‘Dirt’ by Maud Casey

Dirt by Maud Casey, 1995

The magic trick:

Introducing and then repeating a vision of our protagonist’s husband mocking her

Excited to dive into this Maud Casey collection, having just learned that she teaches at the University of Maryland, a few miles from my door.

Odd then to find that in fact the first story is set in the dirty, dusty desert of the American Southwest, full of scorpions and spiders and not the Maryland mid-Atlantic greenery I was expecting.

And that’s fine.

The desert is cool to read about too.

The setting is front and center in this one, as our narrator struggles to adjust to the valley of the sun where her husband has moved them after inheriting his aunt’s home there. She hates the heat and the dirt. But also maybe she hates her marriage.

Those feelings of frustration and depression take odd forms here. Namely, our narrator imagines her husband making clownish faces at her, mocking her, teasing her. It’s the story’s opening scene, and it’s a motif that comes back several times during the plot. A great way to capture this odd break in the marriage and then reinforce the feeling throughout the story.

And that’s quite a trick on Casey’s part.

The selection:

Delia is dreaming that her husband, Austin, stands above her on the bed, contorting his features into a face that might at any moment stick out its tongue. He wiggles terrible fingers at her. This is not the first time, and tonight Delia wonders, in her dream, if it’s a dream at all.

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