S.C. Alban’s story, “The Woman Inside: Sara” reminded me of a phrase from “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock: “to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.” Sara is walking her son to a park. We’re with her only a block or so, a wait at a stoplight. Were we to see her pass, we’d see only an ordinary and presumably happy mother and child, the face she has prepared for us and the rest of the world. But inside the woman is a story, a drama, worthy of a novel. Yet, Alban has deftly concentrated Sara’s history and her pain into a few intense pages that will leave you wondering about the tales behind the apparently indifferent countenances you pass as you go about your daily business. It’s a skillful and memorable piece of writing, is “The Woman Inside.” It takes only a few minutes to read, but it will stimulate your curiosity about those faces in the crowd for weeks afterward.
