When the first of the last coughs come, I take my father to the sea. I know he likes it there. Every time memory resurfaces and reveals his previous life—before my mother, before me, long before the sting of IV lines and the smell of disinfectant—he talks about all...
We were sitting in the stadium waiting for the Face. It came at 6:45, right-center field, or that’s what I’d heard because I hadn’t seen it yet. I was there with my son and one of his friends from the city league—Kierran or Kellan, scrawny kid from the west side....
Look at their body language: Henry grips the wheel with his left hand while the other chops at the air. Marilyn stares out the window. They are driving down a two-lane road charred silver by the summer moon. Without saying their goodbyes, they’ve left a house that...
I was in her backyard, the tiny fenced-in yard behind an extravagant Brooklyn brownstone. I had the baby, Violet, in my arms, and my son, Jasper, was running around with Mateo—both goofy and uncontainable. They were doing the work of four-year-olds—transmuting the...
The lingering perfume of a million flowers is so thick in the funeral home showroom that invisible rose petals plaster the inside of my mouth. Navy curtains hang heavy and block out the daylight because it really is easier to mourn in controlled lighting without the...
I watch her pocket two Snickers bars while I’m ringing up the guy who always buys a can of Skoal and a tallboy. His name is Billy. Nice guy, friendly. Works at the tire factory or the auto shop, I can’t remember which. He’s watching the girl, too, as she heads to the...
We put our seed in the ground and buried a body, but the land gave us nothing in return for the price we paid for it, for the weight of the earth that we piled onto someone who was our own. And after such a loss, what else did we expect? We wandered through our own...
In the bottom of Zadie’s purse, as she sits in a lightly upholstered chair at the DMV to get her license reinstated, everyone packed in side by side by side, Zadie number 23 with number 72 currently being served: A half-wrapped mint filched from the bowl on the...
My father tells all three of us to write a eulogy and he’ll decide who gets to deliver theirs at our mother’s funeral in five days. Tom’s jaw sets, determined. Diane nods, eager to please. I narrow my eyes at Dad, resenting the competition he fuels between us, even as...
A plane ploughs through the clouds as she scrubs and cleans the plugholes in the washbasins and the kitchen sink and the laundry and another plane ploughs when she mops the floors and washes the benches and polishes the windows and another plane ploughs when she...
First: Make sure your patient is safe. Hope that you gave the appropriate caveats when you told them that this visit is confidential, and make sure they don’t have any plans to hurt themselves or others. If they’re a minor, you may have to call Child Protective...
There are six of them. No, seven. They cycle out of the tower and into the night, following their headmistress. Their headmistress wears a habit. The girls wear cloaks, cloaks to hide their hunger. I cannot tell you where they are going, but I’ll tell you this: they...