David Gates «The Wonders of the Invisible World»

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Автор David Gates

Annotation

The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (National Book Critics Cirlce Award Finalist) offers up a mordantly funny collection of short stories about the faulty bargains we make with ourselves to continure the high-wire act of living meaningful lives in late twentieth-century America.

Populated by highly educated men and women in combat with one another, with substance abuse, and above all with their own relentless self-awareness, the stories in The Wonders of the Invisible World take place in and around New York City, and put urbanism into uneasy conflict with a fleeting dream of rural happiness. Written with style and ferocious black humor, they confirm David Gates as one of the best-and funniest-writers of our time.

David Gates

THE BAD THING

STAR BABY

THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD

VIGIL

BEATING

THE INTRUDER

THE CRAZY THOUGHT

A WRONGED HUSBAND

SATURN

THE MAIL LADY

David Gates

The Wonders of the Invisible World

My thanks to Gary Fisketjon, for his care, energy, taste and judgment.

Also to Will Blythe, Candy Gianetti, Reg Gibbons, Rob Grover, Sloan Harris, Jeff Jackson, Elizabeth Kaye, Tom Mallon, Helen Rogan, Michele Scarff and Denise Shannon.

To Amanda Urban.

To Cathleen McGuigan and my other editors at Newsweek.

To the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its generous support.

And to Susan and Kate.

For he said unto him,

Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

And he asked him, What is thy name?

And he answered, saying,

My name is Legion: for we are many.

— Mark 5:8–9

THE BAD THING

He has never hit me, and only once or twice in our two years has he raised his voice in anger. Even in bed Steven is gentle. To a fault. Why, then, am I wary of him? Obvious. Well, so if you’re wary of him, what are you doing here? Also obvious. For one thing, I have his baby inside me.

Ye gods, his baby. I think of it that way because he and Marilyn never had children, and what other chance is he going to get? But it’s not his baby, of course, nor mine.

The baby is its own baby. I think of it as a girl, because the idea of a tiny man inside me is, is, is what? Repulsive, I was going to say, though sometimes I think, A little man, yes, squeezed out into the world to do my will. But at other times I pray, Dear God, if You’ve made it a boy, go back, in Your time-scrunching omnipotence, and re-do the instant of its conception. Not forgetting to add, If it be Thy will. You know, the kind of thing God does all the time, going back and changing what His will is.

So I’m trying to take it as it comes; even that seems wildly ambitious. Two days ago, after Steven had finished working and I’d come to a stopping place, we climbed the hill up behind Carl’s house until we reached the power line. Steven put on his skis, I put on the snowshoes he bought me. I’m not to ski anymore, until after. Another thing I’m not to do is address Carl Porter as Carl; Steven sees it as a class thing. Slipping along by my side, he praised my walking in the snowshoes. “Big deal,” I said. “You put one foot in front of the other. ” “Ah, but that,” he said, raising his index finger, “is ofttimes the hardest lesson of all. ” Big joke with Steven is to intone fake profundities, raising his index finger to make sure you see he’s kidding. I thought, Right, I’m learning that. Being married to you.