"Anyone Can Do It"

Session #2

Before we launch in, I wanted to let you know about a podcast I recorded with Hamish McKenzie (the co-founder of Substack) just before I left on tour. Hamish is a wonderfully generous person and interviewer, who describes the purpose of the podcast like this:

The internet has been conditioning our minds and influencing the global consciousness in ways that we are only beginning to understand – and writers are on the front lines. In The Active Voice, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie talks to great writers about how they are reckoning with the challenges of the social media moment, how they find the space for themselves to create great literature and journalism among the noise, and how to make a living amid the economic volatility of the 2020s.

I was Hamish’s first guest on the podcast, and will soon be followed by Jessica Reed Kraus, Samantha Irby, Glenn Loury, Cheryl Strayed, and Chris Hedges, with many more to follow.

I’m writing this on Monday morning, having finished my first long-weekend teaching session with our grad students. It was such deep, rich fun - an amazing group. I’m heading to New York City today, for three events there over the next three days.

As usual, your excellent Comments have rendered me redundant. But here are some “after-second-read thoughts,” from the Syracuse airport. So please forgive any errors and my slightly rushed tone…

(For reference/easy access here, again, is “Anyone Can Do It,”courtesy of Zyzzyva magazine, where the story originally appeared.)

I want to look at that moment in town. As discussed last time, this is where (I claim) Delfina changes her mind about pitching in with Lis. (She says, later, that she hasn’t thought about it, but I wonder…)

Let’s see how this scene plays out, i.e., let’s see what changes her mind. This is important because when, at the end, we see that she has made a mistake, our mind goes back over the story to locate the reason for this mistake. (Although, it also occurs to me that this move - deciding to go to the fields with Lis) is not actually the fatal error, as she could have gone there but not trusted Lis with the keys.)

But still - let’s see what’s going on in the store.

So, at the end of her conversation with Lis, we get this:

I’ll have to think about it, said Delfina.

Which we take to mean: “I am still saying no.  I am not going to the fields with you. “

The next morning Delfina walks, with Kiki into town, to call her mother. During that call, there’s this bit, which seems fraught:

Did you hear that? she interrupted her mother, dropping another coin. I don’t have much time left.

Now I feel more keenly the connection between “limited money” and “limited time to act,” maybe.

At the mention of “Western Union” in the following, we realize that, yes, her mother is right: Delphina is calling for money:

She had not even given them the address for the Western Union office and she would have to apologize, she knew, when the worst of the financial troubles would be upon her.

She lets Kiki keep the dimes, indulges in the purchase of the ice cream, and then discovers that he has stolen the toy car.

This is a pretty interesting decision point for Delfina.  As was pointed out in the Comments, the expectation here – from other stories and films and, maybe, for some of us, real life — is that we are about to see that archetypal moment when a parent makes their child return a shoplifted item.  But that isn’t what happens here.  She lets him keep the car and they return home.

So, we note this as a departure from our first-order expectation.

Here's the sequence again, stripped back to its essence:

Thinking about Lis, Delphina decides to walk, rather than drive, to town. 

In town, she calls her mother to ask for money.

She gets upset and neglects to finalize/arrange the ask.  (We might note that she hasn’t entirely burned that bridge…she knows she’s going to come back and ask again soon. She’s “deferred asking” until “the worst of the financial troubles” are upon her.  And that will be, we might imagine, a more difficult call to make (now that she’s hung up on them).

She collects Kiki, drops the dimes.  (There’s a slight feeling in here of building chaos and parental anxiety, a feeling that she’s afraid of losing control of Kiki.) 

So, she promises ice cream to get him out of there.

She finds he’s stolen a little toy car.

So, I see this pulse of the story working is as a sort of one-two punch.  The unpleasantness with the mother and sister causes her to botch/defer the ask. This raises the tension. The dimes – our awareness of her awareness of those dimes – underscores, maybe, how little money she has left.  Her lack of control over Kiki and her anxiety re the shop owner possibly coming over serve to increase the pressure on her even more. 

Now, to hone in on the question of what work the toy car is doing, we might try imagining a version of the story without the theft, in which, immediately following the ice cream, she goes home, and then agrees to go pick with Lis. 

This actually works: her request for money fails, we’re subtly reminded that, for her, money is a ticking clock, and (“therefore”) she changes her mind.

What’s lost by this?

Let’s hold that up against the version with the toy car in it. 

So, like this:

Bad phone call, dropped dimes, ice cream….changed mind.

vs:

Bad phone call, dropped dimes, ice cream, reveal of stolen car….changed mind.

It’s interesting - we don’t “see her” decide to let him keep the car. We just see the result (she takes him home).  We don’t “see her decide” to go into the fields. We just see the result:

I’ve thought about it, Delfina said, though she really hadn’t. I think it’s a good idea.

Now, the fact that she hasn’t thought about it doesn’t necessarily mean that the stuff at the store didn’t contribute to or even cause the reversal. This is a lovely insight into how our minds actually work. We are feeling things and being influenced even when the mind is quiet or preoccupied.

What’s wonderful is that this sequence is going to fall on each of us differently. Because her thoughts aren’t narrated, we can each make of it what we will – there’s something cinematic about this.  There’s a certain feeling that comes out of the juxtaposition of “Bad phone call, dropped dimes, ice cream, reveal of stolen car. “

There’s an implied causation and, to my mind, the story feels bigger for not explaining it.

I read it this way: she feels that their poverty, and the way she is stressing over money has somehow driven Kiki to steal the car – he knows better than to just ask for it.  He’s becoming that sort of kid - sneaky, because of his understanding of their circumstances. And this vision of her child as someone being shaped/malformed by their poverty encourages her to take matters into her own hands – to be the head of the household, and make the decision to go into the fields.

As some of you have pointed out, it’s no accident that what’s stolen is a car.  We might imagine a version of the story where Kiki steals something else – a toy soldier.  Does it matter?  Of course, if you know me at all, you know that I think it does.  For what it’s worth, I never overtly made the connection (small stolen car plus real stolen car) until I read some of you discussing it in the Comments.  It didn’t come to my mind later, either, when Delphina hands over the keys. 

I also felt, at that moment (lulled by Lis’s energy and also by the shape of the story thus far) felt I was being prepared for a surprisingly hopeful ending – that Lis was going to surprise me, by turning out to be a good egg.

Well, we all know how that turned out. 

But I think all of this is evidence of how closely tended the story is – I think Munoz was very aware of where he had put me. Part of the thrill was watching the way my mind worked with the evidence of the story...I was walking in Delfina’s footsteps and made the same error of judgment she did and I shared her surprise and, even, shame.

I just received some answers to your wonderful questions, from Manuel, and will be posting them on Sunday, for paid subscribers.

O.K., looks like we’re about to board. I’ll close with some photos from my lovely weekend in Syracuse…

This is the beloved house where we lived from 1997 to 2009. So many happy memories…

The Hall of Languages, in which I’ve proudly taught since 1997.

The pride of Syracuse, Parthenon Book Store - where I did my first in-store signing of this tour.

And finally, this bizarre piece of hotel art. The first few times I passed it on my way to the elevator, I failed to note the train, and thought it was a photo of…that corner building (a hotel?) burning down. “How meta,” I thought.