Bark: Stories

by Lorrie Moore

  “I can’t believe Maria’s wearing white,” said Nickie.

  I shrugged. “What color should she wear?”

  “Gray!” Nickie said immediately. “To acknowledge having a brain! A little gray matter!”

  “Actually, I saw something on PBS recently that said only the outer bark of the brain—and it does look like bark—is gray. Apparently the other half of the brain has a lot of white matter. For connectivity.”

  Nickie snorted, as she often did when I uttered the letters PBS. “Then she should wear gray in acknowledgment of having half a brain.”

  I nodded. “I get your point,” I said.

  Guests were eating canapés on paper plates and having their pictures taken with the bride. Not so much with Maria’s new groom, a boy named Hank, which was short not for Henry but for Johannes, and who was not wearing sunglasses like everyone else but was sort of squinting at Maria in pride and disbelief. Hank was also a musician, though he mostly repaired banjos and guitars, restrung and varnished them, and that was how he, Maria, and Ian had all met.

  Now the air was filled with the old-silver-jewelry smell of oncoming rain. I edged toward Ian, who was looking for the next song, idly strumming, trying not to watch his father eye Maria.

  “Whatcha got? ‘I’ll Be There’?” I asked cheerfully. I had always liked Ian. He had chosen Maria like a character, met her on a semester abroad and then come home already married to her—much to the marveling of his dad. Ian loved Maria, and was always loyal to her, no matter what story she was in, but Maria was a narrative girl and the story had to be spellbinding or she lost interest in the main character, who was sometimes herself and sometimes not. She was destined to marry and marry and marry. Ian smiled and began to sing “I Will Always Love You,” sounding oddly like Bob Dylan but without the sneer.

  I swayed. I stayed. I did not get in the way.

  “You are a saint,” I said when he finished. He was a sweet boy, and when Nickie was little he had often come over and played soccer in the yard with her and Maria.

  “Oh no, I’m just a deposed king of corn. She bought the farm. I mean, I sold it to her, and then she flipped it and bought this one instead.” He motioned toward the endless field beyond the tent, where the corn was midget and standing in mud, June not having been hot enough to evaporate the puddles. The tomatoes and marijuana would not do well this year. “Last night I had a dream that I was in West Side Story and had forgotten all the words to ‘I like to be in America.’ Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”

  “No,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “Jesus, what is my dad doing?” Ian said, looking down and away.

  Ian’s father was still prowling the perimeter, a little drunkenly, not taking his eyes off the bride.

  “The older generation,” I said, shaking my head, as if it didn’t include me. “They can’t take any change. There’s too much missingness that has already accumulated. They can’t take any more.”

  “Geez,” Ian said, glancing up and over again. “I wish my dad would just get over her.”

  I swallowed more wine while holding Ian’s lemonade. Over by the apple tree there were three squirrels. A threesome of squirrels looked ominous, like a plague. “What other songs ya got?” I asked him. Nickie was off talking to Johannes Hank.

  “I have to save a couple for the actual ceremony.”

  “There’s going to be an actual ceremony?”

  “Sort of. Maybe not actual actual. They have things they want to recite to each other.”

  “Oh yes, that,” I said.

  “They’re going to walk up together from this canopy toward the house, say whatever, and then people get to eat.” Everyone had brought food, and it was spread out on a long table between the house and the barn. I had brought two large roaster chickens, cooked accidentally on Clean while I was listening to Michael Jackson on my iPod. But the chickens had looked OK, I thought: hanging off the bone a bit but otherwise fine, even if not as fine as when they had started and had been Amish and air-chilled and a fortune. When I had bought them the day before at Whole Foods and gasped at the total on my receipt, the cashier had said, “Yes. Some people know how to shop here and some people don’t.”

  “Thirty-three thirty-three. Perhaps that’s good luck.”

  “Yup. It’s about as lucky as two dead birds get to be,” said the cashier.

  “Is there a priest or anything? Will the marriage be legal?” I now asked Ian.

  Ian smiled and shrugged.

  “They’re going to say ‘You do’ after the other one says ‘I do.’ Double indemnity.”

  I put his lemonade down on a nearby table and gave him a soft chuck on the shoulder. We both looked across the yard at Hank, who was wearing a tie made of small yellow pop beads that formed themselves into the shape of an ear of corn. It had ingeniousness and tackiness both, like so much else created by people.

  “That’s a lot of dos.”

  “I know. But I’m not making a beeline for the jokes.”

  “The jokes?”

  “The doozy one, the do-do one. I’m not going to make any of them.”

  “Why would you make jokes? It’s not like you’re the best man.”

  Ian looked down and twisted his mouth a little.

