VOLUME 2 - 2007-2008
Stephen King's THE GINGERBREAD GIRL
Esquire, July 2007, vol. 148, No. 1, pgs. 87-110
Run, run as fast as you can . . . Since the death of her infant daughter, Emily has taken up running. Not jogging – running. Emily pounds the pavement like she’s Maniac Magee, with all the heroic self-destructiveness of a track star about to fight in one of World War I’s most tragic battles.
When Emily leaves her husband, Henry – presumably for actually saying things like the running is a classic psychological response to the pain – she finds sanctuary in Vermillion Key, Florida. No, it’s not a real place, although it feels like it should be. Partially that’s because King perfectly encapsulates the abandoned paradise feel that permeates so many Floridian islands, but it’s also because King can’t help but drop a novel’s worth of brand names and references in this twenty-page story. American Express enjoys a brief commercial break (“American Express was the prize, because with it she could get traveler’s checks”), while The Memory Keeper’s Daughter doesn’t fare quite as well (“a book she had tried and rejected . . . He has the reading tastes of a Dorset gray.”) Why not boost the tourist trade in a small Floridian island while you’re at it?
Not that The Gingerbread Girl is any sort of advertisement for Florida living. When the first seasonal resident moves in, the drawbridge operator makes sure to warn Emily: “Jim Pickering’s not a nice man . . . if he were to ask you to go cruising with him, I would definitely say no.” This may seem extraneous, given that the same drawbridge operator has just informed Emily that Pickering only comes to the Vermillion Key to give his dubious “nieces” a tour of the place and a cruise up the coast before Pickering heads back to Chicago. Have no fear – the story’s in King’s capable (if unsubtle) hands.
Particularly unsubtle is Pickering, as he leaves this year’s “niece” dead in the trunk of his car, her bloody hair a red flag. Emily snaps out of the lethargic daze that has caused her to spurn newspapers, television, or human contact just in time to investigate the dead girl, and receives a blow to the head for her trouble, courtesy of Pickering. King takes care to remind us that this is no movie, but it can’t help but feel like King’s watched one too many comic-book adaptations as Pickering and Emily sling one-liners at each other. Prompted by Pickering’s menacing “Stop running away and hold still!” demand, Emily even pauses to give the homicidal lunatic the middle finger.
The story ends, predictably, with a stand-off between Pickering and Emily. But it’s not the stale plot that feels out of place here – indeed, King manages to pack a powder keg worth of action in such a small word count, and the writing is King’s usual blend of shocking gore and sneaky lyricism.
Instead, it’s the little things. Emily and Henry are the kind of responsible couple who invest money for their daughter’s college fund from the very beginning of their marriage (four years of trying and nine months of gestation doesn’t allow for much wiggle room, after all, in a six-year union), but Emily is young enough that she apparently eschewed the Olsen twins for Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two by four that King wields throughout the entire story is Emily’s love for running . . . and yet, when she’s racing against time and her health and, oh yeah, a madman wielding scissors, she does the unthinkable. She stops.
One wishes that Stephen King had stopped, as well, before he allowed the grisly action in the story to run away with the real point. At the heart of The Gingerbread Girl is a woman aching with grief, unable to face her broken marriage or the memory of her dead daughter. The more compelling story lies, not with a woman truly fighting for her life, but rather with a woman fighting to truly live. It’s a fine distinction, and one that King alludes to in poignant imagery drizzled throughout the story like evening rain in Florida. If only King had focused less on the psycho and more on the psyche, perhaps The Gingerbread Girl would feel more like an introspective cross-country race, and less like a hasty sprint.
- Alicia Thompson