by Carlson, Ron
About a minute later she said, “What are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” I said.
Then she put her hand on my wrist, stopping it. “Don’t,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Elizabeth,” I said, kissing at her nape. “This is what we do. Don’t you like it?”
She rose to an elbow and looked at me, her face rock-hard, unfamiliar. “This is what we do?” Our eyes were locked. “Is this what you came for?” She lay back and thumbed off her pants until she was naked from the waist down. “Is it?”
“Yes,” I said. It was the truth and there was pleasure in saying it.
“Then go ahead. Here.” She moved to the edge of the bed, a clear display. The moment had fused and I held her look and I felt seen. I felt known. I stood and undid my belt and went at her, the whole time neither of us changing expression, eyes open, though I studied her as I moved looking for a signal of the old ways, the pleasure, a lowered eyelid, the opening mouth, but none came. Her mouth was open but as a challenge to me, and her fists gripped the mattress but simply so she didn’t give ground. She didn’t move when I pulled away, just lay there looking at me. I remember it as the moment in this life when I was farthest from any of my feelings. I gathered the empty cylinder and the portable gear with the strangest thought: It’s going to take me twenty years to figure out who I am now.
I could feel Elizabeth Rensdale’s hatred, as I would feel it dozens of times a season for many years. It’s a kind of dread for me that has become a rudder and kept me out of other troubles. That next year at school, I used it to treat Linda Enright correctly, as a gentleman, and keep my distance, though I came to know I was in love with her and had been all along. I had the chance to win her back and I did not take it. We worked together several times with the Democratic Student Alliance, and it is public record that our organization brought Robert Kennedy to the Houck Center on campus that March. Professor Whisner introduced him that night, and at the reception I shook Robert Kennedy’s hand. It felt, for one beat, like Western Civilization.
THAT BAD day at the Rensdales’ I descended the stair, carefully, not looking back, and I let myself out of the townhouse for the last time. The mud on the truck had dried in brown fans along the sides and rear. The late afternoon in Scottsdale had been scrubbed and hung out to dry, the air glassy and quick, the color of everything distinct, and the brown folds of the McDowell Mountains magnified and looming. It was fresh, the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, and the elongated shadows of the short new imported palms along the street printed themselves eerily in the wet lawns. Today those trees are as tall as those weird shadows. I just wanted to close this whole show down.
But as I drove through Scottsdale, block by block, west toward Camelback Mountain, I was torn by a nagging thought of Gil Benson. I shouldn’t have left him out there. At a dead end by the Indian School canal I stopped and turned off the truck. The grapefruit grove there was being bladed under. Summer was over; I was supposed to be happy.
Back at Ayr Oxygen, I told Gene, the swing man, to forget it and I unloaded the truck myself. It was the one good hour of that day, one hour of straight work, lifting and rolling my empties into the ranks at the far end of the old structure. Victor and Jesse would find them tomorrow. They would be the last gas cylinders I would ever handle. I locked the truck and walked to the office in my worn-out workshoes. I found two envelopes on Nadine’s desk: my check and the bonus check. It was two hundred and fifty dollars. I put them in my pocket and left my keys, pulling the door locked behind me.
I left for my junior year of college at Missoula three days later. The evening before my flight, my parents took me to dinner at a steakhouse on a mesa, a western place where they cut your tie off if you wear one. The barn-plank walls were covered with the clipped ends of ties. It was a good dinner, hearty, the baked potatoes big as melons and the charred edges of the steaks dropping off the plates. My parents were giddy, ebullient, because their business plans which had so consumed them were looking good. Every loan they’d positioned was ready; the world was right. They were proud of me, they said, working hard like this all summer away from my friends. I was changing, they said, and they could tell it was for the better.
After dinner we went back to the house and had a drink on the back terrace, which was a new thing in our lives. I didn’t drink very much and I had never had a drink with my parents. My father made a toast to my success at school and then my mother made a toast to my success at school and to my success with Linda Enright, and she smiled at me, a little friendly joke, and she clinked her scotch and water against my bottle of Bud and tossed it back. “I’m serious,” she said. Then she stood and threw her glass out back and we heard it shatter against the stucco wall. A moment later she hugged me and she and my father went in to bed.
