The Dictionary of Failed Relationships
Page 29
Jack stood up and faced Marcy. “You suck,” he told her.
I said, “Yikes,” jumped up and pulled at Jack’s arm. He hung back, staring, lower lip slack. He looked as if he were going to challenge Marcy to a fight. Marcy’s husband stirred, realizing that he should do something. Marcy shrank in her chair. Paul’s mouth opened, food still in it. Jack took a loud, deep breath, as if he were going underwater.
“You . . .”—we all waited, motionless—“ really suck,” Jack finished. He swayed a little.
I said, “I love you.”
Jack jerked his head to stare at me. His mouth was open. Mine was, too. So I said it again, experimentally: “I love you?”
And I did. Why? Because I did.
“What kind of love?” Jack asked. His fists were loosening.
“You know,” I said. “Love.”
Paul snickered.
Jack just stood still for about nine seconds. Then he quickly pulled me to his chest and dipped me all the way backward until I could see the ceiling above his head. “Really?” he asked. “Really?” I nodded, upside down.
Jack pulled me up and kissed me deeply, in a way that showed practice, forethought, and intoxication. I kissed him back, with all the ardor of my own experience. This is Jack, I thought. This is crazy. I heard some vague heckling from the table beside us. But Jack kept stubbornly kissing me until everything else faded and we were left alone with this newborn thing that we had somehow created from nothing—strange, imperfect, so much better than the best of what’s around.
CONTRIBUTORS
Elizabeth Benedict is the author of four novels, Almost, Safe Conduct, The Beginner’s Book of Dreams, and Slow Dancing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; she is also the author of The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers. Benedict writes for many publications, including Salmagundi, The New York Times, and Tin House, and has taught writing for almost twenty years. She lives in New York City and Somerville, Massachusetts. (www. elizabethbenedict.com)
Judy Budnitz is the author of the novel If I Told You Once, which was selected as an Orange Futures book by the Orange Prize for Fiction judges, and of Flying Leap, a collection of dark, witty, and weird short stories. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Story, Glimmer Train, Harper’s, and 25 and Under.
Colleen Curran lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she is the associate editor of www.richmond.com, a commercial Web-zine. Her fiction has appeared in Jane and Meridian. She is finishing up a collection of short stories and working on a novel.
Maggie Estep has authored two published books, Diary of an Emotional Idiot and Soft Maniacs. Her third book, Hex, the first in a series of crime novels about horse racing, misanthropes, and Coney Island, will be out in March 2003 from Three Rivers Press; Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals, a collection of short stories and essays, will be published in fall 2003. Maggie’s work has appeared in The Village Voice, New York Press, Black Book, and on www.nerve.com, and she has performed her work on MTV, HBO, and PBS TV. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and likes to hang out at racetracks, cheering on long shots. (www.maggieestep.com)
Suzanne Finnamore is the author of The Zygote Chronicles and Otherwise Engaged. She lives in Larkspur, California.
Pam Houston is the author of a short story collection, Cowboys Are My Weakness, and a novel, Waltzing the Cat. She lives in Denver, Colorado.
Mary-Beth Hughes is the author of the novel Wavemaker II. Her short stories have appeared in a number of literary journals, including The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and The Saint Ann’s Review.
Shelley Jackson is most widely recognized for Patchwork Girl, a hypertext reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that has been compared to Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve. She has written and illustrated two children’s books: The Old Woman and the Wave and the forthcoming Sophia, the Alchemist’s Dog. Her new collection of stories is called The Melancholy of Anatomy.
Dana Johnson won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2000 for Break Any Woman Down. She is on the faculty of Indiana University, where she teaches creative writing. Johnson holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University and a B.A. from the University of Southern California. She was born and raised in Los Angeles. At present, she is working on a novel.
Heidi Julavits lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Brooklin, Maine. Her short stories have appeared in Zoetrope, Esquire, McSweeney’s, and The Best American Short Stories 1999. She is also the author of a novel, The Mineral Palace. Her new novel, The Effect of Living Backwards, will be published in June 2003.
Pagan Kennedy is the author of a novel, The Exes, and a biography about explorer and human-rights activist William Sheppard. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Erika Krouse’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Ploughshares. Her debut collection of stories, Come Up and See Me Sometime (Scribner, 2001), won the Paterson Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is currently living in Boulder, Colorado, and working on a novel.
Kathy Lette achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with Puberty Blues; afterward, she spent several years as a newspaper columnist in Sydney and New York (collected in the book Hit and Ms) and as a television sitcom writer for Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles. Her novels, Girls’ Night Out (1988), The Llama Parlour (1991), Foetal Attraction (1993), Mad Cows (1996), Altar Ego (1998), and Nip ’n’ Tuck (2001), became international best-sellers. Mad Cows was recently made into a film starring Joanna Lumley. Kathy Lette’s plays include Grommits, Wet Dreams, Perfect Mismatch, and I’m So Happy for You Really I Am. Her novels have been translated into fourteen foreign languages and are published in more than 100 countries. She lives in London with her husband and their two children.
Jennifer Macaire is an American freelance writer and illustrator living in France. A former model for Elite in Paris, she is married to a professional polo player and has three children. Jennifer has published short stories in magazines such as The Advocate, Bear Deluxe, and the Vestal Review. One of her short stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has also written a series of novels based on the life of Alexander the Great.
Anna Maxted lives in London with her husband, Phil, their son, Oscar, and their two cats, Disco and Tasha. Her first novel, Getting Over It, was published in June 2000, and her latest, Running in Heels, was published in May 2001.
Eliza Minot was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1970. Her first novel, The Tiny One, was published by Knopf in 1999. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their two children— succeeding relationships all around—and is at work on her second novel.
