After the winter of the coma when his wife sued for divorce, after the year of weekly grand mal seizures, Isaac had a job. Now he wanted his sons back—Ethan, who just turned five, and Paul, three and a half. The boys observed their father, if somewhat coolly, from photos posted on the wall behind…
This time the bombs came in the middle of Sunday mass. Leila heard the planes first, screaming from above. Then the first blast shook the entire church, pulled the walls and wooden pews and windows and ceramic-tiled roof off the building and turned them into a rain of fire and ash. Leila didn’t have time…
Leda would take the train. She hadn’t been on one in some time. A few days before, she read about a woman who killed herself on the track. She just lay there until it came. You never heard of that anymore—it seemed to have gone out of style. She didn’t think it was the best…
The first couple of pounds were hard and I cried a lot; I wasn’t used to so little food. I had signed up at one of those clinics, spent a lot of money on diet soup, and got weighed in front of a bunch of other fat people so when I wanted to eat a…
Ever since the California economy collapsed, people have been coming to our street at night and going through the trash. That sounds worse than it is—I guess if it’s recyclable, then it’s not really trash. They sort through the blue bins that were wheeled out to the curb during the day by the gardening crews….
The spring I turned ten my father told me we’d be spending a month in Maine with old friends. “They have a daughter who’s a little older than you, Josh. And it’s time I taught you to fish,” he said. “You remember the Izelins, don’t you?” I didn’t, not exactly. They’d stayed with us for…
“You’re going to leave your watch on?” “You’re leaving on your cross?”
[Editor’s Note: Clicking on the number for each footnote in the main body of the text will take you to the relevant note. After reading the footnote, please click on the number to the left of the footnote text to return to the section of the story you were reading.] Winston Hall-Miles Worked as…
I recently went to an appointment with a terrorist I used to know. He lives near me in New York City, and when he wrote me a letter that said Dear Sashi, come and see me, without thinking very much about it, I did. Even when I was a little girl in Sri Lanka, before…
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