The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Joy Williams

Chester liked the dog, but it was the girl’s dog. A dog can only belong to one person.

“I bet you’re a professional woman who doesn’t believe in men,” Jane said slyly. “Crystal, how did you guess! It’s true, men are a collective hallucination of women. It’s like when a group of crackpots get together on a hilltop and see flying saucers.” The woman picked at her chicken.

Women suffer from the loss of a secret once known. Jenny will realize this someday. Now, however, she merely thinks, What is the dread that women have?

Judy Cushman and Julep Lee had become friends the summer before when they were on the beach. It was a bitter, shining Maine day and they were alone except for two people drowning just beyond the breaker line.

No one ever played in the snow or used it for anything. It came too often and it stayed too long.

She stood up and came around the table and kissed me. She smelled then like the glass that was always in the sink in the morning, and the smell reminds me still of daring and deception, hopes and little lies.

Gloria proceeded to the rear and sat quietly, thinking that every person is on the brink of eternity every moment, that the means of leaving this world are innumerable and often inconceivable. She thought in this manner for a while, then ordered a drink.

People aren’t much help to one another under most circumstances, is what I’ve found. I’m reminded of the evening I dropped in at AA and a ruddy-faced woman came up to me and said, “I hear you’ve lost your mother, I’m so sorry.” And I said, “No, it was my father who died.” And she said, “Oh, I’d heard it was your mother.” And that was it.

“There’s a flu going around,” she says. “The flu?” I say. “Everyone has the flu?” “Or they’re afraid of contracting the flu,” she says. “The hospital is even restricting visitors. You haven’t heard about the flu?” “Only in the most general terms,” I say. “I didn’t think there was an epidemic.” “Pandemic, possibly a pandemic. We should all be in our homes, trying not to panic.”