Activity

The truth about accepting help is that it requires asking for it and coordinating it and paying for it, emotionally and financially. Financially, I took on extra freelance work to pay for housecleaning because it wasn’t in the budget. Emotionally, I dealt with my husband’s heavy sighs when he’d wal…

[...] Correcting undergraduate essays together in the evenings, reading aloud the worst sentences to make each other laugh. On her little stereo system, the Barenboim recording of the 40th Symphony. Walking over together to their tenants’ union meetings arm in arm, heads bent, absorbed in conversat…

Waiting then in silence empty-handed. Suspended floating, overwarm, heavy overcoat he hasn’t taken off. Before him the flat grey plane of the closed door. And was it real he wonders. She, the raincoat, flower-like her face, the live stream, captured pawn. You’re being very decent she said. Half in …

Social as well as philosophical of course: the problem. All very well if Emily knows or suspects, or if Janine, or Max, Leah, even Gary, maybe. But what about people in general, the public, the whole of Dublin talking. And with that idea in mind he almost wants to forget the idea, throw both of the…

I was seriously worried about you, she says. I’m not even going to tell you where my mind went.

He says nothing.

You know if anything happened to you, that would be horrific for me, she goes on.

I don’t really want that responsibility, he remarks.

He’s looking out the window still but h…