SORRY I WORRIED YOU

A third collection from Fincke (Emergency Calls, 1996, etc.) is as steady as a hammer, nailing the emotional shifts of men hovering over the half-century mark.

The title piece of the 12 stories here sets the terrain: Ben works at a bookstore and spends his Friday nights drinking beer at his friend Jerry’s clubhouse—a shrine, though from 150 miles away, to Pittsburgh sports. Since he turned 50, Ben’s annual visits to his physician, Dr. Parrish, have included the invasive exam that checks the prostate. This time, she suggests further tests, and his worries have a new focus (“He needed to shut up about the 1950s. He had color in his hair; he had a flat stomach; concentrate your stories in the ’60s, he said to himself . . . .”). Mostly, Fincke’s straightforward narratives open up to glimmers of insight, as when Ben thinks, “Everything . . . was so dreadful . . . it couldn’t be spoken. It didn’t matter that he suspected everybody carried such a secret, and that the only thing that prevented them from hating each other was silence.” Other men cope with vasovagal incidents, brain surgery, a mother’s death, a daughter’s vulnerability to danger. In “Gatsby, Tender, Paradise,” a father’s concern about the attentiveness of his teenaged daughter’s English teacher is misplaced, but it turns out his protective instincts are right. “The History of Staying Awake” throws a curveball at an insomniac who sets out at two a.m. to buy ice cream and ends up in the middle of a domestic dispute between a couple in the housing projects. The wife, Tanya, jumps into his van and insists he drive her to her mother to escape Damon, who tracks down the “hero” for revenge. Fincke’s description of Damon is typical of his precision: “His hair, short on the sides, hung down to his shoulders in the back. It looked like the kind of haircut you’d give a small dog, one of those breeds that snarls at your shoes.”

Consistent and moving tales, a winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award (also see Sutton, below).