Excerpt from Landscape with Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A few years ago, some guy in cargo pants was caught tipping over one of the monument's pillars. At first, everyone thought he was doing it as an anti-vuvv protest. Later, it turned out he was just a douche.

My House in Summer,
a '70s Suburban

Our house is half gray shingles and half brown painted panels. The shingles look okay, but all the brown panels look like hell. The paint is cracked and fl aking off in long strips. What kind of dipshit would design a house half shingled and half painted? It looks confusing and it weathers unevenly.

My mom growls, "You say you want to be a painter someday. Why don't you repaint it? Pick up a brush and repaint it."

"I could, but I'm not that kind of 'painter.' "

"No, you're the irritating kind. Couldn't you be useful? You wouldn't have to repaint the shingles. You'd only have to repaint the, you know, painted parts."

I offer helpfully, "I've done landscape paintings of the house. I sat out there with my easel and did a whole series. I think of them not as architectural drawings, but as studies of light on uneven surfaces."

My mother closes her eyes. "You're not doing much to keep hope alive, Adam."

"Mr. Reilly liked them. I discovered that by painting the house face-on, instead of at an angle, I can create this really cool feeling of desolation and vacancy."

"Did you include the piles of bullshit you heap in every direction?"

My mother and I blow each other kisses and go our separate ways.

Now that I am bringing in a lot of the family's money, my mom can't really complain.

We also bring in a little money by having Chloe's family living in the downstairs. Chloe's older brother works part-time at the vuvv energy rendering facility. During the days, her dad sits in the backyard, throwing my old Nerf basketball into the plastic hoop. Just like my mother, he's out of work. In the fall, he raked for us.

My mom tries to be very upbeat about her job search. "The important thing to have is hope," she tells my little sister and me. Up until the vuvv came, she was a bank teller. Since she lost her job there, she's only worked for a month or a few weeks at a time. She worked at a grocery store, restocking the Lay's. She cleaned houses with a friend of hers, until her friend's list of clients shrank and there was no work left.

"You know the great thing about the job market right now?" she tells my sister and me. "Flexibility. Everything is really fl exible. You have to be willing to change like that." She slaps one palm off the other, like it's a skipping rock. "This is a great time for entrepreneurs."

She spends the day e-mailing people résumés. That doesn't take too long, so she spends the rest of the time pacing in circles, waiting for bosses to get back to her. You can tell she paces, because the nap of the living room rug runs backward in an oval, picking its way around the convertible sofa.

A Food Cart
in Front of a Strip Mall,
A Line of Customers

I did a sketch of a food cart where my mother was applying for a shift. She was waiting to talk to the cart's manager. I remember she jangled her keys up and down in rhythm while I drew the line of customers. "This'll be great," she said. "Restaurant jobs are hard to come by nowadays. No one's going out to eat anymore. But I have a good feeling about this." She pointed her keys at Heather's Bucket of Broth. "Everyone can afford a cup of chicken stock. This place is going to stick around. The line's a good sign. It's around the block. I think I have like a sixty/forty chance of getting the job. Maybe sixty-five/thirty-five."

I asked, "How much an hour?"

"I don't know. But I really think I can get this soup job. I can do this. I have a master's." She stared nervously at the tattooed girl who was working the window. "It's only part-time until I get something big. Like the admissions job at Qualiplay. I don't think they've filled it yet. At least, I sent them another e-mail and they didn't reply to tell me the job was filled. I have probably a thirty percent chance there. Okay, it's been a few months. Maybe twenty-five." She drew in her breath. "No, you should have seen the way that guy Brandon shook my hand after the interview. It's a solid thirty percent. . . . Thirty/seventy. That's not so bad. Almost one in three chances. Right? I wish these people would order and get out of the way."

Landscape with Invisible Hand Copyright © 2017 by M.T. Anderson. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.