Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella - Hardcover

Citkowitz, Evgenia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374298874 ISBN 13: 9780374298876

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

Synopsis

In “Leavers’ Events,” a teenage girl awaits exam results and has a sexual encounter with a teacher that she hopes will define her. In “Sunday’s Child,” a middle-aged actress evicts a homeless woman from her garden, which precipitates a crisis of conscience. In “The Bachelor’s Table,” a lawyer takes advantage of an accounting mistake and sets in motion a sequence of events that force him to evaluate his actions. In the title story, “Ether,” a blocked writer plagiarizes his own life with devastating consequences.

All the characters in Evgenia Citkowitz’s first collection of short fiction are connected by the quest for identity. Some are poised at a crossroads, while others teeter on the edge of a moral precipice. The stories are startlingly original, haunting, and often funny. From a hamster cage in Los Angeles to the bowels of the great houses of London and Long Island, Citkowitz depicts her characters’ frailties and humanity with a mordant humor and tenderness that never diminish their complexity.

About this title

About the Author

Evgenia Citkowitz was born in New York and was educated in London and the United States. Her short stories have been published in various British magazines. Her screenplay The House in Paris, based on Elizabeth Bowen’s novel, is currently in development.

Reviews

Screenwriter Citkowitz maps the territory where false starts and disappointment sometimes lead to unexpected opportunities in her debut collection of capricious stories and a disturbing novella. The title novella follows William, a frustrated writer who abandons New York for L.A. and falls in love with gorgeous actress Madeline. Their quick marriage inspires him to begin work on an autobiographical novel, but when Madeline develops a mysterious illness and befriends a strange young man (William calls him the Psycho), his attraction to her sours and his writing takes a dark turn. In The Bachelor's Table, Jonathan Edel, a new father, buys an unwieldy antique table on a nostalgic whim, and its presence through an uncomfortable Christmas with his alcoholic mother-in-law forces him to confront old regrets and feelings of inadequacy. An aging actress adopts a troubled boy in Sunday's Child, and the challenges they both encounter—at school, at home—come to an unexpected head when a young homeless woman is found sleeping in the boy's backyard playhouse. For all the uncomfortable situations and prickly emotion, the pieces are remarkably easy to digest. (May)
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This engaging debut collection looks at diverse characters on the edge, as they struggle with vulnerability and the conflicts in their choices, large and small. With “The Bachelor’s Table,” Jonathan, a lawyer, finds a rare item at an antique store. When he learns that the treasure was sold to him at a grossly mistaken price, he finds himself at a personal crossroad. In “Sunday’s Child,” a middle-aged foster mother is tormented by her reaction when she discovers a young homeless woman living in her garden shed. The nuanced title tale and novella follows William, a best-selling debut author, as he moves from New York to Los Angeles to complete his next book. There he meets and falls in love with an up-and-coming young actress, Madeline, but as their relationship deepens, so does William’s writer’s block. When Madeline begins to suffer from an unusual physical condition and her stability begins to crumble, William makes a detrimental choice to complete his manuscript. Citkowitz deftly balances the rawer emotions of life—resentment, desire, humiliation—with a crafted, clever tone. --Leah Strauss

