In fifth grade another student pointed to the logo on my Polo shirt—a thrift-store purchase—and announced it was a fake because the horse was missing a leg. He was wrong, but I still remember the hot-iron feeling of inferiority. His dad drove a Mercedes with leather seats; mine, a minivan that smelled like pipe tobacco.
My dad liked to fix things and would argue with anyone who believed material wealth was a sign of intelligence or hard work. He’d been raised by a loving single mother, and they’d had a dozen different apartments by the time he could drive. Growing up in the Italian and German neighborhoods of St. Louis, my dad had to work for whatever he wanted.
He took me fishing in the evenings on a lake on our farm, which my classmates called a pond in the woods. There we’d listen to a Cardinals game on the radio in his rusted Dodge Power Wagon, the whir of the crickets combining with the roar of the crowd. It was the summer of 1998, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were slugging it out. After the game was over, the Dodge’s V8 would growl as the truck crawled back over the gravel road toward the lit windows of our Missouri home.
In high school I used that hot-iron feeling as motivation to prove I was good enough, that my parents and grandparents were good enough. I still remember that kid’s preppy boat shoes and salutatorian sash on graduation day as I stepped to the podium to deliver my valedictorian speech.
Byron Rath
Durham, North Carolina
When I was nineteen, I lived in Austin, Texas, in a co-op with a dozen other bohemian types. I had three lovers around the country, all named Jason, and I referred to them by the names of the towns where they lived. Incredibly my local lover’s real name was Jason Austin, which I found both delightful and ridiculous.
At one point he and I learned that the bakery tossed out the good stuff on the same day of the week the used-book store dumped its unsellable merchandise, and a Wednesday-night ritual was born: Dumpster Decadence. After stuffing our backpacks behind the bakery, we’d bike to the bookstore, where a sodium streetlight bathed the lot in a golden glow. Sometimes our treasure hunts yielded rare records or out-of-print books.
After rummaging, we’d settle in, munch pastries, and read to each other. I was a college student. Jason was a poster artist and DJ. These balmy nights felt like some sort of pinnacle: we had nowhere to be, no real responsibilities, and no limits except our imaginations and the hours till daylight.
Decades later Jason lives in assisted living, his multiple sclerosis so advanced he can no longer care for himself. His world has shrunk, but his humor and intellect remain intact. When we talk about the times we had, I realize we were blessed to have been young when life in our now-booming hometown was more affordable. Beyond that, we had our vibrant health—a luxury I still enjoy, however fleeting it may be.
Francesca Singer
Tournan
France
My first glance at the menu confirmed my fear: half our budget for the week would be shot in the first day. I side-eyed my wife and daughter. Had the prices freaked them out, too, or were they just excited to try the prime-beef tenderloin in a mushroom-port reduction?
Earlier that fall my brother had offered to let me use one of his luxury time-shares in Maui over the Christmas holiday. It was a welcome opportunity for our families to be together, but my wife and I had concerns. Vacations in Hawaii and Aruba may have been commonplace for my brother, but we lived month-to-month and had a child in college.
Our daughter, who’d spent a couple of weeks surviving on a shoestring budget in Oahu the previous year, thought we were crazy for hesitating. Her mother and I had to experience Hawaii. In the end we sucked it up and purchased the cheapest flights we could find: red-eyes leaving on Christmas Day and coming back on New Year’s Eve.
The morning after that restaurant dinner, we drove to a grocery store for cereal, bread, cold cuts, potato chips, and a stack of frozen dinners. All week I stressed about money. To get from our suite to the beach required navigating a sea of vacationers drinking mai tais. Tan people in fashionable bathing suits lay in lounge chairs while cabana boys scurried around with beach umbrellas. And there I was, trudging across the sand in my dingy trunks, frayed T-shirt, and perpetual bedhead.
As our return flight lifted off the ground, I gazed at the New Year’s Eve fireworks out the window, relieved to be returning to a world where we could live within our means.
