He is thirty-five, wears Hai Karate aftershave, drives a maroon 1970 El Dorado, and sits too close to me on the piano bench. For the first fifteen minutes of every piano lesson, Vic Giovanni details his sexual exploits, claiming numerous rendezvous with many Hollywood actresses.
My mother’s mother was a city girl, and no number of chickens – their heads popping off on the block as her husband relieved each body of brain – could make her otherwise. Not that she didn’t try.
Start with an incident most people see as unfortunate but you perceive as life changing; the skewed perspective will enhance your experience. The incident should happen while on your Outer Banks vacation, the highlight of your year.
In her right hand she holds a blue disposable razor. In her left hand, held taut to smooth the surface and expedite shaving, is my scrotum. My testicles are being prepped for a vasectomy.
When my mom got the cancer, I wanted her to have the best post-death experience ever. She had this thing about being buried alive.
The clock on my nightstand says two thirty-three in the morning when the phone rings. “Ronnie!” my mother is whispering into the receiver. “¡Están aquí! They are here! They are coming in!” This is her third call tonight.
A short, bald man winks at me. His buckteeth bite on his lower lip. His eyes bounce up and down off my double Ds. He opens his arms wide and says, as if relieved we’ve finally reconnected, “Roseanne.”
Peeking out of the glossy catalogs and bills, the blue and red airmail border is like a cheery flag unfurling in the breeze announcing, “Land ahead.”
Each fall, while walking through the neighborhood, I become intoxicated by that first whiff of smoke from a fireplace—even if it comes from my own chimney.
That morning I woke up with a heavy head. The air was thick with smoke and blaring TV filled the cramped hotel room. I’d woken up earlier and turned the TV off, but Jack had turned it back on. Then I’d turned the volume down, and he’d turned it back up.
