Anita G. Gorman
/ GreyThoughts.InfoThe narrator confesses…
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…was about to start. Everyone had either piles of paper neatly assembled on the table or a laptop that was on and chugging away. I was a new member of the group. I had nothing with me except what was stored in my head. The leader of the group cleared…
By Anita G. Gorman
…liked her name. She didn't feel particularly joyful most of the time. On the other hand, for part of the time on most days she felt pretty good. She had two small children, a husband with a decent job, and she herself worked part-time in retail. She was thirty years…
By Anita G. Gorman
Carlina apologizes for…
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…was always apologizing. In the grocery store, when she was staring at cans of soups and another customer joined her, she would say, "Sorry," and move away to another aisle. The cans of soups would…
By Anita G. Gorman
She enters an antiques store and wants to buy a painting of a clown. The old proprietor reveals why she can't buy it.
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…started looking at the walls. She had enough furniture, but she needed something on the walls of her apartment in downtown Ashleyville, Ohio. She walked to the rear of the small, crowded store and…
By Anita G. Gorman
Magdalena has always been ignored…
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…was not sure when she realized that no one paid much attention to her. Was it in elementary school, when she would raise her hand constantly to answer the teacher's questions? Her arm would ache from shaking it, but Mrs. Alexander, her third grade teacher, would rarely call…
By Anita G. Gorman
Irene's mother issues a…
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…Irene's mother was dying, she established some rules. "Irene, when I die, you will of course bury me in the Ashleyville Cemetery. You will visit every day. I know you will. You're a good daughter, though I can't say you always have been very good. Why you married that guy, I have no idea. At least the two of you produced a cute…
By Anita G. Gorman
The narrator confesses…
————
…was about to start. Everyone had either piles of paper neatly assembled on the table or a laptop that was on and chugging away. I was a new member of the group. I had nothing with me except what was stored in my head. The leader of the group cleared…
By Anita G. Gorman
…liked her name. She didn't feel particularly joyful most of the time. On the other hand, for part of the time on most days she felt pretty good. She had two small children, a husband with a decent job, and she herself worked part-time in retail. She was thirty years…
By Anita G. Gorman
Carlina apologizes for…
————
…was always apologizing. In the grocery store, when she was staring at cans of soups and another customer joined her, she would say, "Sorry," and move away to another aisle. The cans of soups would…
By Anita G. Gorman
She enters an antiques store and wants to buy a painting of a clown. The old proprietor reveals why she can't buy it.
————
…started looking at the walls. She had enough furniture, but she needed something on the walls of her apartment in downtown Ashleyville, Ohio. She walked to the rear of the small, crowded store and…
By Anita G. Gorman
Magdalena has always been ignored…
————
…was not sure when she realized that no one paid much attention to her. Was it in elementary school, when she would raise her hand constantly to answer the teacher's questions? Her arm would ache from shaking it, but Mrs. Alexander, her third grade teacher, would rarely call…
By Anita G. Gorman
Irene's mother issues a…
————
…Irene's mother was dying, she established some rules. "Irene, when I die, you will of course bury me in the Ashleyville Cemetery. You will visit every day. I know you will. You're a good daughter, though I can't say you always have been very good. Why you married that guy, I have no idea. At least the two of you produced a cute…
By Anita G. Gorman
A janitor buys a …
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…had never bought a lottery ticket before. Some of his friends bought tickets all the time, and occasionally they would win something: a dollar or two, or even ten dollars. Edward didn't think that any of them were ahead of the…
By Anita G. Gorman
While on a motor trip, Malcolm comes up with what he thinks is a foolproof way to kill his wife.
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…had wanted to kill his wife for a long time, but only recently had Malcolm figured out the best way to do it. Poison? No, too detectable. Ditto for guns, knives, baseball bats, or a tumble down the basement stairs. In the movies the cops always figured these things out. No, Malcolm needed another method, one…
By Anita G. Gorman
Maxwell loses his job and learns something new about the world.
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…was a sad day when Maxwell Zetterberg lost his job. The boss had called him just after lunch. "Max, come into my office…
By Anita G. Gorman
Janice had a serious crush on Bennie in high school. She has never forgotten him. They meet again at their 20th high-school reunion.
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…was always Bennie in high school. Bennie was handsome, smart, a star athlete, popular with everyone, and Janice loved him, or thought she loved him. At least she had a crush on him, and that must be the same as love, or so she decided when she was sixteen and a…
By Anita G. Gorman
…was a sunny day in April on 55th Road in Elmhurst, Queens. I was almost six years old. Alice Harrington, who lived across the street, had invited me to her play house, built by her grandfather. The wooden house with white walls and green shutters had a realistic gabled roof and benches inside where we could sit. The little house was in the middle of a garden, so in the spring and summer time it seemed to me an…
By Anita G. Gorman
When Elspeth's family leaves her at a campsite, she decides to be a kind of Robinson Crusoe.
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…saw her parents and her uncle and aunt leave the campsite in southern Ohio on a hot summer day. Elspeth was seven and had been playing in the woods. When she emerged, she watched the two cars heading down the gravel road. Her parents were in one car, and her aunt and uncle in the…
By Anita G. Gorman
My mother never told me about her half-brother and the scandal surrounding his life.