Scott Fleming
Eugene, Oregon
I’ve owned a veterinary hospital for almost eight years. Recently I was in an exam room discussing a treatment plan with a new patient’s family, when one of my nurses leaned into the doorway and whispered, “We need you for an emergency. It’s a stab wound.”
In the waiting area two nurses knelt beside a large male pit bull, who was bleeding from a deep wound on his lower back. The owner was hovering, crying, and having difficulty explaining what had happened. I asked him the dog’s name, and he said, “King.” I asked if King could walk on his own. The man took a deep breath and said no. We carefully lifted King while the owner registered at the front desk.
After assessing King’s injuries, I started him on intravenous fluids, pain medication, and antibiotics, then left him with my nurses to go speak with the owner about potential outcomes and expected costs. We’d take care of King, I told him, while he figured out the finances. I went back to the treatment room hating the fact that I had presumed there would be a money issue, but I was right.
My receptionist later told me the man had said he was going home to get his wallet. Six hours and many attempted phone calls later, he had yet to return. Knowing that veterinary care, just like medical care, is often a luxury in this country, I was happy to have the ability to help this dog anyway.
Rebecca Stronger, DVM
Brooklyn, New York
I had artist parents, and money was tight when I was growing up. Clothes were secondhand, food often homegrown in our garden. I started gardening at six and collecting insects at eight. My dad and my grandfather built me display boxes, and my mom sewed me butterfly nets from old curtains.
At Christmas we mostly made each other’s presents, but sometimes I was treated to special purchases in support of my interests: a New Nature Library set on insects, trees, flowers, mosses, lichens, birds, and mammals; the book Animals Without Backbones, which would become my bible; and a very good microscope. One year, when I was struggling to photograph protozoans through the microscope, my parents and grandparents chipped in to buy a used 35 mm camera and a set of extension tubes, which launched me into close-up insect and flower photography.
After sixty-five years of fieldwork, teaching, and writing—and fifty years of nature and horticultural photography—I now have the pleasure of passing the torch to a thirteen-year-old who is a born naturalist. He, too, has supportive parents who can’t afford many luxuries, so he’s inheriting my childhood microscope and copy of Animals Without Backbones. We’re currently working together on a biological survey of a local stream. I’m mentoring him in matters of nature, and he’s helping me rediscover my sense of wonder.
David Q. Cavagnaro
Decorah, Iowa
Too old to play hard to get, I had sex with him on our first date. It was good, so for the second date I arranged for overnight childcare for my son, but the only night the babysitter had available was when I’d be on my period. Unsure of how he felt about having sex with a woman who was menstruating, I told my date in advance so he could prepare for a more chaste encounter.
He made me a delicious homemade dinner, chocolate dessert, and a playlist named after me. As we kissed afterward, I was uncertain how far we would go. Some of my previous lovers had regarded period sex with disgust and derision. I felt vulnerable, dirty and bloody, smelling of animal and iron.
He led me to his room, where he’d made the bed with dark-blue sheets and laid out towels—all purchased especially for the occasion—so we could feel free to connect with abandon. The messiness was arousing to him: a break from the tidy and organized life he managed.
The blue sheets were fit for a moon goddess—and that’s what I felt like that night: a feral, fertile woman, harnessing her power.
We now live together. Whenever we make our bed with those blue sheets, no matter where I am on my cycle, I become a moon goddess again.
Name Withheld
After my two-month-old son, Stephen, died, I no longer worried about his four older sisters having too much screen time. I forgot all about their extracurricular activities. I couldn’t bring myself to focus on trivialities like report cards and behavior.
I’m ashamed to say, however, I didn’t stop caring about my postpartum pudge, or how other people perceived my lax parenting and whether they judged me for Stephen’s death. When I explained to a neighbor who hadn’t heard of SIDS that some babies die during sleep, I felt like I was making it up. She didn’t seem satisfied with the explanation either.
