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Habits

Crack, gambling, smoking

The Mother Material

A picture hangs on the wall of my study. In it, my mother is kneeling to pose with my brother, my sister, and me. The picture was taken a few months before my mother died, and we are all smiling, cheerful, innocent, unaware of the ways in which our lives are capable of changing.

Under The Covers

An old water tower, an airplane blanket, a diamond pendant in the shape of a heart

Mickey Mantle, Mother, And The Secret Service

It’s August 1995, and Billy says the Mick is as good as dead. My brother counts one, two, three on his fingers: “First they give him a new liver. Then the cancer they missed eats up his lung. Then he dies.”

Sister

Burt Osborne Rules The World

All day long, on that day in the sixth grade when my life changed forever and the world became a better place, everything had been smelling and tasting like overcooked eggs.

My Parents’ Furniture

Life is a sitcom; our pain is so ordinary, it’s laughable. Almost everybody goes through this at one time or another. The realtor tells me our society is becoming mobile. I agree. But I wish I didn’t have to sell my parents’ house.

Moving Out

Pencils, three hundred dollars, slashed tires

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.

B I R D

On a hot summer day when my brother was eight months old, my father carried him to the top step of the back porch, lifted him over his head, and tossed him into the weeds.