This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Susan Choi read her story, Flashlight,

from the September 7th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Choi is the author of five novels, including My Education and Trust Exercise, which won the

National Book Award for Fiction in 2019. Now here's Susan Choi. Flashlight.

One thing I will always be grateful to your mother for.

She taught you to swim.

Why?

Not asked as a question, but groaned as a protest. Louisa does not want her father to talk about her mother. She is sick of her mother. Her mother can do nothing right. This is the theme of their new life in Louisa's opinion, that Louisa and her father are two fish who should leave her beached mother behind.

They're making their way down the breakwater, each careful step on the heaved granite blocks, one step farther from the shore.

Her mother is not even on the shore, seated smiling on the sand.

Her mother is shut inside the small, almost waterfront

house they are renting, most likely in bed. All summer, Louisa has played in the waves by herself

because her mother isn't well and her father is invariably dressed in a jacket and slacks.

Every day since they got here four weeks ago,

she's asked her father to walk the breakwater with her,

and tonight he has finally agreed.

Spray from the waves sometimes lands on the rocks,

so he's carefully rolled up the cuffs of his slacks,

though he's still wearing his hard polished shoes.

In one hand he holds a flashlight, which is not necessary.

...