Fiction

My appointment with the psychologist (Roberta) is at 5:00 p.m. It takes only ten minutes or so to walk there, but I decide to leave the house at 4:17 and take a circuitous route. Vigorous exercise helps mental health, too, says Roberta. Tacoma in November: dark, cold, wet. You notice the trees-laurels and firs, especially….

When Gilda tries to imagine what Phoebe Morrow looks like, she pictures Amelia Earhart in her rumpled jumpsuit, those fetching goggles and helmet rising straight from the cockpit, long scarf floating straight back, until Gilda realizes that what she's seeing isn't Phoebe or Amelia Earhart at all, but, rather, Snoopy as the Red Baron. Lately…

There was a great deal of anticipation surrounding the arrival of the new junior-high teacher. Olivia Gibbs: first, because she was new and from the East, which automatically lent her cultural superiority in the eyes of Mosly's self-effacing citizenry; and, secondly, because, from her resume, it was clear Miss Gibbs had travelled widely and would…

The two men had not met in years. They had never really known one another, except by reputation and through mutual friends. Both had received important prizes and fellowships in recent years, and so they greeted one another now with a certain wariness and tentative respect. Arthur's new home was something of a showpiece, really…

Arthur isn't convinced his wife is going shopping. She rarely buys anything. It's months until Christmas, nowhere near his birthday, yet this is the third Saturday in a row she's gone. "Shopping," she says, buttoning up her blouse. A warm mist from her shower floats into their bedroom. "Just shopping." It's a good sign she's…

We used to drive around in the car at night, we didn't have anything else to do. We didn't like to be in our apartment. There weren't places we could sit and do things. If I read my homework on the bed, there wasn't anywhere for my mother to go. The sofa in the living…

Elizabeth's next-door neighbors were having a barbecue. Though Elizabeth and Henry had lived in the house since his retirement three years before, they had only once eaten dinner next door, and the neighbors had only once visited them. After Henry's car accident, the Newcombs had called several times, but when Henry returned, they again only…

At the meeting a guy named Ben had talked about a slip he'd had six weeks earlier. Stopped at a package store and for no reason he knew, walked out with a six-pack. Drank it, called the wife who told him to get lost: went ahead and got lost. ended up in the Portsmouth P.D….

This is the Eastern shore. Light flatters the land. Nature is docile here. It is the time of year after the corn harvest and before the geese. It is my annual return. I live in Europe but my mother insists I come back each fall because each fall may be my father's last. The car…