The other: “Oh my God, we were like so wasted.” “From beer?” “Beer and shots, yeah.” “How did you get home?” “Randy drove.” At the top of the stairs, Myron stiffened.
I can be over in ten minutes.” “You’ll stay for dinner?” “Depends on what’s on the tape,” I say. “Right, yeah, that makes sense.” Ellie hears something in my voice and knows me too well. “Everything else okay?” “We’ll talk.” I hang up first.
Certain problems cannot be solved if you are constantly entertained and distracted.
With choice comes guilt. No escaping it.
That sensitivity workshop,” Myron said, “it’s really starting to pay off.
There are other single parents in town, mostly divorced mothers, but I get a ton of slack. If I forget to write a note or pick up my daughter late or leave her lunch on the counter, the other mothers or the staff in the school office chip in and help. They think my male helplessness is cute. When a single mother does any of those things, she is neglectful and on the receiving end of the superior moms’ scorn.
Some people are drawn to trouble. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up.
I’d always hated running. Born-again joggers described how they got addicted to the rapture of running, how they achieved a nirvana known as a runner’s high. Right. I’d always firmly believed that – much like the high of auto-asphyxiation – the bliss came more from a lack of oxygen to the brain than any sort of endorphin rush.
The secret in any interview was the ability to not fill the silence. A few seconds passed.
The pain flooded in again. It was always there, of course. Through the shaking hands and slapping of the backs, the grief stayed by his side, tapping Griffin on the shoulder, whispering in his ear, reminding him that they were partners for life.
And bad stays. Bad doesn’t go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.
Dreams are fragile. Dreams don’t last.
Children view their parents as both intrepid and omnipotent – yet here their parents are, gazing up at me, the doctor, with a fear-filled longing normally reserved for religious rapture. What.
There was an awkwardness to him, a stoicism that most people, with their need for appearances and fake smiles, found off-putting. Shane couldn’t handle small talk or the excess bullshittery of modern society. When.
I’m sorry,” my dead wife mouthed.
The media, an entity with the collective attention span of a Twinkie-filled two-year-old, immediately focused on this shiny new toy, kicking the old one under the bed. Carlson.
Chloe barked at a movement in the bush. A squirrel sprinted across the street. Chloe growled and feigned a chase. The squirrel stopped and turned back toward us. Chloe barked a boy-you’re-lucky-I’m-on-a-leash sound. She didn’t mean it. Chloe was a pure thoroughbred wimp. Kiss.
Too often, show muscles meant useless muscles.
They watched a repeat of Frasier on Channel 11. The show was starting to grow on them both.
The young family who’d moved into the Miller home had gotten rid of the Millers’ trademark overflowing flower boxes. The new owners of the Davis place had ripped out those wonderful shrubs Bob Davis had worked on every weekend. It all reminded Myron of an invading army ripping down the flags of the conquered.