Stories

He sits out there in his rowboat, mouth half open, the Chicago skyline rising and falling behind him. I walk on my knees though the water. Inching closer, slipping farther out into the lake.

What he was kicking, with a ferocity more like assault than play, was a small peach basket.

My father was disappointed by my inability to ride a two-wheeler by the age of six. He never said so directly, but I could tell.

Grace Churchill's daughter died for the twenty-seventh time.

Persephone Samaras can't wait to escape the oppressive heat of the pizza ovens. She's off to see her cousin Vasili in the hospital, that sterile, air-conditioned sanctuary.

Seconds after my mother died, she began work in heaven on a little play titled "Naked in Bed with Eleanor Roosevelt."

Maggie looks up. She removes the finger from her mouth. “Must be the baby,” she says. Her hand follows the curve of her belly. “She wants bugs.”

“Really? They sell crickets at pet stores. I could get some.”

Usha and I were waiting for our usual treat, a fresh, buttered, sugar-sprinkled roti each. But then our grandmother bellowed from upstairs. “Who let all the fog into my room?” demanded Ba.

“New cereal?” he asks, and then, like the path that their marriage has taken, he renders the question rhetorical with a non sequitur. “Still working on that artery project, if you can believe it.”

The back of the check reads, “You are dead already!” Of course I recognize my Marigold’s arcane, Euro-trash scrawl immediately.