  “Oh, dear. You are?” I said. I squinted at him. When young I had practiced doing the upside-down wink of a bird.

  “Don’t ask,” he said.

  “Hey, look.” I put my arm around him. “George Harrison did it. And no one thought twice. Or, well, no one thought more than twice.”

  Nickie approached me quickly from across the grass. “Mom. Your chickens look disgusting. It’s like they were hit by a truck.”

  The wedding party had started to line up—except Ian, who had to play. They were going to get this ceremony over with quickly, before the storm clouds to the west drifted near and made things worse. The bridesmaids began stepping first, a short trajectory from the canopy to the rosebushes, where the I dos would be said. Ian played “Here Comes the Bride.” The bridesmaids were in pastels: one the light peach of baby aspirin; one the seafoam green of low-dose clonazepam; the other the pale daffodil of the next lowest dose of clonazepam. What a good idea to have the look of Big Pharma at your wedding. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why hadn’t I thought of that until now?

  “I take thee, dear Maria …” They were uttering these promises themselves just as Ian said they would. Hank said, “I do,” and Maria said, “You do.” Then vice versa. At least Maria had taken off her sunglasses. Young people, I tried not to say out loud with a sigh. Time went slowly, then stood still, then became undetectable, so who knew how long all this was taking?

  A loud noise like mechanized thunder was coming from the highway. Strangely, it was not a storm. A group of motorcyclists boomed up the road and, instead of roaring by us, slowed, then turned right in at the driveway, a dozen of them—all on Harleys. I didn’t really know motorcycles, but I knew that every biker from Platteville to Manitowoc owned a Harley. That was just a regional fact. They switched off their engines. None of the riders wore a helmet—they wore bandannas—except for the leader, who wore a football helmet with some plush puppy ears which had been snipped from some child’s stuffed animal then glued on either side. He took out a handgun and fired it three times into the air.

  Several guests screamed. I could make no sound at all.

  The biker with the gun and the puppy ears began to shout. “I have a firearms license and those were blanks and this is self-defense because our group here has an easement that extends just this far into this driveway. Also? We were abused as children and as adults and moreover we have been eating a hell of a lot of Twinkies. Also? We are actually very peaceful people. We just know that life can get quite startling in its switches of channels. That there is a river and sea figure of speech as well as a TV one. Which is why as life moves rudely past, you have to give it room. We understand that. An occasion like this means No More Forks in
the Road. All mistakes are behind you, and that means it’s no longer really possible to make one. Not a big one. You already done that. I need to speak first here to the bride.” He looked around, but no one moved. He cleared his throat a bit. “The errors a person already made can step forward and announce themselves and then freeze themselves into a charming little sculpture garden that can no longer hurt you. Like a cemetery. And like a cemetery it is the kind of freedom that is the opposite of free.” He looked in a puzzled way across the property toward Maria. “It’s the flickering quantum zone of gun and none, got and not.” He shifted uncomfortably, as if the phrase “flickering quantum zone” had taken a lot out of him. “As I said, now I need to speak to the bride. Would that be you?”

  Maria shouted at him in Portuguese. Her bridesmaids joined in.

  “What are they saying?” I murmured to Nickie.

  “I forgot all my Portuguese,” she said. “My whole childhood I only remember Maria saying ‘good job’ to everything I did, so I now think of that as Portuguese.”

  “Yes,” I murmured. “So do I.”

  “Good job!” Nickie shouted belligerently at the biker. “Good job being an asshole and interrupting a wedding!”

  “Nickie, leave this to the grown-ups,” I whispered.

  But the guests just stood there, paralyzed, except Ian, who, seemingly very far off on the horizon, slowly stood, placing his guitar on the ground. He then took his white collapsible chair in both hands and raised it over his head.

  “Are you Caitlin?” The puppy-eared biker continued to address Maria, and she continued to curse, waving her sprigs of mint and spirea at him. “Và embora, babaca!” She gave him the finger, and when Hank tried to calm her, she gave Hank the finger. “Fodase!”

  The cyclist looked around with an expression that suggested he believed he might have the wrong country wedding. He took out his cell phone, took off his helmet, pressed someone on speed dial, then turned to speak into it. “Yo! Joe. I don’t think you gave me the right address … yeah … no, you don’t get it. This ain’t Caitlin’s place.… What? No, listen! What I’m saying is: wrong addressee! This ain’t it. No speaky zee English here—” He slammed his phone shut. He put his helmet back on. But Ian was trotting slowly toward him with the chair over his head, crying the yelping cry of anyone who was trying to be a hero at his ex-wife’s wedding.

