I need to read a biography on Benet. I want to know what he was like.
These stories are so good. Haven't read one that I haven't liked.
The one that was trending that way, "The Story About the Anteater", turned out to be one of my favorites.
"The Story About the Anteater"...
A modern young man (Roger) and woman (Terry) become romantically involved. They have no intention to be like any of those typical couples. They even speak about wanting an "free union" that they had read of "in popular books of the period". "..their marriage was going to be like no other marriage."
Things are heading towards their marriage smoothly when one day Roger and Terry go for a picnic out in a field. Roger tells a joke about an anteater. He bursts out laughing at the joke's conclusion while Terry is shocked. The joke was vulgar and Terry had no idea who this man was that she was sitting next to. An argument ensues about his telling the joke and her reaction to it. At one point she's about to call the engagement off while attempting to remove the ring to which Roger says, "You keep that on.. do you hear, you damn little fool!".
She collapses crying and he gets pulled out of his anger and they go back and forth saying "No, I'm the one who's to blame" in attempts to mollify each other.
The story jumps to 6 years and 5 hours in the future. It's their anniversary and Terry is looking back on her life wondering where it all went wrong. It's their anniversary but they're dining at another couple's (Mr & Mrs George Lattimore) house (an older couple). Terry made Roger swear he would not say that it was their anniversary. But it slips out of him.
To make matters worse he tells the anteater joke. At this point he's told it a hundred times and Terry can see his little quirks of behavior right before he says "have you ever heard the one about the anteater?".
From the story:
Quote:
Someone, most unhappily, had brought up the subject of pet animals. She saw a light break slowly on Roger's face—she saw him lean forward. She prayed for the roof to fall, for time to stop, for Mrs. Lattimore to explode like a Roman candle into green and purple stars. But, even as she prayed, she knew that it was no use. Roger was going to tell the anteater story.
The story no longer seemed shocking to her, or even cruel. But it epitomized all the years of her life with Roger. In the course of those years, she calculated desperately, she had heard that story at least a hundred times.
After the resounding personal defeat felt by Terry she has this very touching interaction with Mrs. Lattimore.
Quote:
"My dear," the great lady was saying, "I'd rather have asked you another night, of course, if I'd known. But I am very glad you could come tonight. George particularly wished Mr. Colden to meet your brilliant husband. They are going into that Western project together, you know, and Tom Colden leaves tomorrow. So we both appreciate your kindness in coming."
Terry found a sudden queer pulse of warmth through the cold fog that seemed to envelop her. "Oh," she stammered, "but Roger and I have been married for years—and we were delighted to come—" She looked at the older woman. "Tell me, though," she said, with an irrepressible burst of confidence, "doesn't it ever seem to you as if you couldn't bear to hear a certain story again—not if you died?"
A gleam of mirth appeared in Mrs. Lattimore's eyes.
"My dear," she said "has George ever told you about his trip to Peru?"
"No."
"Well, don't let him." She reflected, "or, no—do let him," she said. "Poor George—he does get such fun out of it. And you would be a new audience. But it happened fifteen years ago, my dear, and I think I could repeat every word after him verbatim, once he's started. Even so—I often feel as if he'd never stop."
"And then what do you do?" said Terry, breathlessly—far too interested now to remember tact.
The older woman smiled. "I think of the story I am going to tell about the guide in the Uffizi gallery," she said. "George must have heard that story ten thousand times. But he's still alive."
She put her hand on the younger woman's arm.
This counterbalance to the way that she had been viewing her life with George. This wise, older lady who had the same struggles but came to see some bit of beauty in it for both her and her husband.
She goes on to say:
Quote:
"We're all of us alike, my dear," she said. "When I'm an old lady in a wheel chair, George will still be telling me about Peru. But then, if he didn't, I wouldn't know he was George."
Roger and Terry get dropped back off at their home. They have a child and Terry goes to look in on him.
Quote:
Terry ran in to see after the boy. He was sleeping peacefully with his fists tight shut; he looked like Roger in his sleep. Suddenly, all around her were the familiar sights and sounds of home. She felt tired and as if she had come back from a long journey.
No cheap cynicism. No overly saccharine turn of heart.... but a gentle thawing and slow warming. Seeing the same thing but from a better angle this time.
The couple that was so certain they were in advance of the age. Not the ones to fall inline with the silly customs of those marriages other people have. Together but independent of each other. The early dent in this facade that had her questioning all of her feelings for him... an annoying little story of his that had her wondering who this man even is. A doubt that lingered for years. Benet doesn't say "God's grace"... but Providence in the form of Mrs Lattimore's alternative way of viewing those same annoying quirks.
I don't mean to post so much from the story but there's this simple reflection Terry has, years later while at the threshold of their 20 year anniversary:
Quote:
She looked back through those years, seeing an ever-younger creature with her own face, a creature that laughed or wept for forgotten reasons, ran wildly here, sat solemn as a young judge there. She felt a pang of sympathy for that young heedlessness, a pang of humor as well. She was not old but she had been so very young.
Roger and she—the beginning—the first years—Roger Junior's birth. The house on Edgehill Road, the one with the plate rail in the dining room, and crying when they left because they'd never be so happy again, but they had, and it was an inconvenient house. Being jealous of Milly Baldwin—and how foolish!—and the awful country-club dance where Roger got drunk; and it wasn't awful any more. The queer, piled years of the boom—the crash—the bad time—Roger coming home after Tom Colden's suicide and the look on his face. Jennifer. Joan. Houses. People. Events. And always the headlines in the papers, the voices on the radio, dinning, dinning "No security—trouble—disaster—no security." And yet, out of insecurity, they had loved and made children. Out of insecurity, for the space of breath, for an hour, they had built, and now and then found peace.
No, there's no guarantee, she thought. There's no guarantee. When you're young, you think there is, but there isn't. And yet I'd do it over. Pretty soon we'll have been married twenty years.
