Zilpha and Jaron Earliwood, and their child Goldie moved from New York to an old run-down house in New Hampshire woods. They're the new arrivals to a rural community. And here begins a story of trying to fit in, with the community and be at ease with one another in a new space.
This is 'The Corn Woman, Her Husband, and Their Child' by Annie Proulx, published in The New Yorker on August 10, 2025.
It's a long story, not at all short. It traces the family in this South Northburn area through the years. It follows Goldie's growing up years, transitioning into a boy and becoming an adult. It also describes the disappearances of Jaron and and resilience of Zilpha. In an interview with the same journal, the author elaborated,
Newcomers will be assessed by their visible material possessions—the house itself, car, landscape changes—and their estimated financial worth. They will be closely watched by some to gauge whether or not they conform to local mores, fit into the prevailing order, or bring some new and valuable or interesting situation to the town. If, for instance, the Earliwoods had opened a pony farm with weekend rides for kids, they likely would have made many instant friends among parents with young children. If they had made their front yard into a croquet court, they might have attracted the friendship of the croquet community. If they were reclusive and put up tall board fences, they would seem haughty and superior. The Earliwoods put up fences of Being Different, Not Making an Effort to Fit In, and, of course, Trying to Bribe a Local Police Officer.
The family members all have different interests, one in textiles, one in the woods of New England, and one in volcanoes. Fitting into their new home is a many-aspects sort of thing. They would have to be okay with the neighbors, and also be with themselves in this new environment. They survived the first winter in the new home. Apparently Zilpha is already judged for the way she dresses, "a scarlet silk blouse and embroidered Turkish trousers were not the thing in South Northburn."
I had to laugh when I realized what the 'Corn Woman' in the title refers to. It's about Zilpha being cited by a traffic police officer for speeding because she said she was in a hurry to get home to cook the corn, and when taking the corn to show that she was for real, she was mistaken for trying to bribe the officer with sweet corn. She was let off with a warning for speeding, but officer really took that gesture of corn as a clumsy attempt to bribe him, and the whole community heard.
The pleasure of the new place did not wear off for Jaron. His attachment to the crumbling house and broken woodland deepened. He learned to keep that affection to himself rather than put up with Zilpha’s run-on complaints that, yes, the woods were beautiful but also full of “bugs and boring, scratchy bushes.” Inevitably, he and Zilpha slid back into their usual verbal barn burnings. Afterward, they cold-shouldered each other for days, and Zilpha’s smile at her husband was only a slight improvement on a primate’s bared-tooth display. As for Goldie, the breakfast atmosphere after a fight was so tense that she, trapped between parents crunching their granola with tight jaws, came to loathe the aroma of toasted pecans and dreamed of living with a different family in a distant place like Zimbabwe or Montana. Sometimes the fights ended in mutual tears and regrets, and then Jaron and Zilpha went together to the roadhouse in Cow Lumber Center, where a man in a tan suit sat at a piano and they drank gin, wept discreetly, ordered the tough, gray steak, and swore affection to each other while greasy glissandos of piano notes washed over them.
Goldie turned thirteen. She wanted to become a boy. So with a new wardrobe and hormone treats, she did. Goldie became he/him. The community was instantly suspicious. They didn't have time to do anything since Goldie got sent out of the town to a prep school in the west and onward to the University of Oregon of which he majored in geology to study about volcanoes.
Then Jaron disappeared while on a trip in Switzerland. Zilpha didn't understand why and how. But she didn't wallow in sadness or anything. There was also enough money in the trust accounts for her and Goldie to live off of. Zilpha returned home, and set up a business aligned to her interest, 'Moon Silk Rare & Antique Fabrics', turning her home into a showroom. But she and Goldie aren't terribly close at all.
Zilpha accepted Jaron as dead, and Goldie believed his father was alive but chosen to hid away somewhere. Anyway, mother and son reconnected. When Goldie realized that he had treatable Stage 0 lung cancer, it was time to visit his mother at his old home in South Northburn. The author's touch about the way Zilpha slices sandwiches at the end is poignant. Compare that to her rough hewn sandwiches with crusts on, and "whacked into rectangles", a presentation viewed as "trashy" by Jaron. Heh.
It's another story about a family through the decades. It's their story, yet we're privy to it. Do we judge? Do we compare? Or do we just read? Do we have takeaways of their experiences? Do we want to work on our relationships? That's the beauty about reading another family's story. They might be fiction, but yet they aren't.
Goldie and Zilpha had seen Jaron’s presence in his ephemeral marker strokes, in the red-oak height, in the weathervane. He was still with them, and who, in our land of illusions, can say that was not a fair assessment of a united and happy family?
Then Zilpha said, “Goldie, what about a quick bite of lunch?”
“Sounds good.”
They went into the kitchen together. Goldie sat at the little table near the window. Zilpha said, “Can you get the blue plates out of the sideboard? I’ll make us a couple of tuna-salad sandwiches,” as she cut the celery and onion, slivering in a bit of mango for piquancy. The sandwiches waited on the cutting board, the blue plates were ready. Zilpha glanced at Goldie. Her hand turned. She lifted the knife, trimmed the crusts and with a single clean stroke cut the sandwiches into catty-corner elegance.
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