Best Debut Short Stories 2020

by Tracy O'Neill

  Each day we walked farther than the day before, and one evening we came upon a cemetery. We passed beneath the gate and found a sprawl of slouching concrete tombs lined up along cobblestone paths. I watched the snow being tossed about by the wind, gone before it reached the ground. The boy disappeared among the headstones, and I followed slowly after, beginning at the edge, beneath a wall of trees cut short at stunted angles, then into the center, where the paths were unruly and long. Some graves were new and ornate, decorated with pictures and flowers, but most were old and bare, some fading, some broken open, others sinking into the dirt they marked. At the end of one row I found two headstones side by side, decorated with small tiles that shone bright despite the clouds hanging above. The snow was beginning to stick, wet shivers clinging to the tops of the graves. Beneath the tiles were names, carved deep in the stone, followed by numbers. I read the words, and then I read them a second time, and I closed my eyes and saw the snow dancing against the dark wall of my eyelids. I couldn’t remember the names, they were already gone, and when I looked again they disappeared in front of me, each letter melting away as my eyes moved to the next, and so I shut them tight, took off my glasses, tried to remember my father’s name and the name of the woman who had shaken my hand when I met the boy, tried to remember their faces, but I couldn’t, there was nothing, only the snow. I called out for the boy and was met with silence, and then I called again and my voice disappeared with the wind and the snow.

  That night I slept alone, and when I woke the chair by the window was empty. I walked to the park and found my bench, and in the evening when I returned to the room I cooked rice and sausage, and I flattened the wax paper and left it on the counter by the sink. In the morning I walked back to the park and I counted the birds around the lake; a stranger nodded at me and I closed my eyes, and when it grew dark again I returned to the room and found the door locked. I could hear soft noises inside, bare feet moving back and forth across the floor. I knocked, and waited, and then I knocked again; I heard water run and oil pouring into a hot pan, and then a hush fell over the room, over the hallway, a heavy quiet that pulled at my eyelids and settled into the snow melting in my hair and on my coat, until it was broken by the sound of my footsteps as my feet carried me down the hall to the stairs, out the door, into the night where the snow was still falling, batted about by the wind, captured for a moment beneath the streetlights and then disappearing into the night.

  David Kelly Lawrence lives in Vincennes, France, and is studying for a master’s degree in library science.

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  Published in Michigan Quarterly Review’s special issue on contemporary Europe, Mohit Manohar’s “Summertime” takes place in London, on the eve of the 2016 Brexit vote. Sandeep, a college student who grew up in Mumbai, goes on a first date with Russ. In his online search for romance, Sandeep encounters plenty of (badly punctuated) “casual racism”: to wit, “no asians no blacks—not racist just a preference.” Russ’s claim that he’s “into racially diverse men” appeals to the lonely Sandeep, who fantasizes about a potential soulmate while studying at the library. The pair stroll through an exhibit at the British Museum, kiss beside a courtyard fountain, enjoy high tea at the Savoy Hotel. Manohar’s rich description and leisurely pacing keenly lay the way for the disillusionment to come.

  With its sensitive yet unsentimental portrayal of a young man abroad, “Summertime” offers an intimate coming-of-age story. It also delicately but forcefully resonates with cultural and political implications. Over petits fours and rosé, the impending Brexit vote comes up in conversation. “We’ll definitely remain,” Russ says, and Sandeep responds, “I haven’t yet met a single person who thinks differently.” “Precisely,” Russ concludes. Manohar precisely subverts expectations and elegantly delivers harsh news. Great deployment of an umbrella “with a tip that looked primed to impale people,” too.

