Selected Shorts; At the Anarchists' Convention; The Plan; Part 2; Girl

We turn now to a story by the novelist Edna O'Brien entitled The Plan, Edna O'Brien was born in County Clare in the west of Ireland and lives in London. She's written nine novels and has published many collections of stories, most recently one entitled A Fanatic Heart. Her story is read for us by Kate Nelligan, who starred in Edna O'Brien's play about Virginia Woolf Virginia downtown at the Public Theater and on Broadway in Moon for the Misbegotten and Plenty, Kate Nelligan reads Edna O'Brien's story, The Plan. It is morning, what is more, it is a beautiful morning, there is a sparkle on everything, and even in Dallas things are shot with radiance from my back window, the bedroom window, I see that the cat, those wise barometers are already stretched out on the tiled roofs, taking the sun through their thick fur from the front window. If I were to walk to the next room, I would no doubt see girls and women going off to work in their sleeveless dresses, the women carrying their

cardigans just in case. And I would probably note that the pensioners are out that bit early in sort of a shady seat in Dove House Green. It is amazing what a steady sunshine does for these blanched English souls. Just now I put powder on the translucency that the shop assistant guaranteed showed up for the first time. It is like seeing specks of mica on a road. I am reminded suddenly of those traveling actresses who came to our little village in Ireland long ago and made such an impression on me. They were quite bedraggled and unhappy when in the daytime they put their prams down the street that was called Main Street. But at night they were creatures endowed with glitter, glitter on their faces, glitter on their bodies and glitter in their eyes, possibly owing to nerves or maybe fever. They were transformed beings.

I loved watching them. I luxuriated in their pain as they strolled about the stage or halted or flung themselves onto some velvet covered sofa. Their characters were invariably ones that had to endure pain. There was the young, flighty mother who abandoned her little son in order to elope with a rake. And of course, when she repented her wild impulse and tried to come back to her own home, her upright husband had married her rival, who was naturally a woman of steel. The mother was forced to return, disguised as a maid and nurse her little son, but behave with distance as if they were not of the same blood as if she had not. Once Intrepidity carried him within her. There was another indirect contrast who chose the vows of chastity and was kneeling on a little dais haloed in white, taking those final and irreversible vows when her errant scoundrel came to claim her and found that he was too late.

Yes, those ladies come to mind when I packed the powder on and look in my long wardrobe mirror and see that the effect is indeed cheering. Why am I putting the powder on so early when in fact I have household chores to do and when I know that it is best to leave my skin untampered with through the day to let it breathe? Well, no one is seeing me. Oh, to be see is the big nourishment, the soup of content. If only we could go to each other's houses and solar cells to other women's husbands or violets or sons or employers, then we could display ourselves, come home and feel justified. We could feel that the effort we put into Sarina's, into smiling, interspersing into deportment was not completely in vain. I think of all the women in all the houses in London at this moment for whom a visit

would change everything even fleetingly. And I think if I had organizing abilities, I would do something about it. For some reason, I see a young woman, an eastern woman of sallow complexion with her baby and they are placed in an English garden. There are poppies sprouting red in the high yellow unmourned grass, and I realized that her baby tugging at her breast defers the emptiness that she might otherwise feel. And yet she is being emptied. And one day her breast will be like discarded shells. But there's no need for pessimism. This is a special day. It is marked in my diary with a little asterisk and it says, Poor Denay have already laid my outfit on the bed. It is a lace blouse that would not go amiss as an altar cloth, the disc's of thick cream lace or stitched loosely together so that the skin

can be seen through the webbing. The skirt is also cream with spatters of red and violet, just as if one took a marking pen and childishly indented these colored points. It is probable that we will eat outdoors. There will be several tables covered in white cloth and the crystal goblets will be like sentinels at each place setting. There would be roses in special glass bowls. The bowls are high like cake stands and the roses would be cut close to their petals and laid in there like confectionery. If they are pink, as indeed indeed they may be, they will be like those iced sweets that I loved in childhood and it will not be hard to recapture that beautiful synthetic almond taste. The lights will be concealed in the foliage and the smell will be a blend of roses, honeysuckle and various expensive perfumes. There will perhaps be a summer house or a little gazebo where a couple will wander, apparently to study some facet of its design, but really to make an assignation

