SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: December 16, 2022] “Good Neighbors”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fifth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
Like we always do at this time: the Short Story Advent Calendar is back for 2022. We had such a great time last year working with our first-ever guest editor, the one and only Alberto Manguel. This year, however, we’re bringing things back to basics. No overarching theme or format, just 25 top-class short stories, selected in-house, by some of the best writers in North America and beyond. It’s December 16. Erika Swyler, author of Light from Other Stars, doesn’t like the sound of those hoofprints.
I loved the audacity of this story. A couple is mourning the loss of their old neighborhood. I loved this:
You bought a starter house, then a show house or a major renovation, then you retired to somewhere else, leaving an enormous home behind to mark where you’d been.
When Janie and Phil bought their house thirty years ago they were living in the woods part of suburbia. But now they lived in the shadows of mansions. The Hutchinson’s, like everyone else apparently, seemed to be moving to Boca.
Soon enough someone had moved into the house. They tore down a lot of what the Hutchinson had put up, including the (absolutely necessary) deer fencing. Soon enough, their garden had been eaten to the ground by deer.
But the new neighbors were certainly quiet, which was probably better than house partiers.
Then one morning Janie noticed that a deer walked out of the front door of the Hutchinson’s place. Janie quickly ran over to introduce herself to anyone who might be int he house but there was only silence.
A week later, Janie spoke to Laura Tsang, a neighbor whose house had just gone on the market. She asked if Laura had met the new neighbors, and Laura said that Ted and Alice were so sweet. It was then that Janie discovered that Laura Tsang was a big fat liar.
Janie and Phil had taken to watching the Hutchinsons’ place because it was like the National Geographic channel, only free.
One night while Janie and Phil are out for a walk, they encounter the deer. The male stomps its hoof on the cement and stares at them. Janie stares back and stomps her foot right back (it hurts). More deer arrived. But after a tense standoff, the lead deer turned and fled.
But perhaps the point had been made.
I really enjoyed this story both for how surreal and funny it was but how serious it was as well.
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