girls, women, Miranda corrected. They all shot a quick glance at Lou, who wasn't Ty or Malay, they reminded themselves, but had become, Lou thought, implicated. Lou had finished her supper, taking comfort in the restaurant's stunning viewthe floating lights. John picked up his cigarettes and went out. Antoinette described in detail how her brother had gorged on spiky, hairy rambutans and got sick. Billy, laughing, spluttered out her drink. The team was smart but acted otherwise, as if this kind of bravado were proof of freedom. It hadn't been like that in the beginning, but midlife dissatisfaction was what was new. The women joked about who loved Thai food the most. John can't get enough of it, miranda volunteered, then colored and stared down at her empty glass. Lou thought she might take her leave. She had an exam coming up on supply chain management for major projects, which was necessary to keep her certification up to date, and she wanted to go and study in Mrs. Benchy. Her presence felt superfluous. Sadler returned and said he had another engagement. Antoinette began to cry, repeating, God, I'm sorry, I'm so embarrassed, and Miranda squeezed her shoulder. Lou filled out the paperwork for everyone's meal reimbursement, minus the wine. Billy had already gone home. It was just another Friday. The following Monday Sadler came into her office and stood beside the mothers in law. Forgive me, Lou, I shouldn't have abandoned you at that dinner. I'm sorry. They agreed to have a drink together after work. She was curious. Was Saddler sorry the world was the way it was? She knew he'd like to hear about how she had grown up at the end of the war, lost her father and brother when she was 15, immigrated to Canada on her own, and struggled with a language completely foreign to all her ancestors. But those weren't the stories she thought worth telling. People said all the right things until they didn't. Lu was accommodating until she wasn't. And yet she felt bonded to her colleagues in a hard to explain way because co workers were strangers upon whom she relied, and they seemed to want, in some intangible fashion, not her respect but her love, to know that she thought well of them. Lou missed the retired managers, Mr. Gordon and old Bob Jarvis, who had seemed to genuinely care for her and want her to rise. Both came from blue collar families and had considered her perhaps one of them. At the bar, she and John Saddler both ordered spritzers. You've been there, I guess, she said as they waited for their drinks. Mrs. Benchy looked distinguished parked out front, as if she felt at home in this well kept neighborhood. Malaysia? No, but I've traveled to lots of places. Yes, I have too. There were two women in the conference room with Liu. They were Susan Harris, the external investigator, and the clerk. Penny. I'm sorry we couldn't meet with you yesterday, Mrs. Hong, Susan said. Thank you for your time. Now my aim is to make every step of the process as simple and clear as possible. Yes, Susan. Call me Liu. Great. So Liu, you've been with the company for 14 years, right. 14 years. If the hand of fortune passes over you, Lu's mother used to say, you should be grateful. To be overlooked is its own kind of fate. And perhaps freedom. It was strange, Lu thought, how Mother rose in her thoughts every few years, as if memory had its seasons. Panic hovered in her chest. You don't worry enough about remembering, mother had often told her. She must remember to repeat this to her own daughters. Susan asked a string of questions, almost none of which Lou felt she could or knew how to answer. Susan's face softened as she came around the table and settled in the chair beside Lou. She rolled the chair backward to keep a small distance. I've spoken to the purchasing director, she said, angling forward. She told me you may not feel confident providing a verbal statement. She says that your written English is strong. Impressive, in fact. Lou thought of her big daughter and smiled sadly. Susan continued, I have a Microsoft file you can work through on your own. Is that something you'd prefer? For a moment she felt at a loss. She recalled the sensation of being inside a crowd searching for power within itself. You were transformed by such crowds when you were young, she thought. The crowd swallowed you up and gave you a common purpose. In Kowloon, she and her five sisters used to squeeze into the crowded tram on Nathan Road. Her sisters had been her life, a part of her own self. All five had immigrated, each to a different country. No one left. In Hong Kong. When Mother died quietly in her sleep, they had put all their savings together so that one of them could fly home. Over the years, Liu's colleagues had sometimes looked at her as if she were someone's forgotten coat. But it hadn't mattered to her all that much now. She had a clear feeling that Sadler had protected her, or tried to. Long before that brief affair, John had lauded her. He had argued for her to be further promoted, which would have meant a better salary, an easing of financial burdens, a three bedroom apartment for the family. But she had been left to twist in the same position for 10 years. Despite her tireless efforts, Lou had stayed near the bottom of the ladder. A strange calm washed over her, her professional stasis and all the reasons that things had turned out the way they had. All the lost chances for advancement and security. No. Lou stared at Susan for a long time. The investigator's growing discomfort was like a weight passing into Lou's hands. Investigator, Susan cannot read me, which makes her nervous, but also resentful because she's the one in charge. But here Lou's powers of discernment ended. Lou now saw her colleagues laying nets she had to avoid lest she get entangled. She could not say why they drew lines between one person and another, or why they had to pity certain people in order to see them. It was true that their measure of Lu had never aligned with her worth, but when had she ever confused her worth with their opinions? Such self effacing routes were not for her. I understand, susan said, that there is a history of behavior, things said and done by someone in a supervisory position that should not have been said or done. Should not. Susan frowned. Liu couldn't help mirroring the expression and frowned back. As one of the people you report to, susan explained, John Sadler is your superior. We have an expression for this. Lou said to eat from a bowl and then turn it over. Susan was thrown by Lou's non contextualized English and responded by nodding seriously. It means to betray somebody and play them for a fool. Were you played for a fool, Louis? Oh. Susan was more alert than she let on. Liu liked the challenge. We all were. Even John Sadler. That's life. No, that is not life, susan said. Others have given statements. He took advantage of your position as an outsider and a subordinate on the purchasing team. You were not the only one. It's not you who should feel ashamed. Lou couldn't stop looking at Susan, couldn't stop wondering who was it who had demanded shame? 