Chick lit: A genre of fiction that often recycles the following plot: Girl in big city desperately searches for Mr. Right in between dieting and shopping for shoes. Girl gets dumped (sometimes repeatedly). Girl finds Prince Charming.
This Is Not Chick Lit is a celebration of America’s most dynamic literary voices, as well as a much needed reminder that, for every stock protagonist with a designer handbag and three boyfriends, there is a woman writer pushing the envelope of literary fiction with imagination, humor, and depth.
The original short stories in this collection touch on some of the same themes as chick lit–the search for love and identity–but they do so with extraordinary power, creativity, and range; they are also political, provocative, and, at turns, utterly surprising. Featuring marquee names as well as burgeoning talents, This Is Not Chick Lit will nourish your heart, and your mind.
Including these original stories:
“The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Two Days” by Aimee Bender “An Open Letter to Doctor X” by Francine Prose “Gabe” by Holiday Reinhorn “Documents of Passion Love” by Carolyn Ferrell “Volunteers Are Shining Stars” by Curtis Sittenfeld “Selling the General” by Jennifer Egan “The Seventy-two-Ounce Steak Challenge” by Dika Lam “Love Machine” by Samantha Hunt “Ava Bean” by Jennifer S. Davis “Embrace” by Roxana Robinson “The Epiphany Branch” by Mary Gordon “Joan, Jeanne, La Pucelle, Maid of Orléans” by Judy Budnitz “Gabriella, My Heart” by Cristina Henríquez “The Red Coat” by Caitlin Macy “The Matthew Effect” by Binnie Kirshenbaum “The Recipe” by Lynne Tillman “Meaning of Ends” by Martha Witt
Praise for This Is Not Chick Lit
“This Is Not Chick Lit is important not only for its content, but for its title. I’ll know we’re getting somewhere when equally talented male writers feel they have to separate themselves from the endless stream of fiction glorifying war, hunting and sports by naming an anthology This Is Not a Guy Thing.”—Gloria Steinem
“These voices, diverse and almost eerily resonant, offer us a refreshing breath of womanhood-untamed, ungroomed, and unglossed.”—Elle
Release date:
August 1, 2006
Publisher:
Random House
Print pages:
336
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They’re married, but not to each other. Nat unlocks the door and then steps back, to let Ella go in first. The hotel room is high-ceilinged and square, and a double bed takes up most of it. On the bed is a cream-colored quilted spread. Pale heavy curtains frame the window; thinner, translucent ones obscure the view. The carpet is thick and cocoa-colored. There is an ornate bureau, imitation French, and a gilt-framed mirror. The room is close and airless. They have no luggage. Ella moves ahead of him, stopping near the bed. She’s in her late twenties, and thin, with long chestnut-colored hair. She turns, so that she won’t see herself in the mirror. She stands facing away from him, looking down. She has never done this before. She hardly knows this man, and this is a terrible mistake. She has made a terrible mistake, coming to this airless room with someone who, it turns out, is a stranger. She stands motionless, awaiting perdition. Nat follows her into the room. He has never done exactly this before, either, never done anything quite so bold and crude as to rent a hotel room at lunchtime. What he did was always out of town, with women he never intended to see again. It was mostly in Los Angeles, a place full of beautiful, willing girls, happy to be taken out for dinner and then back to his hotel. Those encounters had been brief and distant. But this, now, is in his own city, only blocks from his own apartment, with a woman he does want to see again, and he’s afraid he’s starting something large and irreversible. What it means is the end of his marriage. He won’t be able to go on like this; he’s going too far. This is reckless, indefensible, and he’s doing it in the name of lust, which is, right now, notably absent. He understands that coming here was a mistake, though he believes he loves this woman. He wonders if today can be salvaged. Perhaps it’s the room— should he have gotten a bigger one? But no: it’s the silence, the immobility of the room that’s the problem, the implacably fixed furniture, the hushing carpet, the heavy curtains, the whole place awaiting human animation. He likes looking at her. She’s small and slight, with a polished curtain of hair spilling down her back. Her head is bent. Ella is looking down at the bedspread, waiting for the worst. It is shameful, it is excruciating, that she’s become part of this. What if she’s seen by someone she knows, in this corridor of bedrooms, with this man who is not her husband? What is she doing here at lunchtime, with a man she hardly knows? She can’t look at him. She can feel his presence—large, solid, he’s much taller and stronger than she is—as he stands behind her. She’s now obligated to go through with this, since she agreed to come. It feels like an execution. She dreads his touch. She thinks of her husband. He’s downtown right now, in his office, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders. He’s on the phone, or making a point to someone—he loves making points—or having another cup of coffee. He’s doing something completely ordinary. He’s not betraying her utterly, betraying