“Coda”
by Tessa Hadley
from the August 2, 2021 issue of The New Yorker
When The New Yorker announced they’d be publishing another Tessa Hadley story this week, I got all giddy. I love her stories and I can’t wait to jump into this one, hopefully as soon as tonight . . . though the way things have been it might be later this week.
At any rate, it’s always great to get another story by one of my all-time favorite short story writers. I haven’t even looked up what this one is about because I just intend to jump on in. But for those interested in seeing how it begins, here you go:
I went upstairs in my mother’s house, telling her I was going to the bathroom. There was a downstairs toilet, but it had a raised seat and a frame with armrests so that she could easily maneuver herself on and off after her hip replacement, and I was squeamish about it. I couldn’t help feeling irrationally that if I used it I’d be contaminated with something: with suffering, with old age. And anyway I didn’t really need to use the bathroom. I went into the one upstairs that was free of any apparatus, closed the door, and sat on the toilet-seat lid, then pressed the flush so that she could hear it. The truth was that every so often I just needed to be alone for a few minutes, not making any effort, or being filled up with anyone else’s idea of what I was.
Okay, maybe not the most exciting first paragraph ever, but I’m still interested to see where Hadley takes us as she continues to explore the lives of girls and women.
I hope that wherever you are you’re doing well. I look forward to any thoughts you care to share below.
I think this is the best of her many fine New Yorker stories. Perhaps the resonances hit home more with me–the relation with an aging parent, longing, COVID quarantining and its mood–but I found this depiction of longing quite moving. The character’s need for people, for company yet concomitant desire to sneak away, to observe, fantasize, read is very sympathetically conveyed. There are a few parts where a lot of background is sort of thrown at the reader, which almost suggests this is an excerpt from a novel. But…this is too self contained ultimately and therefore must be a standalone short story.
The name Margot has turned into a kind of dog whistle embedded in this particular style of “contemporary” junk fiction. Plotless, diluted, vanilla navel-gazing tripe written by middle-aged C-minus talents who have not worked a single honest day in their entire life. I swear, I am not making this up. This is the 5th or 6th “Margot” story I’ve seen in the last year or two, and I swear, you couldn’t tell one from the other with a loaded gun pressed to against your skull.
I’m never a fan of such presumptuous criticism: “written by middle-aged C-minus talents who have not worked a single honest day in their entire life.” That this was written about Tessa Hadley boggles the mind and makes it particularly silly. Gavin, this site welcomes positive and negative points of view, but you’ve now left two comments that do not add anything to a discussion. We don’t all agree on here, but comments that express dislike or even outrage can be made in a respectful manner. You dismiss the work and the author but by your tone you also dismiss the possibility of any discussion on here that would disagree with you. Cleary Ken, above, got a lot out of this story, but your response seems to suggest you were angry at the story from line one.
Kudos to you, Trevor. Your response was what I would expect from this site.
I’m afraid I have to disagree, Gavin. Tessa Hadley has published seven novels, three short story collections, and two children’s books. Before she turned full time to her writing, she raised three sons and taught literature and creative writing. So I think she has worked many honest days in her life. She has had 28 stories published in the New Yorker alone, her first in 2002, concurrent with the publication of her first novel. So, you may not like her story, but she has produced a body of work enjoyed and acclaimed by many. She is especially good at focusing on family–its joys and sacrifice–and on the longing or remorse in the aftermath of decisions that might have been made differently.
More “lockdown lit”? I start to groan a bit anytime zoom, masks, or sanitzer features anywhere in anthing I read as of late, regardless of whether it is fact or fiction (you know…. like advice about ivermectin from your uncle). That said, if someone ends up writing it and it has to be written, it might as well be talented writers like Hadley. The elephant in the room is sure going to make things interesting for lit majors in 20 years. I like that we can probably all empathize with this character’s stalker behavior – haven’t we all peeked out the curtains at someone and assumed a bit too much? James Joyce’s Araby? Anyone?
After Ken’s normal comment, Gavin’s emotional rant threw the discussion off course. Let’s get back to business. Ken says that the story depicts longing. OK, but so what? Does that make it a good story? What is good about how she does that? She introduces Emma Bovary, a book which just happens to be lying around her mother’s house, to symbolize her — the author’s — emotional state. Not very creative.
I need you guys to tell me why I should like this story, why the NYer has published 28 of her stories. Because on my own I don’t see it. And the fact that she has incorporated COVID into her narrative rather smoothly does not address my query. I will hold off on my criticisms to give you a chance to explain why you like Hadley’s writing. And not in an abstract way, but using specifics from the text.
