The opening lines immediately alert you that something is very wrong,
Her husband comes home, stamps the snow from his shoes, kisses her, and asks how her day was.
“Our time together is short,” she says.
The married couple remains nameless, but the wife has been diagnosed as “Stage three” and her transformation into a deer acts as a metaphor for her struggle with cancer. Memoir of a Deer Woman may have its roots in Native American mythology, but Rickert has created a story both modern and timeless, both unique and universal.
Rickert’s use of tense, the present and simple future, creates interesting transitions between what is happening now and what will happen. It gives the story an odd, moody feeling. Little portents offered up throughout add to this moodiness and lend to it a feeling of melancholy.
Who knows how long they have? Maybe this is the last time.
But this isn’t a depressing tale. Rickert doesn’t dwell on the inevitable. The changes the wife undergoes are handled with grace and sensitivity. The deer woman’s transformation goes beyond the physical.
It is also a story about a husband who is losing the woman he loves. His willful denials, his inability to comprehend what she is going through.
He is crying and shaking his head and all of a sudden she realizes that he will never understand. Should she say so in her memoir?
His part in this story is handled with equal grace and sensitivity, so that you, the reader, understand,
her husband is not being mean, just human.
Memoir of a Deer Woman is not a story of despair, but more of acceptance. It is not so much a story about dying as it is a poignant reminder to live without regret. And no matter how many times you read Memoir of a Deer Woman (and you will read it more than once), it still retains a sense of the mysterious and inexplicable.
This is part of the BookSpot Central Short Fiction Round Table spotlight on stories that will be included in Best American Fantasy 2008 edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and forthcoming from Prime Books. Please see the intro to the spotlight.
