“Balloons“
by Thomas McGuane
from the May 10, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
I‘m always excited to see Thomas McGuane in The New Yorker. We used to get one or two new stories per year, but it’s slowed down a tad in recent years. That is understandable; in December he turned 81.
From this first paragraph of “Balloons,” he’s clearly still got it.
Ten years before Joan Krebs left her husband, Roger, and moved back to Cincinnati, I spotted the two of them dining alone by the bricked-up fireplace in the Old Eagle Grill. She was a devoted daughter, her father a sportsman with well-bred dogs, who arrived once a year to peer at Roger and inspect the marriage. Roger always saluted his father-in-law’s departure with the words “Good riddance.” In those days, Joan stirred up our town with her air of dangerous glamour and the sense that her marriage to Roger couldn’t possibly last. There was nothing wrong with Roger, but talking to him was laborious. As the founder of the once famous Nomad Agency, he sold high-end recreational properties to members of his far-flung society, and he had taken on the language of his clients. After he described a drought-stricken, abandoned part of the state as a “tightly held neighborhood,” he came to be known as Tightly Held Krebs, or T.H. In the areas of Montana that were subject to his creative hyperbole, people bought god-awful properties, believing that they were an acquired taste. Renowned for his many closings, Roger was on the road a lot; this worked perfectly for Joan and me.
That’s quite the opening paragraph, and the story continues to show how this affair and the general friendship with Roger and Joan as a couple developed and fell apart over time. The narrator’s voice provides quite a bit of intrigue, revealing bits of his own role in all of this in ways that seem natural, that make us his familiar, but that also show us his own surprise at how things developed, like this bit from an interaction he has with Roger:
As he continued to summarize his life with Joan, I fought off my daydreaming to note that he seemed to be heading somewhere, and, indeed, he was. My guess was that he was going to demand a direct answer about Joan and me, but I was wrong: Roger thought that I was the right doc to euthanize him. “I’m not depressed, but I am ready to go,” he said. “I won’t feel a thing.” He dropped his hands flat on the table and tilted back.
This is a very short story, and I’m surprised at how quickly McGuane develops everything into a brisk, twisty story.
“There was nothing wrong with Roger, but talking to him was laborious.” This is a very strong way to draw in the dedicated reader. Some people aren’t inherently bad or malicious and there’s no glaring fault or flaw with them, they’re just exhausting. And what incisive and economical phrasing from McGuane. The contagious nature of clichéd discourse is also an intriguing element.
“People bought god-awful properties, believing that they were an acquired taste.” And this is a great analogy for many failed marriages/relationships.
The story also works because its physician narrator doesn’t let himself off the hook (he’s as insufferable as Roger, just in a different way): “I regret that I fell in love with her and, worse, never got over it.” He then lumps himself in with the phonies as his passive-aggression (which will sort of doom him by story’s end) begins to manifest itself. I’m an alpha, this wispy guy’s a beta, and I don’t need to be macho judgmental Hemingway, but I can literally make his wife shiver with one touch of my one finger. Funny stuff. And of course Roger is the type of man who asks a third man to settle a “gentle dispute.”
Roger and Joan are names of a specific generation (and two of the main characters in Mad Men). We also have a reference to the Mad Hatter from Alice’s Wonderland. Hmm.
“Vexatious litigant“ and “You tin-pot sawbones!” and “The stouthearted fellow who filled them with lead” cracked me up. Ah, “AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz…”, as another littoral writer with some famous ex-wives once sang.
A story about two men from a generation that just accepts drinking and driving as a norm perpended by youngsters, one who views them as comedy and the other views them as tragedy: Nicely wielded, Mr. McGuane.
The twist about the doc’s misapprehension of why Roger has sought him out was legitimately surprising.
The twist about Joan’s post-Roger life was just as piquant.
I’m not sure the titular image works for me, but Roger’s parting gift to the narrator does. Bravo, Thomas. One of the best short stories I’ll read this year, I’m sure.
An outstanding short story.
One of McGuane’s best, in my opinion, since “The Casserole.” And Balloons is a brilliant title, one whose meaning — not the literal meaning but the metaphorical one — is (like the Casserole) not clear to the reader until the story ends, and then it encapsulates it.
McGuane reads the story at The New Yorker website, and I think hearing him read it was even better than reading it myself. He paces his reading in a way that enables one to appreciate better the language of the story, and how it unfolds.
Loved how much was packed into a few pages as well as the surprises and twists. However, I wasn’t convinced by the conclusion of the story. It seemed out-of-character? Worth the read though.