Short Cuts Read online

  BOOKS BY RAYMOND CARVER

  FICTION

  Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

  Furious Seasons and Other Stories

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

  Cathedral

  Where I’m Calling From

  POETRY

  Near Klamath

  Winter Insomnia

  At Night the Salmon Move

  Where Water Comes Together with Other Water

  Ultramarine

  A New Path to the Waterfall

  PROSE AND POETRY

  Fires: Essays, Poems, and Stories

  POSTHUMOUSLY PUBLISHED

  Short Cuts: Selected Stories

  Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose

  All of Us: The Collected Poems

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EBOOK EDITION, MAY 2015

  Copyright © 1993 by Tess Gallagher

  Introduction copyright © 1993 by Robert Altman

  All rights reserved. First published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto, in 1993.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Atlantic Monthly Press for permission to reprint the poem “Lemonade” from A New Path to the Waterfall by Raymond Carver, copyright © 1989 by Tess Gallagher. Used with permission of Atlantic Monthly Press.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carver, Raymond.

  Short cuts: selected stories / Raymond Carver.

  p. cm—(Vintage contemporaries original)

  I. Title.

  PS3553.A7894S48 1993

  813´.54—dc20 93-19747

  Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-679-74864-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-97056-0

  Cover design by Buchanan-Smith LLC

  Cover photograph © Todd Hido / Edge Reps

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction by Robert Altman

  Neighbors

  They’re Not Your Husband

  Vitamins

  Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

  So Much Water So Close to Home

  A Small, Good Thing

  Jerry and Molly and Sam

  Collectors

  Tell the Women We’re Going

  Lemonade (poem)

  A Note on the Text

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  Collaborating with Carver

  RAYMOND CARVER made poetry out of the prosaic. One critic wrote that he “revealed the strangeness concealed behind the banal,” but what he really did was capture the wonderful idiosyncrasies of human behavior, the idiosyncrasies that exist amid the randomness of life’s experiences. And human behavior, filled with all its mystery and inspiration, has always fascinated me.

  I look at all of Carver’s work as just one story, for his stories are all occurrences, all about things that just happen to people and cause their lives to take a turn. Maybe the bottom falls out. Maybe they have a near-miss with disaster. Maybe they just have to go on, knowing things they don’t really want to know about one another. They’re more about what you don’t know rather than what you do know, and the reader fills in the gaps, while recognizing the undercurrents.

  In formulating the mosaic of the film Short Cuts, which is based on these nine stories and the poem “Lemonade,” I’ve tried to do the same thing – to give the audience one look. But the film could go on for ever, because it’s like life – lifting the roof off the Weathers’ home and seeing Stormy decimate his furniture with a skillsaw, then lifting off another roof, the Kaisers’, or the Wymans’, or the Shepherds’, and seeing some different behavior.

  We’ve taken liberties with Carver’s work: characters have crossed over from one story to another; they connect by various linking devices; names may have changed. And though some purists and Carver fans may be upset, this film has been a serious collaboration between the actors, my co-writer Frank Barhydt, and the Carver material in this collection.

  When I first spoke to the poet Tess Gallagher, Ray’s widow, about wanting to make this film, I told her I wasn’t going to be pristine in my approach to Carver and that the stories were going to be scrambled. She instinctively recognized and encouraged this, and said Ray was an admirer of Nashville, that he liked the helplessness of those characters and their ability to manage nevertheless. She also knew that artists in different fields must use their own skills and vision to do their work. Cinematic equivalents of literary material manifest themselves in unexpected ways.

  Through the years of writing, shaping and planning Short Cuts, through the myriad financial dealings and turnarounds, Tess and I had numerous discussions and conducted a steady correspondence. The way she received information changed my attitude about things, so I feel I’ve had discussions with Ray through Tess. She’s been a real contributor to the film.

  I read all of Ray’s writings, filtering him through my own process. The film is made of little pieces of his work that form sections of scenes and characters out of the most basic elements of Ray’s creations – new but not new. Tess and Zoe Trainer, the emotionally displaced mother and daughter played by Annie Ross and Lori Singer, provide the musical bridges in the film – Annie’s jazz and Lori’s cello. They are characters Frank Barhydt and I invented, but Tess Gallagher felt they were consistent with Ray’s characters and could have come out of his story “Vitamins.”

  Raymond Carver’s view of the world, and probably my own, may be termed dark by some. We’re connected by similar attitudes about the arbitrary nature of luck in the scheme of things – the Finnegans’ child being hit by a car in “A Small, Good Thing”; the Kanes’ marriage upheaval resulting from a body being discovered during a fishing trip in “So Much Water So Close to Home.”

  Somebody wins the lottery. The same day, that person’s sister gets killed by a brick falling off a building in Seattle. Those are both the same thing. The lottery was won both ways. The odds of either happening are very much against you and yet they both happened. One got killed and the other got rich; it’s the same action.