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

HAPPY LOVE
 
Elizabeth chose the site: the funeral was to take place under a shock of fuchsia bougainvillea at the foot of her tree; a pomegranate planted by Candayce shortly after Elizabeth was born. Seven years old and in its prime, the tree was now in full glory: slender branches with a profusion of waxy blood-veined leaves supported tumescent, ruby fruit. Candayce never got around to picking the pomegranates—in any case it might have felt a little sacrilegious. So year after year, the fruit split open and rotted on the stem, providing a feasting ground for local wildlife, mainly birds, squirrels, and worms.
Digging was harder than Candayce expected. October had been scorching. The earth beneath the tangle of weeds had cracked into scaly fissures, unyielding to the jabs of her wooden spoon. Her eyes stung, smoke from the fires still burning fifty miles away. She thought of the people whose homes had been lost, their lives, quite literally, in ashes. Yet they still talked about rebuilding. The cost of living in beauty, they said.
Candayce knew what they meant. It was what had brought her to California: a husband’s career and a beautiful home. She was still trying to figure out what it had cost her personally. Once she had done that, she could finally ditch her shrink.
And now this.
She felt the weight of Elizabeth’s sadness compounding her own. It was unbearable to see her little face drooping with grief. Yet she was grateful to be part of it. Grateful to be given another chance. It wasn’t so long ago that she could magically soothe Elizabeth’s pains with a kiss.
Candayce hacked the soil, feeling shock-like spasms in her elbow and neck.
“There’s a shovel hanging on the side of the shed,” Elizabeth offered.
Elizabeth’s presence of mind was disarming. Only minutes earlier she’d been a sobbing mass of saliva and tears. As soon as the funeral was proposed, she pulled herself together and was now behaving with all the decorum such an occasion demanded.
Candayce picked her way across the garden, past the playhouse, once her beading studio, to the shed—so that’s where it’s kept—returning with the shovel to where her daughter reverently waited.
The service was ecumenical. On a stone Elizabeth inscribed “Happy Love” and “R.I.P.” above a representation of the deceased hamster in lavender gel pen. The corpse was laid on a bed of hibiscus with food and seeds for the afterlife. Then Elizabeth delivered a devastating paean: hopes for the deceased’s happiness, hopes for a heavenly garden he might grow with seeds enclosed, hopes for meetings with other fallen pets. Statements of sadness and longing followed. Then it was time to say goodbye to the Corporeal Presence—Candayce had to prod her on this. Elizabeth placed the lid on the Tupperware bower and lowered Peanut into the ground.
They walked slowly back to the house. She felt the calming warmth of Elizabeth’s body by her side. Until Elizabeth stepped forward and ran ahead.
It had been an overwhelming year. Candayce had only just gotten over the summer break, a two months expenses-paid holiday with Elizabeth’s Anglophile grandmother in Berkshire, England, and Antibes, in the South of France. It was draining being in someone’s debt that long, but Candayce had calculated the benefits for Elizabeth: an edifying European experience for her daughter was worth a little sacrifice. Staying with Elizabeth’s grandmother was like living in a first-class hotel, with a domineering staff that was always watching.
On returning home, Candayce discovered the switch. The Imposter was a slug who slept day and night, a listless mound of lumpy fur. In the past, when Elizabeth was at school, Candayce would hear Peanut rustling in Elizabeth’s room or a metallic twang as tooth or tail brushed against the bars of his Critter Condo. By night, Peanut was a dervish, racing across an imaginary desert in a DNA-induced panic. Round and round he went, creating a racket of beating plastic. When Peanut first came to them almost two years before, Candayce had been amazed by Elizabeth’s tender care for the rodent, and her ability to fall asleep at night with him racing maniacally on his wheel.
The house was too quiet now. Thanks to all the belt-tightening Max had been talking about, there wasn’t even the daily hum of the vacuum cleaner to fill the silence. The upside of her new poverty was that she liked doing her own laundry. It reminded her of bygone days when she hadn’t needed an army of people to run her life. And laundry was therapeutic: the sweet, dry static of warm clothes was as satisfying as the sense of completion afterward. The downside was that cleaning for dirt was defeating. Dirt was self-perpetuating: it was everywhere and could only be kept at bay. Cleaning made her obsessive—which was why it was better someone else did it.