14 years at the company. Where had all that time gone? Was John Sadler responsible for that? No, she said. No one takes advantage of me. If I lived that way, I would have vanished long ago. Susan was saying other things, but Lou had already floated free that night when the phone rang. Lou got to it first. No one responded to her, irritated. What? So she switched to Cantonese. Hey, who's there and what do you want? Huh? Lou? Oh, for heaven's sake. John Sadler, husband was at the stove making ketchup rice. What's up? Lou said, turning away from husband and toward the girls. They were lying on the floor pretending to be dead. It was always the holidays for them. I'm such an idiot. I don't know anymore. I don't know, Lou. I'm so sorry. She waited. Wasn't I fair to you? Wasn't I good? Yes, you were fair and good. She nudged her small daughter with her toe. There were crumbs in the girl's hair. Motion for her to get up off the floor. The girl just rolled over and looked at the ceiling with glazed eyes and a silly smile. We had an affair, that's all. It's over. He began crying. I wasn't the one who ended it. I'm not, Lou. I'm truly sorry. But I didn't do what Miranda is saying, what they're all saying. I didn't. I'm alone, he said. I'm all alone now. She didn't have an answer for him and said nothing. He cried harder. We're having dinner now, she said at last. I must hang up the phone. The line clicked. She stood with the receiver, comforted by the weight of it, a balloon tied to her wrist. She thought, what was it to live as a mother, as a wife, and as herself? A balloon that loves the ceiling, that floats away in order to touch it? She must have muttered some of this aloud because her small daughter giggled, shouting, I'm ballooning. She curled into a ball and opened in beautiful slow motion, all her limbs reaching as if forced apart by the pressure of the tide. Liu laughed too, until her eyes became watery, thinking of the sea. That night Lou sat down at the family computer. She pushed the floppy disk Susan had given her into the drive and opened the file. She stared for a long time at the first question. In this space, please tell us what you witnessed. I saw other women grieving. Delete. In this space, please tell us what you witnessed. I never grieved. Delete. Lou tried switching to Cantonese. She printed the page and wrote by in this space, please tell us what you witnessed. I saw the lines of a long net in which we were all trapped, caught up. I saw men and women who all excelled within these lines but also wanted to escape them. I saw my children growing up without their mother, and that's why I never left my marriage. And for 14 years I came to know a power that was more shadow than substance. But wait, before you say that I know little about power, let me tell you that shadows have a strength nothing can dissolve. These quiet things which are nourished by what is within reach. And the other kind of power, the kind that kept me in my place. Well, my co workers say they do not see it. And do I? I have learned not to. I have learned to cross the street and look the other way because you can't stop someone else's contempt. You can't change the earth, the sky above your head, the disrespect. You can't change the electrical wires in your path, but you have to teach your children to sense their presence, to step over them smoothly without a single note of fear. They have to keep moving. After all, why am I writing this in a language you can't understand? So that my dead mother can read it. She already knew. Lou re read the paragraph. Only her big daughter would know how to translate it. But something turned over in her. It was out of the question to ask the child, was this something after all, that a mother should do? She crumpled the page and dropped it in the bin. In this space, please tell us what you witnessed. Lou returned to English. Two people had an affair. Nothing more, but also nothing less. Save after the investigation ended, the purchasing department was reorganized. It took months for everything to be finalized. Fortuitously, around this time, husband's firm offered him a good job in Silicon Valley. Sometimes she was visited by an image or a memory. That stunning view from the 27th floor, the controlled landing of a seaplane in the blue of the inlet. It wasn't just the investigation that brought things to a head. It was the human nature that the investigation had revealedthings Lou couldn't account forall the sorrow and spite, the vitriol and piety that suddenly had free rein. Sometimes when justice prevailed, it left a bad taste. Sadler was hospitalized. No one knew exactly why. Some people in the company pitied him, others didn't. It wasn't about pity anyway, Lou thought. It was the web of understandings and almost loyalties that bound them together, lines quietly zigzagging through, their legs tied and retied in the same old ways. Miranda was promoted to John Sadler's position and became Lou's immediate supervisor. Lou was not surprised. The next day she handed in her notice and took the Mothers in Law home. They flourished, half hidden from the window. Soon afterward, she and husband moved the family to San Jose. Lou started teaching night school. She taught import and export regulations, nafta, trade rules, and supply chain management to new immigrants. The course was at the community college, and her students had meager incomes. Their ability to remain unfazed, combined with their original uses of English, their distance from the right words, made it hard for them to thrive as employees. They had little savings but were determined still to grow their own fortunes and be their own bosses. It was the only way to really live. These were good years for Lou. The student's entrepreneurial spirit gave her comfort, and nothing felt wasted. She enjoyed the steep walk up to the College and taking Mrs. Benchy indulgently on long drives to the Golden Gate Bridge, admiring the views of what others had named the Valley of Heart's Delight. Overnight, it seemed, her girls went off to university. Her panic attacks, that ball of wax, crushed lungs and and then a slow release like forgiveness, recurred every few years you are reenacting your mother's death, she told herself. Stop it. By now Lou was in her 50s. I want to change my shape again, she thought. But how morning could sink into nightfall without her noticing? As if while she gazed at the surface of her desk, at the shine of her screen, the supply of hours crept away behind her back. She did not dwell on her lovers, but sometimes she remembered a long rise of pleasure, a touch, a knowing look. She remembered how belonging and ecstasy mingled together. She would die in her sleep one day. She would change shape quietly, without causing any inconvenience. She felt sure of it. Her husband would grieve his unfaithful wife and eventually remarry and find a different species of happiness. That was life, she wanted to tell her daughters. You wanted to change it, but it changed you, remodeled you for every age. One day you were an immigrant, loaded down with inexplicable shame. The next you were middle aged, a mother. And all the risks you'd taken to live freely, to not be subdued, also made you feel ashamed, as if you'd done nothing but kick the tangerines around. But if by then you didn't have it in you to explain the world away, to reduce it or be certain of it, maybe you never would. Lou accepted that in herself. She'd eaten from the bowl and turned it over. She had been unfaithful and yet faithful. Wrong and yet right. Lonely and yet beloved. And that was the bitter, that was the sweet quandary of it all.

