Fiction

By late morning the cramped apartment has become intolerable and the three of them escape, at last, to the street. Even outside, though, the baby — toddler now, she supposes…

“I’ve wanted to do this a long time,” she says into his mouth, in her mind, as their first kiss winds down. She looks into his closed eyes. His warm…

The surgeon told Brigette that her daughter’s condition is “incompatible with life.” “Now where did he learn a phrase like that?” Valerie asks, gripping the steering wheel on the ride…

Nine years later, on a spring morning hot as summer, my poet boyfriend finally called. In the meantime, I’d married, etc. “Remember your father?” he asked with his usual cryptic…

I am part of the past. Grandmothers do not butt in. My Tarrytown daughter and her cohorts, the current generation, supervise the children now. It is the day of my…

The long, slow roller began with animal warnings, for where we lived even the ground was unreliable. I’d lived in San Andreas a long time. And even before that I…

I’ve been having these egg-headed thoughts about non-linear time and a parallel universe. I’ve been having these thoughts for 20 years, and lately they’ve been coming between me and my…

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, abruptly changing the subject. “I can’t do it, Kate. And I need to tell you why.” She dips her head down, smiles weakly at her…

Mrs. Bowers’ garage door vibrated with the diagonal green, yellow, and red of The Congo. The artist, her youngest son, Tyrone, said the white man pulled his ancestral grandfather from…

It’s her, I tell Craig. I know her jangled ring. He says, “Who else calls at two a.m.?” The phone is cold. She’s hissing in my ear. “You’ve got to…

On our first Ocean City, Maryland, beach run of the season, my husband Dezil was hot for picking crabs for lunch. He dragged me with the kids, Nate and Mindy,…