Mom Left Before Spiders and the Apocalypse
Short Story Review of “Miracles” by Lucy Corin
“Miracles” by Lucy Corin is a short story that I wish was a full-length novel. It’s a fantastic piece, full of compelling details. It’s also very short. Like, the length of one long paragraph. This isn’t to say that I want the story to be longer because I don’t think there’s enough for a good story. QUITE the contrary. For how short this story is, there is already so much to dig through. Warning: you’re going to have to read the story two or three times, at least.
In summary, the story is about a childhood memory that the narrator and the narrator’s brother remember “after the apocalypse.” The memory is of them back on their old farm, when their “stark, raving mad” mother had started calling them from wherever she lived. In this memory, their father showed them a black widow and her sac of eggs, which he’d put in a jar so that they could witness the eggs hatching before he kills them.
“The babies were spreading out over the inside of the jar, the miracle of life. They were making their ways to the air holes punched in the lid. Our father just watched and commented for our benefit. He put a stick to an air hole and we watched babies crawl up it. Spiders crawl their whole lives.”
One of the moments I find especially significant is that, instead of immediately destroying the spider and the egg sac, their father allowed the eggs to hatch. Why? What was it about THIS particular moment that he wanted them to understand? The narrator tells us that, “He said a lot about learning to take care of others as a part of growing up.” Is this a subtle dig at the absent mother? What does that mean for the spider eggs? Why does he allow them to hatch, to explore their surroundings before he takes hairspray to them and kills them? What does that have to do with taking care of others?
Another point I found myself returning to is the fact that Corin uses the word “attention” twice in the story. First: “And the big mother spider, you couldn’t tell if she was paying attention.” Second: “We watched, but some of our attention wandered.” What is it about the idea of attention that Corin wants us to speculate on? Who needs to be paying more attention? The children? The father? The mother?
Finally, the phrase “after the apocalypse” places this story into an overwhelmingly dense context. What is it about the apocalypse that makes the siblings recall this memory about the spiders? Why are they still dwelling on the absence of their mother?
I’m still working on unraveling this story. Good stories often come with more questions than answers. For some reason, though, this story teases me with just enough details that it feels like I’ll worm out the answer if I do enough digging. Check out the story at the link below, then come back here and let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
