Jessika Bouvier: How long ago did you start working on it? How did the story come about?

Jessica Barksdale Inclán: Well, not surprisingly — truth be told, I call it my divorce story.

JB: A little autofiction — we love that.

JBI: It's a little auto, but also not. I'm not that character, and the details of my divorce were different in some ways — very different, actually. I have no neighbor growing corn, for one thing. But the feelings inside the character were probably real in some ways. It was a container, a very useful container for some feelings.

JB: That makes sense, and it fits well with one of the broad topics I wanted to discuss — this idea that the end of something is the beginning of something new. I don't know if that resonates with where you saw the story going, or what you wanted it to be about.

JBI: When I started, I had no idea what was happening at all. It was one of those fun stories. I do garden a lot, so I have a lot of garden imagery as metaphor. But I thought, corn is also a creepy thing. We use cornfields both positively and negatively, and corn itself is very sharp. When you walk through a field, it's painful, it's arduous to get to the food product.

I thought there was something great about the idea of it starting, being harvested during the story, and then reaching a culmination — a cycle of a garden. That obsesses me, as well as the story of the divorce. It's not about the litany of events. It's about the choice. She has decided to start anew.

JB: You mentioned you garden a lot, and there's so much plant life and nature present. it's very visceral, I think, in the way that not just May but other characters interact with it. 

JBI: That part of the story was actually true. My neighbor's partner up and moved, and I didn't know why, so I started to invent reasons. She did say that one line to me, though. She said, "This is [his] house."

JB: What an interesting line to draw, to recuse herself of all responsibility like that.

JBI: They ended up breaking up. My real neighbor did move there, then they broke up, and his real ex-wife moved back and is living somewhere nearby. I could not have made that up.

In the story, May and Dave definitely grew into something that wasn't real. What is Dave doing with May? I have no idea. It was fun to write into something that she didn't understand, and honestly, I didn't know what else was going on either.

JB: That aspect really worked for me, because it didn't feel like a manufactured intrigue. It genuinely felt like: there are just some things you don't know, and you have to speculate. That felt very honest. It was one of the things I loved most about the story, how many different things could be true.

JBI: Who knows? And lately, I've been thinking a lot about just saying yes to things — doing a lot of things scared. A friend wanted to do a really hard race in a double canoe and I said yes, did it, survived. This story has that same energy: when do you get to the yes part? No, how can this be happening? No, I don't understand. No, no, no. And then you have to say yes, because — what else can you do?

JB: That was really embodied from the very first line. The nature of the proposition is that at some point it's just inevitable. How do you say no to: "Do you want to see my corn?"

JBI: You've got to go into the backyard and see the corn. How much time is left to seed the corn? This is the time to say yes to weird things and go forward. She's said yes to things that have been bad for her — now she can try to find the things that will be good for her. Ultimately, hopefully. I definitely wish the best for May. At the end, we get the sense that she's at a place where she can choose yes — she can move forward with some level of acceptance, which I really loved.

JB: I want to put a somewhat selfish lens on something, because I love thinking about labor within a story, what it means, how it functions and interacts with the characters. We see May doing the physical labor of the house, the garden, curating a space that is wholly her own for the first time. And there's also this emotional and spiritual labor of curating a life. Even the sports she chooses — dragon boating seems very physically intimidating to me.

JBI: It is, especially when you've never done it. And even once you have, it's so physically taxing.

I think about this topic from where I am now — I'm 64, I was a professor for 32 years, and I've retired from that, though I still teach online. I don't feel retired. But a lot of my friends are semi- or fully retired, and so maybe work is taking on a different meaning for me. Maybe working in the yard is work. Maybe just living is work, as opposed to getting up every day and going to an office. It's also that so much work happens online now. May’s husband's work was online when he had it. He was theoretically at work, but also theoretically at home.

It's interesting, because I really do feel like I'm always working — and yet I let that perspective go for these characters. Even the coach isn't really coaching; he's just talking. I didn't even realize I'd done that until you pointed it out.

JB: That's always the fun of an interview — getting to see things you didn't know were there. Even the hobbies in the story feel like work: dragon boating, gardening, harvesting, yard work. We see Deanna as the one doing the mowing whenever she's around.

That resonated with the emotional situations they're both in. In both of these parallel marriages, the women are at the helm. They're victims of their circumstances in some ways, but they're also the ones driving whatever emotional connection exists. And Deanna, even when she's off the page, in Michigan, she's the one who eventually instigates Dave's departure. He gets pulled along. The women are in control of the story, which feels very true to life.

JBI: I agree. Women are often the ones instigating, and men often follow — or don't.

JB: Yes, and I think that's where the tension lives. The women guide the story; their choices create the consequences everyone else inhabits. That's what made me pay such close attention to the way May thinks about the other women, too.

JBI: Definitely, especially with the younger girlfriend of the coach — Mark, I think? May is comparing herself to that woman, but really she's almost comparing herself to who she was 20 years ago. She's bemoaning how she's changed, thinking about these women who are still so beautiful, and she's not feeling that way. She's gauging herself by looking at other people, which — when you pointed that out, I thought: why is she doing that? But I think it's because she doesn't know who she is anymore. Who the hell am I, now that I'm not young? Now that I'm not who I was before I got married?

JB: It made a lot of sense when we got to the section about her sex life within the marriage — her husband was always the one defining who she was, telling her whether she was meeting some standard. And after the divorce, that instruction disappears. She's not required by anyone but herself. The comparison felt learned. And I was so grateful for the moment when her friend essentially calls her out on it. She's talking about the coach like he's too old and balding, and the friend says: he's your age. He's completely age-appropriate. Don't compare yourself to your younger self. I loved that it was another woman who pulled her out of that.