  “Sorry, people,” the biker said. He gave the approaching Ian only a quick unfazed double-take. He flicked one of his puppy ears at him and hurried to straddle his bike. “Wrong address, everybody!” Then his whole too-stoned-to be-menacing gang started up their engines and rode away in a roar, kicking up dust from the driveway gravel. It was a relief to see them go. Ian continued to run down the road after them, howling, chair overhead, though the motorcycles were quickly out of sight.

  “Should we follow Ian?” asked Nickie. Someone near us was phoning the police.

  “Let Ian get it out of his system,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said and now made a beeline for Maria.

  “Good job!” I could hear Nickie say to Maria. “Good job getting married!” And then Nickie threw her arms around her former caretaker and began, hunched and heaving, to weep on her shoulder. I couldn’t bear to watch. There was a big black zigzag across my heart. I could hear Maria say, “Tank you for combing, Nickie. You and your muzzer are my hairos.”

  Ian had not returned and no one had gone looking for him. He would be back in time for the rain. There was a rent-a-disc-jockey who started to put on some music, which blared from the speakers. Michael Jackson again. Every day there was something new to mourn and something old to celebrate: civilization had learned this long ago and continued to remind us. Was that what the biker had meant? I moved toward the buffet table.

  “You know, when you’re hungry, there’s nothing better than food,” I said to a perfect stranger. I cut a small chunk of ham. I place a deviled egg in my mouth and resisted the temptation to position it in front of my teeth and smile scarily, the way we had as children. I chewed and swallowed and grabbed another one. Soon no doubt I would resemble a large vertical snake who had swallowed a rat. That rat Ben. Snakes would eat a sirloin steak only if it was disguised behind the head of a small rodent. There was a lesson somewhere in there and just a little more wine would reveal it.

  “Oh, look at those sad chickens!” I said ambiguously and with my mouth full. There were rumors that the wedding cake was still being frosted and that it would take a while. A few people were starting to dance, before the dark clouds burst open and ruined everything. Next to the food table was a smaller one displaying a variety of insect repellents, aerosols and creams, as if it were the vanity corner of a posh ladies’ room, except with discrete constellations of gnats. Guests were spraying themselves a little too close to the food, and the smells of citronella and imminent rain combined in the air.

  The biker was right: you had to unfreeze your feet, take blind steps backward, risk a loss of balance, risk an endless fall, in order to give life room. Was that what he had said? Who knew? People were shaking their bodies to Michael Jackson’s “Shake Your Body.” I wanted this song played at my funeral. Also the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ It to the Streets.” Also “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”—just to fuck with people.

  I put down my paper plate and plastic wineglass. I looked over at Ian’s dad, who was once again brooding off by himself. “Come dance with someone your own age!” I called to him, and because he did not say, “That is so not going to happen,” I approached him from across the lawn. As I got closer I could see that since the days he would sometimes come to our house to pick up Maria and drive her home himself in the silver sports car of the recently single, he had had some eye work done: a lift to remove the puff and bloat; he would rather look startled and insane than look fifty-six. I grabbed both his hands and reeled him around. “Whoa,” he said with something like a smile, and he let go with one hand to raise it over his head and flutter it in a jokey jazz razzamatazz. In sign language it was the sign for applause. I needed my breath for dancing, so I tried not to laugh. Instead I fixed my face into a grin, and, ah, for a second the sun came out to light up the side of the red and spinning barn.

  Acknowledgments

  For their generous reading and helpful insights, thank you to Julian Barnes, Charles Baxter, Melanie Jackson, Mona Simpson, Lorin Stein, and Victoria Wilson.

  A Note About the Author

  Lorrie Moore, after many years as a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is now Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received honors for her work, among them the Irish Times International Prize for Literature, a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

  Other titles by Lorrie Moore available in eBook format

  Anagrams • 978-0-307-81687-0

  Birds of America • 978-0-307-81688-7

  A Gate at the Stairs • 978-0-307-27321-5

  Like Life • 978-0-307-81686-3

  Self-Help • 978-0-307-81689-4

  Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? • 978-0-307-81690-0

  For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com

  Bark: Stories

  By Lorrie Moore

  Reading Group Guide

  ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Bark, the first collection in fifteen years from acclaimed short-story writer Lorrie Moore.

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  “Fifty years from now, it may well turn out that the work of very few Americans writers has as much to say about what it means to be alive in our time as that of Lorrie Moore.”

  —Harper’s Magazine

&nb
sp; A literary event—a new collection of stories by one of America’s most beloved and admired short-story writers; her first collection in fifteen years, since Birds of America (“Fluid, cracked, mordant, colloquial … Will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability.” —The New York Times Book Review, cover).