Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella
Do you view life as 鈥渉arsh and unforgiving,鈥� or as a renewable source of optimism? According to one of Evgenia Citkowitz鈥檚 resilient, down-but-not-out characters in Ether, her striking debut collection of stories, the difference may be 鈥渕ore a question of attitude and the rebound effect of what you put out there into the ether.鈥�
If that sentiment sounds a little New-Age Californian, you鈥檙e not totally off. Citkowitz, the daughter of American composer and pianist Israel Citkowitz and Anglo-Irish Guinness heiress and novelist Lady Caroline Blackwood (whose first and third husbands were painter Lucian Freud and poet Robert Lowell, respectively), was educated in London and the United States. She is a screenwriter married to British actor Julian Sands, and they live in Los Angeles, where many of her stories are set.
To say that Citkowitz comes from a background steeped in the arts is putting it mildly. Yet, with the notable exception of the title novella, which concerns a blocked writer who marries a Hollywood star and secretly mines their life for material, Citkowitz mainly steers clear of show business, writers, art, and, it appears, her high-profile autobiography.
Citkowitz鈥檚 strength is social criticism, and she captures tensions and pretensions with killer details 鈥� such as the supposedly indifferent mistress who digs her nails into her departing lover鈥檚 arm when she leans in for a perfunctory kiss in front of her husband. Her characters struggle to find their moral bearings and their identity, often without benefit of a known father. Many are privileged, but not in parental love.
Although some of her stories are a bit thin, her best, including 鈥淭he Bachelor鈥檚 Table,鈥� are richly nuanced. When a new father, Jonathan, who feels estranged from his wife, young son, and unhelpful, boozy mother-in-law, buys a multi-purpose 18th-century 鈥渂achelor鈥檚 table鈥� he spots in a Sag Harbor antique shop on Christmas Eve, his purchase raises all sorts of issues. The table is nearly identical to one that Jonathan鈥檚 absentee father showed him during one of their two meetings 鈥� which continues to haunt Jonathan as a test he failed, since it led to no further relationship.
Without being heavy-handed about it, Citkowitz endows this object with layers of meaning. Not only does Jonathan associate the table with his deadbeat father, a wealthy French art critic, but he buys it for a steal, later learning from the chagrined saleswoman that she inadvertently dropped a digit from the price, charging $3,300 instead of $33,000. Should he keep it anyway, even though he knows it鈥檚 not his wife鈥檚 taste? Should he pay the difference? Or should he return it? What鈥檚 at stake is his moral fibre and what sort of father and husband he鈥檒l be.
鈥淪unday鈥檚 Child,鈥� set in southern California, is about a mordantly funny, self-described fat white woman, an actor in sitcoms and voice-overs, with moral fibre aplenty. Her heart aches for the troubled black boy she adopted from a website called sundayschild.com, especially when the parents at his Montessori school 鈥渟catter, or become very involved buckling the backpack鈥� whenever she and Ambrose approach: 鈥淎nything to avoid talking to us.鈥�
But she鈥檚 as critical of her own limitations as of others鈥�. After dislodging the teenage girl she finds asleep in her backyard playhouse, she鈥檚 wracked with guilt: 鈥淎mbrose was essentially homeless when I took him in. Why wasn鈥檛 there room for one more?鈥� she asks herself. She鈥檚 chagrined to recognize that what she鈥檚 afraid of isn鈥檛 the girl, but of facing 鈥渢he terrifying sorrow in myself.鈥�
More sober than ethereal, the title novella, 鈥淓ther,鈥� is ambitious beyond its 116-page scope. Not altogether smoothly, Citkowitz addresses issues of success, failure, commitment, and responsibility by linking two sets of characters at extremes of the socioeconomic scale.
Her blocked novelist, William, is one of her more disturbing characters, in part because it isn鈥檛 clear how Citkowitz wants us to feel about him. We meet him during his ghoulishly unsentimental farewell tryst with his editor 鈥� who also happens to be his oldest friend鈥檚 wife and who is as hard as the nails she later digs into his arm. Stalled on his novel for years, he heads to California for a teaching gig, where he falls in love with Madeline, a hot young movie star. Just as he knew that sleeping with his editor and friend鈥檚 wife was 鈥渋n no one鈥檚 interest,鈥� he also knows that writing about his relationship with Madeline is a bad idea 鈥� yet he proceeds anyway.
After setting up William and Madeline, Citkowitz makes a jarring and initially baffling leap over the tracks into Barbara Ehrenreich territory, to a single mother who barely gets by waitressing at Denny鈥檚. This woman remains stalwart despite having every reason to despair, including an autistic son whose obsession with Madeline becomes the fulcrum between the two halves of Citkowitz鈥檚 tale. The result is a disconcerting probe into various guises of failure.
Heller McAlpin, a freelance critic in New York, is a frequent Monitor contributor.
