SHINING THROUGH

In 1940 when I was thirty-one and an old maid, while the whole world waited for war, I fell in love with John Berringer.

An office crush. Big deal. Since the invention of the steno pad, a day hasn't gone by without some secretary glancing up from her Pitman squiggles and suddenly realizing that the man who was mumbling "... and therefore pursuant to the above... " was the one man in her life who could ever bring her joy.

So there I was, a cliche with a number 2 yellow pencil: a working girl from Queens who'd lost her heart to the pride of the Ivy League.
Susan Isaacs

The character became more real to me when I heard that Melanie Griffiths was playing her in the movie. Before that I think I fell for the old maid connotation. But, I do not like the movie version because they consolidate the the characters of John Berringer and his son.

THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING

Everything you think you know about the world isn't true. Nothing is real, it's all made up. We live in a world of illusion. I'm telling you this up front because I don't want you thinking this story is going to have a happy ending. It won't make any sense out of sadness. It won't redeem humanity in even a small sort of way.
Christopher Barzak

I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE CAKE

As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. Say someone pushes me onto the subway tracks. Or I get accidentally blown up. Or a woman with a headset and a baby carriage wheels over my big toe, backing me into some scaffolding, which shakes loose a lead pipe, which lands on my skull. What then? After the ambulance, the hospital, the funeral, the trays of cheese cubes on foil toothpicks...
Sloane Crosley

DEATH IN THE GARDEN

Friday 4th December

Today at half-past two in the afternoon I was acquitted of the murder of my husband.

Five minutes earlier I had known I was to die. The certainty was absolute that what I have lived through in the last half year could only lead to death and a death timed, certain, ritualised...
Elizabeth Ironside