American Innovations
A short-story collection from one of America’s brightest young talents.In one of these intensely imaginative stories a young woman’s furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated dependences and loves of a family.Following spiralling paths towards utterly logical, entirely absurd conclusions, Galchen’s creations occupy a dreamlike dimension, where time is fluid and identities are best defined by the qualities they lack. The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, allowing the reader the pleasure of discovering familiar favourites in new guises. Here ‘The Lost Order’ covertly recapitulates James Thurber’s ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, while ‘The Region of Unlikeness’ playfully mirrors Jorge Luis Borges’s ‘The Aleph’.By turns realistic, fantastical and lyrical, all these marvellously uneasy stories share a deeply emotional core and are written in dryly witty, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer of eye-opening ingenuity.
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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2014
Copyright © Rivka Galchen 2014
Cover photograph © Samantha T. Photography/Getty Images
Rivka Galchen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
These stories previously appeared, in slightly different form, in the following publications: Harper’s Magazine (‘Once an Empire’), New Yorker (‘The Lost Order’, ‘The Region of Unlikeness’, ‘Sticker Shock’ as ‘Appreciation’, The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire’ and ‘The Late Novels of Gene Hackman’), Open City (‘Wild Berry Blue’) and The Walrus (‘Real Estate’).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This collection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007548781
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007548798
Version: 2015-05-26
For Georgie and Yosefa
I was at home, not making spaghetti. I was trying to eat a little less often, it’s true. A yogurt in the morning, a yogurt at lunchtime, ginger candies in between, and a normal dinner. I don’t think of myself as someone with a “weight issue,” but I had somehow put on a number of pounds just four months into my unemployment, and when I realized that this had happened—I never weigh myself; my brother just said to me, on a visit, “I don’t recognize your legs”—I wasn’t happy about it. Although maybe I was happy about it. Because at least I had something that I knew it wouldn’t be a mistake to really dedicate myself to. I could be like those people who by trying to quit smoking or drinking manage to fit an accomplishment, or at least an attempt at an accomplishment, into every day. Just by aiming to not do something. This particular morning, there was no yogurt left for my breakfast. I could go get some? I could treat myself to maple. Although the maple yogurt was always full cream. But maybe full cream was fine, because it was just a tiny—
My phone is ringing.
The caller ID reads “Unavailable.”
I tend not to answer calls identified as Unavailable. But sometimes Unavailable shows up because someone is calling from, say, the hospital.
“One garlic chicken,” a man’s voice is saying. “One side of salad, with the ginger-miso dressing. Also one white rice. White, not brown. This isn’t for pickup,” he says. “It’s for delivery.”
He probably has the wrong number, I figure. I mean, of course he has the wrong—
“Not the lemon chicken,” he is going on. “I don’t want the lemon. What I want—”
“OK. I get it—”
“Last time you delivered the wrong thing—”
“Lemon chicken—”
“Garlic chicken—”
“OK—”
“I know you,” he says.
“What?”
“Don’t just say ‘OK’ and then bring me the wrong order. OK, OK, OK. Don’t just say ‘OK.’” He starts dictating his address. I have no pencil in hand.
“OK,” I say. “I mean, all right.” I’ve lost track of whether it was the lemon chicken or the garlic he wanted. Wanting and not wanting. Which tap is hot and which is cold. I still have trouble with left and right.
“How long?” he asks.
“Thirty minutes?”
He hangs up.
Ack. Why couldn’t I admit that I wasn’t going to be bringing him any chicken at all? Now I’m wronging a hungry man. One tries not to do too many wrong things in life. But I can’t call him back: he’s Unavailable!
Just forget it.
•
Forgetting is work, though. I returned to not making spaghetti, a task to which I had added not setting out to buy yogurt. Then it struck me that getting dressed would be a good idea. It was 10:40 a.m. Early for chicken. Yes, I should and would get dressed. Unfortunately, on the issue of getting dressed I consistently find myself wishing that I were a man. I don’t mean that in an ineluctable gender disturbance way, it’s not that; it’s that I think I would have an easier time choosing an outfit. Though having a body is problematic no matter what. Even for our dog. One summer we thought we would do her a favor by shaving her fur, but then afterward she hung her head and was inconsolable. Poor girl. The key is to not have time to think about your body, and dogs—most dogs anyhow—have a lot of free time. So do I, I guess. Although, I don’t
