This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories

THIS WILL BE DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN

and other stories

A
LSO BY
J
OHANNA
S
KIBSRUD

Fiction

The Sentimentalists

Poetry

Late Nights with Wild Cowboys

I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being

THIS WILL BE DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN

and other stories

JOHANNA SKIBSRUD

HAMISH HAMILTON CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright © Johanna Skibsrud, 2011

“The Electric Man” first appeared as a limited edition chapbook published by Kate Hall and Heather Jessup of Delirium Press (April 2005). “The Limit” first appeared in
Stickman Review
(December 2005). “This will be difficult to explain” first appeared in Issue 69 of
Glimmer Train
(Winter 2009) as “This will be difficult to explain, and other stories.” “French Lessons” first appeared in Vol 15, No 1 of
Zoetrope: All-Story
(Spring 2011).

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Skibsrud, Johanna, 1980–

This will be difficult to explain : and other stories / Johanna Skibsrud.

ISBN 978-0-670-06630-8

I. Title.

PS8587.K46T55 2011    C813'.54    C2011-904907-4

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C
ONTENTS

The Electric Man

The Limit

French Lessons

This will be difficult to explain

Clarence

Signac's Boats

Cleats

Angus's Bull

Fat Man and Little Boy

Acknowledgments

T
HE
E
LECTRIC
M
AN

 

For Rebecca

THE FIRST TIME
I saw him he was sitting out on the deck of the Auberge DesJardins, drinking something out of a tall glass. He had a broad-brimmed straw hat on, the kind that women wear, and he was reading
The Herald Tribune
. I was always looking out for
The Herald Tribune
that summer, because it indicated to me the English-speaking visitors when they came. Though I could no longer excuse the great loneliness of that summer by the dearth of English newspapers in the place, I was always happy to see
The Herald Tribune
.

The Auberge was a spot more popular among the Continentals. The Americans and the Brits and even most of the Australians stayed at the bigger resorts, closer to town. We kept mostly Swiss and Belgian visitors, many of whom had been coming to stay at the Auberge for many years, and so were not—as the Americans always seemed to be doing—simply passing through.

By that point in the summer, my French was good enough for just about every purpose except being able to actually
say
anything. My accent was all right, the guests all said so: I could carry it off. It wasn't marvellous, they didn't say that, but they did say, to my credit, that I didn't sound
like an American, pretending, or—and this was worse—a Canadian, being sincere.

When I saw him the first time I was doing the afternoon rounds on the deck—sweeping through, as I did every four o'clock—collecting empty glasses and trays and asking if the guests were quite as comfortable as could be expected. Everyone mostly said that they were. The Auberge—especially out on the deck, in the pre-dinner hours—was a comfortable place, and very few people thought to complain. Except, of course, on the occasion that they should need a drink, or the bill, or else another drink, and then they did ask, but so politely—in so light and detached a way—that it was as if they wished to indicate that the lack, indicated by the request, was in fact just another element from which was composed an all-around satisfactory whole. One or two guests, however, over the course of the weeks that I stayed on at the Auberge, could be counted on to be more exacting than most. The man with the hat was, it turned out, one of those.

THE FIRST TIME
I saw him was not the first time he saw me, and when I made my way over to his table and said, “Tout va bien, Monsieur?” because he looked like a man who didn't need a thing in the world, he said, “Non.” He said: “I saw you pass this way fifteen minutes ago, and I tried to get your attention. There's not enough ice in my drink.” He rattled his tall glass so that I could see that it was true.

From his accent I guessed he was from somewhere in the Northeast. Connecticut, New Hampshire, maybe, and I thought it was too bad that he could tell right away that I wasn't French. Usually it was just the people who really
were
French who could tell. But maybe, I thought, he was one of those guests whose French was so bad they didn't even try. Who just spoke English as though they expected everyone to understand, or else learn in a hurry.

“I'm sorry, sir,” I said, in my friendliest voice. “We'll get that fixed up for you right away,” and he said, “I didn't expect you to be from the South. I would have pegged you as being from Minnesota or something. St. Paul. Aren't you a little serious,” he said, “for the South?”

I didn't know what he meant, but I knew he didn't mean to be nice. He had a teasing, half-mean look in his eye and held his glass away from me when I leaned over to take it away. I could tell he was going to be a most scrupulous guest, and any hope that I'd had for striking up more than the usual conversation with him was gone. I just wanted to get back to the kitchen, to get him more ice for his drink like he'd asked.

The glass itself, however, the man with the hat had by then retracted—just enough that I would have had to really reach for it in order to take it away. He watched me carefully as he held it there, at that particular distance, looking interested in what I might do. I didn't do anything. I just stood there with my hand—not extended, but just
open and waiting between us—until he got bored with the game and simply handed me the glass.

That's the way things went for some time. He didn't like me very much, and I didn't like him. Or else he liked me too much, and I didn't like him. I couldn't decide, and neither one pleased me.

I could never please him, either. I wasn't, perhaps, quite
authentic
enough for him. Whenever I answered his questions—about where I had come from and why—he always gave me a suspicious sideways look, as if he supposed I was lying and he and I both knew it but we weren't going to say anything about it—at least for a while.

He was the one who asked questions—I never volunteered information on my own. And he never believed what I told him. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, because his questions were never particularly complicated, and I had never before had anyone doubt the answers I gave to questions as simple as those.

I SAW A LOT
of the man with the hat after that. He stayed on at the Auberge for the final part of July and most of August. Unlike the other guests, he didn't go into town, or take weekend excursions to Provence or down along the Côte d'Azur. Like me, he stayed at the Auberge pretty much all of the time.

I would see him in the mornings in the dining room when I delivered curled-up butter to the tables, and then
later I would see him down at the beach, sitting in one of the Auberge's folding chairs, his woman's hat on, when I went down to the shore to collect the beach furniture that had been abandoned by the other guests. In the late afternoons, I would always see him on the deck, before the dining room reopened—he was always very prompt at mealtimes—and I would laboriously refill his tall glass with ice that, it seemed, melted unnaturally fast in his hands.

One afternoon, I said to Marie-Thérèse, who was a niece of Madame and Monsieur Rondelle, the owners of the Auberge, and had worked in the dining room three summers in a row, “Il n'est jamais contente!” As I spoke, I tossed my hands in the air in order to emphasize my disdain for a man who could never be
contente
with a thing. I was always talking with my hands in those days—to make up, I suppose, for how I always suspected my words to fall so short of whatever it was I was trying to say. Marie-Thérèse just shrugged. She was a very easygoing girl, quite
contente
herself, almost all of the time. “Quelque personnes,” she told me, “sont comme ça.” She shrugged again, and went out onto the deck to check on a guest, who was just then at the very beginning stages of needing something.