Long Island Compromise

could appear to roll over like a possum and just let them batter your apparently dead body, the way her brother Beamer did, without ever saying a word, a facial expression so neutral that a desperate mother could just believe that he had acquiesced to what she was lecturing him on while god knows what was going on in his brain. Or you could submit

the way a shiva’s job is to fill the crevices of grief with love.

Jenny would remind you that it’s the ones who look back who turn into pillars of salt.

How the generation who worked and fought for our ability to live how we wanted to would be shocked to see not a painter, or a poet, or a concert violinist, or even a philosophy professor among us.

What is it about shame, that a teaspoon of it weighs so much more than a teaspoon of happiness or any other innocuous emotion? What is it about shame that it always feels like the truth? If she could only feel more of the shame, went her logic, she could get at the actual truth, and a solution.

“Honestly, I think you’re just obsessed with money, Max. There’s more to life than money.” She heard the last thing he said as she walked out, though, because he shouted it at her back. “Only rich people say that!”

past the shiny brass steampunk aerators.

How could she forget the lessons of her Orthodox girlhood? This was all in God’s hands! Look at what happened if you allowed yourself to assume that your good fortune was guaranteed simply because it was vast. Idiot!

What is the word for when you know everyone is taking something too seriously, that the way it’s taking over your life isn’t normal, that it’s a little ridiculous, that it’s clearly what a bunch of rich kids stuck in a decade of ivory tower schooling need in order to think of themselves as real, living people? What is the word for the displaced ene