Mr. Right Is Dead: Stories

by Rona Jaffe

Eventually, people are willing to admit most of their flaws—greed, jealousy, pride, hostility—but the feeling they’re most ashamed to admit is loneliness. I guess that’s because it’s the one weakness we all secretly feel should be the easiest to overcome, and we secretly feel guilty that we can’t. Go out and live—right?

She did not have the good things in life, if good things are a home and children and someone who comes back to be there with you. But she had many homes, all of them impossibly glamorous, and she had many children, all of them the men she taught to revere her, and she always had someone who came back to be with her and take her to the places she thought were the big world.

Social graces are dead, shyness is dead, chivalry is dead, tact is dead, game playing is dead, necking is dead, Mr. Right is dead, manners are dead, prudence is dead, expectations of any kind are dead. Only the moment lives. The moment is not an investment, it is an entity.