her to the bone, though he has. But he’s not doing it right now, and she is. She could call him, there’s an ivory phone on the table by the bed. He’d answer at his desk, his voice familiar. “Hello?” It was a mistake, but she has to go through with it. She is obligated: of course she knew what it meant, meeting at the Plaza for lunch. Now she will have to have sex with him in this strange airless room. She will have to offer him her naked body. She would rather die. Nat steps closer to her. It was a mistake, that’s all. He turns her body to him and glimpses her grieving face. He puts his arms around her and stands still, holding her close without moving. He can feel her, rigid and fearful. He says nothing, embracing her quietly. It’s a mistake, that’s all. What he wants is for her not to be miserable. He holds her until he feels her quiet, until she understands that she is safe; that all he wants from her is this close holding, this understanding.
TWO
They’re married, and now to each other. The divorces were tumultuous and unhappy, but Nat and Ella persevered. They weathered the storms, they made their way determinedly through the torment toward each other. Now they have been married for nine years, and they love each other. They’re knitted deeply into each other, and they warm themselves at each other’s hearts. They long for each other, and their bodies teach each other pleasure, but they fight terribly. They say unforgivable things to each other. Once, Nat took Ella violently by her shoulders. “You make me so angry,” he said. “Someday I’m going to kill you.” Ella, beside herself with rage, was pleased. “Fine,” she told him, satisfaction in her voice. It seemed a vindication, proof of something. When they are not fighting they are happy, drunk on each other, but when they fight, Ella fears they will split apart, and if they split apart, she fears it will be the end of her. She can’t imagine herself, if this marriage fails. She can’t imagine her life if Nat were to leave her. She can’t imagine her existence without him; it would be black and meaningless, the void. It is terrifying to her, this prospect, like falling into deep space. She knows, in one part of her mind, when she is calm, that this is absurd. She has her own life, with friends and a career—she is a literary publicist, and has founded her own agency. Her life won’t really be over if she and Nat split up. Still, there are times, when they are fighting, when rationality is not available. She has trouble breathing, and she thinks of the blackness of deep space, which seems to be waiting for her. Now they are driving from Florence to Siena, along a narrow, crowded motorway. The cars around them are lunatic: on the left, Maseratis and Mercedeses pass at a hundred miles an hour; on the right, huge trucks sway dangerously, taking up one and a half lanes. Behind them headlights flare constantly, signaling them to move over. For half an hour they have been driving in hostile silence. Nat breaks it. “I just don’t know why you couldn’t have gone on to the market yourself.” “I just don’t know why you couldn’t have waited for me, with the car. Or given me the car,” Ella says. “I don’t know why you have to decide what we do and when we do it.” Nat makes an exasperated sound. “I see,” he says, “ I decide everything. Is that what you think?” “Do you think I decide anything?” “Do you think you don’t decide anything?” They get into these maddening, circular series of questions, each challenging the other, losing the point, going off on tangents, becoming increasingly angry. Nat is exasperated by Ella’s self-centeredness. How can she not know that everything he does is with her in mind? What he wants is for her to be happy. This entire trip—Florence and Siena, the churches, the old hotels, the views—was for her. The impassive faces of the holy martyrs, the mysterious half-smiles of Madonnas. It’s early spring, and wildflowers star the long pale grasses in the fields. This was all meant to make her happy, and why does it not? “I decide nothing!” Ella says, furious. “Nothing at all! You decide where we go, where we’ll have dinner, what time we’ll leave in the morning, what we’re going to see, everything. You even keep my passport! I don’t even carry my own passport!” “I keep your passport with mine, and with our tickets,” says Nat, reprovingly. His face has darkened, his mouth tightened. She has broadened her attack, flailing wildly about, as always. “It’s just so I’ll know where everything is. If you want your passport, Ella, of course I’ll give it to you.” “I don’t care if I have my passport or not,” Ella says wildly. She feels trapped by him, helpless; he seems both reasonable and unjust. She knows it’s practical for him to keep the passports. Yet why should he have hers? “Did you not want to come to Italy?” Nat turns his head and looks at her, dangerously, in the midst of the manic speed of the motorway. The car swerves slightly, then swerves back, in and out of the terrifying stream of cars. Ella hopes they will crash. “Of course I wanted to come to Italy!” She is distraught. “But you don’t ask me what I want! You decide everything yourself, and then you tell me what we’re going to do, and then you’re furious if I have a tiny, remote, minutely differing suggestion! I have to do everything you say, always! It’s as though I don’t