HEROIC MEASURES
By Jill Ciment
Random House Canada/Pantheon, 192 pages, $27.95
***
Every once in a while, someone writes a book that, on the surface, is simple and quiet, yet underneath is stirringly beautiful and full of life and love. Jill Ciment's Heroic Measures is this kind of book. At only 192 pages, this slim, tender novel packs a melancholic punch.
The jacket copy states that this is a novel "about real estate, dog love, and a city on alert," but Heroic Measures is also about aging, terrorism, childlessness, New York City and McCarthyism. And about immigration, the Depression, dachshunds, guide dogs, open houses, bed, bath and beyond, artists, taxi cabs, falafel and animal hospitals.
It is post-9/11, and Ruth and Alex, an elderly childless couple, have finally put their five-storey New York walk-up for sale. Tempted by the almost-million-dollar price their real-estate agent is determined they will get, Ruth feels "the number bite her, like a needle, and enter her, like an intoxicating drug. As a child of the Depression, the word millionaire still held a magical spell."
In the midst of the agonizing decision to sell, the couple's 12-year-old dachshund, Dorothy, collapses in a puddle of her urine. As the doctor notes about wiener dogs and slipped discs: "Imagine a suspension bridge without the cables."
As if this weren't enough, the city is suddenly on red alert. An oil tanker truck has skidded into a tunnel, blocking the passage into and out of New York. No one knows where the driver is: Is he a terrorist? New York shuts down. (Literally. The mayor orders all cabs off the road and when they come back, the visual effect is startling: "The lower lanes are solid yellow. Against the bridge's black shadows and the grey afternoon sky, the taxis look dazzling.") Ruth and Alex are stuck walking blocks for help, their little dog carried carefully on a kitchen cutting board.
Written from several points of view - Alex's, Ruth's, Mr. Rahim's (the falafel seller), Dorothy's, people on the street - the book weaves a picture of a New York that is still visibly shaken by the effects of 9/11. Ruth, Alex and Dorothy navigate their way through the city, through past and present, through their long relationship, with stoicism and wit. These characters are charming and lovely. People you immediately want to know.
New York City is alive in Jill Ciment's hands: the taxi driver with "a jackknife-size cross hanging from his rear-view mirror," the "stout old proprietress" at Cosmos Laundromat, the "platinum blond Korean manicurist" smoking in a doorway.
Even as Ruth is imagining what it would be like to leave the city, to move to the Jersey shore, or "that car-less island in North Carolina she saw advertised in The New Yorker," she declares herself a "lifelong New Yorker" and thinks, smartly, "How long can you stare at an ocean?"
This is a quietly suspenseful novel. Will Alex and Ruth sell their apartment? Will Dorothy survive? Will the oil tanker blow up? Will Alex and Ruth get the apartment they have bid on? Will the confused truck driver take hostages? You are compelled to read on. The ending comes as a surprise. Only three days pass in this story, but when you put Heroic Measures down, you feel as if you've spent a lifetime immersed in Jill Ciment's remarkably touching and hopeful world.
Michelle Berry's new story collection, I Still Don't Even Know You, will be published in April. Her border collie/basset hound, Buddy, has little legs supporting a body that, like Dorothy's, is a lot like a suspension bridge.