I cupped my car keys and went outside. I drove the dark streets. The radio played a steady rotation of exactly the same songs heard today on every fifty-thousand-watt station in this country; every fifth song was the Supremes. I knew where I was going. Beyond the bright rough edge of the lights of Mesa I drove until the pavement ended, and then I dropped onto the red clay roads and found Gil Benson’s house. It was as dark as some final place, and there was no disturbance in the dust on the front walk or in the network of spiderwebs inside the broken storm door. I knocked and called for minutes. Out back, I kicked through the debris and weeds until I found one of the back bedroom windows unlocked and I slid it open and climbed inside. In the stale heat, I knew immediately that the house was abandoned. I called Gil’s name and picked my way carefully to the hall. The lights did not work, and in the kitchen when I opened the fridge, the light was out and the humid stench hit me and I closed the door. I wasn’t scared, but I was something else. Standing in that dark room where I had palmed old Oreos all summer long, I now had proof, hard proof, that I had lost Gil Benson. He hadn’t made it back and I couldn’t wish him back.
Outside, the cooked air filled my lungs and the bright dish of Phoenix glittered to the west. I drove toward it carefully. Nothing had cooled down. In every direction the desert was being torn up, and I let the raw night rip through the open car window. At home my suitcases were packed. Some big thing was closing down in me; I’d spent the summer as someone else, someone I knew I didn’t care for and I would be glad when he left town. We would see each other from time to time, but I also knew he was no friend of mine. I eased along the empty roadways trying simply to gather what was left, to think, but it was like trying to fold a big blanket alone. I kept having to start over.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Bigfoot Stole My Wife” in Quarterly West, University of Utah; Sudden Fiction International, ed. Thomas and Shapard, W. W. Norton; Dreamers and Desperadoes, ed. Lesley, Laurel, Bantam Doubleday Dell; The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 5th edition, ed. R. V. Cassill, W. W. Norton.
“Blazo” in Ploughshares, Emerson College, Boston; A Writer’s Country ed. Schell et al., Prentice Hall; The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, 2nd edition, ed. R. V. Cassill and Joyce Carol Oates, W. W. Norton.
“Blood” in McCall’s; dadmag.com online ed. Jonathan Black.
“The Chromium Hook” in Harper’s, October 1995.
“DeRay” in Gentleman’s Quarterly; Best of the West, Vol. 5, ed. Thomas and Thomas, W. W. Norton.
“Down the Green River” in The Southern Review; Salt Lake City Magazine.
“Dr. Slime” in Western Humanities Review, University of Utah.
“The Governor’s Ball” in TriQuarterly, Northwestern University.
“Hartwell” in Playboy; The Student Body: Short Stories About College Life, ed. John McNally, University of Wisconsin Press.
“The Hotel Eden” in Esquire Magazine, May 1997.
“The H Street Sledding Record” in Network, Salt Lake City, Utah; McCall’s; Insight, Arizona State University; Willa
mette Week, Portland, Oregon; A Literary Christmas, Great Contemporary Christmas Stories, ed. Lilly Golden, Atlantic Monthly Press; New Writers of the Purple Sage, Contemporary Western Writing, ed. Russell Martin, Viking Penguin.
“I Am Bigfoot” in Harper’s; This World (San Francisco Chronicle); Dreamers and Desperadoes, ed. Lesley, Laurel, Bantam Doubleday Dell; The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 5th edition, ed. R. V. Cassill, W. W. Norton.
“Keith” in Tell, New York City; The Peregrine Reader, ed. Vause and Porter, Peregrine Smith; Success Stories for the 90’s, ed. Nowman. Institute of Children’s Literature, West Redding, Ct.
“A Kind of Flying” in McCall’s; The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road, ed. Susan Stamberg and George Garrett, W. W. Norton; Literary Cavalcade (Scholastic Monthly); Las Vegas Life.
“Life Before Science” in Fiction Network, San Francisco.