  One of the reasons we transposed the settings from the Pacific Northwest to Southern California was that we wanted to place the action in a vast suburban setting so that it would be fortuitous for the characters to meet. There were logistical considerations as well, but we wanted the linkages to be accidental. The setting is untapped Los Angeles, which is also Carver country, not Hollywood or Beverly Hills – but Downey, Watts, Compton, Pomona, Glendale – American suburbia, the names you hear about on the freeway reports.

  We have twenty-two principal actors in the cast – Anne Archer, Bruce Davison, Robert Downey Jr., Peter Gallagher, Buck Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Huey Lewis, Lyle Lovett, Andie MacDowell, Frances McDormand, Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Chris Penn, Tim Robbins, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Madeleine Stowe, Lili Taylor, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits and Fred Ward – and they brought things to this film I wouldn’t have dreamed of, thickening it, enriching it. Part of this I have to attribute to the foundation of Short Cuts – the Carver writings.

  Only three or four of these actors ever appeared together in the film because each week we began another story, with another family. But we gave the cast all of the original stories, and many went on to read more of Ray’s work. The first family we filmed were the Piggotts, Earl and Doreen, played by Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin, in th
eir trailer park and at Johnnie’s Broiler, a classic California coffee shop where Doreen waitresses. Their work was so superb that I thought I’d be in trouble, but all of the actors stepped up to that level, going beyond or sideways from my expectations, taking over and redefining their roles.

  The characters do a lot of storytelling in the film, telling little stories about their lives. Many of them are Carver stories or paraphrases of Carver stories or inspired by Carver stories, so we always tried to stay as close as possible to his world, given film’s collaborative imperative.

  The actors also realized that the particulars these Carver people are talking about aren’t the main thing. The elements seemed flexible. They could be talking about anything. Which is not to say the language isn’t important, but its subject doesn’t have to be X. Y or Z. It could be Q or P or H.

  It’s a matter of who these people are that determines how they respond to what they’re saying. It’s not what they’re saying that causes the scene to happen, but the fact that these characters are playing the scene. So whether they’re talking about how to make a peanut butter sandwich or how to murder their neighbor, the content isn’t as significant as what these characters feel and do in the situation, as they develop.

  Writing and directing are both acts of discovery. In the end, the film is there and the stories are there and one hopes there is a fruitful interaction. Yet in directing Short Cuts, certain things came straight out of my own sensibility, which has its differences, and this is as it should be. I know Ray Carver would have understood that I had to go beyond just paying tribute. Something new happened in the film, and maybe that’s the truest form of respect.

  But it all began here. I was a reader turning these pages. Trying on these lives.

  ROBERT ALTMAN

  New York City, 1993

  Neighbors

  BILL AND ARLENE MILLER were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle had been passed by somehow, leaving Bill to attend to his bookkeeping duties and Arlene occupied with secretarial chores. They talked about it sometimes, mostly in comparison with the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone. It seemed to the Millers that the Stones lived a fuller and brighter life. The Stones were always going out for dinner, or entertaining at home, or traveling about the country somewhere in connection with Jim’s work.

  The Stones lived across the hall from the Millers. Jim was a salesman for a machine-parts firm and often managed to combine business with pleasure trips, and on this occasion the Stones would be away for ten days, first to Cheyenne, then on to St. Louis to visit relatives. In their absence, the Millers would look after the Stones’ apartment, feed Kitty, and water the plants.

  Bill and Jim shook hands beside the car. Harriet and Arlene held each other by the elbows and kissed lightly on the lips.

  “Have fun,” Bill said to Harriet.

  “We will,” said Harriet. “You kids have fun too.”

  Arlene nodded.

  Jim winked at her. “Bye, Arlene. Take good care of the old man.”

  “I will,” Arlene said.

  “Have fun,” Bill said.

  “You bet,” Jim said, clipping Bill lightly on the arm. “And thanks again, you guys.”

  The Stones waved as they drove away, and the Millers waved too.

  “Well, I wish it was us,” Bill said.

  “God knows, we could use a vacation,” Arlene said. She took his arm and put it around her waist as they climbed the stairs to their apartment.

  After dinner Arlene said, “Don’t forget. Kitty gets liver flavor the first night.” She stood in the kitchen doorway folding the handmade tablecloth that Harriet had bought for her last year in Santa Fe.

  Bill took a deep breath as he entered the Stones’ apartment. The air was already heavy and it was vaguely sweet. The sunburst clock over the television said half past eight. He remembered when Harriet had come home with the clock, how she had crossed the hall to show it to Arlene, cradling the brass case in her arms and talking to it through the tissue paper as if it were an infant.

