Читать онлайн «Honeydew: Stories»
Автор Edith Pearlman
Annotation
A new story collection from Edith Pearlman, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the National Book Award for her last collection,
From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of
Pearlman writes about the predicaments of being human. The title story involves an affair, an illegitimate pregnancy, anorexia, and adolescent drug use, but the real excitement comes from the intricate attention Pearlman devotes to the interior life of young Emily, who wishes she were a bug. In "Sonny," a mother prays for her daughters to be barren so they never have to experience the death of a child. "The Golden Swan" transports the reader to a cruise ship with lavish buffets-and a surprise stowaway.
In prose that is as wise as it is poetic, Pearlman shines light on small, devastatingly precise moments to reflect the beauty and grace found in everyday life. She maps the psychological landscapes of her exquisitely rendered characters with unending compassion and seeming effortlessness.
Both for its artistry and for the lives of the characters it presents,
Edith Pearlman
Tenderfoot
Dream Children
Castle 4
Stone
Her Cousin Jamie
Blessed Harry
Puck
Assisted Living
What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers
The Golden Swan
Cul-de-sac
Deliverance
Fishwater
Wait and See
Flowers
Conveniences
Hat Trick
Sonny
The Descent of Happiness
Honeydew
About the Author
Edith Pearlman
Honeydew: Stories
To Sandy Siler
Tenderfoot
Tenderfoot was a pedicure parlor on Main Street near Channing. Two reclining chairs — usually only one was in use — faced the street through a large plate-glass window. And so customers, alone with Paige, got a kind of public privacy — anybody could see them, no one but Paige could hear them. Paige was an expert listener — rarely commenting on what she heard, never repeating it.
She was a widow, forty-nine and childless. She lived behind and above her store.
She played poker with five other women every Saturday night. They called one another by their last names and smoked cigars. She had lost her husband, a talented mechanic, to the war. Carl was in favor of the war, more or less; but he’d joined up mainly to get further mechanical training at the military’s expense. She’d objected to his risking their joint future, their happiness…but she’d let the argument drop. The Marines took him despite his age. And then, three days into the desert, the tank he was riding met a mine. Each of his parts was severed from the others, and his whole — his former whole — was severed from Paige.Paige’s practice expanded. She had always been popular with faculty wives and local lawyers and dentists, who appreciated that a footbath administered by a discreet attendant squatting on a stool could become a kind of secular confessional. Now, perhaps because of her recent sad history, she caught on with booksellers and high school teachers and nurses. They discovered how easy she was to talk to. Doctors sent patients to her, elderly women who could no longer bend down to clean their feet, could no longer clip their own toenails. Elderly men too — their joints were as stiff as their wives’.
