We’ve taken a little summer break but we’re very excited about the return of The Hinge Story! This month our featured writer is Susan Jackson Rodgers, whose second story collection, Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle Six, will be coming October 1 from our friends at Press 53 in Winston-Salem.
We’re happy to present her story “I’ve Looked Everywhere,” which originally appeared in Story Quarterly. Susan will be checking in through the afternoon of Sunday, September 30 to respond to your questions and comments. We look forward to what you have to say!
I’ve Looked Everywhere
I lost my cell phone yesterday. This afternoon I heard it ringing faintly from deep inside its hiding place: a totebag, purse, kitchen drawer, pocket? I tried tracking the sound—first it seemed to be coming from the bedroom, then the study—but just as I thought I was getting close, the battery must have lost power, or else the person hung up. I went through the possibilities. Not very many people have the cell phone number. You, my sister, my ex-husband, my massage therapist, my housepainter who is also, maybe, my boyfriend, though maybe not. I called them all, all except you and the ex-husband because he’d only call in case of an emergency and he’d try the land line first for that; and the housepainter, because I’ve called twice this week, and I don’t want to appear desperate.
I decided to go to the library, to return the overdue books, but remembered that they are lost too. Three of them, checked out two months ago, and the fines have almost exceeded the value of the books. One was a book of poetry that I used to keep by my bed, because after you left I discovered that reading poetry before I went to sleep produced interesting, poetic dreams. The other was a biography of a child actor; I love stories about people doing drugs. And the third I can’t remember.
I’m losing confidence, but not weight. I’m losing my glasses, my mind, my sense of balance. In yoga class I used to be able to do the Stork and now I can’t, I topple over like a badly constructed block tower. Everyone pretends not to notice because they’re practicing their serene yoga faces. I’m losing estrogen, instant recall, the ability to spell words I have always known how to spell. The stocks I own are losing money, have lost money, are worthless. The country I live in is losing wars—against drugs, fat, violence, stupidity, invisible forces we can’t name, enemies we’ve only imagined who now rightly despise us. I’m losing faith. Altitude. Ground. I’ve lost two husbands—one to heart failure, and one to a twenty-year-old—and children—one to her dreaded Peer Group, and the other to a cultish mentality about a particular heavy metal band that shall go unnamed. I lost my name, twice, and now I can’t get it back again. I’m losing elasticity, skin and otherwise. Losing perspective. Losing my appetite, but not for food. I’ve lost the receipt to the beige dress I bought for my daughter’s high school graduation that she said made me look like a matronly cow so I decided to wear the purple rayon pantsuit instead. Without the receipt, I’m stuck with the cowsuit, which hangs in my closet with many other articles of clothing my daughter has forbidden me to wear. I’ve lost my taste for older men because really, how much older can I go? I’ve lost my yen. For transatlantic travel, for driving a stick-shift, for falling snow, loud dinner parties, loud noise of any kind except certain rock bands from an entirely different era, late-night phone calls. I’ve lost the lyrics to that song that is nevertheless stuck in my head: baby please don’t go, something something something . . . . I’ve lost the left shoe from my favorite pair, the black sandals for whom I get regular pedicures in the summer, the sandals that I bought three years ago in Italy—you were with me. Do you remember the sandals? Where in God’s name does a single black leather Milanese sandal go? Is it at your house? Under the bed, perhaps, or in your closet, with your shoes?
Old friends. The desire to be first in line. The desire to go at all. The need to fit in, to do what I’m told, to accept second best, to fight the good fight, to be quiet. I’ve lost the remote control—forever this time, my car keys, a pair of $200 sunglasses I promised myself I would never lose, three skin cancers off my back, the directions to your sister’s summer house, the children’s baby teeth, many important documents that I’m certain I had signed by a notary public but did not, apparently, store in a safe place, a charcoal sketch of my childhood home, and the Maxime Le Forestier album I bought in Quebec in 1975. On the list of lost things also is the list of things I keep meaning to do, and the list of things I’m sorry I did, though when I wake up at four in the morning, there they all are, crowded around my bedside like eager dogs, pawing my hand, begging me to scratch their ears.
