The Best American Short Stories 2020

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  * * *

  It was April and I liked to be alone. But whenever I sensed that my apartment was beginning to get hold of me, I’d walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the good weather. I live down south in a city whose economy probably should not have outlasted the twentieth century, although folks around here celebrate this accident as proof of their regional superiority. The highways we’ve built are among the greatest curiosities of the world. The haze from nuclear power plants lends the skyline a romantic look, like a vintage postcard. The air is so thick with the stench of gasoline and doughnuts that a deep breath can make you shed one hysterical tear. I could say hello to passing strangers, but only on defense. I could try and meditate, but I was already self-conscious about being out of touch with my community. In real time, the best solution was to walk back inside.

  I’d pass by the mirror and see fragments of other women. The way I bent my wrists or licked the inside of my mouth favored ones I hadn’t thought of and who could never have anticipated me. A blink of the eye revealed some dormant part of my personality, some no-longer-complete person who clutched her pearls at my audacity, the blasé way I naturally stood squandering my opportunities. Another quick glance revealed the godmother. For a long time she had been waiting on me to acknowledge her, but before we could lock eyes she was gone.

  The godmother is like an ancestor who never really left. Someone who’s here even when they’re not. The godmother is what happens when somebody asks your name and you suddenly can’t remember. When it’s gorgeous outside and you work up the nerve to be part of something but not enough nerve to brush your hair, that’s the godmother. Maybe you stay up too late and are tempted to give yourself completely to unrequited obsessions. That’s the godmother’s doing too. When life speeds through its continuum without pushing you forward, she starts to look your way. You have to be careful with this familiar face. She’ll have you batting your eyes and practicing your smile.

  One evening I was alone in my apartment impersonating a vibe. I was fixing a dinner of cachapas and instant coffee when I noticed the godmother wanted to have a chitchat. She conveyed this request by cutting off the power a few times. Because of her, I had to walk across the courtyard and behind the building to the fuse box to turn it back on. After a while I got tired of that and pulled out one of the cane chairs.

  I thought it was kind of me. “So kind,” said the godmother. “You ought to try kindness twice a day, seven days a week.”

  “But I barely have the energy to cook for myself,” I said, and I immediately felt used because now I’d tossed the words into the air where you could really breathe them. The godmother glanced around at the things of my apartment, and when her eyes finally settled on me, they leveled a little as she decided yes, I belonged here too.

  “Can you give me a synopsis of what’s going on?” she said.

  It was too humiliating to talk about. A few interrelated developments kept bludgeoning my life in a way that was turning me into a vagabond. Recently my best friend, Nicole, had revealed in the classiest way possible that she was about to exit our fifteen-year friendship—​by not saying anything. I reacted by latching on to my André Simpson, the man who had neglected to propose marriage when I’d felt the time was right. I was hanging around, trying to convince André—​where I had failed with Nicole—​that we still had things to talk about. These were the only people I’d chosen, if you know what I mean, and the prospect of losing them caused a brittle, shivering thing to come to life and crawl out of me. Also—​and this was embarrassingly typical of me—​my driver’s license was so badly expired that now it was actually becoming difficult to prove that I was myself.

  “Ain’t nothing going on but the weather,” I said.

  The godmother shook her head at my attempt to sound real. “I see you gone be a lot more work than I expected,” she said.

  She leaned asymmetrically in her chair, keeping time in a pair of gold slippers. She wore a housecoat tessellated with hummingbirds sipping from impatiens. Her pocketbook of leggy cigarettes dangled at the edge of the table, just within reach. The godmother was a slinky woman, still pretty in a violent sort of way. Her face was narrow and angled, her skull crested back in a tall forehead, her waved-up hair glistened with mineral oil and water.

  She stood and walked around rubbing her elbow as though physically injured by my tastes. My struggling plants. My assembly of crockpots. My cheap rosé stacked on the counter like an anemic blood bank. “Now, did you mean for your apartment to be so ugly?”

  “Oh, no. That’s the style.”

  The godmother scratched the length of her neck. “What style is that?”

  Eying my cachapas, she asked if the cook was stressed out. Prior to her interruption, I’d been doing ambitious things with a box of cornbread mix. I pushed the plate her way, and she inspected the contents, careful not to touch anything.

  “It’s something wrong with people who cook food they can’t even pronounce,” she said.

  I explained that I liked to dabble in world cuisines. Regular food gave me broke thoughts.

  “You only want something new,” she said, “because you’re tired of living.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was talking about me or about people like me, and I was afraid to ask for clarification. I mean, I was afraid to hear the answer. I knew the answer.

  The godmother made herself at home in my kitchen, whipping up a replacement dish of cornbread casserole that filled the apartment with a golden smell. “You’re tired of living,” she said, drawing a cigarette from her pocketbook, “because something has tricked you into believing that life is long.”

  “Absurd.” I scoffed like a lifelong scoffer. “My beliefs don’t trick me.”

  “That would make you very different from other people.” She sat cross-legged on the counter, breathing minty smoke. She could make rings, hearts, and moving boxes like it was no big deal. “You got to get ready to suffer because you’re different.”

