National Story Project
With Paul Auster

April, 2001 -- Paul Auster reads a sampler of stories from four NPR listeners.

After A Long Winter
Eileen O'Hara
San Francisco, California

Up earlier than usual. The air is calling. Spring air is different from winter air. Tree branches are serrated with red bud teeth. Later, they grow chartreuse fuzz, making pale green auras in the sun. Summer leaves will be dark, shading, but spring leaves let the light through. Spring trees glow in the daytime, spreading translucent canopies.

The birds are out, racketing their news from bush to branch. Cats are still curled up on fire escapes. They are in no hurry to get about in the brisk morning air. They know it will warm up later. They are watching the birds. They can wait.

The air is clear, clean, cool. The smells are tiny smells, little whiffs of green, a ribbon of brown mud, the blue smell of the sky. Midday is mild enough for shirtsleeves. I eat my lunch outside, sitting on a warm brick wall. The breeze lifts my hair and riffles the edge of my skirt. I have to squint. Everything tastes better.

Until today I had been too huddled in my winter coat to notice the quiet coming of flowers. Suddenly, daffodils smile in my face, parrot tulips wave their beaky petals, and fragrant white blossoms are pinned to dogwood trees like bows in a young girl's hair.

The evening is soft, I need my thin jacket. It's still light out when I walk home from the Metro. I could walk for hours. Like a kid playing street games with her friends, I don't want to go in.

When I went to work this morning, I left my windows open. Spring came in through the screens while I was gone. It's as if I had used a big silver key and rolled back the roof like a lid on a sardine can. The indoors smell like the outdoors. It will be like lying down in the grass to sleep. The sheets are cool. The quilt is warm. The light fades outside my windows. This weekend, I think I'll wash my car.

Why I Am Anti-Fur
Freddie Levin
Chicago, Illinois

Uncle Morris has eyes the color of Windex. He wore pinky rings and fedoras and cashmere topcoats to die for. He smelled of bay rum and Cuban cigars, a combination even my seven-year-old self found intoxicating. He could tell a great story.

In his youth he ran away to Toronto, and for a short time pursued a career as a professional wrestler under the name of Murray. There he met Aunt Faye and Aunt Rae. Uncle Morris could not say "no" to women and seldom tried. So, he married them both.

Aunt Rae was so unlikeable even her own babies found her irritating. She had a daughter with Morris who looked just like Whitey Ford and wouldn't speak to either of them from the day she was born.

With Aunt Faye, he had twin boys named Erwin and Sherwin. Supposedly, one was brilliant and the other "slow," but we never knew which was which. Forbidden to ask outright, my brother and I spent hours devising subtle tests that would reveal their true natures, but never with any conclusive results.

The two women lived in separate apartments on either side of town. They knew about each other and, no doubt, because of Uncle Morris's charms, they both decided to live with the arangement. Unlce Morris put a great deal of time and money into keeping Faye and Rae happy. It wasn't an easy task.

There were item of jewelry, up to date appliances and wall to wall carpeting that had to be bought in batches of two. But more than anything, in those cold Canadian neighborhoods, both women wanted fur coats. Uncle Morris could only afford one. Thereafter, much of his time was spent driving the coat back and forth to opposite sides of Toronto so that Faye and Rae could each make use of it.

It was especially hard in the winter. The fur got around more as a coat than it had as a mink. This began to take its toll on Uncle Morris. Combine the pressures of the coat with a life-long diet of pastrami and red pop, and a heart attack seemed almost inevitable.

In the short space of time during which Uncle Morris rose from the table clutching his chest and actually hit the floor, the coat disappeared. The family was instantly and irrevocably divided. A vast Gordian knot of relatives sifted into two camps. One thought Faye had the coat, the other Rae.

Lies were told. Truths were told. The lies and the truths were equally damaging. There was yelling. There was crying. There was the stealing of knick knacks. The coat was never seen again.

Years later, I was helping my mother clean out a basement storage area. "What's this?" I asked, as I pulled out what appeared to be moth-eaten bear suit from the depths of closet. I heard a damning silence and breathed in unmistakable odors of moth balls and Shalimar. I looked at my mother. There was a distinct lack of eye contact. "Oh God," I gasped, " this is Faye and Rae's coat! You took it! It was you!"

My four-foot-ten-inch mother flew across the room with surprising strength and ferocity and pinned me against the wall. She grabbed my shirt and hissed, "You must never tell."

"Take it easy," I whined, "if you kill me, you'll be left with just my brother.'

Ever practical, she eased her grip and turned to the matter at hand. "What should we do now?" she asked. I didn't know. If she confessed, they'd kill her.

I picked up the coat. It was so huge and heavy -- Faye and Rae had been big women. I tried it on and turned to look in the mirror. Just then, my two-year-old toddled into the room. He took one look at me and screamed and screamed and screamed until I took it off.

The Club Car
John Flannelly
Florence, Massachusetts

When I was a young sailor, fresh out of boot camp, I was granted a two-week leave. I decided to go to Miami to visit my father and sisters and boarded the train in Norfolk, Virginia.

After a couple of hours, I was starting to feel hungry, so I left my seat and walked the length of the train to the club car. It was a lively place, I discovered, clearly the only game in town. I gobbled down a ham and cheese sandwich, drank at least two bottles of Coke, and then sat around for an hour or two trying to look cool as I thumbed through some magazines. That was my first visit.

The next day, I went back, prepared now with a paperback novel that someone had given me to read. God's Little Acre, I remember. This time, the club car was virtually empty, and I had my pick of the seats. I chose to lounge in one of the two circular booths at either end of the car. Each had a Formica-topped table in front and was equipped with comfortable vinyl cushions. I put my book down on the table, went to the bar and ordered a large cup of coffee and a Danish, then returned to the booth. Thus ensconced, I devoured the Danish and began my reading.

