The Understory Read Online Free PDF Page A

achievement?”
    So there it was, finally, and Story laughed. “You finally said it,” she said.
    “That didn’t come out right.” But Beverly Easton’s nerves got the best of her and she retreated to her comfort zone. “What did you mean by that?” she asked, and for good measure threw in, “And how do you know ?”
    “I know , Mom,” Story sighed, “because I’ve always known.”
    It was true. In Story’s eyes, Beverly Easton had always been disenchanted with her only child. Story had spent her childhood competing for the role of main character in her own mother’s life, only to find herself overshadowed by grander, nobler protagonists. In fact, Story’s mother had given her daughter the name Story in the hope of raising an interesting child, a child who would make a lasting impression, but if Story’s life paralleled a narrative, her plotline might as well have been a flat line, devoid of rising action and suspense. And what was the theme of this Story ? When you are expected to be extraordinary, and you turn out a disaster, you will cause chronic disappointment.
    “What, precisely, have I achieved through you?” Beverly Easton mumbled.
    Annoyed, Story hoped her mother would recant, change her mind, or at least lie, but Beverly Easton struck again, like a shark, always circling back for another bite. Story recalled another impressive fish: The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. She wondered how Peter Benchley could have written a whole novel about her mother without having met her.
    But when Beverly Easton came back for a second strike, it seemed as though she was trying to prod Story on—to greatness, to completion, to humiliation, perhaps. “You’ve never succeeded at one thing in your life. Seriously, name one thing that you’ve accomplished, that meant anything.“ Beverly paused only long enough to take a breath, as if there was a realization Story needed to make for herself. “Sure as the sun will shine tomorrow, you will have not accomplished—a thing.”
    After a moment of silence, Story exhaled, then mumbled, “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
    “You think I don’t recognize that?” Beverly said, adding, after a cackle, “Samuel Beckett. I loaned you the book, darling. The rest of the world isn’t quite as stupid as you like to think.” She let out one, long controlled breath. “Another first line from the girl who focuses on attempting things rather than achieving. Bet you don’t know the last line.”
    Hating that her mother, once again, was right, Story took a guess. “THE END!” she yelled into the receiver. When Story slammed the phone down, she considered the dial tone as much success as she could muster.

     
    Story had often thought that each one of us, like Russian nesting dolls, has layers of stories inside. Her deepest layer’s story had been Curious George; after hearing it at four, she longed for the man in the yellow hat to whisk her away for wacky adventures. Later, Little Women established another—oh, how she wanted to trade in being a little girl for being a little woman. And in college, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening created yet another layer, showing her why someone might walk straight into the ocean and keep going until she found herself enveloped by deep, dark waters.
    It was a fact that Story had failed at writing her own great American novel. Instead, she peddled commercial, spoon-fed slogans, which were far from literary and even farther from truth. So, in addition to knowing she was a failed novelist, she also knew she mass-produced shit for a living. But what she didn’t know was that she was a fig fruit. It’s true—the parallels are uncanny. In the rainforest, the fig fruit is a staple of almost every forest creature, but the fruit contains a laxative (which is highly acidic) that causes the seed to pass rapidly through an animal’s gut. Thus, the animals