Susan Minot is the author of Rapture, Evening, Lust and Other Stories, Folly, and Monkeys, and she wrote the screenplay for the film Stealing Beauty. She lives in Maine.
Thisbe Nissen is the author of a story collection, Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night; a novel, The Good People of New York; and a “thing” called The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook (with co-author Erin Ergenbright), which is a work of fiction, recipes, and collages. Her new novel, which will have the word osprey somewhere in its title, is due out in 2003 (Knopf). Nissen lives in Iowa with her cats, Maisie and Fernanda.
Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon Books), a novel about four generations of Polish-American women. Her short fiction has appeared in many journals, including Tri-Quarterly, Shenandoah, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Sun, and her work has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
Rachel Resnick was born in Jerusalem, Israel. The daughter of a secular Talmudic scholar and a peripatetic Boston debutante, Resnick moved frequently as a child and into adulthood. Her concern with place and setting, paramount in her debut novel, Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, is an outgrowth of the constant moving she experienced as a child; so is a taste for travel. A graduate of Yale with an M.F.A. from Vermont College,
Resnick worked various jobs for years in film and television. She currently lives in Topanga Canyon, California, with her severe macaw, Ajax. Her work has appeared in publications such as Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Bakunin, The Minnesota Review, The Crescent Review, Chelsea, The Ohio Review, and The Los Angeles Times, and has been honored with a 1998 Pushcart Prize Special Mention. Following a stint as a private investigator, she is presently at work on a detective novel.
Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of What She Saw in. . . . Her next novel, a sequel, will be published at the end of 2003. She has published essays in The New York Times Magazine, the Sunday Telegraph (of London), and Creative Nonfiction, among other publications. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Michele Serros was still a student at Santa Monica College when her first book of poetry and short stories, Chicana Falsa, and Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard, was published. An award-winning poet and commentator for National Public Radio (Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered), Serros has released a spoken-word CD on Mercury Records and toured with Lollapalooza. Serros, who was called “one of the top young women to watch for in the new century” by Newsweek, made The Los Angeles Times best-sellers list with her collection of fiction, How to Be a Chicana Role Model. Currently living in New York City, Michele is working on a young adult novel tentatively entitled Notes for a Medium Brown Girl.
Amy Sohn is the author of the novel Run Catch Kiss and Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, the official companion guide to the hit television show. Her second novel, My Old Man, will be published in 2004. She lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and bred.
Martha Southgate is the author of the novels The Fall of Rome and Another Way to Dance. Her short fiction has been published in Redbook magazine and in various anthologies. She has held fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and is at work on her next novel.
Darcey Steinke is the author of Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, and Jesus Saves. She also coedited a book of essays on the New Testament with Rick Moody called Joyful Noise. Her work has appeared in Spin, George, Artforum, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as other places. She teaches at the New School for Social Research in New York City and resides in Brooklyn with her daughter, Abbie. Her new novel is called Milk.
Jennifer Weiner is the author of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes. She lives in Philadelphia.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Part of the joy of publishing one’s first book is the opportunity to thank everyone who has passed through one’s life. Sociologist David Grazian calls it an “exercise in performing authenticity.” I prefer to think of it as a public way of expressing my thanks to the vast number of people who helped to make my life delightful while this magnum opus gestated.
The first and most fervent shout-out goes to my family: Delma, Ray, Lauren, B.C., and Scott. You guys rule. Thanks to my agent, the incomparable Rosalie Siegel; Carrie Thornton, a friend, a generous critic, and a magnificent editor; Jonathan Ames, Dave Daley, Colson Whitehead, and Jerry Stahl, for the invaluable assistance with mapping the literary landscape. Thanks to my extended family: the Cranes, Hunts, Seatons, Alteveers, Kinseys, Johnstons, and Zikmunds, as well as my grandparents Ann and Tom Hedges. Love you all, and I wish Mary and Burnee could catch this episode. Many friends deserve special mention for their forbearance, kindness, and acceptance of a wide range of eccentricities: Kelly Gartner, Caitlin McLaughlin, Tanya Bezreh, Jordan Ellenberg, Sarah Manguso, Bill Hansford, Jerome Hodos, Dave Grazian, Sam Adams, Debra Auspitz, David Warner, Frank Lewis, Paul Curci, Juliet Fletcher, Deirdre Affel, and the entire Ill Hindu Posse.
The contributors to the book are the most talented, utterly fabulous group of writers I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. Thanks, gals, a billion times over.
And to the real Tony Columbo: Tony, thank you. If you hadn’t been such a prick, this book would’ve never come into being.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Meredith Broussard is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. A literature and arts critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia City Paper, she has also written for Philadelphia Magazine, the Hartford Courant, the Chicago Reader, and the New York Press.
All works are used by permission of the contributors. “Green,” by Susan Minot, originally appeared as “Green Glass” in The Atlantic Monthly. “Etiquette,” by Thisbe Nissen, originally appeared on Eyeshot.com. “Zero,” by Erika Krouse, originally appeared in Ploughshares as “The Good Times Are Killing Me”; copyright © 2002 by Erika Krouse. All rights reserved. Inc. Definitions are loosely derived from Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
Anthology copyright © 2003 by Meredith Broussard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. www.randomhouse.com
THREE RIVERS PRESS and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The dictionary of failed relationships: 26 tales of love gone wrong /
edited by Meredith Broussard.—1st ed.
1. Love stories, American. 2. Short stories, American—Women authors.
3. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 4. Dating (Social
customs)—Fiction. 5. Failure (Psychology)—Fiction.
I. Broussard, Meredith.
PS648.L6 D53 2003
813’ .085089287—dc21 2002152193
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42197-5
v3.0