Free Black Glass by Karen Joy Fowler

unlikely to be comfortable.
    â€œCome on,” his wife said. “What do you really think?” She was so excited. He had never seen her so animated.
    She was going to be old someday. Harris could see it lurking in her. Harris would still love her, but what kind of a love would that be? How male? How sufficient? These things Harris was unsure of. For these things he had to look into himself, and the cartoon looking glass didn’t go that way.
    He held the cartoon panels between himself and his wife and looked into her instead. He had never understood why Carry Nation appealed to her so. His wife was not religious. His wife enjoyed a bit of wine in the evening and thought what people did in the privacy of their own homes was pretty much their own business. Now he saw that what she really admired about Carry Nation was her audacity. Men despised Carry Nation, and Harris’s wife admired her for that. She admired the way Carry didn’t care. She admired the way Carry carried on. “I always look a fool,” Carry wrote. “God had need of me and the price He exacts is that I look a fool. Of course, I mind. Anyone would mind. But He suffered on the cross for me. It is little enough to ask in return. I do it gladly.”
    â€œI know it’s not literature,” Harris’s wife said, a bit embarrassed. “We’re trying to have an impact on the American psyche. Literature may not be the best way to do that anymore.”
    Harris’s wife wanted to encourage other women not to care whether men approved of them or not, and she wanted and expected Harris to say he approved of this project.
    He tried to focus again on the surface of the glass, on the cartoon panels. What nice colors.
    â€œKapow!” Harris said. “Kaboom!”
    We come from the cemetery,
    We went to get our mother,
    Hello mother the Virgin,
    We are your children,
    We come to ask your help,
    You should give us your courage.
    â€”Voudon song

CONTENTION
    Some of us are dreamers.
    â€”Kermit
    A t dinner Claire’s son asks her if she knows the name of the man who is on record as having grown the world’s largest vegetable, not counting the watermelon, which may be a fruit, Claire’s son is not sure. Claire says that she doesn’t. Her son is eight years old. It is an annoying age. He wants her to guess.
    â€œI really don’t know, honey,” Claire says.
    So he gives her a hint. “It was a turnip.”
    Claire eliminates the entire population of Lapland. “Elliot,” she guesses.
    â€œNope.” His voice holds an edge of triumph, but no more than is polite. “Wrong. Guess again.”
    â€œJust tell me,” Claire suggests.
    â€œGuess first.”
    â€œEdmund,” Claire says, and her son regards her with narrowing eyes.
    â€œGuess the last name.”
    Claire remembers that China is the world’s most populous country. “Edmund Li,” she guesses, but the correct answer is Edmund Firthgrove and the world’s most common surname is Chang. So she is not even close.
    â€œGuess who has the world’s longest fingernails,” her son suggests. “It’s a man.”
    Well, Claire is quite certain it’s not going to be Edmund Firthgrove. Life is a bifurcated highway. She points this out to her son, turns to make sure her daughter is listening as well. “We live in an age of specialization,” she tells them. “You can make gardening history or you can make fingernail history, but there’s no way in hell you can make both. Remember this. This is your mother speaking. If you want to be great, you’ve got to make choices.” And then immediately Claire wonders if what she has just said is true.
    â€œWe’re having hamburgers again.” Claire’s husband makes this observation in a slow, dispassionate voice. Just the facts, ma’am. “We had hamburgers on Sunday and then again on Thursday. This makes three