Fresh Complaint

Fresh Complaint
Jeffrey Eugenides

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEARAN EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR‘What was it about complaining that felt so good? You and your fellow sufferer emerging from a thorough session as if from a spa bath, refreshed and tingling?’The first-ever collection of short stories from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies.We meet Kendall, a failed poet who, envious of other people’s wealth during the real estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; and Mitchell, a lovelorn liberal arts graduate on a search for enlightenment; and Prakrti, a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her family leads to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged academic.Jeffrey Eugenides’s bestselling novels Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides and The Marriage Plot have shown him to be an astute observer of the crises of adolescence, self-discovery and family love. These stories, from one of our greatest authors, explore equally rich and intriguing territory.Narratively compelling and beautifully written, Fresh Complaint shows all of Eugenides’s trademark humour, compassion and complex understanding of what it is to be human.

Copyright (#ulink_a377fc33-3745-5bfc-ba76-89d6012a6bbb)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by 4th Estate

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Jeffrey Eugenides

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Jeffrey Eugenides asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This story collection is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007447886

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008243821

Version: 2018-08-22

Dedication (#ulink_3b8a7615-b188-5c33-9d82-1a064b5ab623)

In memory of my mother, Wanda Eugenides (1926–2017),

and of my nephew, Brenner Eugenides (1985–2012)

Contents

Cover (#u71c91b2d-f3ed-5dac-a7a6-8fffeb2830e5)

Title Page (#u8ca18324-a6cd-52bd-b027-7fe702bf2dc1)

Copyright (#u004d4ce7-fc04-5859-9f3c-c95a110890c4)

Dedication (#u0bc3b9d4-81c4-52ff-882e-40fbbcecda17)

Complainers (#ue353e574-f4a7-5681-9379-6ad184dcc441)

Air Mail (#u5f691c2c-514d-51eb-9a1a-710aa0ab9630)

Baster (#u7700bc95-aabf-5d30-808c-5438b52536b1)

Early Music (#litres_trial_promo)

Timeshare (#litres_trial_promo)

Find the Bad Guy (#litres_trial_promo)

The Oracular Vulva (#litres_trial_promo)

Capricious Gardens (#litres_trial_promo)

Great Experiment (#litres_trial_promo)

Fresh Complaint (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jeffrey Eugenides (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

COMPLAINERS (#ulink_81c08f40-8648-5307-9492-4213db2bc1d9)

Coming up the drive in the rental car, Cathy sees the sign and has to laugh. “Wyndham Falls. Gracious Retirement Living.”

Not exactly how Della has described it.

The building comes into view next. The main entrance looks nice enough. It’s big and glassy, with white benches outside and an air of medical orderliness. But the garden apartments set back on the property are small and shabby. Tiny porches, like animal pens. The sense, outside the curtained windows and weather-beaten doors, of lonely lives within.

When she gets out of the car, the air feels ten degrees warmer than it did outside the airport that morning, in Detroit. The January sky is a nearly cloudless blue. No sign of the blizzard Clark’s been warning her about, trying to persuade her to stay home and take care of him. “Why don’t you go next week?” he said. “She’ll keep.”

Cathy’s halfway to the front entrance when she remembers Della’s present and doubles back to the car to get it. Taking it out of her suitcase, she’s pleased once again by her gift-wrapping job. The paper is a thick, pulpy, unbleached kind that counterfeits birch bark. (She had to go to three different stationery stores to find something she liked.) Instead of sticking on a gaudy bow Cathy clipped sprigs from her Christmas tree—which they were about to put at the curb—and fashioned a garland. Now the present looks handmade and organic, like an offering in a Native American ceremony, something given not to a person but to the earth.

What’s inside is completely unoriginal. It’s what Cathy always gives Della: a book.

But it’s more than that this time. A kind of medicine.

Ever since moving down to Connecticut Della has complained that she can’t read anymore. “I just don’t seem to be able to stick with a book lately,” is how she puts it on the phone. She doesn’t say why. They both know why.