I considered stepping into traffic, so that my death might be presumed accidental. But as nice as the thought of escape was, I knew I needed to stay alive for the well-being of my children.
So much has happened in the decade since then. We had another son, who was born the exact same weight as Stephen, and who also has blond hair and greenish-blue eyes, unlike his brown-haired, brown-eyed sisters. My body is thin again, the way I like it, though I still feel shame about needing it to be that way. With the kids all in school, my house is no longer filled with scattered toys and sticky messes, and I possess a luxury that was inaccessible to me in those early years: time to process my loss.
Erica Henry
Oak Park, Illinois
A vendor at my local farmers market often sells tropical obscurities such as feijoa guava, passion fruit, and golden berries. Today he has cherimoya, which I’ve never tried. The frugal part of me hesitates at the price, but he points to a placard quoting Mark Twain, who describes them as the “most delicious fruit known to man.” I hand over enough money to buy lunch in exchange for a scaly, pear-shaped fruit the size of a baseball.
Over the next few days it softens, and I cut it open to reveal a creamy white filling sprinkled with black seeds. It is, as promised, delicious. I toss the remains onto the compost pile.
A few months later, among the eggshells and orange rinds, a seedling emerges. I transplant it to a pot, where it withers for a few months, then miraculously sprouts to life. After a year I plant it in the front yard, where it grows slowly, and strangely loses its leaves in summer: a memory of the seasons in its native Peru.
When the tree is five years old, a buddy who is a horticultural expert recognizes it and explains that its insect pollinator doesn’t exist in California. If I want my cherimoya tree to bear fruit, I will need to pollinate it myself. This requires harvesting pollen in the morning when the flowers are fully open, then returning at night with a small paintbrush to apply the pollen to the stigmas of the newly opened buds. It’s quite the effort, but I enjoy beginning and ending each day ensconced in foliage. In a few weeks fruits the size of peas start to form. I add fish emulsion, apply compost, and heavily water the roots.
The tree produces five delectable fruits. I continue to prune, fertilize, and pollinate, and in three years the cherimoya towers above me. I’m up to fifty softball-size fruits a season. One morning my neighbor asks me to settle a bet. He swears the tree is a cherimoya, which he remembers from his childhood in Jordan, but his wife says that can’t be; they don’t grow here. I tell him he wins, and send him home with a bag and an invitation to grow his own. In return he and his wife bring me lemons from their trees and homemade hummus, and they teach me how to make Lebanese dolmas.
My tree is now fifteen years old, and I’m known as the “cherimoya guy” among my coworkers, friends, family, and—my favorite—my kids’ friends, whose gleeful surprise at their first taste always puts a smile on my face.
Paul Grafton
Cayucos, California
The nondescript package in my mailbox contained an iPad with instructions that took me to a website with a video. “Hello, party people!” my stepsister said to the camera. She and her billionaire husband were inviting my girlfriend and me to their second-anniversary celebration.
We flew out, and a chauffeur greeted us with a sign at the airport, just like in the movies. I asked if this was an exclusive event. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “One of the biggest names in the NBA had a party at this hotel a couple of months ago. He rented out half of it. Your hosts have rented out the entire thing.”
The hotel staff attended to our every need. At breakfast there was an omelet station and a pile of fresh doughnuts as high as my head. A former vice president was milling about, along with two recognizable CEOs.
In pictures from the trip my girlfriend and I appear overwhelmed and in disbelief. We felt guilty about all the waste. A temporary structure was assembled on the tennis courts for an evening dinner. In the morning the whole thing was torn down so people could play tennis by lunch.
I’d been instructed to bring a tux. To save money I had assembled one as economically as possible. For the shirt, I’d purchased a twenty-eight-dollar button-down at a department store, removed the buttons, and carefully cut small holes for the set of cuff links and studs I’d inherited from my father. It looked perfect.