  Polly Rosenwaike, Fiction Editor

  Michigan Quarterly Review

  SUMMERTIME

  Mohit Manohar

  IN HIS JUNIOR year at Yale, Sandeep slept with a boy for the first time, and this filled him with such guilt that he knew he had to tell his mother. His parents had recently moved to an even taller apartment building in Mumbai: its topmost floors had a view of both the Arabian Sea and the Bombay Harbour. Only ten years ago, they had lived like regular people in the northern part of the city. But then his father’s New Age Ayurveda business took off, and when it became too big for him to manage alone, he sold it to a larger wellness company, whose stockholders elected him to its board of directors. Suddenly they had a lot of money. Sandeep was plucked from his regular school and put in an institution where the children of the rich went. There he acquired excellent English and French and lost his ability to speak good Hindi. He and his parents learned to use vacation as a verb; they vacationed abroad. They stayed in expensive hotels in London and Paris, where they suffered embarrassments big and small because they were still, essentially, middle class. When his parents felt insulted, his mother wished that their lives were simpler, that they still lived in their old neighborhood. His father merely looked like a chided child, absorbing a new lesson in propriety. During these moments, Sandeep felt embarrassed by his mother’s melodrama and annoyed by his father’s meekness. They struggled to keep pace with their changing lives. They were not bad people. He wanted to protect them.

  “Ma, I have something to say.” When he Skyped with her, it was evening in New Haven, the sun only rising in Mumbai. He told her, in overwrought phrases, that he thought of boys instead of girls.

  She said, “You know, Sandeep, there are good things in life, and there are bad things in life, and often it is hard to tell which is which.”

  “Ma, what are you saying? Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I understand perfectly well.”

  They stared at each other in silence, half the world between them. The Skype connection was surprisingly good.

  “Promise me one thing,” his mother said. “You will reconsider this decision of yours.”

  “This is not a decision of mine.”

  “Then promise me something else,” she said. “You will not do anything to embarrass us.”

  SANDEEP WAS SPENDING a month in London that summer. He had won a senior thesis research grant and planned on looking at John Lockwood Kipling’s archives at the British Library. When he got to London and bothered to compute costs, he realized that he could last the month if he didn’t eat anything and walked everywhere. His mother told him to use the credit card she had given him.

  “So you can track what I’m doing?” he asked over Skype.

  “At least I’ll know you’re eating.”

  He spent his mornings and afternoons at the British Library and imagined that one day, the pretty boy across the table would ask, “What are those sketches you’re looking at?” And he would tell him that these were made by Rudyard Kipling’s father, who was an artist in his own right. They would start a conversation and the boy would ask if he wanted to get coffee when the library closed. And even though he didn’t drink coffee, he would go.

  Or he would be waiting in the queue to return a book on Kipling, and a bespectacled man in a sports jacket standing behind him would comment on Kipling’s lasting artistic influence on the Indian subcontinent, which would spark a conversation between them, and this man would ask, around closing time, if he wanted to get a beer. And even though he didn’t like beer, he would agree.

  But his time in the library remained solitary and he struggled to understand how one went about doing archival research. Kipling’s papers bored him. The note-taking was tedious. No boy or man noticed him.

  Online, London was full of attractive men, all into “dates and mates,” but whose profiles warned: “dont message me if youre less than 6',” “dont message me if youre less than 8",” “no asians no blacks—not racist just a preference,” “if I dont reply Im not interested.” When he came across a profile
of a doctor—twenty-eight years old, five foot eleven, pronounced jawline, well-kept stubble—who was “into racially diverse men,” he thought, what could be the harm in messaging him? He drafted something clever but it sounded desperate. Eventually, he sent, “Hey, how’re you?” The beauty of his query, he thought, lay in its use of punctuation. But the man did not reply. He came online and he went offline. Sandeep felt lonely and depressed. Even a psychopathic man (what other kind of person would write on his dating profile that he likes “racially diverse men”?) was not interested in him. He edited his bio—“from Mumbai, study at Yale, pic taken from last vacation in Tokyo, in London for the month”—and then felt pathetic for showing off in this manner. He deleted the app.

