Summary:

Princess Vera Gavrilovna visits a monastery on her way to a friend's house. She loves to share the beauty of her presence with the monks, and to have a day or two of peace and quiet. She encounters the doctor who cares for the monks. He is polite, but cool and distant.

When she begs him to explain her "mistake," he goes into a lengthy diatribe describing how vain and selfish she is, and how heartless to her servants. In fact, many years before she had fired the doctor for no reason. The accusations offend her and she begins to cry. The doctor withdraws. The next morning, as she leaves the monastery, the doctor comes up to her and abjectly apologizes for being carried away by "an evil, vindictive feeling."

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Summary:

A district doctor and an examining magistrate are on their way to an inquest. The magistrate tells the story of a young pregnant woman who "foretold her own death" shortly after giving birth. Though she was apparently healthy, she simply closed her eyes and "gave up her soul to God." This tale, the magistrate contends, is an illustration of how inexplicable life can be.

No, the doctor responds, there is no effect without a cause. The woman probably poisoned herself, the doctor explains. Her husband was unfaithful. She wished to commit suicide, but did not want to harm the unborn baby. Thus, she waited until after her confinement. The magistrate is overwhelmed with grief--in fact, the story is that of his own wife. His infidelity may have caused her suicide!

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Summary:

In 1822, a young Canadian paddler named Guillaume Roleau is near death after suffering a gunshot wound to the stomach. His recovery is dramatic and scientifically important. The injury has resulted in a traumatic fistula--a porthole between the outside world and Guillaume's abdominal cavity and organs. The treating physician, Dr. William Barber, immediately recognizes the incredible opportunity for medical research and conducts a lengthy series of experiments on the process of human digestion.

Guillaume--patient, research subject, and guest in the doctor's cabin--is rowdy and frequently uncooperative. He continues to participate in the grisly experiments at least partially out of affection for the physician's wife, Julia, who helps nurse him back to health as well as providing emotional sustenance.

Julia ultimately makes a large, uncredited contribution to Dr. Barber's research. At her husband's request, she has sexual relations with Guillaume so that the unreliable man will remain with the doctor until the experiments are all completed. The efforts of this tragic trio result in a landmark textbook on gastrointestinal physiology authored by Dr. Barber and Julia's illegitimate son, Jacob, sired by Guillaume Roleau.

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Summary:

This well crafted story concerns a contemporary woman in her thirties who undergoes significant personal losses; in fact, she seems to lose or lack an identity. Over the years, Kat, an "avant garde" fashion photographer, has altered her image, even her name, to suit the situation and the times. She has had two abortions and "learned to say that she didn't want children anyway."

The story begins when Kat undergoes surgical removal of a rare and peculiar ovarian tumor containing hair, teeth, bones (the clinical term is a dermoid cyst ); Kat dubs it "hairball " and stores it in formaldehyde on her mantelpiece. We learn that Kat's relationship with her married lover is going sour, that he will replace her as creative director at work. She fantasizes that she has given birth to "hairball" who she sees as the "warped child" of their failed relationship. Physical symptoms accompany Kat's growing emotional confusion. Hairball becomes the vehicle for an ultimate bizarre act reflecting Kat's personality disintegration. She has gone from being Katherine to Kath to Kat, to K, to being "temporarily without a name."

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Summary:

Written in 1977, "Rape Fantasies" appears to be a recap of a conversation among several women during their lunch hour, a few of them playing bridge, one--Chrissy the receptionist--reading aloud from a tabloid. When Chrissy asks the question, "How about it, girls, do you have rape fantasies?" the story unfolds with each woman’s response, all retold from the perspective of Estelle, who’s doing her best to deflect the entire conversation by concentrating on her bidding.

The conversation is tragically ironic, moving from woman to woman, Darlene calling the entire subject "disgusting," Greta describing a Tarzan-like scenario, Chrissy describing hers in a bubble bath, when Estelle, ever the voice of reason, reminds them that what they’re describing are sexual fantasies: "Listen . . . those aren’t rape fantasies. I mean, you aren’t getting raped, it’s just some guy you haven’t met formally who happens to be more attractive than Derek Cummins . . . and you have a good time. Rape is when they’ve got a knife or something and you don’t want to" (104).