JBI: You helped me with that, actually — I think that line came from thinking about what my friend Chris would say to me. She would just cut right through it: what are you talking about? You need none of these men. And she doesn't want either of these men. They're stages of grief, or stages of recovery, for May. She has to go through this — with both Dave and Mark — in order to figure something out and move on.

JB: Right, and the transformation is never linear. That's what I loved about her — she's messy, which is very real. Do you feel that the story draws a distinction between May’s loneliness and her solitude?

JBI: I think about that a lot. I'm not always alone, and I'm certainly not lonely; my older son is here, though he has a girlfriend, so he's not really here. Sometimes I wander around thinking: this feels just great. But then there are cultural norms that say you should be partnered, that a couple has more validity in the world than a single person. And when you get older, the questions become: will I die alone? Am I going to do this by myself? I think May is negotiating both being lonely and being alone. But then she has her dogs and John Ludlow, and that's looking pretty good.

JB: I love how the story isn't overly precious about non-human companionship — it just grows in validity. How uncomplicated, and yet equally intimate, that connection can be. And of all the men in the story she's yearning for, it's the cat she yearns for most.

JBI: And the cat yearns back!

JB: Which is kind of all she's asking for. To be seen, to be loved, to be wanted. I love that dynamic. And John picked her.

JBI: He picked her and moved himself right in.

The idea of desire is the one topic I keep coming back to. People told me when I was younger that women become invisible as they age, and I thought, what? And then as you get older you go: oh, now I understand. And now, with the last of the baby boomers and Gen X entering menopause and post-menopause, it's becoming clearer that there's just no great manual for what happens to your body, your desire, all of it.

I found it astounding when I was told I didn't really need to go back to the gynecologist anymore unless there was a problem. Like: see you later, goodbye. From the time you get your period, through childbirth, and then as you start — as I always call it — to shrivel up, you're in the system. You're part of the medical world, your conditions matter. And then suddenly, you're not.

JB: It's hard not to feel discarded.

JBI: Exactly. I came here every year for all these years, and now I'm just discarded? And we don't glorify senior love very much either. There are more movies lately that push back on the idea that you just shrivel up and die, that you can still find love, passion, companionship, something enduring. My novel coming out (What They Found At The Lake) is about three friends in their late 60s to mid-70s, and it's this idea that people are alive until they're not, and they still feel everything. But there's a point where you have to reconcile what you feel and what you want. Do you want passion? It's still possible. Do you want love? Still possible. Or are you ready to fold up your party tent and say, I'm done?

Some people say that, and some people don't. I like how May is waffling, and how her friend helps her ground herself in that waffling: what do you want, anyway? Do you want anyone? Do you need anyone? She doesn't know at the end, but she's going to find out.

JB: It parallels what you were saying earlier: she's not part of any of these systems anymore. Not the health system, not marriage. There's nothing left to do but make choices. And I imagine that's very strange: to suddenly be in a situation where you're only ever expected to do what you want to do. So much of femininity when you're young is defined by expectations and instructions. When all of that disappears, what do you do with that absence of authority?

JBI: Right — how do you find your own way of telling yourself what to do? And conveniently, her son is across the world. Her family is just gone. Your role as a mother, not to mention your involvement in all your child's systems — their schooling, their health, their activities — that disappears too. The child is gone, the husband is gone, the job is diminished, the friend lives across the world, the neighbor moves away. May is left with: what do I do?

JB: She's living in a kind of anarchic leisure; no system requires anything of her. 

You mentioned bringing portions of this story to a workshop. Have you been surprised by the way readers respond to this subject matter: women growing older, having to evolve their identity again?

JBI: In terms of reader response, my next novel is a mystery, actually. Like The Thursday Murder Club, which is on Netflix now, mine follows three women who are on a walk and find a dead body and decide they're going to solve it. They're dealing with everything we've talked about: family, jobs, husbands. Readers have really responded to that.

One character's husband is in a memory care unit and she meets a man at a support group — both their spouses are alive but effectively gone. Another husband leaves her for a younger woman who's 50, which is still traumatic. The third is a lesbian whose wife died. They're each in different stages of loss. Readers have genuinely appreciated that I focus on a time of life that doesn't seem interesting to a lot of people, and frankly, in the publishing world, I don't bring what the big five is looking for right now.

I'm doing well with my poetry and short stories. People respond to them. But when I came with a package about these three women, it was a different reaction. I ended up going with a smaller indie publisher. We'll see if we can bring more awareness to this corner of literature.

I keep thinking about a book called A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska. A "round-heeled woman" was slang for a prostitute. Jane became widowed and decided she was going to sleep with a lot of people — a round-heeled woman in spirit, not profession — and she wrote a memoir about it. Maybe 15 or 20 years ago now. Every so often a book about older women or older people breaks through: that one, A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman), which I believe is a Swedish novel about a man who escapes his assisted living community and goes on a journey. But mostly, people like to read about younger people.

With younger characters, there's so much that can still happen. You can age them 10 or 15 years within a novel and it's still going. The future feels less shadowed by mortality.

JB: At Chatterbox!, we like to close with a silly question. Fuck, Marry, Kill: cornbead, succotash, elote. 

JBI: I'd have to marry cornbread. It's a staple, it goes with everything, you can bring it anywhere, it's universally loved. You're not going to get into a fight over cornbread. There's some debate — do you go polenta, a coarser grind, semolina — but ultimately, cornbread is the one.

I think I'd kill both succotash and elote. Succotash has lima beans in it, doesn't it?

JB: Traditionally, yes.

JBI: The texture of a lima bean — it's got to go. And with elote: I just have a complicated feeling about it. So — I will fuck none of them. Unless you'd offered polenta. I would totally fuck polenta.

JB: You can absolutely fuck polenta.

JBI: Then: fuck polenta, marry cornbread, kill succotash and elote.