The Virginia Quarterly Review gives us yet another look at what it is like to be alive. This one displaces old memories, both in me and in its characters.
It
takes spare time and some bit of love to appreciate the “teacup-and-doily
world” in which two old ladies live in self-imposed exile. The reward here had to do with something that
becomes a meditation as a person ages.
You begin to think about fate, and how it works, and how it is defeated, on occasion. The Greek and Christian
sides of that two-headed coin compete for your wavering faith. Competition is good, I have been told. Personally, I hate it.
Bobbie
Ann Mason’s story resurrects an incident which might have been trivial in many
other lives but which was pivotal in the girlhood of “Little Bit” and
“Puss.” Now, seventy years later, after
lives of “tabbyhood,” the incident rises up with new power to ally with a new
incident, which, like the older one, would have been harmless—not even worth
mentioning—in nearly any other life. But
not these. Mason’s story ends before we
see it unwind, but we know it is going to kill the older sister and ruin the
other. It will be an arrow tipped with a
poison compounded to kill only them.
Mason shows us that irony can have lethal persistence.
Lunch
at Harvey’s in Lexington, Ky., will remind us of the stubborn wrath of
god. If ever we thought God had grown
modern, Mason shows us that still he seeks atonements from the keepers of cold
altars. And, if you should prefer the
abstract, we can call it fate.
I
stopped. I remembered almost exactly
where to go. I pulled Mason’s first book
off one of my shelves. Inside was the
review from Time Magazine. It was early in
1983. It was one of those “Geritol
books” I dutifully swallowed— even in the midst of a killer business world
several times harsher than almost any other businessman would ever come to
know.
I
knew that one day, I would write, somehow—and make use of that degree—after the
kids were grown and after I had killed my final alligator. And so back then, and for that reason, I
grimly, dutifully read Bobby Ann Mason one-handed, while diapering with the
other and an elbow.
No,
you cannot expect a young man with the highest testosterone count ever recorded
to dote on stories of the life contained in a drop of pond water. But I am ready now. I am not confessing that I am a dried stick. But now, yes, it is right for me.
Plato
had something in the Republic about this (when he and his pals ran into
Sophocles), but that shall be another blog, sometime. Remind me.
Yes,
I forgive myself for breezing through her first book. However, The Horsehair Ball Gown has
unlocked it and this next read will be a good one, I predict. I shall give Shiloh and Other Stories
the thoughtful, watchful reading it deserved 30 years ago, when I zoomed
through it. It just did not happen to
fit my pistol back then.
Since
I believe that I write about what other people think about, I suspect that this
shall become a minor trend. Boomers
shall start to read. You heard it here
first. Border’s may simply have missed
it by a few years. Such a close
one! We will call them “Battered
Border’s Better Boomers.” By the way,
what do snotty literary critics mean by “Boomer angst?”
Now
remember, neighbors, The Horsehair Ball Gown is not going to be like
wrestling a drunk to the barroom floor and going home without a scratch to brag
about it. You are going to have to open
it like you do butterfly legs, and you will take it easy. Hear?
This is going to be like taking time with a woman that you want to see
again.
I
have always thought that Shakespeare is prized today for a lot of clever quipage
that was likely commonplace back then.
The point is, he saved it for us, and now we give him full credit for it
all.
Mason
does this too. “Going to heaven in house
shoes,” and “Tiptoe Day,” and “Better than sex cake” shall now live on and
on. Mason still has those “Burns and
Allen” moments. A case in point, the old
ladies politely listen to the waitress brag about her kid that goes to a magnet
school. When she leaves, they puzzle
over why any sane mother would brag on a child that is retarded or disabled. This will tend to happen to folks who have
not read the newspaper for 40 years.
It
seems that many years ago, when the two sisters were trying to survive their
childhood (with pretty-good, but typically imperfect parents), there had been
an older sister and one who had no pet name.
Geisel was wild.
The
youngest sister lied to protect Geisel and the middle one would not. They coerced Little Bit into an honesty that
backfired when their father barked so hard that Geisel ran away.
Foolishly,
Mom and Dad ignored her letters and so she stayed gone. Now the incident at Harvey’s in Lexington has
raised up dreams of this in Puss. This
rattles both of them.
Still
looking to fix things, Little Bit cannot leave well enough alone. Fate was laying for them in a little chain of
innocence—one end of it nearly forgotten, the other as fresh as two Thursdays
ago.
Offered by the
Booktender of the GOOD STORY Saloon – August 24, 2013
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