The first time the officer told the boy to drop the bat, the boy began to walk forward. He was just under five feet tall, so the bat may have looked longer than it would have appeared if held by a boy of greater height. The boy, people in the neighborhood would later comment, had dreamed of becoming a baseball player.
By the second time the officer ordered the boy to drop the bat, the boy had narrowed the distance between them. The officer wasn’t aware that the late afternoon sun had started shooting rays directly into the boy’s dark brown eyes. Traffic had grown heavy on Seventeenth Street, two blocks south of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where the boy stood clutching his bat in a field infested with weeds and discarded soiled napkins and soda cups, outside an abandoned low-income housing project.…
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1.
She thought about him at the oddest times; the thoughts vaguely embarrassing, as if revealing her to be a fraud —something other than a good wife and mother. She considered herself a practical woman, and by her sober estimation, the memories served no purpose. They were, in fact, counter-productive to the already complex task of simply living her life. Yet, as much as she tried, she was powerless to control them. That was the maddening part —their unpredictability. When they were upon her, a kind of déjà vu took hold, leaving her unsettled and lost. Like the time two summers ago, on a family trip to Nags Head, when memories of a long-ago beach welled up from the bright sand like a guilty confession, leaving her dizzy and lightheaded in the Carolina sun, as her family chattered about her, oblivious.…
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The laces on Henry’s running shoes were starting to come undone as he ran around Columbus Circle heading towards Central Park. He was frustrated by the cotton laces he used on his shoes. One more time they had snapped while he tied them while preparing for his run. Even so, he continued using the cotton laces. He loved the way they felt when he tied them into a knot. The feel of the cotton reminded him of the success and praise Pops had heaped on him as a child. He could hear his father’s words, way to go, son, as he pulled the cotton strings together. The laces were a daily reminder of the warmth his dad had filled him with, giving him the confidence he continues to hold onto, and the self-esteem that propels him on his lunch-time runs.…
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It never rained anymore—it sweated. Moisture hung like a curtain of milky cataracts over the day, waiting to be lifted. Dampness had oozed into the bricks of my apartment building, found its way into cracks of the bathroom, and turned the caulking black. Not quite black mold, not yet. The heaviness weighed me down, and I had to drag myself out of bed, no longer hopeful for the catharsis of a thunderstorm.
The painters had finished yesterday, and I needed to reassemble the apartment. Even after I had pointed out the blackness creeping up the walls and ceilings of the bathroom like a spider’s web, my husband Danny refused to admit he could see any problem. “The place looks fine. It’s too much work. And to do it now, ahuvati?”…
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There were plenty of reasons to be annoyed, Katell thought. The smell of salt in the air was the most immediate, nagging one. She noticed the stink of it clinging to everything. Her clothes. The awful pasty yellow walls of her new bedroom. Her stepmom’s overweight rescue pug, Sebastian. Katell missed Montreal deeply, but she was afraid to express this to anyone in the house. They would smother her with insincere sympathy. So, she pretended she was above homesickness and focused her energy on the other things that annoyed her about Foirer, Nova Scotia.
Sorting through her dead grandmother’s things was taking longer than anyone anticipated. Katell hadn’t known Granny Durkee very well. After her parents split, Katell and her mum had only come by Nova Scotia once a year or so.…
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Mags leaned over the dessert case in the truck stop diner and sang out, “Look what they got today!” Her thick palms splayed atop the long case, wedding ring sparkling in the spotlights. Red flowery blouse curtained three long shelves of thick gooey fudginess and dripping fruitiness and stiff creaminess.
Deb hung back by the hostess podium, avoiding the case. She tried to block what Mags was saying, stop her mind from going into details. She had to be strong, focused. Her mission tonight ran counter to their standard Monday-night mission. But she had not told this to her friend and co-conspirator.
Mags heaved herself up and turned to face Deb, her full weight looking like an unmade bed. She brushed greying strands away from her face.…
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Bill closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and inhaled deeply. Ah! Being around Carol was almost like smoking. Her thick hair carried an aura of cigarette smoke.
“Do you believe this shit?” Carol shook the newspaper in disgust.
“What’s that?” Keep her talking. Keep her here. God, for a cigarette.
“This guy won some lottery back east. In Jersey. No, in whatever. He gave it away. Most of it. Just gave it away!”
“It happens.” She’d let him have one. Smokers love moochers. Mooching means it’s futile to quit.
“Not in my lifetime.” She stood and began wadding the paper into a stack.
“I know a fellow,” Bill said as he reached around to the tiny refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water.…
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