Hear the songs

Written from a sample story · English

For Dominic — best friend since ninth grade

• “named his car Bernadette and talks to her at red lights”
• “has burned the same three-bean chili at every cookout for nine years and still calls it a recipe”
• “showed up at my door with a toolbox the week my landlord stopped answering the phone”

Written from a sample story · English

For Camille — my wife

• “we met at the laundromat on Ninth Street when she lent me a quarter and never took it back”
• “she writes the grocery list in the margins of the newspaper, sideways”
• “she hums the same two bars of nothing while she braids her hair”

Written from a sample story · English

For Hannah — my little sister

• “she met Theo reaching for the last bag of ice at a gas station in July”
• “she has practiced the first dance in the kitchen every night this month, in socks”
• “she cried harder picking the shoes than she did saying yes”

Written from a sample story · English

For Deborah — my mom

• “kept a coffee can of buttons on the windowsill and could find the right one in ten seconds”
• “worked doubles at the diner and still made every game, standing the whole time”
• “calls the dog her grandson and means it”
• “still writes my name on the top of the lunch bag, and I am thirty-four”

Written from a sample story · English

For Ray — my dad

• “taught me to drive a stick shift in an empty parking lot and let me stall it forty times without a word”
• “has one joke about the toaster and tells it like it is brand new”
• “kept every drawing I ever made in a folder in the garage, in order, labelled by year”

Written from a sample story · English

For Margo — my grandmother

• “puts on lipstick to take the trash out”
• “has beaten me at gin rummy forty-one times running and keeps the tally on the fridge”
• “says the word “fine” about nine different ways and every one means something else”

Written from a sample story · English

For Nora — my grandmother

• “her kitchen smelled like cinnamon and scorched coffee every Saturday morning”
• “she said my name in two syllables, like it was a song she was in the middle of”
• “the good scissors lived in the sewing tin and nobody was allowed to cut paper with them”
• “she danced with the radio while the kettle came up, one hand on the counter”