You Tell Me by Clare Sestanovich, 2022
The magic trick:
Setting the bar lower than normal on the reader’s assumed visualization capacity of the story’s basic world building
So many of Sestanovich’s stories detail characters seemingly disconnected from their surroundings. There certainly are a lot of ways to create this effect or to bring such a malaise to life on the page. But I really liked the one this story employs. It’s almost like a fish-out-of-water plot. Think Crocodile Dundee or Coming To America. I’m not sure why I’m locked in on box office highlights of the late 80s. But anyway, it’s a common trope, usually used for comedy.
This story though is not funny at all. It’s troubling and anxiety-inducing. The story assumes Janet’s point of view through an interior third-person. And so when it explains to the reader about what a baseball stadium looks like or details the kinds of things “a store that sells everything” sells, as if we couldn’t immediately picture this world as obvious touchpoints from our current existence, it begins to characterize Janet as a fish out of water. She’s moving through her life and this world as if she’s an alien who just landed on the earth.
It’s not obvious or relentless enough to stand out as an annoying technique either. It’s just there throughout the story, subtly making it clear that Janet is not at home her world right now.
And that’s quite a trick on Sestanovich’s part.
The selection:
At the stadium, everyone was talking and many people were shouting. There were TVs looming above every concession stand, so that you never had to miss a moment of the game. Even in the bathroom, you could hear the announcer’s unrelenting report. The noise invigorated Janet, but Danny and Sasha didn’t say a word. He filled out a scorecard, she scrolled on her phone. Janet had never known the rules of baseball, and her incomprehension put her on edge. The crowd’s cheers and boos were stage directions for a scene she didn’t belong in. Without warning, people leaped to their feet. She jumped up to join them, a stranger’s triumphant voice in her ear, someone’s shoulder bumping hers, everyone assuming she was one of the fans—one of them. It was thrilling, but it was frightening, too.
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