Object Lessons: The Paris Review Presents the Art of the Short Story by Lorin Stein & Sadie Stein

Author:Lorin Stein & Sadie Stein [Editors] [Stein, Lorin & Stein, Sadie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781250005984
Amazon: 1250005981
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 2012-10-02T07:00:00+00:00

He had stepped down off the porch to inspect the walkway where a couple slate tiles had strayed out of line. He was stooped over, prompting a piece back into place with his shoe. Here were weeds. Here were ants, too, crawling in a long contorted file.

Connie watched him, smoking hard and unhappily, still in the swing. “I need to say a few things. About my feelings,” she said.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and rejoined her on the porch. He leaned on the far railing, facing her. They were quiet a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m an oaf,” he said.

She answered that silently and with a brief, sarcastic smile.

He said, “I do want to hear.”

She looked at the ceiling.

“Okay, I probably just don’t understand then, Connie.” He brought his hands from his pockets, bunched his fingers, and consulted them. “Is it that you have a kind of fantasy about me?”

“God, no!” she said and clicked her tongue. “It’s actually a little more adult than that.” She pronounced the word “aah-dult.”

Her smile grew reproachful. “So you know all about my feelings.”

“Oh, I don’t think that.”

She said, “Since you’re Mister Perfect.” She began fussing with the cultured pearl in her ear. “Bet you wish I’d kept my feelings to my own fuckin’ self.”

It was one of the unhappiest conversations Buddy could recall. “I really don’t think any of that,” he said.

Connie’s long legs were folded now with her feet tucked to the side. She had the grace of someone who had been an athlete or a dancer. And she used her hands prettily, holding one in the other or touching the prim white collar on her dress. Her hair was fascinating—a gleaming black. But there was sorrow in her eyes, or so Buddy thought. They moved slowly, when they did move. Her gaze seldom shifted. Her eyes were heavy, and gave an impression of defeat.

He was thinking, patting his fingertips. He said, “I’ll tell you a few things about myself. The morning Matt died, by the time I arrived at the ICU and could locate Ruthie, my wife, she was standing with her face to a wall, clenching her diaphragm like she’d run a marathon and couldn’t breathe. So I tiptoed over and tapped her on the shoulder to show I was there. Only she didn’t feel it or was too distressed. At any rate, she didn’t acknowledge. I wasn’t sure. I just stayed there waiting. Until, when she finally did turn, she looked straight through me. So, what I did? I gave her this huge tick-tock wave. Like, hidee-ho.”

He smoothed his hair a few times. “How much have I thought about that! It was just a bad moment probably, a slipup, but it might’ve paved the way for this second thing, a situation I found myself in.”

He said, “My son was riding his Jet Ski, I don’t know what you heard about it.”

Connie’s head moved, no.

Buddy’s head nodded. “On the lake. He crashed into a fishing boat that had a couple of high-school boys.

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