Divorce: A Love Story
I was cooking breakfast, which is odd since I don’t remember that we usually ate things that were cooked for breakfast, and I could swear neither of us ate eggs. Nevertheless, I was cooking breakfast. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” I thought he meant wait for breakfast, or maybe he had started something handy, and it was backfiring like changing a light bulb or building a wall. “What?” I said, looking up from the frying pan, I remembered that frying pan, so it must have been eggs or bacon or pancakes or French toast.
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Buddhists
I was telling my friend Janet about my summer job babysitting thirty Brooklyn College freshmen for two months while they studied in London. “Hey,” she said. “Call this guy. He’s a chef in a huge rock recording studio outside of Oxford. You two will love each other.” I took his number despite the fact that I was sure I would never call him.
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The Cruelest Month
What is certain? Nearly nothing. Waiting is purgatory. That middle passage corridor I was told was the reason to christen me and give me a name I’ve never used. “Why did you baptize me Mary Ellen?” “Molly isn’t a saint’s name. You’d be a corridor baby.” The image of all these badly named babies, the misspelled and trendy, the nicknames and the silly, fills my brain. All those babies waiting to be allowed to enter a world deeply in need of their newness, their babyish ways, their ability to make adults feel helpless, uncertain, afraid.
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