Fiction

The woman across the street bends over to pull a weed from her front steps. I set a fresh cup of coffee on the Help Wanted section and watch from my second-story kitchen window. She is married to a surgeon. It's a two-Mercedes family. She and the surgeon have two daughters. One married a lawyer…

1. Crazy? It's after midnight, and I kiss my wife's cheek and quietly slide out of bed: No lights, no alarm. Blue jeans and work boots and a flannel shirt, then out to the backyard. I pick a spot near the toolshed. Crazy, you think? Maybe, maybe not, but listen. This is the hour of…

There was a park at the bottom of the hill. Now that the leaves were down Marty could see the exercise stations and part of a tennis court from her kitchen window, through a web of black branches. She took another donut from the box on the table and ate it slowly, watching the people…

In my family, there were always two people. First, my mother and father. Carol and John. They danced. Hundreds of evenings at hundreds of parties in their twenties. A thousand times between songs her eyes completely closed when she leaned against him. He looked down at the top of her head; her part gleamed white,…

It is a soft afternoon. Spring. Blue and pale green. Just a little breeze occasionally laces the silvery warmth of the sun. They are in the yard at the back of the house, standing on the graveled drive that divides the lawn and her flower beds from the working yard of packed dirt and rough…

Her grandmother would put on her glasses to read labels when the girl went to the market with her. The grandmother would read the brand name and the price out loud to the girl. The girl could not read much herself, but sometimes she pretended she could. The grandmother would read a word, and the…

Katie had already made plans to go to Texas with the baby. Her going didn't have anything to do with Fisher hitting her. On the other hand, she wouldn't change her plans, even though her eyes were black in the morning; even though he cried and said he'd sat up all night in remorse, thinking…

The air conditioner was broken again. Cynthia unscrewed one side from the window and lost interest in fixing it. Now the celery was chopped and the lettuce, cored and cleaned, lay draining in a puddle of water on the sink. Anna hadn't moved her things out yet so Cynthia could still use the good knives….

I I was always interested in myself, but I never thought I went back so far. Joan and I talked about birth almost as soon as we met. I told her I believed in the importance of early experience. "What do you mean by early," she asked, "before puberty, before loss of innocence?" "Before age…