Glimmer Train Stories, #73

Excerpts:

Nellie Hermann
Can We Let the Baby Go?
Life was confusing and strange and unpredictable, and here, the two of them joined in holy matrimony under this tree in Virginia, here was the proof that we could never comprehend it.

K.L. Cook
Bonnie and Clyde in the Backyard
That was how we passed the fall and then winter and then most of the next spring, watching my father and his cousin continue to elude the forces determined to kill them off.

Abby Geni
Captivity
At the age of thirty-one, I moved in with my mother. This was not entirely my fault.

Matthew Mercier
Valentine Ave.
Whole families, up past midnight, on a summer evening. Martin loved it. He eased his way through the happy crowd, spotted a few familiar faces, and, if the faces noticed him, gave a small grin or quick nod. All his customers. He knew hundreds of faces, zero names.

Stefanie Freele
Us Hungarians
Steyr double-locked the door behind them. "If only Mom and Dad would understand that just because a Hungarian relative recommends a Hungarian to rent from, it doesn't mean they're not crazy."

Louis Gallo
S-O-S
You hone the cornucopia down to a few trusty stand-bys--a good cup of green tea, a bowl of strawberries, Progresso lentil soup, White Rain shampoo from Dollar General and chuck the rest, the entire amazing array.

Nancy Reisman
Ear to the Door
The door seems less than solid, flimsy enough to punch through. The wood might not even be wood, and isn't that the way lately? Things not quite themselves?

Michael Schiavone
No One Comes Up Here by Accident
I'll explain how real criminals prefer to sneak up on you, catch you while you're sleeping, and that these guys are too loud, obvious, with their headlights and beer bottles. They're as scared of us as we are of them, I'll tell her. This isn't how these things go.

K.L. Cook
Interview by Lucrecia Guerrero
I read Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night, when I was seventeen, and was transformed. I didn't know that you could write in such a nakedly vulnerable way about family.

Dana Kinstler
Eclipse
Sophie couldn't tell him that her mother didn't let her go east of First Avenue. Rumors circulated about the Alphabets. The poor throw garbage down at you, one friend said, like the Middle Ages.