Time for a Tune-up

Just up in STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20 is "Dr. Mechanic" by Sabrina Tom. What excited me about this story when I first read it as a submission was the mixture of meditative musings within the storyline. A smart and deep story. A story for our time. A story that sets aside pure interpretation so the narrator can say something about life. Many have gone down in flames trying such a narrative, but Sabrina Tom succeeds where others have failed. Which just proves that if the writer possesses a strong enough voice and a confident sense of style any form of narrative will work.

My mother and I have the same birthday. Today she turns fifty-five. I will be thirty-two. I hear that time speeds up as you get older, that one night you go to bed in the prime of life and the next day you wake up old. It's not that you look old, and you don't act old, but you sense it, from the tip of your eyelashes down to your toenails, which is exactly where the anxiety begins, in the parts of your body that are noticeably dead. But it's not too late, you think. You run your tongue over your gleaming white teeth (they run in the family). Past that, you can taste your salty center. The core of you is intact, it's just the outer shell that needs a little work. So you go to someone, anyone with competence and the patience to listen, and tell him you want a tune-up. You tell him you want to be new again.

Which expresses universal and timeless concerns while adding an absolutely sweet contemporary spin by asking for a "tune-up." Yeah, Dr. Mechanic, a shaman for our times.

The story has abundant themes, which is another of its strengths: mother/daughter relationship, body image, aging, among others. One that stood out for me, however, was the contrast between the rejuvenating power of plastic surgery and the rejuvenating power of a relationship:

All during the dinner with my mother and Dr. Mechanic, I could feel their giddy energy. It was hard not to get caught up in the excitement. My mother's voice acquired an upward lilt. She gestured wildly with her hands. Every once in a while she would squeeze his arm, though whether it was to reassure him, or herself, I couldn't tell. In between her exclamations, he took over as the ringleader. Part of it had to do with the inflections in his speech. Everything with enthusiasm and showmanship. He described the food as being "out of sight!" and the service as a "miracle!" He called my mother "doll face" and me "doll face two." There was also the sight of my mother sitting next to him. She looked younger, more vibrant, and not just because, after her facelift, the skin around her cheekbones was taut and shiny. She glowed from the inside out.

The narrator is drawn deeper into their spell as the story progresses, including a scene at the end that includes cake (you knew food had to be in the mix, too, didn't you?), which I will leave for you to discover as you read this wonderful story.

Sabrina Tom is the fiction editor at Hyphen. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Big Ugly Review, Slow Trains and Utne Reader. She has attended the Hedgebrook Residency and the Napa Valley Writers' Workshop and currently lives on the sunny side of San Francisco, where she is at work on a novel.

And, yes, the STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize 2007 contest is still open for submissions. First prize is $1000. Deadline for entries is July 15, 2007.