I probably should have worked on pulling myself together before I rounded the corner and collided with a paper goods display, arranged in the shape of a giant turkey. There really was no turning back. In the wake of the damage, I call out a harried string of, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” as I push on. Just an hour ago, Greg and I were living the life, in bed with
“Oh my God… what am I doing here?” I blurt. “Finding a man,” Amanda reminds me with a cheeky grin. “I have cats,” I deadpan. Is my skirt too short? Is the zit on my forehead bulging through my concealer? Amanda takes my hand in hers because I keep fidgeting. “You look fantastic, and your zit’s still incognito.” Though I might sweat off three layers of spackle-like concealer, I’m more
A single bubble escaped my right nostril, swimming in haste to the water’s surface, as if gasping. I closed my eyes. She was right, that synchronized swimmer I’d overheard in the locker room. “Sometimes we lay on the bottom of the pool. It’s actually relaxing.” I could’ve drifted off to sleep. My heartbeat, remarkably slow, was pounding everywhere. In my scalp. My temples. My eyeballs. My stomach. I even felt
Sydney’s picking her nose again. You want to scream, even bat her hand away from her face. She is standing in the produce aisle, next to the loose leaf lettuce. People are staring. It’s all fun and games until someone finds a booger on their radicchio, you think to yourself. “Sydney,” you say to your sister, your tone patient, but there is tension under the patience, tight as a rubber
My name is RoseMarie LeBlanc, and if you think I’d planned to be taking orders, taking up dirty dishes, or taking complaints all of my life, you’d be wrong. I’d wanted to be a beautician. Not a stylist. Not a salon operator. Not a barber. A beautician. I wanted to have the kind of shop like Truvy in Steel Magnolias. The ladies of the town would come in for weekly
“The New Deal will bring reform and relief to citizens riddled by the Depression!” The spray of Franklin Roosevelt’s words on my face might have been alarming, if I hadn’t already experienced five horrifying minutes of the French Revolution, thirty equally terrifying seconds of a hanging in Salem, and an unforgettable fifteen minutes at Woodstock. Panic had subsided sometime in the middle of Joplin’s “Summertime,” and survival had set in.