[Deborah Treisman]

That was David Wright Valaday reading Lou Reshaping by Madeline Tien. The story appeared in the New Yorker in December of 2021.

[Richard Lawson]

Working at Vanity Fair, our entire lives revolve around press screenings, premieres, film festivals, Q&As, set visits, award ceremonies.

[Deborah Treisman]

Not that we're complaining, it's pretty great. But you know that feeling when you see a new film or show and you want to talk about it with everyone immediately? We feel that all the time.

[Richard Lawson]

Yes, we sure do. I'm Richard Lawson. I'm David Canfield.

[Deborah Treisman]

And I'm Rebecca.

[Richard Lawson]

On Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's flagship entertainment podcast, we discuss today's most exciting films and TV shows.

[Deborah Treisman]

David and I are fresh off attending the LA premiere last night.

[Richard Lawson]

Break down the latest developments in the awards races. Gomez and Grande split the pop girly vote and catch up with Hollywood's biggest movers and shakers. Demi Moore, welcome to the show.

[Deborah Treisman]

Thank you for having me.

[Richard Lawson]

Whether you're a casual viewer or an industry buff, this is the podcast for you. New episodes are published every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Richard Lawson]

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[Deborah Treisman]

So David, whenever I go back and read this story, the first line that really, really grabs me is that line, all my life I've wanted to change shapes, change skins, and obviously that's where the title comes from. How do you read that line? You can read it in so many different ways. What do you think Lou is saying? It's right at the beginning.

[David Wright Falladay]

For me, A an important major theme is again, this notion of how she is seen and her awareness of how she is seen and the way that that maybe feels like it has something to do with control. So it feels like one of the important tensions in the story is her trying to not just assert control because she asserts control in her life, but that wrestling back and forth about being seen. And so the notion of changing skins or changing shapes seems to have to do with that. If we put ourselves in the place of some of her white co workers, they're seeing a specific person who is not the person she's seeing as herself. And so that changing of skins, of shapes seems to be Lou's deliberate attempt to try to manage that and maybe control that.

[Deborah Treisman]

It's interesting because I don't get the sense that she would want to change to look like her co workers.

[David Wright Falladay]

No, right.

[Deborah Treisman]

Or to resemble them. So perhaps it's changing in a certain way that conveys what's inside more accurately.

[David Wright Falladay]

Interestingly. And I may be stuck in my own reading, but to me it feels almost more like the control piece of it. Like there are these cycles. Like, I'm struck by Ardruis when she tells the story of Ardruis. She begins with his father and mother and they're swimming. And then he has a plastic flower business. And then the move that he makes with Ardruis. And Ardruis has this live flower business, like that cyclical evolution of things. And then we see that in her own life, between her remembering of her mother and then what she is passing on to her daughters, but particularly to big daughter. And so for me, it's something to do with that maybe again the effort to have some control. Not to be like those others in the way that you're saying, but to have some control, to feel like you have a measure of control of how you're being seen, of how you're able to assert yourself in this foreign place that isn't overtly hostile, but hostel all the same. Right. She's stuck in that same position. She deserves the promotion, but it's almost like they don't even consider she's an afterthought as concerns that. And it's that piece of it that I feel is being expressed.

[Deborah Treisman]

She doesn't want to be a chameleon. It's not about changing to fit in.

[David Wright Falladay]

Exactly.

[Deborah Treisman]

The first scene we have of her in her office is a moment in which she has a Panic attack.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

She's watching the seaplane come in to land.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Something about that or something about being in that space or perhaps being late for a meeting and then it's not happening. It's. Maybe it's that uncertainty. What do you think triggers it?

