The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970 by Lex & Martone Williford & Michael Martone

Author:Lex & Martone Williford & Michael Martone [Williford, Lex & Martone, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781416532279
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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AMY HEMPEL

In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

AMY HEMPEL (1951—) is the author of three collections of short stories: Reasons to Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, and Tumble Home. Her stories have been widely anthologized, appearing in such collections as The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. She teaches in the graduate writing program at Bennington College and the New School in New York City.

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“Tell me things I won’t mind forgetting,” she said. “Make it useless stuff or skip it.”

I began. I told her insects fly through rain, missing every drop, never getting wet. I told her no one in America owned a tape recorder before Bing Crosby did. I told her the shape of the moon is like a banana—you see it looking full, you’re seeing it end-on.

The camera made me self-conscious and I stopped. It was trained on us from a ceiling mount—the kind of camera banks use to photograph robbers. It played us to the nurses down the hall in Intensive Care.

“Go on, girl,” she said. “You get used to it.”

I had my audience. I went on. Did she know that Tammy Wynette had changed her tune? Really. That now she sings “Stand by Your Friends”? That Paul Anka did it too, I said. Does “You’re Having Our Baby.” That he got sick of all that feminist bitching.

“What else?” she said. “Have you got something else?”

Oh, yes.

For her I would always have something else.

“Did you know that when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied? That when they asked her who did it on the desk, she signed back the name of the janitor. And that when they pressed her, she said she was sorry, that it was really the project director. But she was a mother, so I guess she had her reasons.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “A parable.”

“There’s more about the chimp,” I said. “But it will break your heart.”

“No, thanks,” she says, and scratches at her mask.

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