Thirteen

Zoe Keithley

Description

Chicago
Thirteen, Stories for Earth Travelers is a collection of short stories of which each is a vibrant and dramatic experience. Unique characters whose frailties and misplaced dreams become those of the reader through transformative dialogue. Precision detail setting the stage, each story brings to life characters living a unique experience, struggling with the common toils of life, loss, hope and love.

Sujets

• Boarding school
• Classics
• Système éducatif des États-Unis
• Fiction
• Chicago

Informations

• Publié par: Balboa Press
• Date de parution: 19 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798765231159
• Langue: English

Extrait

THIRTEEN
Stories for Earth Travelers
ZOE KEITHLEY


Copyright © 2023 Zoe Keithley.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
Balboa Press
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Bloomington, IN 47403
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3114-2 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3116-6 (hc)
ISBN: 979-8-7652-3115-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912747
 
Balboa Press rev. date: 01/18/2023
Contents
The Second Marriage of Albert Li Wu
The Only Thanks I Wanted
Annie Doesn’t Mean No Harm
Mama’s Boy
About That Dinner At The Smith’s
Doc Bailey Gets Busted
Uncle Fun
Figlia Mia The Passion of Mother Adelli
1. There Will Be No Problem, Dr. Rhenehan
2. Hide and Seek
3. What The Daughter Owed
William Cullen Bryant Day
A California Story
Jophile’s Story, In Short
Epilogue

