Nancy Drew learns the value of abstract art: "Rain" by Colin Barrett (O.Henry Anthology)

Most literary theory is painful to read, but there's one story from the discipline that is actually kind of a good yarn. Stanley Fish was teaching a class on mystic poetry, and he came in to the classroom one day and found five names of linguists still written on the board from the previous lecture. The names were Jacobs, Rosenbaum, Levin, Thorne, and Hayes. Instead of erasing the names, he presented the names to his students as though they constituted another mystical religious poem for them to study. The class wasted no time coming up with highly original interpretations that made the five names seem like what Fish had told them it was. Jacobs became Jacob from the Old Testament, Rosenbaum and Levin were some kind of indicator of the Jewish people, and Thorne pointed to the crown of thorns Christ wore during his crucifixion. Somehow, it all fit together. Fish's point was that interpretive communities tend to read things according to the standards of their community. If they are looking for a mystic poem, they'll find one. 

I've recalled this anecdote because in reading "Rain" by Colin Barrett, it's possible someone might accuse me of inventing meaning in a particular way because I'm a literary blogger who is committed to finding just that kind of meaning in stories, not because the meaning is really there. Of course, I run that risk with every story, as some people are inclined to resist readings that find any kind of meaning that isn't overt, but it's particularly true with this story, because the story itself is so simple, it's hard at first to see that there is anything going on other than two sisters spending an ordinary day in their non-traditional Irish family. (In this case, not meaning that they're of Irish ancestry, but that the story is actually set in Ireland.) 

The surface story

Scully and Charlie are sixteen and thirteen. They are schlepping ice and snacks back from the store for their family when they see a note pinned to an old public phone booth: "IF ASHA CALLS TELL HER TO GO HOME." 

This isn't the first time Scully has seen this note, and she's been trying to work out what the details behind it are. She shows an almost Sherlock Holmes-level of attention to detail. It's not warm-hearted, like a parent would write if their child were missing. And it says "go home," not "come home." Someone, Scully realizes, knows enough about Asha to know she might call this pay phone, but not enough to know where Asha is. 

Because the story is from Scully's point of view but not her first-person narration, it's hard to say for certain what details we get are hers and which are the narrator interpreting through her senses.  Some perceptions are clearly labeled as hers, but some aren't, but we can assume that at least some of the highly perceptive account of what Scully sees and senses is her own, leading us to understand that Scully, like other literary detectives, tries to understand her world through keen observation. 

If someone is going to accuse me of reading too much meaning into this story, I can at least say that the story invites creative meanings by having Scully convinced throughout that there is an answer to the riddle of the note, and the answer is hiding in plain sight if only she and Charlie can puzzle it out. If that's not an invitation to look for mysteries hiding in plain sight of the story, I don't know what is. 

Scully is on the case, although it's not quite an X-file.

Looking a little closer, the note isn't the only place where meaning is hiding just below the surface. The title of the story is "Rain," and at the outset, it looks like this is referring to real rain, because the girls have come out from the shop just after a rain and all the trees are wet. But a little later on, we find that the boyfriend of their mother is nicknamed Rain, because he reminded their mother of German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Rain himself seems to believe that dreams can signify something more than they seem to, because he interprets a dream about losing one's teeth to concerns about money. The text is inviting the reader to go beyond surface level, to investigate. 

Rain and their mother Mel seem to be long-term romantic partners who live together. They're not the only people at the house. Victor, who is Rain's friend at the psychiatric hospital where they are security guards, is there. So is Mel's younger sister Natalie and Natalie's two-year-old rambunctious daughter Tessa. It's a pretty full house, and it's obvious that on days when everyone is off work, this gathering of everyone in the home is pretty normal. According to the routine, Rain and Victor will eventually go off to the pub while Mel, Natalie and the girls stay at home, watch movies, and drink Coke and eat digestives (sort of like cookies). 

