![]() ![]() She’s overheard her daughters talking about her need for order in a less than flattering way. I’m sure that there are other people-her daughters, in particular-who might argue with her assessment. I think Evelyn has curated her world and her activities to conform to a certain idea of herself that she clings to. She is not vulnerable with people-we see that in her inability to express her feelings about the thefts to Paula-and she keeps the possibility of intimacy at arm’s length. First, why is she questioning her goodness, and, second, why doesn’t it occur to her that Scotty may just lack self-consciousness? Why does she need Scotty to be a kind of mirror that reflects her in a flattering light?Įvelyn has worked hard to keep herself at a distance from emotional discomfort. Scotty’s visits reassure Evelyn that she is “intrinsically good.” Scotty wouldn’t be comfortable singing around her if she weren’t, she tells herself. And let’s not forget the lure of cinnamon toast. And there is a way that Evelyn’s orderliness appeals to him. He has a job to do, and she makes him feel useful. Scotty simply likes it at Evelyn’s apartment. Or maybe a better way of saying that is that I try to fully inhabit their limited perspective. When I write characters, especially in close third person or first person, I try not to write with a sense that I know more than they do. What do you think it is that keeps Scotty coming back? A sense of order that he doesn’t get from his own frazzled mother? There aren’t many seven-year-old boys who would choose to continually help the widow next door with her chores. But she can’t (or can’t yet) empathize with their sadness or struggles, because that would require her to examine her own. I think they are the most important people in her life. She would tell anyone who asked that she loves her daughters, and I think that’s true. In today’s parlance, we’d say that she has not “done a lot of work on herself.” She’d scoff at that idea! As she would at the notion of dwelling in your feelings. Even when her actions cause great friction, as they have with her youngest daughter, Paula, she’s unlikely to blame herself. Yeah, Evelyn is not an easy one! She is a sharp-edged, emotionally guarded woman. How much of the distance between them is simply generational, and how much is due to a certain rigidity or blindness in Evelyn? I get the sense that she wasn’t the easiest mother. When a character or a story line arrives unbidden, when my initial intention gets hijacked by my subconscious-for me, that’s where the excitement lies.Įvelyn is the mother of three adult daughters, with whom she has a somewhat strained relationship. there was Scotty, ready, narratively, at any rate, to disrupt her world. Evelyn was busy ironing and thinking about things, framing her life in a way that suited her, and then . . . But his appearance was not so much decided upon as discovered. I say that fully aware that I imagined Scotty and put him there. And then, while I was writing about that, a boy appeared at her door. Her feelings about them have something to do with her need for order and control and her emotional caution. I began writing the story by exploring Evelyn’s state of mind in relationship to her daily tasks. Evelyn, retired from work and largely alone, has created a structure for her days that revolves around housekeeping. By the time this story takes place, Helene has died. I’ve been working on a collection of stories about two women, Evelyn and Helene, whose lives are thrown together through the marriage of their children, and who have a sometimes comic, sometimes antagonistic, always intense alliance. Your story “ Tiny, Meaningless Things” explores the relationship between a seventy-four-year-old widow and the seven-year-old boy who lives across the hall. ![]()
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