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Excerpt: from Deb Olin Unferth's novel, Vacation
A Stop Smiling Author Event Spotlight
Monday, October 19, 2009
On Thursday, Oct. 22, STOP SMILING and Chicago Public Radio will present An October Sort of City: Chicago Authors Talk Chicago, an event that will showcase four Chicago authors rhapsodizing about the city that shaped their lives and work. Click here for event details.
The following is an excerpt from Vacation (McSweeney's), a novel by Deb Olin Unferth. Unferth will present her work at the event along with authors Joe Meno, Cristina Henríquez and Eula Biss.
Click here for an excerpt from Cristina Henríquez's novel, The World In Half
Click here to read an excerpt from Eula Biss' book of essays, Notes From No Man's Land
Click here to read an excerpt from Joe Meno's book of short stories Tender as Hellfire
From Vacation:
CLAIRE
Last week the phone rang. This is how I wound up on the train.
We have a box here in Chicago, said the woman on the phone. We thought you might like to know.
It was early. I was half-asleep in my bathrobe, propped up in a chair.
Thank you for the update, I said. Maybe next time you could take out an announcement in the Times.
It’s a box with your mother’s papers in it — your mother, the TV
star?
If this is blackmail, you go ahead and show those to anyone you
want.
This is not blackmail.
Pawn shop? Mob?
Librarian. Your father sold these to us on condition that they stay sealed until now.
What’s so special about now? I said. I looked at the clock.
Your father’s been dead ten years today.
He wasn’t my father.
Whoever he was, the box is here and on top is a card with your name
on it. As of today these papers are a matter of public record to anyone with a fine-free card. But you get first-look, if you care to, which you might, considering.
Considering what?
Don’t ask me. It’s your family.
At first I wasn’t going to go. I had a lot to do myself. I don’t know why he had to sell them to a place way out west.
Ha. I was going. Of course I was going. My mother’s papers? You bet I was going. I never got to ask the woman a single question. And the man who raised me just made his broadcast and died.
At first I wasn’t going to go because the truth was I had no money, or the truth was I was going to go when I had the money — it always comes along sometime. No, the truth was I had no money but clearly now I needed some money because I had to find out what was in that box. I needed money now.
I was up at this hour because I didn’t want to be in bed. There was a stranger in there who I hoped would wake up soon and leave.
Hey, wake up, I called. I went over to him. You have to get up now.
He opened his eyes. I dreamed the phone was ringing, he said.
It was just a dream, I said.
He sat up, pulled on his shirt.
Your dog wants to be let in, he said. Don’t you hear that?
I don’t have a dog, I said.
I fastened a hairpin in my hair.
Do you have any cash? I said.
He blinked at me.
It’s for my mother.
So I took the subway to the train station and got on the train. I’d only been seated a few minutes before the man sat down next to me, the one with the head. He had just the single odd feature, like a trick with mirrors or papîer-mâché. Or perhaps as if he had been lying down for a long time with a small weight pressing into the side of his head, and each day a smaller weight was put on top of the one that was there, and another and another. At first the weight would have been nothing. A fly to swat. Tax. Almost not there. But one day it wasn’t nothing anymore — the accumulation, the duration pushed it (inward) to subtle, devastating proportions. It’s all just math.
Later, after he’d left his seat and I saw him out on the platform, I realized who he resembled. An image of the man who raised me came into my mind: We were playing nuclear war together and making sounds of sirens. We were laughing. I’d drawn on the mirror with soap a bomb going into the ocean. Mayday! he was saying. Man down!
Copyright © 2008 by Deb Olin Unferth. This excerpt originally appeared in Vacation. Published by McSweeney's. Reprinted here with permission.
Deb Olin Unferth will take part in the event An October Sort of City on Thursday, Oct. 22. Click here for details.