OTHER PUBLICATIONS BY ZOE KEITHLEY
Write Yourself Well
3/Chicago , 11:59 Press
Crow’s Song
The Calling of Mother Adelli , Create Space
Of Fire, Of Water, Of Stone, Jophile’s Story , Balboa Press
RECOGNITION
“Hide and Seek” Zoetrope All-story 2001 competition finalist.
“The Second Marriage of Albert Li Wu, Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (1997); finalist American Fiction, Vol. 9.
“The Only Thanks I Wanted” Hyphen Magazine finalist.
“There Will Be No Problem, Dr. Rhenehan” placed first in Emergence IV’s “First Chapters” competition in Pigeon Magazine
Dedications
With unending gratitude to Elizabeth, Clare and Christopher, and for Fiona, Ian, Steve, Tristan, and Kayla, too. And with special love for Kathy.
With unending gratitude to my brothers and sister, Byrne, Allen, and Martha, and to our beloved parents Edward Marhoefer, Jr. and Isabelle Byrne Marhoefer.
With boundless love and gratitude to Joseph and Fran; and to Michael and Angel and their beautiful children, of whom all I adore.
I am forever grateful to all of those to whom this book is dedicated.
Acknowledgements
I wish particularly to acknowledge the staff and students of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College, Chicago, for their life-giving inspiration, education and support. Many of these stories were “first draft” in workshops there. My thanks also to C. Michael Curtis, retired fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly, for his perceptive readings, teaching and encouraagement. One tale in this collection was inspired at a Bennington summer workshop he led.
My thanks to Michael Marhoefer and Andy David without whose technical assistance this collection would still be in the computer on my desk.
My thanks to my daughter Elizabeth, for the cover photo.
The following stories have appeared previously in slightly different forms:
“The Only Thanks I Wanted”, Hyphen Magazine, #12, fiction finalist; Chicago;
“Mama’s Boy”, Hyphen Magazine, #3, Chicago;
“That Dinner At The Smith’s”, The Wapsipinicon Almanac, Anamosa, IA;
“The Second Marriage of Albert Li Wu”, American Fiction, V. 9, New Rivers Press;
“There Will Be No Problem, Dr. Rhenehan”, Emergence, IV, Chicago, and The Calling of Mother Addelli ;
“Hide and Seek” appeared in The North American Review, and The Calling of Mother Addelli ;
“What The Daughter Owed”, in Emergence III, and The Calling of Mother Addelli ;
“Jophile’s Story, A Short Story”, Of Fire, Of Water, Of Stone, Jophile’s Story , (Balboa Press)
The Second Marriage of Albert Li Wu
Albert Li Wu trudged home through the gloom of an overcast February sky in Chicago’s Chinatown to tilt against his first floor apartment’s front window the sign he had made at Premier Printing on their hand press : Wife wanted . Apply within.
It was 1983.
He prepared his usual tomato soup along with a grilled cheese sandwich in the iron wok his dead wife Amour had favored. At the breakfast table with his chop sticks, he sat then to scan the sports page of Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, dipping pieces of the sandwich into the soup and overseeing the sports page . Tomorrow or Tuesday, he knew, a widow or spinster would ring his doorbell. (Well, his real preference was that she be a widow.)
As opening gambit, he would prepare tea and, to become comfortable, make small talk about the weather, the neighborhood and rising prices. He would detail his current circumstances: Bereft these two and a half years, in his early seventies and with a good pension from Premiere Printing where he still made money from special print jobs, as well as from his hand-carved ivory chess sets, known all over by serious chess players, including state champions! No close family ties. In excellent health! He would smile widely to show his still-perfect teeth.)They would tour his living room, bed chamber, kitchen, pantry, bath and back porch.
That evening, he watched the late news, a detective show, then a movie. Since his wife passed a year and a half ago, he didn’t sleep well. At one a.m., he lit the usual stick of incense before the dust-covered Buddha seated upon the discrete altar just outside the livingroom door, mumbled a short prayer, andthen blew the candle out.
That night, his dead wife K’uan Lai came in his sleep wearing a wedding robe of red satin and with a lotus in the topknot of her hair. In her hands, and rising like the sun, was the gold bridal fan of her grandmother!
“Why you advertise for wife?” she had asked in the Chinese they shared--had spoken directly into his mind through the mask of her face, and in a voice so cold as to make his scalp flock! “I am your wife!” she drew herself up.
“And since when do you speak so to your husband, or to any man!” he retaliated. “You are dead. Now I must cook! And clean-- and carry my shirts to the laundry! And,” Albert Li Wu drew himself up, scowling, “I have no one to talk to.”
And at that, a wicked light scampered across her eyes--she, who for twenty-seven years had never raised so much as an eyebrow over all his foolishness! But now she drew herself up further, and asking, “Since when do YOU ever talk?” And she swept her closed fan across the half-formed knights and pawns he sat carving then in his dream; and with a final stroke with her fan across the air, she dissolved completely--like color washed from paper.
Well, and Albert Li awoke, then, enraged that his dead wife should tilt her head so as to look down upon him; and worse, should dare to scatter his work, his carvings! But oh how his heart had blistered at the sight of her, so fresh, so young--perhaps eighteen--and even more radiatnt than the day he had married her!
Well, he had waited late to marry--waited until his income could command a prize of traditional family; and one his friends’ eyes would catch at when they came around to smoke and play mah-jongg . And, like any husband, he had expected excellent meals, a tended shrine, and at night the comfort of her breasts and thighs under his roaming hands.
When Albert Li stepped from his door to fetch the Sunday paper late next morning, the sudden clatter of female voices greeting him ceased suddenly like a ribbon cut as the female eyes took in his pressman’s hump, hole-infested sweater, flattened bedroom slippers, outsized ears and wisps of greying hair moving gently on the field of his pale and otherwise naked scalp.
Immediately, and as though they had just been bilked, the younger women bolted from the queue to stomp up Twenty-sixth Street--and leaving their scorn to crawl up his stoop to glare at the balding pate, wrinkled shirt and flattened bedroom slippers of the filthy old bag of bones! And a neighbor, out early walking his dog, had telephoned the Chicago Sun-Times about women all doodied-up and lining Twenty-sixth Street on his block since seven a.m.!
Just then, (and taking in Albert Li Wu’s sewing thread mustache and beard), a punk news reporter had cocked his hat and stepped forward. “You Wu?” And he’d tapped the sign. “This for you, or are you starting some local business?” And the reporter had leered around, then, chest shaking as another man came huffing up, video camera upon his shoulder.
Albert Li Wu, appalled and secretly and mysteriously humiliated, slammed his front door.
Well, after all, he had pictured one or two older Asian women drifting through his afternoon, chatting, drinking tea, admiring his front room, bedroom, bath, kitchen and back porch. But now,