O.K., gang, here’s an idea for a sitcom: my father, the best-known Methodist minister in our tiny town, slept with my best friend’s mom. Oh, yes—the woman who lives across the alley.
And he announced his transgression from the pulpit.
Right, I know, too outrageous, even for cable. Too dark, too humiliating for his fourteen-year-old daughter and loving wife. I mean, the hate boiling from my mother alone would power
Continue reading… "The Preacher’s Daughter"“Nina! Come down here this instant.”
I felt dizzy, my mouth dry. I composed my face while trudging downstairs.
I had always felt an urge to steal small. When I shoplifted, I thought of the items I stole as abandoned cats in a shelter waiting for an owner. One of them mews at you in a certain way, purrs at just the right moment, or rubs its head against your hand, and you know it has
Continue reading… "McTheft"It wasn’t just his aching tooth that made him call twenty different dentists in the hope that one would see him on a Sunday. It was his chance to show that he was no chicken when it came to sitting in a dentist’s chair—that those days were over.
Continue reading… "Almost Like Steve McQueen"Sitting next to Miss Sweet Senior Sunshine in the tour bus is dangerous, but she’s rarely given me a choice, finding time on each drive to scoot me over and plop down, leaning close, a tanned claw on my pale wrist. Sharp and hard, the pins on her beauty contest winner’s sash and the plastic points of her bejeweled silver crown
Continue reading… "Her Crown on My Head"Whenever Neva drops by, I think she has come to get her turkey out of my freezer. She bought two for the price of one a year ago for the holidays, and since she had no room in her fridge for an extra turkey, the bird___ all frozen, featherless, and pimply-skinned___ came to live with me. I hardly knew her when she asked me if she
Continue reading… "Two for the Price of One"We were sitting in Dena’s house in Eugene, drinking coffee and reminiscing about the sixties and how we’d all barely gotten out alive. Back then, the four of us had been closer than sisters; we’d lived together, danced together, and cried together. Forty years, marriage, careers, and raising children had separated us. Then my
Continue reading… "Surviving the Sixties"Serena clunked shut her car door in front of her darkened apartment building. The light of a full moon cast intricate patterns across the two story facade, shadows from sentinel utility towers in the field. The smells from the power line right-of-way, dew-damp
Continue reading… "Buffalo Moon"Morty Adler had fallen down next to the coffee table. For the past ten minutes he had been unable to get up, lying on his side with one cheek resting on the carpet. He held the cordless phone to his ear and listened to the 911 operator as she told him to stay on the line
Continue reading… "The Last Days of Camelot"For every day that went by since Mara Shi had gotten her period and Ariel still hadn’t, Ariel became more and more convinced that she was probably a boy. She’d read articles about hermaphrodites whose inside-out penises looked exactly like vaginas until one day they
Continue reading… "The Mustache"It’s easy now. Her body has remembered. Her legs fly like they used to years ago when she won the sprint in fourth grade. Her lungs heave. Not long now, Ellie tells them.
She passes the statue of the old man gazing up into the sky, a look
Continue reading… "In Amber"