From an entry in progress for Emily Spivack's "Worn Stories"

My father’s vintage Ralph Lauren cardigan is age-stained and moth-nibbled, the cuffs are all stretched out. Although I don’t have any memories of him ever actually wearing it, it certainly corresponds to the type of man that he was then. In the early eighties, he had great hair and a mustache—a long-legged, rare-steak eating, tennis playing man who belonged to clubs with letter-pressed stationary in royal blue and cream. He always gave me a sip of wine at dinner, but would tell me to smell the bouquet first. This will give you the impression that my dad is cultured, snobbish. He isn’t. He pushed the wine across the table to me to piss my mother off.

From "Tropical Storm"

Something here about the happy times. Who wants to hear about my mother’s drinking? Would you like to know instead that I once had a horse? My parents let me name it and I named her Fantasy. I feel no embarrassment about this, oddly.

From "Tropical Storm"

            Every time we come down from Massachusetts for a visit, I think that if I can stay cheerful, the visit will be different. As long as we have fun during the daytime, I will be okay. That when five o’clock comes and my mother loads her wineglass full of ice and vodka, I will think: today I touched a porpoise! I went for a bike ride! I had shrimp on a bamboo skewer! And I will look the other way.

From "Tropical Storm"

She knocks out four pins on her first roll, none on her second. I pick up my pink bowling ball and feel a certain amount of pressure. To our left, the lanes are filled with small gentlemen in collared shirts and khaki shorts. Their shorts feature utility pockets. They’re wearing high socks. Their legs show the weary tendons of a once athletic life, but their bodies are sloped lines now and supple semicircles. Gentle foreheads, many chins, everything moves downwards. Their balls roll slower than our balls, they rotate with intention. They move like manatees up and down their lanes.

From "Airs Above the Ground"

            Everyday with Peter felt like a confirmation that three hearts could make a world.

Their routine followed a pattern that was instantly familiar in that it replicated the daydreams of the life she’d always wanted. After coffee and the ceremonial splitting of the paper into his section, and hers, one of them would ride Belltello while the other mucked the stable. Then, after a weird breakfast of leftovers and fruit and this horrid, Swedish fish paste that Peter pushed through a tube onto whole wheat crackers, Lydia would go to her studio to paint, taking breaks at the window to watch Belltello and her lover—what other word was there for it?—dance.

From "Tropical Storm," an essay in progress.

            We watch the mechanical teeth send all the pins back to the same place. We wait for the ball return to give me back my ball.

Cut from "Airs Above the Ground"

Lydia settled on a scrapbook, scissors, three packets of stickers, glue and a rubber stamp all neatly enclosed inside an attractive plastic container. She hoped that the recipient of her “DreamMaker Set” would be happy, but they probably would not be. The guardian at the children’s center would probably remove the scissors, rendering the gift useless. What kind of person would give scissors to a child?

            The type of person who didn’t have children, obviously. The type of person who believed that severence was the most important step in art. It wasn’t until she finally admitted to herself that she wasn’t any good as a rider that she discovered photography, and painting. She’d felt whole again, less nervous. She’d felt in control.

            She paid for the DreamMaker Set (forty-seven dollars. She would have preferred to donate cash) and walked across the parking lot with her brazen pastel gift bag. Control. Control was something she’d been robbed of. And she didn’t see a future in which she got it back.

            In the car, Lydia fingered the gold tassell hanging from the pendant around her neck. She’d put on a pair of black wool trousers for the party, an eggplant blouse made of glossy silk, black heels. The heels were patent leather, shameful. This outfit wasn’t her. Several months ago, she wouldn’t even have been able to have worn it in her car. The upholstery would have been (matted with) horse hair, stray pieces of hay, dusty horse blankets thrown in the back seat and crumbled leaves on the (foot carpets), dead flies on the dashboard. Everything was nice now. Clean smelling. Hoovered. She could go to fancy parties now, all dressed in black.

            Lydia gathered herself. Ran her hand down her pant leg, seeking stray hairs. Thirteen years of dressage training had prepared her to be a mourner. Takt:

rhythm and regularity: you keep working, you show up when expected, once a month, you call your mother, you say yes to parties. Versammlung: straightness and collection: you keep your hair clean, you listen to talk radio while you eat your dinner to make up for the absence of that other voice, you put a hot water bottle on his side of the bed. On social days, you force yourself to reach for the mascara and the broken cake of blusher, and once a month, usually after speaking to your mother, you take a bath with water that is too hot and in this too hot water, you cry in the tub.