The day I needed to wear it, I informed the hotel’s front desk that I had some dry cleaning, and I hung the tuxedo outside my room. A knock came exactly two hours later. I removed the black suit jacket from its bag and unwrapped my shirt, which was smartly pressed and starched. Moreover, each of my rough-cut buttonholes was fixed, and each slot bore a brand-new, gleaming white button.
Name Withheld
In my compulsion to pick apart the imperfect, I began aggravating the dry skin on my fingertips to the point of injury, peeling off flaking layers of nail like wallpaper. This drove my ex-husband crazy. He’d pin my hand down, and my nervous energy would collapse under his touch.
When I made time to sit with my feelings, I would enjoy periods of serenity, unbothered nails reflecting an unbothered mind. But I believed such neat hands were not an option for me, and sooner or later the habit flared up again.
Last year I decided to get a manicure. I liked the result so much I managed to leave my nails in decent shape. When I returned to the shop three weeks later, the manicurist suggested I put false tips on the shorter nails to even them out, and I agreed. As he applied foundation over the extensions, I noticed his ring had an anchor on it, and I asked if he was a sailor. He told me of emigrating from Vietnam by boat and how the journey had claimed the lives of his siblings. I couldn’t believe the hardships he’d endured.
“Throw them out,” he said, gesturing to the cuticle clippers I’d been butchering myself with. “I take care of your nails now.”
And he has.
Erin Carpenter
Sylva, North Carolina
My six-year-old’s favorite show is The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals, where three hosts travel the globe, showcasing a “budget,” a “unique,” and a “luxury” option in each location they visit. For months I couldn’t tell which alternative my daughter favored, though I had my suspicions. When a towering mansion, oversized lodge, or private island came on-screen, her face broke into a wide smile.
I could only guess at what this meant, because she had no words to tell me: a rare and progressive syndrome had stolen her swallowing reflex, her mobility, and, most frustratingly, her voice.
Last year we bought a device that reads the movement of her eyes and speaks words and phrases aloud. We watched the travel show with the machine next to us, and when a Caribbean resort was featured, my daughter shot me her usual cheeky grin. Then she chose an icon: “That is good.” She navigated to her keyboard and typed out a word: “Quality.”
I laughed and returned her smile. “It is pretty great,” I said. After years of guessing, I finally know what she’s thinking. I’ll never take it for granted.
Claire McMurray
Lenexa, Kansas
I grew up in a family where steak was a once-a-month treat: specifically flank steak marinated in Wish-Bone dressing and served with baked potatoes. Sometimes—if the budget allowed and they were available in whatever far-flung town the army had sent us to—we had artichokes.
Decades later, as a specialist in international economics, I spent time in India and Indonesia, where I enjoyed exquisite meals that cost the equivalent of fast food back home and entire spa days for the price of a nail job in the US. I tried not to take it for granted, but after a while those treats became habits.
I was living in Jakarta when the Asian financial crisis of the late nineties hit, and the Indonesian rupiah lost its value. In one short week the purchasing power of the dollar went up tenfold. A hand-painted silk batik scarf that would’ve cost me a month’s salary? Twenty-five dollars. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot at the hotel bar? Fifteen bucks.
My friends and I spent our workdays analyzing the impact of the economic crisis and crafting suggestions for the government. Then, in the evenings, we swept through high-end boutiques, crowed over bargains, and indulged in every outrageous dish on restaurant menus. Luxuries, all around us.
It didn’t take long for the truth to set in. These goods were within my reach only because of an economic crisis, created by governments and financial markets, that was causing pain for millions. Not luxuries at all. Loot.
Laura E. Bailey
Manzanita, Oregon
I grew up near Detroit, then the “Automotive Capital of the World.” My father, a union bricklayer, worked on construction of the General Motors Technical Center, which was less than a mile from our home. Supporting a wife and six children on workman’s wages, he always drove a used Plymouth or Dodge sedan and considered anything fancier pretentious.
