Strange Courtships: Nine Romantic Stories

By Carla Sarett

This collection brings together nine "well-crafted" and "original" tales of contemporary women seeking love. Most of the stories were published in literary magazines, and a few are brand new. From the mysteries of early love to online deceptions, Carla Sarett aims to capture the charm and wit of older Hollywood romance, but tinged with the metaphysical. This is romance-deconstructed, turned on its head, and approached with humor—with characters that "enter your daily life."

In Sarett's world, love always surprises: a physicist and violinist are bound by a memory; in a reverse take on Hitchcock's Vertigo, a scorned art historian takes revenge by creating an online persona, and a chance encounter leaves a man searching for "a mirage in hot sand." These are balanced with comic tales of marital friction, awkward wedding proposals and even more Internet dates gone awry. Plus, for readers who have enjoyed "Career Girl" and "Skinny Girl," there is another installment of this woebegone heroine's search for happiness.

Some reader praise for Nine Romantic Stories:

"Carla Sarett is a writer who simply and elegantly expresses intelligent themes…big themes supported by deep feeling and a hint of the magical. Her careful prose feels pleasingly old-fashioned…unaffected, yet stylish." – Dan Essman, poet

"A writer to watch…These stories beguile the imagination, made as they are of well-crafted language at once precise and lyrical, and situations that reveal truth with humor and pulse." – Cheryl Snell, author, Rescuing Ranu

""At the beginning of "Mandolinata," the narrator describes the suit Kim Novak wore in Vertigo—how it is well tailored and has great style. The same can be said of each story in Ms. Sarett's beautifully crafted collection."—Barbara Alfaro, author, Mirror Talk

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carla Sarett
• Release date: Apr 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301637355

Carla Sarett

Carla Sarett's is a poet and novelist based in San Francisco. The Looking Glass (Propertius Press, 2021) and A Closet Feminist (Unsolicited Press, in press.). Her poetry collection, She Has Visions, was published by Main Street Rag in 2022; and 2023 sees two chapbooks, Woman on the Run (Alien Buddha Press) and My Family Was Like a Russian Novel (Plan B Press.) Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Net and Best American Essays; and has been shortlisted in several national contests. Carla has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania,.

Book preview

STRANGE COURTSHIPS

Nine Romantic Stories

By Carla Sarett

Copyright 2012 by Carla J. Sarett

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

A Short Visit originally appeared as April's Visit in Danse Macabre; A Strange Courtship originally appeared in Scissors and Spackle; Mandolinata originally appeared in The Greensilk Journal; Victor's Proposal appeared in InfectiveInk; In Rittenhouse Square originally appeared in The River Poet's Journal, The Hopeless Romantic.  My special thanks to all of these magazines and their hard-working editors, and to my husband, Paul Messaris.

Table of Contents

A String Theory Valentine

Bonny Lass

A Short Visit

A Strange Courtship

Mandolinata

Leonardo's Smile

Victor's Proposal

Stand-By

In Rittenhouse Square

A String Theory Valentine

Only weeks before, all things being equal, Anna and Jonah would have spent the day together.  By this time, they might have climbed up Sleeping Beauty Mountain and admired the light of late summer in the Adirondacks.  Instead, Anna lay on the sofa, eyes half-closed, listening intently to Mendelssohn’s rapturous double string quarter, the Octet in E flat major.

Anna said, By my age, Mendelssohn already wrote this. He was like sixteen, I think.  And, did he ever write anything better?  I don’t think so. It’s totally depressing.  She flipped herself over, face turned down, wild hair falling all over.

Faith knew her daughter’s moods all too well.  I wish you’d call Jonah.  It’s not right. He’s almost a part of our family.

Was, mom, he was, said Anna.  Anyway, what were you thinking?  We’d get married and live happily ever after?  I’m off to Julliard and he’s off to Stanford, and I mean, I wasn’t going to marry my high school boyfriend, was I.  Her foot kicked her mother’s latest book off the glass table.

What about the Octet? You said it, Mendelssohn was a teen, Faith said, picking up the book and returning it to where it belonged.

He was a prodigy and anyway, that was then, not now.

Yes, and someday now will be then, Faith responded—she was a professor.

Anna considered her mother’s riddle.  Yes, and someday, tomorrow will be then, too.  And maybe in string theory, yesterday is tomorrow, and in another string, Jonah and I didn’t fight and we got married. Maybe we got married, and now we’re divorced and I’m stuck with the kids.  Or maybe in another world, he’s here right now.

Not that we needed physics to know that.

Besides, it wasn’t my decision.  It was Jonah’s, but that’s all I’m going to say, ever.

It had been a conversation about music.  Both she and Jonah studied classical music, and up to that point, she had imagined their tastes neatly aligned.

Anna had not spoken openly to her mother.  She had taken it for granted that she and Jonah would grow old together: any other version of the future seemed impossible.  In fact, she had formulated certain peculiar plans about her life with Jonah.  Anna, and only Anna, knew about Jonah’s little brother’s ghost and how he visited from time to time.  Jonah concealed these visits from everyone, in case they labeled him loony and carted him off to therapy.

Anna had wrapped her arms around Jonah and squeezed him hard.  They’ll be room in our house for Gary’s ghost.  After we’re married, I’ll make sure he’s welcome.  We can put a little chair in our bedroom, just for him.  You don’t have to worry.  It will be our secret.

And he had kissed her all over with tiny feathery kisses, whispering, I love you, I love you, I love you.

They rolled around giggling until they were out of breath with happiness.

A few weekends before, Jonah had played music for her—blues music.  In retrospect, she realized it was a kind of fare-well present, but at the time, she thought nothing of it.  The names of the blues artists were unknown to her, and meaningless—Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, who were they?

She listened for a few minutes and said, The chord structure is kind of primitive.  There doesn’t seem much to listen to, if you ask me.  What do you like about this?

Jonah looked tormented. What do you mean what do I like?  It’s Willie Dixon.  It’s great.

She frowned.  What’s great about it?

It was if she slapped him.  All he said was, I don’t know.  Everything, I guess.

She shrugged since she knew that a kiss would not solve anything. I don’t get it.  I guess we don’t like the same things.

Then he had withdrawn.  It was like some silly movie.  She could have apologized, but for what?  She hated the music and she could not pretend, just for his sake.  It would have been the first lie between them; then, others would follow, each meaningless by itself, but taken as a whole, corrosive.  He would have to take her as she was.

Jonah sat blocks away, listening to Willie Dixon, whose music pierced him like a knife.  His dream was to rise in the world of physics and contribute to the ultimate proof of string theory-- the grand theory that tries to unify the world of the stars with the world beneath the atom.  It is a weird sort of theory: it divides the world into parallel universes, in which time reverses and bends like strings, and in which endings are not endings and the world as we know it is only one among many.

Jonah’s mother, Rachel, smiled at her son.  Don’t be sad.  Things will get back to normal.  It’s a matter of time.

Jonah sulked.  There is no such thing as normal.  That’s a construct, Mom.

"I suppose there’s no such thing as time, for