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Fiction
Dinosaurs
When we arrived in Florida, my in-laws found us at the baggage claim, and it seemed at first that the visit could be a success. They were touchingly nervous, and they’d dressed carefully: Floyd in pressed khakis and Dolores in a coral dress. Her dyed hair escaped from her scarf, and when she leaned close, I could see the fabric was patterned with parrots. She likes birds, I thought. Something to talk about later.
December 2009
Georgie’s Big Break
Georgie saw the notice on a listserv online: the upcoming citywide book festival, Lit Expedition, needed volunteers to introduce speakers. Perfect. It would be a perfect way for Georgie to keep her hand in during a long maternity leave.
November 2009
An Otter’s Tale
In retrospect I can see the appeal. The world according to Blick was a grimly serious place, as orderly and attractive as one of Pebbles’ mobiles; he dangled his international system of coat hangers and dental floss, and my sister gaped up at it like a dazzled kitten, batting at it from time to time with her little paw.
November 2009
Uncommon Weather
Herb had finally hit the jackpot in the herring-roe fishery and decided that, with the girls gone, I might enjoy some creature comforts to take the edge off being alone in the cabin so much. Unfortunately I had already come to the same conclusion, and one of the comforts I’d treated myself to was named Jimmy.
October 2009
Exit
Then boom, boom, boom, the stores fell like dominoes. Without the Gas-n-Go to anchor the town, and with the grocery store and the bank gone, the rest couldn’t hold. The pharmacy shut one day and never reopened. Armored trucks were seen emptying it.
October 2009
The Maluksuk
Go-boy made a knife for his girlfriend. He called it an ulu, and I had never seen anything like it before. The ulu was an Eskimo fish-cutting knife. It was about the size and shape of the bill on a Lakers cap. When Go showed me how an ulu was used, he held its handle and carved up the air with card-dealing slashes. He said Eskimos never wasted any meat because of this knife.
September 2009
Aftertaste
Although it’s close to Labor Day, there is no hint of fall in the air. No streaks of red in the trees, no breeze stirring the leaves. The temperature in these last days of August has been ferociously high, even for Manhattan. Every day dawns steamy, and by nighttime a haze of heat blocks out the moon.
August 2009
Piano Lessons
We lived in an old, two-story Arts and Crafts house with an elevator, which was permanently stuck on the second floor. We used it as a storage closet, and it was my favorite place in the whole house. Now I went into the elevator and shut the gate and sat in one of the antique ladder-back chairs that my father had put in there, and I looked over the Chopin piece in my piano book and tried to visualize my future.
July 2009
The Way To Mercy
There are three things you need to be a smelt fisherman: a net, a bucket, and your thumb. There is only one thing you need to be a cadaver, and that’s to be dead. My father and I had gone smelt fishing each spring ever since I’d turned seven. Now it was 1972, I was a boy of ten, and Richard Nixon had just been reelected president.
July 2009
Brightest Corners
My sponsor told me this would happen. “Temptation comes from the brightest corners and at the most unexpected times,” he said. I washed my hands and face in cold water and flushed the toilet to make it appear like a genuine bathroom visit. I walked out of the bathroom, said I had to go. She scrambled her sorrys and for the first time in my life I meant it when I said, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
June 2009
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