Stephanie Johnson’s microfiction creates rich subtext in few words, making each story complicated and true, and each character alive and familiar.
You know those people, the ones that tell stories and ask whether you want to hear the long version or the short version? After reading Stephanie Johnson’s story collection, One of These Things Is Not Like the Others, I’m inclined to think that she would ask for the short-short version. Here are stories about a woman moving on after a miscarriage, a man ruining an ex-spouse’s chance at selling the house they bought together, a son who tries to convince his mother that her cat is not the reincarnation of his dead grandmother, and much more; in every instance, Johnson succeeds in creating complex and emotionally real worlds in the smallest of spaces.
This book is like a photo album made of pictures collected at random from people on a busy street; each story is a single moment that comes from a different place, time, and gender-perspective, and each is narrated closely, creating a high level of intimacy between narrator and reader, so much so that the reader is still thinking about the characters long after each story ends. The narrator of “In Vino Veritas” is a librarian just home from a day’s work to find his wife, Elle, cooking dinner for Carver, a longtime friend of hers whom she was about to retrieve from the airport. Later, after dinner and over two bottles of Chianti, Carver explains why he became a dentist and the narrator, in turn, rises above his quiet jealousy to explain why he became a librarian:
Here’s the truth. I became I librarian because I enjoy the sacredness of the library. I’m not a religious man, I don’t believe in something bigger than I am that guides my life. I believe in wisdom—even if that wisdom is later proved wrong. The library is like a cathedral for me. To be surrounded by ages of knowledge, of words, of ideas… That’s really something.
Obviously, the story is an homage to Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” with its old-friend-over-for-dinner storyline, its character named Carver, and its narrator/husband who starts out jealous of his wife’s friend but later comes around to liking him. But it’s not necessary that a reader be familiar with “Cathedral,” or the other literary references that appear in the story, to like it. It’s more about getting to know the little pieces of a partner’s history that we couldn’t possibly be privy to. Even after we’re wronged by them—as the narrator was when Elle sold some of his book collection—having a clearer understanding of who they are through the small details of their lives makes coming home to them just a little bit sweeter:
When I returned during the late night news, she pressed herself against me. She held me as though she was afraid to let go. She undressed me: the buttons forcefully pulled through their holes, the squeeze of my belt digging into my abdomen and then the release of my khakis falling. She tugged me toward the floor. My sense of balance turned black and I surrendered to the man she thought I was.
“In Vino Veritas” is one of the longer stories in One of These Things, but some of Johnson’s micro-fiction is memorable too, as is the almost-prose-poem, “The Real Mrs. Robinson Takes a Moment to Reconsider.” In just under one hundred words, Johnson brings to life a woman’s shred of doubt as to the appropriateness of her love arrangement: “Without clothes, skin—like wreckage—tells a story. Next to his youth, your geological profile is marred by natural disaster. Scars and stretch mark dots, when connected, form considerable constellations.”
The title story, which closes the collection, is subtly disturbing in its portrayal of an elementary school science teacher, told from the point of view of one of the students:
The other girls gossip that the science teacher stands in front of the swings when he pushes them because he likes the white cotton underwear under their plaid skirts. They say he holds doors because he likes to see you from behind. At the end of recess, the first person in line has to hold his hand as you walk back into the school and the way his moist palm chokes your nail-bitten fingers makes your back ache, makes you feel like you need to pee, makes you want to hide in the last stall of the girls’ bathroom, squatting with your feet tucked under you on the seat as if you can compress yourself tighter and tighter until you simply disappear.
Johnson zeros-in on just the right details to make these pieces work. She’s able to create rich subtext in few words, which makes each story complicated and true, and makes each character feel alive and familiar. Of any new book that I’ve read this year, One of These Things Is Not Like the Others is the one I’ll return to, one that will reveal itself a little more with each read.
