My father was alone when he picked me up, which I found deeply disappointing. He explained that his new VW station wagon was tiny and Ernest was tall for fourteen—too tall to fit with my luggage in the back seat. I’d never had a brother before and I’d never been to South Africa before. The…
after Issa I think it’s enough just to sit and meditate, heedlessof the needs of others close to us and oftheir perpetual demands that seem to sap thestrength from us. My doorway and the morning deware all I need to make my day, and thatis where I’ll plan to be. And if that marksme misanthropic,…
I. Mostly it was a great job—a real joy, the nurse usually told people when they asked—but every once in a while there were things that shocked her—or, rather, things that when she had first come to the ward shocked her: now nothing did. Or almost nothing. Every once in a while something happened that…
The sky was low. His head was a vase ofsorrows he wanted to fill with blossoms.He stepped into the House of Wigs. The saleslady said, “Try this one on. It’s calledthe Mind of Fire. It turns ashes into flame.Prometheus was wearing it, they say, whenhe was punished by the Gods for his compassionand he barely…
The first time Merel and Fen spoke to their yuppie neighbors, the Yuppie Husband pointed at the Yuppie Wife and said, “This is Christy Parker. If you happen to mention her to anyone around town, make sure to use both her first and last names, cool? She’s the top realtor in the state and her…
And shall we describe the beautiful bike?It was a beautiful color the beautiful bike.What ever happened to the beautiful bike?The beautiful bike rode off into the beautiful sunset.Not by itself, surely. Who was pedaling the beautiful bike?You, you were the one pedaling the beautiful bikelast seen disappearing into the beautiful sunset. Now I remember the…
She steps up and out and stands in her yard. Ice crackling the mud and hoarfrost burning off the tall grass left unscythed beneath the trees. She bends and puts a finger to the ice, bends farther over and sniffs at it. Now here come the crows. Cawing and settling on the ridge line of…
As a child—“I mean really little,” Jean Thompson says, “teething and waking up at night crying”—her sleep-deprived parents put a stack of graham crackers in one corner of her crib and a stack of Little Golden Books in the other. “Whenever I woke up with sore gums, instead of screaming, I’d find my books and…
The beach house in Bodega Bay was supposed to be our escape, but it was just another place for us to be uncomfortable together. Every summer, we used to spend a couple weeks there. My father drove us in his coral car, a BMW sedan so glossy it was almost as if it wasn’t there;…
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