Dad makes steaks. He gets butter on his fingers and slicks his eyebrows back as if he was Elvis in a jumpsuit about to shake his heinie on stage. All artificially boisterous and cartoonishly suave. He’s a Claymation person. Seemingly handmade, with features exaggerated as such. Doughy under the eyes. Pliable, plush cheeks. A face…

“There is something you can do for me, Lara.” My Oma rocks in her armchair. She’s put on real clothes: a floral blouse and sneakers with stretchy, coiled shoelaces. I’m thrilled at the chance to be useful. “But you’ll have to get out of your pajamas.” She says it with a wicked grin and draws…

Doesn’t make sense, Mia says to herself and surveys her foot. She calls a doctor and when the nurse asks the reason for the appointment, she deflects to calling it a twisted ankle. Sitting on the papery slip in the sterile room with the doctor holding her bare foot, his glasses tipping to the edge…

It’s like walking into a showroom of human endeavor. My wife Cara and I are often invited to parties given by Dr. Tony Schermbrucker and his third wife, Marta. Cara had worked with Tony’s first wife Jennifer when they shared an office at Children’s Services. I manage Cardiff Corner Books and the Schermbruckers are some…

We are up ten. We are down thirteen. We sit up straight on decades-old bleachers, throw our shoulders back like our physical therapists train us to do, but soon we revert to a coiled position. Leaning forward, elbows digging into knees. Muscles tense like we are about to strike prey. We cannot dribble the ball,…

It’s everywhere now: the community pool, the deputy sheriff’s mascara, the baby strollers on Main. But what I simply can’t bear are the other cars. My wife and I passed two more yesterday, on the freeway through Umatilla National Forest, each one a harpoon in my side. Sleek, muscled drop-tops, and—how had I not seen…

My father planted the hungry tree in the crack in the driveway, assuming it would starve, wither in the summer heat. He thought it would die before the first leaves unfurled. Today, I harvested six seeds from the branches I can reach. Its roots sprawl, breaking the driveway into uneven slabs. I navigate these like…

Dear beloved child of mine, You were the size of a kumquat when I first found out about your existence. Since discovering this fact, I’ve stopped eating the small, orange fruit that I can enfold in one palm. But they’re everywhere now. Hanging from small trees. Displayed in wooden bowls. Candied on crisp tarts. It’s…

One. Tell your boyfriend that you’re Bonnie and he’s Clyde. Show him the famous photograph, Bonnie leaning against the car, cigar drooping from her lip, gun in hand. Tap the photo and tell him that could be you someday. Don’t tell him how Bonnie and Clyde died: her typewriter and his saxophone in the car,…

New England’s ghosts return bound in swirls of humidity, pushed by hurricane winds. Sea captains who went to the briny deep instead of to their corseted lovers, colonial toddlers who plunged through open windows. The Pequots, Mohegans, and Narragansetts who fell to smallpox and genocide as their descendants fought and survived. Ghosts of indentured servants…

He was that type of boy: the kind who skinned live squirrels and bunnies and other small creatures in his backyard when he was a child. His parents (Bless their souls! said the neighbors) sent him to intensive therapy at a ranch for troubled kids in Utah and now he was perfectly normal and sane…

When I was ten my aunt dated a wealthy man for a while. The first time I met him they took me out to a dark restaurant with linen tablecloths and three forks to the left of every plate. My aunt was babysitting that night and told my parents that she’d take me to the…