Behind the booth was a stainless-steel heating grate perforated with round holes. After each sip of coffee, I would put the paper cup back onto the table and throw my right arm over the back of the booth, stretching it out in a resplendently suave manner. My fingers began tapping on the heating grate. And then I slipped a couple of them in and out of the holes. Leaving my fingers in the holes for the nonce, I concentrated on my reading. Then, ready for another sip of coffee, I pulled my right arm up and, incredibly, my fingers wouldn't come out. They were stuck in the holes.

This is ridiculous, I said to myself, this isn't happening. I tried and tried, but my fingers wouldn't come out of the holes. The car began filling up with new arrivals. At one point, a group of four people asked if I was finished with the booth because they needed the table to play some cards. I told them about my predicament. They were astonished, but very sympathetic.

Attempts to free my hand then ensued. First, the application of an ice pack; then some cold cream; then the talking cure: "Stay relaxed, stay calm, breathe deeply!" Nada!

A contigent of the train's crew then arrived on the scene. One of them was toting a canvas bag filled with tools. They proceeded to dismantle the booth, quickly exposing the heating grate. Then they unbolted it, and there I was in the middle of the club car in my now-rumpled dress blues attached to a six-foot-long piece of stainless steel. Even then, my fingers wouldn't budge. They were visibly swollen now.

Eventually, the train stopped and I was taken off and driven to a hospital emergency room, grate and all. A perplexed intern did his best to deal with the situation, but to no avail. I then wound up in the basement of the hospital, where a maintenance man very carefully hacksawed the grate from my hand. Immensely relived, I thanked him from the bottom of my heart.

The next day I was in Miami, none the worse for wear.

Bronx Cheer
Joe Rizzo
Bronx, New York

Al used to stand outside with his golf sweater on, always looking to play golf. So I went over and talked to him. He said, "Are you ready to play golf?" I said, "Not really. How about a game of pool down in your cellar?"

So that's what we did. We went downstairs and started to play on this big table that covered half the basement, but next to the pool table there happened to be a wood column that supported the floors above. Every time I tried to use one of those long pool sticks, it would bump into the wood column.

I said to Al, "I can't make this shot because of the column." Al said, "Why not cut the sticks?" I said, "That's a good idea," and so that's what I did.

Then I had a better idea. I said, "Al, maybe we should eliminate this column and put a steel beam in there instead." He said, "That's a great idea."

So Al and I and my kids got into my station wagon and drove to 138th Street and Morris Avenue to pick up this 22-foot steel beam for the house. The beam was so long that it stuck out of the station wagon. It kept hitting the street, bouncing up and down and sparking and smoking. After a while the kids were yelling, "Hey, Daddy, look! The beam is on fire!"

Al and I both looked, and sure enough we had to stop and cool it off. Once we got to the house, we put the beam in the driveway. Then we said, "How are we going to get this big beam into the house?"

I said that we had to cut a two-foot hole in the concrete wall. Then we'd be able to slide the beam under the ceiling of the basement.

So we chopped the hole. I said to Al that before we put the steel beam in, we had to support the rest of the house with jacks and supporting wood columns. We didn't want the house to collapse before we took out the old wood column.

We worked until midnight. We were tired and exhausted by then, so I went home. The next morning around six o'clock, I got a call from Al. "Help!" he said. "I think there's something wrong. There's water coming down the steps and the kids are yelling that they can't open the doors to the bathroom and the bedrooms to get out."

I ran across the street, and there's Al with his golf clubs and his golf sweater, standing in front of the house and yelling at the kids, "Turn off the water! Don't flush the toilet! Your mother's downstairs on the table holding up the chandelier and ceiling with her hands!"

Sure enough, when I went into the house, that's exactly what I saw. Arlene was up there on the table, trying to keep the chandelier and ceiling from falling down. Al then ran upstairs and opened the doors for the kids to let them out. I ran downstairs into the basement and shut off the water. When I turned around, I saw squirrels jumping in through the hole we had cut in the wall. The short, cut-down sticks were still on the table, and it looked like they were playing pool with them.

When I got upstairs, my wife was there, yelling at me that it was our anniversary. We have reservations in Canada, she says, did I forget? Hurry, hurry, we have to go.

I looked at Al, and then at Arlene, who was sopping wet, and at Al Jr. sliding down the banister, and at Keith coming down the steps backwards on his knees, and he was sopping wet, too. Upstairs, the girls were yelling, "Where's my clothes? My clothes are all wet!"

So, I yelled out at the top of my voice, "STOP! Let's get Arlene off the table, and let's try to clean up this mess so Al can go and play golf."

I said to him, "I have to go on my anniversary trip, but when I come back, I'll try to put everything together again."

When I did come back, of course, Arlene had already put some sheetrock on the ceiling. She asked me to plaster it and then paint the rest of the house, and that's what I did. But I still wanted to know what had happened, and Al said to me, "Just before you came that day, I had a carpenter come in to shave and cut the doors to fit the sagging house." I hadn't know about this so, quite naturally, when we leveled off the house with our jacks and supports, we straightened it out, and that's why nobody could open the doors.

You have to understand that this was not a normal house. It looked like something from that old comic book The Little Old Lady that Lived in a Shoe, with 40 kids looking out the windows. But, of course, that didn't bother Al. He would say to Arlene, "Don't forget to plaster and paint the walls. And don't foget to pick out the color and feed the kids before bedtime. I'm going to play golf." She would say, "Okay," but somehow, whenever she said okay, out popped another kid. There were kids all over the place.