Two summers ago, my wife and I took our daughters to the zoo. As we walked the grounds, we saw a sign advertising the park’s big event: the Cheetah Run. We headed toward the families scouting out their viewing spots and found an empty stretch along the route. Our youngest, Amma, hopped up on my Read more
My sister has been dead for nearly fifteen years when I see her on the TV news. I’d been working the ER for six hours straight, triaging young humans from a beach party where a fight broke out. Two gunshot wounds, one that nicked a kidney; a broken cheekbone; a broken wrist; and multiple facial Read more
20 December 1937 Listen. Three miles deep in the forest just below Arnott’s Ridge, and you’re in silence so dense it’s like you’re wading through it. There’s no birdsong past dawn, not even in high summer, and especially not now, with the chill air so thick with moisture that it stills those few leaves clinging Read more
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it. —GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ In writing this book, I’ve endeavored to be as factual as possible, turning to journals, letters, scrapbooks, photo albums, report cards, recipes, articles, and other records of my personal and familial history. Read more
November 29, 2011 The view is wondrous from here, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between London and New York. As I lay my head back and gaze out at the majesty of sunshine over fluffy white vapors, I take time to ponder all that I’ve learned over the past week and where Read more
I shouldn’t have come, and that’s the truth of it. It’s not even five o’clock in the afternoon, and I’m already fantasizing about a swift, painless coma. Something dramatic, involving a nice collapse to the floor, with my eyes rolling back in their sockets and my limbs shaking. It’s my niece’s annual post-Christmas tea, you Read more
MARGOT CARY LEANED her forehead against the warm truck window as it bounced along the pitted Georgia highway. She closed her eyes against the picturesque landscape as it rolled by. Green, green, green. Everything was so effing green here. GREEN WAS NOT her lucky color. It certainly hadn’t blessed the opening of the botanical garden’s Read more
I almost went back for her. When she didn’t show. When she didn’t answer her phone. When she didn’t reply to my text. But there were the drinks, and the cars blocking me in, and the responsibility—I was supposed to be keeping an eye on things. I was expected to keep the night running smoothly. Read more
In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot, my parents sent me to live with my Aunt Peg, who owned a theater company in New York City. I had recently been excused from Vassar College, on account of never having attended classes and thereby failing every single one of Read more
‘Welcome to the Drumbeig Nursing Home’. The words on the sign belie the fact that I’m standing in the pelting rain, on the wrong side of the glass door, stooping slightly to bring my ear nearer to the Entryphone in the hope that someone’s heard me press the buzzer and will respond. I huddle in Read more
