A Blind Corner

by Caitlin Macy

Genres: Coming of Age; Short Stories; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

From the author of Mrs. and TheFundamentals of Play comes a brilliant and biting short story collection about pride, privilege, and our nagging need to belong.

In an era of “hot takes” and easy generalizations, this collection reclaims the absurdities and paradoxes of life as it is actually lived from the American fantasy of “niceness”. In Macy’s world, human desires and fatal blind spots slam headlong into convenient, social-media-driven narratives that would sort us into neat boxes of insider or outsider; good or bad; with us or against us.
 
Time and again, whether at home or in the age-old role of Americans abroad, Macy’s women see their good intentions turn awry. A woman who tries to do a good deed for an underprivileged child sees it go horribly wrong. A wife, attempting to be a good host to a friend’s strange ex-boyfriend, finds herself in a compromised situation. And, in the title story, a newlywed fancies herself a Euro-sophisticate until an accident reminds her just how truly foreign she really is.

In tales where shocking and sometimes brutal events disabuse characters of their most cherished beliefs, Macy forgoes easy moralization in favor of uncomfortable truths that reveal the complexity of what it means to be human.  

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 224

Sample

The Gearys had plans with Frances’s mother for Memorial Day, and the next weekend Ted’s firm had its corporate picnic, so they didn’t take possession of the rental cottage till the second Saturday in June. Their nearest neighbors, Annie and Tom Ziegler, were also their landlords. The weekend after the Gearys moved in, the Zieglers had a dinner party so that they could meet people. “Gotta initiate the newbies!” said Tommy Ziegler when he caught Ted buying a quart of milk in Cullen’s, the general store. He clapped him on the back. “Leicester tradition.”

A hundred miles from the city, the town of Leicester was less well known than other nearby towns where city people rented. Frances had chosen it for that very reason after trying and rejecting more popular towns in previous summers. Lucas was nearly two now. They were anxious to establish themselves somewhere—to start piling up those idyllic memories neither Frances nor Ted had had the privilege to enjoy as children. When Ted, returning with the quart of milk, told Frances they were invited to the Zieglers’ for dinner, she was pleased and a little bit excited. “Did you hear that, Lucas?” she said to the toddler sitting in the high chair as she cut up toast for him in the cottage’s funny old kitchen with the coffee percolator and the three-quarter-size pull-door fridge. “Mommy and Daddy are already making friends in Leicester!”

“Oh, jeez!” Ted called back through the screen door as he went to get his bicycle out of the shed. “Remind me to get a printout of the lease and sign it!”

“We haven’t signed the lease?” Frances said worriedly. Late in the spring she had driven up from the city and found the place. Ted had said he would deal with the paperwork.

“We sent them a check last month! I just kept forgetting to mail the thing!”

Taking Lucas for a walk in the stroller that afternoon Frances caught Annie Ziegler outside her house, weeding her flower beds. Though she had crow’s-feet and a weathered face, Frances’s landlord wore her hair in two braids, like a little girl. She sat back on her heels, trowel in hand, and waved away Frances’s apology about the lease. “Please—no worries, Frances! No worries at all!” She spoke in a quiet, silvery voice that sent shivers down Frances’s spine.

“So who’ll be there tonight?” Frances asked genially.

“Oh, you know…” Annie waggled her fingers at Lucas. “The usual suspects.”

  

Frances had already put Lucas to bed when the babysitter arrived—a reticent older woman from town called Mrs. Deans. Frances showed her in and went to finish getting ready. She looked critically at herself in the old, de-silvered mirror above the ramshackle chest of drawers. The chest, like most of the furniture in the cottage, had been perked up with a coat of white paint. Touching her string of beads with her fingertips, Frances felt unhappy, wondering how she and Ted would measure up. Ted could be difficult. Reticent by nature, he would suddenly speak up at the most inopportune moments. And he didn’t suffer fools. When he emerged from the shower, Frances watched him in the mirror toweling off. After a moment, she said irritably, “Can you please, please make an effort tonight? Can you please not judge everyone right off the bat? Can you please just go along to get along?” She looked back at her reflection and frowned, then tried a smile and turned her head from side to side. “I wonder what she’ll serve. I wonder if they’ll drink…God, I hope it’s not like Grenville. I hope it’s not a huge bore.”

