A Run on Hose [Paperback]

The short story continues to be labelled a hard sell: an old star that has had its day. Nevertheless, writers who love the form continue to resist being coaxed by publishers into writing novels only. And every so often a new collection resounds with all the reasons for standing by the short story. Rona Altrows’s A Run On Hose is one of those books.
In the initial and title story, we encounter Irene, who is “manager in all but name” (a kind of subtitle that comically resurfaces) of Marjorie’s Lingerie. Her pragmatic and often humorous middle-age voice recurs in six of the eleven stories that comprise this first book. “Thirty years it’s been now,” she reveals, “here at Marjorie’s Lingerie. Half my life. A lot of women with a lot of stories . . . People tell me, Irene, you could have been anything you wanted. You’ve a good head on your shoulders. I say, hey, I am something.” She knows her worth, as well as that of the women who enter the shop’s exclusively female domain-an intriguing place from which to investigate the matriarchal component of western society.
All the stories are written in the first person, and none tries to awe the reader with pyrotechnic plot or style. Instead, their quiet steadiness uncovers the ways in which individual women work through and come to terms with aging, loss, grief, depression, and the changes in friendships, working relationships, and other facets of daily life we can all relate to, or easily imagine. A calm determination and self-awareness draws us in page after page.
Irene’s voice infuses much of the book with the familiarity of a friend. Selecting moments in her years at the shop, she says, “This is my place. This is where I do my best thinking.” Her observations provide insight into her customers’ lives as women, and sometimes she establishes strange but profoundly meaningful relationships with them. In the title story, Irene ‘christens’ a shy, repeat customer “Rosie”, and over time unravels the mystery of this odd woman who’s “flat as the prairie . . . got her right hand over her mouth . . . [and who] chews with tiny bites . . . What is it? Breath mint? Shouldn’t I have heard a crunch when she chewed? . . . My brain starts working on the problem again. A drug. It’s got to be a drug . . .” But this isn’t idle curiosity or a gossip-driven nosiness. Irene cares about her customers, tries to understand what motivates them, and directs herself to give them her best in whatever capacity she is able. “I help people make important choices . . . it’s useful work, my job.” Customers confide in her, or ask for advice. “Emily is anxious to talk. Her thirty-eight-year-old daughter Trish is suffering from fibroids in the uterus and will soon have a hysterectomy . . .” She empathises, gives comfort, while also keeping a clear eye to doing good business. Sometimes comfort is returned in unusual ways. Not long after Irene’s husband dies in an accident and she’s back working a sale day, timid “Rosie” steps into the crowded store, freezes, then turns and flees. Irene admits, “I want to run too, to go after her, to say, look, I can’t take what’s going on either.” It’s these subtle, unexpected revelations that hone our sense of women who may seem ordinary, but aren’t.
These stories also examine the interrelatedness of people’s lives, providing a perspective that more broadly describes how we all touch one another in the quotidian world. Women connect by everyday means as they always have. They exchange comfort, and support each other. Through ordinary women-retail clerks, seamstresses, aunts, “emotional shoplifters”, ex-political organisers, university students, seniors who go back to university, mothers with daughters battling cancer or progeria or gender biases-Altrows relates the pros and cons of being female in contemporary society. At one point, Irene comments, “Oh Amelia, I’m thinking, when will you get over it? . . . You’re round and tall and big-breasted; there’s no missing you. Why can’t you accept that belly and bosom? They add to your charm. What pushes you to buy clothing two sizes too small? Who will read your underwear labels?” And Amelia, with regard to the career guidance her niece finds in school, states, “I’ve had it with people who call themselves experts in education . . . they can’t go about their business without shattering a girl’s dreams.” Irene then tells Amelia of an old classmate who wanted to be a linguist. But when the guidance teacher could only find a brochure on archaeology, “she told Edna, You’ll have to be an archaeologist instead . . . Edna held her ground . . . Mrs. Perry kept Edna in after school and had her print OBSTINACY IS IGNORANCE a hundred times on the blackboard.” The echoes of other women’s pasts illuminate how things have changed, or how they’ve failed to change. Even out of context, occasional capitalised phrases-CANADIAN GIRLS KICK ASS or WORKING FOR YOUR FUTURE-read like bannered reminders of our abilities, a call to solidarity.
Other characters tackle issues such as “purity of intent,” “the need to be normal,” and “fear of abandonment” (from “Amanda’s Weekend”), as well as loyalty, love, casual sex, and surrogate motherhood. Liz, in the half-comic, half-tragic story “Turkey Baster”, sees that “[e]very family has its bailer-outer,” and she’s it. When her sister asks, Liz agrees to have a baby for her, despite disgust for her sister’s husband. “I put the baster in the jar, fill it up, insert it into my vagina . . . I am doing this to help my sister Margie. I am doing this to help my sister Margie. I am doing this to help my sister Margie.”
Flashes of wry humour ease us occasionally. In “Four Shirt Rant”, fifty-one-year-old Arlette works at a seniors’ residence and suffers from insomnia. Hoping to wear herself out enough to sleep at night, she offers to drive a resident, Ada, to an election campaign office where they both end up volunteering. “Before we left for the campaign office today, Ada invited Rebekah Paskow to fuck off. This created a stir at the Manor; that kind of talk is not expected. On the drive to our political gig I ask Ada what brought on her outburst. She says Rebekah accused her of incontinence.”
Women share, and sometimes the sharing is painful. In another story, a woman loses her income, then her home. “So my ’77 Buick became my home and place of work. I had no choice. But where’s the sense? A person with back problems making a living on her back-how can that be intended? . . . I stuffed lots of makeup in the glove compartment; that was where I hid my face.” She eventually finds comfort in a stray cat, and later a man’s love and a home. But the only certainty is the uncertainty of hanging onto anything.
Altrows understands what makes us tick, and how courage can be undermined by simple fears and needs. The final and longest story in the collection, “Boxes”, explores how Irene copes with the loss of her husband. Her best friend Doreen finally coaxes her into planning a trip to Molokai. When Irene reads up on the island’s history, she discovers it was once home to a leper colony run by a priest. Fantasies take over her mind, comingling with memories of her life with Henry, and her imagination finally confronts what her rational mind cannot: life is unfair, and being a widow feels like being a leper.

