Once there was a woman who was asked by a stranger to carry a foreign object with her onto a plane: When the stranger approached her, the woman was sitting at the edge of her chair a few feet from the gate out of which her plane was scheduled to leave. Her legs were crossed….
Mitchell’s daughter, who was twelve, accused him of loving his books but hating his customers. He didn’t hate them. He just didn’t like having to chat with them, or lead them to very clearly marked sections (if they couldn’t read signs, why were they buying books?) while they complained that nothing was arranged by title….
Olivia Alcuaz set down platters of spaghetti, tortillas, tomato and cucumber salad. She sat, lifted her chest as if she were in posture class, and launched into a tale about her cousin Enrique. Enrique had been driving down from Mexico when there were reports of a terrible crash involving a white car. Enrique’s car was…
Marie parks in the circular drive where the front lawn had been grass the summer before. But nothing so beautiful, nothing so inherently good, about grass. The paving job was done by her cousin William’s own company, which he’d started after deciding it was too difficult to make a living as a fisherman. Hippie-ish…
Mason Salisbury and his son, Moreau, were hunting by Little Sandy Creek several miles from where the stream ran through town and powered the Salisbury mill. Father and son carried old fowling pieces and hadn’t brought the dogs; they weren’t hunting so much as talking. Moreau was home from seminary in Cazenovia. He hadn’t wanted…
I escape. I board Northwest 18 to New York, via Tokyo. The engine starts, there is no going back. Yesterday, I taught the last English class and left my job of thirty-two years. Five weeks earlier, A-Ma died of heartbreak, within days of my father’s sudden death. He was ninety-five, she ninety. Unlike A-Ba, who…
When my brother tells me he’s been seeing a psychiatrist, I say, "That’s great, Jack." He says, "Why—you think I’m fucked up?" I say, "How’d you find him?" He says, "What makes you think my psychiatrist is a man?" Her name is Mary Pat Delmar, and Jack tells me she is brilliant. He says, "She…
"On any given day, Mother could have her pick of maids. The women, usually Hmong, would line the open markets and scurry after her, offering to carry her bags. Mother decided that she was going to plan a special meal. Father was coming home from the military soon. They would celebrate. The end of his…
They had no contract. It would be a simple transaction. A sublet in Tribeca for the month of September. Two bedrooms and a terrace: $3,000. They were almost forty years old, children of responsible, middle-class parents, and had created this mess out of their own sordid desires. Josh and Clarissa had lived for twelve years…
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