Laurustina

This gift arrived last week – just in time for my birthday – and while you can’t fully appreciate its 3-D elements on the page, I suspect you can still imagine my delight.

[You can find more of June's art HERE.]

The clock reads 12:03. He’ll be home for lunch soon. She marks the page in her book and unfolds herself from the hideous couch, with its big blue flowers. She opens the shades of the single window, letting a faint beam of light into the dull gloom that is their apartment. They have lived here for a month now in this unfamiliar town, far enough away from home that no one has bothered to visit.

In the bathroom, she surveys her face. It’s bloated. Pregnancy pounds. She’s only in her sixth month, but her face has filled out something awful. Quickly, she applies concealer and a bit of lipstick. Lining her eyes makes them look a little less red. She slips out of her pjs and into the blue tent shirt that her mother bought. The old gray sweat pants still fit over her belly and she’s thankful for that. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve arrived here in search of more stories about Alice, the quickest link is THIS ONE .

I just came across this piece I wrote in 2005 which makes me desperately want to add another chapter to the manuscript. How can I have written 74,000 words and not told you about Ari? The last time I saw her was a couple of months before Ashlie (aka Alice) died. She came to Mo-town to visit and the three of us lunched together. There is much I could say, but perhaps it’s too late. In an effort to resist the urge to shove another story into an already over-crowded book, I am sharing the poem here. Let it not be said that I forget my friends. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, I gave my father a fat stack of stories that I’d written about our family, hoping to connect with him by sharing a bit of myself. What I didn’t know for years after was the stories hurt him deeply, each one feeling like a condemnation when I had written them as love letters. This is one of those stories:

There’s this tiny alcove at the mechanic’s shop, with a garish gold recliner and a soggy box of National Geographics. I am actually delighted with the room and curled now into the recliner with both feet tucked beneath me while the mechanic changes my tires. His sweet, smelly golden retriever has been following me around since I arrived fifteen minutes ago, and now, he sits beside me like a fuzzy end table, mumbling an ancient tennis ball and practically purring while I scratch his head.

This is one of those moments when I am most my father’s daughter, content amid the wrenches, oil filters and battery cables. Read the rest of this entry »