[David Wright Falladay]

One of the things, whether it's graduate or undergraduate class, one of the questions that often comes up in the context of talking about stories is what's the occasion for the telling of the story? Why tell this story this day? It feels like the moment that we enter the story is a moment where she's coming to a full realization, or at least the beginning of a full realization, of her stuckedness. That's not a word, but of her stuckedness in this position, despite all her hard work, the fact that she's up until the wee hours of the night with Big Daughter to do this work exceedingly well. And she fights so much to keep certain things in that I think they sort of let go of themselves despite herself. So she has that panic attack. There's nobody there. She's brought the donut. She's late. The donut box is bent because she's been rushing and it expresses itself that way. And then the other woman comes in and she starts to, you know, calm herself. I read it in that way.

[Deborah Treisman]

And perhaps it's a moment that she didn't have control over. And we know that control is important.

[David Wright Falladay]

Right.

[Deborah Treisman]

What's the ball of wax?

[David Wright Falladay]

That's a great question. You know, I don't know.

[Deborah Treisman]

It's like such an interesting image, I suppose. I get it. It's like a. I almost feel as though it's in her throat. You know, there's something, but.

[David Wright Falladay]

And the string. Then how do you read that?

[Deborah Treisman]

Maybe you're pulling that. You pull it out.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

You don't know.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah, yeah. And that image returns then at the end.

[Deborah Treisman]

It's interesting because at the end she says that the panic attacks are her reenacting her mother's death. But she's told us that her mother died quietly in her sleep. Right. So it wasn't a moment of panic. So reenacting maybe her feeling about her mother dying.

[David Wright Falladay]

I was actually thinking it was more this sort of parallel between her relationship to her daughter, Big Daughter in particular, and what she's putting on Big Daughter, the sort of responsibilities and what she felt about her own relationship with her mother. So I read it almost relationally more. It's not so much the trauma. She died quietly in her sleep. It's her obligation as a daughter. To her mother. And then now as a mother, what she's enacting with her own daughter. I feel like I read the parallel in that way, you know?

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And also, her mother's death was a time when she and her sisters were all scattered in different countries. They could only send one person back. And that person wasn't there with her mother. I suppose. So again, a vision of sort of perhaps failure of filial duty.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yes.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah. And it feels like that's the oftentimes unstated question she's asking herself again, even in reverse, when she's putting that responsibility on her daughter. She's asking herself almost, am I doing this right? Not right, According to some larger standard outside her own experience. But again, what she sort of took from her difficult life. And she's got this weight to do it right. Whatever right means for her. So there's the pressure that's theirs again, in these subtle ways. One of the things that Maddy does so beautifully is she just shows us and we just feel it aggregate and accumulate the pressure that Lou herself is feeling.

[Deborah Treisman]

And then she's at work, she gets the news that this meeting isn't happening because there's an investigation. And right away we get how the other people in the office talk to her this condescending, infantilizing way. Sheila, I think saying, even when someone is our friend, even when we care about him, we have to act in a principled way. You know, it's like a teacher.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

What do you think happens there? Are they talking down to her because of a racial stereotype? Because her English isn't great? Are they talking down to her because of this cliche that she's a natural subordinate? Because they think that's in her personality.

[David Wright Falladay]

What is all those things? I think it's those things and she's keenly aware of it, that they're seeing her. They want to imagine from the stereotype, submissive Asian woman. Like, even there's the moment where she's reflecting upon their regular Friday night outings. And Antoine is recalling her brother's marriage in Thailand. And again, because Asia, broadly, they kind of glance towards Lou, you know, and again, I keep reflecting back on Arduous. One of the things that's really wonderful is how he addresses her by her name. She's Lou to everybody else in those contexts. So, yeah, I feel like they're seeing a person of their own creation that is not her. And she has been a victim of it, but she has also learned to work around it. And again, to try to maybe. And then with Jon Sadler, it's clear. There's this knowledge that she has had this affair with Jon Sadler. And I wonder what they see of her then. Like, are they seeing her fully then or in a more complicated way? It's not clear to me, but it's interesting.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. It seems to me that they think John Sadler has sort of taken advantage of her. Right, right. So they are not seeing the role she played in that relationship at all.

[David Wright Falladay]

Right, right. And we understand it because we're seeing her like Jon Sandler isn't the only person, but she expresses beautifully the reasons for the affairs, how she's getting something from these relationships and all that. But she also categorizes them, like she leaves them in their place. Husband is still husband. John Sandler was fun. He was as winning as his winning smile in a way, until he wasn't.

[Deborah Treisman]

And she decides that it's the one arena where she does have control. Yes.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

She doesn't really speak up for herself in the workplace. She doesn't defend herself. She thinks she'll get ahead by working really hard. She pays for her own training, but does not do anything to disabuse others of what they think they're seeing in her. Why do you think that is?

[David Wright Falladay]

The word shame comes up a few times, and even the shame of being an immigrant. I put that in air quotes and it feels to me like it has something to do with that. I'm not sure she feels shame super presently, but she is made to feel shame. And so she wrestles with the notion of shame, but it's the thing that is imposed on her as an outsider and an outsider in the broadest sense. Not just sort of an outsider from China who has immigrated to Canada, but as a woman. Bob Jarvis is her boss first, and then it's another man who's her boss. Eventually he's replaced by a woman. But she's marginalized in all those ways. And I feel like it's being made to feel the word you used earlier, infantilized, lesser. It starts shaping, maybe how she sees herself. Why she doesn't assert herself more, though, is interesting. I hadn't posed myself that question. I just sort of went with it and sort of went the space. The circumstances of her life maybe don't create space for it in that way, but I didn't push it past that thought. Can you imagine her asserting herself more in those ways?