that will not be him and me. If he gives me five minutes of his time without taking a tweezers to my nervous system, I shall consider myself lucky. To be fair to myself, I did not plan this meeting the opposite two days ago when I heard a bit from my hostess, I flinched. She had come here to discuss her dilemma with her lover and her impatience with her poncey husband. Just as she was leaving, I asked who were the other guests? As soon as she told me I tried to get out of going. She said my name sharply. Anna, she said, and I could feel the inevitable rebuke. She said finding a woman at the last minute is almost as difficult as finding a man. Her nails, her eyes and the heels of her lizard shoes were all very pointed. And I was afraid to cross her, but my heart did start to gallop.

I am envisaging, envisaging each group with the new arrivals like extras, waiting for their moment to be received, to be introduced, to find excitement or shock in some unexpected face. The men will all be wearing black tie. And I pray that at least two of them will be personable. I will need all the discipline that I have got. My lover is going to be there. My lover's wife is going to be there. I have never met her. Well, that's not quite true. I once saw her, and so I will recognize her. My eyes will land on her and rest on her so that she will know that I am not flinching and not turning away. She's dark. She is dark, like the raven. At least that is how I remember her.

It may have been the lighting in which Green was impregnated with blackness. It was in a marquee at a wedding. There was a great storm outside. So the event was marked by a kind of menace that I took to be talismanic. Among the guests I saw a dark woman in a cape, but I did not know then to whom she was attached. He and I had just met and we were eating canapés on which there was a single sprig of limp tinned asparagus. I refused a second one to which he said, You don't look as if you need to diet. And then announced that he was not as thin as he looked, but the hollows in his face made him seem thinner than he actually was. His face reminds me of those stone effigies that decorate the ceilings or columns of a monastery or chapel. It is a grave and faced. In contrast, our conversation was merry and stirring and you don't know how lovely you are,

he said. Half joking, the market was freezing and there was only one gas heater at the far end around which the older people had converged, it being spring, the bride and groom naturally had anticipated a warmer day. After all, the daffodils were out, but the wind was blowing their wrinkled flutes, seeing in the distance the blue coronet of the gasifier. I thought baby chicks curl up next to each other under a lamp. And I had a sudden, unaccountable longing to nestl nearer to him. When I saw that he had already come a few steps closer between us was only a fraction of space in which I could feel a shudder. It was getting to be the moment when the bride's father was to make his speech, and I realized who the dark woman was. She came towards us and said to the man, having a good time. And that once moved away.

Of course, it could have been that she trusted him so utterly that they lived in such an understanding that they even like to share people such as me source to talk about it afterwards. At any rate, on that first occasion, I could not find words or the words I could find would have sounded caustic or maybe even brazen. My future lover saw me move and came and touched my elbow so lightly and so gracefully that I felt as if a ghost had taken charge of his body and brushed against mine. And I thought, Oh, Christ, I'm falling in love with a ghost, just as always. And I saw in him shades of others saw his disappearing tricks, disappearing tricks, his inability to give love along with his restless pursuit of it, when he touched me, as if it was as if we had met before, as if we knew

each other in some hidden way. And the time had now come for us to cross that barrier and to savor each other, to cease to be strangers, though, of course, would always be strangers. Is that not the essence, the requisite of love? So I can now say, because now I am better acquainted with him, that my instinct was flawless and that I could have predicted almost everything that would happen and has happened, and that is yet to happen, even as he is asking to see me. He is asking me not to see me when I am distant. He lost me like a clinging schoolboy. And when I reveal my feelings, he looks at his watch and says he has a meeting at four. Only my near absence guarantees his near present and it is an exhausting game to play it. I feel that if I could reach him, things would be different.

