These short stories are about their titles

This is a story about Death

We drive a good car. It is blue and relaxing and fast, but still gets good mileage. The car is Italian, like my wife. She is prone to fits of jealousy, and I’ll often see her tailing me on the way to work, sometimes directly, and at others with a car or two between us. She drives poorly and looks agitated. Sometimes I’ll pull off suddenly for coffee, making small talk with the woman at the register asking after the weather and the day. Back on the road, I’ll find myself staring in the rear view, seeing if I can spot the white of her knuckles gripping the wheel at 9 and 5. She’s a nervous driver, and was never any good at it. I’ll wonder sometimes, how she and my infant son managed to get out of the house so quickly, after I leave. I wonder what kind of shoes he’s wearing, or whether his little toes are tapping like a piano player across keys on his car seat. I wonder where they go after this morning ritual is over—If they’ll slip back down to the playground to haunt people there or stop at their favorite Gelato place up around fifth. I want them to follow me forever, but I always lose them in the glare of the sun, or the passing of a big blue truck. No matter how much I slow down, I can never quite catch them, warn them to stay off the roads, and just like that, they are gone again, without even stopping to say goodbye.

 Bombs and Brooms 

I was looking all over the house for the broom. The children had left toys all over the floor and it was my intention to sweep them up and throw them all away. At night, when they will ask me where the toys have gone, I’d make up elaborate stories: Wally the puffer fish stuffed animal grew gills and took up religion. He’s under seas now, preaching to the unclean, their unwashed bodies. James the Giraffe took up with the circus because they offered a more competitive 403 B. They’d believe none of it of course. My children are too damn smart. They are so smart that they’ve hidden the broom away, anticipating even this gesture. I am sure that I ask them they’ll tell me quite a story. The wicked witch of the West needed it for air travel. It grew a soul and flew into the clouds. It was last seen over the center of town in a Middle Eastern country, dropping bristles on the unwashed children below.

On Children

When the baby is crying, my wife will ask me to go upstairs and soothe him. I am tired often, and lazy to boot. Instead of going upstairs, I’ll tell her that the world will offer him no comfort, that this is a test of his fortitude. She’ll say that he doesn’t even know how to spell or say fortitude. In the kitchen, she’ll place the dishes in the sink and head upstairs. “You’re spoiling him,” I’ll yell, “he’s going to turn out like old milk” from the couch where I’m reading an article about fantasy football. 

Architecture

I try to look for beauty in the small things: a flower blooming in a sea of pavement, a stranger smiling from across the room. Often though, I find that the small things in life are rather too small: the nucleus of an atom, molecules colliding. Most of the world seems full of big ugly things. I think that I must keep looking for small things: the smell of an old perfume, filling certain moments of a day, a trickle of light passing through thick darkness. Nothing is ever as good as it could be. I’m looking for an hour, a minute, a second to go perfectly right, something around which I could begin to construct my day.