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

I'm Deborah T.

Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear T. Corragason Boyle read his story, The Shape of a Teardrop,

from the March 15th, 2021 issue of the magazine.

Boyle is the author of more than two dozen books of fiction, including the novels of The Terranauts

and Outside Looking In. A new novel, Talk to Me, will be published in September.

Now here's T. Corragason Boyle.

The shape of a teardrop.

Police dogs and fire hoses.

I'm not going anywhere.

They can come in with police dogs and fire hoses and I'll cling to the woodwork till I'm stripped

to the bone. They'd like that, wouldn't they? They're one and only child that never has to be

born in the first place, reduced to an artifact in his own room and the only home he's ever

known. A memento mori, a musculoskeletal structure without the muskilo. Shouting matches? If they want

shouting matches, well, I'm more than equal to the task. They're old and weak and ridiculous,

and they know it, with their stained teeth and droopy necks and faces like masks cut out of

sheets of sandpaper, with two holes poked for their glittery, hypercritical eyes to blaze through.

But what a fool I am. I thought the final straw was when they dropped me from the family plan, and I woke up one day with no cell service, and really, knock, knock, how do they expect me to get a job if I don't have a phone? Is that so hard to figure out? Does that take higher reasoning, putting fucking one and one together? The next final straw was when they brought in Lucas Ubinski, who was in high school with me

back in the time before time, and had him put a lock on the refrigerator and the pantry, too,

as if they were display cases at Tiffany's. Do you think that was extreme? How about the final,

final straw?

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