The shamelessness pained me the most in the sauna. With a few exceptions, their butts were naked against the towels on the wood. Saggy or perky.

It was clumsy in the best way possible. Smooth clumsy, easy clumsy. Familiar. It was the first time, Natalie was the first time, that I’d felt something beyond a rush of blood and an inward lurch. She didn’t leave afterward and I didn’t want her to

Your father held one of your mother’s notebooks where she wrote the names and addresses of the homes she cleaned. A few sticky notes stuck out like orange tongues from the notebook as he flipped through the pages.

They were at that point in their marriage when she no longer asked him to zip her up—certainly not the zipper to the dress she’d chosen in defiance of his suggestions. She hadn’t asked his opinion about the hat she’d decided to purchase either.

Suada stood in her curlers at the kitchen table and cut with scissors into a cardboard box. Her brother, who had remained with his family in Norway even after the war had ended, had sent her a package for her birthday. She ripped the last bit of the tape with her fingers and opened the flaps. 

P and Aliza fought often, and in these battles P always managed to leave reminders of himself. Like the time I found her with three of his fingers imprinted on her right cheek.