Louise Marburg’s new short story collection presents snapshots of twelve women at difficult and painful turning points. Written during the pandemic lock-down, “You Have Reached Your Destination,” due out Nov. 10, exudes the anxiety, fear, and sometimes despair that many were feeling at that time.
The youngest of these women is just 12 years old and
struggling to understand and accept her father’s suicide while tiptoeing around
her alcoholic and abusive mother. Her one ally, her sister, who is 10 years
older, inexplicably turns on her, adhering instead to an alcoholic and abusive
boyfriend. Not even a teenager yet, Katie realizes she is utterly alone, with
only herself to trust and depend on.
At 91, June is the oldest of Marburg’s protagonists. June
lives alone in New York City, “an easy place to be old.” She can take a taxi
wherever she wants to go and have her groceries delivered, and she has a best
friend in her building. However, June’s friend dies suddenly while having tea
with her.
When newlyweds move in next door, she is happy to find the
young wife is friendly and even offers to pick up items for June on her
shopping trip. It is not long before June hears loud noises coming from her new
neighbors’ apartment: loud voices, thumps, and crashes. The next day she sees
the young wife with a bruise on her face. June, having escaped an abusive first
husband, tries to help her neighbor, but the woman becomes angry. June confides
in her daughter, who never knew about her mother’s first marriage. The daughter
doesn’t believe her and implies that June is becoming senile. June misses her
best friend and feels abandoned by her daughter.
The other ten stories feature young women desperate for family,
middle aged women desperate for love, and older women desperate to be seen.
Many are orphaned or come from abusive homes. One is so ashamed of her parents,
she tells everyone they are dead.
Marburg’s stories of loneliness are not without humor and
hope. Matronly, 60-something Lydia finds an obscene and threatening note on her
desk. Her patronizing boss promises to find out who left it although he never
intends to do anything about it at all. Then Lydia’s duplicitous and
self-involved best friend accuses Lydia of leaving it herself for attention. To
console herself, Lydia takes an all-afternoon lunch at a downtown bar, not
realizing it is a gay bar, even after meeting a woman named Dade who actually
turns out to be David.
In “Next of Kin,” a 41-year-old freelancer who has been
“actively wooing” a rare-book dealer “despite his obvious lack of interest”
finally makes her move on him only to discover that he’s gay. Neither of them
can understand how she missed this. Although they don’t make love, they do become
close friends, and he promises to be her next-of-kin.
