I. Initial Identification Hope chests. Baby dolls. White ponies. Lace and dresses. A Barbie Dream House and a pink Corvette and Ken in the passenger seat in a powder-blue tuxedo. You can have this. You can have it all despite your yearning for Micro Machines and Captain America’s mask and everything else in the blue …
Our wives turned fifty and returned to school. We’d been warned to expect it, been told by other men at church, the high priests who have more gray hair than we do yet, to get ready. Set aside money. And time. Learn to make dinner once in a while. The men laugh as they say …
Of the two of them, Todd was more upset when the baby bled out. Beyond the physical pain, which was great, there was no innate strain of motherhood in Cora that ingratiated regret. When she held the plastic stick with the pink lines up to Todd’s face, she knew she did not particularly desire the …
Part of me still couldn’t fathom that our life together was done, still believed we lived in that cramped third-floor apartment, two floors above the James Spader lookalike who held open mic poetry readings every Friday evening in his living room and once asked if you’d ever read Madame Bovary. Across the street sat the …
Many years later, after he’d forgotten how to write stories, García Márquez began to call his brother. What day is it? He would ask. And his brother would tell him, in a voice that was a blend of respect and simple tones, It is Tuesday or It is Friday afternoon or It is the last …
First there is the suffocation dream, which comes in jump cuts, then whole sequences lit low with dark figures looming over me, hulking shadows. It’s as if I’m trying to sleep while Fritz Lang is in my bedroom shooting some expressionist nightmare. He doesn’t care about me or my wife. He barks instructions at Bruno, …
When Grandpa died, he didn’t look like he was sleeping. He looked like he was dead. It was Wednesday, August 16th. I remember that because I circled it in purple Sharpie on my calendar. I don’t think Wednesdays are good days for dying. And purple was the wrong color to use. I should have used …
Robert Mende pulled the plug on his marriage not with a violent jerk, but in spurts; it may not have added up to much of anything at first, Mende was nothing if not scrupulous; he kept at it, and after a good year and a half of solid effort his wife was thinking of divorce. …
“Play ball,” the umpire yelled, raising both hands. Crouching low behind the catcher, he pointed his finger out toward the center of the diamond, out toward the girl standing high on the hill. She nodded. Then pressed her fingers against the gleaming sphere, drew her eyes into slits, and looked for the sign. Around her, …
One afternoon, as Denise watered plants and I changed a light bulb, we heard the squeal of brakes and a terrible howl. We ran outside. An old VW van with a bright mural painted on its side was parked in the road. A wild-haired, older woman stood next to the van. Our dog lay …