The Juniper Tree by Lorrie Moore, 2005
The magic trick:
The nightmare sequence
Today we have a little bit of magical realism from Lorrie Moore. The heart of the story is a eerie sequence – Is it real? Is it a nightmare? It can’t be really happening, right? – in which our narrator visits a friend who had died the night before. It’s an arresting scene, to be sure. Like any good magical realism, the surreal serves to contextualize the other, more realistic, elements of the story. In this case, the nightmare not only emphasizes the narrator’s feelings of guilt and selfishness, it casts her entire world in a more ominous light. It reveals not just self-loathing but a contempt she feels for her friends, the town and the whole college-professor lifestyle she’s fallen into. The nightmare makes the non-nightmare portions of the story feel like nightmares too. And that’s quite a trick on Moore’s part.
The selection:
“As a result?” said Robin, a bit hoarsely. She cleared her throat. “No hugs. Everything’s a little precarious, between the postmortem and the tubes in and out all week. This scarf’s the only thing holding my head on.” Though she was pale, her posture was perfect, her dark-red hair restored, her long thin arms folded across her chest. She was dressed as she was always dressed: in black jeans and a blue sweater. She simply, newly, had the imperial standoffishness that I realized only then I had always associated with the dead. We pulled up chairs and each of us sat.
“Should we make some gin rickeys?” Isabel asked, motioning toward the bags of booze and lime-juice blend.
“Oh, maybe not,” said Robin.
“We wanted to come here and each present you with something,” said Pat.
“We did?” I said. I’d brought nothing. I had asked them what to bring and they had laughed it off.
Short Story Magic Tricks 
I just read this story, having missed the reference to the Brothers Grimm tale. So I went back and read the tale. I’m thinking that the scarf Robin mentions “holding her head on” matches with the bandage holding the dead boy’s head onto his body in the tale. And Robin wrote plays based on fairy tales , so there’s a connection there, too. Plus, there’s also the unhappiness of the narrator, which she tells may originate from choosing a different lifestyle than her own mother—perhaps this is a reference to the first wife of the tale, who died of happiness because she gave birth to the child she so desired? Am I reading too much into this? Are there other similarities I am missing?
Also: strange that she never gives the name of the man she is seeing.
Also: what’s up with the pie thing at the end of the story?