exist!” What she’d wanted was for him to come with her to the flea market in Florence, wander through the stalls with him. It was a junky market, only odds and ends, but it was Florence. The people offering the broken clocks and plastic dolls were Florentine. Their faces— surprisingly fair, ruddy, blue-eyed, with red-brown hair—echoed those in the old frescoes. Ella loved all of it; she always thought the living scene was as interesting as the museum. Nat thought it was dreary and trashy. “Why should I want to look at a flea market, full of junk?” he had asked. “I have to move the car. I’ll take it back to the hotel, and you come back whenever you want.” But Ella feels crushed by the weight of his disapproval, by the thought that she was someone who wanted to look at junk, someone he disdained. All of it makes her feel panicky and abandoned: she speaks no Italian and has no sense of direction. She knows she’d get lost, trying to find her way back up to the hotel. She is afraid of being lost, and afraid of asking questions of strangers. She loves him. She hates being at odds with him. The flea market was a bad idea; she should never have suggested it. He disapproved of it, and of her. And now she has made him angry again; he may leave her. At any time he may leave her. He is easily angered at her. She starts to weep from despair. She is always doing things wrong. They have been married nine years; she has not managed to give him a child; he may leave her. They are always fighting. She will die if he leaves her. She knows this is irrational; knowing it does not help. Nat keeps on driving, the corners of his mouth turned down in disapproval. She is so extreme, Ella, so wildly intemperate, and so utterly unfair. Her complaints are wounding: he feels that his life is given over to making her happy, that all their decisions are made on her behalf. He’d thought she’d like the trip to Italy, and she had seemed to. This is the way she acts: at first she says nothing, later she complains bitterly. It’s completely unfair. He loves her. He is easily wounded by her, he is outraged by her when they fight. She is irrational, messy, late. She maddens him. He is completely absorbed by her. He cannot wait each night to see her, to see her turn her head, to listen. He waits to hear what she will say; he is endlessly interested by what she will say. His body needs hers. They are joined, which makes all this so excruciating: she levels these wild charges at him, as though she were dismissing their connection. How can she? How can she take such extreme positions over something as trivial as the flea market? These trips seem to be more pain than pleasure. How can she act so brutal and miserable to him? He never thinks of leaving her; she’s at the center of his life. At the end of their fights everything is somehow righted. A great calm happiness floods through them both, like a neap tide rising and moving through the fields, smoothing out the rutted landscape like liquid silk. This is hard for them to remember when they’re fighting; it’s hard to believe it’s a possibility. Nat swerves more now, across the traffic, into the slower lane, then he swerves again, cutting out of that lane too. He pulls off the highway altogether, onto a tiny semicircular pullout, edged haphazardly by whitewashed stones. A rocky hillside rises steeply above it; just ahead, on the road, is one of the low stone tunnels that perforate Italian mountains. The tunnels are pitch-black inside, narrow and claustrophobic, and the cars race through them at supersonic speeds. Their car was just about to enter this one, and the traffic beside them continues to slide smoothly and hypnotically into the small black mouth, which is like that of a monster. But just before they are sucked into the dark maw, Nat pulls completely off the road and jerks the car to a stop in the turnout, the corners of his own mouth turned down. Ella sees his disapproving mouth, his lowered brows, his fierce eyes, and she turns away, to the window. A sob swells her chest: whatever he is about to do will be terrible. She is afraid he will hit her, though he has never done this, or threatened to. She is afraid he will reach across her and open the door, and tell her to get out, to clamber onto the steep rocky hillside rising above them. Then he will pull the door shut and drive on, vanishing into the black tunnel and leaving her there forever. Nat puts the car into neutral, jerks on the hand brake, and turns off the engine. He turns to Ella, his brows still dark. He leans awkwardly across the tiny car, across the gear shift, and puts his arms around her. He pulls her as close as he can, the upright gear shift between them. He holds her against him and strokes her head, her silky hair. They’ve gotten themselves into this terrible trough of unhappiness, and this is all he can think of to get them back to the other place, where they remember each other. He holds her tightly inside the circle of himself, pressing his cheek against her head. He feels her collarbones against his chest, her shoulder blades beneath his hands. Her hair is shorter now, but still silky. Ella feels his arms close around her, she breathes in the familiar smell of his skin, and she closes her eyes in relief. She feels her whole body yield, give way. This is more than she had hoped for. It is everything.