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…hangs on the wall behind the piano, the large photograph of my mother’s family taken in 1904. My mother, the baby, sits on my grandmother’s lap. My grandfather, Adolf Johansson, holds a toddler, an uncle I never met. Six children occupy this large formal portrait, along with their parents. Eleven would be the final…
By Anita G. Gorman
I picked up the phone, even though caller id said Anonymous was on the other end.
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…the phone rang, I checked the Caller ID. Anonymous, it said. I didn't know anyone by that name. The phone rang again. Anonymous was calling a second time. I picked up the phone. Maybe it was a person who knew our code: if we don't answer, dial again right away. A young man was on the other…
By Anita G. Gorman
Josie loses her job and rebels when two friends tell her that "everything happens for a reason."
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…was Adele who first told Josie that "everything happens for a reason." Josie had just lost her job, and she could not think of a single reason that this cataclysm should have…
By Anita G. Gorman
When Jonathan returns home to Queens at the end of World War II, he is missing a…
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…watched as he emerged from the car. He had crutches, and his right pant leg was pinned up. She wondered why he didn't just let the pants cascade down to the ground. Maybe he would trip, since he had no right foot…
By Anita G. Gorman
Eustacia's boss makes her job intolerable. When she quits, she finds out who her friends are.
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…a physical blow, Andrew Amundsen's harsh words pummeled Eustacia Fleming and made her feel sick. She had been the office manager at Amundsen Insurance for ten years. Loyal, trustworthy, friendly, competent: those were words that Andrew had used to describe Eustacia on her last…
By Anita G. Gorman
A boy named Cincinnatus learns Roman history and decides to model his life after the ancient hero.
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…Cincinnatus was born, his father made a pronouncement.
"Adelaide," he said to his wife, "I'd like to name our son Cincinnatus."
"But we don't live in Cincinnati. And if we did, wouldn't it be…
By Anita G. Gorman
Eliza is the perfect daughter to a domineering mother, until she quietly rebels.
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…never had a good answer, and secretly she didn't want to give a good answer. Why she had such a compliant little girl had to do with constant repetition, with beginning early with her demands and, perhaps, with having an impressionable…
By Anita G. Gorman
My mother and my aunt surprised me one day with an act of courage.
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…took courage to cross the ocean in the early part of the twentieth century and begin a new life. My mother, Astrid Paulina Johansson Malmquist, was a woman of courage. My aunt, Amalia Johansson Lindquist, was another. They were two of the eleven children who grew up on my grandparents' farm outside of Asarum in the province of Blekinge, in southern…
By Anita G. Gorman
The chauffeur of a mysterious limousine takes Marjorie to places where she misbehaved in the past.
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…was in the middle of washing dishes in her tiny kitchen when her smart phone beeped at her. She liked calling it her smart-aleck phone. The beep signaled a new text…
By Anita G. Gorman
…decided to become happy, she was not exactly sure how to make that come about. She had often immersed herself in the dregs of misery, and she was acutely aware of the consequences, which were not good at all. Most of the time she felt depressed and hopeless, as did, she noticed, most of…
By Anita G. Gorman
The narrator has difficulty renewing her Writer's License.
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…been issued my Writer's License on my birthday, July 15, during the previous year. Now it was time, I noticed, to renew the license, a license I had barely used. Still, if I intended to write again, I would need to traipse down to the license bureau, the same bureau that issued driver's licenses, license…
By Anita G. Gorman
A grandmother suddenly has to take care of her three grandchildren.
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…daughter showed up one fine summer day at her mother's house in Ashleyville, Ohio. Catherine had not been the model daughter Agatha wanted, but she was her only daughter. Agatha, now seventy and a widow, had not seen Catherine or her grandchildren for…
By Anita G. Gorman
Agatha bemoans the way old people are treated. Then she performs an act of bravery.
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…had just celebrated her 85th birthday, and she was unhappy, as she told her friend Veronica, who at 75 was a lot…
By Anita G. Gorman
Bertha and Bertram Free try to find an appropriate name for their baby boy.
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…knew that somewhere in the distant past his ancestors had another name, a longer name, a foreign-sounding name. He'd heard of immigrants coming through Ellis Island and having their names shortened and Americanized by the island's personnel. Maybe that was how his family became…
By Anita G. Gorman
…did not know there was a secret in Uncle Otto's family. Or was it a secret? Did anybody care, or was the fate of a three-year-old girl not that important in the hardscrabble world of rural Sweden in…
By Anita G. Gorman
…was the time of the pandemic. On most days Muriel Blenkinsopp did not venture out of her house on High Street in Ashleyville, Ohio. She lived by herself, her husband having died five years before, and her children were now at home in another state a few hours away. She didn't even have a dog, though she would have liked one, but they seemed too much trouble to take care of. She didn't like cats very…
By Anita G. Gorman
…wanted a hobby, but it had to be an unusual one. He knew people who knitted, crocheted, painted, coached football, collected comic books, and played complicated card games. He wanted a hobby that no one else, or at least that few people…
By Anita G. Gorman
…was the resting place for citizens who had died as early as 1795 and as late as 2020. Most of the tombstones were modest, and in recent years small plaques in the ground had become more popular than large tombstones or obelisks. No one these days put up a mausoleum, but a few dotted the landscape of the old…
By Anita G. Gorman