armand6154

My mom had been in charge of the chorus and of writing the endofsummer musical at Camp WaNaKeeTah, and my father, tanned and broadshouldered, had taught archery at the boys’ camp across the lake. They’d never told me how they’d met. Sometimes I’d imagined that it had been in the water: that my mom had [...]

“New neighbors,” Jon cal ed to my father, who was at his station at the stove, making his famous pancakes. “Real y?” My mother put her hands on Jon’s shoulders, standing on her tiptoes to peek over his head. She watched the truck for a minute, then went back to the kitchen. That morning she [...]

“It’s fine,” Jordan said. “I believe I’ve solved the mystery.” He explained, without looking at her, that she’d been aiming her key fob at the wrong car. The woman slumped back against the seat and pounded at her forehead with the heel of her free hand. “You must think I’m the biggest idiot in the [...]

“It’s a brandnew car. You’re just supposed to walk up to it with your key fob, you don’t even have to press anything, and I keep trying, but the door stil won’t open.” “Don’t worry,” he said, giving the woman a fast (and, he told himself, completely professional) onceover. Fivefive, oneforty, Caucasian, brown and brown. [...]

The receptionist’s chirpy voice had cooled noticeably at my name, and I knew why. Last year I’d cal ed in a panic after my fingers had found an oddshaped protuberance on the side of my abdomen …which had turned out to be my hipbone. Wel , how was I supposed to know? I thought, as [...]

She would like the enameled vase on the bedside table, the crisp linen bedskirt and the trel ised iron headboard, but then she’d realize that it was my parents’ bedroom. Stil here? she’d think, and I’d have to explain how I hadn’t meant to stay, how I’d tried to go away to col ege, how [...]

The first gold medal we had won for the Soviet Union. This one we won for each other. In 1995, we were training in Lake Placid for a fifty-five-city tour with the Stars on Ice. Our choreographer, Marina Zueva, was coming to help us work out the finishing touches on the program. We went over [...]

By the time I got back, everyone was around Sergei, and the medical people were working on him, trying to get his heart going. They wouldn’t let me get close to him. The other skaters were holding me. They didn’t want to let me watch what was happening. Then the medical people were taking him [...]

That he was like a little angel now. But that he’d never come back to her as we knew him and that it was very sad, and sometimes I would be crying, and that would be the reason. I looked carefully into her eyes as I spoke these words, so she’d understand. And I think [...]

Here we spin. Here we cross over. … I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to stop myself. I felt Sergei’s spirit was beside me right then. As the time neared for my solo number, a prayerful tribute to my union with Sergei, I thought about the words he used to say to me when [...]