Fiction

“Yeah, he just left.” Matty clutched the phone between his ear and shoulder while stirring the roux with a long-handled wooden spoon. Bits of onions, celery, leeks, and crushed tomatoes…

It’s Thursday, three-thirty in the afternoon, and I’m standing in front of the mirror thinking about the Chinese woman and her husband. Right about now she is getting ready for…

“Charles, get down from there!” One day led into another and somehow they all looked the same. This one wasn’t any different, beginning with dirty diapers, noses running green, and…

Some days, he talked about his days in Paris, where he studied the piano. She was in high school then, no, maybe junior high, and it might have been about…

“Mama,” Lia whispered as she nudged India’s swollen belly. “Mama, are we done resting? Mama?” India allowed herself to slowly drift in and out of sleep until Lia’s voice and…

My son burned down the house today. Adam did it deliberately, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s only been taking the pills for nine days, not nearly long…

My father’s room is dark on a sunny day. I’m confused, he says, meaning he is not listening. I can’t hear you, he says, meaning the shades are drawn, the…

“Close the door,” he said. “The wild and wooly BTUs are escaping!” “Stop it.” He had a totally straight face. Not even a smile cracked the solemnity of his balding…

My mother, for all her faults, always wants to do the right thing, and she has instilled this thinking in me, her only child. We argue vehemently over what that…

I trudged up the stairs of my mother’s house as the sky turned a sickening summer green, that peculiar, often catastrophic color: nature’s warning of a storm’s approach. The stately…

It was the first time I’d sworn in front of my daughter, a loud clear invective followed by a long sigh. Muskan, busy peeling layers of thoughts, didn’t appear to…