"Meal Planner's Creed," a Story by Diane Williams

In the 18th in a series of posts on 2012 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Diane Williams, author of Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (McSweeney's Books), raises questions about stories and replies with a story of her own.

What is a story?
They are are always asking. What is a story?
Is that a story? What is a story?
Can a story be a dream-come-true?

 

Meal Planner's Creed

     “Will your restaurant always be as bad as this?—or do you expect to make changes? It used to be such a good restaurant. We loved coming here. What happened?” I said.

     “What was wrong with the food,” the manager said,

     “Do you ever eat this food? You should eat this food,” I said.

     “I am not going to run around anymore I decided,” the manager said, “and serve people and see what people need. I am just going to enjoy myself!“

"Boo is Under the Blanket" by Lou Beach

In the 37th in a series of posts on 2011 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Lou Beach, author of 420 Characters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), goes undercover with his dog.

© Issa Sharp

Boo is under the blanket. Boo is our brindle Chihuahua, bristly near the tail; the blanket is a faux leopard skin synthetic throw, unnaturally soft. Their patterns clash, a variegated mash-up. She hates the cold more than she hates the mailman and burrows under blankets and pillows and piles of laundry left on the bed to get warm. We cover her with an assortment of pooch blankets and towels and sweatshirts, or place her near the space heater, the wall vent.

Today the blanket has been patted into a mound around her, as one would pat a ball of dough for bread, and it resembles a small spotted igloo. Only Boo’s nose sticks out, shiny and moist, and I can see the side of her mouth, the gums pulled back to reveal a row of teeth as sharp and uniform as the cutting edge on a box of tin foil. Her cozy campsite is on the bed near the corner and I get down on my knees and stick my head into the opening, forcing her head back inside.

My head now blocks the light but for a few strands that stray in with me. Boo and I are in her dark little cave together, the side of my face touching her flank. I AM my face in here. She makes a funny little sound that I read as either annoyance or resignation or a cocktail of the two, but no warning growl comes from her so I relax for our visit. I read somewhere that a dog’s nose is one thousand times more sensitive than a human’s and I wonder if I have bad breath or if she smells the tuna melt I had an hour ago, or if what a human considers bad breath might in fact be like an air freshener or perfume to a canine.

I can smell her body and it’s not an unpleasant odor. She is a clean little dog, not prone to rubbing in dead stuff like our big dogs had done and there is a slightly warm and nutlike quality to her fur. I press my nose to her neck and inhale and push my face against her. She issues a low growl and I stop. Etiquette has been established, protocol defined, and we begin. 

I tell her how much I like her place, how comfortable it is and thank her for allowing me to visit (not mentioning that I had in fact barged in) and she exhales a little breath and I realize that she too had had some tuna melt a while ago. A bit of light reflects off her eye and I can tell she is looking at me. Dogs are always looking at their humans, reading moods and intentions and expressions, hoping for that lift of the brows that means “Walk” or the shifting in the chair that precedes going to the kitchen, that great temple of treasures.

I’m a little dizzy from lack of air but I keep talking to her, complimenting her on the décor, asking what she’s been reading and if her Pilates classes have strengthened her core, does the cat ever visit. I’m getting silly, but I’m easily amused and continue probing her about her financial situation, squirrels or rats (which is harder to catch?) and why she doesn’t like beagles. My glasses are fogging and I close my eyes. I hear the slight whistling breath that indicates Boo has fallen asleep and soon I nod off as well.

Someone kicks the bottom of my feet and I wake suddenly and jump up, the leopard skin throw on my head, a wacky kufiya. Boo leaps off the bed and runs down the hall. My wife stands before me, hands on hips, a look on her face that a dog can’t make. “You know,” she says “if you keep this up, you’re going to deprive your brain of oxygen to the point where your already tattered thinking will finally disintegrate. AND you’ll freak that poor little animal to where she’ll bite your nose off one of these days. You’re a grown man, stop fooling around.” She pulls the blanket from my head, drops it on the bed and follows Boo down the hall, into the kitchen.

I sit on the edge of the bed and rub my eyes, then stand and rub my stomach. Maybe I should eat something, I think, but they are in the kitchen and I’m feeling a bit chagrined. I lie down and put the leopard skin blanket over my face, close my eyes and continue my story writing exercise, this time with an invisible dog.

