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Once I bought the dog, there was no turning back. Even a get-well beanie-baby bloodhound from the hospital gift shop becomes an imperative for me: he must now be delivered to the woman who shared Mom’s hospital room, even though Mom’s back home healthy and I’m just here for paperwork. The dog cajoles me that his faultless sniffer can track a few tumor cells per billion, so I follow him to six and a right off the elevator, and sure enough, outside Gloria’s door, her husband is collapsed in a chair weeping, and my shabby gesture feels like flowers to her funeral. Dearly beloved, I’ll say, Gloria—if I have her name right—the oldest of seven siblings, never felt the need to bear children because, she told my Mom, she had raised her brothers and sisters. Wasn’t she special. Over several dreary afternoons, while Mom (Bed One) chatted with callers about their bouquets, Gloria (Bed Two) raged to me against her brain, brain surgeons, hospital indignities, and about her “kids,” who were too put out to visit her this lifetime, and about her job at the diner and the waitresses who wished her well and who had sent the punny card with the little dog who said: Heal! Back to today. The trail has led the dog and me to Gloria’s door. Her husband, weepy but chipper, tells me: Go on in. Take ten minutes for me. She’s alert and expectant. And when I see she sees it’s only me, I wish I were all six of them bursting in with trivial gossip and thoughtless positivity, but I and the little dog who knows better than anyone else what’s going on inside her head will have to do. She hugs us like a mother to my own sweet mother’s son.
Original Copyright © February 25, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 03, 2026
I’m sitting at a red light falling in love with the passenger in the next car. She’s cute and small and irrepressible, but mostly hidden by the headrest, and dark and coy and mysterious and of completely indeterminate age, and smart! When she turns her head just so, contemplating her driver, I can see enough, through the tinted glass and the relentless glare of the bird-stained windshield, to know she’s curious and contemplative. A brilliant browline crowns a clear and deepset eye of sparkling darkness. I feel you judging me. Love at one car distance is every bit as legitimate as love at a distance of one breath mingling with another, near enough for our tongues to snap like wit. I’ve had the skin-on-skin sort. The varsity variety. I’m not sure it was any better. I’ll catch her eye when I pass alongside, if this maddening gridlock doesn’t unhinge me. I want to tell her this traffic is the worst since cops invented red lights to raise ticket revenues, right? I know. Observations like that should win her heart unless my heart is lying. She’ll be mine to amuse and disappoint in a minute or a mile. But first, eliminate the other driver, who doesn’t deserve or appreciate her. How’s his traffic material? Green light, finally. As our cars pull even, her driver’s head blocks her from offering me her face. To pledge in my direction. With her eyes. That I am not alone in love. Her driver will concede our love is destiny, or regret it. He moves aside, I believe, in surrender; I see her; she is stunning. The most magnificent springer spaniel, dark of brow and bright of eye, purebred of champions clearly, this one, raised from greatness for greatness, vivacious and irrepressible, age approximately three.
Original Copyright © February 10, 2000
Revised Copyright © February 06, 2026
Very Short Novels 