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516 The Kentucky Anthology Dwight Allen “Fishing with Alex,” from The Green Suit Dwight Allen, with one novel to his credit at the beginning of his writing career, is a man who has been involved in the literary world for some time, studying the art of writing at Iowa and practicing a bit of writing and fact-checking at the New Yorker. In 2000 he brought together some of his previously published stories into a book that chronicles the activities of a prominent, upper-middle-class family in his hometown of Louisville. It is not quite a novel, but all the pieces focus on the members of the Sackrider family and, in particular, Peter Sackrider. For Peter the book is a series of experiences that mature him—sort of. It is a comfortable read, and for anyone familiar with Louisville in the sixties, it evokes memories of things past. h When my sister was a sophomore in college, in Philadelphia, she fell in love with a sallow-skinned, lank-haired boy whose chief interest in life was the effects of hallucinogens on the neurochemistry of white rats. This was in 1973. Ed was two years older than Alex, and when he dropped her, she came unglued. She left school and returned home to Kentucky. One morning in March, after eating half a grapefruit and casting a cold eye on the saucer of vitamin pills my mother had set before her, she went back upstairs, swallowed most of a bottle of barbiturates, and sat down in the reading chair in my bedroom. By the time my mother found her, Alex was in a stupor; her head lolled, her hands were clammy, her blood was pooling, not moving. My mother, who had been on her way to church to tag items for a bazaar, called an ambulance and got Alex to the hospital, where her stomach was pumped. Later, the doctor put her in Queen of Peace, a columned and porticoed institution that sat on a hill about a mile from the new county zoo. Because the windows to the rooms were sealed shut, it was unlikely that a patient would hear an elephant trumpet or a peacock shriek or a lion roar. But Alex said there was a man in her morning group therapy class who complained that the animals kept him awake every night. As for Alex herself, she heard nothing at night, just a whispering in her head, like a breeze passing through fir trees. A few days after my sister entered Queen of Peace, I took the bus home from college. My father picked me up at the depot downtown. I asked how Alex was, and he said, “Your mother thinks she might be hypoglycemic.” I 516 Dwight Allen 517 looked puzzled, and he said, “Something about a low level of sugar in the blood.” He didn’t tell me what he thought. Three stoplights later, we fell silent. Eventually, he turned on the radio. The car filled with opera—it was a Saturday—and then he dialed around until he got a basketball game. “Now here’s something in English,” he said. My father led me into the hospital and up a broad, curving staircase, which I pictured women in long dresses descending, on their way to meet men who wouldn’t have resembled me or my father in his raincoat that looked as if he’d slept in it. At the top, Dad remembered that my mother had sent along a sack of vitamins for my sister. He left me at Alex’s door and went back to the car to fetch the sack. My sister was sitting up in bed. Next to her, on the nightstand, was a fish bowl, and above her, on the white wall, was a small plaster crucifix; the bony Jesus, his head downcast, looked as if he’d given his last cry. Alex wore a black shawl over a white blouse that was buttoned to the throat. I’d never seen the shawl. It made her look dramatic, in a formal kind of way, like someone in a painting from another century and another country. Alex had always liked to dress up, and I thought it was a good sign that she hadn’t stopped. I didn’t know if it was a good sign that she’d tied her hair back, leaving her brow so exposed. “Don’t worry, Peter,” she said gamely. “I’m just having a run...

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