Sunlight dripped through the liquidambar trees caged in large planters around the cafe patio, etching star-shaped leaf-shadows on the white tabletops. The small expanse of red brick formed an island of old-world security lapped by suburban concrete, the trees

Mary Lou’s tits are no longer the size of pert silver dollars. Her silver dollar tits are more like silver dollars accidentally dropped in an Insinkerator garbage disposal–dulled and marred by the spinning blades. Silver dollars that need to be taken out of circulation.

It’s a bombshell, lobbed between gasps. Mom’s having a decent day, meaning she can talk, but she tears up, straining to continue. “I met him in college. Your Dad and I were separated for a few months. He knew.”

Jessie started every Monday morning with a class meeting in a circle on the rug in the back of the room. It made the transition from weekend to school week a little easier on her and, oh yes, gave her students a chance to practice their listening and speaking skills.

‘Good Luck and Have a Nice Life’ read the handwritten message in the middle of the card. Anyone examining it would be left in no doubt that the well-wisher, who signed herself ‘loadsaluv Jasmine,’ had gone to particular trouble in composing and presenting her greeting.

Ma scratched the stubble on her ninety year old chin. “You want me to paint a chair?”

Her friend Stephanie nodded. “One we can auction. Just fix up an old chair and give it that ‘Ma’ look.”

After heading to the grocery store to pick up a quart of milk and a box of animal crackers, Jade must have had some trouble navigating the three block return trip home to the falling down shack of a house we shared in Iowa City, because it was a week later that she called me collect from Paris.

Doris pulled the last jar of the summer’s tomatoes from the shelf and set it on the counter. She’d have to ask Liz to get on the stepstool and bring the rest of those beans down lower where she could get at them. Robert put them up for her like he always had, with no thought that he wouldn’t be there to get them down.