“Max” in Carolina Quarterly, University of North Carolina.
“Milk” in North American Review, Cedar Falls; Neo, Salt Lake City; The Family Therapy Networker, Washington, D.C.; Best American Short Stories 1987, ed. Ann Beattie, Houghton Mifflin.
“Nightcap” in Salt Lake City Magazine, May 1997.
“A Note on the Type” in Harper’s; The Writing Path 2, ed. Petit, University of Iowa Press.
“On the U.S.S. Fortitude” in The New Yorker; Practical English Handbook, 9th edition, ed. Watkins and Dillingham, Houghton Mifflin; Voices Louder than Words, ed. Bill Shore, Vintage/Random House.
“Oxygen” in Witness, Farmington Hills, Michigan; American Short Stories Since 1945, ed. John Parks, Oxford University Press.
“Phenomena” in Writers’ Forum, University of Colorado; Best of the West, Vol 1, ed. James Thomas, Peregrine Smith; Higher Elevations, Stories from the West, ed. Blackburn and Pellow, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press.
“Plan B for the Middle Class” in New Virginia Review.
“The Prisoner of Bluestone” in Gentleman’s Quarterly, April 1996.
“Santa Monica” in Kaimana, Honolulu, Hawaii.
“The Status Quo” in Network, Salt Lake City.
“The Summer of Vintage Clothing” in Harper’s.
“Sunny Billy Day” in Gentleman’s Quarterly; Baseball Fantastic, ed. W. P. Kinsella, Quarry Press; Bottom of the Ninth, Great Contemporary Baseball Stories, ed. John McNally, Southern Illinois University Press.
“The Tablecloth of Turin” in Story; Sudden Fiction, Continued, ed. Thomas and Shapard, W. W. Norton.
“The Time I Died” in Carolina Quarterly, University of North Carolina.
“What We Wanted to Do” in Witness, Farmington Hills, Michigan; Harper’s; The Best American Humor 1994, ed. Waldocs, Simon & Schuster.
“Zanduce at Second” in Harper’s; Baseball Fantastic, ed. W. P. Kinsella, Quarry Press.
Thanks to the many editors who helped bring these stories forward. A special thanks to four people: Carol Houck Smith, Bob Shacochis, Gail Hochman, and Marianne Merola.
Praise for Ron Carlson
THE NEWS OF THE WORLD
“An exuberant, wise and wonderfully inventive evocation of the kinds of love and longing that never really go out of style. . . . It’s a story like ‘Life Before Science’ that conveys best the blend of tragicomedy, sheer optimism, sharp perception, and almost manic energy that makes Carlson’s work so distinctive—and so appealing.”
—Alida Becker, Washington Post
“There is in these stories a certain holiness bestowed on ordinary things, on ordinary lives, that is a powerful reminder of the late John Cheever.”
—John Irving
“Wonderful. . . . This is a genuine collection, each tale separately coherent but also full of cross-references of tone, theme and image, so that the whole finally resonates as a novel would. . . . Carlson convinces us over and over again that he’s just telling the truth, more than anything we’ll read in the paper this morning or see on the tube tonight.”
—Janet Burroway, Philadelphia Inquirer
“A demonstration of how much a skilled writer with a little passion and compassion can fit into the smallest of spaces. Very strong stuff.”
—Madison Smartt Bell
“Carlson knows how regular guys feel, and writes about it thoughtfully, wittily, expertly. The 16 stories in this collection . . . have more dynamism than you’ll find in ten other story collections put together.”
—Playboy
“Marvelous. . . . Domestic love of a very rare homey and affectionate sort is alive and well in the work of a writer who has acquired the technique to depict such values and situations with absolute integrity. No sentimental gushing here. . . . I read Carlson’s collection, racing from one good tale to the next, warmed by his familial passions in an otherwise wintry world.”
—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
“Quirky and thrilling. . . . His stories have something I’ve been hungry to hear, and his quiet, familiar style is so seductive, convincing, that I am led to believe that his ordinary people have elaborate, you could even say baroque, and not minimal lives; and they have speech too. A kind of friendly, naked, confidential prattle or ramble, not fancy but expressive and wide-ranging. . . . You’ll want to read these stories as fast as you can, and hope for more.”
