Fiction

Margaret suddenly had a yearning for cake. Chocolate cake. She had six boxes of cake mix to choose from in the pantry. She took two from the shelf and set…

Laura allows herself this. Allows herself this first moment to stand under the stream of near-scalding water. Really it only feels this way. The water is nowhere near scalding because…

The first time I saw Rita she was watering her lawn. Our house had come fully furnished yet there were no curtains. I was sitting Indian style on the sofa…

After I escaped from my husband I found this place on a street with no name. Luigi the landlord calls it his street. He plays village headman, doling out advice…

My mother-in-law waited in her hospital room while my husband and I sat in the doctor’s office. Our son, Kei, slept across my lap, his temple sweating against my forearm.…

I hurry home, pull into the driveway, open the trunk, and grab all six plastic grocery bags. Dropping the bags on the kitchen counter, I go out to the living…

I let Timmy stay home the next day. I take some aspirin and go to work. “You look like shit,” Janice says when she settles in at eight-twenty. “I stopped…

The day was the way you’d paint it, with Gauguin blue for sky, sweet dianthus in the air and the future floating all of us right off the chinky concrete…

First, One Child… When the bus pulled up, exhaust stirred candy wrappers, bits of yellowed leaves, and empty cigarette packages in the gutter. Annette pushed Jane’s small face into her…

Zoë slept like an old drunk or a well-run dog, mouth open, completely surrendered. Though it had taken fourteen rounds of harmonizing “Pop Goes the Weasel” with the worn-out sing-along…

They weren’t sure their mother had a face. When she read to them at bedtime, she sat on the edge of the bed, turned away. When they had nightmares, she…