You are currently viewing the stories for “February 2020.”
On a recent visit to a friend’s aging aunt who lives in a minuscule Bronx apartment crowded with plants, I was puzzled by her three telephones. Two of them rang several times, as did her microwave, alarm clock, and various other tingling appurtenances—the pitch of each of which she was immediately able to tell apart, though given the profusion [...]
Bellevue was a dark castle in my childhood imagination. In grade school, long before I knew that my own mother had once landed there, my classmates and I spoke of Bellevue in a chilled whisper, as the place you’d end up in if you lost your mind. A straitjacket and a padded cell would be your lot, and you’d live [...]
Bobbi and Gerri first introduced themselves as sisters when we moved into an apartment one floor below them. But the headline above their picture in the Park Slope Patch nine years later reads, “Park Slope Couple First Same-Sex Couple to Wed in Brooklyn.” The picture caption reads, “After 48 years of coupledom, on Sunday morning Barbara Pilgrim, 83, and Geraldine [...]