Peter Hedges

Wait a minute, I'm thinking, was this another one of those conversations where what is meant and what is being said are not the same thing?

Who's calling?""Don't insult me like that," the voice says.I stop. Was I just insulting?

He loves to hide, but only if you take the time to find him. And while I suspect that's true for most people, only a retard or a kid would admit it.

In the living room, the consensus among the guests was that Scotty__ looks favored his father, but the Judge was quick to disagree: __e doesn__ look a thing like me. He looks like an hors d'oeuvre.__earing this, Joan thought the following, and pledged it to herself, as both prayer and promise: You will be loved, Scotty Ocean.And while the guests laughed at the Judge__ remark, Joan leaned over and softly whispered to her newborn son, 'You will be loved.

I stared at her - unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother's stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes.

I left this conversation hours ago, but somehow my mouth is still moving, words are still forming, and none have seemed to offend. Amazing, the mind. My mind, I mean. Not hers.

In a cement park across the street is this giant sculpture. It is a giant umbrella frame lying on its side. It's green. Stand under it, during a rainstorm, you'll still get wet - that's why it's art.

I was seven when he hung himself, and I don't remember all that much, and anything I did remember, I've managed to forget.

The more Christian you are in this town, the more makeup you wear. I've always thought that it's because if you were to die suddenly, you'd look better for God.

These eggs are broken. Cracked.""Yes, ma'am. That happens sometimes.""Does it?""Yes, it's the unfortunate part of being an egg.

How can you kill a man who'd already been dead for years?

I never want to regret. 'Regret' is the ugliest word.

I devised a test.I turned off the TV and instantly the snoring stopped. She began to move. When I felt her eyes about to open, I turned the TV back on and back to sleep she went. Then I'd turn it off and on - sometimes for millisecond - and she never failed me. Each time it was off, she's move and mutter - each time it was on, she'd sleep.By the time the headlights from Amy's Nova turned into our driveway, my suspicion had been confirmed. My mother has a more intimate, connected relationship with this television than she has ever had with me.

It's supposed to go bing-bing or bong-bong or ding-ding when tires go over it. The one at Dave's stopped working several years ago, and he won't have it fixed because he feels as I do - that none of us need to be reminded we exist.

She doesn't acknowledge Tucker, and there's no thank you for the cigarettes. She says a person shows their gratitude by action, not by words. So I guess that means she thanks me by smoking every cigarette in every pack.

Gilbert?"Some days I hate all those who know my name.