On All Saints’ Day, 1940, Grandfather went to the cemetery with his daughter Marthe, whose firstborn son lies under a bed of white gravel, a tiny Flying Dutchman sailing into the uncharted mists of the beyond,

The break had been going on for who knows how long; time was passing by unchecked. The men opened their notebooks, leafed through them noiselessly, shifted their behinds on the school benches, sharpened

The guests are arriving, across the lawn. It is Friday afternoon. The men are coming in on the late train in the parlor car, and others have come on the ferryboat

In my adolescence, I dreaded the thought of marriage. No slave state could oppress me as thoroughly as a wife. Marriage was like patriotism; no wonder politicians

Every now and again, as if on a whim, the Federal government people would write to Marie Delaveaux Wilson in one of those white, stampless envelopes

Sister Binche began her duties in a serious manner, taking extra time to unbandage his eyes, which operation felt to him nothing like a turban, but more like

An odd town, Venice has always drawn oddities to itself. Feel displaced, unwanted, unappreciated, come to Venice. Too contemptuous, indolent or poor to wash, shave 

It was a quiet summer with a long terrible time of heat. It was blue in the evenings and black at night. The elderberry hung over one side of the house and near

Chester said she was a Fish, and that wasn’t good. She was sure to say no before she said yes. She had these clear, gray eyes, watery, like two little pools of clam

About four weeks after I took the Vow, I had become so marooned in the repetitions of Raymond James Burns’s course in World Communism that I made the mistake