[Deborah Treisman]

I'm sure there's a reason she doesn't. Right. That there's A structural reason. There's a fear of doing it, maybe, but it is surprising to me that she is so assertive in her affairs and then can't be in the workplace. And, you know, perhaps she's so assertive in her affairs because she can't be in the workplace, but in the workplace, you know, she sort of relied on Bob Jarvis to stand up for her, and she relied on Sadler to stand up for her. And she doesn't defend herself in that regard.

[David Wright Falladay]

That moment that she has when Jon Sadler calls her crying, I mean, there are any number of reasons why husband is right there, her family's there, but it feels not angry, but assertive, that, like, she is assertively keeping him in his place. And when she ends the conversation and the line clicks, he has hung up. Like there's no ambivalence in her in that moment. It feels to me like she feels like she has asserted something. And so the way you're reading it resonates. It resonates with me.

[Deborah Treisman]

She definitely doesn't want to take on his pain. No, she wants nothing to do with it.

[David Wright Falladay]

Nothing. And that's why she's not with him as it's, you know, as Mattie articulates it so much more beautifully than I'm about to butcher. But, like, you know, the sort of winning smile he shows to everybody is what she. What draws her to him. So when that's not there, no, she's not sharing his pain.

[Deborah Treisman]

She's not interested. For someone who is so sort of contained and restrained in her professional life, it's a surprise that she's so sexual, that she's seeking out this constant array of lovers and that she seems to have all the power in those relationships, except perhaps with arduous, which is one where maybe she loves him. Is it just that that is the only arena where she feels able to assert herself, or is it. You know, I think it's also just something about her nature that emotions don't get expressed and the physical does.

[David Wright Falladay]

It feels to me, and I don't want to slip into facile stereotypes myself, but it feels to me like sort of the way that her co workers view her condescendingly, infantilizingly. They have this specific notion of what it means to be Chinese, what it means to be a Chinese woman. And sexuality is not what is associated with those notions of sort of the Chinese woman, immigrant. I think there are any number of ways which, you know, Chinese women might be sexualized or hypersexualized in other ways, but she is sort of, I imagine, the sort of smaller stature woman. And they're imagining as a non sexualized person despite the fact that she has no husband and two children. And if that's true, it feels like a big act of rebellion to. Against those constraints, against the way that they're not actually seeing the person that she is, to fully be the person that she is. And I do think that she does feel a love for Arduous. There's a wonderful moment later in the story where she's responded to this questionnaire and then she gets bypassed through the promotion. And she recalls water. And I remember that image of water makes me think. Cause I think Ardruis's father swimming across Ardruous, swimming in the Hastings pool every day. She doesn't state him specifically, but in that moment of release, relief, maybe satisfaction with where she arrived, as how she has asserted herself. I feel like Arduous is the one that it recalls. So it was with Arduous, it was more than just, you know, pushing against a stereotype. It was fully living something. And just in structural terms, the story from a sort of riderly place. The way that Husband, in juxtaposition to Arduous, you know, the way that he comes off the page, he's even just called husband with a capital. He's not fully named. And I just thought that really wonderful. I thought that she was so. As this fully complicated, fully formed sexual being. I thought it's just such an interesting, wonderful construction of that part of her character.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. Why do you think we don't ever get the backstory of Lou's immigration, for instance, of Lou's life before this?

[David Wright Falladay]

For me, in my reading of it. And again, this is one of the things that really draws me to the story and in the story form, in the novel, we're gonna get all that in the story form. The occasion for the telling of the story isn't all that. All that we need is that sense of her relationship to her mother that in part, we get a sense of when she describes, you know, how her five sisters are everything in her life. I think to do more with that is to shift the focus in a way that maybe you're the fiction editor of the New Yorker, so I'm saying things to you that you know better than me. But so much of what makes short fiction work for me as a reader is the immediacy. And I think if we diverted or digressed too much into how we got here, that tampons down the immediacy of that moment and the Immediacy of the moment is what really, again with this really subtle story, makes it just come off the page despite, or maybe because of all the things that are not said, you know?

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. I mean, we don't know how or when she met husband or married him, had these children. We have no sense of that part of her life.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah. I love the way she refers to her eldest daughter, too, as big daughter. A little bit like she refers to husband. But we get a sense of something more there. You know, it's sort of the juxtaposition of things. Husband versus big daughter, big daughter in juxtaposition to her own relationship to her mother, her feelings about arduous injective position to her feelings about husband. All that is just masterfully handled, I think. And a lot of it is because it's not. It's rarely explicative. It's often just evoking it.

[Deborah Treisman]

I mean, Lou makes her life complicated. It's not that she's looking for kind of a simple path forward. The way she's sneaking around, hoping husband doesn't find out that she's getting big daughter to help her and having her affairs and using this excuse of Friday night dinners with co workers for other purposes. It's interesting that there's even room in her life since she's really striving that there's room in her life for that kind of subterfuge.

