You are currently viewing the stories for “May 2011.”
In graduate school, I dated a skinny fiction writer named Dan. It was a good relationship at the time, always having someone willing to read your draft of this or that, but when the time came to move from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn, I needed less brains, more brawn, and that’s exactly what the moving company sent. At [...]
On beautiful May mornings like this one, when the sky holds a brightness that hints at a sunshiny day and the birds are all a-twitter, I miss Nancy terribly. I miss knowing that after school we’ll go beyond the alley that stretches out behind my back yard, to the communal gardens there. As we do most days, we’ll walk home [...]
We suspected it was illegal, but we had no choice. At the vet’s office in Park Slope, they told us cat cremation cost $125, and neither my boyfriend nor I had the money. Besides, cremation seemed too formal, too clinical, for Jed. He was always escaping out the window, taking self-guided tours of the neighborhood after nightfall. He was an [...]
When I took a position at a legal research firm, I became a frequent rider of the subway, sometimes spending more time under than above ground. My new job had me traveling from office to office during the day giving presentations and training attorneys. I hate to drive, so I've never minded the subway. Usually I hold my book or [...]
I support a poor kid whose name I don’t know in a country I don’t remember the name of, somewhere in South America, I think. This happened because I was stopped on the street on my way to meet a friend for dinner at a nice restaurant, singled out from the after-work stream of people flowing west on 34th to [...]
When Jeffrey and I argue, my mother always weeps. "Shame on you," she says. "I wish my brother, Shmuel, was still here for me to argue with. Shame on you!" My brother and I hang our heads. We wait for her to leave the room, but she is not yet finished. "Is this what I survived Hitler for?" she mumbles. [...]
