The New Yorker Radio Hour - Reading “The Plague” During a Plague, and Memorial Day by the Pool

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

When schools were closed owing to the coronavirus outbreak, the English teacher Petria May did the most natural thing she could think of: she assigned her tenth-grade class to read Albert Camus’s novel “The Plague,” which describes a quarantine during an outbreak of disease. Plus, a short story by Peter Cameron. In “Memorial Day,” a teen-age boy is forced to spend a beautiful Memorial Day with the two people he really can’t deal with: his mother and his new stepfather, Lonnie, who’s so young he’s sometimes mistaken for the narrator’s brother. The boy is talkative in school, and he writes letters to pen pals in prison, but at home he hasn’t spoken a word in months. Noah Galvin reads the story, which was originally published in The New Yorker in 1983. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Just looking at my screen, I feel like you can just see my whole life on my wall, which is kind of weird. Oh, for sure. Oh, I never turn my camera on. Like, sometimes I'm like, oh, please don't judge me. I didn't clean, but, like, I have to, like, come to class. After her students left the building in March, not to return for the rest of the school year, Petria May decided to make the best of it, and she changed the curriculum and gave her 10th grade class Albert Camus' 1947 novel, The Plague.

I actually really like it. The Plague, even though it's relevant to an almost scary degree, I find it much more enjoyable. I agree. I wouldn't say that I would go and read it. this book for pleasure. Like, that probably would not. No, I definitely would not. But I still think it's an important thing to read. It helps to feel like someone else would kind of understand what we're going through. Camus' book describes an outbreak of plague in a coastal city in Algeria, which is then completely cordoned off and guarded. There's a doctor trying to treat the suffering, a criminal who profits on the black market, a priest, a journalist, all understanding and responding to the disaster in various ways.

Actually, I actually recommended it to my mom. Kind of with like a challenge not to just line up the obvious similarities. I feel like you can say like, okay, yeah, like it's a plague, it's quarantine. And, you know, the authorities are not being responsible. Like there's all these like obvious similarities. But I feel like there's also like so many deeper lessons about just like what it means to live in a state of fear and like what human reaction to change. Yeah, a character I feel like I've kind of latched on to is Rambert.

I think his whole, like him wanting to escape felt very relatable. Like definitely not like I'm not trying to go see my wife in France. But there is this feeling of like I don't belong here. Like this should not happen to me. And I guess him turning himself around and going, okay, so I'm going to help instead because I can't escape. Has made it a little easier on me to just not feel so. bad about how much I hate it. I think what was interesting was towards the end of the book is how society begins to go about

again. And it kind of made me think about questions like what will happen when this whole pandemic is over, you know, like my mom works for transit and she sent me over to my grandmas because of the fact that like, you know, she has to work and she didn't want to expose us to anything. Now it's definitely a time where I get to just kind of sit back. and realize just how much she's sacrificing just so she can see her children, like, you know, survive. So it kind of arises, like, arise the question. Are we actually going to take a step back and look at how we're going through our life?

Yeah. I mean, Camu was a philosopher. He wasn't a psychic. So I think at the end of the day, like what Maya was saying, it's better to use it as a glimpse into human nature rather than about, how people are living through a plague. But then again, like, if you have a good grasp and understanding of human nature, it will give you insight into how people will inevitably react to a virus or pandemics, whatever.

Students in a 10th grade English class at Beacon High School in New York, we heard Elena Rubinstein, Afcadori Soufrant, Tamara Figueroa, and Maya Renault-Livine. If your kids haven't set foot in school in a couple of months, if you haven't seen your workplace or maybe even put on your shoes, you might not notice that summer is officially, unofficially here as of Memorial Day. So we're going to close the show today with a story set over the course of a long Memorial Day afternoon. It was published in the New Yorker many years ago, but the boredom with being at home,

the claustrophobic feeling of a teenage boy spending way too much time with his parents. It all feels pretty relevant. to the moment. Here's Peter Cameron's Memorial Day, read by the actor Noah Galvin. I am eating a grapefruit with a grapefruit spoon my mother bought last summer from a door-to-door salesman on a large three-wheeled bike. My mother and I were sitting on the front steps that day, and we watched him glide down the street, into our driveway, and up our front walk. He opened his case on the handlebars, and it was full of fruit appliances, pineapple cores, melon ballers, watermelon cedars, orange juice squeezers, and grapefruit spoons.

My mother bought four of the spoons, and the man peddled himself out of our lives. That was about a year ago. Since then, a lot has changed, I think, as I pry the grapefruit pulp away from the skin with the serrated edge of the spoon. Since then, my mother has remarried, my father has moved to California, and I have stopped talking. Actually, I talk quite a lot at school, but never at home. I have nothing to say to anyone here. Across the table from me, drinking postum, is my new stepfather. He wasn't here last year.

