Fiction

Not Modern

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….

The Eighth Day

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…

Blue Stone

Old man Trainer, they say, has finally gone around the bend. As he rides his Italian ten-speed bicycle down the long slope of curving asphalt roadway toward Red Branch, the farm women watch from their orchards, from screened veranda porches, and they say it: he's crazy. They shake their heads sadly. He's loopy, they say….

Fathers

"Why don't we forget about the ball," the young woman said. "Why don't you just take a drop?" The man, considerably older, was in the short rough just off the seventh fairway. He was walking carefully, looking down, swinging the head of a two-iron across the tops of wild flowers. "It's a Titleist," he said….

The Loneliness Quiz

You say that if I have comments on any of the questions I can write them on a separate piece of paper and send it with my answers. I have decided to do that. Question 1. I have checked these-      a. 55-60 (I'm 57)      b. Female      c. Suburbs      d. $20,000-$25,000 (I think that's right)      e….

Hog-Killing Weather

There are those images that lie around at the back of your mind, not demanding much attention and rarely getting any, sort of fossilized, as you might say. Then one morning, a bitter November morning, something catches the edge of your eye, still smoky with sleep, and you sit up in bed and squint into…

Offices of Instruction

When my mother read to us, her voice wasn't like a woman's voice. She sat on the couch and read chapters from long books. It was night, and my father was at work. He took the violin wrapped in chamois in the leather case and played at the hotel in the city. He walked across…

Bag Ladies Never Beg

Everything is in the bag. Everything.       Orange shawl necklace chemise cigar garter belt string banana umbrella sweater button superball duck socks             No. Incomplete.             Moldy half orange, torn yellowed shawl, pink rayon chemise, frayed flowered garter belt, two pieces of string…

Amanda

The press pass gets you in the door. You have a friend who works for Action News and he owes you for the time he took the MG out to Westchester and hit a ten-point buck deer. You know people who have been hunting for twenty years and have never seen a ten point buck….