Mystery, Menace, and Early Sorrow

Mystery, Menace, and Early Sorrow

    *Notable Essay Best American Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2018   The dolls never slept.  They stayed wide eyed and unblinking on their shelf in my small, overheated room, watching me watch the man and woman in the apartment across the way. As a...
My Brother’s Guns

My Brother’s Guns

  My cousin’s eyes are blazing as he turns to me and Bill. “Those two guys are going to kill us in our tents tonight,” he says. My first camping experience. We’re in Vermont over a Columbus Day weekend on the land of our absent friend Vinny. I’m keeping my...
Searching for George, Dan, and Fergus

Searching for George, Dan, and Fergus

George is in China now, buried there. Or maybe not. Maybe he was cremated, his ashes flung into Beijing smog—I’ll never know. But one thing is certain: this son of New England is not in America. Alice, the woman who married him in his 80s as he began his decline,...
The Chattering Classes

The Chattering Classes

The masses chatter wherever they mass, the classes chatter even during tests, while the Chattering Classes speak for themselves alone, testing others’ patience. The patients, depleted from chatter surfeit, are admitted to the institution and quickly plug their ears....