When I was in grade school, my cousin Louie had a collection of Matchbox cars. My favorite was the Jaguar Mark IV coupe, with its long hood, clamshell fenders, and huge headlights. On weekends we’d ride our bikes to Falvey’s Imported Cars on Nine Mile and press our noses against the glass to look at the new E-Type Jags, Austin-Healeys, MGs, Triumphs, and Aston Martins.
In my freshman year at community college I got a very used Triumph TR3. My father, of course, hated it. He also hated the MGA I later restored in his garage, the Healey Sprite I helped my younger brother patch up, and the other British roadsters I bought over the years.
In the early 1990s it became apparent Mom was suffering from dementia. To qualify for state assistance, Dad transferred their assets to my siblings and me. I was forty-five years old with a four-year-old son, a pregnant wife, and a mortgage. Though the money was legally mine, Dad took me aside and said, “Don’t go spending this on one of those goddamned sports cars of yours!”
I didn’t. Mom needed nursing care before she died, and eventually Dad did too. After he passed away, my wife suggested I use my inheritance to buy the Jaguar I’d always wanted. My share of the estate was hardly enough to buy a used Toyota. Nonetheless I started searching for a deal on a Jag.
When I found an ad for an X-Type that cost the exact amount I’d inherited, I was sure the price was a typo. The seller insisted it was correct: the car had a “salvaged” title, as it had been sideswiped and considered a total loss by the insurance company, but he’d fixed it up. When I went to look at the car, I couldn’t find anything wrong.
I’ve owned and loved that X-Type for eight years. And every time I twist the key in the ignition, my dad turns over.
Dan Kosuth
Metamora, Michigan
Up first on Christmas morning, my three siblings make as much noise as possible to awaken our parents. The oldest at nine, I prefer peace and quiet. Sometimes the noise in our house increases to a point that my nerves revolt with an asthma attack.
As soon as the presents have been opened, my mother orders us to get dressed so we can drive to my aunt’s, where a giant spread of food awaits, along with six cousins who are as loud as my siblings. I’ve lived this scene many times. Once we’re in the car, my mother will launch into a diatribe about my dad’s driving, which will continue all the way to my aunt’s house and all the way home again. I’m not in the mood.
Though I’ve never faked sickness before, I go to the bathroom and cough until I gag and make vomiting noises. As I come out, my sister glares and says, “You’re faking it.”
“Am not!” I say, crying for effect. I tell my parents I’m sick and need to stay home. My mom offers my nebulizer, which doesn’t help. My dad says to leave me. I keep the act going while everyone files out to the big Ford station wagon.
After they drive away, I get in the bathtub and lie with my eyes closed for an hour without anyone pounding on the door. Then I make a pickle, potato chip, and peanut butter sandwich, grab a bottle of homemade root beer, and turn the TV to a soap opera I’m forbidden to watch. Later I read for a while in my room, then return to the TV for American Bandstand, also forbidden.
By the time everybody returns, I’ve had the best Christmas ever.
Kathy Wiley
Mt. Pleasant, Iowa
After a run-of-the-mill medical test, I receive some unexpected results: my overworked thyroid is reaching its expiration date, thanks in part to an anomaly that ranks as “moderately suspicious.”
Because I excel at obsessive worrying, I google the result, clicking every link in an attempt to comprehend the possible ramifications. After all, why wait for my doctor’s opinion when I can conjure my own worst-case scenario? Even as I assess the frightening possibilities, relief washes over my weary soul. A multitasking mother, I find myself contemplating an alternate universe where a less-than-desirable ultrasound provides a valid reason to loosen my grip. A free pass, if you will.
Not that I wish to fully surrender. I’m only asking for a hard-earned break from that constant sense of responsibility, so frequently egged on by its sidekick, guilt. Before I call my doctor, I quietly retreat from my long must-do list and enjoy the extravagance of saying, “I can’t get to that right now.” No further explanation needed.
