Mendocino and Other Stories (eBook)

Ann Packer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2008 | 1. Auflage
256 Seiten
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Verlag)
978-0-307-48815-2 (ISBN)

Infos

With humor, wisdom and tenderness, Ann Packer offers ten short stories about women and men--wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers--who discover that life's greatest surprises may be found in that which is most familiar.

In the title story, on the anniversary of their father's suicide a young woman discovers that her brother may have found a 'reason for living' in the love of a good woman. In 'Nerves,' a young man realizes that the wife he is separated from no longer loves him but that it is his own life he misses, not her. The narrator of 'My Mother's Yellow Dress' is a gay man remembering his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy. In 'Babies'--which was included in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series --a single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can only be observed, not shared. In these and six other stories, Ann Packer exhibits an unerring eye for the small ways in which people reveal themselves and for the moments in which lives may be transformed.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Textauszug

MendocinoBliss is driving north on Highway 1, looking at the crashing Pacific. She would like to pull the car over and walk along the water's edge, but there is no beach here, only cliffs jutting out over the ocean. The mountains, the road, the water-it's so gorgeous it's getting monotonous. So she begins to make small promises to herself. If Gerald starts in on the beauty of the self-sufficient life, she will allow herself a solitary one-hour walk. If Marisa invites her to join in the baking of bread or the pickling of cucumbers or the gathering of fresh-laid eggs, she will invent a friend who lives nearby with whom she has promised to have a drink. These people-her younger brother, Gerald, and his girlfriend, Marisa (his R.F.L., as he calls her, his Reason For Living, and, really, this irks Bliss as much as anything else)-live in Mendocino County, two and a half hours north of San Francisco, a mile from the coast, in a small, isolated house of their own design. It is, Bliss remembers, a nice enough house, made tacky by a pair of stained glass windows that flank the front door-windows that Marisa made. She is, Gerald has said more than once, an artisan. Life for Marisa-and, now, for Gerald-is about using your hands whenever you can. Bliss has been tempted in the past to point out that your brain must contribute something to this equation, but she is determined to keep all snide remarks to herself on this visit. After all, it will be the first time she has seen them in over a year. And, too, today is the tenth anniversary of their father's suicide. She wants to be on her best behavior. Bliss would like to think that this reunion was Gerald's idea-a peace offering of sorts-but she is sure that Marisa is behind it. Even the way Gerald asked her sounded like Marisa: didn't she think it would be nice if they could 'be together' for a weekend. Until a couple of years ago-until Marisa-Gerald was a sensible man. Stodgy even, with his job working for a big accounting firm, with his careful haircuts and his fuel-efficient cars. They had a nice relationship, every four or five months Bliss would fly up from L.A. and Gerald would squire her around San Francisco, surprising her with tickets to chamber music concerts, with out-of-the-way Asian restaurants. They would exchange work stories, and, into a second bottle of wine, confide in each other the news of their most recent failures at love. It amazes Bliss that until this moment she never once realized it was because they were failures that they talked about them. Now Gerald has his success, and it is as if the two of them had never been anything but what they are now: wary, cordial. As Bliss turns from the coastal highway onto the road to Gerald and Marisa's property, she realizes that she has come empty-handed: no bottle of wine, no flowers, nothing. It would be worse if this were her first visit-she has been here once before, a year ago June, when Gerald and Marisa threw a housewarming party and she flew up for the day with Jason-but still, she ought to have something. So she makes a U-turn on the narrow road and heads back to the little store she passed a few miles back. She didn't get a very good look at the place when she drove by, and it's a disappointment. She was hoping for a little country fruit and vegetable stand, she could have bought a dozen dusty peaches and offered them as coals to Newcastle-Gerald, at least, would have gotten it. She'll be lucky if this place has a head of iceberg, it might as well be a 7-Eleven. She walks up and down the aisles, looking for something halfway suitable. The only beer they have isn't expensive enough to give someone as a gift, and when she looks at the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.11.2008
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-307-48815-2 / 0307488152
• ISBN-13: 978-0-307-48815-2 / 9780307488152