Moonglow

by Michael Chabon

She was always threatening rain; he had been born with an umbrella in his hand.

holding herself like an egg balanced on a spoon,

My grandparents forgave each other with the pragmatism of lovers in a plummeting airplane.

The shirt had scandalized some of his fellow villagers, but my grandfather had no regard for anyone who could be scandalized by a shirt.

My mother returned my father’s attentive inattention with a display of her skill at striking unposed poses.

If there were times when the weight of the secret she carried, whatever it had been, made it impossible for her to love herself and thus to return his love, the fierceness with which she had clung to him even at those moments was recompense enough. It had fed his various hungers.

But even skepticism, setting a limit to all belief, has its limits.