  

“I hope you like rosé!” she said unctuously to Annie Ziegler half an hour later, handing over a bottle of wine. She was in apologetic mode because, after walking the fifty yards of cracked, country hardtop that separated the cottage from the Zieglers’ main house, she and Ted had gone to the wrong door—the front door, which had to be unlocked in three places and pried open amid clouds of dust—rather than the side door that everyone else had known to use.

“It’s not expensive, but Ted and I love it.”

“That is so thoughtful of you, Frances!” Annie beamed. “So thoughtful. Thank you! And you too, Ted. Now, Ted, you go on out to the porch—just follow the noise—and Frances, you come with me. Come meet the gals.”

As Frances was led away to the kitchen, she glanced back at Ted and gave him a meaningful look. Ted held up both hands with his fingers crossed—being facetious. Be nice! she mouthed, and tried to look severe.

In the kitchen, three women were standing around an island beneath a pot rack, big goblets of wine in their hands. The kitchen had been renovated in that anodyne, any-town style of glass, apothecary-type cabinets and marble counters. The first thing Frances noticed, as the women turned with what looked to be a mixture of curiosity and welcome, was that one of them was old enough to be her mother. As Annie introduced Pam Carmichael and Theresa Dowe and Pilar—who had a complicated surname involving de—Frances concentrated very hard, repeating the names to herself: Pam Theresa Pilar, Pam Theresa Pilar. She was reading a book on improving one’s memory, and immediate repetition was one of the author’s tips. Pam Theresa Pilar, Pam Theresa Pilar. “Now, Theresa’s in the city during the week like you and me,” Annie went on, pointing. “Pilar and Felipe moved back to Argentina two years ago, but, if you can believe it, they still make the pilgrimage to little ol’ Leicester in the summers! And Pam used to be in the city, but she and Chappie retired up here, so now they’re year-rounders.”

“Oh—how great,” said Frances. “I’d love to move to the country!”

“Would not we all?” said Pilar with a jokey grimace. She was a tall, striking woman of about forty, with dark hair pulled back into a twist. She wore a colorful cotton dress and spoke English slowly and with an intriguing accent—later on, Frances found out she was Spanish, from Madrid; her husband was Argentinean. “Too bad some of us have to hold down the job!”

“You’re so right!” Frances said quickly, and “I’ll have white—thank you!” when Annie held up two bottles of wine. She gulped quickly at the glass she was given, feeling unaccountably nervous. “Whenever I say I want to leave the city, Ted says, ‘And what would I do for a living, pray tell?’” She laughed. “I quit when we had the baby, so I really can’t talk.”

This set off a flurry of interest, warm and encouraging.

“How old?”

“Aw, that’s a great age.”

“Ees it a boy or a girl?” asked Pilar. Only Theresa Dowe stayed silent—standing back and observing the exchange with a sardonic look on her face that made Frances blanch. Oh God, what did you do this time? she could hear Ted asking her at the end of the night. Nothing! Frances made her imaginary protest. I swear!

“It’s true what they say, Frances—the hours and days drag,” Annie Ziegler opined softly.

“But the years,” the older woman broke in, “they just fly, don’t they?” This was Pam. Pam Carmichael. Preppy Pam, Frances thought. Another technique the memory book had suggested was putting a descriptive epithet with a name. “Trust me—they go like that!” Pam snapped her fingers. “Y’all are sitting there telling bedtime stories and then, boom, it’s off to college!”

