In the 1940s, Arthur Sackler had watched the introduction of Thorazine. It was a “major” tranquilizer that worked wonders on patients who were psychotic. But the way the Sackler family made its first great fortune was with Arthur’s involvement in marketing the “minor” tranquilizers Librium and Valium. Thorazine was perceived as a heavy-duty solution for […]

”I don’t know if I ever liked you,” I say, and bathroom acoustics being what they are, the declaration is magnified and that much more unkind, which makes me feel bad until I see that he is missing a shoe, and I feel it anew, this terrible disappointment in myself that I am happy to […]

Doctor Lynn peered into the abdominal cavity, which was pulpy with dark juice. She dictated: Liver swollen, signs of internal bleeding. Kidney inflamed and oozing. Colon ulcerated.  I followed her scalpel with my own, taking samples.  She murmured, We could always blame the stars. I beg your pardon, Doctor? That’s what influenza means: influenza delle stelle–the influence of […]

Hirai looked into Kazu’s eyes and gave a firm, definite nod. Kazu put the coffee in front of Hirai. She picked up the silver kettle from the tray with her right hand and looked at Hirai from underneath her lowered brow. This was the ceremony. The ceremony did not change, no matter who was sitting […]

In the second silence all heads turn toward Martin. He speaks of satellites in orbit that are able to see everything. The street where we live, the building we work in, the socks we are wearing. A rain of asteroids. The sky thick with them. Could happen anytime. Asteroids that become meteorites as they approach […]

Dawn. There’s no sunrise, no birdsong. Light seeps over the water, through the branches. The sky is lying on the loch, filling the trees, heavy in the spaces between the pine needles, settling between blades of grass and mottling the pebbles on the beach. Although there’s no distance between cloud and land, nowhere for rain […]

Letty and Marcia began a more leisurely tidying up. They did not speak of or break into gossip about the two men, who were accepted as part of the office furniture and not considered worthy of comment unless they did something surprisingly out of character. Outside, the pigeons on the roof were picking at each […]

Maren knows Mamma has nightmares too. But she doubts her mother wakes with salt on her tongue, the sea mottling her breath. Sometimes Maren wonders whether she brought this life upon them all with her wishing for time alone with Diinna and Mamma. For though Kiberg is close, and Alta not so far, no man […]

Since overhearing her and Deborah’s conversation on the night of the pizza, I had become hungrier for more clues about my mother, yet simultaneously more fearful of what I might discover. So far, Connie had proven prickly when questioned about her life, and only liked to talk about things when she could control the information […]

Olive fell asleep beside it at four in the morning. The next day, she stood before the painting as the sun cracked low along the sky beyond her window. She never knew she was capable of such work. She had made, for the first time, a picture of such movement and excess and fecundity that […]