Ghost Stories

In “Agnes of Iowa,” a short story in Lorrie Moore’s 1998 collection Birds of America, we meet a couple from Iowa visiting New York City. Their marriage has been failing for quite some time. The protagonist, Agnes, has grown impatient with the “pathetic third-hand manner in which the large issues and conversations of the world were encountered.” Once they’re in New York, though, things seem to get better. The couple window-shop and roller-skate in Central Park and gamely behave like normal happy tourists. Agnes marvels at the city’s sense of humor and even finds some humor in her own life: The city “seemed to embrace and alleviate the hard sadness of people having used one another and marred the earth the way they had.” At one point, as Agnes and her husband, Joe, are sitting in a cafe, he turns to her and makes a clown face. Agnes is taken aback, horrified rather than amused, and when she attempts to imitate him, to show him how he looks, she produces “a look of such monstrous emptiness and stupidity” that Joe bursts out laughing. Their relationship is doomed and Agnes has become embittered. But by the end, they can at least have a laugh at things.