Frances smiled gratefully. Pam was a bosomy brunette, dressed in that tailored style that evokes the Reagan era. She wore a polo shirt and loud pants and tended to a wicker purse on the counter in front of her. Frances quickly assessed that Pam wasn’t the kind of person she would have naturally befriended in the city. There was the age difference, and no doubt she would turn out to be politically conservative. But Frances had a contrarian streak—it had brought her to Leicester in the first place—and she had a soft spot for the South, having lived there briefly; Pam’s y’all took her back to that sunny, carefree year after college when she had lived in a group house and worked at a menial job. She was beyond tired of their crowd in the city. She was fed up to here with the “urban liberal clusterfuck,” as she put it—bored silly by her and Ted’s peers’ predictable pretensions and child-brilliance one-upmanship: Miles is finishing his opera in his spare time. Stella has taught herself Sanskrit.

“It’s not Dowe anymore,” Theresa was saying testily to Annie. “I told you, I went back to my maiden name. It’s Perkins. I go by Perkins now.”

“In Madrid it is not really done—for a woman to change her name,” observed Pilar.

“Gosh, I been Carmichael so long,” Pam said cozily, “I wouldn’t know myself as Pam Blanchard.”

Frances smiled doggedly but felt a prick of despair when she stole a glance at dour Theresa. She had barely arrived in Leicester, and yet the one woman who was exactly her age seemed to have taken against her. Any awkwardness, though, was covered up by a roar of laughter from the porch. “Come on! Let’s go eat before they get too drunk!” said Annie.

“Who, them?” Pam said dryly, and the others laughed.

As the women made their way through the living room, the back strap of Frances’s sandal fell down, and she knelt to tighten it. “Here, let me hold that.” Annie relieved Frances of her glass of wine. She leaned over and murmured, “Don’t worry about Theresa. She’s just bitter about her divorce.”

“Um, er…Theresa?” Frances straightened up, unable to think of how to respond to this.

“In the jeans and the blouse?” Annie said. “Her husband dumped her and ran off with his secretary. Three little kids at home. So she’s kinda hating life these days. Once she gets to know you, though, there’s not a more loyal friend in the world.” Annie handed back Frances’s glass of wine. “So, who do you have babysitting tonight?” When Frances told her, Annie stopped short and shook her head. “Oh, dear God—Shirley Deans. Bless you, Frances. She’s still at it. With her little index card in Cullen’s…”

“She’s okay, isn’t she?” Frances said anxiously. “I mean, she’s all right—right?”

Annie made a dismissive gesture. “She’s fine—she’s totally fine. Once there was a—not exactly an incident…you can ask Pilar.”

Frances found she was shaking. She stood, paralyzed, in the dim hallway that led to the porch. “Oh my God. I just—I didn’t know anyone! She had so many references! Should I go home?” she asked Annie. “Do I need to leave?”

“No, no, no! Oh God—I’m not being clear!” Annie gave Frances’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “She’s fine at night when the kids are asleep. She’s absolutely fine. Responsible—whatever. It’s just—” She hesitated. “She likes to discipline them. Even the little ones.”

“What?”

“Frances, we all used her. She’s the only game in town! Or was. But you know what? Here’s what you do.” Annie moved her face in close to Frances’s, as if to make sure she was paying attention. “You tell her when you get back tonight that for the rest of the summer, Tara Ziegler is babysitting for you.”

“Your daughter?” Frances was so grateful and relieved, her voice cracked.

“My one and only.” Annie’s smile was warm and empathetic. “How easy is that, right? You won’t even have to drive her home. She loves kids, and she loves babies and toddlers. Just super-maternal, my Tara. And she’ll play with him and everything, not just sit there on her phone like some of these kids.”

“Oh, that would be great!” Frances swallowed. “Would it be too weird if—I mean, is it okay if I text her right now?”

Annie shrugged. “Sure! She’s over at Neal’s—her boyfriend’s. Go ahead.”

The two women got their phones out, and Annie shared her daughter’s contact. It didn’t work at first; they had to step back into the living room to get service. “Leicester all the way,” said Annie. “We’re in our own private Idaho here, I’m telling you.”

“I can give her regular work!” Frances said. “Please tell her—a few hours every afternoon, and nights! Here. I’m writing it right here: ‘I would like to hire you…’ A couple nights a week! At least, Annie! I mean—I’d love to sew her up if I can! It can be so hard in towns where you’re new…”

“You don’t know who to trust!” Annie concurred as they went out onto the porch finally.

