“The Cookie Lady” by Philip K. Dick is just such a story.
This whole post is going to be a SPOILER ALERT! If you want to read the story ahead of time, I understand. The story is probably in an anthology or two, but I read it in the PKD short story collection, We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (the title story being the basis for the movie Total Recall).
I have to say up front that I am a huge fan of PKD and Ray Bradbury. If you’ve read any of my sci fi stories, you can probably tell. It’s not that I try and write like either of these writers so much as it is that the types of stories each have written are the types of stories I like to read, at least as far as Sci Fi goes. So, I guess it’s a case of what goes in is what comes out. To me, writing is just an extension of reading. Can’t find a story you like? Sit down and write one. As the story comes out, it is just as new and enjoyable as if you had found it in a book on the shelf.
I would have sworn that this was, in fact, a Ray Bradbury story. Had I not had the PKD book in my hands, if someone had simply handed me the story and asked me to read it, I would have been absolutely positive it was Bradbury.
“The Cookie Lady” is a very simple story, wonderfully written. There are no secrets, no surprising twists or turns. You pretty much know right off the bat what is going on, or what is happening. You just don’t know exactly how things are going to end. You simply follow along the path that the author has laid out.
If I were to use an analogy, I would say that if a string (the string, of course, being the story line) were stretched between two points (beginning and end) and tied off with just the perfect amount of tension, not too slack or too tightly stretched to stress the line to a breaking point, that would be this story. I would carry this analogy even further to say that just the perfect amount of material was used in the twill or winding, the binding of the material of the string. There isn’t too much fluff (extra descriptive words) or too little. If the story were a guitar string, it would give off the perfect note when plucked. To sum up it is a perfectly written story.
Here’s the lay out:
The story is about an old lady who bakes cookies for a little boy who comes to visit her. He isn’t coming to visit her. He’s coming for the cookies. She just happened to offer them up one day while he was passing by. This has been going on once a week or so for about a month. On his way home after school, he stops. As the story opens, a friend chides him, asking if he is going to visit his “girlfriend.”
Now, I had an image similar to the chubby kid from the movie The Goonies in mind as I read. Trust me, the boy needs the extra padding for this story. You learn early on in the story that the old lady is sucking energy from the boy. At first, I don’t think she even realizes that she is doing it. It just felt right to invite him in for cookies. But soon enough she realizes how much better she feels, how much younger and more energized, etc. And the closer she is too him, the better. She moves her chair closer to the couch the next time, moving a table and lamp to get closer. The boy is only focused on the cookies. He stuffs himself with cookies, fills his pockets with them. She doesn’t mind. She gets him to read from his Geography book. She doesn’t care what he reads, as long as he is near.
The woman feels her skin smoothing out, and a lot of other things happening to her body as youthfulness grows within her. The trouble is that it all fades when the boy leaves.
When the boy heads home he is slow moving and lethargic. His parents are waiting on him for dinner. He stops and sighs. Once he makes it home, he slowly climbs the stairs to go wash up for dinner. His parents are angry with him. They know that he stops to see the old lady, and they know that he is always very tired whenever he arrives home from visiting her. The parents don’t know what the reason is for the boy’s lethargic movements exactly, but they get the sense that something isn’t right. The boy’s father forbids him from going to see the old lady, but the boy tells his parents that he has promised to see her the next Wednesday. So, one more time.
The boy, on his last visit, informs the old woman that this visit will be his last. The woman feels a little upset that this will be his last visit. The boy is only vaguely aware of the chair being pushed close to the couch. He’s got the plate of cookies beside him. He eats, in a daze, as usual. The old woman gets him to read to her from one of her books. She asks if it would be okay if she touches his arm. She sits close, and touches his arm with her fingers. Immediately, she starts to feel better, younger. Youth washes slowly over her. The boy doesn’t even notice the difference in her. He is always focused on stuffing his face. He reads because she asks him to do it.
This time the youthful feelings and appearance don’t leave the woman. None of it fades.
I’ll stop right there, and not give away the ending.
It was pretty cool that on reading the story over the second time, I noticed that the description of the old woman’s house, as the boy (and me as a reader) approached it, was described as dilapidated, with a sagging porch and needing paint, etc. The front yard was overgrown with weeds. I’m quite sure it was no mere accident that the house sort of mirrored the woman’s state. As we get old, our body starts to break down and decay, etc. Though I’m sure you didn’t need me to actually point that out specifically.
“The Cookie Lady” is a solid, well-written story, at just under 3,500 words. It’s a very simple story. No twists or turns. Nothing complex about it. I love it.
I’m not quite sure why this story impressed me so much right now except to say that it is probably due to the fact that my stories are getting longer and longer. Used to be that I could sit down and knock out two to three stories in an afternoon. Now, however, the stories I write are becoming more and more involved. Each scene becomes more full-bodied, flowers out, so to speak. I guess it is a good thing. Or perhaps I’m being too “wordy” as one reviewer suggested. I’ve always been wordy, however. I don’t know whether that is just my style, or nature, or whatever. And maybe it’ll change over time. At this point, my stories have gone from being 2,000 to 3,000 words to 8,000 to 10,000 words. I’m taking it slower, working on one story for two or three days, taking a break and sort of letting it all gestate.
As a side note, I had to laugh, thinking about the last post I wrote where I seemed obsessed with word count. I have been thinking that I should explain. A lot of it has to do with the number of stories I can fit in a book. If the word count per story goes up, then the number of stories goes down. Digital copies don’t matter, of course, but you want the same content in both digital and print books of the same title. And, printing costs go up with word count on the printed copies. It is all a matter of economics, or whether I want to make $2 and change per book or $1 and change. Sorry to be so blunt, or seem like a penny pincher. I would gladly price my paperback books at around $5 or $6 but then I would be in the negative. LOL. Of course, Amazon wouldn’t allow me to price them that low (though there might be special sales, where I would make up the difference and pay them to run the sale). They don’t care if the author breaks even, but they want the author to cover printing costs. And they, of course, like to make money. I believe $8.99 is the lowest they will let me go (at least for the length of my books). Anyway, like I said, it’s all about economics. Though I do love giving digital copies away on Goodreads. But that’s not free for me either, which sounds counterintuitive. I pay to give books away, but it gets my books out there. Big sigh. Maybe one day I’ll make it as a writer.
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Okay, I’ve digressed, just as I usually do.
I want to touch on one other thing though. There is a special documentary streaming on PBS about Hemingway. The documentary is a Ken Burns (and a woman, though her name escapes me at the moment) production, so you know it is well done. I encourage you to watch it.
I’ve always been aware that Hemingway, Bierce, Crane, etc. had a certain terse and laconic, or “economy of words” style of writing. There was nothing wasteful about it. I figured it stemmed from them having been news reporters at the start of their careers. This is probably true. Being correspondents, they would have to telegraph their reports/stories from halfway around the world. Telegrams were on a cost per word basis. It was interesting to learn in the documentary of how Hemingway would painstakingly go over his writing, over and over again, to eliminate any extra words. He deliberately worked extra hard to hone his stories down to the bare bones.
That will probably be the next phase of my writing journey. Right now, the stories are billowing out, not necessarily with extraneous detail (okay, not always), but becoming fuller, with more detailed scenes. I’m just along for the ride, I tend to let things flow naturally. Next, however, I will probably start the honing process, whittling things down to the bare bones, finding the perfect words to make up the scenes, the story. Maybe I’ll produce something simple and beautiful. Or not. Maybe I’ll just keep having fun! Though, I have to say, anything and everything about writing is fun for me. But we’ll see.