Tobias Wolff - Back in the World: Stories  

A C C L A I M F O R
Tobias Wolff

A brilliant, captivating writerone of the best weve got.

Annie Dillard

His vision of the way we live now, and the way we wish we did (and pretend to) has a sharp, troubling immediacy.

Chicago Tribune

Tobias Wolff has somehow gotten his hands on our shared secrets, and hes out to tell everything he knows.

Raymond Carver

Wolffs stories are wonderful; they read like memories or premonitions, and are quietly unforgettable.

Jayne Ann Phillips

Wolffs range, sometimes within the same story, extends from fastidious realism to the grotesque and lyrical. [His] stories provoke our amazed appreciation.

The New York Times Book Review

ALSO BY Tobias Wolff

The Night in Question

In Pharaohs Army

This Boys Life

The Barracks Thief

In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

Tobias Wolff
BACK IN THE WORLD

Tobias Wolffs memoir of Vietnam, In Pharaohs Army , was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his childhood memoir, This Boys Life , won the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 1989. His other books include three collections of stories, The Night in Question, In the Garden of North American Martyrs, Back in the World , and The Barracks Thief , a short novel for which he received the PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives with his wife, Catherine, and their three children in Syracuse, New York, and teaches at Syracuse University.

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION,
OCTOBER 1996

Copyright 1985 by Tobias Wolff

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States
by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in 1985.

The stories in this book originally appeared in the following
magazines: Antaeus, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Missouri
Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly , and Vanity Fair .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolff, Tobias, 1945
Back in the world / by Tobias Wolff.1st Vintage
contemporaries ed.
p. cm.(Vintage contemporaries)
eISBN: 978-0-307-78728-6
1. United StatesSocial life and customs20th century
Fiction. I. Title.
813.54dc20 95-43452

for Rosemary
my mother

The author wishes to thank the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
for its generous support.

Contents

Coming Attractions

J ean was alone in the theater. She had seen the customers out, locked the doors, and zipped up the nights receipts in the bank deposit bag. Now she was taking a last look around while she waited for her boss to come back and drive her home.

Mr. Munson had left after the first show to go ice skating at the new mall on Buena Vista. Hed been leaving early for almost a month now and at first Jean thought he was committing adultery against his wife, until she saw him on the ice one Saturday afternoon while she was out shoplifting with her girlfriend Kathy. They stopped by the curved window that ran around the rink and watched Mr. Munson crash into the wall several times. Fat people shouldnt skate, Kathy said, and they walked on.

Most nights Mr. Munson came back to the theater around eleven. This was the latest he had ever been. It was almost twelve oclock.

Someone had left an orange scarf on one of the seats in the back row. Under the same seat lay a partially eaten hambone and a bottle of hot sauce. The hambone still looked like what it was, an animals leg, and when she saw it Jean felt weak. She picked up the scarf and left the bone for Mr. Munson to deal with. If he said anything about it she would just play dumb. She put the scarf in the lost-and-found bag and walked toward the front of the theater, glancing from side to side to scan the lengths of the rows.

Halfway down the aisle Jean found a pair of sunglasses. They were Guccis. She dropped them in the bag and tried to forget about them, as if she were a regular honest person who did not steal lost items and everything else that wasnt bolted down, but Jean knew that she was going to keep the sunglasses and this knowledge made her resistance feel ridiculous. She walked a few rows farther, then gave a helpless shrug as if someone were watching and took the sunglasses out of the bag. They didnt fit. Her face was too narrow for them, her nose too thin. They made everything dim and kept slipping down, but Jean left them on as she worked her way toward the front of the theater.

In the first row on the right, near the wall, Jean saw a coat draped over one of the seats. She moved along the row to pick it up. Then she stopped and took off the sunglasses, because she had decided to believe that the coat was not a coat, but a dead woman wearing a coat. A dead woman all by herself in a theater at midnight.

Jean closed her eyes and made a soft whimpering noise like a dreaming dog makes. It sounded ridiculous to her, so she stopped doing it; she opened her eyes and walked back along the row and up the aisle toward the lobby.

Jean put the lost-and-found bag away, then stood by the glass entrance doors and watched the traffic. She leaned forward as each new line of cars approached, looking through her own reflected face for Mr. Munsons Toyota. The glass grew so foggy from her breath that Jean could barely see through it. She became aware of her breathing, how shallow and fast it was. The game with the coat had scared her more than shed meant it to. Jean watched some more cars go by. Finally she turned away and crossed the lobby to Mr. Munsons office.

Jean locked the office door behind her, but the closed door made her feel trapped. She unlocked the door again and left it open. From Mr. Munsons desk she could see the Coke machine and a row of posters advertising next weeks movie. The desktop was empty except for the telephone and a picture of Mrs. Munson standing beside a snowdrift back where the Munsons used to liveMinnesota or Wisconsin. Mrs. Munson had on a parka, and she was pointing at the top of the drift to show how tall it was.

The snow made Jean think of her father.

It was quiet in the office. Jean laid her head on her crossed arms and closed her eyes. Almost at once she opened them again. She sat up and pulled the telephone across the desk and dialed her fathers number. It was three hours later there and he was a heavy sleeper, so she let the phone ring for a long time. At first she held the receiver tight against her ear. Then she laid it down on the desk and listened to it until she heard a voice. Jean picked up the receiver again. It was her stepmother, Linda, saying, Hello? Hello? Hello? Jean would have hung up on her but she heard the fear in Lindas voice like an echo of her own, and she couldnt do it. Hello, she said.

Hello? Who is this, please?

Jean, Jean murmured.

Gee-Gee? Is this Gee-Gee?

Its me, Jean said.

Its you, Linda said. My God, you gave me a fright.

Im sorry.

What time is it out there?

Twelve. Ten past twelve.

Its three oclock in the morning here, lambchop. Were later than you are.

I know.

I just wondered if maybe you thought we were earlier. Wow, just hang on till I get myself together. A moment later Linda said, There. Pulse normal. All systems go. So where are you, anyway?

At work.

Thats right, your dad told me you had a job. Gee-Gee with a job! Youre just turning into a regular little grown-up, arent you?

I guess, Jean said.

Well, I think thats just super.

Jean nodded.

Im big on people doing for themselves, Linda said. Fifteen isnt too young. I started work when I was twelve and I havent stopped since.

I know, Jean said.

Christ almighty, the jobs Ive had. I could tell you stories.

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