Hum: Stories (Fiction Collective Two) - Softcover

Richmond, Michelle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573661783 ISBN 13: 9781573661782

Verlag: F2C, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

A new collection of stories by bestselling author Michelle Richmond, Hum presents a cautionary political fable, a celebration of the complexities of marriage, and a meditation on modern-day alienation.

Thirteen years after the publication of her first story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Richmond returns with Hum, a collection of ten stories that examine love, lust, and loyalty from surprising angles.

In “Hum,” a young couple that is paid to live in a house filled with surveillance equipment becomes “quietly lost to each other,” as the wife’s infatuation with the subject of their surveillance turns to obsession. In “Medicine,” a woman grieving over the death of her sister finds her calling as a manual medical caregiver. In “Boulevard,” a couple who has been trying to have a child for seven years finds themselves in an unnamed country at the height of a revolution, summoned there by the enigmatic H. “Scales,” the story of a woman who falls in love with a man whose body is covered with scales, parses the intersection of pain and pleasure. The narrator of “Lake” must choose whether to walk in the footsteps of her famous grandfather, The Great Amphibian, who disappeared while performing a feat of daring in Lake Michigan. What does it mean to be heroic? How much should one sacrifice in the name of love? These questions and more are explored with tenderness, wit, and unerring precision in Hum.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michelle Richmond is the author of the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, the novels Dream of the Blue Room and No One You Know, and the New York Times and international bestseller The Year of Fog. Her new novel, Golden State, will be published by Bantam in 2014.

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HUM

STORIES

By MICHELLE RICHMOND

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2014 Michelle Richmond
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57366-178-2

Contents

FOREWORD BY RIKKI DUCORNET, ix, 
HUM, 1, 
MEDICINE, 25, 
LAKE, 43, 
HERO, 59, 
SCALES, 73, 
HONEYMOON, 89, 
HOSPITALITY, 97, 
LOVE, 109, 
TRAVEL, 113, 
BOULEVARD, 125, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 151, 

CHAPTER 1

HUM

We could hear it from any point in the house—upstairs,downstairs, even the garage. From the kitchen the sound wasfaint, like the upswing of a snore with no silent intervals in between,all intake of breath, no release. While we were eating atthe small table by the window, forks and knives clicking againstour plates, it was there in the background, a reminder. If wespoke loudly, the hum could be drowned out for a moment.In the beginning we tried, it was like a game, we attempted tokeep a dialogue going during the entire dinner just to cover thehum with the sound of our voices. This went on for our firstfew weeks in the house, but there were only the two of us there,we knew each other well, and there was not much to be said. Atone point, without ever voicing a mutual decision, we gave up.We fell into long silences, just the click of silverware on plates,the sound of wine being poured into a glass, the polite chewing—andbeneath it all, or above it, the continual hum comingfrom the second bedroom, the source of our livelihood and ofour growing discontent.

With music we could disguise it, could forget it for three orfour minutes at a time, but there was always the moment whenone song ended, the tinny whir of the CD player while it movedon to the next, so that, eventually, even music lost its joy for me.

At night, from our room across the hall, we could hear it."It's just white noise," my husband said. "If you'd stop thinkingabout it, you wouldn't notice it at all." So I tried to stop thinkingabout it, but the more I tried, the louder it became. My uneasewas intensified by the fact that we were not allowed to go intothe second bedroom; in fact, we had never even seen it.

Twice a month someone would stop by to check the equipment.He or she would arrive unannounced and knock discreetlyon the side door. Often, this person would bring a cake or abottle of wine, so that it would look to our neighbors as thougha friend had come calling. Once inside, he would avoid conversationand head straight for the second bedroom, toting a largeduffle bag. Never once did any of the maintenance personnel—that'show they always introduced themselves, not by name, butsimply, "Hello, I'm the maintenance personnel"—agree to stayfor coffee. Their abruptness heightened my sense that, eventhough we were merely caretakers of the equipment, not its subjects,we were under its scrutiny twenty-four hours a day.

