A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks: book review

A Permanent Member ofthe Family (2013) is a collection of 12 short stories.

The title story is a man telling his account of a situation that occurred 35 years earlier ‘to set the record straight.’ He had separated from his second wife of 14 years, Louise, and moved into a small house a quarter of a mile from their former home. He had four daughters: Vickie (18 years old from his first wife) and Andrea, Caitlin and Sasha from his second wife. They had joint custody of the children, but he got Scooter the cat and Louise got Sarge the dog. Sarge accompanied the children during their weekly visits to his house, and each time, Sarge stayed. Louise demanded that he ‘bring the dog home’ until she eventually stopped and Sarge became a permanent member of his family. Until the day Sarge died – and that is the cause of the man’s concern. He now sets the record straight about how the dog died.

Former Marine is the story of Conrad, a former marine who had been ‘let go’ of his job at an auction house eight months earlier. He has three sons: Jack, Buzz, and Chip – two are in the police force and one is a prison guard. Conrad takes his .45 calibre Colt service pistol and robs a local bank, but his has a car accident afterwards, losing consciousness and ending up in hospital. Jack finds a bag in his father’s car with money and a pistol. He tells his brothers and they confront their father in his hospital bed.

Transplant is about Howard Blume, a heart transplant survivor of four months. The donor was a 26-year-old man who died in a motor cycle accident, leaving a 22-year-old wife and baby boy. Howard’s doctor phones him to inform him that the widow, Penny, wants to see him. Reluctantly Howard agrees to meet her by a monument at the top of a hill. When they meet, Penny makes a strange request.

In Snowbirds, after 40 years of marriage 70-year-old George and his 60-year-old wife Isabel Pelham decide to leave their New York home and try living in a rental place in Miami for a year. A month after the move, George dies of a heart attack. Isabel, alone, phones her friend Jane. ‘There was something weird going on with Isabel, Jane thought. She was not prepared for her friend’s sprightliness or her suddenly fortified willfullness and new enthusiasms. This was not the Isabel she had known for more than half a lifetime, the woman she had come here to console.’ After the funeral, Isabel opens the urn with George’s ashes and navy buttons fall out. George has never been in the navy. These are not George’s ashes.

In Big Dog, Erik and Ellen are scheduled to have dinner with friends Ted and Joan, and Sam and Raphael. Although they had never married, Erik, an artist, and Ellen, a designer, had been together for 32 years, having met in their early 20s. Ellen’s nickname for Erik was Big Dog. This was because his artworks were large theatrical installations. Before dinner Erik learns that he has been awarded a MacArthur – a prestigious art award with half a million dollars over five years. During dinner, Joan asks ‘You’ll still be friends with us, won’t you, Erik? Even though you’ll be rich now. And famous.’

My favourite story, Blue, is about Ventana Robertson, a 47-year-old woman in Miami who has been a legally licensed driver for 25 years, but had never owned a car. She used to drive her ex-husband’s car. She goes to a car showroom near closing time to look at cars with the intent to return the next day to purchase one. On the way out, the guard dog, a ‘thick-bodied pit bull’ menaces her and she escapes by climbing onto the roof of a car. The sales staff lock the fence and leave. Unwilling to call out or phone 911, Ventana waits for the dog to leave. Teenage Reynaldo sees her and calls 911 but they refuse to attend, telling him to call the police. Instead, he calls the local Channel 5 news, who immediately turn up to film her, but then realize that it is not an exciting story, merely a ‘cat stuck in a tree story’ and tell Reynaldo to call the police. Embarrassed, Ventana refuses to call the police, and tells Reynaldo to go home. It is dark and Ventana is trapped by the vicious guard dog. But then she decides to get down from the roof of the car and climb the wire fence.

Lost and Found is about a married 49-year-old plumbing supplies sales manager at a Convention in Miami. An attractive 34-year-old woman approaches him in a bar. She asks if he remembers her from the Convention five years ago, but he doesn’t. His hotel room is on the 27th floor and that’s where they go. ‘She was angry, he remembers now. Which is probably why he wanted to forget that night, why he actually succeeded in forgetting it and the way Ellen had made him feel, until here she was again, five years older, yet still that very particular woman who made him visible to himself, funny, smart, good looking, and lonely.’ These were feelings he had ‘lost bit by bit’ during his marriage, and which he had ‘found’ that night five years ago with Ellen.

All of the stories in the collection have a sense of foreboding, a twist-of-fate ending – a loss, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of anxiety and a longing: a longing for something more in life.