Gainsford — what is “talented” about the writing here?
I’m a big Hadley fan, but I didn’t respond to this one the way I often do. I love when she explores the relationships between mothers and daughters, or women in general, but this one didn’t help me go deeper. I’ll likely give it another go sometime, because Hadley is often so strong — makes me wonder if it was just me. Then again, even our favorites don’t usually bat 100.
William – I don’t think this story will be taught in lit classes 30 years from now by any means. But it moves well and characterizes well and is honest. Writing short stories is difficult, so I’m very hesitant to heap criticism on any that actually entices me to read the entire thing. Like Trevor says no one bats 100…but I did read it and this story is far better than the one I have never written. Let alone published in the New Yorker. 28 times must mean something and we don’t have to love every thing. What’s the fun in that?
In “Coda”, Hadley has provided a clearly delineated profile of a particular older British woman. Unfortunately, thIs woman is neither interesting nor personally (psychologically) attractive.
For one, she lacks energy and involvement in life. She has been married once, and has an adult child. She is now divorced, probably for many years, but apparently has had no interest in trying to initiate another relationship. At about the age of 60, she thinks of herself as being in the “coda” of her life – coda being a part of a musical work that reprises the main themes rather than introducing anything new.
During COVID, she goes to her mother’s house to hibernate. Nothing wrong with that. But she is so secretive, so afraid to reveal anything about herself: “But ever since I was a child I’d had an instinct—which probably made me furtive and difficult to love—to keep my inner life out of my mother’s sight.” This is a grown woman!
She “spies” on the caretaker next door when the woman comes out to smoke: “Her back was more or less turned to me; she couldn’t possibly have seen me, and I’m sure I’d have been invisible to her anyway, even if she’d chosen to look up behind her. The windowpanes would have reflected only darkness. Nonetheless, I took a step back from the window, which was steaming up from my breath on the cold glass.”
And when her mother asks her what she sees, she lies:
‘”Anything happening out on Desolation Row?”
‘“Nothing, no. No one.””
And later: “I hurried upstairs in the hope of seeing her, contriving reasons for it cunningly, because Margot must not be allowed any clue as to what was going on.”
How can we care about such a timid character? Can she lead us anywhere meaningful in terms of plot?
And why is she so furtive? What is she afraid of?
Perhaps this is our clue
“I remembered from my time at school how little it took to set a day apart, surround it with happiness; perhaps one of the girls I worshipped gave me a biscuit left over from her break, or asked if she could copy my Latin homework. It was only later, when I transferred my worship to men, that everything grew complicated.”
So we have a 60-year-old, firmly closeted, emotionally repressed lesbian. She reminds me of the butler in “The Remains of the Day”, who was totally submerged in his menial, submissive role. Even Emma Thompson couldn’t bring him out.
And she dares to compare herself to Emma Bovary, a woman who is stupid and naïve, but energetic and passionate: “For the moment, “Madame Bovary” was my inner life, stirred like rich jam into the blandness of my days.” This is fantasy, like women who read passionate romances. Is this the best that Hadley can do for a character?
The big action is when the woman hugs the next-door caretaker:
“We weren’t wearing our masks. I hadn’t thought to put mine on in the emergency, and, anyway, I was indifferent just then to the possibility of contagion. I burst into tears and threw my arms around Teresa, burying my head in her softness and heat, feeling the resilience of her bust under the polyester housecoat, breathing in her unknown exotic smell—skin cream and sweat and cooking, cigarette smoke, traces of last night’s perfume. This embrace felt momentous, as if a character had stepped out of my dreams to hold me. She was patting my back kindly; I’m sure I was just another old woman to her, as crazy as my mother. If she held herself cautiously away from me, I don’t think it was because of COVID.” How pitiful. And she knows to some degree that she is imagining the feelings.
Nonetheless, this brief incidental contact excites her:
“I knew it was ridiculous, because nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen. But I was like Emma Bovary, looking at herself in the mirror after her tryst in the woods with Rodolphe. Murmuring over and over to herself, I have a lover, I have a lover.”
She is so desperate that she invents a lover out of a meaningless contact. That is so audacious for her to compare herself to Emma. At least Emma actually had an affair instead of just imagining one.
So — a pitiful character. Can a good story be made entirely out of pity? Not for me. I need some impetus or action from the main character. Which is lacking here.
There was a Call for Submissions for Unlockdown Poetry & Short Fiction in my feed in, dismayingly, August 2020!