Mary Gordon is an American writer and a Professor of English at Barnard College. She is well-known for her novels, memoirs, and literary criticism. Gordon is married with both children and grandchildren, and resides in Manhattan. Gordon was born in to a Catholic family in New York. Gordon always wanted to be a writer, even through the times when she wanted to be a nun. She identified as a poet for most of her life, but then published her first novel, Final Payments, in 1978, which was followed by The Company of Women in 1981. Gordon has written a total of sixteen novels and short story collections. The collection that I had the pleasure of reading began with a new selection of short stories. However, it also included a collection from 1987 called Temporary Shelter, which is the section of this compilation I delved in to.
The Thorn
Although it was difficult to pick my favorite story out of all of them, I eventually settled on this little six page story. It follows a little girl named Lucy whose father just died. She didn't cry about it because "he'd either come back or take her with him." At the funeral, Lucy tried to climb into the coffin with her father so that she could go away with him. Lucy got it into her head that she couldn't go anywhere, just in case her father came to the house to get her. Gordon writes, "She had a heart, just like her father's, brown in places, blue in places, a muscle the size of a fist. But hers had a thorn in it. The thorn was her father's voice. When the thorn pinched, she could hear her father saying something. 'I love you more than anyone will ever know.'" She spent most of her time in her room, waiting to hear her father's voice. Lucy didn't feel like this belief was out of the ordinary. Her mother was very accommodating, but her aunt was not reacting to Lucy's way of handling the death in the same way. She forced Lucy's mother to send Lucy away to summer camp. Throughout the summer, Lucy is surrounded by boys and learns to do different things outdoors with them and her uncle, but doesn't hear her father's voice. The last lines of the story are terribly sad. Gordon writes, "Her heart was thick now...The thorn never touched the thin, inside walls of it anymore. She had lost it. There was no one whose voice was beautiful now, and little that she remembered. This was my favorite story because of how well it captured the feeling of grief and coping with the loss of someone you love. Even though it was awfully sad, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Imagination of Disaster
This was another story that I really enjoyed. The entire story is only three pages, but within that time the reader engages with a mother's thoughts on how to protect and prepare her family for the possibility of disaster. The mother goes through her day and the reader engages in only her thoughts and reactions. She thinks about fighting her friends and neighbors for food, and whether she should truly prepare her children by teaching them how to shoot a gun and making them exercise. She does not, even though she thinks about it. Toward the end of the story, the woman and her husband are making love and she thinks about how this is what caused their two children to be living. She says to her husband that when disaster strikes, they should all lie down and die together by pills. But, her husband calms her and says that they will fight and live. The final paragraph is beautifully written as Gordon writes about how human beings have lived with death and suffering for all of time. She concludes with, "For we cannot dream the poisoned earth abashed, empty of all we know." This story really spoke to me right now, because as I get older I realize just how broken and disastrous the world is. What I liked most about this story was that it seemed like such a normal thought process for mothers, or even parents in general. It is a natural survival instinct to protect and prepare, and Gordon captured that thought process perfectly.
Billy
Even though there weren't very many stories that I didn't like in this collection, this was probably my least favorite. It is told from the point of view of a woman whose childhood acquaintance has just died. Billy was the son of one of her mother's friend. The woman proceeds to tell the story of Billy's life and how he started out as a handsome and stubborn teen. Gradually, his life begins to dull down and he becomes overweight and lives with his mother. The strange thing about this story is that Billy was twenty-two years older than the woman. At one point in the story, he refers to her as his girlfriend. However, the reality is that the woman really just pitied Billy and the disappointment he'd become. After the woman finishes telling Billy's story, she explains about the last time she heard from Billy. It was the night before her wedding and he asked her if he had ever had a chance with her. The woman never talked to Billy again but talks about how she thought about Billy in the years leading up to his death. Finally, the woman tells her sons about Billy and who he was. They ask if they are like he was. And their mother assures them that they are not at all like Billy. I think the reason this was my least favorite was because I was disappointed in Billy. I wanted him to turn around and then he never did. Also, even though the woman tells her sons that they are not like Billy, there is a slight fear in her tone that makes me believe otherwise.
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