Graham Swift's story "Blushes," published in the Jan. 11, 2021 New Yorker, is a tale for our time, not because it is set in the current coronavirus pandemic, but because it is all about the uncertainties of gender.
The protagonist of the story is a lonely, retired doctor who has volunteered to go back to work in the prevailing crisis. His second wife -- "the love of his life" -- died two years previously and neither marriage resulted in children. And his mother, to whom he was exceptionally devoted, is also deceased.
On the day of the story, as he drives to work, earlier than necessary, along silent suburban roads, his thoughts revert to his childhood as they often do on such occasions. This time, he remembers an incident when he was 10 years old, sick in bed with his delightful mother stroking a foot or knee as a doctor examines him. It was just after his birthday party.
The doctor say's the boy's illness is not hard to identify: scarlet fever.
"Then his mother said, with a sly kind of smile, 'Unless he's just blushing.'"
The doctor, readers are told, "couldn't have known what special meaning this had. If his mother had been given to winking, she might at this point have winked."
After the doctor concludes his examination, declares it a minor case and writes a prescription, he gives some instructions among which is the following:
"As for blushing, young man, I can't cure that. You'll have to take care of that by yourself."
Although Swift's story is appropriately far from explicit in this delicate matter -- we are now back in about 1948 -- the source of the boy embarrassment, or even shame, stemmed from an incident in which his gender identity was called into question when he was teased by a woman who evidently had certain suspicions..
The young man is clearly a "mother's boy." His father, who soon divorces his mother, is depicted as uninterested and there is a hint his mother is unable to have another child -- perhaps the daughter she was hoping for.
His birthday party was in the afternoon of a working day and other mothers were the only grownups. The children were both boys and girls -- the girls and the mothers all wearing "party frocks." While there is no precise definition of a "frock," one can say with confidence that it is a dress that departs from the strictly utilitarian, sometimes significantly. You know one when you see one. It radiates desirable femininity,
The frock his mother wore, for instance, was "a mass of swirling red blooms on white, and in a delicate waft of perfume."
There was a moment "when the mothers all claimed him" and one wanted to have him -- like a piece of cake. And as she said it, a piece of the cake she was eating fell into the plunge of her cleavage, the neckline of her own floral dress cut low.
"So come on, Jim, you've got to tell us ... which one is your favorite? ... Which party frock?"
Confused -- was the woman talking about just a dress, or a girl in a particular dress? -- Jim doesn't know how to answer and begins blushing. With relief, he is gently saved from further questioning by his mother.
But his thoughts, about "party dresses, rustling, pressing, whispering around him" left him understanding that "for a moment, he'd been claimed by the women, even made to feel he belonged to them," and "he'd even seemed to see everything through their eyes."
Still driving along, Jim Cole, ponders what is means to "blush like a girl." Or a boy. And what about "that vexing question" the woman had put to him? Had it meant "that life itself might be a great choosing of girls. Girls! How delightful. What happiness."
Or, readers might easily suppose, had the woman --a certain Mrs. Simms -- perceived what we might now call a certain degree of gender fluidity within Jim and with her teasing, put her finger on it. Had he picked out a certain frock at the party as a favorite, would the next question have been would he like to wear it? Would he have liked to have been one of those delightful girls, or just like them, seeing the world as they did?"
The look his mother had on her face when she had told the doctor "unless he is just blushing" was meant for him, the boy had realized. She, too, knew and was happy with his latent femininity. It would make him a better person as a boy and a man, she no doubt thought and she was evidently right.
In the usual New Yorker author interview, Summers is, in effect, asked the wrong question: what drew him to writing a story set in the coronavirus crisis, and in response he talks rather vaguely about ghosts, eventually explaining that "ghost worlds, lost worlds" became the atmosphere of the story.
The interviewer doesn't press him to explain how his character felt drawn into the world of women amid all the frocks, and Summers doesn't himself go there on his own during the interview. That's a disappointment, but no disaster.
I think one can easily imagine the nature of at least some of the ghosts the author had in mind.
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