Guest Lecture
On Writing Fiction

Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the novels In Hovering Flight and Stranger Here Below and the short story collection Tell Me Everything and Other Stories, which is the winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in fiction. Her most recent work, The Beauty of Their Youth, a collection of short stories, was published in March 2020. In a piece that appeared online in Necessary Fiction, Hinnefeld talks about her processes in writing those stories. Below is an excerpt from the title story.

The Beauty of Their Youth

For the next two nights, their last ones on Naxos, Fran had nightmares in which she lost her daughter. In one, Miranda was five, the age she’d been when they had in fact lost her, briefly. It was during a family vacation, at a resort with a massive, and crowded, playground for the kids. They were there with Jeff’s big extended family, a situation that always made Fran tense. And that year, there was more: Jeff had, she knew, slept with someone several months before, while she and the kids were in Chicago visiting her parents.

A mistake, a misstep—he’d been beyond remorseful at their sessions with a marriage counselor, pleading with her to forgive him. She’d think it was all okay, she had managed to forgive him, it was all over at last, and then something would happen, and she’d snap. On this particular occasion, it was the walk along the beach to the big playground, where she could see his two sisters, already there, heads bent together, talking, gossiping—about her, Fran assumed, and the other in-laws. They only trusted their four blood siblings, it seemed to Fran, and they made it clear that everyone else would always be an outsider.

Their kids were older, running wild and free, and Fran and Jeff had let Ben run on to join his cousins. But Miranda was still with her parents when the fight began. Probably Fran said something about the sisters—“Oh God, I can’t face them yet, Jeff, not this early in the morning.” And he’d probably said something innocuous, like “Come on, Fran, they’re not that bad.”

That would have been enough, in those days, when she thought she was over it but she clearly wasn’t. She wouldn’t even know what hit her, and then she’d be crying, raging, screaming at him. At some point, in the middle of it all that morning on their way to the playground, they realized Miranda was gone.

That was when everything turned—that endless, horrifying hour when they couldn’t find her. Her brother hadn’t seen her, nor had any of her cousins. The playground area was huge, maybe an acre or more of molded plastic swings and slides designed to look like animals, all of them crawling with children, all become nightmare creatures suddenly. They found a security guard, and suddenly two more appeared, all asking about what Miranda looked like, what she was wearing; in her terror, Fran recalled—still ashamed at the memory— she couldn’t remember. And another shameful memory: In the midst of it all, she was sure she saw Jeff’s sisters—also searching madly, also baffled and afraid— pausing to give her smug, judgmental looks. And she’d felt a wave of pure, nauseating hatred for them.

Jeff stayed calm and focused. He ran back to their room, searching everywhere. He sent Ben and the cousins to search the bathrooms, the snack bar. Fran, meanwhile, kept wandering aimlessly, eventually crying, then sobbing. She was on the brink of full-blown hysteria when she knelt down to look inside a slide that she was wearing; in her terror, Fran recalled—still ashamed at the memory— she couldn’t remember. And another shameful memory: In the midst of it all, she was sure she saw Jeff’s sisters—also searching madly, also baffled and afraid— pausing to give her smug, judgmental looks. And she’d felt a wave of pure, nauseating hatred for them.

Jeff stayed calm and focused. He ran back to their room, searching everywhere. He sent Ben and the cousins to search the bathrooms, the snack bar. Fran, meanwhile, kept wandering aimlessly, eventually crying, then sobbing. She was on the brink of full-blown hysteria when she knelt down to look inside a slide that was painted to look like a caterpillar and caught a glimpse of Miranda’s sneaker.

She’d climbed up to the darkest part of the slide, tucking herself against the edge so kids could get around her. She’d been sitting there the whole time, crying.

“Stop fighting like that,” she said when Fran climbed up to her, clasping her little legs and laying her own head on her daughter’s tiny lap, crying with her.

And they did stop fighting. After that, Fran had put it behind her. She’d forced herself to let it go, for her daughter’s sake.