Your story in this week’s issue, “The Shape of a Teardrop,” involves an adult man who refuses to move out of his parents’ house. There have been various situations like this in the news. What drew you to the idea?
I was inspired both by news reports (like one mentioned in the story about a young man who is attempting to sue his parents for having given birth to him) and by a personal experience. I had a very close friend, while I was growing up in suburban New York, who, at the age of sixteen, converted his parents’ basement into a space for himself. He was brilliant and erratic. He shaved his head, lifted weights, drank milk (for the protein) in half-gallon jugs that he lifted to his lips and emptied in a series of gulps, and listened obsessively—and at top volume—to the albums of Leadbelly, only Leadbelly, Leadbelly ascendant. I went off to college, as did he, but he dropped out and moved back into his parents’ basement. He was still there in his thirties, still shaving his head, lifting weights, guzzling milk, and cranking Leadbelly till that venerable singer’s voice became the erupting volcano of his life.
The story alternates between the voice of the son and the voice of the mother. Why did you decide to tell it that way?
The fascination here for me is with the parent-child bond. The mother loves her son, as all good mothers do, but are there, finally, limits to that love? My friend’s parents were long-suffering. They did not attempt to move him out, but did ultimately see the necessity of providing him with psychiatric care.
Both of these characters are in denial: the son about his responsibility for the current, untenable situation, the mother in her wish to be seen as doing only what a loving mother would do. Is it challenging to write from the point of view of a character who can’t see or be honest about him- or herself?
Of course, it’s challenging to write about anybody from any perspective—even oneself. Speaking of challenges, my forthcoming novel, “Talk to Me,” features a series of chapters written from the point of view of a chimp in one of the nineteen-seventies primate-language studies. Here, however, I have whole boatloads of fun with Justin’s self-justifying rant. While the story is ultimately sad, I think, its humor derives from how delusional he is—and how wrong, how very, very wrong. Should I mention the phrase “every parent’s nightmare”?
What do you think drove Justin to this level of delusion and entitlement? How can he justify the hypocrisy of forcing his parents to care for him while he disowns his own child? How was this monster created?
Look to society, and look to the crapshoot of the way any given set of parents’ genes line up. How was Raskolnikov created? How about the “patriots” who assaulted the Capitol Building? We live in our own private realities, and sometimes—too often—those private realities have nothing to do with the larger world around us. I speak from the point of view of a novelist, a profession to which only the delusional are called.
You have adult children—and I think one of them is living with you during the pandemic. Is this a cautionary tale to yourself?
The youngest of my three recently graduated from med school and has been thrust into the chaos and horror of the pandemic in one of L.A.’s biggest public hospitals. He is home at the moment, safely ensconced in the guesthouse, taking a very brief respite from his demanding schedule. As for the guesthouse, my vision of it is as a temporary residence for guests, and I will account myself very, very lucky if no one actually winds up living there as the years roll on. My daughter, her husband, and their eighteen-month-old child live next door to us, in a separate house, connected to our property by a gate. I love them. I see them daily. The gate, however, closes firmly. With a latch.
“The Shape of a Teardrop” will be in your next story collection. Are the stories in the collection thematically related in some way?
My novel “Talk to Me” comes out in September. The book of stories, which are not thematically related, is titled after another story that first appeared in this magazine. It is called “I Walk Between the Raindrops” and will be published next year.
