Friday from the Archives: “Concerto for the End of the World” a short story by Theresa Dowell Blackinton with art by Caroline Hickman Vaughan in NCLR 2023
March now brings with it many mixed emotions: a joy at being outside, delighting in the first flowers, wincing at pollen, remembering what happened mid-month in 2020. Thank goodness for writers, like Blackinton, who could work all these various emotions into a short story.
“Concerto” was the 2nd place winner for our 2022 Doris Betts Fiction Prize. Judge Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle wrote, “Much like the process of composing a concerto, the author ensures that every detail of this story is essential and expertly placed. A story of salvaging from loss, ‘Concerto for the End of the World’ grapples with humanity’s response to crisis in a manner that is both subtle and weighty.”
“Though it was the peak of pollen season, the lusty pines coating everything in the neon yellow expression of their ardor, Frances and I still took to the porch each morning for our breakfast. There, and to the end of the driveway to fetch our plastic-wrapped paper each morning, were as far as we had ventured since the pandemic began.”
The narrator, a surgeon, and spouse Frances, a musician, are watching the house next door be sold and torn down to be replaced by something new, a street-level metaphor for both their lives in recent retirement and the global pandemic lockdowns. Everything changes.
“I was trying to be patient. I had retired almost a year earlier and understood that the transition was difficult, all the more so, I imagined, when it happens suddenly, without goodbyes, without a final performance, without one last call for an encore.”
Everyone deals with both crisis and natural progressions differently; Blackinton’s characters are no different.
“Had we talked about this before? I wondered. Had we ever actually talked about what we did, what it was like to turn notes on a page into music, to sew back together a torn piece of cartilage? “I do think. I never stop thinking.” I lay down beside her in the sun. The warmth enveloped me. “Are you still composing?”
Read the rest of the story on ProQuest. And make sure the 2023 issue is in your collection!
