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"into doubts and agonies" by problems, that she will not ride in
Ross's car. Interpolated into this narrative is the story of a childhood
incident that defined Colin's relationship with his brother. Fearing
that if Ross gets hold of a rifle they and some other boys have found
in a car, "loaded or not, it would explode," Colin grabs the gun and
it goes off. Ross screams, falls to the ground, and Colin bolts. Ross
is not dead, however: only stunned or shamming. Finally Colin is
persuaded to come down from the bridge where he has fled, when
the police turn the lights on Ross to show he is alive . While he sat
there, however, Colin thought, "What was silly was to think in these
chunks of words. Colin. Shot. Ross. To see it as an action, some–
thing sharp and separate, an event, a
difference."
Then when he finds
he has been spared that difference this time, he and the story con–
clude: "He knew that to watch out for something like that happen–
ing-to Ross, and to himself-was going to be his job in life from
then on." The story from the past is told, presumably, to explain the
protective stance that Colin feels he should take toward Ross. Yet his
own relation to the past seems less clearly consequential. He
remarks to Glenna that they should take some pictures of the kitchen
floor before they finish renovating "so we can remember what we've
done." The narrative structure here seems to be calling for one kind
of understanding of the way cause and effect and past and present
are related, but the characters seem to miss, if not understanding, at
least being able to act on any knowledge of how to prevent disaster,
how to learn from the past. Even the sublime Glenna, who "could
hold in her mind an orderly succession of rooms, an arrangement
that was ordained, harmonious, and by her, completely under–
stood," can do no more than absent herself from the apparently
inevitable catastrophe the others have decided Ross is courting.
This sense of missed connections appears in various ways in
other stories. In the title story the narrator is puzzled by the incom–
patability of the tales her aunt and her mother tell, about the time
their mother threatened to hang herself, and about the differences
between the way her mother recounts burning the money she in–
herited from her hated father and her own recollection of the event.
Yet, going through her old house, she tells the new owner her ver–
sion of the latter story, in which her father plays a benevolent protec–
tive role while her mother does this thing her sister calls crazy. She
then deliberately lies to the new owner after he has made a remark
about the sexual shenanigans of the commune that once lived in the
