Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2011 Dreams on Shelves Jillian Koopman Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERISTY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES DREAMS ON SHELVES By JILLIAN KOOPMAN A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011 The members of the committee approve the thesis of Jillian Koopman defended on March 4th, 2011. ______________________________ Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Thesis ______________________________ Julianna Baggott Committee Member ______________________________ Erin Belieu Committee Member Approved: ______________________________________ R.M. Berry, Chair, Department of English ______________________________________ Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii To my mom, dad, Andy, Sam, and Bandit. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge The Florida State University for giving me the opportunity to attend this program. I would also like to acknowledge all of the professors, classmates, peers and students who helped shape my time in Tallahassee. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract vi The Walk 1 Into the Wound 19 My Blue Memory 40 Origins 58 Afloat 78 Open Doors 99 Ordinary Thursday 137 La Sedia Del Papa 164 Dreams on Shelves 186 Biographical Sketch 210 v ABSTRACT This thesis is a collection of short stories that explore characters undergoing a personal change and how it affects their lives and relationships. Each character struggles with a sense of ambivalence as well as a desire to control and understand her life, and these two reactions produce a conflict. vi "Against my better judgment, I feel certain that very near here--the first house down the road, maybe--there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here someone's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight." —Buddy Glass, from J.D.Salinger’s Franny and Zooey vii The Walk “To me, it is not about getting over things and moving forward, it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it.” —Justine Vernon, mother of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) Allie parked her white Corolla in front of a tree, turning the key halfway so she could hear the rest of the song. She could feel her jean shorts sticking to the newly deposited globs of fat on her hips and thighs. Last night she’d eaten three pieces of fried chicken and a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and even though she spent all day hauling around coolers and chairs for her brother’s soccer tournament, she didn’t count this as a workout. Colin’s team lost in the final game; she politely averted her eyes as he wept on the way home. Now as she got out of her car, she thought of the boys’ faces as they played, free of emotion, concentrated on just that moment. If she could be that carefree, she would not consider her day a loss, even if she’d lost an infinite amount of games. She had been excited all week, though now a huge part of her wanted it to be three hours from now, when she’d be safe in her bed, free to think things over without the pressure of acting. When she wouldn’t have to worry about making fool of herself, which she’d inevitably do. Her deepest worry was that the night would not live up to her expectations, which others were always telling her were wildly disproportionate to reality. She had tried tempering her excitement by searching through Jeremy’s Facebook for any disparaging, racist or sexist comments he’d made, but he had little activity. On his profile it listed only his email and the few jobs he’d worked, at a sports store and as a lifeguard. All of the pictures posted of him were taken outside, in groups or too far away to see his face. When she saw him her instinct told her to look away, but she forced herself to make eye contact long enough to smile. Jeremy squinted happily into the sun. She let her head hang down as she crossed the dirt parking lot. “What’s up?” he said. He was wearing mesh shorts, flip flops, a t-shirt, and a light blue hat. 1 “Nothing.” She wished she had a better way to answer this question. A sentence that consisted only of the word nothing did not deserve to be spoken. “Great day, huh?” she said. As she smiled she was terrified of some colorful remainder wedged between her teeth from all the candy she ate that day. “A little hot, but definitely nice.” A wall shot up in her mind, preventing her from saying anything stupid. She looked around, nodding vaguely. “You want to walk?” he asked. “Sure.” Eight o’clock was the hottest part of the day in the summer. All the heat that had accumulated during the day seemed to wrap itself around you like a blanket. “How was your day?” asked Jeremy. “Good! I was at my brother’s soccer tournament and he lost. So, that part sucked.” “Too bad.” “Yeah. And I had to listen to my mom talk all day.” “Your mom’s a talker?” He smiled. “I swear she’s got some freak genetics that prevent her mouth or tongue from ever getting tired.” Jeremy laughed, and she felt little bells ringing in her heart. Allie kept wiping her upper lip in case it started sweating. She could hear herself breathing, all the clicks and moans of her inner slime, and she was sure Jeremy heard it too. When you thought about the body, what it was made of and how it really looked, it was pretty revolting. Allie reached back and yanked her hair out of its ponytail. “Hold on a sec,” she said. Flipping her head upside down, she gathered all her lemony-streaked brown hair and wove it quickly in and out of a band. “Hey, you dyed your hair.” “I used lemon juice, so it wouldn’t be too extreme.” She had been afraid to go blonde because her mother told her it wouldn’t match her skin tone. “I like it.” “Thanks. It’ll look better when it starts to grow out.” 2 There weren’t many homeless people out today. They were always offering her little pieces of wisdom; usually it was something so simple she’d overlooked it. Allie actually preferred them to the people she went to school with, who refused to accept any part of themselves that wasn’t sanctioned by Urban Outfitters or some new reality TV show about rich people. There was never anything in the homeless peoples’ tone or words that attempted to disguise what was bad about life. They accepted it as one with the good. They passed a woman reading on a bench. Something about the way she was sitting—one leg up on the bench, the other bent, her hand on her head, elbow pointed out—reminded Allie of someone. She just looked geometrically confused. Allie realized it was her English teacher, Laura. She scooted to the other side of Jeremy and gazed at the bathrooms. While she was in there, ducks liked to waddle under the door and say hello. “That was my English teacher,” said Allie, once they were a little farther away. She subtly pointed. “Sitting on that bench.” Jeremy turned around. “Did you like her?” “She was great at first, but by the end of the class I hated her. I don’t know why.” She laughed. All she knew was that she caught herself hoping bad things happened to her teacher pretty often. “I don’t think she liked teaching very much,” Allie added. “She looks kind of young. Maybe you were her first class.” “We weren’t.” “Oh.” Allie looked down the near empty pathway that led around the lake. Everyone was probably at home, snuggling up into his or her Sunday night routine. Allie hated the dead ache of Sundays, how endless they were, how not even time could relieve you of them. “I had a teacher once who told us he hated teaching. Needless to say, it didn’t make any of the students like the class better.” Allie nodded. She could not stop her mind from going back to her teacher. It was like when someone moved her chair, and she could not stop harping on the small space 3 change until she’d righted it. “Yeah, I even friended her right after the class, and literally two minutes later, she accepted.” Her teacher’s profile shocked her. She was not the self-conscious woman she’d been on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to one thirty. Her About Me section had said, “I am no less in love with the world than rain.” “I did like the course material, though.” “Is that the class that made you want to be a writer?” “Actually, I think it had the opposite effect.” “Really? I bet you’re awesome.” Allie faked a smile. “I want to concentrate on film, I think. I really enjoy everything involved in editing, and all the other facets of it. Though for years I’ve wanted to be a writer.” Part of Allie felt proud to be so elastic.