by Rolf EBELING

We whip our car in­to the round­about too fast, cut off a bus, wave sor­ry-sor­ry-sor­ry out the back win­dow to the honk­ing bus, and ac­cel­er­ate down the last ex­it curve. In the front seats, we ar­gue. Bursts of words vol­ley from the driver’s side to the pas­sen­ger side and back again about which ur­gent care clin­ic is ac­tu­al­ly the clos­est and which one will ac­tu­al­ly be open at this time of the morn­ing on Christ­mas Eve. Scrunched up on the rear bench seat, we have a fever, our head hurts, we need a pep­per­mint shake, and we are not hap­py at all about be­ing so far away from the pile of presents un­der the big tree.

The cousin mag­ic meld­ing us to­geth­er is fiz­zling out. Each Christ­mas — well, at least for a few hours dur­ing Christ­mas — the once-a-year, nos­tal­gia-fu­eled nov­el­ty of see­ing each oth­er in re­al life would ef­fec­tive­ly fuse us in­to a sin­gle per­son. The wide gaps and jagged fis­sures be­tween our gen­er­a­tions, per­son­al­i­ties, and home ad­dress­es near­ly van­ished. We be­came such a sin­gu­lar en­ti­ty that we knew what we were think­ing and feel­ing — and what we would be think­ing and feel­ing, so much so that we would con­duct en­tire con­ver­sa­tions pure­ly through body lan­guage, or, if things got a lit­tle heat­ed, by shoot­ing point­ed looks at ourselves.

Right now, though, we are crack­ing apart. On our pas­sen­ger side, we sim­mer in frus­tra­tion at our driver’s side’s lead foot, our in­sis­tence on fa­vor­ing our flawed mem­o­ry over the pre­cise map on our phone, or when that fails, swerv­ing across busy traf­fic to ask for tips from com­plete strangers in strip mall park­ing lots. On our driver’s side, we chafe at our pas­sen­ger side fre­quent and lengthy plunges in­to glow­er­ing judg­ment, a com­plete in­abil­i­ty to just for once loosen up and — 

— right then we near­ly run the lit­tle man over.

We brake hard, but even be­fore the car stops and rocks back­wards   inch­es from the lit­tle man’s wide chest , we feel a dif­fer­ent shock. The lit­tle man is wear­ing a boxy, over­sized, earth-toned plaid suit straight out of the 1970s; a 1970s that  we in the front of the car keep in scat­tered patch­es of child­hood mem­o­ry. His care­ful­ly knot­ted tie with bur­gundy and gold stripes con­trasts with his mint green dress shirt. His mus­tache is Burt Reynolds thick, and he is sport­ing a nar­row-brimmed straw hat — a hat just like the one we re­mem­bered steal­ing off the head of our grand­fa­ther be­fore church on Christ­mas Eve morn­ings. We would run away, and our grand­fa­ther would try to chase us across the red tile pa­tio in his big suit, the click­ety-click sound of our tiny dress shoes punc­tu­at­ing our laughter.

In the front, look­ing at the lit­tle man, we feel a strange weight, as though a long emp­ty space with­in us is sud­den­ly and un­ex­pect­ed­ly filled. 

In the back, we feel even hot­ter, and why did we have to stop so hard, and now our head re­al­ly hurts, and did this lit­tle man have any presents and our pep­per­mint shake?

The lit­tle man ap­pears by our driver’s‑side window.

“Please chil­dren,” he says, “I will be late for Mass. Take me.”

From the pas­sen­ger side, we shift the heav­i­ness for a mo­ment. We know we can’t be see­ing this, can we? How could we be here, the smell of burn­ing rub­ber from our tire skid marks waft­ing in through the vents, stopped in the mid­dle of a ran­dom street af­ter near­ly run­ning over a very spe­cif­ic, high­ly de­tailed, and Nixon-era fam­i­ly phan­tom who is ask­ing us for a ride to church? Ridicu­lous. Im­prob­a­ble at best. Ac­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble. We can see that it is clear­ly a stranger, some odd­ball with co­in­ci­den­tal­ly ac­cu­rate body pro­por­tions, taste in vin­tage cloth­ing, and, fine, maybe the voice was dead on, but we need to get mov­ing be­cause our fever in the back seat is not go­ing to break on its own, we need to get an­tibi­otics, and, come on, it’s Christ­mas Eve and ghosts do not exist.

