Homes, A.M. "Georgica." Things You Should Know. New York: Perennial, 2002.

I reread this story last night to prepare myself for teaching it this afternoon, and it's rare that rereading stories for this purpose does much for me—that is, it's never as good as the initial experience of discovering the story for the first time. This time, though, it was. It was better, really. I wrote "yes" in the white space at the end of the story and underlined it twice.

Quick plot: a woman who was in a terrible car accident caused by her drunken fiancee ends the marriage and begins to want children. Rather than date men, she starts leaving condoms on lifeguard stands, then sneaking around the dunes at night watching them have sex with their girlfriends. The condoms she takes, then syringes (verb? "siphons"?) out the semen, and then implants it inside of her.

The story is immediately great in the way it establishes sympathies on the part of the reader and then keeps it up. I sort of love this woman, and I want to give her money and good food and all my best clothes, and I want to be able to climb into her womb and smash the sperm and egg together with my own bare hands. She deserves a child so much, and it's weird because I don't think anyone "deserves" children. I think the way the story makes me feel this has something to do with the point of view—third-person limited—or at least this is what I'm going to try to get past my students today.

Oh, here's a quote. A long one:

If he knew, would he think she was a crook, stealing him without his knowledge, or would he think it was nice to be desired, had from this strange distance?

Another boy, older, walks barefoot down the warm boards of the bathhouse, his feet moving fast and high, as if dancing on hot coals. She stays through the morning. He is not the only one, there are others. It is a constant low-key sex play, an ever-changing tableau.

This year they have new suits, their standard Speedos replaced with baggy red trunks. Beneath their trunks, they are naked, cocksure, tempting, threatening. It is always right there, the bulge, enjoying the rub of the fabric, the shrinking chill of the sea.

She watches how they work, how they sweep the deck of the bathhouse, set up umbrellas, how they respond to authority—taking direction from the man with the clipboard. Before settling on two or three of the strongest, most dominant, she watches them play with each other. She chooses the one with the smoothest chest, and another with white hair, like feathers fanning out, crawling up his stomach, a fern bleached blond.

They are becoming themsleves as she is losing herself.