A criminal act intensifies the conflict between two estranged and contrary sisters—one a butcher, the other a vegetarian cellist. A mime sublets half of a family’s duplex, then makes them the subject of perhaps the most astonishing trick of his career. A couple enters uncomfortable new terrain in their marriage when one of them believes their toddler has become a devourer of small objects.
This is just a sampling of the offbeat dramas that unfold in Jacob M. Appel’s entertaining and thought-provoking story collection Coulrophobia & Fata Morgana. Instead of running counter to reality, the quirkiness of the stories feels true to the strangeness, and the struggles, of lived experience.
In “The Butcher’s Music,” a professional butcher, Rita, agrees to a visit from her sister, Tammy, a “big deal” cellist, whom Rita hasn’t seen for three years. The sisters’ estrangement is rooted in a variety of differences—professional, socioeconomic, and personal. For one thing, Tammy’s cello is worth “several times more than Rita’s butcher shop and Rita’s garden apartment and Rita’s six-year-old Toyota combined.” And to Rita’s mind, Tammy’s financial and professional successes have given her an attitude: “Deep down [Tammy] thinks she’s better than me—and it drives me up the fucking wall.”
The ostensible reason for Tammy’s visit is that she will be in the area to perform in charity concerts. But as Rita soon learns, Tammy is hoping to escape the consequences of a crime she’s committed—and without Rita’s intervention, she may very well commit another. (I won’t give away the nature of her crime; I’ll just say that “butcher” has a double meaning in this story.)
The news of what Tammy has done both horrifies Rita and turns the power dynamic between the sisters on its head. Rita is forced to be Tammy’s better when the stakes couldn’t be higher. As for Tammy, though for the most part she’s in deep denial over the seriousness of her actions, she experiences fleeting moments of recognition: “All those years of training, all that conservatory, and in the end I’m just as fucked up as anybody else.”
This darkly humorous story sheds a strange new light on all-too-familiar truths: often, we are far from really knowing those closest to us, even blood relations, and shifts in those relationships can take us to unexpected places.
In the story “Coulrophobia,” an entire family is taken to unexpected places when, in search of additional income, they sublet the other half of their duplex to a mime. More specifically, the father makes this decision, which comes as a surprise to the narrator of the story: Turner, the son. When the soon-to-be-subletter, Simon Stillman, tells the father that he performs mime at the zoo, Turner observes:
Though Simon eventually stops paying rent, incurring the wrath of the father, he pulls some clever tricks to get into—and remain in—the good graces of Turner and Turner’s stepmother, Sylvia. In particular, Simon establishes a “clown camp” just for Turner, and he completely charms Sylvia by teaching her the art of miming. “Overnight,” Turner observes, “she went from all nerves to nearly happy-go-lucky.” This change doesn’t go over well with the father: “Something essential had occurred in my stepmother’s life, he must have sensed, and he wasn’t part of it.”
Things escalate from there, and the story ends with the father trying to confront, once and for all, the rift between himself and Sylvia. The results of the confrontation are surprising yet logical, and they—and the larger story—offer a telling illustration of the fragile chemistry of many marriages. Sometimes, a couple’s dreams and aspirations just drift apart; other times, a disruption from without (a romantic rival, or some other factor) reveals that those dreams and aspirations might never have been aligned in the first place.
In the marriage at the center of “Saluting the Magpie,” the disruption comes from within. The narrator of this story, Dave, believes that his wife, Gillian, is overreacting after their one-year-old daughter, Calliope, seems to have swallowed a penny. When Gillian insists that they take Calliope to the emergency room, Dave makes this observation:
In the waiting area of the emergency room, where an X-ray reveals that Calliope has indeed swallowed a coin, Dave and Gillian encounter their pediatrician, who raises the disturbing possibility that Calliope may have a case of pica: “cravings for non-nutritive substances. Chalk. Soap. Coins. Nobody knows why.” (Pica, the doctor tells Dave and Gillian, is the Latin word for magpie, a bird known for eating anything.)
After Gillian and Dave bring Calliope home, Gillian tries to get “all ingestible objects” out of the toddler’s way, prompting Dave to once again believe that she’s overreacting. Despite Gillian’s efforts, additional small objects go missing, and she is virtually certain that Calliope has swallowed them—especially when Calliope seems to be troubled by a stomach ache.
“She needs an X-ray,” Gillian says. “This is a catastrophe waiting to happen, Dave. I’m not sure why you can’t see that.”
The story invites us to consider whom to believe, Dave or Gillian, and what is sensible and what is excessive in efforts to keep children safe and well. As the ending of the story suggests, such conflicts can be difficult to resolve neatly, or peaceably.
In a larger sense, the story invites us to consider whether sympathy should ever have limits and, if so, what those might be. Dave understands that Gillian’s anxiety over Calliope’s welfare is fed by a tragedy she experienced years before: her baby sister’s drowning in a neighbor’s pool. Yet his own certainty about facts and reality blinds him, and to some degree it shuts down his sympathy for, and receptiveness to, his wife’s concerns.
Reflecting on Dave’s behavior, one might take this advice from the story: Be as patient as you can with loved ones, even when your limits feel tested. Listen to them—really listen, even when it’s hardest to. But, as the story makes clear, these will never be easy things to do.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":▪ Offbeat or humorous fiction that offers telling explorations of human relationships (such as the stories of Lorrie Moore)
▪ Longer/meatier short stories that read like mini-novels
