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Waiting

At the door, Laura turned and smiled. “I’ll be right back,” she said. Dash was out the door already, pulling the leash taut. David had a last-minute impulse to get up and take the dog himself, but he didn’t. And so it was Laura at the edge of the road when the car shot out of the cool night, drawn like a missile to her heat.

Names

Indian names, the McCarthy hearings, cigars

Between Living And Dying

A Conversation With Anne Finger About Disability, Abortion, And Assisted Suicide

We’re being told that medicine is supposed to get rid of disabled people — either by curing us or killing us. This idea is deeply rooted in industrial culture. I think there will be tremendous social pressure to “choose” suicide in the future.

On Regret

Of all the things Greenfeld said, the word that resonates most when I ponder the question of regret is kittenness. “It’s hard when they lose their kittenness,” he said.

Reminder

Silas

Silas works at a social-service agency. He sits inside a cubicle, behind a metal desk with a simulated-wood surface. One by one, people — mostly old women, but some old men, too — come and sit on a metal folding chair across the desk from Silas, where they weep and whine and struggle to maintain their dignity and finally grow vexed and demand their Social Security checks.

Mark O’Brien’s Days

Mark O’Brien spends virtually every moment of every day encased in an iron lung in a room eleven feet wide and twenty feet long and seven and a half feet high.

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.

The Eye Man

“Darn,” said the eye man. “Darn.” He ran a hand through his long black hair and shook his head. “OK,” he finally said. “OK, OK, OK. Here it is, right? Here it is: I can’t make eyes that will help her son see. No, I can’t do that. But I will make him eyes that will help everyone else see.”

Labels

Joshua used humor to keep people at arm’s length — which was funny in itself, because his arms were stunted from polio at an early age and now lay close to his body, twisted and next to useless.