The economy of the story, which gives us very little information about each character, is violated when we learn about the artistic temperaments of Mel and Rain. This is the only part of the story that is expansive in its explanations. Both are apparently artist enough to be considered artists by other people, although Rain doesn't seem to keep it up anymore. Mel does "realistic" art where the things she draws look like the things she sees. In fact, Scully is taken aback by how realistic they are, and she wonders if anyone can make art of greater verisimilitude than her mother can. Rain, on the other hand, does abstract art:

"Rain had painted abstracts, near identical pictures featuring dense, somber swabs of muted color that looked depressing and dreary, like pictures of migraines or terrible weather. Mel's pictures were charcoal and pencil sketches of body parts; sections of torsos, faces with precisely smudged mouths and wary, animate eyes, disembodied hands and feet flexing and gesturing in white space."

Scully is glad that Rain has given up art so she doesn't have to see his work anymore. It's clear she values her mother's work over Rain's, because it looks like the thing it's of. Her work is more difficult, she feels. She understand that in art, there's more to it than just being accurate, and she knows that Rain's work was more valued by people who knew about art than Mel's, but she can't help thinking Mel is more talented. Her feelings about his art mirror those she has for him: she doesn't hate Rain, but she doesn't love him and isn't sure she actually likes him.

And now we turn Thorne into a crown of thorns

It's notable that the pictures Mel draws have "wary" eyes and disembodied hands and feet. It's like she's drawing crime scenes. Perhaps Mel has endured some trauma, or maybe she just shares her daughter's interest in solving mysteries. If so, Mel seems to approach the mysterious the same way as her daughter: by using reason and close observation of what is there. Her work values precision over artistic feeling and exaggeration. Rain's doesn't. Rain's work emphasizes feeling.

And that's the conflict, such as it is, in the story. It's not set up to be a high-tension conflict. In fact, Scully realizes at last, Rain, for all his faults, seems to know how to allow for choices to be made in ways that avoid conflict. He knows that Scully must have been wanting to go out and see what the pub is all about. He's willing to take her along, but that would mean Scully making a decision to change the status quo, choosing a night out over staying in with her mother and family. It would mean a decisive step toward growing up. Rain rigs this choice for her, though, by asking if both Charlie and Scully want to come along. He knows Charlie will want to, but only if Scully does, so Scully can say yes while making it look like she's doing it to be considerate of her sister. Nobody is making decisions in defiance of any established order; they're all just being considerate of others. 

Rain's intuitive approach has advantages Mel and Scully's logical and deductive one doesn't. There's no great storm in this story that leads to a thundering climax, only a soft rain that gives way to growth afterwards. The moment when things seem like they might erupt, when Rain declares, "Enough of this...Hand me my sword, Victor," isn't Rain about to explode. His "sword," it turns out, is a knife on his key chain. He's breaking up ice with it. It's a tool to get things unstuck, and it's attached to keys, the universal metaphor for something that solves a problem. This moment is the moment when Rain is going to solve a problem that nobody even knows is a problem yet. 

The conflict of the story has passed, and nobody even realized it was a conflict, including the reader. It was there, though, hiding in plain sight, and it was Rain who cracked the case. Just like the rain at the outset of the story, that passed while the girls were inside and didn't even know it was coming, this Rain has quietly descended without anyone else knowing. 

Rain has solved one problem before it became a problem, but by story's end, nobody has cracked the case of the missing girl on the phone booth. Rain doesn't even know anyone named Asha. Perhaps Rain, by teaching Scully about a different way of approaching problems, has given her a key to unlock it, or, if not this particular problem, other problems in her life. Scully notes that you can only learn tricks like this from Rain about how to get what you want but disguise it if you "paid attention." She is an expert at paying attention, and perhaps Rain has noticed this, too, which is why he knows he can communicate with her in a coded language. The text of "Rain" deals with its reader in a similar manner, locking its mysteries up in a way that only a reader who pays attention can unlock.