I believe he does not know himself that if I could lead him to himself, he would dispense with all artifice. He would he would welcome this rapture. He would not shrink it. When he's trying to shrug me off, he eats hurriedly. He throws the cherries into his mouth and gulped them down. He did that the last time he was here to lunch. And in his haste, one fell onto his white shirt, which was still open. Dad, he said as he looked for it, it had slipped into his belly button and fitted there like the stone of a ring, a ruby. It had burst, he picked it out. It left a red stain on his shirt, he began to suck the white fabric. He sucked it with such determination. I hated him.

I thought he is sucking it clean so that when he goes home, he will not be asked, how did that get there? I saw his ruthlessness and I saw his fear in myself. I saw stirrings of pain, a dip into that fount of sorrow, a reintroduction to a loss that I thought I had finished with. Perhaps it was then I hatched my revenge. Sensing a coolness, he he reached out for me and drew me onto his knee and he said, Do you fantasize about me? And I said, yes, but I was too shy to say how I asked if he fantasized about me and he said yes in the car on his way to see me. And then he said that I fantasized too much and it was unhealthy. I was about to say so did he. When I realized with staggering clarity that he was right and that I was misled. He only fantasizes when he is on his way to see me, when he is assured of the sight

of me and all that I can give. Whereas Isbin fantasies as the hours go by, as the sprinkler in the garden makes a damp circle around the base of every rose bush as the shadow on the sundial moves lower and as the floor that I have polished gleams and has the magic of a ballroom waiting for its waters, him and me. Tonight, I fear that he will snub me, in fact, I know that he is in danger of snubbing me unless I am cunning, unless I preempt him by giving him a glacial look that will unnerve him and make him doubt the certainty of next week's London date. I will look past him at the moment of being introduced to him and then I will hurry to some other man. And I know that unwisely but impulsively, he will follow me and mutter You're very aloof tonight and very beautiful. His flattery is always undisguised and for that reason it never fails to thrill me.

Perhaps I see the transparency of it, the flagrant reason for it, the truth and the truth of it. Tonight I shall guard myself so that I can carry out my little scheme. I shall join the group that his wife is in. I know that she will want to talk to me. I know that she will detach herself from the others and veer towards me. That she will talk about everything under the sun, her twin summer holidays, their garden, her busyness, deferring what she wants most to know. And presently I will unnerve her. She will not be sure whether her little jabs of inner dread are validated or not. What I have decided to do is to listen to her, to admire her dress or her blouse or her jewelry, to admire anything that can be admired. Without my being obsequious, I'm going to be a soft and patient as a wet nurse.

When she needs a drink, I will be the one to signal the waiter and I will down mine more quickly so that our glasses may be filled and then clinked together. Even if she thinks that I am over friendly, she will not think it by the time I have finished because of my trump card. Naturally others will come over and interrupt this tete a tete. Others were delayed by strategy. Her husband, fearing the worst, may come over and say, Now what are you two nattering about? Our hostess may not allow two lovely women to slink into a corner and while away that half hour when they should be mixing with and delighting the men, I have no doubt that we will be alone because we both wanted. I shall whisper, I may even touch her elbow or her wrist. I shall ask if, by any chance she has smelling salts or tranquilizer in her bag.

And once she has appraised the question and felt my shiver, she will ask me why. I shall tell her, in all truth, that I doubt if I can get through the dinner again. She will ask me why she will look at me and when I say the usual, she will know that my trouble is man trouble. I can already see her eyes, dark eyes becoming potent with curiosity, and her blood will quicken. And it will not be long before she asks me who he is, what he does, and I will tell her so much and so little. I will describe to her her own husband and any other woman's husband. Because do they do they differ so radically? Those men in dark suits, white shirts and tasteful

silk ties who want peace in their nests and excitement in their forays. I will say that he gives me pleasure, that he gives me pain, that I never know when to expect him and when not, and that I mean to give him up. But I lack the necessary strength, the determination. Then comes my cool. I will ask her to have lunch with me in my favorite restaurant. I will tell her that I long to talk to somebody whom I do know, someone who can help. And with every word I say, suspicion will redound in her will. She may hesitate, but she will not refuse me. I will pin her to a day and the sooner the better. Nor will he be able to force her to cancel, since that would show him to be implicated. So his culpability.

