Days At Home by Maud Casey, 1997
The magic trick:
Using a family photo as a platform for communicating the story’s main themes
This Mother’s Day weekend, we have two stories about moms. They’re by writers – Maud Casey and Anna Noyes – who, as far as I know, have absolutely nothing to do with each other except that I happened to read these stories back to back last summer. It’s always neat when those random connections just happen. (They also each famously have four letters in their first names and five letters in their last names. Famously.)
Up first: Maud Casey and her story, “Days At Home.” Our narrator is back home in her childhood house. She’s a young adult at an early low point in life. Her mom, on the other hand, is dating men she meets in the classifieds. The neighbor from across the street wanders over from time to time like a popular side character from a 1980s sitcom.
It’s a loose little story with little in the way of plot. The main driver becomes an old family photo the narrator finds at home. It doesn’t move the story in any dramatic direction but becomes a nice way to focus the narrator – and reader – on the story’s central feelings and themes of family and women.
And that’s quite a trick on Casey’s part.
The selection:
“She’s been dead for years,” I say, remembering the way my mother was sorry about that too. My grandmother was unhappy with my mother in the end for losing her husband to an illness. She was upset that there was a pause in my mother’s life after my father died, as though by taking too deep a breath, my mother might have passed out.
“Hmm,” Raymond grunts thoughtfully, not particularly regretting the question. When the news is over, Raymond rises to leave. He takes his glass into the kitchen and then stands in the living room for a minute, looking at the picture of me, my mother, and my grandmother.
“The Twister?” he asks, pointing at the yellow blur though he is looking at my mother. “You all look alike,” he says, running his finger along the row of us.
I slide down the couch to look, and it’s true, we do. We are variations on a theme: the same thin hair and saucer eyes, the same exaggerated poses and looks of mock astonishment. I’m not sure why I’m so surprised. I’ve looked at these pictures over and over again since I’ve been home, but Raymond’s looking at them has made me look again – the way he searches my mother’s image for the source of her magic.
As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.
Subscribe to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.
Short Story Magic Tricks 