William and Clare- The Old Impossible

Under the chapter titled William and Clare, there is a story called The Old Impossible. If you choose to read this story by itself, you might have a hard time following and understanding the relationship between William and Clare, but the stories before this one explain that they are both married, but have an intimate relationship behind the backs' of their spouses. This stories talks about a day shortly after Clare has an ankle injury and William and his wife, Isabel, come over to visit her. Isabel leaves for an hour, and the lovers are alone. During this hour, Clare's housekeeper's son, Nelson, comes to visit and play checkers, and at the end of the game, Nelson becomes injured after tripping and cutting his forehead on a coffee table. Clare and William clean Nelson up and send him on his way. The story ends with Clare and WIlliam splitting a Percocet and falling a sleep together on the couch.


The way this story, and the rest of the stories in the collection, is written is very unique. Although written in first person, it also gets inside the minds of the characters, without directly explaining which character each time. This was interesting, but also became confusing at times, especially in the earlier parts of the story when you don't know much about the characters. Bloom also seems to use a subtle technique of repetition; she mentions that the variations of friendships of Will, Clare, and their spouses all have nicknames for each other. Instead of mentioning these nicknames all at one time, she describes each character separately and includes the characters that have nicknames for them. These techniques all give the story a different tone than most of the short stories I have read before, but I also noticed some mistakes in how the story was written. There are sometimes errors in the tenses in which Bloom is inconsistent. When this was an issue, the reader has to go back and look it over again to try and make sense of it. Another huge problem in the story is that Bloom uses the wrong character's name for a section, then changes it back soon after. "William very gently puts Clare's feet aside, picks up the boy, and carries him into the kitchen...She runs cold water and hands an icy dish towel to Charles...Charles says, 'A couple of Band-Aids, Clare?'...."Clare wants to stay, but Nelson is nestled on the kitchen counter, resting so comfortably against William..." (pages 35-36). Earlier in the story, it is mentioned that Charles leaves the house to run errands and his return is never announced.

These quotes also present a symbol within the story. Nelson, the injured child, can be a symbol to represent the cracks in Clare's relationship with her husband, William's relationship with his wife, and Clare and William's relationship. The fact that Clare and William work together to help the child can be foreshadowing for them fixing their own problems and relationships in the future.