The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1 by Emshwiller Carol

Author:Emshwiller, Carol [Emshwiller, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2010-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

That feeling when you’re just a little bit drunk and you can suddenly HEAR… you can hear the ambience of a place… every little sound having meaning and a strange clarity. That’s the way small women hear things all the time. Notice every tinkle and thunk and respond to the inner implications. But she’s much too large for that kind of listening. Eardrum’s thick tickle. No finesse. Can make out only the lowest notes of any given piece of music. Eyes can hardly trace the line of demarcation between a leg and a hat in any given work of art. Where’s the artistic fulfillment in that? And what about the leisurely enjoyment of tiny cupcakes served on fine china? What about whispered catch-phrases… the flash of a signal that might be meant for her? And now, already a whole year has gone by and no art done. Nothing to show for it, not even one little clay pot or a part of a quilt or a sweater, not even a scarf to give to her husband . And everything refined or polished keeps slipping out of her hands, falling to the floor, and she steps on it. It’s more or less the same with all the impedimenta of everyday life. The knobs and switches made for finer fingers: her husband’s little dirty socks, his little bits of food and drink, his slippery little penis. (She sat on his glasses. She stepped on the cat.) How can she be expected to keep track of the details of life even though, as a wife, that’s her main job?

What she’d rather be doing is taking some part in his magic show. Go on stage with him. Stand beside him in the spotlight (all in sequins). Be sawed in half. Curl up in a box and have swords stuck into it. But she shouldn’t have to ask. He should ask her. He should have asked her a long time ago.

But now it is interesting that she longs to take a risk of some kind. Risk a grand gesture, perhaps even on stage. Risk… actually risk standing up to full height, aiming for the monumental mode. (It is clear that she suspects that she might be numbered among the ten tallest women. She wouldn’t dare think more than that.) And now she allows herself to imagine what it would be like to go on stage with her husband as the featured part of the act, in pink and silver and swinging her tassels. “Ever see…” for instance, “Ladies and Gentlemen, ever see a five or seven thousand pound… Ladies and Gentlemen, twelve or fifteen thousand pound woman perfect in… almost perfect in every detail, though can’t be exactly perfect because of the Square-Cube Law, which is why elephants are built as they are and, therefore, why she is as she is? When she steps on stage it is a moment suffused with an out-of-the-ordinary femininity… an out-of-the-ordinary roundness and fullness. Some of you may object,

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