Sunday Short: Up High in the Air by Laura van den Berg

Just after the Fourth of July, my mother called to tell me she thought her hair was on fire. She lived in Nebraska, alone since my father drowned in the Platte River two years earlier. I hadn’t seen her since Thanksgiving and, for the last month, hadn’t returned her calls.

“What do you mean you think your hair is on fire?” The apartment my husband and I shared was near the L and the floor shuddered beneath me as a train passed.

“I can smell the smoke,” she said.

“Do you see flames?”

“I can smell the smoke,” she said again.

“Maybe you should call the fire department.”

“I think I’ll go outside for a while,” she said, and hung up.

I walked down the hall and sat in the linen closet.

I'm a little bit in love with Laura van den Berg's short  story 'Up High in the Air', published back in '09 by the Boston Review. There's a total heartbreaking tenderness that dominates the tone of this story about a woman teetering on the line between control and chaos. With a drowned father and a mother slowly losing her mind, Diane has given up on her marriage to her recently unemployed husband and temporarily takes up with one of her university student's, Dean. It all sounds melodramatic, but the result is a story so much focused on the ebb and flow of shifting relationships and psyches more so than on the drama of the narrative. It's a beautiful, beautiful piece.You can read it here.