What Feels Like The World by Richard Bausch, 1985
The magic trick:
The maudlin mixed with gritty realism
Bausch is a master of cultivating – or demonstrating – one-on-one relationships over the short span of his stories. This might be his finest example. The relationship between Brenda and her grandfather will have you reaching for the tissues. It’s so well-done.
There are big bits of maudlin here.
One, the grandfather is widowed.
Two, the grandfather’s daughter (Brenda’s mother) also is dead. A car accident with hints that the accident may have been a suicide?
Three, this sweet 10-year-old is scared of getting made fun by her classmates because she can’t leap a pummel horse in gym class.
You really couldn’t construct a better premise from which to generate sympathy.
That sounds like way too much, you’re probably thinking. What is this, you ask, Reader’s Digest?
And I’ll admit it does seem like a script ready to be made as a Lifetime movie.
But we haven’t mentioned Bausch’s trademark realism. The guy is just so good at dialogue. And his writing always bears the hard edge of hard living. There always seems to be something visceral there, some fundamental understanding of those who live rough.
So what we find here is an excellent combination. You get the maudlin mixed with gritty realism.
And that’s quite a trick on Bausch’s part.
The selection:
He dresses quickly and heads downstairs. The ritual in the mornings is simplified by the fact that neither of them is eating breakfast. He makes the orange juice, puts vitamins on a saucer for them both. When he glances out the living-room window, he sees that she is now doing somersaults in the dewy grass. She does three of them while he watches, and he isn’t stealthy this time but stands in the window with what he hopes is an approving, unworried look on his face. After each somersault she pulls the sweat shirt down, takes a deep breath, and begins again, the arms coming down slowly, the head ducking slowly under; it’s as if she falls on her back, sits up, and then stands up. Her cheeks are ruddy with effort. The moistness of the grass is on the sweat suit, and in the ends of her hair. It will rain this morning – there’s thunder beyond the tress at the end of the street. He taps on the window, gestures, smiling, for her to come in. She waves at him, indicates that she wants him to watch her, so he watches her. He applauds when she’s finished – three hard, slow tumbles. She claps her hands together as if to remove dust from them and comes trotting to the door. As she moves by him, he tells her she’s asking for a bad cold, letting herself get wet so early in the morning. It’s his place to nag. Her glance at him acknowledges this.
“I can’t get the rest of me to follow my head,” she says about the somersaults.
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