Household Words 3

The fact is, I only met Ellen’s parents a handful of times before I went off to San Diego. When people die, it’s natural to magnify their significance retroactively. I tried. I didn’t have a lot to go on. I observed nothing compelling about Ben and Amanda Walden. Maybe her mother’s eyes were too […]

Household Words: 2

In Middleton, I was in the school of social work. I had decided against medical school. My mother and brother were in a car accident years before, and they were just bodies, problems and numbers, in that E.R. I wanted people to be something more than bodies. I worked in a fabric store during those […]

The Man Made Out of Wood

PINNOCHIO (opening of an almost-novel) There once was a man named Gepetto who lived with his loneliness every day. Loneliness slept in the corner and sighed and kept him awake. Gepetto became older; his hair grew in white, and his teeth wore down dull, and his ankles started creaking in the morning, and his lips […]