  THERE WERE OTHER students from Yale, mostly Americans, who were spending their summer in London. They met up occasionally for drinks in pubs, thrilled that they didn’t need fake IDs to gather there. The conversations always returned to the same theme: how different England was from America.

  “I mean, in most countries people drive on the right side,” said Peter, a peevish blond guy that all the girls admired. “Studies show this is safer. I could not drive on the wrong side.”

  “It isn’t that difficult,” Sandeep said, “I drive both in India and the States.” He had said this to impress Peter but received a dismissive look instead.

  They were sitting in a poorly lit and dank pub not far from his Airbnb. Each pub they’d been to had a similar aura of darkness and mystery. Sandeep felt he had gone back in time, to Tudor England perhaps, and that outside, he would stumble upon a beheading or a bonfire raised to burn a witch. The summer light stretched long into the evening, but night eventually arrived. When Peter left, many girls departed. When another pretty brunette left, the few boys followed her out. He was left nursing his second glass of wine in the company of Kat, a sleek girl from New York who always wore black, and who was on her fourth gin and tonic.

  “Gin in London is really good,” she said in her husky voice. After a pause, she added, “I went on a date with someone yesterday.”

  “That’s exciting,” said Sandeep. “How did you meet him?”

  “I met her,” Kat said. “I met her online.” Then she looked at him intently, her eyes shining in the dim pub light. “I see the way you look at Peter,” she whispered, and took a sip of her gin and tonic.

  Sandeep realized he was perspiring. The wine and the summer and his inability to hide were making him warm. He paid for his drinks, Kat paid for hers, and then he walked her to the Camden Town Underground. Back at his Airbnb, he downloaded the app he had deleted two days ago. The psychopathic doctor interested in racially diverse men had written back: “Hey sorry for the late response. Was busy with work. Hows London treating you. Im Russ whats your name.”

  THEY CHATTED ON the dating app and then exchanged numbers and took the conversation to WhatsApp. Sandeep still had his American number, which gave him unlimited 2G but charged dearly for international calls and texts. But only old people texted or called.

  Russ suggested they meet at the British Museum on Sunday, when he didn’t have to report for work. On Sunday morning, Sandeep put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, appraised himself in the mirror, and thought, no, too casual. He changed into a white linen shirt and blue trousers. This looked appropriate and summery. He reached the British Museum at the appointed hour, ascended the marble stairs, and waited.

  A man tapped him on his right shoulder from behind. He turned.

  “You’re Sandeep, right? I’m Russ.” He was smiling and Sandeep straightaway noticed that he did not have crooked teeth and that he had also made some effort to impress, dressed, as he was, in a crisp shirt, khakis, and oxfords. Either his brown hair was graying or he had chosen a peculiar highlight.

  “Did I say that right? Sand-eep?”

  “Actually, it is Sun-deep. Shall we go inside?”

  Russ carried a large black umbrella, with a tip that looked primed to impale people. It was sunny out. “Umbrella,” Sandeep said, like a child recognizing an object and saying its name.

  “Yes, you can never trust London’s weather,” Russ replied.

  They were there to see the special exhibition Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds. The galleries were blue-green and cool, and on a large wall a video of a sunken city was projected. Fish swam among placid Egyptian statues green with algae, and underwater archaeologists floated towards these statues and touched them in amazement with gloved hands. The wall text read:

  Vanished beneath the waters of the Mediterranean, the lost cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus lay at the mouth of the Nile. Named after the Greek hero Heracles, Thonis-Heracleion was one of Egypt’s most important commercial centres for trade with the Mediterranean world and, with Canopus, was a major centre for the worship of the Egyptian gods. Their amazing discovery is transforming our understanding of the deep connections between the great ancient civilisations of Egypt and Greece.

  Speakers hidden in the galleries played the sound of waves breaking upon a shore, and on the ceiling was projected a video of water: rippling, glittering, shining like a jewel. Sandeep glanced at one object and then the next, while Russ took his time, mesmerized by each gold coin that had been extracted from the sea. Sandeep walked out of the first room and then realized that Russ was still behind. He retraced his steps and found Russ studying a lopsided glass ewer with a thread of gold running around its lip and base.

