The Paris Review

I didn’t think I would ever tell this story. My wife told me not to; she said no one would believe it and I’d only embarrass myself. What she meant, of course, was that it would embarrass her. “What about Ralph and Trudy?” I asked her. “They were there. They saw it too.”

“Trudy will tell him to keep his mouth shut,” Ruth said, “and your brother won’t need much persuading.”

This was probably true. Ralph was at that time superintendent of New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 43, and the last thing a Department of Education bureaucrat from a small state wants is to wind up on one of the cable news outlets, in the end-of-the-hour slot reserved for UFOs over Phoenix and coyotes that can count to ten. Besides, a miracle story isn’t much good without a miracle worker, and Ayana was gone.

But now my wife is dead—she had a heart attack while flying to Colorado to help out with our first grandchild and died almost instantly. (Or so the airline people said, but you can’t even trust them with your luggage these days.) My brother Ralph is also dead—a stroke while playing in a golden-ager golf tournament—and Trudy is gaga. My father is long gone; if he were still alive, he’d be a centenarian. I’m the last one standing, so I’ll tell the story. It is unbelievable, Ruth was right about that, and it means nothing in any case—miracles never do, except to those lucky lunatics who see them everywhere. But it’s interesting. And it is true. We all saw it.