I had come to dinner at my father’s — our monthly ritual — but after the smoked brisket he left. I did the dishes, then looked for him out back and found him dragging a piano into the backyard. He had it on two wooden planks that he rotated, moving one ahead and then sliding…

You were sitting at the kitchen table when he told you he was moving to Hollywood to follow his dream of becoming an actor. He ate beignets you made from scratch. Smacking his lips as remnants of the powdered sugar dotted his chin. You smiled, even though you felt like you’d been gut-punched. You wondered…

Years later, moments after she narrowly escapes the fate of Joyce’s Eveline and is safely inside the train pulling out of the dreadful, damp town, and the eyes of the dark young person at the elbow all aglow with the vision of far sunlit lands, this day comes to her like some forgotten smell. She…

Daylight spills over the horizon and floods the paths of the famous cemetery. From the rooftop patio of an adjacent gastropub, the superintendent of the dead appraises his domain. He wonders what it might be like to live in a city that boasts, for example, a famous zoo. As the sun ascends, the shadows of…

Translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey The first time I made a wish, I wished for a tin frog that made a loud clicking sound when you squeezed it, which I’d seen lying around at a friend’s house. The next time I played there, I took the frog home with me. This is how my first…

Are the other mothers working harder than she is, she wonders, so very much harder? Ought she to be ashamed? Or are they working markedly less hard — watching movies in the middle of the day, taking time to smell the roses as it were? Are not their families better off under the light hands…

Before a place can become a place, it must have secrets. A boy goes to a field where five sheep have died. In search of something conclusive, a way to proceed. There is no trace of carnage: wolf, coyote. The ground is frozen, snowless. The boy kicks at the soil with the worn toe of…

Badal had choreographed many fierce duels in his time. Take for instance the battle between his chestnut-brown pheasant and a gray rooster of foreign breed that his opponent bought at a high price. The gray bird jostled nobly but in the end Badal’s pheasant spattered its entrails. During the few minutes Badal’s birds took to…

I’m awakened by a long, continuous horn. The vibrating sound appears to elevate the kitchen floor to knee-high. I stand barefoot for a while before realizing my feet are cold. I have lost my socks somewhere under the blankets, during the night. I return to the bedroom and do a search and rescue, revering my…

1. You don’t have to be famous to be featured on SpecialRequest. It’ll drive your rate up, sure, but it’s not a requirement. Most of the profiles on the app are people who were famous two decades ago — reality show contestants, leathery pro-wrestlers, washed-up political trolls, Dave Coulier. And Damon. This is about Damon.…

I hadn’t been in a fight since the regional jail. Even then, I turtled and let my bigger, uglier opponent whale on me until the other inmates pulled him off before the guards came. Those guards saw the scuffle from their mirrored tower, but when they stormed the block, their cans of pepper spray ready,…

Summers were endless then. The few days spent by the seaside with my parents were followed by weeks of boredom. I have no brothers or sisters, and none of my friends lived nearby. For some strange reason, in my childhood neighborhood there were only childless couples. You could never hear the screams of children playing,…