Mary Leatart
Bend, Oregon
I was freshly showered, lying on the pillow-top mattress in a ribbon choker like Manet’s Olympia. In lieu of a black cat, my brindle mutt sat atop a tufted cushion in the corner. From the bed I could see the mosaic fleur-de-lis inlay above the tub, the Corinthian columns in the sitting room. The hotel’s standard pet amenities—veined-quartz water bowl, pink plastic bags, four bottles of mineral water—were lined atop a travertine console.
The Chef came in at 5 PM sharp, smelling of cured meats. He stepped out of his kitchen clogs, shucked off his white T-shirt, and climbed on top of me, bobbing up and down for a quick quarter of an hour. On his way back to the restaurant’s wood-fired oven, he tapped his fingers on a leather-bound room-service menu and flashed a smile. “Order whatever you like.”
The hotel staff had begun calling me Mrs. Marino, as if I were his wife. Earlier that day I had pulled my dirt-dappled Toyota into the valet circle for the fifth time. I had surveyed a pair of Maseratis gleaming like gills in the tropics. I had paused in the lobby to watch guests glide across the floor as if they were angelfish in an aquarium.
I waited in the room for The Chef to return. A server brought me a room-service sundae beneath a pewter cloche. In Beverly Hills the surfaces are shiny and mirrored like Narcissus’s ruin. The monuments are adorned with American flags, Israeli flags, Gucci flags. There was even a little red marzipan pin flag stuck into the vanilla golf ball of my sundae. It was summertime. I spooned my ice cream in silence. I licked the bowl.
It was half past midnight when The Chef came back, bone-tired, smoked out, too spent for sex. He laid his head down in my lap and fell asleep. In the morning there was a note on the hotel stationery next to the sundae dish: “Alla prossima.” Until next time.
I called down to the valet, collected my things, and drove twenty miles east. At home, I took a linen napkin from my purse and carefully unwrapped the marzipan flag. I twirled it between my fingers, my sweet five-star souvenir.
Waverly Mandel
Los Angeles, California
I grew up in a back-to-the-land family. It was considerable work for my parents to pump water from the well, so baths were for Saturday nights only. My siblings and I took them in the kitchen of our two-room cabin, with the entire family on the other side of the room. As we grew into adolescence, a semiopaque curtain was installed to afford a modicum of privacy.
When I was in sixth grade, the school nurse asked my class how often we should take a bath. My hand shot up along with others. When the girl she chose answered, “Every day,” I was surprised—and grateful the nurse hadn’t called on me.
In ninth grade some girls behind me smelled body odor and were discussing who might be the source of it. “It can’t be me,” one said. “I took a shower!” Then, in a whisper, “It’s got to be.” And I knew someone had pointed at me.
For the rest of my high-school years my mother took mercy on me and brought me my own basin of water every morning before school.
These days my husband and I pump water from a well like my parents did, but our semihomesteading life has many conveniences that were absent from my childhood. A solar camping shower, for one. Every evening I fill a bag with water heated on the stove, hang it from a nail on the side of the outhouse, and stand on a wooden platform underneath. While I shower, I watch the sun set through the bare winter trees or surrounded by bright greens after a soaking May rain. One evening I had the treat of hearing, then seeing, two juvenile owls in the almost-dark. I always go to bed feeling clean.
Name Withheld
When my eight-year-old daughter, already an expert beautician, asks if I want to come to the Chill Spot Salon, I have to say yes. “Lucky for you,” she tells me, “the Chill Spot Salon can be anywhere.”
I sit on a hand-me-down chair in our Alabama home, and she spreads a faded dish towel beneath my feet. She asks what services I want: a cleanolala, a lotion gootata, or a massage-lorita—all custom-designed for her anxious mom. New specials are being offered all the time, she patiently explains, including the pushwamy wrap, which involves her covering me with our coziest blanket and giving me hugs all over.
