My grandfather wanted to tell me the story of the horse that died of heartache. “What are you thinking?” my grandmother said. The horse’s name was Sully, my grandfather said. (Which must have meant something quite different in another language. I did not ask.) “A beauty,” he said. He said it was true, the story […]

I heard a story at my great-aunt’s place that I told to my sister long-distance on the phone. Well, first I said, “Did you know her real name?,” because I knew or suspected that my sister did not. I will not repeat it here. But one of the cousins, a man whom I had never […]