I can hardly wait for tonight to be over so that I can get on with the proceedings there. Unknown world will gradually unfold to me. I may even meet their twins. She and I may become friends or getting to know him through her. I may be cured of this passion or together we may overthrow him and send him out into the world. Stripped of his duplicity. I scarcely know what will happen. All I know is that I cannot endure it alone, and as they have become part of my life, I should become part of theirs. Our lives, you see, are intertwined and if they destroy me, they cannot hope to be spared. Edna O'Brien, the plan was read for us by Kate Nelligan.

Our final story is by Jamaica Kincaid, who has written the novel Annie John and the collection of short stories at the bottom of the river. Her story, entitled Girl is Read for US by Harry Winston, an original member of the Negro Ensemble Company and a star of PBS is the Electric Company who was seen on Broadway recently in the Tapdance Kid and will soon appear with Whoopi Goldberg in the new film Clara's Heart. Harry Winston Reed's Jamaica Kincaid story Girl. Watch the White Claws on Monday and put them on the stone. He washed the color claws on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry. Don't walk their head in the hot sun. Cook pumpkin fritters in very hot, sweet oil, soaked your little claws right after you take them off.

When buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse. Be sure that it doesn't have gum on it because that way it won't hold up well after wash sock salt fish overnight before you cook it. Is it true that you're seeing Beñat in Sunday school? Always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach? On Sunday's tried to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming. Dancing Beñat in Sunday school. You mustn't speak to rap frat boys, not even to give directions. Don't eat fruits on the street. Flies will follow you. But I don't think better on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school. This is how to sew on a button.

This is how to make a button hole, put a button. You have just sewed on. This is how to dress when you see the hem coming down so as to prevent yourself from looking like that. I know you're so bent on becoming. This is how your eye iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease, this is how you are in your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease. This is how you grow okra far from the house because Oak Tree Harbor is red. And so when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water as did make your trought. It shook when you eaten it. And this is how you sweep a corner. This is how you sweep the whole house. And this is how you sweep our yard. This is how you smile to someone you don't like too much. This is how you smile to someone you don't like at all. And this is how you smile to someone you're like completely.

This is how you set a table for tea. This is how you set your table for dinner. This is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest. This is how you set the table for lunch. This is how you set the table for breakfast. This is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well. And this way they want recognize immediately the sluffed. I have warned you against the coming. Be sure to watch every day, even if it is with your own spit, and don't walk down to play marbles, you're not a boy, you know, don't pick people's flowers. You might get something. Don't throw stones at black birds because it might not be a black bird at all. This is how to make a bread pudding. This is how to make jacana.

This is how to make it. This is how to make good medicine for a cold. And this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even become a child. This is how to catch a fish. This is how to trawl back up because you don't like. And that way something bad will fall on you. And this is how to bully a man. This is how a man bullies you. This is how to love a man. And if this doesn't work, there are other ways that. And if they don't work, don't feel too bad about giving up. This has helped us picked up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you. This is how to make ends meet. Always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh. But what if the baker won't let me feel the bread? Oh, you mean to say that after all, you are really

going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread? Harry Winston Reid, Jamaica Kincaid, story girl. We welcome your opinions about selected shorts. Also, if you would like a reading list that will tell you how to find the stories that you hear in this series, send us stamped self-addressed envelope to selected shorts, Symphony Space, Ninety Fifth Street and Broadway, New York, New York, one zero two five. We can also provide information to schools, clubs and libraries interested in using short stories in classes and special events.

That address again is selected shorts, Symphony Space, Ninety Fifth Street and Broadway. New York. New York 10025 Selected shorts is produced by Kay Cattarulla and directed by Isaiah Sheffer. The series is produced for radio by Marjorie Van Halteren and Lauren Krenzel. Executive producer Ray Gallup; recording engineer is Miles Smith and the mix engineer Jane Pippick with additional mixing and recording by Joe Cursio and Carol Martino. Selected Shorts is made possible by grants from Xerox Corporation, the Sertna Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Selected Shorts is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC FM, New York Public Radio.