Today they were moving back to the city because their mother never liked it here in the country, near the woods. Inside the house, the boxes were packed for the movers who would arrive in twenty minutes. Their mother watched the three children from her bedroom window, a tall window with old and rippled glass. Nora waved. Her mother waved back and let the curtain drop. Soon, Nora thought, that window would belong to a thin and pale woman whose children were already grown. Nora imagined her standing at the upstairs window and staring out at the yard like a ghost...
Dagmar had been my own first hope and inspiration for a future beyond the ordinary. She had become the source of all my earliest discovery and flight and fame fantasies. But I let Dagmar and her famous big breasts slip through my fingers.
To be honest, until Cassie started calling, there were a lot of things that I hadn’t thought much about. I knew the basic facts, of course. I knew, for example, that my mother was thirty-two years old when she was sent to prison. She had given birth by that time to eight children...
My new shirts are small and tight, like something a teenager would buy. I wore one to the grocery store last night and imagined someone handsome and bold would stare at me in the frozen food aisle as I reached for a pizza or a gallon of ice cream.