Her Sister's Helper

A WRITER'S WIT
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.
​William Golding
Born September 19, 1911                                 

New Yorker Fiction 2016

Geoff McFetridge

​September 19, 2016, Rivka Galchen, “How Can I Help?”: Hayley, twenty-four, works for a call center, and discovers she is pregnant with twins. ¶ The story’s narrator is Hayley’s sister, the youngest of three adult children and yet perhaps the most mature; she is also responsible for getting Hayley her job. The narrator claims several times that she is non-judgmental, yet backtracks and admits that she is a bit, attempting to help right Hayley’s ship. She even has the opportunity to transform her judgment into something positive. Earlier Hayley has asked the narrator to adopt one of the twins (after they arrive)—almost as if it were a puppy. At the time the transaction does not seem possible to the narrator until Hayley experiences some alarming symptoms and checks herself into the hospital without the help of her judgmental sister. When she shows up at the hospital to help Hayley, she says:

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“‘I’m here for Hayley Ward,’ I said. ‘I’m the nanny for the Ward twins.’ Though I had made no decision, I felt happy, expectant. I needed a family. And here Hayley was bringing one to me. Love was about practice, the book on happiness had said. Or maybe it hadn’t said that. I think it was that winning at squash was about practice, and then it turned out that victory had been insufficient? I didn’t know. Maybe I could learn on the job” (79).

​This quiet “relationship” story is satisfying for its full but brief exploration and yet “positive” but unsentimental ending. Galchen’s fiction, Little Labors, came out in May.
Illustration by Geoff McFetridge

NEXT TIME: My Book World

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