[David Wright Falladay]

I'm remembering one of your earlier questions, the panic attack when she's standing on the 27th floor. Significantly in this. The floor she aspires to be, and she sees that plane coming down, apparently in control. But she remarks upon how it gets closer to the water. It appears to be going faster. And it's around the same time that she starts. A little bit later, she has the panic attack. To me, it feels completely. I was gonna say sensical, and that's not the right word. Right. It just feels completely logical, maybe that she would. She is coming in for a landing with her life in general, and it's going faster the more that she's doing. She's having these affairs, she's doing whatever. It's all this effort to maintain control on this descent towards the lake, for this landing to the water. To the water, you know? Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Coming back to the idea of shame in the story, because it comes up several times. It comes up with arduous telling her life doesn't ask us to pay a debt of shame. The investigator tells her she isn't the one who should feel ashamed. And then when she's reflecting on her life. She says, one day you were an immigrant, loaded down with inexplicable shame, and the next you were middle aged, a mother, and all the risks you'd taken to live freely, to not be subdued, also make you feel ashamed. So that last line implies that she's feeling shame over the affairs. Perhaps. But I think there are two forces. There's kind of an outside world that implies she should feel shame or implies that she does feel shame. And there's an inner refusal to feel it, but also a sense that maybe she should. So it's this kind of competing voices. Her to herself, others to her. What is it? It's shame over what? You know, having come from somewhere else, not being fluent in English.

[David Wright Falladay]

It's exactly what you just said. That was gonna be my response. I read her as not feeling shame. She poses the question. There's a moment where she does. In regards to big daughter, I think she states it as regret, which suggests a certain shame or the possibility of a certain shame. But then she pushes forward with big daughter and pushes her, you know, so I'm not sure she's feeling the shame, but she's keenly aware that the world wants her to. And she's refusing. You know, that assertion, the word agency. We throw it around. Maybe I throw it around a little bit too easily, but that assertion of agency in those ways, it just makes her just the greatest character, you know, I'm not sure she's feeling shame.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, I mean, if you flip it around and it were a husband having all of these affairs and lying to the wife and sneaking around doing something the wife doesn't want him to make his daughter do, we would be, you know, wagging our fingers, tsk, tsking.

[David Wright Falladay]

Right.

[Deborah Treisman]

But we don't do that with Lou. We're on Lou's side. Why is that?

[David Wright Falladay]

That is a great question.

[Deborah Treisman]

I mean, I think perhaps there's an element of privilege. She is not acting from a place of entitlement. She's not acting from a place where she can do these things. She can do these things just to do them in the way that in some cases the man does.

[David Wright Falladay]

Right, right, exactly that. So she's not a man doing these things, but we have access to her interiority. And from the beginning, I don't think it's a feeling of shame, but she does make herself vulnerable. We're aware of her vulnerability because she's posing questions even as she's pushing big daughter at the beginning to do this work for her. She's aware that it's late at night and she serves her tea and is like, you know, you're gonna have to pee all night. So we get a sense of this vulnerability. But despite feeling vulnerable, she then asserts she acts. And so to me, that's the thing. That's the thing that makes her, from the very beginning, just winning. And I want to know what's gonna happen next, you know?

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, let's talk about those kids.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Because they're hilarious.

[David Wright Falladay]

They are really funny. They're really funny.

[Deborah Treisman]

I mean, they're the moment of comic relief in this drama. What's going on with them? Why are they playing dead? There's that line where she. They're lying on the floor pretending to be dead, and she says it was always the holidays for them.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

You know, are they carefree?

[David Wright Falladay]

Big Daughter in particular, Lou is aware, maybe even hyper aware, of how she is burdening her. But she also, I feel like. And maybe in a nominally sort of stereotypical reading, but she's aware of giving her daughter a better life in the way that Ardwood's father gave him a better life. You know, plastic flowers to fresh flowers. And we see that so much more with the little daughter because she's the one who's goofing off all the time. And Big Daughter will, too. But she sees in her interactions with Big Daughter that Big Daughter's starting to feel the burdens. You know, why do I have to go to school? And whatever. And Lou immediately jumps to her defense. But I feel like what Lou also realizes is they're gonna have a better life than she had, which is her responsibility as the mother, I think, as she reads it.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, they're great characters for such little page space. On fire for such little page space. And they're always fooling around. There's a sense of how burdened Lou is and husband too. He's mad she doesn't come home in time because he's working a late shift and taking over for other people and he's stressed. And then for her to see these girls being so unoppressed.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sorry to cut you off. I would jump in and say, but Big Daughter differently. In that first scene, Big Daughter's like when she says, I don't want to go to school, and Lou gets defensive about it. Is somebody, you know, bothering you? The more that she sort of teases it out of her. She says to her, you know, you want to learn from books or whatever, but I wanted to learn from living life. I feel like Lou has this keen sense, like big Daughter. I think she's funny, but I feel like she is a reflection of Lou, understanding that she's doing well by them. She can be a little prickly. Everything's fun for you.

[Deborah Treisman]

You're just kicking tangerines.

[David Wright Falladay]

You're just kicking tangerines. But she understands that that's what she wants for them too. You know, Even as she's imposing on big daughter, she also understands, you know, she wants them to have better than she had.

[Deborah Treisman]

I think the image of a mother that she gives, of a mother as a balloon tied to a wrist.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

So she's that balloon. She's tied to the daughter's wrist. The daughter has a hold on her that prevents her from sort of floating away freely. I suppose that's maybe a more negative connotation than is actually intended.