I don't think he was anywhere last year. His name is Lonnie, and my mother met him at a Seth Speaks seminar. Seth is this guy without a body who speaks out of the mouth of this lady and tells you how to fix your life. Both Lonnie and my mother have fixed their lives. One day at a time, my mother says, every morning, smiling at Lonnie and then, less happily, at me. Lonnie is only 13 years older than I am. He is 29, but looks about 14. When the three of us go out together, he is mistaken from my brother.

Listen to this, Lonnie says. Both Lonnie and my mother continue to talk to me, consult with me, and read things to me, in the hope that I will forget. and speak. If gypsy moths continue to destroy trees of their present rate, North America will become a desert incapable of supporting any life by the year 4,000. Lani has a morbid sense of humor and delights in macabre newspaper fillers. Because he knows I won't answer, he doesn't glance up at me. He continues to stare at his paper and says, wow, think of that. I look out the window. My mother, is sitting in an inflated rubber boat in the swimming pool,

scrubbing the fiberglass walls with a stiff brush and Mr. Clean. They get stained during the winter. She does this every Memorial Day. We always open the pool this weekend, and she always blows up the yellow boat, puts on her Yankees hat so her hair won't turn orange, and paddles around the edge of the pool, leaving a trail of suds.

Last year, as she scrubbed, the diamond from her old engagement ring fell out, and sank to the bottom of the pool. She was still married to my father, although they were planning to separate after a last family vacation in July. My mother shook the suds off her hand and raised it in front of her face,

her fingers flat, as if she were admiring a new ring. Oh, Stephen, she said. I think I've lost my diamond. What, I said. I still talked then. The diamond fell out of my ring. Look! I got up from the chair I was sitting on and kneeled beside the pool.

She held out her hand the way women do in old movies when they expect it to be kissed. I looked down at her ring and she was right. The diamond was gone. The setting looked like an empty hand tightly grabbing nothing. Do you see it? she asked, looking down into the pool. Because we had just taken the cover off, the water was murky. It must be down there, she said. Maybe if you dove in?

She looked at me with a nice, pleading look on her face. I took off my shirt. I felt her looking at my chest. There's no hair on my chest, and every time my mother sees it, I know she checks to see if any has grown. I dove into the pool. The water was so cold, my head ached.

I opened my eyes and swam quickly around the bottom of the pool. I felt like one of those Japanese pearl fissures. but I didn't see the diamond. I surfaced and swam to the side. I don't see it, I said. I can't see anything. Where's the mask? Oh, dear, my mother said.

Didn't we throw it away last year? I forget, I said. I got out of the pool and stood shivering in the sun. Suddenly, I got the idea that if I found the diamond, maybe my parents wouldn't separate. I know it sounds ridiculous, but at that moment, standing with my arms crossed over my thin chest watching my mother begin to cry in her inflatable boat,

at that moment, the diamond sitting on the bottom of the pool took on a larger meaning. And I thought that if it were replaced in the tiny clutching hand of my mother's ring, we might live happily ever after. So I had my father drive me downtown, and I bought another diving mask at the five and ten, and when we got home I put it on,

first spitting on the glass so it wouldn't fog, and dove into the water, and dove again and again, until I actually found the diamond, glittering in a mess of leaves and bloated inchworms at the bottom of the pool. I throw my grapefruit rind away and go outside and sit on the edge of the diving board with my feet in the water. My mother watches me for a second, probably deciding if it's worthwhile to say anything.

Then she goes back to her scrubbing. Later, I'm sitting by the mailbox. Since I've stopped talking, I've written a lot of letters. I write to men in prison and I answer personal ads, claiming to be whatever it is the place or desires, an elegant, educated young lady for afternoon pleasure, or a GBM. The mail from prison is the best, long, long letters about nothing, since it seems nothing is done in prison.

A lot of remembering, a lot of bizarre requests, send me a shoehorn, send me an empty egg carton, arts and crafts, send me an electric toothbrush. I like writing letters to people I've never met. Lonnie is planting geraniums he bought this morning in front of the A&P when he did the grocery shopping. Lonnie is very good about doing his share. I am not about mine. Every night, I wait with delicious anticipation for my mother to tell me to take out the garbage.

How many times do I have to tell you? Can't you just do it? Lonnie gets up and walks over to me, trowl in hand. He has on plaid Bermuda shorts and a Disney World t-shirt. If I talked, I'd ask him when he went to Disney World. But I can live without the information. Lonnie flips the trowel at me, and it slips like a knife into the ground a few inches from my leg. Bingo! Lani says.

Scare you? I think when a person stops talking, people forget that he can still hear. Lonnie is always saying dumb things to me, things you'd only say to a deaf person or a baby. What a day, Lonnie says, as if to illustrate this point. He stretches out beside me, and I look at his long white legs. He has sneakers and white socks on. He never goes barefoot. He's too uptight to go barefoot.