I’ve lost my place in the book I’m reading, the negative for the picture of us I wanted to enlarge (standing on the stone steps, Lake Michigan behind us), the phone number for the acupuncturist my neighbor recommended. Both parents and a brother, six dogs, eight cats, four hamsters, three birds, and, I’m not kidding, a pear tree, which died of blight. The instructions to the Cuisinart, the breadmaker I got for my second wedding—and you tell me where a breadmaker could possibly be hiding. The extension cord I swear I bought last week, this week’s TV Guide, my favorite pen.
I’ve looked everywhere.
Every day there’s something else, things dropping away like the careless removal of clothing or make-up after a party, like the diamond earring that slips from my fingers into the bathroom sink and down the drain, disappearing so quickly it seems to have planned its daring escape. We both watch it fall, incredulous, as if this kind of thing never happens. You kindly take apart the pipes underneath the sink (still wearing your handsome evening clothes, crisp white sleeves rolled up to your elbows) but the earring is gone. You straighten, unroll your sleeves, pluck the remaining earring from my palm and drop it into the drain just like that, without looking at me. And I can’t read the gesture, or the expression on your face; can’t decide if what you mean is, See, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a thing; or, Now the two earrings will be together forever; or, Through your terrible carelessness, your inability to watch what you’re doing, your consistently wretched sense of timing, you’ve sealed your fate, and mine.
There! Did you hear that? The phone—it’s ringing again. Three rings, four. Now is the moment when I realize I could have just dialed the cell number myself, and tracked down the phone. “Dur,” my oldest daughter would say. I stand in the middle of the room, six, seven, the afternoon light fading now, the shadows lengthening across the woven rugs. The rings stop. It must be later than I think, the way the light falls across the floors. The day must have gotten away from me, as it does sometimes. Does that ever happen to you? The day slipping by? Who knows where it goes. But it’s late, in any case, it’s starting to get dark, it’s getting dark a lot earlier now, and in the mornings when I go for my walk, there’s a chill, a dampness. Sometimes I wear a sweatshirt, my favorite one, faded blue, extra large, soft from many washings. The one you must assume, by now, that you’ve lost.
Susan Jackson Rodgers is the author of two story collections: The Trouble With You Is and Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle 6. Her fiction has appeared in journals such as New England Review, North American Review, Glimmer Train, Beloit Fiction Journal, Midwestern Gothic, Quick Fiction and Prairie Schooner. She grew up in Connecticut and New York City, taught for many years at Kansas State University, and currently teaches creative writing and literature at Oregon State University.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a stort story that can balance first person with second person like this. We obviously hear and feel what’s going on with the narrator, but it also fleshes out the mysterious “you” while still keeping enough of the mystery. As I go along, I ask myself if it’s the other ex, a former boyfriend, or a post-divorce fella. Is the housepainter in the picture because of or despite “you?”
But, regardless, “you” has (have?) a significant effect on the narrator – he’s driven her somewhat mad, I think, for better and worse, maybe totally responsible for it and maybe not. Insecurities, to me, seem to lie just on the other side of a fence – extraordinary confidence isn’t that far from questioning yourself on everything you do.
My one non-rhetorical question is whether this story, as it stands, came from one idea or did it reveal itself as you went along?
Thanks for the great comments, Whit.
I wanted to write a list story, and the idea of writing about “lost things” seemed promising. I love list stories that balance the concrete and the abstract (a brilliant example, of course, is O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”). When I wrote the first few sentences, I was pretty much in autobiographical mode. Who hasn’t misplaced a cell phone? As soon as that first “You” entered the scene, though, I realized this was not me speaking anymore.
As I kept writing, I discovered that this was a woman who’d been married a couple of times, was enjoying a dalliance with her housepainter, and had some other boyfriends along the way, among them, the “you” character. It was clear to me that she still felt acutely the loss of that “you”-guy.
So, the story definitely revealed itself as I went along. The character kept listing the things she’d lost, and every once in a while, she couldn’t help it, she’d address that “you,” the guy whose sweatshirt she kept without his knowledge. Those moments felt intimate to me–her way of staying close to him. She’s alone now, housepainter notwithstanding, and that sweatshirt provides some small comfort against what I guess is the chill of late middle age… loneliness… autumn…
Yeah, you’re right, it’s all driven her a little cuckoo. Maybe her hanging on to that sweatshirt is just the tiniest bit vindictive, too. At least, I hear a slight satisfaction in her last sentence. Like–”ha ha, I’ll bet you’re looking EVERYWHERE for this. Well–it’s mine now!”