“Get in,” we say from the driver’s side.

The lit­tle man shuf­fles to the rear door, fum­bles with the han­dle, and gin­ger­ly stoops to get in be­hind the driver’s seat. He pulls the door shut and ex­hales con­tent­ed­ly. “Bless you, children.”

In the pas­sen­ger seat, we feel stretched be­tween dumb­struck and apoplec­tic. How, we won­dered, did any part of us in the driver’s seat think this was a good idea? Our face flush­es with heat, our eyes grow wide, and our head turns to un­veil our most lethal glare to­wards the stun­ning­ly id­i­ot­ic part of our­selves in the driver’s seat. Yet, in the mo­ment we turn to un­leash un­re­lent­ing eye­beams of con­dem­na­tion, we feel the strange weight in­side of our­selves set­tling, find­ing its way in­to old con­tours and crevices, and ra­di­at­ing a fa­mil­iar warmth. Stop it, we think, this is not our grand­fa­ther, and a mem­o­ry can’t just mag­i­cal­ly come alive, pop in­to re­al life, slide in­to the back of our car, and make that ache go away, and — 

— in the driver’s seat, we feel the rays of ex­as­per­at­ed rage blast through us and we are un­able to look away from the in­can­des­cent eyes from the pas­sen­ger seat locked on­to our own. How­ev­er, a calm shields us from the worst of the ra­di­a­tion. The strange weight has trans­formed quick­ly in­to com­fort on our side of the car, fill­ing the empti­ness in­side our­selves be­fore the lit­tle man had even asked for a ride. A smart part of our­selves knows that what we are see­ing is a fluke and not a phan­tom, but that part of our­selves shuts up as we think that maybe, just maybe, this is a chance, if on­ly for a mo­ment, to feel like a hap­py kid run­ning across a pa­tio again, and, hey, the least we can do is give a friend­ly ghost a ride to church because — 

“It’s Christ­mas,” we say from the driver’s seat.

This inar­guable  and in­fu­ri­at­ing­ly smug  fact hangs in the air be­tween us.

In the driver’s seat, we shrug.

In the pas­sen­ger seat, we turn to the lit­tle man. “We need to take her to a doc­tor now. She has a fever and —”

“My child,” says the lit­tle man. “I will show you the way.”

When the lit­tle man had got­ten in the car, we had scoot­ed across the rear bench seat as fast as we could and scrunched up tighter in the cor­ner. He wasn’t car­ry­ing any presents, or our pep­per­mint shake. We looked at our­selves in the front seats and frowned hard when we said, “it’s Christ­mas.” We want­ed to say this is dumb re­al­ly loud and maybe cry re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard, but we didn’t be­cause up front we looked kind of sad and hap­py at the same time.

“Please, child, dri­ve,” says the lit­tle man. “Mass be­gins soon.”

We ac­cel­er­ate down the street. The lit­tle man leans for­ward, anx­ious­ly look­ing out the front window. 

“You are a Christ­mas kind­ness, my chil­dren. A kind­ness that has left my life,” says the lit­tle man. “I awoke to­day as I do every morn­ing. I dressed, pre­pared my hum­ble meal, and sat by my­self at the kitchen ta­ble. While the sun rose, I won­dered how I would get to church.”

As the lit­tle man speaks, we no­tice that his cologne is our grandfather’s brand.

“Where I sit at Mass there are still scratch­es in the pew from when my own chil­dren were young and care­less. I run my fin­gers through those grooves.”

The lit­tle man leans for­ward fur­ther, grip­ping the tops of each front seat. “My chil­dren are grown now and far away. Per­haps they have scratch­es in their pews from their own children.”

