Great short stories

A college acquaintance of mine, with whom I have not kept in touch, but who consistently manufactures witty Facebook statuses, recently posted a list of some of her favorite short stories. I looked 'em up and found links. Internet!

J D. Salinger: A Perfect Day for Bananafish

Philip Roth: The Conversion of the Jews

Raymond Carver: A Small, Good Thing

Amy Hempel: In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried

Tobias Wolff - Bullet in the Brain

Lorrie Moore: People Like That are the Only People Here

Ray Bradbury: The Veldt

This is not a true story

Comma

If nothing else, she helped me overcome my dependency on commas. A product of my prep school heritage perhaps, a school of thought obsessed with cramming as many ideas into as small a space as possible, possessed of the notion that more, and more, convoluted, was better, one would never have called me uncluttered. She harangued me for comma splices in my text messages. Even when the context was trivial and even when she was about to break up with me.

She broke up with me by moving to Phoenix. Her predecessors did it in text messages or over the phone. One used AOL Instant Messenger™ and another simply showed up at a party hand-in-hand with my (obviously erstwhile) best friend. I don’t blame her; it was as simple and clean as everything else she did.

We used to plan for our breakup. I asked her to kindly abstain from dating my friends for a few months. She asked me to kindly shut-the-fuck-up-and-kiss-her. Which I did. I was just so afraid of losing her. Rather I was afraid of her losing me the way the others had. I lied to you earlier: I was the AOLer and the texter. I hopped between friends like a slimy frog afraid if I sat too long on the same lily pad I’d sink.

As it turned out all that jumping around just tired me out and left an armful of pretty girls half-sunk in my hangups. I knew it wasn’t fair or even practical but it took this particular girl announcing one day that she was going to be an archaeologist in Arizona for me to get it through my skull that the past had already happened, the future hadn’t happened yet, and the present I created with someone was exactly half my responsibility.

She never spoke to her ex-boyfriends which makes me think she’ll never talk to me again. It’s not so much about bridges burned as it is about bridges never crossed again. I guess I’ll find out for sure on my birthday next month.

She told me she loved me on the fourth night we spent together. I informed her that she was crazy. Love is far too complex of a state of being to reach in two weeks. Whatever we were feeling couldn’t possibly be love until at least four months into an officially acknowledged relationship. She asked me to schedule our love for August. I gave up and started using the word too. At first I relegated it to aftersex and beforegoodbye but soon it began peppering our conversations with giddy nonchalance if that’s even possible. I think I actually fell in love in July.

She had no moral qualms with cheating. I did because cheating is wrong. She didn’t but she never cheated on me or anyone else because why would she want to? She broke up with boys when the relationship was over and not a moment later. She thought it was stupid that I usually waited another two months to pull the plug after sullying an affair with my conspicuous impatience. She told me my moral highground was littered with broken hearts.

We never fizzled or faded or even fought. We just ended.

My Feet Knew the Way

I used to be frustrated by the inevitability of waves.  I would hurl myself against them with all my strength, body slapping broad-side into the ambling hill of water, trying with all my might to make an example, set a precedent, assert my sentient dominance over the senseless redundancy of nature.  It was a battle of wills and I, being blessed with Will, was the clear favorite.

Naturally, I lost every time.  Each wave was followed inexorably by another, and red-chested and infuriated by the ocean’s indifference to my presence, I would gather myself for another offensive.

Tiring of this, I would alter my strategy and resign myself to building sandcastles with moats carefully situated just at the limit of the obliging tide; or constructing palaces for sojourning crabs, nomadic despots who would signal their gratitude for my hospitality with clumsy sideways curtsies.  Or something like that.

I was jealous of the older boys on their jet skis, their casual indifference to the forces that stymied me, skimming the surface like sleek cars on an undulating pavement, surgically slicing its skin, as unimpressed with their medium of travel as it was with me, their artificial waves trailing them, spreading out like a slow Japanese fan, criss-crossing at odd angles to their larger, slower cousins.

*          *          *          *          *

It’s been decades since I’ve been to the ocean, I realize as I leave the hospital in the cobalt light of the pre-dawn, but my feet remember the way.  With a nod to the stoic palms on Cass Street I turn left, and sand supplants cement.  I can’t feel its texture through my leather soles but it gives way deferentially under my weight.  I don’t break stride, even as the tiny waves make a play for my kneecaps.  When the water is deep enough I squat, submerging myself to the neck.

I am weightless.  I am a buoy.  The ocean cycles around me and through me and I am utterly unobtrusive.  It rocks me like a baby, lovingly indifferent to my will.  Tonight, I will dream of its momentum.