I couldn’t remember what I was dreaming, or if I was dreaming at all. But I knew I had been sound asleep. And I was rudely awakened by a random thought: Did I make James’s lunch for school? Damn it, Sharon, did you? I twisted under the blankets and turned onto my back. I stared into the darkness of my bedroom. Did I make James’s lunch for school? The question nagged. Was I going to have to get out of bed and check? Think, Sharon!
My mind revved like a reliable engine but churned out thoughts irrelevant for the late hour. I remembered tasks for later in the week, phone calls from two days ago, and which bills got paid for the month. My memory was blank each time I was able to circle back to James’s lunch.…
...continue reading
I was sitting on the loading dock with Charlie, eating a rabbit sandwich. This was mid-November, now. Charlie shot the rabbit the day before, on a Sunday, in the woods behind his dad’s farm. I thought Charlie didn’t like me, you know. So I was surprised when he offered me a rabbit sandwich. We didn’t talk much. I was an out-of-towner. I was lucky to get a job anyplace.
Charlie usually sat in his truck, by himself, during the lunch break, staring out into the woods and smoking. Now I was sitting next to Charlie on the loading dock between two empty trucks, eating a rabbit sandwich. I didn’t want to eat it. I never ate rabbit before. But I took the sandwich, said ‘thanks,’ and I ate the sandwich.…
...continue reading
Joe my brother says, spitting smoke toward the ceiling. Another long story.
Joe I say. Joseph.
Guy is a year and a half younger. We’re both Joe. Another long story. He tips back in the recliner. We sit watching football in the parlor of our youth, monk-bald middle aged men sinking into furniture. I am back for the wail and wallow of an Italian funeral. No need to be coy; it’s my mother’s, she whose legacy was to withhold all the Italian except the swears. Let them be American. So at eighteen I left to be a real American, go to college in another city in the dead center of the country. You can’t (or at least you don’t often ) go home again. A very American story. …
...continue reading
Confronted with the dim lighting, dark wood, and the tangy, sweet scents of barbequed meat, Kaylee stomped her right foot twice, then, lips pursed, exhaled. Better Ribs BBQ had no signage directing DoorDash drivers where to pick up orders and she dreaded asking.
“Can I help you?” said the young woman at the hostess station.
“I’m…here…for…Door…Dash.”
The hostess tilted her head. “You drive a car?”
If Kaylee could speak normally, she would––every day, every time, every word—but she couldn’t. Kaylee swallowed. “Yes…I’m…a…Door…Dash…driver.”
Two other orders sat in the car with her husband, David, waiting to be delivered. Saturday evenings they made good money, got plenty of work in a concentrated area, picked up several purchases in a row, and then dropped them off one, two, three at addresses near each other.…
...continue reading
Tick. Tick. Tick. Kenny watched as the clock on the wall of his seventh grade classroom moved closer and closer to twelve, it seemed to taunt him with its slow, unending ticks. His foot had begun to shake uncontrollably in anticipation, smacking against the tile flooring like the applause of a crowd. In about five minutes, when both hands of the clock met at the very top, the teacher would call out Kenny’s name and he would have to go give a speech at the front of the room. The speech was on the history of Chicago, he had always loved the city, but he found himself dreading it now as the countdown drew closer to zero. He hadn’t really prepared for the speech, it’s not that he didn’t have time, his teacher gave him almost a month, its just that it got lost in the daily tangle of life until suddenly it was speech day and he had nothing.…
...continue reading
When he first showed me the crescent-shaped rash on his chest, right over his heart, I glanced at it from across the kitchen. My husband was fresh from the mid-summer garden, dripping fresh salty sweat on the floor. I knew better than to come too close, and there was always something. The cactus splinters in his hands, the twig in his eye, his darkened rotting toe. “Feel it!” He didn’t sound too desperate, so I said, “I’m not a doctor.”
That afternoon, I scooped cookie dough. My husband walked in from the garage and pulled off his damp tank top. Even though I’m near-sighted I could see the eruption, now a quarter moon, which covered his chest and protruded at least an inch. I bent down to examine its details, touched it tentatively.…
...continue reading
Jamie was determined to hide his anger. Bullies turned his anger against him. They made him look helpless and dumb to everybody on the school bus. Worse: they turned his joy against him too. Like that time when word got around that he was into dinosaurs and everybody started calling him Jamiesarus. Or when everybody found out he still watched Mr. Rogers after school and all the bad things that happened after that. And if Jamie ever got mad and made a fist, or answered back to defend himself in any way, the whole bus would turn against him like they always did. They never turned on the bullies or the bad guys; everybody always turned on him and made him feel weak and crazy too since he never did anything against anybody, and mostly tried to make himself as small as possible and to stay out of everybody’s way, and to mind his own business.…
...continue reading