Essays
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“Tribal Bloods” by John Wenke
Michael Marlow makes a good living as an actuary for State Farm Insurance. He figures out the likelihood of people living to eighty or dying at sixty. People who live to eighty have a high statistical probability of surviving to ninety. Personally, none of it matters. At the individual level, all statistics are irrelevant. There is more to it, he claims. Computers, demographics, environmental factors—these things and more come into play. He needs to fill out the time, immerse himself in issues and entanglements that justify a forty-hour work week.
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“Decoding the Flag” by Cheryl Dietrich
One summer when I was eleven, I bullied my two younger brothers into helping me open a lending library in our grandparents’ garage. We borrowed books from all our friends, sorted them alphabetically by author into battered bookcases, and set up a card file. Finally, to legitimize the venture, we pooled our money and purchased a twenty-five-cent flag. A library should have a flag.
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“The Watermark” by Susan McCallum-Smith
A year after my parents separated, I saw my father on the other side of a narrow street. He walked straight by without any gesture of greeting. No one else was around. It dawned on me, after a second or so, that he hadn’t recognized me. I hadn’t changed from a goose to a swan, or some such nonsense, I had simply had a haircut and stopped dressing like a boy. . . . I paused, aware that I felt nothing more than an aloof curiosity, and watched him walk away. If I were fanciful I would say that this was the moment I became a writer.
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“My Mother’s Theories of Child Rearing” by Kathryn Starbuck
I had my first migraine when I was twelve. I knew what it was because my mother had taught me. She would moan and wail around the house ten or twelve days each month. She would yell at me to be quiet. “Don’t you know my head is splitting?” “Turn off that light.” “What’s that awful smell?” “Fix me a milkshake.” “My God, I’m dying of pain.”
Well, she had more than migraines, of course, and I felt sorry for her a lot of the time. She was a somewhat functional crazy person.
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“First” by Ryan Van Meter
Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us, our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy—his and mine—to sit turned away from our moms and dads in this place that feels like a secret, as though they are not even in the car with us.
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“Minestra” by Joyce Davis
My house had been torn up, to one degree or another, for six months. What started as a straightforward bathroom remodeling that any contractor could finish in his sleep had morphed into a many-headed monster fueled by drywall and home equity. Every day I came home from work and went
upstairs to the mess, shaking my head at the weird stains, holding my nose at the weirder smells. Every day I hoped that Floyd, the only employee assigned to our job, the lone island in a sea of subcontractors, had actually arranged for work to be done. He never seemed to do any himself.
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“Luisito Grau de Armas” by Colleen Kinder
When the priest directed his entire Sunday congregation to turn and welcome the foreign woman sitting in the last pew, Luisito was already staring at her from his wheelchair. He had propped himself up on the chair’s
right arm—something only a person of his size could do without toppling over—and was using the boost to peer over the heads of the congregation in Bejucal, Cuba,
for a clear view of the blonde person. She was a quarter breath from falling asleep, her eyes growing bleary and narrow. Each time her head drooped toward her lap, Luisito fought the urge to giggle and point.
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“The Wit of the Staircase” by Kathleen Rooney
The spirit of the staircase. I suppose for l’esprit d’escalier to be truly the subject of this essay, I would have to tell you now, right here, since I
have had so much time to perfect it, the comeback to Dan I thought of later that
night, the one that caused me to sit bolt upright on the air mattress in Elise’s
illegal loft, where I slept fitfully next to Beth. Or maybe the comeback that I thought of
on the plane back to SeaTac. Or the one I came up with at home at my own kitchen
table, recounting the night to my husband. But I haven’t thought of anything
especially witty to say, except lines in the vein of “Stop touching me, you
cocksucker,” or others of that ilk. What can I say? The situation didn’t call for
subtlety.
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“The Mother Bed” by Marcia Aldrich
For my mother’s first wedding, her father commissioned a maple
bedroom suite: an armoire, a dresser, and twin beds, all in a French country
style, with graceful lines like the lift and fall of willows, and resting on
carved claw feet. Twin beds were not a common choice for the bridal chamber, and
I have always supposed that by splitting the conjugal bed in two, my
grandfather—whose own marriage had been riven by a precipitous divorce when my
mother was just a little girl—was saying something sly about matrimony.
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“Spinal Beauty” by John Gamel
What a difference a day makes. On Sunday, March 31, I was useless. Supernumerary. Tits on a boar hog. Which is to say, a medical student. The next day Santa Clara Valley Medical Center issued me three starched white jackets with Dr. Gamel stenciled in blue ink over the heart. Immediately beneath, in the more durable medium of embroidery: Intern. The pockets held my stethoscope, reflex hammer, tuning fork, and visual acuity card—gifts Eli Lilly hoped would encourage me to prescribe their excellent medications. Now I could sign my own orders.
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