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Manners

Licking your plate, listening to screams echoing up the stairwell, entertaining yourself​

Watching TV

A week without TV, a father’s suicide, the first moon landing

The Bath

Warm Regards

Three-year-old Jersey Lem leaned forward and rested his chin on his tan, plump forearms, which bridged the handlebars of his tricycle. There was an invisible force field that ran between the last square of concrete sidewalk and the driveway of the house next door.

Autonomy

The End Of The Day

A west-facing window and Scotch, the Sacred Order of the Kitchen, photos of the summer solstice

Saying Its Name

When Illness Is A Secret

I swore to hate the woman who told me to undress, who sat me on the examining table, and who took my father away to talk with him outside my presence. I hated her for her chilly brusqueness, for having seen me in my underpants, and for having mentioned within earshot the words cystic fibrosis.

Thirteen

I ’m kneeling in the foyer lacing my sister’s boot when I hear my mom muttering in the hallway. This time it’s not about the shoes in the living room or my father’s late child support. She’s talking about me. “Thirteen,” she says, “and you think you’re all grown up.”

His Master’s Voice

Whenever Dad came up to Nooksack from Seattle, he took my brother and me to the movies, or to a sandwich place on the waterfront where we shot pool. He booked a motel room in town where we’d watch color TV before he returned us to Mom’s.

What Every Boy Knows