The Forgetting Time

by Sharon Guskin

people always did a little double take upon looking at him as if ethereal beauty, located in a boy child, was some kind of trick.

It occurred to him that Sheila’s death, which was the worst thing that had ever happened in his life, had not substantively changed the course of his days.

But there was no going back, was there? Wasn’t that the lesson of adulthood, of motherhood? You had to be where you were. The life you’re living, the moment you’re in.

She carried that everywhere with her now, that fear she sparked in other parents’ eyes.

Tommy was dead and she was a – what? Not a widow, not an orphan. There was no word for what she was.