I love stories and poems that draw images in negative space, as this story so artfully does. We learn so much about the narrator through what’s missing, and through her words, we see the objects (and people) that she may never see again. There’s something almost ghostly about it – almost everything we learn about her is already gone, and in this way, she seems to be fading away herself. Thus, each object in the list was a tiny bit heartbreaking for me as a reader. I especially love the diamond earrings, which seem to act as a temporary anchor to the list of things flying away. So much meaning is contained in those earrings that I was just about devastated when the other one was dropped down the drain – such a lovely moment.
My question, like Whit’s, is about process: This is a short piece (almost short enough to be called flash fiction), yet it’s self-contained, and wholly satisfying. When writing very short fiction like this, do you find yourself returning to the same characters again later, with an urge to continue their stories, even if only in other very short pieces? Or is a narrator like this contained entirely within her one story? She seems so intrinsic to this piece, to her list of losses – yet I wouldn’t mind meeting again. Does she return elsewhere in the collection?
Rochelle, I may have entered my answer to your question in the wrong spot! Sorry about that.
No problem! Thanks for responding. I can’t wait to read more of the new collection.
Thank you for sharing this story with us. I really enjoyed being whisked through a variety of emotions with each element of that list. Things could get really serious: ” The country I live in is losing wars—against drugs, fat, violence, stupidity, invisible forces we can’t name, enemies we’ve only imagined who now rightly despise us. I’m losing faith.” I almost cried at that moment, but then I would be laughing at lost items like the pear tree. (Probably laughing because whenever I kill a plant, I feel like a failure!)
When I read this story, I was reminded of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art,” and I am curious if that poem influenced/inspired this story at all? On a larger level, how do other writers influence/inspire your writing?
Thanks,
Bridget
Hi Bridget,
Oh wow! I just looked up Bishop’s poem–amazing, and my story owes a huge debt to it even though I don’t think I’ve read it before. Thank you so much for passing this along.
I’m hugely inspired and influenced by what I read. I love short story writers–William Trevor, Alice Munro, John Cheever, Antonya Nelson, Andre Dubus, Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Mattison, Tobias Wolff… When I read a story that dazzles me, I often reread it for structure. How does the writer get from the opening lines to the next paragraph? What associative leaps does she make? Where are the transitions? It’s such a mystery to me, how the magic happens, and while you’re in the middle of a transcendent reading experience, it’s like a dream–you can’t see how the thing is put together. So, I like to break it down on a second or third read, to see how it’s done.
I’m trying to teach myself to write a novel now, and I go back again and again to Evan S Connell’s Mrs. Bridge and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, trying to absorb those structures. Plus, the sentences! Swoony…
Thanks for the comments, Bridget!
Many thanks for the story! When I first read it this morning I knew I liked it, but didn’t know why. I suspect it was because it felt as much like a poem as it did like a story. (What do the others think?) I think it was the rhythm of the narration. Maybe all list stories feel that way. I’ve never seen a list story before, so this was a great read for me.
I guess you always knew this was going to be a short list story. Have you ever started a list story and then realized that some of the items in the list could be expanded to scenes in a longer story?
Hi Sandeep,
Hmm… interesting question… I do think items in a list story sometimes open up and suggest a larger “moment,” though I can’t recall a particular instance when I took an item and expanded it into a long scene. I’m sure that’s happened, though, in the process of composing. It’s all so associative for me, in the first draft stage anyway–I’m just trying to keep going from thing to thing, line to line, without getting in my own way, so that I can get those little surprising moments and leaps that give me (and, I hope, the reader) a jolt–you know? Something I didn’t quite expect.
In a small way, the detail about the diamond earring was something I expanded in the ways you’re suggesting–or at least, I pushed the detail into the next moment–thereby discovering the business about the party clothes and the drain and that odd interaction between the narrator and her lover.
List stories I love include Rick Moody’s “Boys,” Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (not a list story per se–but the story contains many brilliant lists), and Susan Minot’s “Lust.” A key thing about a list story, I think, is that it must rise above the list. It can’t JUST be a list. It has to take a turn at some point, and offer up something else besides a bunch of THINGS.