He would step on a piece of glass immediately. That's the kind of person, Lonnie is. The Captain Ice Cream truck rolls lazily down our street. Lonnie stands up and reaches in his pocket. Would you like an ice pop? He asks me, looking at his change. I shake my head no. An ice pop?

Where did he grow up? Kentucky? Lonnie walks into the street and flags down the ice cream man, as if it isn't obvious what he's standing there for. The truck slows down and the ice cream man jumps out. It's a woman. What can I get you? She says, opening the freezer on the side of the truck. It's the old-fashioned kind of truck, with the ice cream hidden in its frozen depths.

I always thought you needed to have incredibly long arms to be a good Captain Ice Cream person. Well, I'd like a nice ice pop, Lonnie says. A twin bullet, suggests the woman. What flavor? Do you have cherry? Lonnie asks. Sure, the woman says. Cherry, grape, orange, lemon, cola, and tootie-frutti. For a second, I have a horrible feeling that Lonnie will want a tootie-frudy. I'll have a cherry, he says.

Lonnie comes back, peeling the sticky paper from his cherry bullet. It's a bright pink color. The truck drives away. Guess how much this cost, Lonnie says, sitting beside me on the grass. 60 cents. It's a good thing you didn't want one. He licks his fingers and then the ice stick.

You want a bite? He holds it out toward me. Lonnie is so patient and so sweet. It's just too bad. He's such a nerd. I take a bite of his cherry bullet. Good, huh? Lonnie says.

He watches me eat for a second, then takes a bite himself. He breaks the bullet in half and eats it in a couple of huge bites. A little pink juice runs down his chin. What are you waiting for? he asks. I nod toward the mailbox. It's Memorial Day, Lonnie says. The mail doesn't come. He stands up and pulls the trowl out of the ground.

I think of King Arthur. There's no mail for anyone today, Lonnie says, no matter how long you wait. He hands me his two bullet sticks and returns to his geraniums. I have this feeling holding the stained wooden sticks that I will keep them for a long, long time and come across them one day and remember this moment incorrectly. After the coals and the barbecue have melted into powder, the fireflies come out.

They hesitate in the air, as if stunned by dusk. Lonnie and my mother are sitting beside the now clean pool, and I am sitting on the other side of the natural forsythia fence that is planted around it, watching the bat swoop from tree to tree, feeling the darkness clot all around me. I can hear Lonnie and my mother talking, but I can't make out what they're not.

saying. I love this time of day. Early evening, early summer. It makes me want to cry. We always had a barbecue on Memorial Day with my father, and my mother cooked this year's hamburgers on her new barbecue, which Lonnie bought her for Mother's Day. She's old enough to be his mother, but she isn't. I would have said, if I talked. She cooked them in the same dumb, cheerful way she cooked last years. She has no sense of of sanctity or ritual. She would give Lonnie my father's clothes if my father had left any behind to give. My mother walks toward me with the hose, then passed me toward her garden to spray the pea plants. Okay, she yells to Lonnie, who stands by the spigot. He turns the knob and then goes inside.

The light in the kitchen snaps on. My mother stands with one hand on her hip, the other raising and lowering the hose, throwing large fans of water over the garden. She used to bathe me every night, and I think of the peas hanging in their green skins, dripping. I lie with one ear on the cool grass, and I can hear the water drumming into the garden. It makes me sleepy. Then I hear it stop, and I look up to see my mother walking toward me, the skin on her bare legs and arms glowing. She sits down beside me, and for a while, she says nothing.

I pretend I'm asleep on the ground, although I know she knows I'm awake. Then she starts to talk, as I knew she would. My mother says, you are breaking my heart. She says it as if it were literally true. as if her heart were actually breaking. I just want you to know that, she says. You're old enough to know that you are breaking my heart. I sit up.

I look at my mother's chest, as if I could see her heart breaking. She has on a polo shirt with a little blue whale on her left breast. I'm afraid to look at her face. We sit like that for a while, and darkness grows around us. When I open my mouth to speak, my mother uncoils her arm from her side and covers my mouth with her hand. I look at her.

Wait, she says. Don't say anything yet. I can feel her flesh against my lips. Her wrist smells of chlorine. The fire flies. Lighting all around us, make me dizzy. Memorial Day by Peter Cameron, performed for us by Noah Galvin. The story appeared in The New Yorker in 1983.

Peter Cameron went on to write, Someday this pain will be useful to you and other books. I'm David Remnick. Recently, staff writer Peter Hessler went to a dance club in China as that country continues to reopen, and we'll find out what that was like next week. It's the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next time.

Our Our Our Our Our Our production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon, Riannon-N-Corpi, Cala Leah, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina

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