Seeing the World, or at Least the State of Maine: Officer Friendly and Other Stories by Lewis Robinson

reviewed by Greg Mortimer

"Peter walked into the store in his wet bathing suit. He'd never been to Point Allison before - it was on the western edge of that remote, depressed part of Maine that didn't get much traffic." So begins Lewis Robinson's 2003 debut collection of stories, with a man who lives not just on the edge of a continent, but, as the opening story "The Diver" unfolds, on the edge of himself. As with Peter, Robinson throws his characters (mostly teenage or young adult men who all live in Maine) into experiences that test their reason, friendship, loyalty, and love - but ultimately awaken their sense of self-purpose, prodding them into the difficult point between complacence with their unextraordinary circumstances and a consciousness of how to live more inspired lives in an uninspiring setting.

In "The Toast", a young bartender named Roger visits his mother for a weekend, only to be brought to a seaside party whose bohemian guests inform him that he's been selected to shoot the terminally ill host - a rich, geriatric screwball. His initial bewilderment and hesitancy are eroded by the gathering's free-wheeling antics - guests in period costumes, a strange woman who tries to seduce him, flowing gin and tonic, and a cryptic note from his mother that reads, "IT'S OKAY. IT'S HOW THINGS ARE DONE HERE. YOU'RE THE BEST!" Robinson gives us an ending so unnervingly funny that it's unforgettable.

"Seeing the World" follows Sam, who at seventeen works in a movie theater but aspires to be a filmmaker. Johan, his 35 year-old coworker who also rents a room in Sam's mother's house, suggests they respond to a lucrative call for sea urchin divers near the Canadian border. Sam's mom doesn't like the idea. As in his other stories, Robinson's unpretentious prose fosters a simple empathy for his character's yearning:

"But you understand, don't you?" I asked. "This is something I have to do, for my movies."

"Jesus, Sam. How would catching sea urchins help anything?" [my mother] asked. She wore small silver hoop earrings and an orange scarf and was shuffling through papers, not even looking me in the eye. "What about your job at the Twilight?"

"I need to do something, Mom," I said.

But the best story in the collection is "Puckheads," which chronicles two pugilistic friends who are kicked off the hockey team and forced to join their prep school's drama club to calm them down. Cast in the spring production of "Oliver," William and his friend Kovach both fall for Christina, a beautiful but headstrong girl who plays the lead opposite William in the show. The two boys' friendship grows tenser, and William becomes afraid of how obtainable Christina actually is, or if he has the ability to win her. "My greatest fear was that she was someone I'd actually contend with," he says, "and that she'd find out I was a worm with nothing to offer, forcing me to slither back underground, alone. She was an actress - an artist - and I was a short ex-hockey player whose father taught geometry."

Some readers may find Robinson's themes or endings too familiar, where sons try to reconnect with and understand their fathers, or where a kind of emotional epiphany is a story's climax ("Peter felt exhilarated, reborn"; "It felt great to run on the catwalk, when you were so high up, looking out at the sky - it felt like you were flying"). But Robinson's willingness to give his stories endings that are shockingly or subtly uncertain, filled instead with impending possibility, is one of the best reasons to read this flawless collection. At the end of "Fighting at Night," where a boxer's coach and her husband raise money for him by charging admission to his sparring matches with the locals, Robinson's hero prepares to face a pro fighter, one of the best in Maine: "I couldn't see Brick Chickasaw," he says, "but he was there somewhere, limbering up, getting ready to climb the ring." You want him to follow through, but Robinson leaves you strangely content that you'll never know what happens next.