[David Wright Falladay]

Hmm. I didn't read it valued in that way. I read it, I think, more descriptive. At a moment, she's describing John Sadler and her affair with John Sadler, and there's this notion of ascension, and then at the end, it comes back to the notion of the balloon and she floats freely, you know, when she has died. And so I didn't read it as negative so much as metaphorical. Wasn't negative or positive. It was a way of painting a picture of how she's envisioning the balance. Floating freely at the end is death, you know, and so she understands that she needs to be constrained in certain ways by the balloon that's ascending. But it's tied to things. The daughters, the responsibility, even these affairs, to a certain extent. The prosecutor from Shanghai who works in the warehouse, you know, it's his lack of levity that she's like, I know this is gonna end. So, yeah, I think I read it more as descriptive than valued.

[Deborah Treisman]

Mm.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Do you think it's important or significant that she works in procurement and supply chains? Why do you think Mattie chose that particular field?

[David Wright Falladay]

It feels to me that part of what the writer is exploring is. Is the stereotypes being seen truly versus being mis seen or poorly seen at all. And so it felt like to, you know, again, the stereotype about Asian folks and numbers, it just seemed like that was a job that would, from a writerly place, would establish the stereotype that then the character is pushing against. Even as she is good at it. She likes it, she's drawn to it, but she's so much more than that. The affairs and all the other things, you know, it's an interesting juxtaposition. Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

It's funny, I went back to the Q and A that I did with Maddy when the story was coming out and just reminding myself of how complete and external a character Lou was to her. You know, she took a long time to write the story. It was several years. And she said, I kept wanting to come back and see what Lou was doing or, you know, learn more about her. And I think now she was finally ready to go out in the world on her own, you know?

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

I felt like in asking Maddie some of these questions she wanted to ask Lou, you know, that she almost wasn't quite sure that there was this person there. And she'd gotten to know her a bit.

[David Wright Falladay]

But not entirely the discipline of that. And not just in Mattie, although clearly in Mattie. But we get a sense, echoing a question you asked earlier about including more of the backstory and whatever the fact that Maddie doesn't include it in the story. I never have a sense that she doesn't know exactly. Like, I have a sense that Maddy has a complete sense of the full arc and complexity of Lou's life. And I think that must have been hard. I mean, all writing is making choices. But especially in short fiction and in reading Lou Reshaping, you have such a full sense of the whole life, of all of it. And we only get the bits and pieces.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. I mean, I always think the stories that make the reader work to fill in or to understand are the best ones.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah. In this weird way. And I made reference a few times. And I'm harking back to the sort of teaching. But when I'm in the MFA program, I'm trying to learn to be a writer. And Hemingway is everything, or Raymond Carver. And that's a withholding to an extreme, a starkness, a skeletal almost withholding. And this isn't skeletal. It's fully fleshed out. No, but there's nothing extraneous. There's nothing extra. It's just the things that continue to evoke and the word I used earlier, aggregate. That they just sort of aggregate so that by the end, we have this full richness.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. And then let's talk about the end. Two elements of the end. First, her statement for the investigator.

[David Wright Falladay]

Loved that part.

[Deborah Treisman]

Her first answer. And her second one. How do you read those?

[David Wright Falladay]

I love that repetition of the question. And the question is so spare. Right. It reduces complexity to nothing. And so her response at first feels like what she feels like she should respond. And she deletes it. And then she complicates it a little bit. More. And then she deletes it. And then she goes to the page and writes in Cantonese this thing that is purely. I was gonna say purely emotional, but it's not. There's an order and a logic. She places herself on the page. I did this, and I did this. And it happens for this reason. And she evokes her mother, she evokes her daughter. And this is what it was. And it's so clear that she understands. She was writing that for herself anyway. Right?

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah.

[David Wright Falladay]

She knows even as she's writing it, she's writing it in Cantonese. The investigators wouldn't understand it if she saw it.

[Deborah Treisman]

And she can't ask big daughter to translate it.

[David Wright Falladay]

Yeah. And I think she probably even wouldn't. She's articulating for herself all the reasons for all the things she has done. And it's complicated. It's not black and white, it's gray. And here it is. This is me. And then she balls it up and throws it away and then gives the very truthful but very short response that is, this happened. I was not taken advantage of. Send.

[Deborah Treisman]

And then after that, of course, we get this enormous sort of coda, like, story of life. From then on, we've had this very finite moment in a life that's over the course of maybe a couple weeks or less, a couple days for most of it. And then we get this husband gets a job in Silicon Valley, she quits her job, and she passed over the promotion all the way up to her death. Is that a happy life? Is what comes after this better?

[David Wright Falladay]

I don't know if it's a question of better or worse. This is gonna sound like an evasive answer, and I'm not deliberately trying to be evasive.

[Deborah Treisman]

She likes her teaching.

