Presently In Ruins

by Gregory Blake Smith
From StoryQuarterly 40, 2004


I like this melanchony story. With an air of nostalgic reflection and dry blackness, it tells the story of a son trying to decide whether to help his diseased elderly father commit suicide. Our narrator’s voice recites the Hemlock Society’s suicide instruction manual with no hint of distaste. I was morbidly fascinated.

I also enjoyed the point of view of the son, particularly his matter of fact pragmatic approach to death. Sometimes I found this funny, though I probably wasn’t supposed to.

The story’s climax left me unsettled. The old father exits with “It’s not my fault. It was all forced on me.” The explanation for these words does not appear to lie within the story, yet the narrator seems to accept them with resignation and no puzzlement. The question hangs.

Despite this fractured conclusion, the story works. It paints its characters well with evocative detail, dropping tidbits about the father's navy days in the Korean War and World War II. In another instance the narrator types names from the past into Google, trying to form a grip on the long gone past. Also, I’m a sucker for stories about quiet fathers who build model train layouts. (That’s my dad.)

Themes and symbolism? I suppose you could see the trains that show up in a flashback scene as symbolic of the inescapable passage of time, especially because the father builds and stares at a railroad layout model of their hometown built to look exactly like the place did in 1926. None of that is obtrusive, fortunately, it’s just present if you look for it. No heavy-handed thematic gesticulating here.

This story is a morbid somber little song. Check it out.

A selection:

“Yes,” the son intoned gently. One of his legs-how strange!- was quivering inside his pant leg. “But there’s a way.” And he detailed the Hemlock Society’s method: Seconal to calm you, plastic bag held on by rubber bands or pantyhose, a painter’s mask to keep the plastic from being sucked into the mouth and nostrils, a baseball cap to keep it off your face. He had practiced saying this, ran through it now like he were back in law school, in moot court, where he’d always had his arguments memorized.

“A painter’s mask,” his father was repeating. His face registered the ingenuity of it. “That might work.”