  Kitty rubbed her face against his slippers and then turned onto her side, but jumped up quickly as Bill moved to the kitchen and selected one of the stacked cans from the gleaming drainboard. Leaving the cat to pick at her food, he headed for the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror and then closed his eyes and then looked again. He opened the medicine chest. He found a container of pills and read the label – Harriet Stone. One each day as directed – and slipped it into his pocket. He went back to the kitchen, drew a pitcher of water, and returned to the living room. He finished watering, set the pitcher on the rug, and opened the liquor cabinet. He reached in back for the bottle of Chivas Regal. He took two drinks from the bottle, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and replaced the bottle in the cabinet.

  Kitty was on the couch sleeping. He switched off the lights, slowly closing and checking the door. He had the feeling he had left something.

  “What kept you?” Arlene said. She sat with her legs turned under her, watching television.

  “Nothing. Playing with Kitty,” he said, and went over to her and touched her breasts.

  “Let’s go to bed, honey,” he said.

  The next day Bill took only ten minutes of the twenty-minute break allotted for the afternoon and left at fifteen minutes before five. He parked the car in the lot just as Arlene hopped down from the bus. He waited until she entered the building, then ran up the stairs to catch her as she stepped out of the elevator.

  “Bill! God, you scared me. You’re early,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Nothing to do at work,” he said.

  She let him use her key to open the door. He looked at the door across the hall before following her inside.

  “Let’s go to bed,” he said.

  “Now?” She laughed. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing. Take your dress off.” He grabbed for her awkwardly, and she said, “Good God, Bill.”

  He unfastened his belt.

  Later they sent out for Chinese food, and when it arrived they ate hungrily, without speaking, and listened to records.

  “Let’s not forget to feed Kitty,” she said.

  “I was just thinking about that,” he said. “I’ll go right over.”

  He selected a can of fish flavor for the cat, then filled the pitcher and went to water. When he returned to the kitchen, the cat was scratching in her box. She looked at him steadily before she turned back to the litter. He opened all the cupboards and examined the canned goods, the cereals, the packaged foods, the cocktail and wine glasses, the china, the pots and pans. He opened the refrigerator. He sniffed some celery, took two bites of cheddar cheese, and chewed on an apple as he walked into the bedroom. The bed seemed enormous, with a fluffy white bedspread draped to the floor. He pulled out a nightstand drawer, found a half-empty package of cigarettes and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he stepped to the closet and was opening it when the knock sounded at the front door.

  He stopped by the bathroom and flushed the toilet on his way.

  “What’s been keeping you?” Arlene said. “You’ve been over here more than an hour.”

  “Have I really?” he said.

  “Yes, you have,” she said.

  “I had to go to the toilet,” he said.

  “You have your own toilet,” she said.

  “I couldn’t wait,” he said.

  That night they made love again.

  In the morning he had Arlene call in for him. He showered, dressed, and made a light breakfast. He tried to start a book. He went out for a walk and felt better. But after a while, hands still in his pockets, he returned to the apartment. He stopped at the Stones’ door on the chance he might hear the cat moving about. Then he let himself in at his own door and went to the kitchen for the key.

  Inside it seemed cooler than his apartment, and darker too. He wondered if the plants had something to do with the temperature of the air. He looked out
the window, and then he moved slowly through each room considering everything that fell under his gaze, carefully, one object at a time. He saw ashtrays, items of furniture, kitchen utensils, the clock. He saw everything. At last he entered the bedroom, and the cat appeared at his feet. He stroked her once, carried her into the bathroom, and shut the door.

  He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He lay for a while with his eyes closed, and then he moved his hand under his belt. He tried to recall what day it was. He tried to remember when the Stones were due back, and then he wondered if they would ever return. He could not remember their faces or the way they talked and dressed. He sighed and with effort rolled off the bed to lean over the dresser and look at himself in the mirror.

  He opened the closet and selected a Hawaiian shirt. He looked until he found Bermudas, neatly pressed and hanging over a pair of brown twill slacks. He shed his own clothes and slipped into the shorts and the shirt. He looked in the mirror again. He went to the living room and poured himself a drink and sipped it on his way back to the bedroom. He put on a blue shirt, a dark suit, a blue and white tie, black wing-tip shoes. The glass was empty and he went for another drink.

  In the bedroom again, he sat on a chair, crossed his legs, and smiled, observing himself in the mirror. The telephone rang twice and fell silent. He finished the drink and took off the suit. He rummaged through the top drawers until he found a pair of panties and a brassiere. He stepped into the panties and fastened the brassiere, then looked through the closet for an outfit. He put on a black and white checkered skirt and tried to zip it up. He put on a burgundy blouse that buttoned up the front. He considered her shoes, but understood they would not fit. For a long time he looked out the living-room window from behind the curtain. Then he returned to the bedroom and put everything away.

  He was not hungry. She did not eat much, either. They looked at each other shyly and smiled. She got up from the table and checked that the key was on the shelf and then she quickly cleared the dishes.

  He stood in the kitchen doorway and smoked a cigarette and watched her pick up the key.