Kate Bernheimer Tells a Tale About Telling Tales

In the 60th in a series of posts on 2010 short story collections entered for The Story Prize, Kate Bernheimer, author of Horse, Flower, Bird (Coffee House Press), offers an original story.

This story is based on a haunting Russian fairy tale called “How a Husband Weaned His Wife from Fairy Tales.” The traditional version ends with the wife being beaten and beaten until she no longer has a need for these magical stories. My version, written in honor of The Story Prize, is an ode to storytelling, as are the stories in Horse, Flower, Bird.

How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales

There was once a mother whose only child loved fairy tales above all else and accepted as dolls only those who could tell stories.  Of course the child suffered loss because of this, as there were not so many dolls that could perform such  a remarkable task. And her mother suffered as well: when she went to the department store on birthdays or Christmas, she often left empty-handed, and disappointed her only child who asked for more and more stories.  Bad stories or good. She wanted more fairy tales—that’s all she ever wanted, she said. She was insatiable. 

By her eighteenth birthday the child had only two dolls: one who told wonderful stories and one who told very bad stories indeed.  Still, the child was very good-natured and told her mother, one cold winter evening, that even two dolls, one who could tell wonderful stories and one who could tell terrible stories, were far better than none and their household had more fairy tales than more impoverished homes, where perhaps no storytelling dolls ever had lived.  And then she hugged her mother and kissed her goodnight. 

That very same night, at a very late hour and (of course) a wee bit of vodka, the mother wondered how she might wean her daughter from fairy tales. One day, every girl must grow up, after all.  There was a knock on the door.  There stood a witch doll, shivering with cold, and she asked the mother for shelter.  The girl’s mother said, “Can you tell stories? My daughter does not allow any dolls in the house that cannot tell stories.” The witch doll saw that she had no choice; she was a rag doll and she had tiny icicles dangling off of her rag-limbs.  She was almost frozen to death. She said “I can.”  “And will you tell them a long time?” “All night.”

So far, so good.  The mother let the witch doll in, and set her in a tiny rocking chair right by the fire, where her cotton stuffing nicely and evenly warmed.  The mother gently woke up her daughter, and said “There is a witch doll here, who has promised to tell stories all night long, on the condition that your other dolls do not argue, or interrupt.” The daughter woke up her dolls—the one that could tell good stories and the one that could tell bad stories—and brought them to the living room and sat near the hearth.  The mother had laid out all manner of goodies for all of them to eat: lollipops with chocolate tucked inside their miniature globes; jelly beans; and buttered toast.   The witch doll said, “Yes, I will tell stories, but there must be no interruptions—or I will tell no more stories to you.”  The mother, the daughter, and the two dolls ate their snacks and went back to bed. 

The witch doll began: ‘An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water. An owl flew into a garden, sat on  a tree trunk, and drank some  water. An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water.’ Over and over again, the witch doll repeated this sentence.  The good doll listened and said from her little doll bed: ‘That’s a beautiful story, but I’m afraid your audience might become tired of it. I’m not tired of it, of course, I think it’s lovely, but—’ And the bad doll shouted from bed, ‘That’s not even a story!’

The witch doll gazed coldly into the fire. ‘Doll One, you’ve interrupted me. I told you not to interrupt. And Doll Two, you have argued. That was only the beginning. I was going to change it later.’ The witch flew out of a window with the two dolls in her hands.  She dropped the dolls into the frozen pond: down into a teeny hole that had been made by a rabbit. And there in ice water they drowned.

The mother saw this from her bed. She rushed over to her darling, beloved, lone daughter, who had been blissfully sleeping—dreaming the whole thing just like a character might in an old storybook. Her mother knelt down, clasped her child’s warm hands into her own, and silently pleaded with her: ‘Your dolls were told not to interrupt, and never to argue, and now look what’s happened! We won’t get any more fairy tales!’ And she hugged her and hugged her, to offer some comfort. The child never asked for a talking doll ever again, and the witch doll flew around the world over and over again, for a household that might more quietly listen to her. She’s still flying today, alone up there in a very cold wind.