Because the equipment had to be supervised round theclock, my husband and I never went anywhere together. If wewanted to see a movie, we would toss a coin. The winner wouldwalk down the street, past the rows of primly painted mansions,the neat driveways with expensive cars, across the cityroad, to the Cinaromaplex. The place was so named becauseof the machines that piped appropriate smells into the theaterduring movies—the smell of gunpowder during a gunfightscene, smoke and liquor during a bar scene. The Cinaromaplexwas even equipped with the musty scent of sex for certain Rratedmovies, and for the more gruesome films, there was thedistinct, metallic odor of blood. The winner of the coin tosswould come home straight after the movie, and the one whohad been house-sitting would go to the next showing. Later wewould discuss the movie as if we had seen it together, as if wewere an ordinary couple who went on outings as a pair, ratherthan as two halves.

It was the same way with restaurants, plays, and museums.When we first moved into the house, we made a pact that wewould not sacrifice these small pleasures, the many cultural offeringsof our beloved city. We decided to live as we always had,with minor adjustments. For a while we honored the pact, butabout the same time we stopped insisting on dinner conversationwe also ceased our elaborate efforts to see the same movies,eat at the same restaurants, view the same museum exhibits. Theinevitable result was that, over time, we became more like roommatesthan a couple.

That is not to say I was entirely without companionship.

Some nights, unable to sleep, I would step into the backyardin my bathrobe. I would leave the porch light off, so as not tobe seen, and would stand there in the dark, the wet grass slipperyunderfoot, and watch the Uradian Embassy. I would gazeup at the third floor corner window, where the light was alwayson, and I would watch the ambassador sitting at his desk, his tiepulled askew. I could never really make out his face, just the figureof him there. He sat as still as a man could possibly sit, andI wondered what he was doing awake, night after night, whileeveryone else in the building slept.

I wanted to call up to him. I wanted to tell him about thesecond bedroom, and the machinery that hummed behind theclosed door. I wanted to tell him about the dissolution of hiscountry, a dissolution which, to him, might be only the vaguestfear, or perhaps even a nightmare he thought would likely cometrue—but no matter how vivid the nightmare, how disturbinghis fears might have been, he could not have known for certainthat his country was being slowly dissembled at that very moment,and that the machinery of its destruction hummed in thestately red brick house behind him. This is what the equipmentdid: it listened, it watched, it recorded everything.

Those nights, standing in my borrowed yard and staring upat the ambassador's window, I began to wonder if it is possible tolove a man you have never met, if love can be born out of sympathyalone, and out of the knowledge that one's own life's workis intricately connected to the ruination of another. Could I lovehim simply for his insomnia, for the square of light cast by hiswindow onto my sleeping lawn, for the knowledge that, withouthim, my own life would in some manner be rendered pointless?

I decided that I could.

I did not tell my husband about my late-night trips to thegarden, although some nights he must have woken and foundme gone. I did not tell him that I dreamed of this man's country,of miles and miles of unused train tracks ending in abandonedtowns, of once-prosperous markets that were now home to alonely clerk guarding a few loaves of bread, a single poor cut ofmeat. I did not tell him that there were days when I sat for hoursimagining myself in the ambassador's country, starting a new lifewith him there.

Isn't it true that everyone, at some point, dreams of beginninganew—with new friends, new surroundings, a new lover?Doesn't everyone, at least once, dream of abandoning her ownlife?

* * *

My husband and I had become caretakers of the equipmentby virtue of timing. The opportunity arose through a friend Ihad met years earlier while working as an administrative assistantin a government building. One afternoon in June, I ran into myold friend in a coffee shop. I mentioned that the landlord wasraising our rent and we were going to have to move to a cheaperapartment across the river.

"Perhaps we can help each other," he said. "Do you have afew minutes?"

Over a cup of coffee, my friend explained that a trustworthycouple of impeccable discretion was needed immediately toinhabit a very nice home in the Duncan Hill District....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: F2C
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1573661783
• ISBN 13: 9781573661782
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 149
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar