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Wingtips
Stories by Avery Chenoweth
Reviewed by Jen Bergmark
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Avery Chenoweth’s debut collection presents a series of linked short stories detailing the trials and tribulations of the Goodpastures – a family tested by divorce, illness and shady schemes. Early in the collection, we learn that Stuart Goodpasture, Sr., has left his wife for Muriel, a "perky, tennis-playing, born-again Christian." Stuart Sr., with Muriel’s prodding, attempts to secure the family’s inheritance money for an "investment" – what is initially described as a new children’s wing at the Oral Roberts hospital and later turns out to be a strange oil enterprise.
Chenoweth is masterful in his descriptive language, adept at setting a scene in a leisurely fashion. The best of these stories are the longer ones, where Chenoweth has room to stretch out and display his talent. The first, "Powerman," introduces Stuart Jr. as a boy. Stuart Jr. serves as the eyes, ears and conscience for the collection (he is the adult narrator of most of the stories); it is only fitting that we first see him eavesdropping on the other Goodpastures from a hiding spot under the family veranda. |
 Wingtips Stories by Avery Chenoweth Hardcover - $ 15.75 Published January 1999 Johns Hopkins University Pr. |
He moved inseparably through the shadows under the porch. From beyond the tall doors that opened onto the porch came the sounds of his siblings and cousins playing a board game on the living room floor. The red and blue glass lights of the brass lantern above the circle of adults flashed in the breeze, and under its colors several conversations came together in a burst of laughter. He took a step closer, invisible.Stuart Jr. is a compelling and finely drawn character – the other siblings (allotted one story each) are somewhat interchangeable, and I was disappointed to learn that it would be brother Brian, and not Stuart Jr., who would travel down to Florida to investigate his father’s investment plans. I was puzzled, too, by the inclusion of the five-page long "I Wish You Wouldn’t Be That Way," a brief piece involving a phone argument between Moriah Goodpasture and the wayward Stuart Goodpasture Senior. The story seems to function as filler – providing background information, and little else. The information, although helpful and explanatory, could have been included in some of the meatier pieces.
One of the strongest stories, "The Visit," reveals both the humor and terror of extended family relations. Stuart Jr. and his brothers Brian and Jay, visiting Florida for the funeral of their uncle, spring a surprise visit on their father’s mother, grandmother Bubsy – a woman they haven’t laid eyes on since their father skipped town. "I looked at the pats of rouge on Bubsy’s cheeks, the shadow of mustache and sideburns, and I blamed her for my father. And with incremental bitterness, I realized who she reminded me of – Bing Crosby in drag." The unusual family reunion culminates in a lunch date – brothers, a cousin, an aunt and Bubsy all crammed in "Bubsy’s Buick dinosaur," with Brian speeding and pumping the brakes until "We went off the road, into a ditch and up again, striking our heads on the ceiling, and plowed to a dead engine halt on a plane of sand."
This brief foray into physical danger breaks Stuart Jr. out of his bitter reverie of family ills, and Bubsy becomes human to him, no longer the ogre who bore his terrible father:
Her life and makeup were melting down her cheeks; she was bewildered. She had gotten old, after all, quite old, and this emergency with the car seemed as far beyond her comprehension as all the times she had played the villain. Her blue eyes, which had reminded me of Bing Crosby only an hour ago, were now lost in exhaustion, and suddenly I saw in them my father’s eyes looking back at me...Chenoweth’s Wingtips elucidates the simultaneous pain and liberation in forgiveness. "We were a tighter family than I had realized," Stuart Jr. concludes, "but in relinquishing that inherited rage, I felt as though I could now accept what was left." What is left is an elegant portrait of a complex family.
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Jen Bergmark is the Fiction Editor of Pif Magazine. She is completing an M.F.A. at Bennington College.