Genealogy by Maud Casey, 2002
The magic trick:
Upshifting halfway through from numb depression to potentially disturbing
“Genealogy” begins in headspace that I would compare to Richard Bausch, early Richard Ford, maybe even some Raymond Carver, where we are hanging out with a middle-aged man who is at a low point in life. Here, to be specific, he is divorced, estranged from his daughter, on leave from his job, and living in a depressing – if not disgraceful – way.
He’s apparently drifting around, different towns, different coffee shops, sleeping with different, random women he meets in these places, feeling almost nothing. So we learn all those things about his current situation over the course of the first half of the story, and then one of the threads in particular gets pulled: the note about his estranged daughter. And that’s when things go from depression to surprising, creepy, and even more depressing.
The story doesn’t make anything explicit, but the potential connections it leads the reader to make are disturbing and change our sense of the story’s vibe.
And that’s quite a trick on Casey’s part.
The selection:
The phone rang again, and Bernard pulled out of Bella, pretending to sleep.
Bella turned and looked at him incredulously. “That’s my phone, you know.”
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