2014
“A Christmas Letter.” Ploughshares 40:1 Spring (2014), 112-133.
"I was in Italy when my father died..."
2002
“Snapshots of Aphrodite,” StoryQuarterly 38 (2002), 478-488.
Rosella was a rose garden in flames, DiVita an indefatigable gardener, grafting new pleasures on the ancient stock, forcing them in the hothouse of desire to burst precociously into searing colors.
1997
“FOR SALE,” Black Warrior Review 23 (Spring/Summer 1997), 1-13
Thanksgiving was the same as always–turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, apple pie–except that Margot, Rudy's youngest daughter, was in Florence, Italy, and Molly, his second daughter, had stayed in Ann Arbor, Michigan (where she was studying to get her real-estate license) in order to be with her new boyfriend.
1994
“O Happy Men, If Love Which Rules the Stars Rule Your Hearts,” Crazyhorse 47 (Winter 1994), 125-38).
Both Rudy's wife and his youngest daughter had fallen in love with Italy, and they'd fallen in love with Italians too.
1992
“The Second Coming,” Mississippi Valley Review 23 (Fall 1992), 63-79.
Rudy let the dogs in, filled their water dish, and spread out the mail on the kitchen table. There was nothing from his daughter in Italy, but there was a letter from the University of Chicago, where Helen had gone back to school, asking for money, which he tossed in the garbage--Helen had been dead for almost ten years; and there was a large, formidable envelope bearing a stern warning:
“I Speak a Little French,” Crazyhorse 43 (Winter 1992), 82-91.
It was December and I was forty‑nine years old, going on fifty. I tried not to let it get me down, but when my daughter wrote to say that she wouldn't be coming to Florence for the holidays, I didn't see how I could hang on in Italy for another seven months.
1991
“Where I Want to Be,” TriQuarterly 81 (Spring/Summer 1991), 55-76.
Papa did all the cooking in our family. He started when Mama took a leave of absence for two months and went to Italy to look at the pictures, to see for herself what she’d only seen in the Harvard University Prints series and on old 3” x 4” tinted slides that she used to project on the dining-room wall: and when she came back he kept on doing it.
1989
“Pockets of Silence,” The Chicago Tribune, Magazine Section, 29 January 1989, 18-20.
Shortly before she died my mother made a tape for us, several tapes. She had some things she wanted to say, big things, little things. It was kind of a mystery. I mean, I don't think she had any big secret sins to confess–her sins always rose to the surface right away–so what could she possibly have to say that she hadn't said, or couldn't say to our faces?
1985
“The Minstrels” Farmer’s Market 3 (Fall 1985), 31-36.
Once upon a time there were two little girls named Seremonda and Duva who lived in a village halfway between the East and the West.
1984
“Class of ’59,” Farmer’s Market 2 (January 1984), 4-8.
Both hands grip tightly before he moves a foot. Both feet are firmly in place before he moves a hand. A gallon of purple paint, slung on a belt over his shoulder, swings heavily and bangs against the brush in his back pocket.
1984
“Green of Real Green,” Ascent 10 (December 1984), 55-62.
HOMECOMING, 1965. Michigan is playing Ohio State. Woody Hayes and Bump Eliot glare at each other, a couple of paunchy gladiators, on the front page of The Michigan Daily.
1982
“Strange Bedfellows,” Columbia 7 (1982), 85-90.
On the bookshelves which Julian has just installed in his new study, at the north end of the large bedroom he shares with his wife and a cat, the I Ching stands next to Carlos Castanada’s Teachings of Don Juan–deep calling to deep.
“The Mountain of Lights,” The California Quarterly 21 (1982), 93-112. Listed in Best American Short Stories 1983; reprinted in Best Short Stories from the California Quarterly, 1971-1985.
Julian Dijksterhuis stood by a half-opened door in the vaulted corridor, his shoulder blades pressing against the clean white wall like the runners of a sled. He wasn't in anyone's way, but he didn't belong there, and the nurses kept suggesting that he would be more comfortable in the waiting room, or sitting with his wife.
1975
“A Lover’s Pinch,” The Chicago Review (January 1975), 179-86.
“I am like Lazarus, “ said Father Dawson one afternoon, looking up from a well-worn Testament which lay open on his lap. Mrs. Dougherty, who came on Thursdays, put down her dust cloth and looked at him.
“Really I am, “ he said; “I was dead and now I'm alive."
1973
“Russian Dreams,” The Iowa Review (Fall 1973), 40-44.
Alexander Gotsen was not a man of wild and dangerous passions which needed to be brought under control. He was, on the contrary, a philosopher, a professor of classical philosophy, that is, who had recently completed a slender volume of essays on the cosmological fragments of Philolaus and Archytas.