Untidy Life

The short story collections In Envy Country by Joan Frank and Feeding Strays by Stefanie Freele tackle the universal subjects of domesticity: marriage, babies, husbands, wives, meals, and work. Dirty diapers and disillusioned homemakers still exist; however, housewifery clichés do not. Freele and Frank explore the complexities of human emotion and action with humor, nuance, and acuity, using slightly unconventional narrative constructs. While Frank employs a voyeuristic tack, Freele re-imagines the emotional states of ordinary people with quiet gestures in tiny universes. In both collections, we meet the brokenhearted, the jealous, the attention-starved, the murderous, the obsessed, the static. The characters are complex and layered, as are their stories and the methods used to tell them. They are imperfect. They are human. They are us.

Without being alarming, Joan Frank's stories still manage to alarm us. Frank escorts her readers on an expedition across the IED-stricken terrain of envy. Her characters are Madame Defarge-esque, chronicling the steps and missteps of others with no less bloodlust than the French Revolutionary herself. What's clever is that the storytelling is both vitriolic and detached, wonderfully demonstrating the tension of concealed yet seething jealousies. To wit: Merin, from "A Note on the Type," is a receptionist where her job is "simply letting people in and out of Gerald's building." Merin accepts her fate as Gerald's clerical dilettante simply because he "plucked" her "from the daily floodtide of the lost and lonely—a tide still visible out the office windows." Enter Rochelle, Gerald's fledging hire. Merin details Rochelle as would a stalwart spy: "Her eyes were Betty Boop's: huge and black. Eyes eager to persuade you of their natural sympathy without revealing the least trace of a thinking agency behind them…. Rochelle's behavior made the same warrant of empty-vesselhood as did her eyes and even her voice, a piping sing-song."

Eventually, Gerald provides Rochelle with services such as daycare, a housekeeper, and an accountant (things not provided to Merin). Merin considers, "What did that leave Rochelle to do? It left her free. Free to arrange things…. Bikini waxes, psychic readings, makeovers. Scuba lessons. Spanish lessons. Acting lessons. Singing lessons. Yoga. Home and garden shows. Car shows. Rebirthing sessions. Deep tissue massage," while rhetorically asking herself, "For myself?… My little place was a handy block from the main streetcar line. I thought of it as a second-floor shoebox, with holes cut in the lid." These small oblique explosions unmask Merin's feigned objectivity for what it really is—malevolent envy—and her narrative neutrality is diluted by the precise rhetoric used to construct it.

Lena, in the title story, is a radio broadcaster, and visits the home of Karen Ryerson, a TV anchor and local celebrity. Lena tells herself that Ryerson's "Turkish rugs over the polished hardwood floor. Two deep sofas; two puffy armchairs piled with extra cushions, all in rich creams and autumn golds" are "distastefully shrill." The three-page, detailed description of such a home is possibly an inventory of all that Lena wants but does not have. But does she want the riches that come with celebrity success, or does she want the celebrity? One night Lena and her husband Phil are eating dinner at the Ryersons when the Ryersons step outside to finish an argument they began inside.

Lena was enchanted.

Phil! Come look!…

They're fighting, breathed Lena without taking her gaze from the window. She said it the way a small girl might have said, a mermaid.

Yeah? Lemme see. Why's that so nice? Because they never fight, said Lena softly, moving over for him on the couch. They're always perfect.

It appears that what Lena really wants is the undoing of Karen Ryerson. This oscillation between desire and jealousy raises the question, are envy and aspiration intrinsic to one another?

In the nine stories in Frank's collection, we watch others...