THREE
They have been married for nearly a quarter of a century, and they have stopped fighting. Something between them has steadied, and they no longer frighten each other. Instead, they trust each other. She is less intemperate, and when he gets annoyed she finds his exasperation amusing. She waits it out, smiling, and smooths his hair. He finds her exaggerations funny; she no longer infuriates him. They look different now, of course. She is still small, nearly childlike, but her waist has thickened, and her face bears a mask of fine lines. She is no longer beautiful, but pleasant-looking. Her hair is now short and iron gray, thin and straight, with bangs, like a felt helmet. One knee gives her trouble, and sometimes she limps slightly. This morning, standing in line at the airport, waiting at the ticket counter, Nat saw her lean over to rub it. The sight made him feel tender, and he thought of her moving, with him, toward age, and toward the dark curtain beyond. He takes comfort in knowing that they will approach this, whatever it is, together. His own body has thickened as well, and his hair has receded. His forehead is rising slowly, like a cliff from the sea. This disappoints him: his father had all his hair until he died, at eighty-one. Nat’s hair had once been thick and springy—it was his secret vanity. Ella doesn’t mind his baldness, no longer notices it. She is so used to his face—the deep lines from nose to mouth, the dense eyebrows, the neat pouches beneath his thoughtful eyes—that it might as well be her own. She barely sees herself in the mirror now, her eyes fading, her lips blurring. They have been living together for decades now, and they belong to each other. They have forgiven each other the dreadful acts, and they appreciate the generous ones. They admire and enjoy each other. They have grown together into this marriage, adding year after year to the trunk of it, each line encompassing the one before. The years in which they fought are now enclosed, entirely and forever, by these later ones, in which they do not. These are years in which they simply love each other, years in which trust is dominant. Today they’re on a flight from Boston, where Nat had a business meeting and Ella saw her sister, to San Francisco, where he has another meeting. After that they’ll go on to Los Angeles, to see his daughter Beth, who is a screenwriter. As far as they can tell, she is not a really successful one, but who can read the cryptic signs of Hollywood? Beth is funny and bright, always full of optimistic talk about meetings and development. She was angry about the divorce when she was younger, but seems to be over it. All three of them have lived it down, settling into enjoyment of one another’s company. Her boyfriend—though is boyfriend the right word? It’s hard to keep track of the correct word now—anyway, the person who is around more than anyone else, is a psychotherapist/mystic/studio musician named Ralph. He, too, is bright and funny, and if they lived in the East they would have regular salaries and health benefits, instead of this handto- mouth existence. Or maybe not. Maybe they are both simply outside the world of regular salaries and health benefits, and so it’s a good thing they’ve found each other in West Hollywood. Ralph and Beth have promised to take them to their favorite sushi restaurant. Ella doesn’t like sushi—why do people still eat raw flesh, five hundred thousand years after the discovery of fire?—but she eats it with Beth. She loves Beth, and in some ways gets along better with her than Nat does. Nat gets frustrated by Beth; he wants her and Ralph to get married and get jobs with health benefits. Ella finds this funny and touching. She thinks of it now and she reaches out and smooths his shoulder. He is the beloved. She feels grateful for his solicitude, the way he wants to take care of them all, herding them toward shelter like an anxious sheepdog. At her touch, Nat looks up from his book and smiles at her. They’re sitting in business class. Nat works for a large management consulting firm, and he’s flown hundreds of thousands of miles. They both benefit from all the times he’s been weathered in at O’Hare, fogged out of Portland, delayed at Dallas/Fort Worth. Now, when they fly together, they enjoy these wide comfortable seats, the kindly attentions of the flight attendant, the little compote of warm nuts after takeoff. They haven’t taken off yet; they’ve taxied out onto the runway and are waiting in line. Not for long, though: