Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

This collection contains 22 short stories set mostly in the American West, depicting working-class and middle-class characters in moments of quiet crisis. The stories share recurring concerns: marital strain, economic anxiety, loneliness, and the sense that ordinary life can shift without warning into something strange and unmanageable.

In "Fat," a waitress tells her friend Rita about serving an enormously fat man who speaks of himself using the plural "we." Her coworkers mock him, but she feels an inexplicable tenderness. That night, she suddenly feels herself becoming tremendously fat, so large that her partner Rudy seems tiny. She senses her life is going to change.

"Neighbors" follows Bill and Arlene Miller, who feel their lives are dull compared to their neighbors Jim and Harriet Stone. When the Stones leave on a trip, the Millers begin lingering in their apartment, drinking their whiskey, and trying on their clothes. When Arlene locks the key inside, they lean against the sealed door, holding each other.

In "The Idea," a woman and her husband Vern regularly spy on a neighbor who watches his own wife undress through their bedroom window. The narrator expresses outrage while ignoring her own voyeurism, then discovers ants in the kitchen and sprays insecticide in growing anxiety.

"They're Not Your Husband" centers on Earl Ober, an unemployed salesman who overhears men mocking his wife Doreen's body at the coffee shop where she waitresses. He pressures Doreen to diet and tracks her weight daily, then returns to the shop and tries to get a stranger to admire her figure. Doreen identifies him flatly as her husband.

In "Are You a Doctor?" Arnold Breit, home alone while his wife travels, receives a call from Clara Holt, a stranger who pleads for him to visit her apartment. When he arrives, she cannot explain why she called. He kisses her awkwardly and leaves. At home, his wife calls, and he cannot respond normally.

"The Father" is a brief scene in which a family debates whom a newborn baby resembles. When one daughter says the baby looks like Daddy, another asks who Daddy looks like. The father sits in the kitchen with his back to them, his face white and expressionless.

In "Nobody Said Anything," a boy fakes illness to skip school while his parents fight. He goes fishing, teams up with another boy to wrestle a huge fish from a creek, and they cut it in half when they cannot agree who keeps it. He brings his portion home. His mother recoils, and his father screams at him to throw it away.

"Sixty Acres" follows Lee Waite, a young Native American man living on reservation land, who confronts two boys hunting ducks on his property without permission. He confiscates their ducks but lets them go, feeling he has failed. At home, he slides down the wall to a squat, cups his hands over his ears, and hears a roaring like wind from a seashell.

In "What's in Alaska?" Carl and Mary spend an evening at their friends Jack and Helen's house smoking marijuana. Mary mentions a job possibility in Fairbanks. Carl glimpses Mary embracing Jack in the kitchen. At home, he lies awake gripping a shoe, watching for something he thinks he sees in the dark hallway.

"Night School" features a recently separated man who meets two women at a bar who want him to drive them to their reading teacher's house. His father tells him his mother took the car keys. The women leave cursing. He walks to the restaurant where his mother works, planning to eat and return to his cot.

In "Collectors," an unemployed man waiting for mail is visited by Aubrey Bell, a door-to-door vacuum demonstrator who performs an elaborate cleaning. When a letter drops through the mail slot, Bell pockets it and leaves, taking the narrator's mail with him.

"What Do You Do in San Francisco?" is narrated by Henry Robinson, a postman in Arcata, California, who observes a troubled young couple, the Marstons, and their three children. The wife leaves with another man. Marston waits desperately for the mail each day. When a letter in a woman's handwriting arrives, he goes pale and retreats inside. Days later, he is gone without a forwarding address.

In "The Student's Wife," Nan lies awake all night while her husband Mike, a graduate student, sleeps. She begs him to stay awake, lists the things she loves, and sits alone through the dark hours. At dawn she watches a sunrise she finds terrible, then kneels beside the bed and prays for God to help them.

"Put Yourself in My Shoes" follows Myers, a would-be novelist, and his wife Paula on an unannounced holiday visit to Edgar and Hilda Morgan, in whose house the Myerses once lived as renters. Edgar tells stories meant as writing material, including one about a widow who returned Hilda's lost purse without the cash, later died on their couch, and had the missing money in her own purse all along. Myers laughs. Enraged, Edgar accuses the Myerses of violating their lease and stealing records. The story ends with Myers at "the very end of a story" (152).

In "Jerry and Molly and Sam," Al, facing layoffs and carrying on an affair, secretly abandons the family dog Suzy. Guilt overwhelms him, and he races back. He finds the dog near a fence and crouches down calling, but she wags her tail, gets up, and walks out of sight.

"Why, Honey?" is a letter from a mother living in hiding, recounting her son's lifelong compulsive lying. As a teenager, he lies about his paycheck, his whereabouts, and a blood-soaked shirt in his car. He eventually enters politics and becomes governor. She lives under a changed name, afraid of what her powerful son might do.

"The Ducks" depicts a young couple in a mill town. The husband returns home after a coworker dies suddenly of a heart attack on the mill floor. They drink beer and try to reconnect, but he cannot. He lies awake hearing only rain and the sound of machinery stopping.

In "How About This?" Harry and Emily drive to her father's abandoned property in rural Washington, hoping for a fresh start. The house has no electricity or plumbing. Harry realizes he cannot stay. Emily does cartwheels and tells him they will just have to love each other.

"Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarets" follows Evan Hamilton, two days into quitting smoking, into a neighborhood dispute over a wrecked bicycle that escalates into a fistfight with another father. At bedtime, his son Roger says he is lonesome about never having known Hamilton as a boy.

In "What Is It?" Leo and his wife Toni must sell their convertible before a bankruptcy hearing. Toni leaves to sell it and does not return until near dawn, intoxicated. Leo undresses her, finds the check, and gets into bed. He traces the stretch marks on her hip, like roads in her flesh.

"Signals" follows a couple, Wayne and Caroline, to a restaurant for her birthday. Their conversation collapses into hostility. Wayne asks if there is a chance for them. She cannot say. The restaurant owner, Aldo, kisses Caroline's wrist and presents her with a rose.

The title story, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" traces Ralph Wyman, a high-school teacher, through the night after his wife Marian reveals she slept with a man named Mitchell Anderson at a party two years earlier. Ralph screams, pushes her away, and flees into the night. He wanders through bars, enters a poker game, and is mugged near the pier. At dawn he returns bruised. Marian pleads through the locked bathroom door. He says, "Will you please be quiet, please?" (250). He draws a bath and then gets into bed. Marian lies beside him and strokes his back. He tenses, then lets go, turning and turning in what might have been a stupendous sleep, marveling at the impossible changes moving over him.