When Max split at the beginning of the year, telling Candayce and Elizabeth about baby Dylan, Elizabeth cried with joy at the prospect of a half-sibling while Candayce inwardly died. It wasn’t so much the body blow of his treachery. She could deal with that—no one died from infidelity. It was more that the humiliation would be ongoing: that for Elizabeth’s sake, she’d be forced to embrace Max’s harpy attorney and his baby into an extended family group.
Candayce had known Max had wanted another child but hadn’t taken in how much. The betrayal was incredible. Her friends sympathized, while secretly agreeing that they’d seen it coming. You have to work at relationships, they said. During all those late-night conference calls (probably phone sex), his attorney had worked at it. Candayce had not.
Less than a year before the bombshell, Max had urged Candayce to try for another baby. Candayce had turned forty and no longer had the boundless energy that had characterized her thirties. Max was freaking out about money, something to do with his deal not being renewed. Bringing another child into their stressed family unit hadn’t seemed like a good idea. Yet a year and three-quarters on, Elizabeth was morphing into a young lady, Candayce could see it wouldn’t be long before she was up and away. With the reasoning behind her decisions as previous as her marriage, Candayce began to wonder whether having another child would have been such a hardship, whether maybe she should have been bold and gone for it. Maybe … maybe can make you crazy. She checked herself.
“Lizzie needs a sibling. Being an only child is too much pressure,” Max said.
So Candayce went out and bought her daughter Peanut.
A pet had been in the cards for a while. Elizabeth was no longer pacified by a series of canaries: Tweeties, all of them, who’d died and been replaced as necessity called. “I want a pet that will sleep in my bed,” she wailed. A dog was out. Candayce knew it would be up to her to do nocturnal walking duties. She’d be damned if she would traipse through deserted Hollywood hills, the specter of the Strangler hovering over her shoulder.
Peanut was the solution. He was a fluffball of charm, with soulful almond eyes and wavy chestnut-streaked fur. A teddy-bear hamster, don’t you know? He was a smash hit. Candayce and Elizabeth laughed at his antics, his overstuffed pouches, and lauded his skill at navigating the tubes by smudging himself up and down. When given the chance, he could flatten under doors and squeeze himself through bars. He was the Harry Houdini of the domestic animal kingdom.
With Peanut already a bond between mother and daughter, he soon became a point of connection for others in their circle. When Uma shared Elizabeth’s delight with the playful creature, it was only natural for Candayce to feel love and gratitude toward Uma, as she would anyone who happened to love Elizabeth and her furry friend.
Uma was the yoga teacher, an ethereal blond with eyes that stared in large pools of sympathy. Part two of the economy drive had been for Candayce to cut back on the private sessions with Uma, but this had proved impossible to sustain. In any case, privates at ninety dollars a pop were a mental health bargain—half of what her sometimes shrink charged. After her yoga sessions, Candayce felt her brain had been washed and balmed, her middle thoracic spine (repository of rage and anxiety) released. As a gesture to her business manager, Candayce attempted a home-practice but blanked on the sequences and cheated on the weaker side. Without Uma to cheerlead, the CNN loop showing a world with problems greater than her own was more compelling than her asanas. So Uma continued to come and generously offered to take Peanut while they were away during the summer.
First stop when they got back from Europe was to pick up Peanut from Uma’s. In two months away, Elizabeth had grown an inch and matured unbelievably. Candayce was relieved to see that Elizabeth still looked forward to her reunion with Peanut with a glee that harked back to pre-K days.
Together Candayce and Elizabeth drove downtown to Uma’s studio in Silverlake. Together they stared at the mammal formerly known as Peanut. How they stared. Gone were the brown streaks that had once given him his name. This hamster’s coat was streaked white and matted like an Afghan rug. Gone were the almond eyes that sometimes brought to mind her own daughter’s: this one had mad, bulging orbs. His nose was bovine, not cute. Nor petite. His backside was balding and rat-like. And he stank. Peanut had never smelled. He’d always been a talented groomer. No way was this Peanut. More like his bad-news brother.
While Elizabeth went to the bathroom, ostensibly to wipe poop off the sad pretender’s rear end, Candayce took the opportunity to whisper to Uma lightly, “What happened? Did Peanut cross over, you know, to the Other Side

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374298874
• ISBN 13: 9780374298876
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256