Spring Reprints: Week 1

I lived with my husband at the edge of Manhattan. At night in the winter when the trees were bare we looked toward the Hudson River. We cherished our view and waited all year for the cold when the leaves that hid the river would turn and swirl to the ground, the water revealing itself like a mountain behind mist: gray, silent in the distance. We lay in bed together in the morning and stared at the low clouds gathered in the sky and at the dull slate line beyond the hill and waited for the room to fill with more than just the flimsy specter that passed for light.
       As we lay there, silent, side by side, I wondered if he led multiple lives as well. Instead of coming back from the store in the morning in the same state of completion in which he left, did part of him stay and stock shelves and speak Spanish and give back incorrect change? Did part of him leap into the newspaper’s stories, across the ocean to Europe, to work to broker peace? Or was he somehow able to contain himself wholly within himself? Was he able to come back to me complete, and feel no longing strong enough to pull him away when he stared with me out the window at the river? [Read more]

The first story for our 2019 digital reprint issue is “The Strange Case of Ingrid P.” by Johanna Stoberock, originally published in Vol. 22 of Eclipse.