[David Wright Falladay]

She likes the teaching. There's this thing that's happening again from this sort of writerly place. I remember several times when I've read it where I'm like, could it just end on that last. You know, the investigation and the hit send. And I've gone back and forth, especially rereading in advance of this and maybe even when I taught it to the grad students in the fall. No, the end really matters. And it's not so much a question of a happy life or for me or unhappy life, but it's fulfilled. The girls go off to university. She's teaching whatever the ambitions were she had within that company in Canada about rising the ranks and being appropriately, justly promoted. This is that she's working with other folks who have struggles like she had with language, but who understand. They want to be their own bosses. And there's some freedom here, or at least a suggestion that freedom might be possible that she hadn't had. And it's interesting. It's in that moment that I actually begin to more fully see husband. Like at the very first line, when he's transferred to Silicon Valley. Up to that point, he could have been a pizza delivery guy for all we know. We just don't know anything about him. But he's also got this thing going on. So, no, I think that. That coda. I think coda is the appropriate word. I don't know if it's necessary, but it enriches the story. It enriches the story. She continues driving Mrs. Benjy, and she goes to the Golden Gate Bridge, but understands how it was called something else. And no, it's really wonderful.

[Deborah Treisman]

And then there's death.

[David Wright Falladay]

And then there's death, and then the balloon floats away.

[Deborah Treisman]

The balloon floats away. But she's done what she wanted to do. She's got the girls off to university, which is funny, because in so many ways, she is not what she's supposed to be. Right? I mean, even down to the details, like Mrs. Benshi. Like, here's this supposedly diligent, submissive immigrant who is never going to succeed beyond a certain level, and yet she loves fine cars and she loves sex and cheating on her husband. All these things that she's just not. She's not what people see. And that's ultimately what you have.

[David Wright Falladay]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. At arduous. She goes back after the funeral and the three pours of cognac. She is not what the world wants to see of her with society, what that business and the people surrounding her want to see of her. I love that.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. Maddie in the Q and A said about her co workers said their projection on her is so strong that they can't really see Lou outside of that framing. They find it deeply perplexing when she just goes on being Lou. You know, I think that's a moment where Lou thinks that her colleagues have to pity certain people in order to see them. But the irony of it is, they pity her, but they don't see her.

[David Wright Falladay]

And they don't see her.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, right.

[David Wright Falladay]

And they don't see her. And she is so aware of it and refuses to be victimized by it, even as she is. Even as she never gets the promotion. But then she finds her space in that and makes her full, complex life, despite the fact that they and society in those ways want to limit her.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. She doesn't set them right.

[David Wright Falladay]

No.

[Deborah Treisman]

She does nothing to disillusion them or disabuse them, really. I mean, except by working so hard and becoming so good at her job. She doesn't give them what they ask of her. Yeah, but she doesn't ever say, who do you think you're talking to? Why are you speaking in that manner? What are you. You know. So there's no verbal setting things. Right.

[David Wright Falladay]

She says something at a certain point, though, where she does with the investigator, specifically say, Lou couldn't stop looking at Susan, couldn't stop wondering, who was it who demanded shame. Fourteen years at the company, where had all the time gone? Was John Sadler responsible for that? No. She said, no one takes advantage of me. If I had lived that way, I would have vanished long ago. It's not often, but she gives these moments where she's like, no, you want to see a certain thing, but maybe what you're seeing isn't true, isn't real. So I feel like her impulse is to shift around and say what is expected. But then she does assert in the way that she does with Sadler later. So it's infrequent and it's not. It's not big, but it's there.

[Deborah Treisman]

Her assertions are negative. They're refusals.

[David Wright Falladay]

They're refusals. They're refusals. Yeah. And it's right at the end of the scene where afterwards Susan continues talking. Susan was saying other things, but Lou had already floated free. Right. And that's the end of the scene.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. So there she's floating free from the obligation of being the person that the investigator thinks she is, which I'm. And I suppose later she floats free from the obligation of being a mother and a wife. All these roles, she didn't quite fit. Yeah.

[David Wright Falladay]

She tried to maybe redefine to meet her own needs, you know, which is wonderful. Again, that word that we throw around, or I throw around agency. She's acted upon, but she's not laying down, she's acting, you know.

[Deborah Treisman]

She'S a hero.

[David Wright Falladay]

Oh, again, I love the story, but I love the character. I love the character.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, thank you so much, David.

[David Wright Falladay]

Thank you. It's really great to talk to you about the story.

[Deborah Treisman]

Madeleine Tien's works of fiction include the novels Dogs at the Perimeter and Do not say we have Nothing, which won the Governor General's Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize in Canada. A new novel, the Book of Records, will be published in May. David Wright Falladay is the author of the novels Black Cloud Rising and and the New Internationals and the nonfiction work Fire on the Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers. He's been publishing fiction and nonfiction in the New Yorker since 2020. You can download more than 210 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including one in which Madeline Tien reads a story by Yoko Ogawa, or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Procinos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.

[David Wright Falladay]

Foreign.

[Richard Lawson]

I'm Jameelah Robinson, host of Food People. On Food People, we talk about how food and drink shape our society. I talk to the luminaries making big moves in the culinary industry, from chefs and entrepreneurs to celebrities and even activists.

[Deborah Treisman]

The combination between a school and a restaurant.

[David Wright Falladay]

The next generation of Ethiopian chefs. A lot more than food goes on in a kitchen. It's where you have your loudest arguments.

[Deborah Treisman]

It's often where you have your loudest laughter.

[Richard Lawson]

I'm Italian, Mexican. I'm a comedian. There's gonna be lots of opinions. So if you wanna go deep on how food creates the world we live in, join me on Food People. Food People is available on the podcast app of your choice.

[David Wright Falladay]

From PRX.