TRANSGRESSIONS

Eleven tales in a third collection from veteran small-press author Bingham (Straight Man, 1996, etc.)

The central theme here is expressed by the protagonist of “The Big Bed”: “Liz wanted, the summer she turned sixty-four, to pass through unconditional love . . . to what appeared to be its inevitable other side: transgression.” Transgression, for Liz, amounts to arranging a threesome for her wanderer-lover in the misguided hope that she can keep him. But that’s not the first one. The first transgression comes in “Apricots,” when an aging college instructor finds herself, by her own design, jamming fruit alongside one of her students, a young man with tanned hands who is quite familiar with the sexual nature of the scenario. In “Benjamin,” an aging painter, languorous in fame and conceit, attends the unveiling of a signature work and meets a young woman—another transgression—who will reveal both his weakness and what strength he has left. An aging momma’s boy’s (“Stanley”) failure to outgrow the social conventions of the schoolyard leads to awkwardness on a date (a failure to transgress), which in turn leads to a pathological fascination with the woman who seems, awfully, to be perfect for him. The final piece (“The Splinter”) is a quiet story about another older woman who finds herself alone with another young man, gay this time and in for the equivalent of a foot-washing ceremony and discussion of the fickleness of men and the fleeting nature of human relations. Other tales are about a woman who decides to leave an ill lover (“Rat”) and a husband who tells a wife about a long-lost love in a cave in Crete (“Loving”). Bingham’s career is in its fifth decade; perhaps this accounts for Liz’s conclusion that “For what, after all . . . is the use of age if it doesn’t bring us to courage?”

Stylistically rooted in the conventional, probing at the transgressive.