“Oh, look—she already texted me back! God, I can’t thank you enough.”

Annie put up a hand. “Please! Leicester’s like this—we help each other out.”

Frances was still so shaken that she took a second to get her bearings on the screened porch and drank what was left in her glass. Her eyes sought Ted’s, but he didn’t look her way. He was holding a drink and standing between their host, Tommy Ziegler, and another, older man who was meticulously clean-shaven in a jacket and bow tie with his hair slicked down. This must be Pam Carmichael’s husband. Ted looked very serious—alarmingly serious. Frances felt a pang of fear, but then he laughed, throwing his head back—“Ha-ha! That’s a good one!”—and she let out a breath. Now she could relax.

  

The nine adults sat at a long table that almost filled the screened porch. Frances had to mince around the corner of the table to squeeze herself down into her seat. She loved that the Zieglers were game to mush in as many guests as they could. As the others came to the table, it was all very cheerful but in the low-key, almost professional way of people who socialize together a lot. The table was covered in a blue print tablecloth but set with paper plates. Frances liked that too—the lack of pretension spoke directly to some cherished part of herself that she’d had to bury, occupied as she and Ted had been these last several years with the getting and spending, the relentless push toward advancement and the jockeying for position that living in the city entailed.

“Annie always uses paper plates,” Pam Carmichael explained to Frances from across the table as she settled her wineglass at her place and then herself in her chair. Tommy courteously stood behind the older woman to push her in—“Here you go, Pammie”—then went outside to the deck to tend a gas grill. “It’s her thing,” Pam said.

“That’s right,” said Annie, standing at the foot of the table. “And I always serve the same thing, don’t I? Don’t I?” she repeated, tapping on her glass with a knife.

“Steak, baked potatoes, and a green salad,” recited the others as the stragglers—Pilar and her husband, who had been sharing a cigarette outside next to the grill—came to the table. “Feelsy habit—just feelsy,” said Pilar. “I apologize for my bad manners.”

Annie introduced Frances to the men and Ted to the women. Every time she used Frances’s name—which she did frequently, in that kindly, hyper-inclusive way Frances associated with yoga teachers—Frances felt prickles on the back of her neck. “Now, Frances…”; “I want to make sure, Frances…” Pilar’s husband, Felipe, took the seat diagonally across from her. The Argentine had a dark fall of hair over his forehead and wore a sweater tied around his shoulders, European-style. He removed it and hung it carefully on the back of his chair. “It ees wonderful to meet you,” he said, locking eyes with Frances, who flushed and had to look away.

Tommy Ziegler banged through the screen door with a platter of meat. “Got a rare one for you, Felipe—you can see where the jockey hit it!”

Amid laughter, a voice called out, “Everyone good for drinks?” This was Chappie Carmichael, the man in the bow tie and jacket. He was standing in front of a low drinks table—a card table with a gingham cloth over it—that had been set up by the door. “I already made yours, Pammie.”

“Aw, thanks, babe!” Pam turned back to the table. “Love my Chappie.”

“I could use another!” someone down the table piped up. It was Ted. Frances looked at him in alarm. He was doing exactly as she’d asked—he was being polite; he was being affable, even, and sociable, which went against his nature. In order to do that, she realized, he was having to get lubricated.

“What was that, Ted? G and T?”

“That’s right! G and T-T-T it is!” The two of them guffawed as Ted half stood and passed his glass to Chappie, apparently at some inside joke already established between them. Frances crushed her napkin against her thigh under the table. There was nothing she could do. She would just have to hope he didn’t get so drunk that he did something stupid and ruinous. She pasted on the most ingratiating smile she could muster. She was willing to work overtime, do anything she could to make this happen. She just couldn’t face starting over in a new town—not again. Having to find out where the farmers’ market was and how to get a dock sticker…

Annie had gone on explaining, for Frances’s benefit,. . .