The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

They were on a first-name basis now, united in female solidarity after a twenty-minute conversation about cats. How women cemented alliances over less than nothing impressed him anew.

You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people— . . . They take up room. So much room. I was married to Howard for twenty-eight years and yet he made only a piddling dent in my memory. A little nick. But certain others, they move in and make themselves at home and start flapping their arms in the story you make of your life. They have a wingspan.

Can memory be revisited to allow us to see now what we didn’t see then?

Answering questions about the Korean War would most certainly not improve my spirits. Your Mr. Linkman is obsessed with wars, does he realize that? You tell him all war is the same: lots of pointless killing and then broken people coming back home.