I am thrilled to share that my story, “I Am in It,” published in Alaska Quarterly Review, was noted as a Distinguished Story of 2021 in The Best American Short Stories, edited by Andrew Sean Greer with Heidi Pitlor. It was an honor simply to be included in an issue of AQR and a great surprise to make the list at the back of the BASS anthology. I nearly died upon seeing my name there so close to the likes of Yiyun Li, one of my very favorite writers. That afternoon, after nearly dying, I then felt suddenly cured of the COVID that had plagued me for weeks. Who knew BASS works better than Paxlovid, antibiotics, steroids, inhalers, and quarts of chicken soup?
This story is one that I thoroughly enjoyed writing. You know how some stories are just terrific fun to work on? The inspiration came to me after I’d spent the morning at the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at NYU, reading the diaries of Elizabeth Robins for my story, “Love in the Time of Brad Pitt’s First Marriage” (eventually published in The Journal). Robins was a writer, actress, and suffragist from the turn of the century. The archival staff at Bobst brought the journals out to me on special pillows, with great care, one at a time. I became so absorbed in them that I completely forgot to have lunch. I also developed a whopper of a headache from trying to decipher Robins’ very difficult handwriting, which got worse with each passing year. I was starving and cranky as I spilled out into the too-bright sunlight of Washington Square Park.
I wandered toward the subway, my brain so weary that I got lost, found my way again, ended up far from the stop I’d intended to go to, and passed a lovely French bistro on Lafayette Street. I walked by it at first—ready aim fire toward the Astor Place subway. My kids would very soon need to be picked up. But I was so hungry! And I’d heard the restaurant was delicious. But it was overpriced. And yet I was so hungry. Eventually I found myself in a large booth all to myself in a nearly empty restaurant, well past the lunch rush and the lunch lingerers and dangerously close to school pick-up time. I called another mom to please please pretty please fetch my kids and went on to eat the most delicious lunch I have ever eaten. I do not eat out for lunch. Even before the pandemic, it was not something I did. This felt decadent and sexy and just altogether wonderful.
Sitting there with a fancy chicken salad in front of me, paper tablecloth under my plate, I realized what my next story would be. I took a bunch of notes on that tablecloth and ripped them off the table when I left. I would write about feeling hemmed in by motherhood, something every single mother has surely felt. At the time, multiple woman I care about were suffering within abusive relationships, and they were on my mind a lot. My brain was turning circles around what they should do, how they were managing being mothers with such terrible partners. The character that was born sprang from these women, from the diaries of Elizabeth Robins, from my own escapist lunch.
I am enormously grateful to Ronald Spatz, Editor of Alaska Quarterly Review, for finding something in my story and for saving me from the terrible last few lines of my original version with his wonderful editorial suggestions, which he delivered via phone! A literary magazine editor who calls submitters to accept their work and offer their suggestions! How lovely! (Of course, I happened to be in a NYC Taxi en route to school pick and he was in Alaska and the phone connection dropped more than once.) I am also grateful to my writing group—Alice Kaltman, Sara Lippmann, Shayne Terry, and Chris Gonzalez—for workshopping the story. And to Amy Stuber for her precise and astute comments. Every story is a journey.
