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    One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
    One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
    One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

    By Keyhole Press

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    About this ebook

    Stephanie Johnson's first full-length collection of short stories.

    Stephanie Johnson can accomplish in five hundred words what some writers can only do in five thousand: a complete arc of narrative with compelling characters struggling through the web of human frailties, entangled in passion and dependency, love and betrayal, insight and ignorance. She does it by plucking strings of meaning that resonate far beyond the economy of the printed page. And when we finish a story, we realize we had slipped into a compelling world, both strange and familiar, and we miss it. So we read another.
    -Jeff McMahon, Editor of Contrary

    Stephanie Johnson s fiction like Raymond Carver s celebrates the idea that less, on the page, can be more: her stories are at once lean and rich, poignant and wry, insightful and evocative. An impressive debut.
    -Jessica Treadway, author of And Give You Peace and Absent Without Leave

    There is, in Stephanie Johnson s stories, a profound, unflashy magic of seeing. She puts you right up to the beating hearts of her people from which vantage, you see how they miss one another, and you understand as odd, perfect miracles their moments of connection and knowledge.
    -Scott Garson, author of American Gymnopedies

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKeyhole Press
    Release dateFeb 2, 2012
    ISBN9781301985548
    One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

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      Book preview

      One of These Things Is Not Like the Others - Keyhole Press

      ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS

      Stories

      by Stephanie Johnson

      Keyhole Press

      an imprint of Dzanc Books

      www.keyholepress.com

      One of These Things Is Not Like the Others © 2009 by Stephanie Johnson. Smashwords edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Portions of this book originally appeared in Contrary, elimae, Juked, Menda City Review, Night Train, Quay, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, and Wigleaf.

      Cover design by Peter Cole.

      for

      Ben and Finn

      STORIES

      My Neighbor Doesn’t Remember Everything She Forgets

      In Vino Veritas

      My Great-Aunt Meets Jesus at the Mobil Station in Montana

      You Are Not Clark Kent

      Faux-Finish

      Baby, Baby

      Tennessee Travel Inn, Circa 1979

      The Dog and the Bone

      Read the Fine Print

      A Case Study in Accidents

      My Cousin Billy Is Dismantled

      Fluxions

      Thesmophoria

      Marriage

      Dragons

      Motherhood

      Ichthys

      Magdalene

      Dirty Laundromat

      The Real Mrs. Robinson Takes a Moment to Reconsider

      One of These Things Is not Like the Others

      My Neighbor Doesn’t Remember Everything She Forgets

      My neighbor has a new puppy that my dog likes to pee on. When my dog sees the puppy, he trots over to the chain link fence between our yards, spins a circle or two, lifts his leg, and lets loose. I try to deter this behavior, but my dog is stubborn.

      I don’t like to blame the victim, but the puppy isn’t very smart. He sits there. He wags his tail. When the shower’s over, he shakes. He puts his paws on the fence, begging for me to pet him, but I don’t want to touch him. He’s covered in piss.

      My neighbor meets me at the fence. Oh ho, she says. She claps her hands. Look at that. I think he liked it. She laughs and the puppy wags his tail. He rolls over and she rubs his belly.

      Bad dog, I say, more because I want my neighbor to hear than because I think my dog listens to me. The dog likes my husband better.

      Oh, he never barks, my neighbor says. You have a good dog. He’s a good boy. He’ll protect you if anyone tries to break in.

      Even if I disagree, I try to accept compliments gracefully, especially when they come from someone who needs to give her puppy his tenth bath of the week. He’s a pretty good dog, I say.

      She points at the puppy. We’re too old for this, she says. But Hank, you know, he wanted the dog. She sighs. What can you do? It doesn’t do any good to argue. Men will do what men will do.

      Don’t even try and stop them, I say.

      I’ve started getting in cars with men who aren’t my husband, she continues. Happened again yesterday. Hank was supposed to pick me up in front of the post office. The man was kind enough, but he wasn’t Hank. It wasn’t our car. Can you imagine?

