Jim Carlyle drove down Glenmore’s main street looking for a parking spot in a manner that suggested he’d never burned out a clutch in sixty years of driving and wasn’t about to start now. He found a place and swung the Utility’s wheel so that he rolled in perfectly against the kerb. Nothing wrong with…
Translated by Angela Rodel The Runt had no luck with fathers at all. On the whole, nobody here had any luck with parents, but most of them were always crying for their mothers. The orphanage that they came from was itself called “Mother and Child” for some unknown reason. First, there were no mothers there….
Childhood is self-enclosed and timeless. In adolescence, a moment comes when we sense the future, if only vaguely and ecstatically. For me, that happened on a boarding school trip to Quebec. It was 1962 and I was fourteen. The circumstances of the excursion have gotten fuzzy in my memory, but I do know we traveled…
Beth tried to reach her daughter first thing on Sunday morning. When her daughter didn’t answer the phone, a feeling of alarm arose and, like a weather balloon, kept sending Beth disquieting signals all day. Beth and Vanessa had a relationship marked by an almost occult sense of the other’s welfare. Over the years, mother…
I. The second dawn rose in the east, at nine in the morning. Hiroshi had never before seen such radiance. It rivaled the sun. He stood on deck with Yoshi, and the light crushed them beneath its purity. Hiroshi closed his eyes, but even so, the brightness pierced his head. The other crew members clamored…
She knows the alcohol is kicking in when she thinks, wistfully, “Dear old Shakespeare!”
I say: “I guess I’d better take your name…” She says: “It’s Shelley…as in Byron, Keats, and Shelley.” “Hah!…I’m glad you like them too!” I say. “Oh, yes,” says Shelley. “I wish my name were Keats, but it’s not…” I add. “I do too!” she responds. “Thank you for choosing Verizon Wireless.”
I thought the booklet said hands at ten and two on the wheel. But maybe that’s because I like to drive with my hands at ten and two. But the booklet actually says: hands at nine and three. Well, my husband usually drives with his hands at eleven and one, which makes me nervous. And…
“Caramel syrup or caramel drizzle?” “Sorry?” “Caramel syrup or caramel drizzle?” This is an overheard conversation. I look up: it is a tall, slim woman with a ponytail, buying the drink at a Starbucks counter. She is wearing a dark blue uniform. We are in an airport. She is probably a flight attendant. Long pause…
No products in the cart.