I had always hated Mila’s boyfriend, but because she loved him and because she was dying, I tried to be polite. When he called, it was one in the morning Pacific Time and I’d already been asleep for hours. He said, “Mila’s asking, do you have any bud?” as if we were twenty and I …
In my most vivid memory of my daughter, we are on the beach in Kauai and she is walking toward me, hair wet and tangled, legs pink with sunburn. Her purple bathing suit is too small for her. She extends her cupped hands toward me. “Daddy, look,” she says, opening her fingers. There in her …
Entering the train that night was like stepping into a diorama, the inside of the car covered floor to ceiling with contact paper of leaves, vines, and flowers. The car had been painted a shiny emerald on the outside too, part of an environmental campaign. This was in early March, when it was still difficult …
The girls, strangers, look at each other between the crack separating the airline seats. They are eight and nine-years-old, and the only children on the plane. Their fathers, who don’t know each other, have brought them on a business trip, an unusual event. This is the first flight both children have ever taken. Sally’s father …
Together you and Juliette spray footprints. Get to the spot, drop boards on sand. Sky dawn pink, she waxes, you yank up your wetsuit, secure hair, which she never does, leaves it down, of course. Plunge into surf, the first shock of cold creeping to skin. Too stunning all around now for that ugly feeling …
Allison was wedged between the baby and her husband, Jacob, both asleep, both quietly snoring, the baby making small, piglet-like noises. Their faces, fuzzed by the darkness, were similarly childlike. For the first several days in the new house, the type of house they had casually and reasonably dreamed of for so long – an …
“Can’t you try remembering, Everything?” Milly’s head tilts with her question; a bottlecap that won’t lock on its threads. We’re comparing true loves—one I lost back when, one she’s savoring now—and she suspects I’m stonewalling her over the reasons mine was star-crossed from the start. Well, sure. But Milly and I have, against all odds, …
There is a man sitting on a bench in the sun. He watches a woman on hot pink roller skates stumble around the tennis court beside the bench. He has just been fired from his job as a radiation physicist. He fixes radiation machines—or did, anyways. He recalibrated them to make sure they beamed the …
We don’t know why he came. Ours is not a big city. There are no stadiums, no conference centers, no airport hotels to fill with hosannas. Instead, he has a folding chair at the farmer’s market. Behind him rests a banana crate, handpainted. Miracles $10. He does not look like a faith healer. As we …
The next curve is a tricky one. Too much pressure on the gas and the van could tip. Not enough, and the truck a cigarette-length from your fender will send you flying cliffside. Or worse, they’ll overtake you ‘round the blind corner. This happens, and your regulars will click their tongues and say each second …