      My neighbor told me she wrote my name in a notebook she keeps by her refrigerator. I’m after her grandchildren’s names and the date of her husband’s last heart attack, but before the names of the new neighbors across the street and the list of who to call if Hank’s pacemaker fails. She says when it gets bad enough, she’ll have to pin a note on her shirt to remind her that everything she needs to remember is in that notebook.

      Tell me again, she says. Where’s your husband?

      When I don’t answer quickly enough, she says, Wait, wait. Don’t tell me. You’ve told me before. She presses her fingers against her forehead. I know you’ve told me. Don’t tell me again.

      It’s hard to get a word in edgewise with my neighbor. She likes to talk, and I don’t hold that against her. After seven decades, she’s got a lot to say. She doesn’t always know what happened fifteen minutes ago, but she knows things, important things.

      Her face wrinkles. I’m sorry, she says. She shakes her head.

      The puppy yips. When he barks, he hops, propels himself off the ground. Despite recent events, he’s happy. Nothing gets this dog down.

      You know, my neighbor says, when I had my first, I didn’t know what to do. I thought, My God, I’ve made a mistake. We didn’t know anything then—we enjoyed food and sex, and then, well, that’s what came of it. A woman at our church couldn’t have them. No one said anything about it, but everyone knew. And I thought, I’ll give this to her…

      My neighbor curls her fingers in the fence. I didn’t think I wanted him, she says. Then she stops, presses her palm against her mouth. What a horrible thing, she says. What a horrible thing to remember. Why did I remember that? Her eyes water and she shakes her head.

      I’m sorry, she says. I don’t remember everything I forget. Is your husband with his mother?

      He’s not, but it’s pretty to think so, so I nod.

      He’ll come home soon, she says. She picks up the puppy, cradles him against her chest like a child.

      I know I should take the dog in, but insomnia’s rawness makes me want to talk. I remind her that she complimented me back then, said I looked healthy as if she could sense I never wore beauty conventionally, as if she knew my body belonged round and full, weighted and earthbound. Since then, others have told me that we have to accept what we can’t change. They’ve said, some things just happen and no one is to blame. I know these things—we can’t always beat the odds. But now my husband pays monthly for a room across town while I pay daily for vacancy. I tell her I think I see the face in my dreams. I tell her about what we measure in weeks and months and pounds, the things we can’t hold—shouldn’t count on to save us—because they’re not here. I try to name the thing we never missed until it was lost, all the things that never stood a chance in this beautiful and brutal world.

      In Vino Veritas

      Tuesday night, I come home from work at the library and she reminds me the dentist is coming over for dinner. She’s been working out the details to make this evening perfect for a month, changing the menu, changing her mind about what to wear, changing her diet to squeeze into a sleeveless dress she wore when we were first dating. She’s been working hard ever since he called to tell her he’d be in town for the night, and I’ve been working twice as hard to convince myself she used to do things like this for me too. I just didn’t know it.

      Dr. Dibley’s coming over? I ask her.

      She rolls her eyes, as though I’m trying to give her a hard time. With the way she’s been carrying on about her dentist, you’d think he was personally responsible for every tooth in her mouth.

      Carver, she says.

      Who?

      From high school, she says, as if I’m supposed to keep up with every person she knew before we met. She’s thirty-three, for God’s sake. I’ve known her for five years and been married to her for three. She’s dressed in the tight red dress, necklace, heels, earrings, the whole deal. The diet worked. She’s dug the apron out of the drawer and it’s knotted around her waist. As I lean over her shoulder to see what she’s making, I smell her perfume. Sweet spices. She smells good, like summer breezes and vine-ripe tomatoes.

      Is he going to look at my gums—see if gingivitis has taken over?

      Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t ask to see his teeth.

      Why would I do that?

      Don’t play dumb, she says. Maybe I am. But sometimes, dumb is all you can depend on. I tell her this and she looks at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language.

      You think your sense of humor is so funny, she says.

      Don’t you?

      Carver doesn’t know you. Can you give him a little time to catch up?

      Is he going to bring us toothbrushes?

      She turns from the red sauce she’s simmering on the stove. Her hand is on her waist and her weight’s shifted to her right hip. Steam rises off the pot behind her,

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