It was a free-standing glass telephone booth, the kind Clark Kent enters and Superman exits. Residual heat from the day gave it the feeling of a warm oven. Inside the booth smelled of something that already progressed from pungent rotting to a dull stink. Mom experimented with the door that rattled as she pushed and [...]
Mom drove with her lotion-smooth hands on the steering wheel in the sixty-forty position. She eased the Buick onto I-91 heading East, where they hit heavier rush hour traffic, their progress reduced to what felt like a crawl as they changed to the 215. Once through San Bernardino, ignoring all the restaurants offering their hopeful [...]
Mom and Aunt Arlene rolled the Buicks windows down. They drove the three miles to the Highline Credit Union with only the radio for conversation. It was late afternoon and no breeze had kicked up to cool down the summer day. Only the moving car generated fresh air. My Aunt was used to Mom not [...]
The pokey hall was dark—once I got near my Aunt’s bedroom (and the phont there) at the back of the house,, I could hear one of my cousin’s talking. My oldest cousin Angie was sitting on my Aunt’s bed talking on the phone, something I knew she wasn’t supposed to do. Aunt Arlene didn’t like [...]
That Tuesday afternoon was no longer ordinary. Mom drove on, presenting me only her sunglasses hidden profile. The cars behind us didn’t honk again, but Mom blushed. She could chew on driving insults for days. Rare occasions when other drivers made faces, or impolite gestures, or honked at her were subjects that Mom might mutter [...]
The first biography I wrote was Aunt Sue’s fault—Sue and a set of ruined decorative towels. As I’m blaming Sue, or giving credit, let me give you the whole picture. The towels in question hung in the downstairs bathroom. A half bath, or a .5 in the parlance of real estate agents (like my Aunt [...]
This is, and is not, a ghost story. This is another biography of my mother, another biography by me. While it’s a tale of her life, this is still a ghost story; in the same way any tale of the Titanic is a ghost story. Whether cast as a story of the hubris of industry, [...]
Mom and Aunt Arlene rolled the Buicks windows down and drove the three miles to the Highline Credit Union. It was late afternoon and no breeze had kicked up to cool down the hot day. Only the moving car generated fresh air. My Aunt was used to Mom not using the air conditioning. The station [...]
Tuesday, August 16th 1977, began just like every other weekday that summer, began exactly like all the other summer days I don’t remember. There were beds to make, laundry to fold and time to pass playing. I was six years old that summer. No doubt freckled, with highlights in my no-longer blonde hair from playing [...]