On the pas­sen­ger side, we un­clench our teeth. The back of our neck tin­gles, and we try to sti­fle a hitch in our breath. We imag­ine the lit­tle man sit­ting alone in the mut­ed light of the nave, gen­tly trac­ing those weath­ered lines in the pew, and we have to bite our lip to keep it to­geth­er, be­cause no way we were go­ing to give the driver’s side one bit of sat­is­fac­tion in this mo­ment. Fine, we ra­tio­nal­ize, we’re do­ing a good thing by giv­ing the Ghost of Co­in­ci­dence Present a ride, and maybe his rot­ten chil­dren will feel a wave of un­ex­pect­ed shame roll over them wher­ev­er they were ly­ing on a beach. Hon­est­ly, how  shit­ty are this guy’s kids? we think on the driver’s side. The in­dig­na­tion we feel on the lit­tle man’s be­half is a re­lief, be­cause oth­er­wise, there was no way the pas­sen­ger side would let us live this episode down. We think about the lit­tle man in church, shak­ing hands and say­ing peace be with you to the fam­i­lies around him, and we have to bite our lip to keep it to­geth­er. We sneak a look at the pas­sen­ger side. Over there, we aren’t frown­ing, so maybe we have warmed up to our sur­prise ex­per­i­ment in Christ­mas good­will. In the back, how­ev­er, our cheeks are bright red, and we are look­ing quizzi­cal and a lit­tle bit pissed off.

“LEFT,” says the lit­tle man. “It is very close.”

“You said the doc­tor is on the way?” we ask from the pas­sen­ger side.

“RIGHT. Yes, my child, we are very close.”

We zig-zag through the down­town, pass­ing long blocks of store­fronts that ap­pear less and less pros­per­ous the far­ther we dri­ve. On the driver’s and pas­sen­ger side, the grungi­ness of the con­sign­ment stores and pay­day loan of­fices make us even more sub­dued and pen­sive. This lit­tle man is not our grand­fa­ther, but we are do­ing a good thing to­day. We will get him to where he needs to be. Where he will be em­braced and where he will be loved.

“STOP,” says the lit­tle man.

We hit the brakes. With alarm­ing speed, the lit­tle man opens the rear pas­sen­ger door, hops out, scam­pers across the street, and skips over the curb, mak­ing a straight line to a large faux-Me­dieval look­ing door with flaky paint. A red neon sign clicks alive and blinks OPEN from the door’s tiny arched window. 

We low­er the pas­sen­ger side win­dow and stare. Next to the door, two scruffy old­er men stand laugh­ing as the lit­tle man yanks on the han­dle and bolts inside.

“Right on time,” says one.

“Save us a spot in the pew,” says the oth­er, call­ing af­ter the lit­tle man.

The two men shuf­fle inside.

We look up. Above the door and a chipped plas­ter gar­goyle bolt­ed in­to the grimy stuc­co wall, a large, fad­ed sign says “St. Chester’s Abbey” in hand-paint­ed goth­ic let­ters. “Di­vine Spir­its. Heav­en­ly Com­pa­ny. Ser­vices Dai­ly, 7AM to 2AM,” the sign says. A car­toon saint, lit­tle bub­bles ris­ing through his ha­lo, rests his el­bow on the “Y” in “Abbey,” cradling a jum­bo chal­ice of foamy beer, and laughs. 

In the back, we are frus­trat­ed. We pull our legs up to our chest. We want to not be so hot, our head to not hurt so much, to get presents, and get our pep­per­mint shake right now, but when we look at our­selves in the driver’s seat and the pas­sen­ger seat, we feel dif­fer­ent, kind of like we are heav­ier all of a sud­den. We have not seen ex­pres­sions like that on our faces be­fore. Our mouths are open, and we aren’t sure if we are re­al­ly con­fused, or em­bar­rassed, or su­per mad, or that we are about to say some­thing, or laugh crazy hard, or that we are go­ing to cry.We don’t un­der­stand what has just hap­pened, and that makes us a lit­tle sad, too.

Filed under Fiction on December 19th, 2025

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by Robert WEXELBLATT

I was a sin­gle par­ent with a Corol­la much old­er than my eight-year-old daugh­ter and a one-se­mes­ter con­tract that paid $9500 for teach­ing 240 stu­dents. Times were tough but with a car, a roof, a job, and my daugh­ter, I count­ed my­self lucky. Still, I wor­ried about mon­ey. Though it wouldn’t do much to di­min­ish my anx­i­ety or aug­ment the pantry, I took on a night course, Wednes­days from six to nine. I paid the kind­ly high-school girl next door to feed and watch over my lit­tle girl un­til I got home. I ached from be­ing away — guilt, blood pres­sure, and speed all es­ca­lat­ing on the way home to her on Wednes­day nights.