I squeal from the cold tickle as she dabs lotion between my toes with a paintbrush. She lets the cat lick the brush to “moisturize his tongue.”
During the massage-lorita she asks, “Is this a good hurt?” I wonder if there is such a thing. Her ponytail falls across her face as she leans over to peer at me, my beautiful brown girl. She just wants to help. My broken heart is mended a little by the power of her small hands. She’s with me in this moment, and I’m with her.
“I’m glad you aren’t as sad as you were, Momma,” she says, gathering her supplies to put them away. Then she adds with a smile, “That’ll be twenty-seven bucks!”
Sabrina Sahib
Huntsville, Alabama
I don’t doubt my grandfather experienced moments of gravity and sorrow, but in memories and faded photographs his default expression is a smile. He helped my father raise two little girls after our mother decided to leave our sleepy Texas town and add “biological” to her title. I was five; my sister, two. On top of the usual childhood insecurities, I harbored guilt that I’d driven her away with all the times I’d forgotten the rule not to talk to her before she’d had her morning coffee.
A mechanic and washing-machine salesman, Granddaddy approached things in a practical way. When one of my incisors wiggled in its socket, he tied string to a doorknob and pulled it out. The gaping hole I saw in the mirror embarrassed me. Kneeling to look me in the eye, he told me with authority that my smile was beautiful. That I was beautiful. I believed him.
When my wisdom teeth came in, they shifted my other teeth forward, pushing my canines up and out like the fangs of a pissed-off rattlesnake. My smile looked more threatening than welcoming. My father couldn’t afford to pay an orthodontist to rectify the chaos in my mouth. Granddaddy urged me to keep smiling anyway.
He was with me the first time a little kid asked their mother if I was a vampire. My breath caught, but he shrugged and said, “Just keep smiling. Don’t deny the world that joy.”
I was twenty-two when my grandfather died. He left me the money to get braces so I could have a smile I considered beautiful.
Tobi Pledger
Durham, North Carolina
After I dropped out of college, I landed a civil-service spot sewing costumes for a university theater department. The pay was horrible, but I could ride my bike to work, and there were many attractive places on campus to sit, eat my lunch, and read.
I lived in a small house with my boyfriend and his best friend. Beans and rice got us through the week, and we limited our entertainment to parties and free concerts. Our place was decorated with cast-off items that fit our hippie style, but I craved small touches of beauty. On payday, while my boyfriend and our roommate biked home with beer under their arms, I carried an extravagant bouquet in my bike basket.
“Those are just going to die,” they said, looking askance at the vase of vibrant flowers.
“You’re just going to piss out that beer,” I answered.
Julia Fauci
DeKalb, Illinois
I grew up in Cuba during Castro’s revolution. My family didn’t own a TV, but Dad took me to the movies every Sunday. After Castro sealed Cuba’s fate, Mom and I fled to Florida. In Miami we might go to the movies or to Valenti’s Restaurant once a month.
When I went to music school in New York City, Mom became a live-in cook for a family on the Upper East Side. Her employers, who had European nobility in their ancestry, sometimes traveled to Switzerland or France to visit relatives. While they were gone, my mother and I—as well as two live-in maids—stayed in their apartment, enjoying the expensive furnishings and artwork, the opulent baths and showers. I would read in their library or listen to Edith Piaf on their pricey stereo.
After my first marriage crumbled, I met my second wife and moved to South Carolina to be with her. I found success writing music for television, and we bought a five-bedroom house next to a stretch of woodland. I had a flat-screen TV, Wi-Fi gadgets, and brand-new recording equipment.
Then a spate of personal tragedies left me depressed and without direction, and I ended up in federal prison. I remember federal agents driving me away in handcuffs early one morning, past neighbors jogging and watering their lawns. I said goodbye forever to my suburban dream life.
