In this post: A story of a family based in the height of 2020, trying to figure out how to navigate unprecedented times like the rest of us.
Category: Short Story Collection + Fast Fiction
Ramiah Recommended?
Yes.
This is the first story that I've read about the pandemic. Here we are, nearly two and half years after its height - masks are no longer required in most places in the US, global travel has largely resumed, etc. - but this story takes the reader back to 2020 right as it begun.
We follow an older couple, Paulette and Howard, as they go about married life as an older couple. Being empty nesters and grandparents, bickering, losing family members and friends to health issues and old age. There's a film of dullness placed over how old age's portrayal - and to be honest, it doesn't seem fun.
I often said that we were lucky to still be alive, but he had to know I was lying. This hurt and that. 'What?' one of us yelled to the other from the next room. 'What is it now?' The little flash fires of frustration and anger. We’d both become relief maps of keratoses, skin tags, and suspicious-looking moles.
Their old age seems very caught up in the mundane. In letting like happen to them. In just taking it day by normal day.
Along the way of chugging forward in their routine, Paulette and Howard lost their love for each other. Or at least, lost the routine of expressing it. So much so that Paulette "wondered if he remembered us, too, but I was too afraid, or shy, to ask."
When we're not learning about Paulette and Howard's relationship, we get a glimpse into their family and how their children have become adults. Ann, their daughter, just made partner at her law firm and acts as the power of attorney for her parent's health, and their son Jason was between marriages, jobs, and homes.
Fast-forward to the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak: Ann had heard news reports of a contagious virus and called Paulette to tell her to stay home, cancel appointments, and look out for the Whole Foods food delivery Ann was sending over. Soon, the book club meeting Ann was looking forward to became a Zoom meeting, learning the pain of speaking while muted, lagging, and the battle of changing speakers on the screen.
When Howard is infected with COVID, the world slowed down. all the things that families faced in real-time around the world were being portrayed through Paulette and Howard's struggle. Not being able to visit in the hospital, learning how to quarantine (especially in smaller quarters), fearing infection while trying to go to the grocery store.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a happy ending.
And Howard had died without anyone who loved him nearby, had been cremated with no one there to see him off. I hadn’t witnessed any of it and my imagination failed me for once—I couldn’t picture it. His clothes were hanging in the closet, his frayed blue toothbrush was in its holder. It was as if he had merely vanished, like a magician’s assistant falling through a secret trapdoor.
Something that really made me recommend this story was the rawness with which it portrays the human experience. I could feel Paulette mourning the excitement of her marriage, her sense of self as her life started collapsing at the height of COVID, and especially, the loss of her husband.
I imagine it hard-pressed to find anyone who couldn't feel the pangs of this story and how it echos part of their own COVID experience.
Another thing that interested me was the subject. This is the first time I read a story focused entirely on seniors, let alone a senior couple. I was surprised to find that I lacked reading about an age that I will eventually experience. It was oddly charming.
When I think about the title, I'm curious what the 'escape' was. Was it the mundaneness of daily life once COVID reached its height? Was it her marriage? Was it herself? With how the story ends, I'd like to think it was all three.
Read the story for yourself here and tell me what you think! Good themes of family, what it means to be old.
Ramiah Reflects
Questions to Ask Yourself (and answer!):
What does it mean to get old? How do you envision your life will look like when you're in your golden years?
Food for Thought:
"Houdini—that escape artist, the Handcuff King—was a great magician, but also a pragmatist. He knew that his tricks were just that, not anything mystical or otherworldly. So why did he and Bess ever devise that ridiculous pact [to make contact when one survives the other]? Maybe terror makes believers of us all." What do you think about making contact after death? Is it possible? Is silly to try or silly not to?
Ramiah's Re-read When
Re-read when:
You want a charming story
You want to divert from the type of protagonists you read about
You want to reflect on your COVID experience.
(No notes this time, folks!)
Check out my other posts and book notes here.
Until next time!
Montana Houston
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