Fiction

  • Still Life

    The woman standing at the right is Alice Fitzsimons Coffey. Those in the portrait with her knew her as Allie, but I think of her as Mama. Her black hair is pulled away from her face and secured at the crown of her head. Her mouth is straight, and her cheeks, even in this old…

  • Pitch Memory

    The day after Thanksgiving my mother was arrested outside the front doors of the J.C. Penney's, Los Angeles, and when I went to get her I considered leaving her at the security desk. I thought I wanted her in jail. I wasn't surprised – I'd known all along she was a thief. Small things: a…

  • The New Yorker

    He wanted, above all, to crack The New Yorker. He could not deal in the right things, a lorgnette, an Italian garden, a grandmother, Mexico. Mexico is perfect because it is a proximate paradise. Situations come undone without the vexation that Europe can sometimes bring. The New Yorker watches for mise en scene. You feel…

  • 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…