From one love story to another. Are you a romantic? I’m pretty sure I am, dangerous as that is. And I get more so the older I get, even though I think it’s meant to work the other way around. I first read this story in Granta’s anthology New American Stories, and then again in another anthology My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead, a selection of love stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. So who am I to prevent it from making the hattrick? But that, of course, isn’t the reason I want it here. It’s because it is so very lovely. The hope we all have, that someone deeply good will love us despite ourselves is what keeps the world turning, our hearts beating.
First published in The Yale Review, 1 January 2003, and available to read here; collected in My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead, HarperPress, 2008 and New American Stories, Granta, 2016
A Personal Anthology 