I was hur­ry­ing home at 9:30. The streets were emp­ty; rush-hour com­muters by then were home and dry. At the bot­tom of a steep hill, I had to cross the trol­ley tracks run­ning down the mid­dle of Com­mon­wealth Av­enue. I start­ed to­ward the tracks then slammed on the brakes. A flashy late-mod­el coupe was bar­rel­ing down the rise, tires on the tracks rather than the street. About five feet be­hind it whizzed a pa­trol car, lights spin­ning mad­ly but no siren. The street­lamps lit up the un­can­ni­ly silent scene bright­ly, so I got a brief but un­for­get­table look at the face of the flee­ing young man be­hind the wheel. An earl in a wingchair pe­rus­ing the Times at his club, a bro­ker in a bull mar­ket with his feet up on his desk, a lead­ing man loung­ing by his turquoise pool with his lat­est star­let — none would have ap­peared more at ease, non­cha­lant, or serene than that fugi­tive do­ing at least nine­ty on steel rails. 

When­ev­er the lit­tle bot­tle of Sto­icism I keep in the med­i­cine cab­i­net doesn’t do the trick, when­ev­er I feel my dig­ni­ty dis­solv­ing like April snow, self-con­trol flak­ing like a rusty handrail, I call to mind that in­sou­ciant mis­cre­ant be­hind the wheel, care­less of the twirling blue lights, the slip­pery tracks, the in­evitable crash and noisy, man­han­dling ar­rest. So far as I could tell, he was rel­ish­ing the ride.

One reg­is­trant in my night class was an el­der­ly woman, well over sev­en­ty. She nev­er did the read­ing but al­ways had plen­ty to say about it. Most weeks she knit­ted — click, clack, click — putting me in mind of the Vi­en­nese ma­tron who, seat­ed in the first row, ex­as­per­at­ed Freud by click-clack­ing all through one of his pub­lic lec­tures. Freud point­ed at the woman and ob­served that com­pul­sive knit­ting was an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of un­con­scious mas­tur­ba­tion. The au­di­ence gasped, but the woman replied cool­ly. “Dr. Freud, when I knit, I knit; when I mas­tur­bate, I masturbate.”

I in­sert­ed a break mid­way through the three-hour class. We all need­ed it. The first week it last­ed five min­utes, the next ten. The fi­nal class in De­cem­ber was pret­ty much all break. Every­body was re­laxed, in­cu­ri­ous about Death in Venice, think­ing about the hol­i­days, as un­con­cerned as that placid out­law rac­ing down Com­mon­wealth Avenue.

As I drove home af­ter that last class, stop­ping to check both ways be­fore cross­ing the trol­ley tracks, I vowed that this was the last time I would leave my lit­tle girl af­ter dark. I thought I’d try to be more like that kid in the coupe. I would wor­ry less. I be­gan by de­cid­ing to stop be­ing anx­ious about whether I’d done an ad­e­quate job for my night stu­dents, as weary from their day jobs as I was. I would give them all good grades. 

At the end of our last class, the stu­dents sur­prised me with a grat­i­fy­ing round of ap­plause. I was keen to get home to my lit­tle girl, but the stu­dents lin­gered, want­i­ng to chat. The knit­ting la­dy brought out a tin of gin­ger­bread cook­ies she’d baked for every­body, thanked me for a stim­u­lat­ing course, then dipped in­to her bag again and pre­sent­ed me with some­thing wrapped up in brown pa­per. It was an ug­ly sweater, mam­moth and mis­shapen. I’ve nev­er worn this me­men­to, but I’m still grateful. 

Filed under Fiction on December 5th, 2025

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by Raina JOY

I’ve in­her­it­ed my mother’s pen­chant for a fine­ly dressed ta­ble. She liked to host Sun­day din­ners with co­or­di­nat­ed plates and place­mats and nap­kins fold­ed in­to fans or geese or art­ful­ly tied through dec­o­ra­tive rings. I don’t go quite that far but I do in­sist on cloth nap­kins, and I love a pret­ty tablecloth.

When friends come over to my house to eat, es­pe­cial­ly with chil­dren, they glance around ner­vous­ly seek­ing pa­per tow­els, but if they pause long enough to pe­ruse the ta­ble they’ll see that all are wel­come here, even am­a­teur soup slurpers. This year’s Thanks­giv­ing table­cloth was print­ed with a scat­ter­ing of acorns and stained with last year’s gravy, which now blends right in like a slight­ly crum­pled oak leaf. New­ly added dots of drip­ping cran­ber­ry sauce will art­ful­ly meld in­to the cor­nu­copia of the fall har­vest. For these rea­sons, I pre­fer patterns. 

