Author: Alice Nelson

“It’s an aggressive form,” Dr. Monroe said. His eyes didn’t waver; he was used to giving bad news.

“You’ve got about a year.” This time he spoke with a little more empathy, not nearly enough to soften the blow.

“So, you’re telling me I’m dying,” I said.

“I’m afraid so,” he said, scribbling something on my chart.

There’s a little town between here and there. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know where it is; in fact I’m doing you a favor by not telling you where it is. Let’s just say, it’s the kind of town you speed by on your way to somewhere else.

This may seem like an odd thing but our story begins with a sock; yes, a sock. Just your typical cotton/spandex blend, like that one, lying over there on Danvers Road.

It was part of a pack of Hanes athletic tube socks, only $5.50 in the sale bin at the Walmart. Margery Morgan purchased them for her husband, Harry, a 50-year-old two pack a day smoker, and a rather despicable human being.

My friend Dylan died today. It wasn’t a quick death; he’d been dying for years. Drugs had taken over his life, and no matter how many times he got clean, the demon always won him back.

Anna Emery’s pregnancy was quite unexpected; not in the Virgin Mary immaculate conception kind of way, but a surprise nonetheless.

She and Mason had been very careful, always making sure they were using protection. But as Anna’s grandmother was often quoted as saying, “If you do the deed, there’s a chance he might plant his seed.”

And three months after their first date, Anna was pregnant. A month later, they were married. Not long after that, they were on the verge of a divorce.

There have been two defining days in my life: the day I married Teddy Minsky, and the day Teddy died. On both days a dark, ominous cloud loomed overhead—that cloud came in the form of his mother, Ida.

Ida Minsky was a bulldozer, in attitude and appearance. A short stout woman with square shoulders like a linebacker, but she was much nastier. On our wedding day, the storm cloud bullied the caterers into changing the menu, the band into playing the songs she liked, and Teddy into realizing that no matter who he married, she was still in charge.

She was so skillful in fact that she relegated her husband, Pauley, to near invisibility in her presence, and he finally just vanished altogether, choosing death over life with Ida.

But Pauley’s liberation meant my captivity because after he died, Teddy brought Ida Minsky to live with us.