  “Amazing, isn’t it, that this vessel lay in what it was meant to carry for thousands of years?” Russ said.

  For something to lie in what it was meant to carry: that was a nice way to put it.

  Sandeep adjusted his pace to Russ’s, and they exchanged comments on the strange things they saw, but as they progressed through the show, they became quieter, communicating with eye gestures and smiles. To Sandeep it felt like an intimate language. Occasionally Russ took it upon himself to explain things. He shared the little he knew about hieroglyphs and talked about the one time he had gone underwater diving (“sadly not near a sunken city”). Sandeep listened and nodded, enjoying the singsong cadence of his accent. He liked the way light reflected against Russ’s blue eyes, made brighter by the blue of the ceiling, how they occasionally caught a glint of the gold from the cases.

  When they emerged from the gallery, Sandeep blinked. He had forgotten where he was, and some part of him did feel he was underwater, for the world outside had transformed as well. The glass ceiling in the museum atrium, through which only an hour ago the summer sun streamed, now showed an inky sky above.

  “See,” said Russ, lightly tapping his umbrella to the floor. “Aren’t you glad I have this? Let’s walk outside. London is beautiful in the rain.”

  They walked close to each other under the umbrella, heading south towards Covent Garden. A few street entertainers were performing their magic tricks in the piazza, the rain unable to deter them. Some tourists, sheltered underneath umbrellas and raincoats, watched and took videos on their phones.

  They spoke about their pasts. Russ was Scottish, born not far from Edinburgh, where he attended college. Then he relocated to Australia for work but got bored with that country. “People there love to spend all of their time outdoors. I liked the outdoors, but there are no museums there. Hardly any culture.” He lived in France next, but not before he got the chance to go to India. “I was in Goa, mostly. Those were the days I was a serious alcoholic. No, really. I may not look like one, but I had a real drinking problem. It was New Year’s Eve, I remember, and a bunch of us were sitting around the table, talking, drinking, and I got up to use the loo and just collapsed. When I woke up, sick and tired, I said to myself, no more. And I haven’t touched a drop since.”

  They walked to the courtyard of the Courtauld and sat on the metal chairs near the fountain. The rain was beginning to peter out and the sun hesitatingly shone again. Students and tourists walked in and out of the damp neoclassical buildings, and children ran through the jets of the fountain
, squealing with joy. One chubby boy gave Sandeep a long and curious look, a finger in his nose, the other hand scratching his bum. Then he ran through the fountain, shrieking with delight as water hit him from below, into the hands of his mother.

  Sandeep told Russ about his childhood in the northern part of Mumbai. By 5:50 a.m. each day, he had to be out of his house in the noisy apartment complex, the bus stand a ten-minute walk away. There was always a scuffle to get into the bus. The ones who got in early were able to find a seat, while the rest of them had to stand. He often had to stand. Sometimes, the senior boys would ask him if he wanted to take turns sitting on their laps.

  He loved his family’s weekend trips to south Mumbai. They would take the local train from the Borivali station near their house: the train speeding through the colorful, blurry city; the thrill of the wind hitting his face. They would step out on the platform of Victoria Terminus, which would always be crowded, and his mother would offer him her hand. “Look ahead, not above,” she would admonish when he looked up, mesmerized by the station’s Gothic ceiling. He described it to Russ: the white vaults with blue dots and ribs outlined in gold.

  “Have you seen the ones at St. Pancras, inside the hotel area?” asked Russ. “They also have golden ribs, but the vaults are green, if I remember correctly.”

  “St. Pancras actually provided the inspiration for Victoria Terminus,” said Sandeep. “A portion of my senior thesis looks at this connection. But I don’t want to bore you with talk of my thesis.”

  “It’s not boring at all. Do you have a picture of this station?”