For cran­ber­ry stains: Flush with cool wa­ter. Mix one ta­ble­spoon white vine­gar and one tea­spoon liq­uid laun­dry de­ter­gent in one quart of cool wa­ter and soak stain in so­lu­tion for 15 min­utes. Rinse. If stain per­sists, sponge with rub­bing al­co­hol and rinse. Laun­der us­ing chlo­rine bleach, if safe for fabric.

Long be­fore any­one ar­rives, I love to po­si­tion my­self at one end of the ta­ble, re­lease the fold­ed mass in­to the air and let it float gen­tly down to the table­top. As I smooth out the wrin­kles and even the drape, I can trace the road map of im­per­fec­tions and rem­i­nisce about the ghosts of din­ners past, re­mem­ber­ing which guests splotched my linens. Some­times they im­me­di­ate­ly gasp and try scrub­bing up the spill with their nap­kin, as if it were not, ahem, cut from the same cloth. But more of­ten than not, I don’t find the drips un­til the par­ty has end­ed, and I’m clear­ing every­thing away. I can usu­al­ly iden­ti­fy the guilty par­ty, but what they don’t know is that it is with joy and not mal­ice that their fum­ble will be filed away in the fab­ric of our shared meal. 

Find­ing the smudges that sur­vive, the ones that valiant­ly per­se­vere through the bar­rage of bak­ing so­da and hot wa­ter, lends a bit of cred­i­bil­i­ty to both the vi­brant cook­ing and the live­ly con­ver­sa­tion that re­sult­ed in a dis­tract­ed dol­lop. Usu­al­ly it’s hap­py hands that flail through the air as a mae­stro nears a story’s crescen­do and a hap­less chick­en wing takes flight. Who among us hasn’t over-ges­tured with a full glass, and isn’t that an in­di­ca­tion that our glass­es are, in­deed, full? The on­ly spilled milk that I ever cried over had been du­ti­ful­ly ex­tract­ed from my own breasts. 

For milk stains: Flush im­me­di­ate­ly with cold wa­ter. Scrub stain gen­tly with 1 ta­ble­spoon hy­dro­gen per­ox­ide or 1 ta­ble­spoon lemon juice. Rinse and re­peat as need­ed. Treat with stain re­mover and launder.

My moth­er has hand­ed down loads of pris­tine white linens that I have to won­der if she even used. I can imag­ine her clear­ing the ta­ble with a re­proach­ful look of dis­may when one of our guests man­aged to soil her table­cloth be­yond re­demp­tion. Maybe she sin­gle-hand­ed­ly cre­at­ed the ad cam­paign to “Shout It Out!” Grant­ed, she wasn’t one to serve red wine or tik­ka masala, so per­haps the oc­ca­sion­al bleach bath kept her whites white, but I pre­fer pat­terns to cam­ou­flage crumbs. Be­fore Ve­ra Wang, there was Ve­ra Neu­mann, ex­hib­it­ed at MOMA, hon­ored by the Smith­son­ian, and sell­er of mil­lions of dol­lars of home linens in the 1970s. Her table­cloths are some of my fa­vorites, but I won’t be do­nat­ing mine to any mu­se­ums. The splotch­es and specks blend in nice­ly with her art­ful prints and col­or­ful florals. 

De­spite my pret­ti­ly set ta­ble, I’m not prone to putting on airs and I could care less which fork you use, al­though I hope it’s at least your own as I will make an ef­fort to pro­vide every­one with the need­ed uten­sils, forks on the left side, of course. But around my ta­ble you might al­so find mis­matched chairs, chipped tea cups, and ques­tion­able culi­nary tech­niques, and if you should ar­rive for din­ner slight­ly frayed around the edges or car­ry­ing the stains of your past trans­gres­sions, I would hope that you would find com­fort in ca­ma­raderie and not let your stom­ach sink at the sight of my over­filled gravy boat.

For char­ac­ter stains: Soak the of­fend­ed par­ty in re­gret and apolo­gies as soon as pos­si­ble. Im­merse one­self in 2 parts repa­ra­tions and 1 part em­pa­thet­ic pur­suit. If stain per­sists, in­gest am­ple amounts of hum­ble pie and trust that with time, even the worst stains will even­tu­al­ly fade in­to the fab­ric of one’s life.

Filed under Fiction on November 21st, 2025

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