  “Well, my difference ain’t paying off,” I said. “Not monetarily. Not spiritually.”

  I’d always wanted to become an artist, but no galleries would respond to the nudes I’d sent them. I spent most of my days begging on behalf of a museum I kind of believed in, where I also had a side hustle teaching rich kids how to draw a circle. All my money went to rent and dead people’s clothes.

  “So lower those expectations if you got to be happy. You don’t have to change your heart,” said the godmother, “just your heart’s desire.” Her remark burned. I hadn’t known that changing what I wanted in this world was even an option.

  The godmother glided around my kitchen with an air of tough elegance that the best schools never could teach me. She fixed fried pork chops and collard greens and then stood back, judging mildly as I ate. The extravagance made me laugh with shame. I can’t even tell you how delicious everything was. If I could, you’d just cry and cry.

  * * *

  All week I’d been begging to be included, so on Friday night, Nicole invited me to a dinner party she was obligated to go to anyway. It was one of those gatherings where nobody knew each other but told jokes and flirted like they believed they had done the right thing by agreeing to spend the time together. You had to walk up an oaky boulevard and enter a gate code to even get inside the neighborhood. Both sides of the street were lined by mansions in a variety of neocolonial and European styles, and every tree glowed in its own floodlight. Like always, Nicole led the way until we reached one particular mansion like all the other mansions except for the fact that it was perfect. The front door was simple and Shaker with chipping shellac and seemed like an apology for the house’s decadence. Once inside, we separated almost immediately.

  We were on the verge of losing touch forever, but before she became the seasonal homie, Nicole had been my best friend. When we were kids, she had been my partner in ballet and spades, and in junior high she gave me an in-depth understanding of the dozens, probably because she cared more abo
ut my self-esteem than I did. But what made us last was that when we were together, it felt like we were speaking a special language. Looking back, I think that maybe I had just learned to speak her way. I hung on to every turn of phrase and rhythm, because there was so much hope in them, the way her words sailed out and up with such poise and without fear. My mama didn’t even sound like that. Then Nicole and I got to the point in our friendship where we didn’t have to talk at all. We kept up these long silences like talking out loud was an unevolved thing, like we’d arrived at this new place of understanding and feeling.

  Actually, the new place for Nicole was that she got a real job and a fiancé. I got furniture. Once every new moon, I’d catch some uplifting article about a local dance troupe visiting the National Mall and I’d remember to miss her. When I begged for it, we’d present ourselves as the same girls from before. I felt like the strain of trying to be our old selves showed only just a little, but Nicole disagreed.

  In the entryway, under a blown-glass chandelier that looked like a bunch of squashes tumored together, some fool was playing Spice Girls on the violin. The host went around shushing people, trying to shame them into ironic appreciation, and if I hadn’t found the dessert tray, I could’ve cried bitter tears. When it was over, I went to the table to complain to Nicole, but she hadn’t noticed it was a dumb performance. She eyed my dress and introduced me to everyone, admitting to each of them that I was a lifelong friend. A man at the head of the table kept doing annoying things like holding up a plate of chickpeas smothered in yogurt and giving a detailed explanation of the dish, and people were listening like he had a punch line on hand or something. The people seated around him were good-looking and miserable. I drank champagne until I felt close to everyone.

  I attempted to coerce Nicole into interpreting a dream for me. In it I invite a woman into my apartment who scolds, laughs, and cooks for me so that I can get better or just die—​I can never tell which and that’s why I needed Nicole to clarify.

  “You dream of the same things,” she said, like I was the only one, like it was a bad thing.

  “Maybe the same problems,” I said. Then I described a scenario where versions of my former self judged me through the bedroom mirror. Of course I didn’t mention the godmother. I didn’t want her rude ass popping up when I’d barely got invited myself.

  “You on the computer too much,” said Nicole. Someone passed her a plate of intricately painted chocolates that she rationed with me only. We were supposed to take one and pass them down.

  “Only because I’m heartbroken,” I said, “and failing. I’m not sure if we can take it anymore.” I was speaking vaguely about everything, so when Nicole said she knew what I meant, firecrackers went off in my face and hands.

  “I was just thinking about that the other day,” said Nicole. “I was wondering if I had the heart to do this work again. Like, could my heart break one more time? Then I came across the website of a woman who fostered medically fragile babies. Apparently when a newborn is terminal, the parents can give up their rights if they know they won’t be able to handle the medical bills. These newborns have nobody, so this woman would bring them home. Every now and then one would get better and be adopted, but most of them died in her living room. After about the tenth dead baby, her little son asked when they were getting another one. The mom told him it was too hard on her, she just couldn’t take it. And her son replied, ‘So we aren’t going to help any more babies because you can’t take it?’ ”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. I looked Nicole up and down. “That story reminded you of me?”

  “It reminded me of a lot of things,” she said. She turned a cocoa-dusted truffle between her fingers as though contemplating my future. “When you think of quitting on yourself,” she said, “just remember the mom and the babies.” But I was stuck on the little son who couldn’t get enough of baby-death, who had also put their sad life in perspective. Without him the mother never would have noticed.