the skies are clear, and it’s after Labor Day, the summer traveling peak over. Their stewardess has taken away their jackets. She’s in her fifties, slightly stocky, with a wide, pleasant, animated face, slightly pockmarked. Her short hair is dense black, maybe dyed. During the safety video it was she who put on a life jacket and stood in front of the cabin. She made smooth, ritualized gestures, setting the oxygen mask neatly over her nose, pointing out the emergency exits. No one watched her, and Ella wondered if this was because everyone had already heard these instructions, or if it was a subliminal superstition, the fear of naming dangers. The idea that it’s bad luck to allow the idea of peril into your mind. By doing so you’re calling danger into being, so the less you think about safety measures, the less likely you are to need them. Maybe to counteract that superstition, Ella pulls out the plastic safety-instruction card from the pocket in front of her. She studies the people, tidily life-jacketed, who are sliding down the chute in an orderly line. Their faces seem lively and intent, not frightened or unhappy. It’s broad daylight, and the chute rests on flat ground. If this really happened, Ella thinks, there would be clouds of black smoke and bursts of orange flame. Or maybe they would be sliding into the ocean, at night, in blinding rain and huge swells. Disasters take place in perilous conditions, storms and darkness, not on clear days under blue skies. In any case, it wouldn’t be like this—orderly and pleasant. Ella, feeling she has somehow triumphed over the card, slides it back into the pocket. All the stewardesses have disappeared now, up front, perched on their tiny provisional foldout seats. The sky is blindingly bright, cloudless. They are in a line of planes, all huge and motionless. Heat waves shimmer up from the tarmac, and the planes seem to tremble slightly. The pilot’s voice comes over the intercom. They’re number four, he tells them, and it won’t be long now. He speaks with a slight southern accent, and his voice is reassuring. The reason that so many pilots are southern is that so many southerners go into the military, and so many pilots are ex–Vietnam War veterans. This comforts Ella—these men are seasoned by dangerous exploits, which they have come through unscathed. Their experience is like a bright shield over their passengers. They have always made the right decisions. The plane taxies slowly to the end of the runway, turns ponderously, revs its engines, and then begins to rumble down the long concrete strip. As the plane gains speed, the engine noise mounts and mounts, and when the cabin falls silent with the universal respect given to takeoff, Ella is gripped briefly by nerves. She reaches for Nat’s hand, and he clasps hers firmly and reassuringly, without looking at her. He is not a nervous flier; he flies too often. The rumbling, hurtling plane nears the end of the runway, racing toward the moment of breathless suspension, the moment in which the arcs of speed and lift and burden all intersect, precisely and miraculously, and the wheels leave the ground, and they suddenly rise up, without pause, smoothly and astonishingly into the clear blue air. The landing gear folds noisily into the belly and the plane banks hard, tipping over the rows of dark buildings of Newark, now so tidy and precise. They have done it; they have made the transition from earthbound to airborne, and there is something great and self-congratulatory about this moment. They have all succeeeded in this death-defying venture. When the stewardess reappears with the lunch menu, Ella is no longer holding Nat’s hand. She used to be a very anxious flier, but that has changed, too. She feels remoter, now, from the danger of flying. Once, without Nat, she flew through a thunderstorm, lightning bolts sizzling off the wings, the fuselage jolting horridly with each shock. Her heart had thudded in her throat, but she had suddenly thought to herself, though she is not religious, “You are in the hand of God.” At that her panic ceased. Since then she no longer becomes so frightened during flight. Fatalism, or some sort of calm, has entered her. She is in her fifties, and she has certainly lived over half her life. She feels less responsible now for the care of the world. If she vanishes, the world will rumble along without her. Right now she is absorbed in her book, and they are climbing smoothly toward thirty thousand feet, heading slightly northwest, toward