Today a luxury is an occasional “prison cheesecake,” a quiet walk around the rec yard, or enough toilet paper to last the week—anything that allows me to relax and just exist. Luckily for me several other musicians and sound engineers have ended up in this low-security Texas facility, which has become known for its music program. Some guys call it Camp Cupcake; others, the Ritz Hotel. I live a Spartan existence, but I suppose if I have to be locked up, this is the place to be.
Fernando Rivas Martinez
Seagoville, Texas
Mom shuffles to her recliner and settles under an afghan.
“I love you,” I say.
“Back atcha,” she replies.
I’m fifty-seven years old, and she’s never actually said the words I love you to me. I didn’t recognize this was odd until I went to my first sleepover. Jenni’s parents kissed each of our heads and whispered, “I love you.” When it was my turn, I bowed so that my hair covered my eyes. In my house kisses were offered only at big moments, like when my grandma died.
Staring at the cemetery outside Mom’s window, I dig my nails into my palm and will myself not to cry. I so want to hear those words from her. Why can’t I tell her? She’s ninety-two, and time is running out.
Once, I asked my father if she’d ever told him she loved him. He said he had told her one time, and her response had been to bang some pots around and ask if he didn’t see how much she loved him every day. Who was she shopping, cooking, and cleaning for?
Now she stares at the watercolors he painted in retirement. One is of the Jersey shore, our favorite vacation spot. The other is of a barn, a reminder of the farm where she grew up. I unclench my fists, kiss her head, and whisper, “I love you.” She says nothing, but I see her grin reflected in the window.
Maria Warner
Scottsdale, Arizona
When the envelope arrived, I did a dance by the mailbox and then ran inside, waving it around. “Christmas is saved!” I told my husband.
I was twenty-two, already a wife and mother, and had just gotten my first credit card. Accustomed to putting things back at the grocery store and counting out spare change to buy gas, I immediately took my husband to dinner at a restaurant we couldn’t afford, then bought my son more Christmas presents than a three-year-old needs. I knew I’d have to pay it back, but that was a problem for later. By New Year’s Eve I’d hit the card’s $400 limit.
Over the next decade my wallet filled with plastic: the card I opened to fix my car after it failed inspection; the one I used to buy a new heat pump for our house; the one I applied for when our cat required a weekend stay at the emergency vet. After years of saying no to friends’ invitations to have cocktails or attend a bridal shower, it felt good to say yes. Birthday presents, co-pays, my son’s soccer cleats—every time I used a card, I planned to pay it off, but when the bill came, I made minimum payments instead. I got an office job making better money, but instead of settling my debts, I ended up buying dress clothes and fancy shoes to look professional.
The line between needs and luxuries blurred, then disappeared. My husband was juggling unpaid balances of his own. Though we both had good jobs, a large chunk of our paychecks went to paying for meals we’d eaten years ago or clothes we didn’t even own anymore.
At one point I managed to pay it all off and close my accounts. Then the divorce burned a hole through my savings, and I found it easier to open another card than to ask for help.
I remember with chagrin how excited I was to get that first card twenty years ago. If I continue making the minimum payments and don’t incur any new debt, my cards will be paid off in 2037.
Jen Bryant
Columbus, Ohio
In April, when it’s cool enough for transplanting but warm enough that I don’t need gloves, I decide to plant a cherry tree in our backyard. I work up a sweat using a shovel, pick, and iron bar to remove head-sized rocks from the subsoil. Whenever I have a job to do, I focus on it until it’s done, forgetting to rest, forgetting I’m in my mid-seventies.
After an hour my wife emerges from the house with a glass of water. I stand in the unfinished hole and admire how her silver hair swings as she descends from our back deck. The pile of black earth I’ve removed contrasts with her pale floral-print dress. In the sunlight her eyes turn to gold, with hints of spring green. She extends the glass and smiles.
I drink, filled with the wealth of her presence.
Jalil Buechel
Ithaca, New York
