ESKIMO NIGHTS and OTHER STORIES by ANN BRONSTON A
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ESKIMO NIGHTS AND OTHER STORIES By ANN BRONSTON A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2003 Copyright 2003 by Ann Bronston ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is wonderful to have a chance to thank people out loud, so to speak. I thank Padgett Powell for liking my stories, encouraging me to come to Gainesville, and for teaching the importance of honesty, clarity and surprises in stories. I thank David Leavitt for calm and kind support and wonderful editing. I thank Jill Ciment for perceptive reading and attention to structure. I would like to thank my father for spoon-feeding me his love of literature. I believe I owe any ability I have for putting words together, to my father’s reading (the best reader) Shakespeare, and Burns, Whitman, and Forster, and of course Lewis Carroll, to me. I would like to thank my mother for her great generosity, courage, strength, and unwavering love and kindness. Finally, I thank my husband John Flynn, (the other best reader) for his sense of artistry, his honest critiques and his (always surprising) love. And Caitlin and Walker for just being so wonderful and helpful. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................................................ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................iv RERUNS............................................................................................................................. 1 FIRE ................................................................................................................................. 12 OBEDIENCE SCHOOL .................................................................................................. 18 SISTER FIVE BY FIVE .................................................................................................. 35 OULIPO ............................................................................................................................ 54 SMOKERS........................................................................................................................ 60 AIR ....................................................................................................................................78 MR. BUBBLES................................................................................................................. 93 TAMPA .......................................................................................................................... 103 EARTH............................................................................................................................ 123 ESKIMO NIGHTS...........................................................................................................130 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 150 iii Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts ESKIMO NIGHTS AND OTHER STORIES By Ann Bronston May 2003 Chair: David Leavitt Major Department: English “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice hastily replied: “at least—at least I mean what I say— that’s the same thing, you know.” “Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. These are not necessarily the stories I meant to write, but having written them, I find they are the stories I mean. iv RERUNS The marriage went south, the kids went north; I moved into a trailer on a side street of what’s left of rural Tampa. My neighbor to the right lives in a trailer too, and has two dogs and a goat. Her name is Barbara, and she scares me, because she looks old and worn out. But she is my age. My lasered skin and dyed hair don’t impress her. She feels sorry for me, because I am always needing her handyman skills and because my trailer is always messier than hers and because I always look scared when she sees me. I don’t know my other neighbors because they all live in solid houses, with pink and white flowers arranged around the doorstep. I live for the day when one of them stops me in the supermarket, and never suspecting I am the woman from the trailer down the block, says, “Oh my God. Didn’t you used to be on that TV show about the Revolutionary War, Yankee Doodle? You were so wonderful. I’d recognize you anywhere.” But of course that will never happen, because I was just a background character and no one ever recognized me even when the show aired almost twenty-five years ago. No one in Tampa knows about my Hollywood past. We moved here eight years ago. My husband was once a lowly second Assistant Director on Yankee Doodle while I was the ‘talent,’ as the actors are called by production. Then he became an executive producer and I became the ‘wife of,’ as spouses are called. Universal sent him to Orlando. We hated Orlando and thought Tampa would be a better place to live. We 1 2 were wrong. Though it was better for the kids. My daughter had friends for the first time who didn’t have orange and lime hair. Their worst trait was that they wore crosses and went to church. I don’t go to any church. I don’t belong to any organizations, and the friends we had in Tampa, we had because my husband had ‘Hollywood’ connections. Maybe he still sees them. I don’t. I don’t see many people. I don’t work. I don’t need to work. My divorce settlement gave me alimony and our home in Tampa, which I sold. I knew of rich Malibu wives who, after their divorce, though they could no longer afford mortgages and travel and facelifts, couldn’t control their appetites. They ended up homeless, spending their days in museums and libraries and shopping malls and sleeping in BMWs. My alimony pays for the trailer, my laser treatments, eyelifts, teeth bonding and weekly spa treatments. And thanks to the sale of the house, there is money for future facelifts. It might be nice to work, to have a place to go, to have associates. But I can’t think of any job I would want to do, or could do. I loved acting, but not as much as I loved being an actor. When I was young I saw some old character actor on the Johnny Carson show. He said he loved being an actor so much that if he couldn’t be a working actor, he was still happy to be an out-of- work actor. I know now all he was saying was if he couldn’t hang around a set all day, eating free food and bullshitting with the other actors, he was just as happy to hang around a bar eating free peanuts and bullshitting with the other actors. Once a month I meet with some ‘bridge buddies’. That’s how they advertised themselves: Bridge Buddies seeking new members, informal games, smokers okay. All levels welcome, no beginners. At fifty-six there is not much I’m a beginner at. 3 Two old ladies, Clara and Ruth, organize the games. I call them old because I like to think I’m much younger than they are, though I suspect we are not more than ten years apart in age. But they’ve lived in Tampa all their lives and that makes me think that they expected to grow older. They understood a certain order in the universe. Clara is short and wide, short gray hair, wide large glasses, wide nose, short fingers. She is the doer. She serves the iced tea, with coasters. She adjusts the temperature of the room three or four times a game, and she whistles, a thin airy noise, without purpose or melody – or none that I can discern. Ruth is quiet and coiffed and seems to find everything just a little distasteful. Clara laughs at my jokes. Ruth doesn’t. There are about six other women who are members of this club. But there is no regularity to their attendance, and often only one foursome gets to play. The left-overs eat and watch television and complain about their husbands, if they’ve got them, and smoke. It’s nice to be around other smokers. When I smoke alone in my home, I feel secretive, worried that some electric company man or some phone man will surprise me. Even late at night, I’m afraid of being discovered, seen as cigarette smoking, TV watching, beer drinking trailer trash. I drink good whiskey, but to the ignorant it still translates as trash. I come as much to play bridge as I do to smoke in a tidy, two story house, with other coughing smokers. One afternoon only Clara and I are the television watchers. “Can I ask you a question, Rachel?” Clara says, without looking up from the pistachio she is struggling to open with her short fingers. “Sure, Clara.” I reach for my cigarettes. 4 I can’t imagine what Clara has in mind to ask. We don’t know each other well; I’ve only been a bridge buddy a few months. I partnered with Clara a number of times, and that is always a bonding experience, if you play well, and we both do. She stops fighting with the pistachio and asks, “How old are you?” Bitch, I think. “Fifty-one,” I lie. A four o’clock news brief is coming on the television. I can’t help myself; it would have been as if you’d spent hundreds of dollars on lottery tickets and didn’t check the winning numbers. I have to ask, “How old do I look?” She smiles so sweetly that I know any answer under fifty would just be patronizing. Before she can speak, the anchorman on the TV says, “And on a sad note, Gabriel Turner, who started his career in the television series Yankee Doodle, died today. Mr. Turner earned two academy award nominations, most recently for Mister Fool, a bittersweet love story, about a retarded man and an immigrant female cabdriver. He was sixty–one.” “I slept with him,” I say, taking a drag on my cigarette. For a brief second, time wrinkles, and I am twelve years old giving the finger to my bunkmates who are only ten and eleven, but all at least half a foot taller than I am. I did it to establish my superior worldliness, lest anyone think I belonged with such babies. “Oh. Ruth’s sister used to go out with him, but that was before he was a newscaster. Poor Gabriel Turner. I used to love Yankee Doodle.