Tag: 2020 autumn

When Penelope’s fertility doctor mentioned her age twice in the same sentence—“Certainly it’s not impossible for a thirty-seven-year-old woman to conceive for the first time, though thirty-seven is on the downslope of female fertility”—she shook her head and gave him the same pitying look she gave her students when they were being stupid. “I’m thirty-two,” …

He was a child when I met him. On a steaming June day, he charged at my daughter in a strip mall parking lot, and his hug lifted her up and sent her feet into orbit around him. He’d been the source of much radio chatter from Bea since we’d enrolled her in ballet, but …