Thanks for the comments, and I’m glad you liked the story!
Hi Rochelle,
Thank you for your great comments. I love the “negative space” metaphor–that’s perfect. She does lose a bit of herself with each lost thing, and I think what made me saddest about this character’s story is her acute sense of regret: some of her losses are her own fault. But, I also saw a toughness in her, like when she lists things she’s glad she lost: “The need to fit in, to do what I’m told, to accept second best, to fight the good fight, to be quiet.”
To answer your question, I don’t tend to return to characters very much–though I like it when authors do this (Ellen Gilchrist’s wonderful Rhoda stories, for example). Short stories can be frustrating, I think, because you do have this sense of–well, what happens to her? What else is going on? Is this IT? But it’s funny, I do feel as if once I’ve finished a story, I don’t need to take the characters any further. They tend to exist in this one particular space and time for me.
So this woman doesn’t return in the new collection. At least, I didn’t think she did, until you asked your question… I just flipped through the book, and right after “I’ve Looked Everywhere” is a story called “You Again.” I must say, the protagonist of that story does bear a suspicious resemblance to the Lady of the Lost Things…
Susan,
Thanks so much for sharing this story. It was a delight to read. And I agree with Bridget’s comment about “One Art,” which is also very high praise.
As someone with a background in poetry, I’m always intrigued when poems pop up in other parts of our culture. I think that, as a country, we have an odd relationship to that art form. We use “poetic” as a term of deep respect, but we don’t seem to read many poems. That doesn’t bother me–there are far bigger problems than what people do or don’t read–but it is interesting. In your story, “poetic” dreams come from actual poems. I’d love to hear you talk about what relationship you see between poems and stories and poems and things that are poetic (if that’s not too hopelessly vague a question for anyone to answer.)
Ohhh it’s a beautiful question.
I love reading poems, and like my narrator, I often read them before I go to bed, though I’m not sure they give me poetic dreams. Sometimes I read one or two poems before I begin writing. Of course there’s the obvious thing that prose writers say, and it’s true: reading poetry helps tune your ear in to language, to rhythm, to meter, to sound.
But it’s more than that. Poets often make these gorgeous associative leaps, and those leaps are like little bursts in your mind as you read; they wake you up, they connect you to something deep and mysterious, or humorous, or scary, or painful, or disturbing. That’s what I love, is those leaps from one word or line to the next. It’s the part you can’t really teach when you teach creative writing, that hooking in to some subconscious place that’s beyond or outside of thought. You can help students get there with writing exercises and prompts, but if they can’t let go of thought and jump into that dream-like place–if they don’t have the desire to jump, or the imagination–I’m not sure you can teach them how. (And sometimes they CAN make the jump, but they have no interest in the next stage: revision.)
In poetry, there’s a “frisson” you get when you land on something that is both, for example, wildly illogical, and exactly right–exactly “true.” Maybe that’s the other thing: some poems seem to just lay out truths for the reader. As story writers, we’re all so busy with narrative and keeping the thread going and getting characters on and off stage–it’s bracing and thrilling to just hear someone …. say it. It’s clarifying. When I read a poem and then go work on a story, I can FEEL that clarity somehow, at least for a while.
Right now I’m reading Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap. I reread Marie Howe’s What The Living Do on a regular basis. And Stephen Dunn’s What Goes On is another favorite that’s been living on my bedside table for some time. I like reading a whole book of poems fast, and then going back to certain poems and reading them over and over.
I love recommendations of books of poetry, so please pass along your favorites, if you’re willing!
(I don’t think I really answered your question, but I enjoyed the attempt! Thanks, Jonathan.)
Hi Susan,
Thank you so much for sharing and discussing “I’ve Looked Everywhere” with us! I think it’s a beautiful story to read out loud, both for the anxious intimacy of the narrator’s voice and for the wonderful cadence of the sentences. I wonder if you could talk a little about the composition of the last paragraph? It seems to me to be very delicately balanced between the short sentences of observation–”the rings stop”–and the longer, rhythmic sentences (especially the last three–my favorite part is “it’s starting to get dark, it’s getting dark a lot earlier now,” which sounds both like someone talking to herself and also, to me, like poetry). Did the end of this story take a long time to compose, to get just right? How long do you usually work on a story? I was happy she kept that sweatshirt, by the way.