  People kept coming through the door until a party was in full swing, but I wasn’t about to give up my seat to dance to some techno. Nicole left me to talk to her other friends, and a blond woman sat down roughly in the vacant chair. I thought it was rude to sit down like that and tried to scold her with looks, but she was on the phone, talking in a shaky monologue, saying, “If someone storms in here and shoots up this party, I bet you’d be so happy. More than happy!”

  I popped the last piece of chocolate into my mouth, watching. Across the room, Nicole was explaining a complicated point with her hands. When she caught me looking, she seemed annoyed, and I knew that if someone stormed in to shoot up the party as the blond person had prophesied, Nicole’s feelings toward me wouldn’t change.

  “It may be over between us,” the blond person said, “but I just have to say, right now, you are nullifying my entire life.”

  I turned away. I didn’t like to hear somebody’s life get nullified. People have the right to withhold their attention. I’ve done it. And when André did it to me, I’d believed I was special. My heartache was delicious. It turned me into an outcast. I would cling to him until he said something devastating, like Take it easy.

  This Igbo dude in a velvet blazer kept edging in, so I obliged him. He was so cocoa-buttered up in embroidered slippers, smelling like a group gift for the Messiah, that I fell in love for at least fifteen seconds. Chudi said he was a doctor and filled my glass with cough syrup and ginger ale, which isn’t even the recipe. We engaged in some almost dangerous banter that made my head swim—​but his bootsy syrup could’ve given the same effect.

  I continued talking to this man in code until too much time had gone by. I could tell he wasn’t that attracted to me, but I was feeling too good to think about it. I made it obvious that I’d lost interest too—​I was happy that it had worked out this way—​but this hurt his feelings somehow. And he became typical, avenging his feelings by calling me names and saying I wanted to be a white girl.

  “You just a mumu anyway,” Chudi said, leaning close enough to lick my ear. “I’m so tired of bitches like you. You just want to do everything that hula-hooping white girl does, but you can’t.”

  I lied. I said, “I can hula-hoop.” I didn’t know what he was talking about until I looked in the living room where, sure enough, that same blonde had attracted a crowd by dancing as though she was trying to keep an invisible hula hoop in swift rotation.

  I didn’t appreciate the way these folks partied. They liked to give you what you needed for the time being and then rob you because it made them feel intelligent or something. I looked around for my friend. Nicole stood between a man and a woman both dressed in black. Since Nicole was wearing black too, they looked like they had come to this party together. The man and the woman nodded with their mouths open, like Nicole was saying fascinating things. She was becoming one of them, and I was becoming the wrong version of myself.

  “Intelligent robbery,” I said. Inexplicably, I laughed hard at my misfortune.

  Some people, like myself, who weren’t supposed to be at the party had noticed the large amounts of wine left out in the open. Little by little, people started stealing the wine, swiping two and three bottles each. When I said I was ready to leave, Nicole didn’t seem surprised and she did not agree to leave with me. I started to beg. Then one of her new friends scrambled over to guilt people into returning the wine. The new friend was the one who’d invited Nicole in the first place, and I could tell by the way Nicole tolerated her earnest appeals that she was going to leave when the new friend said so.

  Cool, I thought, I’ll go home without my seasonal friend. But I will never, ever, ever feel bad about stealing luxury goods from rich people.

  * * *

  In the mirror my ancestors wagged their fingers as I pulled a wine bottle out of my big purse. At 2 A.M. I called the man I’d been meaning to repossess, and since he didn’t seem upset to hear from me, I told him, “I’m getting drunk as fuck beca
use of you.”

  “You been doing that,” André said.

  A shaky laugh that could’ve belonged to any number of my ancestors rattled out of me. I laughed to hide the suspicion that I was doing something horrible to myself, that gesture by gesture I was making myself disappear. Maybe that’s why I told André one of my secret resolutions, which was to pawn everything I owned.

  I waited for somebody else to chime in, but it seemed he had excused himself to the other room. I’d never met Porsche, his new girl, though on occasion she would address me indirectly, pitching her ghetto proverbs just within earshot. Whenever I succeeded in getting André on the line, I could hear her husky contralto in the background saying something like “All shut eyes ain’t sleep.” And “You don’t apologize to a roach once you spray it.” It takes skill to get to that level, years if you study really hard.

  But despite Porsche’s gifts and what a new body like hers can do for a man’s self-esteem, André went to the other room for me, to let me annoy him into daylight. It was all the reassurance I needed to act a fool.

  I didn’t get the chance to beg him to come back to me, but I told some lies like I always do when I sense somebody doesn’t like me. I lied like I was genuinely happy at the simple accident of being alive. I talked until I felt like I was living in someone else’s idea. André got quiet, probably struggling to remember why at one point in time he had wanted me bad. Then I pretended things were getting serious with the African dude who’d called me a mumu.

  “Joy,” André said, doing something magical to my name. I felt a surge of hope that things would turn around. “Do you really believe in the things you say?” he said. He said I needed to take it easy. He said again that he probably would have stayed with me had he not met Porsche. “And in the first place,” he said, “you’re the one who declined me.” That was how his simple ass put it: declined. I wish I’d thought to say it first.