Stay Away from Matthew MaGill · Pineapple Street Studios and Audacy

Part 2 — Jenny

April 20, 2021·32 min·3 clips

Among Matthew's documents was a divorce agreement naming his first wife, 1970s Broadway star Jenny O'Hara.

The box starts on Eric's living room floor. Back in New York in the spring of 2016, he sits beside it and tries to pin down why Matthew's life keeps tugging at him. The first answer is almost funny in its plainness: Matthew seems cool, and the box is packed with old newspapers and odd paper traces, exactly the kind of stuff Eric already loves. Then Jenny changes the temperature of the story. She remembers a man outside with a mistreated monkey, a sudden purchase, and a dinner invitation that sounds made up until she tells it straight. She and Dorr kept the monkey for about a year and named him Sidney. After that, the story gets even stranger: Dorr had an uncle in Silver Springs, Florida, who wrestled alligators for Hollywood films and kept touring monkeys. It is absurd, but it lands close to the heart. Jenny and Dorr's early life starts to feel less like background and more like a spell Eric has wandered into. He admits some envy as Jenny talks about days on a 52-foot sailboat, bluefish lines trailing behind them. Dorr sounds capable, cooking what they caught, single-handing the boat, and living by sailing, eating, sleeping, and love. By the credits, the spell has come down a little, but the shift has happened. Matthew is no longer just a stranger in a box. Jenny's memories make him harder to flatten.

As heard by us

A box of keepsakes opens into Sidney, a sailboat, and a warm, unruly portrait of Jenny and Dorr.

The episode starts with Matthew McGill's box on the floor of a New York apartment and lets the objects do the work: old newspapers, maps, and anatomical drawings of rodents, all of it cluttered in a way that feels used rather than arranged.

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Why you'd press play

A box of odd keepsakes opens into old newspapers, monkey lore, sailboat days, and a love story with loose seams.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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