Estelle then describes her rape fantasy where she deflects her attacker by squirting juice from a plastic lemon in his eyes ("You should hear the one about the Easy Off Cleaner"), but also includes the one where "this short, ugly fellow comes up and grabs my arm . . . [and] I say, kind of disgusted, ’Oh for Chrissake,’ and he starts to cry," which prompts a wave of sympathy in Estelle (106). And there are more, each with Estelle warding off her attacker through outsmarting him ("I’ve just found out I have leukemia"), or talking him out of it.

As the narrative continues, the reader becomes aware that Estelle is addressing someone in addition to the reader--"I hope you don’t mind me holding my nose like this . . . " (107) and that person is probably a man (twice Estelle says, "But I guess it’s different for a guy"). As the story ends, we realize that Estelle all along has been in a bar, speaking to a man she has just met, worrying about the possibility she will be raped by him. "Like, how could a fellow do that to a person he’s just had a long conversation with, once you let them know you’re human, you have a life too, I don’t see how they could go ahead with it, right?" (110). We are left wondering whether all these "conversations" are Estelle’s deliberate inventions, her way of trying to control a potentially dangerous social interaction.

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Summary:

Tom Fogarty is a sixteen-year-old boy who is introduced to both love and death in 1934. The object of his affection is Lily, the 14-year-old niece of a neighbor who lives across the street from Tom. Lily has tuberculosis and is waiting for a bed at the sanitarium where her parents are already being treated for the same disease. The relationship between the two adolescents is risky, passionate, forbidden, and ultimately transforming. Their romance is abruptly interrupted by Lily's death.

Tom's overwhelming grief over the loss of Lily coincides with torrential rain that cleans and nearly submerges the town of Troy, New York. Tom is further wounded when he fractures his clavicle during the flooding. His physician-father, a general practitioner, repairs Tom's injured collarbone but only time can mend the boy's broken heart.

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Summary:

When I had Annina, the narrator says, her first-born child was eight years old, frost covered the geraniums, and something "warm and wet" ran down her legs. She lost her second pregnancy at only nine weeks from a spontaneous abortion. Secretly, she names the tiny girl "Annina" and tucks her inside her heart and mind, where for years she nurtures her, protects her, dresses her, listens to her language, and watches her grow to a daring adventuress, though she is Thumbelina small, and carries a needle for a sword. Annina eventually moves on and the narrator will not dare to ask her to come home.

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Summary:

Sam and her partner are getting ready to go out. She is due to have a baby soon, and they need to acquire just a few more items to complete the nursery and baby wardrobe. Sam wants a Forever Baby duvet, but realizes that it may be difficult because duvets are large and hard to conceal. Slowly it emerges that her trendy baby supplies are stolen.

Sam stops by the clinic where an assistant makes the mistake of asking if this is her first pregnancy. The glance from a colleague silences her, but Sam notices. She has no baby now but she remembers her little girl who "ought to have kept out of his way" although she was hiding in her duvet.

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Summary:

Martha Hale and her husband are taken by the sheriff with his wife to the isolated home of the Wrights. Hale tells the authorities that on the previous morning he found Mr. Wright strangled to death. Mrs. Wright claimed not to know who killed him. She was arrested and awaiting charges.

Mrs. Hale and the sheriff's wife are to gather clothing and see to her preserves. The men mock women's "trifles" and jokingly caution them not to miss any clues, before they turn to their "more serious" work of finding a motive. In a basket of patches destined for a quilt, the women find a strangled canary. In quilt-like fragments, they piece together the difficult life of the third woman and decide to conceal the evidence that could incriminate her.

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Summary:

In 1930s London, a doctor is visited by his wealthy and powerful patient Beatrice Glendenning, who demands an abortion. Although the doctor is an occasional guest of this woman and her husband at their country estate, the law requires that he refuse her request, and he advises her to have the child--and most certainly not to get a backstairs abortion. She tells him that it is not her husband's child, that bearing it would never do, and storms out of the office.

Ten days later her husband calls the doctor to ask if he could drop by the Glendenning townhouse and look in on Beatrice, who, he says, has the flu. The doctor goes, and discovers that she has gotten an infection from an undercover abortion. He feels trapped, but he treats Beatrice anyway, resenting her the whole time. The husband maintains his story that Beatrice has the flu, and the doctor leaves thinking that the husband never suspected. In the fall, as usual, he is invited to a pheasant shoot on the Glendenning estate.

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