“All’s Well” and Dialogue Beyond Words
Margaret LaFleur’s All’s Well, which appears in the Summer 2023 issue of the Kenyon Review, is set during the early days of the pandemic. The story follows Katie, who is newly single and newly pregnant. Her only family is a faraway grandmother who is weathering lockdown with a robot cat.
I want to look at a moment three quarters of the way through the story, when Katie is on the phone with her lawyer. Lockdown is still in effect, and Katie is working from home. Though the pregnancy is far along, she’s kept it a secret from the husband she is divorcing and from her coworkers.
“There’s a sticking point,” her lawyer responds. “It seems that Mr. Henson would like to reopen the discussion about the embryos.” Katie doesn’t know if the kick in her stomach is the embryo in question or her own nerves.
“No” is all she can think of to say.
The lawyer sighs. “I’ve been seeing more and more of this. His new wi — girlfriend, she doesn’t like the idea of you using them in the future.”
Katie feels lightheaded and sits back in her chair. “No,” she says again slowly. “It’s too late. I’m . . . I . . .”
“Katie?” her lawyer says, this friend-of-a-friend who had seen her through the sudden implosion of her marriage, who had held Katie’s hand on the slick leather couch in her office as Katie wept violently and blamed the hormones from the IVF they had just started (Just started, she’d cried).
“I kept the appointments,” Katie manages to say.
There was a long silence. “Congratulations,” the lawyer says. “But, Katie, I’m assuming that you haven’t told Mr. Henson?”
“Can you?” Katie asks. “Just let his lawyers know.” She laughs, and to her surprise the lawyer lets out a bark of genuine humor. Katie giggles and claps her hands over her mouth, imagines the phone call from Kevin’s lawyers, their awkward congratulations, the texts that would appear on her phone. “But I do have to go, I can’t miss this meeting,” Katie says as she wipes a stray tear from her cheek.
It's the laughter that entrances me—Katie’s initial outburst, but especially the lawyer’s surprise bark, and Katie’s giggles that follow. It holds so much.
First, consider what it means that the laugh is shared with Katie’s lawyer. She’s someone who has seen Katie cry violently and who knows Katie’s personal and intimate business—who can read between the lines when Katie says she “kept the appointments.” But the lawyer is not a close friend or family member. Rather, she’s a “friend of a friend,” known in a professional context. That makes her bark of a laugh somewhat odd. It’s not quite appropriate for the situation and so it’s surprising to Katie.
But it’s more than that. Lawyers are supposed to put it all into words, right? They’re meant to craft legal language that can’t be disputed, that allows no nuance, that is black and white and pinned all the way down. This laugh is none of those things. It is mysterious and beyond words and therefore capable of holding much more.
One job of a story is to twist the abstract—and even the completely unknowable—into something almost tangible. A story does this so we can hold the mystery, look at it, turn it around. A story doesn’t have to solve anything, but it might let us poke at something that can’t be named.
Until this point, Katie has kept her pregnancy—already big enough to be seen through a zoom screen—a secret. And her reasons for that are complex and difficult to explain, even for her. Part of it is her history of miscarriage and IVF and the fear of losing it. Another part is the dissolution of her marriage. But another reason Katie keeps her hope a secret is that it is too bright and too impossible to voice. In light of everything in her world—the pandemic, the isolation, the recent death of her mother, the rise of authoritarianism—it is unsayable, unthinkable. The unsent email to HR can’t contain it.
The impossibility of Katie’s hope has been brewing as subtext through every moment we’ve spent with Katie throughout the story. The odd laugh is what lets that subtext bubble through to the surface. Through the laugh, the way it expresses absurdity and the way it exists outside of words, Katie can express what she’s been holding as a secret, and the lawyer can understand the power of it and share in it. Then, in that space between the characters, the reader can hold it too. The lawyer’s “bark of genuine humor” recognizes this unspeakable hope and gives it form.
Immediately after the call, Katie joins a work zoom and accidentally stands up on camera, revealing her pregnant belly. She doesn’t plan this. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence. (In a short story, there’s almost no such thing as coincidence.) Sure, she doesn’t formally and purposefully announce her news. But she relaxes enough to let it slip.
I think the slip happens because of the scene with her lawyer. Sharing a moment beyond words—an intimate and unspeakable moment—lets Katie breathe a little bit inside of her hope.
Beyond that, the laugh and the strangely intimate space created by it, makes a shape for the reader to feel the mystery of Katie’s impossible hope. The unsayable thing can bubble in a throat like a giggle or a bark. The subtext of the story is nebulous and complex and abstract—but the unexpected laugh has become a container for it.
Check out Allison's 6-week online class "What You Don't Know: Mystery in Fiction" starting November 5!