“The priest requires the leper to stand under a black canopy and says a mass in Latin similar to the funeral mass. He throws dirt over the leper’s right shoulder, then over the left, to represent the death of her former status as a social person.
God gave you this sickness. You can’t go home, not even to say a last goodbye to Henry. Here’s your bell. Ring it when you’re close to healthy people, so they can avoid you . . . Pray. Go away.”

Yet, life does go on, and Irene remembers that “Henry used to say, It’s ironic, Irene, you are so dedicated to freedom, and here you are, selling lingerie, which is used to confine women, isn’t it? . . . I told Henry I don’t think of lingerie as hemming a person in. I think of it as support.” And what Rona Altrows weaves into each story of A Run On Hose supports our sense of ourselves as women, the roles we play in each others’ lives, shoring up, helping to maintain courage through life’s thick and thin.
Never mind the novel. These stories are well worth the telling, and they reward the listening.
Ingrid Ruthig (Books in Canada)
-- Books in Canada

Rona Altrows' short stories go to the core of what it is to be human - to cherish a departed mate beyond reason, to love a child to distraction, to keep the faith with a friend no matter what, to laugh in the face of self-doubt. This collection delivers a humorous yet poignant series of tales told from the perspectives of women.

"Rona Altrows delivers keenly-observed tales with a serious kick. She draws her characters and their travails in beautifully controlled, precise strokes that render them arresting, haunting and immediate. This is fiction at its best, revealing fresh insights into a world we think we know. This is the real deal."

- Ian Samuels

"Rona Altrows writes about women with uncommon grace and honesty. In the tradition of Grace Paley, Altrows' stories capture deep philosophical issues within everyday physical details and events, often with a wry astuteness that made me want to laugh and cry and sit down with these people for a talk. No matter what her circumstance in life, each character in these stories shines with the dignity and beauty that come with compassionate observation. In a style that is at once spare and elegant, oral and physically palpable, Altrows pens stories that resonate far beyond the page."

- Roberta Rees