San Francisco. The stewardess smiles professionally and offers her a menu. Ella takes it, smiling back. She wonders how long the stewardess will go on working. It’s a brutal life, they say, especially if you have a family. You’re away so much, and you get bloat, and your cycle is disturbed. Plus you’re on your feet all the time: Ella thinks of her knee, which will at some point, her doctor says, need re- placement, though she’s putting it off. She wouldn’t be able do this job, but these women must like it well enough. Ella’s reading Anthony Trollope, Nat a book about Alexander Hamilton. She likes the symmetry they create, likes feeling that, together, they are responsibly covering the field of letters: she, fiction, nineteenth-century, English; he, politics, eighteenth-century, American. What more can you expect of a marriage? She sinks peacefully into her book. At first she hardly notices the disturbance, since the noise level on airplanes is already so high—the loud drone of the engines, the staccato voices of video earphones, the conversations around them. But finally it becomes intrusive, and she looks up to see a dark-skinned young man in a pale T-shirt, with a red bandanna tied around his head, coming down the aisle from first class. He has something in his raised hand, and he is shouting at them angrily. It’s the anger that is most apparent, and confusing. It’s directed at them, the passengers, for some reason. What is he shouting? Behind him there seems to be a cloud of black smoke: is something on fire? Is the plane on fire? He is shouting at all of them, though the words are too big, right now, to understand, it’s hard to sort through the information—the smoke, the rage, the T-shirt and bandanna, who is he?—but his anger is very clear, and his insistence. He is motioning at them urgently, gesturing at the back of the plane. He’s angry at them all, he’s beside himself with rage. His rage, the chaotic energy of it, is confusing and frightening. The front of the plane is where the pilots are, and where the stewardesses busy themselves. The front of the plane is the seat of authority, but no one in uniform appears—where is the captain, with his reassuring southern voice, his heroic war record? It seems that this dark-skinned man now represents authority. That’s where he’s coming from, the cockpit, and the black smoke is billowing behind him. He’s shouting. “Get in the back!” Some people stand, bewildered. “What’s going on?” People are asking him questions, but the man is not answering; instead, the questions turn his face darker, thunderous. He has large liquid black eyes, brilliant. “Get in the back,” he says ferociously. “There’s been an accident.” “What kind of accident?” More people stand, alarmed, wanting to know, wanting to help. Behind the man their stewardess suddenly appears, the stocky black-haired one. Her pockmarked face is contorted with purpose. “Help!” she shouts. Her voice is high-pitched, frantic. “Hijackers!” The man swivels instantly; his arm shoots out and he seizes her by the throat, his arm snaking around her neck. They are directly in front of Ella, and Ella can see the woman’s hand shaking, held helplessly across her chest. The hijacker’s elbow is raised high in the air, and he holds her chin up. “Don’t move,” he hisses. The stewardess wears a navy cardigan over a white long-sleeved shirt. There is a gold bangle on her wrist, and her hand is shaking. Ella can hear her breathing: slow and strained. The hijacker looks around. He looks to be in his thirties, with high cheekbones and a broad, slightly crooked nose. His teeth are very white, and his shiny black hair falls over his forehead. No one moves. Behind him, the first-class cabin is full of smoke. The stewardess swallows convulsively. Her chin is still pulled high by the hijacker’s arm. Ella can see the shifting of her throat muscles beneath the skin. The hijacker tightens his grip, and her eyes roll upward, then close. She swallows again, with difficulty, and her hand goes up, reflexively, to his arm. Ella remembers the smooth ritual gestures she made during the safety video. The hijacker hisses at her again, then pulls her chin up, further exposing her throat. What he has in his other hand is a small straight blade, Ella sees its brightness, and he sweeps the blade across her throat. The pale skin parts easily. The smell of blood is very strong, and the rush of it overwhelming, disorienting. It floods out, da
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