These things should not happen. With luck, any luck at all, things would have gone differently. Margaret would have seen him, the terrace doors would have been unlocked, the window ledge would have been closer. And neither Margaret nor Willie ever wanted to be in that thicket of hostility. They love each other, mothers, children, no matter what they say, what they do. That should count. And repentance is meant to save.
Most often there are miracles; most children are saved. When a miracle doesn’t happen, when you hear that a child is lost, the terrible sound of it echoes within your mind, a series of slow reverberations. They continue, deep inside you, distant and sinister. You feel terror, the vertiginous pull downward, the drop that you escaped for no reason. And you hold your own child close to you, close, no matter how he struggles.
About the Author
Roxana Robinson (b. 1946) is the author of five novels, most recently Sparta; three short story collections; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Robinson teaches in Hunter College’s master of fine arts program and is president of the Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for writers.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Roxana Robinson
The following stories appeared in slightly different form in these publications:
“Sleepover” in Glimmer Train; “King of the Sky” in Harper’s; and “Mr. Sumarosono,” “Leaving Home,” and “The Favor” in The Atlantic Monthly. “Mr. Sumarosono” was also published in The Best American Short Stories—1994 (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).
Cover design by Julianna Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2560-7
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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