Hi Belle,
You are so right: this is one of my favorite stories to read out loud. There are a few “turns” in it, and you’ve identified the biggest one, which comes at the beginning of the last paragraph–”There! Did you hear that? The phone—it’s ringing again.” It’s almost like performing a monologue, at that point. The narrator is addressing the You-guy, but when I read this story for an audience, I’m addressing them, and that’s fun.
The balance between short and long sentences is instinctive, but further honed through revision. Writing for me is largely an act of listening. So I’m listening not just for the words but the sounds of the words, and the ways the sentences move and bend and loop, how phrases might accrete and accumulate, one after the other, either to build to a climax at the end, or to sweep up in the middle and then land gently down. None of this is conscious–I’m attempting here to put words to a process that’s difficult to describe. And, as I said, revision is key: rearranging the sentence parts, breaking up sentences that are too long or that are next to other long sentences. And paying attention to when the short sentence can pull the reader up and make a strong impact. Saving that “punch” for the right spot. Like this. So you pay close attention. Slowing the reader down, then speeding her up again. But it has to be meaningful; the form has to reflect the content.
So: “The rings stop.” That’s a more abrupt stop than, “The rings stop abruptly.” “The rings stop” makes the character stop, and makes you as the reader stop. Stop. Just the sound of it–stop! It pops, and startles. When I’m writing that line, I’m also standing there in that quiet afternoon room, with the fading light, and dust motes hanging in the still air–I can feel what it is to be in that place, and in her head, and so I hear the phone ringing in some muffled way, and then of course, I hear the rings cease. (“Cease”–too soft a sound for the same impact. Might work in a different context, though…)
And when I was writing that line, I thought, how stupid, readers will wonder–why didn’t she just call her phone, that’s what we do all the time to find the phone that’s slipped under the couch cushion or fallen behind the bed? So that thought strikes the character at the same time. I think I was reading Bridget Jones’ Diary when I wrote this story, and I like that “Dur” rather than “Duh.”
After the “stop”–she wakes up. It’s later than she thinks. It’s too late, for some things. The day is getting away from her. Her life is too. The question here feels plaintive to me–but also resigned. “Does that ever happen to you?” He’s not there, he’s not listening, her questions are more musings, rhetorical in nature–and yes, you’re right, she’s talking to herself, finally. But without self-pity (I hope). This is how it is. Tomorrow I’ll go for my morning walk. It’s chilly out now. I’ll wear that sweatshirt…
And to answer your question (at last!)–the end, that sweatshirt bit, came into my mind all on its own. I just saw the sweatshirt, with those tiny little holes, you know? The pinpricks that sweatshirts get when you’ve washed them a whole bunch? And I knew it was his, that he’d left it at her house at some point, and she wears it all the time now. The last line in a short story is the most important sentence, and I think in a short-short that’s even more true. Like the punchline of a joke: everything else has been leading to this moment. Endings are often a struggle. This one came relatively easily, something I’m always grateful for.
Sorry to go on and on! And thanks so much for the comments.
Hi Susan,
Thanks for your great and often slyly humorous story.
Like Sandeep, I was struck immediately and throughout by just how rhythmic your sentences are, both individually and in relation to one another– (e.g.,”I lost my name, twice, and now I can’t get it back again. I’m losing elasticity, skin and otherwise. Losing perspective. Losing my appetite, but not for food.”) That this is a story and not a poem (a possibility I wondered about as I read–especially in terms of imagining what earlier drafts of this piece might’ve looked like) is clear in that the sentences on their own don’t seem finally to be the basic unit of measurement by which we discern the overall meaning or thrust of the piece. In other words, unlike in a more formal poem, your sentences here really do depend upon one another for us to appreciate the drama inherent to, as you say, “…the business about the party clothes and the drain and that odd interaction between the narrator and her lover.” At the same time, I can think of many prose poems that achieve equivalent effects–and sometimes in ways the seem even more dramatic or piercing than they would if presented purely as prose. (This is not a criticism, incidentally, of your ending: it feels quite pointed and surprising, helping to answer the question whether the narrator will ever be able to hold on to anything.) With that in mind, you’ve mentioned your not having kept track of the order of decisions you made initially while working to develop this material. Was there ever a point later on as it became clearer to you what you were dramatizing that you were still drawn to leaving things in a more identifiably poetic form? Or if not a poetic form per se, then something less narratively standard? One thing I thought of at the end the story was that it felt, without actually being one, like a good old-fashioned letter, replete with all the stops and starts, full sentences and fragments that we’d find between two scribbling lovers (of yore?)–which, given the narrator’s concerns about becoming obsolescent, would seem to provide an ideal format in which to express, as I think she does throughout, her still considerable pride and defiance against all those folks and forces that are, from her estimation, reliable or not, turning a blind toward her.
