American author Amy Hempel wrote the minimalist short story “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” in 1983. The story is dedicated to Jessica Wolfson, Hempel’s friend who died of a terminal illness. Originally published in TriQuarterly, the story appeared in her first short story collection, Reasons to Live, in 1985.

The story is written in the first-person point of view, with minimal detail provided about the narrator. The story is presumed to take place in the not-too-distant past, with references to real people (like Paul Anka, Tammy Wynette, and Bob Dylan), real songs and TV shows (like “Stand by Your Man” and Marcus Welby, M.D.), and real products (such as Wite-Out). The narrative unfolds through a series of vignettes, though subtle hints suggest they may be presented unchronologically; for example, the narration shifts between past and present tense across moments that otherwise appear to progress linearly.

The story opens in a hospital near Hollywood, California, where two unnamed female friends—“I” and “she”—are talking. The first-person narrator is visiting her friend, who is receiving long-term care because of a terminal disease. Her friend asks to talk only about trivial subjects, “useless stuff,” to distract her, and the narrator obliges, introducing celebrity gossip and popular culture trivia. One topic involves a science experiment where a chimp was taught sign language and used it to lie. Her friend finds this amusing, but when the narrator says there’s more to the story and that it’s sad, her friend objects to hearing more.

A camera is pointed at them from a ceiling mount, “the kind of camera banks use to photograph robbers” (1). The hospital staff are closely monitoring the room. When the narrator uncomfortably glances at the surveillance, her friend assures her she’ll get used to it. Also presumably per hospital protocol for the visit, the two of them wear medical face masks, and the narrator muses inwardly that the masks make them both look like “outlaws.” Her mask makes breathing uncomfortable. She isn’t used to it—unlike her friend, whose clever method of tying the mask straps signals she’s a seasoned expert.

As she introduces the narrator to one of the nurses, the friend refers to the narrator as “the Best Friend” (2). The word “the” seems aloof to the narrator, who suspects her friend feels closer to the nurse than to the narrator. When her friend remarks to the nurse about having known the narrator for a long time, the nurse replies that the two of them seem like sisters. The narrator feels a twinge of guilt; though she and her dying friend may seem close, it has still taken her two months to visit the hospital. She thinks to herself (as though half-explaining to the reader) that her delay was due to her fear not just of death but of looking at death, which itself (it seems to her) might invite death.

Sometime later, the narrator uncomfortably observes her friend, who is beautiful but visibly ill. The description of her friend’s body is cryptic, referring only to a leg and describing it as unpleasant to look at (though for unspecified reasons). Aside from this grim sight, however, her friend still strikes her as beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that “you look at her and understand the law that requires two people to be with the body at all times” (3)—an allusion to a morgue and the possibility of necrophiliac violence.

The friend turns to gallows humor in their conversations. At one point, she takes a phone cord and playfully wraps it around her neck, saying, “the end o’ the line” (3). Then she asks the narrator to remind her of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s projected stages of grief (Kübler-Ross was an American psychiatrist who studied treatment of terminal illness and is famous for pioneering the idea of the “five stages of grief”). The narrator stays quiet but privately surmises anger must be the next stage for her friend’s grief over her own death. Her friend comments that Kübler-Ross should have included resurrection as a stage. When the narrator tells a joke, her friend quips ironically, “Oh, you’re killing me” (3).

Later, a doctor visits—the Good Doctor, whom the friend likes because he joins in with her gallows humor. This doctor (who seems “a little in love” with the friend [4]) suggests the narrator should take a break and visit the beach across the street from the hospital. As the narrator leaves, her friend shouts after her, requesting she bring something back—anything, that is, but a magazine subscription (another facetious allusion to her imminent death, as she wouldn’t live to enjoy the full subscription).

At the beach, the narrator mostly ruminates about her friend. Her friend once told her a superstitious myth: that earthquakes can’t happen while you’re thinking about them (her friend then chanted earthquake three times, and the narrator repeated after her). This conversation took place after a big earthquake in 1972 when the two of them were in the same college dormitory (immediately following, her friend poured them mimosas and joked about it). After this terrifying experience, the narrator became more fearful and vigilant for signs of disaster, while her friend seemed afraid of nothing—not even plane flights. Indeed, her friend can brazenly munch on macadamia nuts through turbulence; the narrator is deathly scared of flying (though she recalls an odd dream where she enjoyed it). Nevertheless, she now senses a change in her friend, detecting fear in her. And the narrator believes her friend has good reason to be afraid. As she gazes at the ocean, she feels a gnawing sense of its danger (sharks and the undertow and who knows what else).

When she returns to the hospital room, she is surprised to see a second bed in the room and, after momentary confusion, realizes (with some dread) that her friend wants her to stay the night. After her friend starts chatting, the narrator remarks enigmatically that it is “earthquake weather.” Her friend doesn’t miss a beat—countering that the best way to avoid earthquakes is to not live in California—but she appears sickly. The two women sit together on the beds and watch a movie. For a moment, the narrator again feels close to her friend and begins to miss her even though she hasn’t yet died.

A nurse comes to give her friend an injection of some kind. The injection makes her friend sleepy; just by watching, the narrator feels sleepy, too. They both sleep. She dreams that her friend is an interior decorator and has decorated the narrator’s home: Everything is covered in colorful bunting and streamers.

When they’re both awake, the narrator tells her friend, “‘I have to go home’ […] I twisted my hands in the time-honored fashion of people in pain. I was supposed to offer something. The Best Friend. I could not even offer to come back” (9). As she tells her friend this, she feels like a pathetic failure—but she also feels a kind of excitement at the thought of finally leaving. A fantastic plan flashes through her mind:

I had a convertible in the parking lot. Once out of that room, I would drive it too fast down the Coast highway through the crab-smelling air. A stop in Malibu for sangria. The music in the place would be sexy and loud. They’d serve papaya and shrimp and watermelon ice. After dinner I would shimmer with lust, buzz with heat, life, and stay up all night (9).

Upon realizing the narrator really means to leave, her friend is upset. She tears off her own face mask and throws it down, leaving the room and heading down the corridor; concerned hospital staff call after her. When the narrator leaves the room to find her friend, nurses glare at her. She makes her way down the corridor to find that her friend has shut herself in a supply closet; two nurses are beside her, trying to comfort her.

The narrative shifts abruptly: “On the morning she was moved to the cemetery, the one where Al Jolson is buried, I enrolled in a ‘Fear of Flying’ class” (9). Looking back from some unspecified point after her friend’s death, the narrator shares an anecdote about the class when the instructor asked her to name her worst fear. She responded she was afraid the class wouldn’t cure her fear. She remains fearful in general, confessing that she sleeps with a glass of water on her nightstand so she can watch for the water to tremble, signaling an earthquake (she always feels as though she is shaking, and she isn’t sure if it’s the earth or her own body).

Her narration turns inward again, introspecting. Now that her friend has passed, the narrator can finally begin to process her grief and feelings of guilt. She recalls the sign-language-using chimp, the topic of one of her first superficial hospital conversations. She now tells the end of the chimp’s story, the sad part that her friend didn’t want to hear: The chimp eventually had a baby and tried to communicate with her newborn through sign language. However, the baby died—but the mother chimp still tried to sign to it, futilely asking it for a hug. As the narrator ponders this, she supposes the mother chimp was “fluent now in the language of grief” (10).