Fiction

Deborah set about making herself useful from the minute she woke up, and most mornings she was first in the household to rise. She pushed off the bedcovers, slipped into her robe, and washed in the bathroom, dressing cautiously and wincing if a zipper or button clanked against the closet door; her bed was in…

I was fourteen that summer. August brought heat I had never known, and during the dreamlike drought of those days, I saw my father for the first time in my life. The tulip poplars had faded to yellow before September came. There was no rain for weeks, and the people’s faces along Eleventh Street wore…

The outer Cape in mid-October. A new tilt to the earth and its altered angle to the sun make for a suffusing clarity. Hopper’s light. With the tourists gone, the beaches have been reclaimed by gulls, and the road that traverses the peninsula is bare. At this time of year, delays occur behind school buses….

Finding things had always been her greatest pleasure. She was not systematic, not one of the ones who bought the local paper and mapped out a route between all of Saturday’s yard sales. What she loved was driving down the road and coming upon the sign-a rough paper bag tacked to a telephone pole, or…

Daniel was already home. “Hi,” he yelled from the kitchen as Em wrestled her overcoat onto a hanger in the overfull front closet. What the hell was he doing? Breaking rocks on the counter? “Hi,” she yelled back, unwinding her scarf. “Annie call?” Wham. Wham. Wham. “No,” Daniel called back. Wham. “What are you doing?”…

Her name was Margy, hard g, like aargh, or argonaut. Not soft g like margarine, and if someone called her that, she’d show them her disdain. Sometimes her father did it for a laugh, and she’d have to climb into his lap, press her nose to his, and stare at him until he stopped. She…

On the day before his fiftieth birthday, Bill Lander received a letter from a woman he had never heard of-Amber Harding-saying she’d be pleased to come to Wallace to meet him and be his birthday date. She noted the time she’d arrive on the train and said she’d have no trouble recognizing him. “I’ll just…

The old woman drowsed beneath an overhang of Orphan Annie hair. The blast of orange swirls and curlicues was blinding in the sun. Monsoon wondered how the old lady could sleep with all that brightness in her face. His backside was going numb against the pavement. Blinking, he scooched sideways for an up-close look at…

Elna had once said that beautifying was nothing more than grabbing Mother Nature by the throat and showing her who was boss. When Shelly arrived for her appointment, her friend was vigorously at work on an alabaster-complexioned teenager. Testimonies of terse, coiled ringlets spiraled downward at the girl’s ears and the back of her neck….