Also, since you asked, here are a few other recommendations that I think might touch on especially well the notion of poetry making more associative leaps more regularly than prose: Anne Carson (“Men in the Off Hours,” “The Beauty of the Husband”, “Autobiography of Red”–actually a novel in verse), Louise Gluck (“Meadowlands”), James Tate (“The Oblivion Ha-Ha”).
Thanks for the recommendations, Jon–I love Autobiography of Red, and know a little of Gluck’s and Tate’s work, but not these books specifically. (The Oblivion Ha-Ha–I must have this book right now!)
And thanks for your wonderful comments and questions–all very thought-provoking. I think you’ve touched upon another note that the story (I hope) hits–not just melancholy and longing, but also…anger. That “defiance and pride.” Yeah, she’s a little pissed off, too. She’s sad she’s lost all this stuff, and her youth, and that she can’t remember where she puts anything, but she’s also pretty sure of herself–knows who she is, now, and yet the world isn’t so interested in older, self-assured women with complicated pasts. At least, I think that’s part of her attitude.
The sentences really do stand in relation together, as you say, through conscious repetition. Losing a name/losing elasticity/losing perspective/losing appetite. With a list story I’m always trying to think about (or get my students to think about) the different ways you can spin one word or concept. So–let’s write a list about, what, Broken Things–I’d start riffing, figuring out all the things that can break–a bowl, a heart, a bone, a promise; break-down, break out, break free, break through, break-up, break a leg; breaking a horse, breaking down a wall, breaking in new shoes…putting on the brakes. So much of the effect does rely on repetition, I think, so the reader can hear the narrator sifting and sorting through all the things (in the case of my story) that the narrator has lost. And juxtaposition is key, of course–those leaps I keep talking about.
The story wasn’t ever a poem or a letter, but I could definitely see writing the same material into one of those forms. Definitely! And because she does address that “you,” it feels very epistolary indeed. I think…hmm…I’d write it almost as a collage, lots of fragmented pieces, which would have the feeling of letters begun and never finished, never sent.
To answer your question about the decision to leave the story in a less narratively standard form: Here’s the truth, Jon. I suck at plot. “Plot” in the dramatic-structure sense: conflict, complications, climax, falling action, resolution…I never think about writing a story, and say to myself, Ok, who are the protagonist and antagonist? What is the conflict? How does the conflict resolve itself? I mean, yes, sometimes I write stories in that vein, but I usually don’t realize I’m doing it until halfway through the first draft. Certainly when you start out with an event that has a clear beginning, middle, and end, then the Freitag Pyramid is your go-to structure. But I’m not automatically drawn to that kind of story. I want to catch a glimpse of a character, someone at a certain point in her life; I want something more impressionistic and… poetic? I want to get right into the emotional heart, how things feel to the character, what it’s like to BE her or him.
I also started writing a lot of shorter stories (flash fiction, short-shorts…) when I had children. I had three children in pretty quick succession (“planned chaos,” we call it) and, well, I’ve spent a lot of years jotting down quick drafts of very short things, because I could at least finish them. I could shape and reshape a few sentences during the 20 minutes I had while two of the kids were napping and the other was at school. I’ve always kept writing notebooks and journals, and I tend to do the exercises I assign to my students, so I have these smaller pieces that grow out of that practice-writing. The less standard forms felt friendlier to me, and also more reflective of life: chaotic, non-linear, fragmented, strange. And the short-short is so beautifully compressed, so economical.
I’d say in the new collection the stories are about half and half–half Freitag-ish, half using other forms…
Thanks again. I’m off to order that James Tate now.