annashay 
by Robert Shapard
AT THE TURN of the twentieth century a movement in self-improvement swept Europe. Its leader, a French psychologist named Émile Coué, wrote, “If you want to change your life, you must capture aperçus.”
Amanda discovered him in the French language course she was taking.
For Coué, aperçus were instants of cosmic awareness, conjured by almost anything, whether a bit of memory, a few musical notes, even a scent. Everyone has them, but few remember or even recognize them because they pass so quickly. To capture an aperçu, Coué said, one had only to say the words This is the meaning of my life.
‘Practice this daily,’ he instructed. ‘If you are diligent, you will begin to see your place in the universe. If you are suffering, you will begin to heal.’
Amanda was skeptical. How could just repeating a phrase, This is the meaning of my life, really change anything? Some people couldn’t change if you paid them. She wasn’t sure she needed healing. Still, she was interested to try.
Her boyfriend, Andy, moved her iPad aside in bed and said, ‘If anything can prompt an aperçu, then can one aperçu prompt another aperçu? And then another, like a chain reaction? Like a mental orgasm? Would that be dangerous? It can’t be good.’
She put her hand like a claw gently over his mouth. ‘Is that what you think of me?’ she said.
He kissed the top of her leg, the crease, down to her pubic hair. ‘Marry me,’ he said.
‘Just shut up,’ she said.
They’d only known each other a month. He’d asked her out right away, when they met at Austin Plumbing Supply, where she worked. He was looking for designer faucets. It turned out they went to the same college, and had a mutual friend who was a performing musician. They were playing a gig together that night and he said if she came he would take care of her. Which she did, with her work friend Dolores. She loved it when he sang harmony, and his mandolin solo on “I’ll Fly Away.” She couldn’t get him or the song out of her mind.
After that they were with each other every night. When he asked her, again, to marry him, she said sure, but there were just two problems. He was still in the process of getting a divorce, and she was getting over a boy she met two years ago who did too many drugs, never grew up. It wasn’t easy getting free of him, getting clean herself. She’d gone back to college part-time as partof her recovery, taking small contract jobs like the one for Austin Plumbing, upgrading their old inventory system. Now she was four courses short of getting her accounting degree, taking French to complete her language requirement—because what was the point of taking Spanish if everyone in her family spoke Tex-Mex?
As for the famous Émile Coué, what she wanted from him and his aperçus was perspective. A calm way to think separate from accounting numbers. She wasn’t sure if it would work. If she took a sip of a margarita and remembered drinking too many at a party once and retching violently, was that an aperçu? Or if she saw an old Buick that reminded her of her dead grandmother’s car, was that supposed to be the meaning of her life?
*
They often drove to Dallas to stay with her brother, who had a house near Love Field, the commuter airport, where the properties were cheap. Her brother, who loved her, who’d taught her to drive when she was twelve in a crappy old convertible he’d bought at a used car lot. They went everywhere. They’d even crossed a bridge to downtown after a spring flood, the river still vast and thundering just under their wheels. She was scared, but somehow it was all right because he was her older brother and would protect her. Their father had left them. She’d already begun to travel with her mother from apartment to apartment, from one school to another. After a few years her mother was gone too. Now her brother was home, all she had left.
She’d asked Dolores, ‘What kind of guy asks somebody to marry him if he still has a wife?’ Dolores was her mother’s age. ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said. Amanda said, ‘I’m only twenty-seven.’ Dolores raised her eyebrows, nodded, and said, ‘You can’t wait forever.’ They agreed the question was whether to trust his divorce was actually happening. Dolores looked him over when he came into Austin Plumbing again. ‘He needs a haircut,’ she reported. His hair was sandy, spilling from the sides and back of his ball cap.
Andy was renovating an old frame house he owned. He let her know the divorce papers were signed. And more. His ex-wife and daughter lived in Houston, he’d grown up on a ranch, had been in the army in Iraq, then Italy, and had worked construction. The house was surrounded by beautiful old shade trees, was a mess but livable. He owned an apartment house, too, and sometimes took things in trade for rent—he said it probably made him an idiot. His treasure was an authentic African harp, with a cracked gourd. He sat in with bands around Austin, playing not just mandolin but anything that had an o on the end—banjo, Dobro, mando. She said, ‘What about oboe?’ She was tutoring him in French. When he tried to say, ‘I like your face more than any other in the world,’ she looked away and said, ‘Your accent is getting better.’ In a side yard there were refrigerators, tilting like Easter Island heads. In the turnaround, a bass boat full of leaves.
‘You’ve got everything,’ she said. ‘Why would you need me?’
He gazed at her and said in English, ‘You would be nice to have around.’
She liked his answer. She didn’t mind the clutter. But she thought, Am I a trade-in? And, Is this the meaning of my life?
Her most lasting aperçu vision came while they were at a party at her brother’s house. Friends and in-laws and neighbors were in the kitchen and backyard, but she’d gone upstairs to lie down, after the long drive from Austin. It had been a rainy day and the air was damp but pleasant by the open window. Laughter and voices floated up, and from somewhere came the music from a bygone time, the Big Band era, when her great-grandmother was young. The melody and orchestration were haunting and she had an aperçu, a distinct feeling that she was born already knowing “April in Paris” and “Solamente una vez.” The vision grew, a beautiful, living lacework of natural patterns—the return of spring rains, the music returning, coming home to her brother again, bringing a boyfriend home again. She’d brought boyfriends home before, but none of them had been good for her. Did she only come home when things were already failing? Is this the meaning of my life? she wondered. In the same moment, she realized that whatever the meaning of her life was, she had to choose. An aperçu couldn’t tell her what to do.
Sleepy, she thought of other visions she’d had, like being on the bridge with her brother, the flood just under her feet. Without thinking, she stepped out onto the water and walked on it—how easy it was. She looked back for her brother but instead saw Andy, out on the water, arms flailing, because the water was slippery. He looked vulnerable, wearing nothing but his shorts and ball cap. She realized he was trying to rescue her. She yelled above the roar, ‘You really do love me, don’t you?’ His cap flew off and he fell scrambling onto his hands and knees. He didn’t answer, but kept coming. ‘It’s dangerous out here,’ she yelled, ‘but don’t worry, I’ve chosen an aperçu!’ He looked relieved, and lost. She wanted to laugh, he was so sweet and funny, and she stretched her hand toward him so they could be swept away together.
oOo
Robert Shapard’s book of mostly very short stories (and a few slightly longer ones), Bare Ana & Other Stories, won the W.S Porter Prize for Short Story Collection and will be published February 18th, 2025, by Regal House Publishing.