—Alice Bloom, The Hudson Review
“Carlson makes it all credible, amusing and very refreshing. . . . Most of [the stories] are models of economy, packing a great deal of joy-in-life into a few pages. . . . Even Carlson’s sad stories are warm with love and humor.”
—Nancy Shapiro, St. Louis Times-Dispatch
“Ron Carlson has a lovely way with words. . . . Family life, its joys and its pitfalls, is a recurring theme in Carlson’s work, but he handles this material in such a stunning variety of ways that his chosen theme always strikes the reader as new and fresh.”
—Phil Thomas, Associated Press
“Every story is hilarious and the characters pleasantly eccentric. . . . [The stories] are pithy and energetic and, often, ironic, but always with a touch of warm human emotion.”
—Lorna Gold, Albuquerque Journal
PLAN B FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS
“Wise and witty. . . . A lovely collection. . . . Carlson is a very funny writer indeed. . . . It is a generous author who creates a world at once so messy and loving.”
—Geoffrey Stokes, Boston Sunday Globe
“At their best . . . [the stories] tilt the world just enough to give us a sense of how much we need it to stand upright.”
—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
“A gathering of tender and often humorous tales. . . . Ron Carlson is a brilliant comedic writer. . . . With its wildly humorous but truthful look at how much we can bend without breaking, Plan B for the Middle Class is a revealing—and sometimes unsettling—look at what we may really mean when we talk about ‘family values.’ ”
—Maxine Chernoff, New York Times Book Review
“Ron Carlson . . . is a master of the quirky, bittersweet domestic story. . . . Funny and well-observed.”
—Mark Bautz, Washington Times
“Carlson plunges you into each universe, filling your mind with tactile detail and epigrammatic dialogue. Having crafted these careful, concentrated renderings of emotional states, he gets playful, spinning funky little tales. . . . The title story is a masterful and charmingly funny drama of dreams denied and dreams secured. Another splendid story collection by the author of The News of the World.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“He does amazing things with astonishing economy. . . . Carlson restores to minimalism both its good name and its maximum punch.”
—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
“These stories display an extraordinary craft and maturity of vision. . . .
Carlson’s range—from quotidian to surreal, encompassing everything in between—is astonishing. . . . Wonderful. . . . Ron Carlson has become a wizard of the short-story form.”
—Patty O’Connell, Boston Sunday Globe
“It is Carlson’s sensibility as a perceptive, amusing and gracious storyteller that makes this collection so strong. . . . Everything we want from a story collection and just what we need.”
—Sheri Hallgren, San Francisco Chronicle
“There is substance and depth beneath the bizarre surface happenings. Mr. Carlson’s range is remarkable, from the quirky to the affecting.”
—Bob Trimble, Dallas Morning News
“The wonderful stories in Plan B for the Middle Class mix outrageously funny observations with bittersweet meditations on mid-life.”
—R. K. Dickson, Bloomsbury Review
“Honest and honed narratives. In these stories Carlson has made reading about the modest life irresistible.”
—Nancy Zafris, Cleveland Plain Dealer
THE HOTEL EDEN
“I was entirely and happily in Carlson’s thrall. The word ‘happily’ seems especially apt for this writer, who is a master of that rarity in contemporary fiction, the happy ending.”
—Margot Livesey, New York Times Book Review
“A strange eclectic mixture of some of the funniest and saddest stories ever to cozy up together in one volume. Some stories are brilliant and deeply moving; others are wild and surreal. . . . Affirms both the breadth and depth of this writer’s vision as well as the utter singularity of his voice.”
—Judith Freeman, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Carlson’s stories are authentic, honest, hilarious, and full of a kind of hard-won hopefulness. Again and again he achieves the perfect balance between understated humor and understated grief.”
—Pam Houston
“Pungent stories. . . . Hauntingly evocative.”
—Margot Mifflin, Entertainment Weekly
