Published Stories
WATERWORKS
“For the next two hours, Carl helped Cordelia set up what she referred to only as her project. She didn’t tell him anything about what she was doing or why, but worked with a sense of purpose and determination that Carl found inspiring. And he didn’t think he was so impressed just because they’d had sex, but he couldn’t be sure.”
GINGERBREAD
“After the kids went to bed, Bill and Kate sat outside with a glass of wine, listened to creatures call out in the night and felt as if they’d wandered, unwittingly, into a storybook life. It wasn’t until a Saturday morning in early November, when Bill was cleaning the clogged gutters above Julie’s room, that they discovered the gingerbread.”
KILLING APHIDS
“He killed methodically from top to bottom, left to right, challenging himself to see how many aphids he could dispatch in a minute without snagging himself on the thorns. He used both hands and knew, almost without looking, where the aphids were hiding and where their eggs would be. Every half hour or so, he took a few steps back to stretch his legs and admire his progress. The flowers he’d cleared of bugs seemed to glow a brighter orange.”
SUN IN A BOX
I've got the sun in a box and my parents say it's about time I gave it back but I'm not so sure. I like tanning in the privacy of my own room. (I’m at that hyper-modest stage of puberty.) I look like I've just come back from Florida and I'm never lonely anymore because the sun keeps me company. I also collect balls and it's an awesome addition to my collection.
There are problems of course. It's always dark outside unless I take the sun with me but this is next to impossible. Not because the sun is too big – it's the size of a basketball, about the same size it was in the sky – but because it rolls and hops and sputters and sets everything on fire. You’d think the sun would float in the air but it doesn't so I store it in an old metal coal bin my dad hauled up from the basement. Mom complains about the smell – like rotten eggs mixed with Clorox – but I've grown to like it.
IT'S GOING TO BE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DAYS
“After an hour in a body, I usually find my bearings but Elsbeth’s world has no distinct boundaries or reference points. Possibilities shimmer out of focus, and out of reach. She is a mass of yearning flesh, like a newborn child, wanting everything, having nothing. I do not know how to be except to eat and dream. This is the most difficult life I have ever lived.” (Published ten years before David Levithan’s novel Every Day.)
THE CUP AND THE CUCUMBER
“The Cup found the cucumber beautiful, his form so different from her own. She admired the cucumber’s solid green skin, the fact that it could be what it was without any fancy pictures or words, that it had no top or bottom. But most of all, the Cup was in awe of the fact that the cucumber grew and was not suddenly cast into being.”
BODY ON THE FLOOR
“I am both lying on the floor and standing. I see myself, like a double exposure, towering above me in breathless shock, and flat on my back staring angrily up. The vision makes me dizzy, makes my eyes blur and water. A sharp, unbearable pain flashes at the center of both foreheads as I shimmer between bodies. My emotions ricochet between a seething anger and a stunned ascendancy. The pressure in my heads keeps building until it feels like my brains are going to explode then everything goes black.”
LAST FRONTIER OF LEARNING NOT TO BE MY MOTHER
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to escape my mother’s hold on me. And now, after two weeks up here, hardly talking to anyone except my husband Tom, I can still feel her inside me chatting away – worrying, criticizing, telling me what to do, trying to make me be like her. That’s what’s driven me up into this old beech in our backyard – and I’ve decided to stay here until she’s gone, although I have no idea how long that’ll take."
FLOWER WITH A TONGUE
“Fredrik says she’s a flower with a tongue. A very critical flower. That he can’t read the morning paper without her complaining about something. “Stop watering her,” I say. “Or give her to me. I could use some talking to.” I live alone now since Mr. Flower Hater and I broke up.”