This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. I'm Debra Triesman,

fiction editor at The New Yorker. On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear

Tessa Hadley read her story Coda from the August 2, 2021 issue of the magazine. Hadley has published

ten books of fiction, including the story collection, bad dreams and other stories,

and the novel, Rate in the Day, which was published in 2019. She's a winner of the 2016

Wyndham Campbell literature prize. Now here's Tessa Hadley.

Coda. I went upstairs in my mother's house, telling her I was going to the bathroom.

There was a downstairs toilet, but it had a raised seat and a frame with arm rest so that she could

easily maneuver herself on and off after her hip replacement. And I was squeamish about it.

I couldn't help feeling irrationally that if I used it, I'd be contaminated with something,

with suffering, with old age. And anyway, I didn't really need to use the bathroom.

I went into the one upstairs that was free of any apparatus, closed the door and sat on the

toilet seat lid, then pressed the flush so that she could hear it. The truth was that every so

often I just needed to be alone for a few minutes, not making any effort or being filled up with

anyone else's idea of what I was. Don't get me wrong. First of all, my mother wasn't really

suffering. She was getting along pretty well for 92. She had magical powers, I sometimes thought,

of resilience and brightness. And I was glad to be with her during that time when we were all

locked down month after month because of the coronavirus. I couldn't have been happy living

away from her, worrying about how she was managing by herself, knowing that she must be lonely.

She had friends who would shop for her, plus a cleaner and someone to keep the garden tidy,

and these people were her friends too, although she paid them, but she was naturally sociable

and longed for company, any company, even mine. We had both lost our men, hers to death three years

...