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Hansen stayed three weeks, and after he left, I experienced a modified version of my prior despair. I missed him bitterly, but with each day the bitterness abated and another set of possibilities began to assert itself, like shifting my weight from one foot to the other. A week after he left, I had…

Irene Maitlock was one of those women I found difficult to look at without imagining how much they would profit by dropping just a few pounds, wearing a less pointy bra, a minimum of makeup, and clothing that had, if not personality, at least some semblance of an identity. Because the raw material …

“Always watching,” Silas says, looking at me. “Those big eyes, always moving.”

I nod, ashamed. “But I never do anything,” I say. And all of a sudden I know, I know why Angel left me.

Silas frowns. “Sure you do. You watch,” he says, “which is what’ll save you.”

I shrug. But the longer we si…

When my husband told me he was leaving, we were sitting in our den. I looked around at the polished shelves, the TV and VCR, piles of The New Yorker and Business Week. The accumulation of ten years of marriage, mostly his.

“I’ve made the arrangements,” he told me. “I’ll rent an apartment.”

I …

Ellen found her mother seated on the living room floor, her hair in a scarf. She had the dreamy look she often wore after spending several hours by herself. “I’m rearranging,” she said. “Dusting.”

Around her lay things she had bought on her various trips: inlaid wood chests, corn-husk dolls, ani…